Shame

fun.”
    “No,” Caleb said, “I don’t.”
    “I stopped to chat with Elizabeth. I wish I could have stayed a little longer with her. I told her I’d be borrowing her cell phone for a few more hours. She didn’t
voice any objections
.”
    His emphasis was supposed to be cluing Caleb to her condition. He was telling him that she was unconscious, or gagged, or dead.
    “I want you to take a walk,” said Feral, “a little stroll down to La Jolla Cove. There’s a gazebo at the park there. It’s right across from the lawn.”
    “Walking’s hard for me,” Caleb said. “I had an accident last night.”
    “I think the exercise will do you good. You know what they say about people who don’t exercise—they’re at risk, and by extension so are their loved ones.”
    Caleb didn’t respond to the threat.
    “You’ll find further instructions at the gazebo. I’d hurry if I were you.”
    The line went dead.
    Caleb cut through the La Valencia Hotel, taking its courtyard pathway down to the cove. He tried to be on alert, aware of everything going on around him. As he crossed Coast Boulevard, he sensed that he was passing over a demarcation line, an upstairs-downstairs division that had the rich above and the hoi polloi below.
    The cove wasn’t crowded, but the air was pungent with smoke from fires and barbecues. Caleb took the roundabout way, following the pathway along the rocks. He stopped to tie his shoe and glanced back to see if anyone was following him. No one. But he was still sure he was under surveillance. The only people near him were two tide-poolers probing with a flashlight to see what the retreating tide had left behind. As Caleb rounded thebend, he encountered Frisbee players tossing their discs under the lights. Their boom boxes were positioned around the park, and techno vied with pop as he passed through. Dogs barked—or they might have been sea lions. Caleb knew the sea mammals liked to gather on the rocks around the cove. The end of daylight had brought the surfers in but hadn’t closed the door on all ocean sports. Several night dives were taking place. The scuba divers themselves were mere shadows, their outlines only hinted at by the glow of their underwater green lights.
    Caleb felt like one of those divers. He was having to work his way through darkness, and his illness made it seem as if he was doing everything in slow motion. A mist was hanging along the coast, light but building. The shroud seemed to cling to Caleb, hanging on to him. He tried to fight off the illusion but wished he had one of those green diver’s lights. They reminded him of a wizard’s scepter. That’s what he could use, a magical wand....
    I should have taken more aspirin, Caleb thought. His forehead was beginning to burn again. He couldn’t lose it, not now.
    Someone was in the gazebo. Caleb reached for the gun. There, he thought, touching the metal. The gun would serve him better than any wizard’s scepter. He didn’t pull it out but kept his fingers gripped around it. He crept closer to the gazebo, willing himself to be invisible, imagining himself as part of the fog.
    Fever talking, he thought.
    Inside the gazebo the shadow was moving, twisting. It was like some huge goddamn snake. Caleb took out his gun and stepped inside the structure.
    A couple looked up. Young, no more than fourteen. They stopped their kissing, interrupted by a man with a gun. They were terrified, mouths open, eyes wide and panicked.
    Caleb put his gun away. He didn’t know what to say. Further instructions were supposed to be in the gazebo, but what kind of instructions?
    “Was something left here for me?” he asked. “Some kind of package?”
    Drugs. He could tell that’s what they immediately assumed. And with his sweaty face and dazed manner, Caleb knew he probably looked like the most demented of dope fiends.
    “There wasn’t any package,” the boy managed to say.
    Caleb searched the darkened structure anyway, the boy and girl silently huddling together in the corner. Then he went outside and began examining the exterior of the gazebo. If he hadn’t been looking for the envelope, he wouldn’t have seen it, tucked as it was under one of the side eaves. As he reached for it, Caleb remembered the other envelope, the one with the pictures of Brandy Wein in it. His heart started racing. He pulled the envelope down and was glad to feel its lightness. That meant no new pictures. The envelope was addressed to Gray Jr. Inside