The truck purrs like a kitten and I hit the road for Interstate 15 south. The ’Vette had over twice the power, but I’d been driving it for five days and I get bored after five days of just about any car. And hot cars-even cold-plated ones-get risky.
I’m looking forward to seeing my main man and my kids. It’s been a while. Or I could stop off and see a friend of mine, give him a cute little diamond to put in his ear.
Right now, though, I just want to get the hell out of L.A.
I love this city, but there are too many dangerous people up here.
5
Charlie Hood looked at the brightly lit office lobby that was never lit at three A.M. Then he climbed the steps to the front door and looked in at the stillness. He saw the overturned chair at the threshold of the office then looked down the hallway leading to the bay.
He tried the door and felt the bolt knock against the lock plate and the housing. He looked out to where the 710 crossed over Interstate 10 and listened to the steady toneless roar of the cars.
Hood took the catwalk around one side of the building and looked through the first window he came to, at the cars and the whirring fans and the lilting curtains sprayed in various colors and the dead people strewn across the floor. It looked like an Anbar alleyway in ’04.
From the next window down he saw five more dead. He waited a long time for something to move other than the curtains and fan blades, but nothing did.
He went back to the unit and called in backup and ten bodies’ worth of coroners, paramedics, the homicide and gang units.