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and numbers of anyone else who might know something about where I can find Raya, along with the addresses of places she frequented. Reesa’s embarrassed at how little she can come up with, proving once and for all that the best parenting doesn’t get done on crystal meth. In the end I’ve got the name of an eighteen year-old boyfriend of Raya’s and the name of a Hollywood Goth club they went to together, and that’s all I’ve got. It’ll have to do.
    The last thing I ask for is a picture of Raya; something I can show around. Reesa says she thinks she has one in her dressing room and goes to get it. I watch her go. I’m reminded of the ocean. I light a cigarette. I wait.
    When she comes back she hands me a snapshot of an attractive fourteen year-old girl with dyed black punk-cut hair caught in the act of rolling her eyes at the camera. The resemblance to Reesa is undeniable. I pocket it.
    Though I want to linger, my own addiction is tightening the leash, so I tell Reesa I will look into it, drain my drink, and stand to go.
    “Don’t you want some money up front?” she asks, batting her lashes at me playful-like. “I thought that’s how it worked.”
    She reaches inside her robe and takes a stash of hundreds from somewhere I don’t dare think too long about, being as I’m standing up and all.
    “Will a thousand do to start?” I want to tell her to put it away, to keep it ’til I get some results. That would be the classy thing to do. But I don’t. I take it. I take it and hide it in my pocket like something shameful. “It’ll do.”
    “Aren’tcha gonna count it?”
    “I trust you,” I say.
    “But you don’t even know me.”
    “I don’t have to. I know where to find you.”
    One last smile. One last look. I try to acid burn the image of her into my memory. I want to be able to remember her exactly when I fantasize about being that barstool later. I turn and retrace my steps to the door, a cigarette smoke snail-trail the only evidence I came and went.

3
    I go back to the car. I fix. I fire up the engine. I drive. Every store, every street that flashes past holds a memory for me of an earlier day, and as always, I find myself reconciling the landmarks of the ghost-of-L.A.-past with that of the present. The dry-ice inland fog that’s come smoking in from the Pacific makes the town look all the more spectral.
    I hang a right at Fairfax and head south. In the rearview, a set of constant headlights begins to make me wonder if maybe I’m being tailed. Feeling a nervous tightness form in my chest, I take the next left just to see. The headlights, which belong to an older-model Ford pickup, blow past without so much as a hiccup. My chest loosens. I shake my head and fire up a smoke. Maybe I’m getting paranoid in my old age, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years in this business it’s that paranoia pays.
    I U-turn and continue down Fairfax and pull into the small lot behind the big Canter’s Delicatessen sign. I used to love Canter’s back when I could still digest solid food. I would go and eat there after shows way back in the thirties when the deli was still located over in Boyle Heights. I got the pastrami sandwich every time. I liked theirs because it was so lean and rare. I guess I liked things bloody even then.
    I get out. I go in, not in search of a pastrami sandwich, but a pay phone. It’s bright and busy at this hour. The smell of greasy cooked food washes over me, making my delicate stomach roll uneasily. I swallow hard and make my way over to the phone. Times like this make me rethink my stubborn refusal to adopt a cellular.
    I flip my notepad open, drop some change in the slot, and punch up Vin Prince’s number. His assistant, a perky skirt by the name of Barbara, picks up. I give a fake name, something Jewish-sounding, and ask to talk with the boss-man, but she tells me he’s incommunicado all night. I act all pissed off, telling Babs her boss and me were supposed to