Danielle is accustomed to domestic flights with United or American, on airplanes that smell faintly rancid, staffed by harried stewardesses who charge passengers five dollars for the privilege of headsets so they can listen to bad movies projected onto stained screens. She is a little overwhelmed by JetBlue's leather seats, cheerful staff, and individual TV screens with thirty satellite channels. Danielle finds herself wishing she had never dropped out of her school, had gotten her MBA instead and joined JetBlue when they were young. She could have made herself part of something constructive. Instead of fleeing to Los Angeles to rescue a woman she has never met.

On the flight over she reads The Famished Road, which only accentuates the sense of fatalism that has crept into her since leaving her apartment, a feeling that she has been suddenly swept up into one of the river of time's inexorable rapids, she no longer has anything to do with the determination of her fate. There is no exit, no escape hatch; all she can do is tread water and hope to be carried into calm water again.

The landing proceedings pass in a blur, and then she is outside in Los Angeles' bright summer sunshine. The ellipsis that is LAX is centered around a building that looks like a UFO on stilts. A restaurant, if she recalls correctly. As she waits for the Avis van to arrive, a handsome man with a craggy jaw tries to talk to her. She ignores him, suspicious that he might be assigned to follow her. When they reach Avis, and he rushes to be the first to get a vehicle and drive away, she realizes he was just an actor trying to pick her up. A useful reminder. Even if there is a conspiracy, not everyone is part of it. Just because they're after you doesn't mean you're not paranoid.

***

Los Angeles' Central Public Library is a large, austerely pale building located on the good side of downtown, steeply uphill from Skid Row, easy to find thanks to the landmark pyramid that tops its central tower. Danielle enters twenty minutes before it closes. There are plenty of poor and homeless people in the reading rooms, but only one barefoot Indian woman. She is younger than Danielle expected, early twenties at most. Her skin is very dark, almost black, her features strong and aristocratic, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Her long hair has clumped into greasy hanks, and her clothes, jeans and a loose black shirt, are stained and thickly wrinkled. Her body language is rigidly composed, almost military. She would be pretty if she were not so gaunt and drained.

"Jayalitha?" Danielle says from behind her.

The Indian woman looks up from her 1999 Fodor's guide to L.A. "Miss Leaf?"

Danielle nods.

"You came," Jayalitha says incredulously. Her smile lights up the room. "Oh my goodness. I did not allow myself to believe you might really come. I scarcely allowed myself to hope. Oh, thank you, Miss Leaf. Thank you so much."

"Call me Danielle. Please. Let's, let's get you some food, okay?"

"Please."

They cross the street to the Westin Bonaventure hotel and its panoply of restaurants. Danielle intends to take her somewhere nice, then realizes Jayalitha's lack of footwear might be a problem. She is saved by Jayalitha's gasp of desire when she sees the Subway logo. One vegetarian sub and large Coke later, the Indian woman is visibly blissful.

"I hardly remember the last time my belly was full," she says. "Shanghai, perhaps. A month ago. There were Subways in Bangalore. There was one on a shopping centre on Brigade Street I frequented whenever I visited the city."

"I used to go there," Danielle said.

"Oh, yes, you lived in Bangalore. I used to go there and try out American foods. I always wanted to go to America. And now," she looks around, "it was an evil road, but somehow, here I am."

"Here you are," Danielle agrees. "Come on. I've got a hotel. By the beach."

It's a twenty-minute drive down the Santa Monica Highway to the Cadillac Hotel, a moderately priced Art Deco hotel right on Venice's boardwalk, where Danielle once spent a week with Jonas DeGlint, one of her nicer Crazy Years boyfriends. Jonas was neurotic, needy, a bad guitarist and worse songwriter who believed himself the second coming of Jimi Hendrix, but he stayed away from hard drugs and was always good to Danielle, and her memories of the Cadillac are fond ones.

She parks on Rose Street. Jayalitha is half-asleep in the passenger seat. Danielle wanted to watch the sun set over the Pacific, but it is already dark; she wanted to buy Jayalitha sandals, but the stores have all closed. She supposes one more barefoot night won't kill her. The Indian woman hardly needs shoes anyhow, she has half-inch callouses on her feet.

"You must be tired," Danielle says, when they arrive in their room, small but clean, with two double beds.

"Exhausted." Jayalitha's eyes drift from Danielle to the bed as if magnetically compelled. "I know we must speak. But if it is possible to sleep first..."

Danielle knows she has to find out what Jayalitha knows, why she fled India and has stayed quiet for the six months since, but she also knows the subject is poison. She is reluctant to bring it up now, when Jayalitha is so childishly happy to be fed and given a place to sleep.

"Go ahead," Danielle says. "Take a shower, go to bed. We'll talk in the morning."

** *

The ringing phone startles them both awake. Danielle crawls to the edge of her bed and gropes for it, dazed by sleep. The room is lit only by starlight and the glowing red digits of their alarm clock. It takes her four rings to locate the phone by sound.

"Yes?" she answers.

"Danielle. It's Keiran." The connection is terrible, his voice sounds fuzzy. "They know where you are. You have to get out of there."

"What?"

"I'm serious."

Danielle shakes her head to clear it. "How, how do you know?"

"I have a tracer on P2's VOIP gateway. I can't listen in, it's encrypted, but I know he just called your hotel. Presumably confirming your presence. Then he called two other Los Angeles numbers. I think he's sending people after you."

"How, how could they have found us?"

"P2 must have cracked every hotel in the city," Keiran says. There is something like awe in his voice.

"What are we supposed to do now?"

"You're supposed to run."

"Where can we go?"

"We? You found her?" Keiran asks. "Yes. She's right here with me."

