A different world then, different world now.

Same brothers. Andy stayed thin and wiry. Tough as a boiled owl. Me, I’ve filled out some, though I can still shiver the heavy bag in the sheriff’s gym.

San Clemente, and you have to think Nixon. The western White House, right up the road. I picture him walking down the beach with the Secret Service guys ahead and behind. Too many secrets and nobody but the seagulls to tell them to. Andy’s newspaper ran a cartoon of him once, after he’d been chased out of office, and the cartoon showed him walking the beach with a metal detector, looking for coins. Thought that was a funny one. I kind of liked Dick Nixon. Grew up just over the hill from us. He was tight with my old man and his Bircher friends for a while, used to come to the house back in the fifties when he was vice president and in the early sixties when he’d lost for governor. They’d sit around, drink scotch, make plans. Nixon had a way of making you feel important. It’s an old pol’s trick, I know. I even knew it then. In fifty-six I graduated from the L.A. Sheriff’s Academy and Dick Nixon sent me a note. The vice president. Nice handwriting. It’s still in my collection of things.

But that’s a different story, too.

“You don’t look so good, Andy,” I said.

Brothers and we still don’t look much alike. An old cop and an old reporter. There used to be four of us Becker boys. Raised some hell. Just three now.

I looked at Andy and I could see something different in his face.

“What gives?” I asked.

“Listen to me, Nick. Everything we thought about Janelle Vonn was wrong.”

2

1954

“BECAUSE THE VONNS are direct descendants of murderers, that’s why,” said David Becker. “One of their relatives got hung in Texas. And I saw Lenny Vonn bust a brick with his bare hands once. One chop. That’s exactly what he’ll do to Nick’s head. The Vonns are crazy.”