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the garage, a couple of chairs, a coffee maker, a table with a spread of muscle car magazines, a TV on a metal stand. The TV showed a live news shot from some outlying location, a brown, bleak place, dust and long sky, a low ridge of mountains in the distance. The camera zoomed in on a large barn without windows or a visible door, then pulled back to reveal a pair of smaller buildings, a garage, a water tank, all behind a high deer fence topped with concertina wire.
    “Where is that?” Bob said, squinting at the screen from halfway across the garage. “The Tehachapis? Looks like the Tehachapi Mountains.”
    Roistler stood in front of the TV, head forward to hear the low volume. “Some kind of survivalist group,” he said. “Been living there for a few weeks. They’re going to wait out the Millennium Bug.”
    “Where is that?” Bob said. “Roistler, turn up the goddamn sound.”
    A female reporter was now in the shot, holding a microphone, standing in front of a satellite news van.
    “Twenty-five, thirty people,” Roistler said, relaying what he heard. “They all met in an online message board. These reporters found their web site.”
    “Can you please turn up the goddamn sound?” Bob said.
    Darby hopped down out of the van, still shaking the last of the headache from the job site. He patted his waist, his belt. His cell phone was gone. He kept the phone in a leather holster clipped to his belt, set to vibrate in case The Kid needed to reach him. The entire holster was gone. He checked the front of the van, under the seat, behind the seat. He tried to remember if he’d had the phone with him when he’d left the house the night before, if he’d clipped the holster to his belt next to his Everclean pager, if he’d had it in his hand when he stood in The Kid’s bedroom doorway, watching him sleep.
    Molina came out into the garage from his office, looked at the TV. He pulled at the collar of his white dress shirt, too tight around his wide neck. A bird’s claw tattoo poked out from under his cuff, the man that the businessman had once been showing through a little.
    “Have you seen this?” Roistler said. “Tell me you’ve put a bid in on this.”
    “There’s nothing to bid on,” Molina said. “Nothing’s happened.”
    “Give them a call. Get us on a list. Someone’s starting a list, government bids.”
    “Roistler, they can’t take bids on something that hasn’t happened.”
    “Big job,” Roistler said. “That’s going to be a big job.”
    The Kid had convinced Darby to buy the cell phone, had come up with an entire system for its usage. Darby hadn’t wanted to leave The Kid alone in the house when he went out on night jobs, but The Kid didn’t want to stay with anyone else, so one evening, nine or ten months before, The Kid laid his cell phone plan out for Darby on the front porch. The plan took up an entire two-page spread in his notebook—diagrams, arrows, the whole nine yards. Darby would buy a phone and subscribe to one of the monthly calling plans The Kid saw advertised during the late-night talk shows. The Kid would be the only person with the phone number. If there were any problems at night while Darby was at work, The Kid would call Darby and relay a series of dot-dash-dot bleeps using the keypad of the kitchen phone. Morse Code. Bob had bought The Kid a book on Morse Code for his birthday that year, and this had sparked his whole idea. In his notebook, he’d copied over a few phrases he thought he’d be using in his transmissions to Darby: Help, Come at once. What is your position? Calling for assistance. S.O.S.
    Darby stood in the middle of the garage, scanning the cement floor. No sign of the phone or the holster.
    “Here you go, jefe .” Bob handed Molina the paperwork from the cleanup. He turned up the volume on the TV, pulled a three-ring binder down from the shelf above the set, slid the Before and After photos into a plastic sheet at the back. These were the sales