"Good. Where's a good place to meet, near the airport?"

"The airport," Danielle says, and tries to think. "There's a building in the middle. A restaurant. Looks like a flying saucer."

"I'll be there by noon. Your time."

"Noon?" Danielle looks at the clock. It is 3:05 AM. "Where are you?"

"Five miles over the Atlantic. Listen. Don't make any phone calls. Don't use a credit card. Take out as much cash as you can and move right away. I think this P2 can trace most anything. Banks, government, maybe even military, it's fucking mad what he can do."

Danielle swallows. "All right."

"Don't pack. You don't have time. Just leave."

** *

The man behind the Cadillac Hotel's desk gives them a bewildered look when they exit the elevator at 3AM. In no mood for conversation, Danielle sweeps past him and leads Jayalitha outside.

Across from them is a small line of shops. The boardwalk and beach are about twenty feet to their left. The beach is wide enough, and the night dark enough, that they cannot see or hear the ocean. To their right, Dudley Avenue, a narrow pedestrian thoroughfare, climbs east from the Cadillac for two hundred feet before it reaches Pacific Avenue, busy by day but now deserted. About a third of the way there, it intersects an alley that runs parallel to the beach, called Speedway. East of Speedway, Dudley is lined on both sides by small houses, their gated properties obscured by near-jungle.

The breezy night air smells of the ocean. There is no one else in sight. Danielle leads the way east, towards their car, parked on Rose Street a few blocks away. They are halfway to Pacific Avenue when they hear an engine purr behind them, a car turning onto Speedway. They duck into an open gateway and watch the car stop in front of the Cadillac. The police car. Danielle watches, her whole body prickling with goosebumps, breathing deeply, as a uniformed police officer emerges.

She is tempted to rush to the officer and ask for help. But she doesn't. During the Crazy Years, when at any given time she was probably carrying drugs or technically in offense of several bylaws, and frequently got hassled and moved along by intolerant uniformed tyrants, she developed a powerful avoidance reflex towards police. To this day, when she spots a police car, it is like seeing a shark passing by. She only watches as the cop enters the hotel.

A minute later, a light flickers in the window of the room they so recently inhabited.

Maybe the police, like Keiran, knew they were in danger. Maybe the police are the danger. She thinks of the Rampart scandal, when a cabal of a dozen crooked LAPD officers was unearthed, amid dark hints that they were only the tip of an iceberg of corruption. It's very easy to kill someone, if you're a cop. You don't even need to leave the scene of the crime. Just walk into the hotel room with the skeleton key the night manager gave you, shoot your victims dead with an untraceable weapon, then call in your discovery of a murder scene, thanks to the anonymous tip phoned in half an hour ago.

"Let's go," she whispers. Jayalitha nods. She seems alert, nervous, but not terrified. Danielle is glad of that. She too is frightened but not panicky. If she had nothing to do, if she had to wait and hide, that would be different; but as long as there is a course of action, find the car and go meet Keiran at the airport, she can bury her fear beneath activity.

They go to the end of Dudley, walking very fast now, cross Pacific, go the half-block north to the corner of Rose, and start east towards Main Street, only two blocks from where their red Dodge Neon is parked at Rose and 3rd – but Danielle stops after a few steps and stares. There is something blocking the street near their car. Another car, double-parked right by their rental. The street lights are dim but she can make out a telltale girder-shape above the vehicle. Another police car.

She freezes for a minute, then grabs Jayalitha by the hand and takes two quick steps backwards, trying to get back around the corner onto Pacific, out of sight. But she is too late. The searchlight mounted atop the car blazes to life, almost blinding them from three blocks away. Danielle and Jayalitha turn and run. Behind them, the car growls into life; tires squeal as it leaps towards them.

On impulse Danielle takes a chance, keeps running down Pacific, south past Dudley to Palermo Ave, the next pedestrian walkway, and then westwards towards the beach. She knows from her previous tenure at the Cadillac that the streets around here are open, hard to hide in; their best bet is the lightless beach. Hopefully their pursuers will go the wrong way – but as they pelt down Palermo, the searchlight illuminates them from behind, casting their hundred-foot shadows against the pale pavement and the golden sand beyond. Danielle keeps running, to the beach, and Jayalitha follows. They veer onto Venice Boardwalk, sprinting diagonally away from the light, shadowed from it by buildings that by day contain colourful T-shirt stores, pizza stands, rental bicycles and tattoo parlours, but by night are covered by metal shutters, as bleak as a prison wall.

Danielle keeps going, over the boardwalk, across a patch of grass, and briefly along a bicycle path shaped like a sinuous river. They stagger a little when they hit the soft sand of Venice Beach, easily two hundred yards wide.

"Keep going," Danielle pants. She has half a plan now. But they need to move fast, get away from the street lights, and her lungs and muscles are burning from exertion, the last few months of drink and dissolution have not been kind to her nearly-thirty body – and now another pair of headlights is coming at them from the north, along the beach. For a moment Danielle sags and slows, defeated; this car is still distant, but if it is hunting them and has a searchlight, there is nowhere else to run.

But no, she realizes, this is the beach patrol, who rove the sand all night to ensure that the homeless do not sleep here. Danielle isn't sure if they are technically police or not, but they are probably not out to get her. She can go to them for help – but then what? Then the police chasing them will arrive, and take them into custody, and she is horribly certain that if she lets this happen, neither she nor Jayalitha will ever make it to any police precinct. Instead they will be driven on a one-way journey to one of Los Angeles' many lonely and dangerous streets, where their bodies will be discovered come morning. She keeps running. She thinks she hears, behind them, over the ocean's gentle roar, the sound of boots slapping against the boardwalk, of men racing towards them.