The visits were just at the house for a while, always with Anne within earshot. Harley stayed for supper a few times and once or twice spent the whole evening watching videos of old westerns with them. The Searchers, Shane… it was after The Magnificent Seven that she agreed to let him resume the weekend visits.

The first one was in May. Harley picked Cody up at seven on Friday night and said they were just going to spend the weekend at his place down in Venice. That was three months ago, and she hadn’t seen her son since.

“During these three months,” Neal asked, “what have you done?”

“Harley was supposed to have brought Cody back that Sunday night around seven. About eight o’clock, I guess, I started calling his place. No answer. Around ten I went over there and leaned on the doorbell. Nobody home, no lights on, no TV, no stereo. I called the police, who told me that I needed to go to the sheriff’s department. I went to the sheriff’s department and they told me that they’d check his last known address, which they did, and he wasn’t there. They’d put a warrant out for him but couldn’t give custodial cases much priority, because it wasn’t a ‘real kidnapping.’ I got my lawyer out of bed at around two in the morning and he told me he’d start filing papers. As far as I know, he’s still filing them.

“But we can’t find Harley to serve him the papers. We’ve gone through social service agencies, private investigators, a couple of dozen police and sheriff’s departments. Then my lawyer said he’d found a new detective agency that specialized in custody cases. They were a lot better at finding creative expenses than they were at finding my son. Finally I called Ethan. I heard that he didn’t feel-how shall I say this-constrained by the narrowest limits of the law.

“How do you know Mr. Kitteredge?” Neal asked.

“His bank put up money for a couple of my films,” she answered.

Natch, thought Neal.