Flashback

K.T. had come to the house to watch a double feature of the two Australian Mad Max movies starring a very young Mel Gibson, but really starring the black-on-black supercharger-modified GT351 version of the Australian 1973 Ford XB Falcon hardtop that Mad Max drove past, through, and around bad guys. Dara had absented herself from those movies—which they’d watched more than once when K.T. came over—but Officer Lincoln and Val and Nick had loved them. Occasionally Nick or K.T. would see some drug dealer’s car that vaguely resembled the erroneously labeled Last of the V-8 Interceptors from the ancient movies and drag the other over to the impound lot to admire it.

“You want the nitrous oxide tank, too?” asked K.T.

“I think that was Humungus’s vehicle,” said Nick. “But if you find one, I’ll take it.”

“You are nuts,” said K.T., and there followed a more ominous silence than the earlier ones.

“K.T.?”

“You realize what you’re asking me to do, Nick? Steal a car from impound for you? Have you been an ex-cop so long that you’ve forgotten that we tend to keep track of little things like that? Impounded cars and such?”

“All the heroin from the real French Connection was sto…,” began Nick.

“Oh, fuck the heroin from the French Connection case!” shouted K.T. “You’re talking about me getting thrown off the force here, Bottom. About me going to jail.”

“You’re too smart to…”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” said K.T. “If you… you and Val… were running away from these Vast Invisible Powers that you say framed you, where would you go that they couldn’t reach you?”

It was Nick’s turn to be silent.

“Oh, shit,” said K.T. after a moment. “The good ol’ Republic of Texas doesn’t take in addicts and felons, Nick. It’s almost impossible to get into that crazy country. You have to be a combination of James Bond and Albert Schweitzer just to get considered. You know that! How many perps have we chased who headed for Texas only to be turned back at the Texhoma border portal and nabbed by the Oklahoma cops?”

“Yeah.” Suddenly Nick was impossibly weary. He just wanted to crawl back into the lice-and bedbug-infested flophouse/flashcave and go to sleep on the filthy floor.

“Call me sometime next week, Nick. Maybe we could figure something else out and…”

“I need the car tomorrow, K.T. By noon, if possible. After tomorrow is too late. Tomorrow night will be too late.”

Detective Lieutenant K. T. Lincoln said nothing.

After a minute, Nick said, “Good night, K.T. Sorry for waking you,” and broke the connection.

Nick opened his eyes. Twenty minutes until they were scheduled to land. Sato still sat with his eyes closed and arms crossed, but was no longer snoring. Nick had no idea whether he was awake or not.

He studied Sato’s face as the sound of the Airbus 310/360’s twin engines dropped in pitch and the plane began jolting in its rough descent into the never-forgiving thermals and downdrafts of Colorado’s Front Range.

Nick had been most worried about getting to see Advisor Daichi Omura before he had to leave, but in the end, Omura set up the interview and demanded to see him.

This time, after Nick had surrendered his Glock and suffered the various indignities of high-tech and no-tech searches, he realized that there was no special reason that Omura should let him go if he didn’t want to. This might be the permanent last stop on his five-day Los Angeles tour.

Except for the fact that both this former Getty Center and Nakamura’s beautiful Japanese home were on mountaintops, the setting with Omura couldn’t have been more different than it was with Nakamura.

A smiling young man, no bodyguard, politely led Nick to a vast but strangely cozy room—the sense of coziness probably created by the intimate lighting and clusters of modern furniture set tastefully around the large space. Exquisite paintings decorated the walls (it had been the Getty Art Museum, after all), and the amazing Richard Meier modernist buildings situated on the double ridgetop, the 24 acres of campus, and the more than 600 acres of carefully planted trees and shrubs surrounding the campus were all promised to be returned to the people of Los Angeles once the current national emergency was over.

There was no sign of that emergency ending soon, and in the meantime, Advisor Omura and his delegation determined the future of not only California but of Oregon and Washington from these rooms.

While he waited for Omura to arrive, Nick allowed himself to be stunned by the view through the 30-foot-wide south window. This main building was 900 feet above the I-405 that cut past its feet and dropped down into Los Angeles to the south and to the San Fernando Valley to the north, but it seemed to be perched miles above Los Angeles. Toward the eastern horizon, Nick could see smoke rising from the looted wasteland that had been East Los Angeles. He could only imagine this view at night with the solid carpet of city lights close in and the complex constellations farther out.