The Narrows

out that, like Terry McCaleb, I was a father. In the months since, I had learned to find in my daughter's eyes what Terry had once told me he had already found in his daughter's. I knew to look for it because he had told me. I owed him something for that.
    Graciela came out behind me.
    "Will you do this for me? I believe what my husband said about you. I believe you can help me and help him."
    And maybe help myself, I thought but didn't say. Instead I looked down at the freeway and saw the sun reflected on the windshields of the cars moving through the pass. It was like a thousand bright, silver eyes were watching me.
    "Yes," I said, "I will do it."

CHAPTER 4
    My first interview was on the docks at the Cabrillo Marina in San Pedro. I always liked coming down this way but rarely did. I didn't know why. It was one of those things you forget about until you do it again and then you remember that you like it. The first time I arrived I was a sixteen-year-old runaway. I made my way down to the Pedro docks and spent my days getting tattooed and watching the tuna boats come in. I spent my nights sleeping in an unlocked towboat called Rosebud. Until a harbormaster caught me and I was sent back to the foster home, the words Hold Fast tattooed across my knuckles.
    Cabrillo Marina was newer than that memory. These weren't the working docks where I had ended up so many years before. Cabrillo Marina provided dockage for pleasure craft. The masts of a hundred sailboats poked up behind its locked gates like a forest after a wildfire. Beyond these were rows of power yachts, many in the millions of dollars in value. Some not. Buddy Lockridge's boat was not a floating castle. Lockridge, who Graciela McCaleb told me was her husband's charter partner and closest friend at the end, lived on a thirty-two-foot sailboat that looked like it had the contents of a sixty-footer on its deck. It was a junker, not by virtue of the boat itself but by how it was cared for. If Lockridge had lived in a house it would've had cars on blocks in the yard and walls of stacked newspapers inside.
    He had buzzed me in at the gate and emerged from the cabin wearing shorts, sandals and a T-shirt worn and washed so many times the inscription across the chest was unreadable. Graciela had called him ahead of time. He knew I wanted to talk to him but not the exact reason why.
    "So," he said as he stepped off the boat onto the dock. "Graciela said you are looking into Terry's death. Is this like an insurance thing or something?"
    "Yes, you could say that."
    "You like a private eye or something?"
    "Something like that, yeah."
    He asked for identification and I showed him the laminated wallet copy of my license that had been sent to me from Sacramento. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at my formal first name.
    "Hieronymus Bosch. Like that crazy painter, huh?"
    It was rare that someone recognized the name. That told me something about Buddy Lockridge.
    "Some say he was crazy. Some think he accurately foretold the future."
    The license seemed to appease him and he said we could talk in his boat or we could walk over to the chan- dlery to get a cup of coffee. I wanted to get a look inside his home and boat-it was basic investigative strategy -but didn't want to be obvious about it so I told him I could use some caffeine.
    The chandlery was a ship's store that was a five-minute walk down the dock. We small-talked as we walked over and I mostly listened to Buddy complain about his portrayal in the movie that had been inspired by McCaleb's heart transplant and his search for his donor's killer.
    "They paid you, didn't they?" I asked when he was finished.
    "Yes, but that's not the point."
    "Yes it is. Put your money in the bank and forget about the rest. It's just a movie."
    There were some tables and benches outside the chandlery and we took our coffees there. Lockridge started asking questions before I got the chance. I let him run his line out a little bit. My view was that he was a very important piece of my investigation, since he knew Terry McCaleb and was one of two witnesses to his death. I wanted him to feel comfortable with me so I let him ask away.
    "So what's your pedigree?" he asked. "Were you a cop?"
    "Almost thirty years. With the LAPD. Half of the time I worked homicides."
    "Murders, huh? Did you know Terror?"
    "What?"
    "I mean, Terry. I called him Terror."
    "How come?"
    "I don't know. I just did. I give everyone nicknames. Terry had seen firsthand the terror