Private

And then I fell off the planet for a while.

I must have slept long and deep, because I was awakened by a groundskeeper shaking my arm, saying, "Sir, we're closing. You have to leave, sir."

I touched Mom's stone, found my car, and as the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, my car seemed to drive itself to a pretty carriage house I knew well in the flats of Beverly Hills.

I parked on Wetherly, a tidy residential block, and sat for a while just looking at Justine's small, beautiful house. I turned my phone back on and tapped in her number.

Justine answered on the first ring. "Jack. What was this family emergency?" she asked. "You missed the party."

"Colleen is going back to Dublin," I said. "We talked it over. After that I went out to Forest Lawn. I needed time to think."

"Are you okay?"

"Sure."

" 'Sure,' he says," Justine said, tweaking me. "Well, I've had to do some mental reorganization of my own. See, um, Bobby dumped me to go back to his wife. Too bad for Bobby, though; she didn't want him anymore."

I wanted to comfort Justine, and at the same time I was happy to hear this breaking news. Justine was too good for Bobby Petino, or to get tainted by the smudge and stink of California politics.

I wondered where Justine was right now. I pictured her in a chaise in her study, or lying in bed with the TV turned down, a glass of wine in her hand. My emotional pull toward her was almost a physical force.

"What are you doing right now?" I asked.

"Why?"

"I could come over," I said. "Just for a while."

There was a deep pause that I filled with hope.

"Jack, we both know that would be a bad idea," Justine said. "Why don't you just get a good night's sleep, and I'll see you tomorrow."

I was saying her name when she disco

And then I drove to my home alone.

Epilogue

Chapter 120

OUT-OF-WORK actor Parker Dalton knocked on the door of Suite 34 at the Chateau Marmont.

He held the folding massage table by its handle, reset his cap with his other hand, and waited on the dark print carpet for Mr. Cushman to invite him in for his daily rub.

Dalton loved this job, actually. Stars had always stayed at the Chateau, and some of them actually lived here several months at a time. The sightings of Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Matthew Perry, and others made fantastic entries on Dalton's blog and always gave him hope for his own career.

Mr. Cushman was no star, but he was a celebrity, what with his wife having been murdered and the killer still on the loose.

Dalton had tweeted about his sessions with Mr. Cushman, and his friends and i

When Mr. Cushman didn't come to the door, Dalton phoned his room on the direct line. He heard the phone ring inside the suite, and when Mr. Cushman didn't pick up, he considered his options.

Should he leave-or call the front desk?

It wasn't exactly rare for Mr. Cushman to be semidrunk when Dalton arrived. But maybe there had been an accident. Maybe he had fallen in the shower.

Dalton finally called the desk, and within minutes the day manager came up, a tall blond guy with a rockin' build and the name "Mr. Straus" on the tag on his vest. Straus questioned Dalton briefly and then opened the door to Cushman's suite.

Dalton stood at the threshold and called out, "Mr. Cushman." When there was no answer, he followed Straus into the large suite.

The spare 1930s-style furniture was undisturbed. Bottles and glasses littered the tabletops, garbage spilled out of trash cans, and white curtains billowed over the unmade bed.

"I don't see Mr. Cushman anywhere," said Dalton.

"No kidding," said Straus.

Dalton watched Straus open the closet doors-and he saw his opportunity to snoop. What did Mr. Cushman wear when he wasn't naked or in his pajamas?

The closet was empty and so were the dresser drawers.

The bathroom, with its wonderful period black-and-white tiles, was a mess: medicine cabinet open, just a used razor and a bottle of aspirin inside, towels all over the floor.

"Man, looks like he checked out without telling me," said Parker Dalton.

"Christ," said the manager, begi

"Are you calling the police?"

"Be serious. This is the Chateau Marmont."

Parker Dalton was tweeting before he left the legendary and, some said, haunted hotel. Oh, man, what a tale he had to tell. By the end of the day, twenty thousand nosy people would know that Andy Cushman had stiffed the hotel and scampered away.

Chapter 121

IT WAS LATE afternoon when Del Rio turned off Lobo Canyon and parked his gray Land Rover off Lobo Vista Road.

The sky was as gray as the car, as gray as his clothes, camouflage he didn't need because this was such a desolate spot.

Del Rio was thinking about Jack as he took his Remington 700, fitted with a ten-power scope, from the rear of the car.

He walked off-road, taking a deer path up an incline through the scrub.

The rise got steeper, and when the trail bore to the right, Del Rio broke a new path through the weeds, grabbing onto grasses and coyote brush and pulling himself up the hillside in places where his shoes slid on the slope.

When he reached the plateau, he took in the view of the farmhouse seventy-five yards below him, with its sun-bleached outbuildings and stretch of terrain that looked like a rumpled and dusty carpet had been tossed over the hills.

Del Rio assumed a prone position with the muzzle of the gun extended over the edge of the bluff.

Forty minutes crawled by before the back door of the farmhouse opened-and the man he was waiting for came out with a dog, a handsome Rhodesian ridgeback.

The guy had a rolling walk, wore a plaid shirt, jeans, a brown brimmed hat. He chained the dog to the porch post, patted its head, then picked up a bridle and saddle from a railing before heading to the paddock.

The guy with the hat saddled up a bay mare and rode it out to a bridle path that led into the hills, where trouble was waiting for him.

Del Rio lined up his shot where two lines of plaid intersected and squeezed the trigger.

The mare's ears went back, and Del Rio saw the hole appear in the rider's shirt just as the horse rounded a bend.

Del Rio stood and saw that the rider was still sitting upright, until, as if in slow motion, he tipped to the left and fell to the ground.

The mare stepped off the trail, dragging the rider by one boot until he fell free. Then the horse stopped and grazed on the dry grass.

Del Rio picked up his shell casing, put it in his shirt pocket, and walked down the bluff at a right angle to the trail.

When he reached the hit man's body, he checked for a pulse. There was none.

He kicked the contract killer a couple times in the side to be sure he was dead, then said, "Hey, Bo Montgomery, you scum. Shelby didn't see it coming either."

Del Rio wiped down his gun with his shirttails and tossed it over the cliff, saw it bounce and get lost in the miles of unbroken scrub.

He polished the casing and hurled it after the gun, watched it disappear.

One shot. One kill.

Job done. Very professional. Very Private.

Very personal too, thought Del Rio.

Jack had loved Shelby-and he loved Jack.