When I got out into the low-lit bathroom hallway, Cinnamon was waiting for me alone with her back up against the wall, a little apologetic tilt to her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I sent him home. He’s…sensitive.”

“Not to me he ain’t.”

She reached into her big, brown stitched-leather purse and pulled out a cassette case, thrust it into my hands. It had a picture on it of a stout, bald, dark man with a massive thick honker and oversized glasses, wearing a doctor’s white lab coat over a suit and thick tie. In gaudy bold red eighties font, it read:

A. Bahari, PSY.D., DOCTOR OF POSITIVITY PRESCRIPTIONS

From the Dr. Bahari Spiritual Clinic

Booster Shots to Increase Life Profits

Building a Super-Success Plan Step-by-Step

Remedy for a Life Without Meaning

Rx for Health, Wealth, and Loving Relationships

I shot Cinnamon a curious look.

She said, “Open it.”

Inside: a cassette with a printed label.

TELEGRAPH

1. Big, Wide World 2. Foghorn Nights 3. When I Want You Too

Golden Harmony Mgmt.

And then a phone number in the 213.

Side two was black, no label.

I said, “They changed their name.”

She shrugged, sighed, shook her head a little. “Don’t forget our deal, okay?”

I took it in and gave her my word.

“Adam, I’m not joking. You need to leave this alone.”

I felt for my hurting cheekbone. “Is Dr. Bahari still alive?”

“Yes. And he’s still sketchy as they come.”

“Okay, but where?”

“Last I checked he was running some kind of vitamin company in Playa Vista, but—”

“Well, I could just—”

“No, Adam. Last April, Devon found me, and he came here. I begged him not to go digging into all this and he didn’t listen.”

She raised eyebrows.

“That’s what happens when you fuck with the past.”

“So…is Bahari the reason you stayed away?”

Her eyes did a funny dance of apprehension, she shook her head a little and grabbed my hand, put her face close to mine and cut to a whisper. “I stayed away because I knew that every street corner would remind me of Emil’s smile. And I’m never going back again.”

I took it in.

She said, “Are you going to tell Charles you saw me?”

“Not a chance.”

“How much time does he have left?”

“I don’t know. Not much.”

Our eyes met—hers were pleading. Then she gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “Get out of here.”

The woman who once so long ago ran for her life and never stopped running. The woman who thirty-six hours ago wasn’t even alive. Now it killed to think I’d never see her again.

30

Back in the car, I wasn’t still drunk exactly, but the night’s long, dark glow hung around me like a personal heatwave. I wrote a text apologizing to Endi for flaking on dinner and promised to drop by the next day—no response.

The night sky was vast, twinkling eternal mystery.

I gassed up at Chevron and was about to hit Highway 10 heading for Los Angeles, when I remembered I had a crappy boom box in the trunk, one of those mono-speaker jobs. I’d picked it up on my last case. I pressed play and the little rollers still spun—batteries not dead yet.

I got behind the wheel and popped in the cassette demo as I took the long curve through the desert, past ancient rock formations and cascading mountains, under the wash of stars, glowing like Cinnamon’s Chaplin-esque smile, the laughing sorrow of a grown woman full of trapped teenage light.

But she lived. And I saw her.

I pressed play. Hard-hitting precision drums, a splash of large wide guitar like a crack of thunder—from the first note, Telegraph sounded different, very. More confident, deliberate, ahead of the beat—and then the voice kicked in and it was really different. Maybe it was Sandoz, but it sure didn’t sound like him—this was crooner majestic, with just a tint of British and a timbre that verged on pro.

The big wide world

it’s been sneaking up on us

I drove in a trance, shooting down the highway night. I cut the windows, letting the big sound mix with the breeze. Gone was the folk rock, the wannabe Dylan strumminess. Gone was Grunes’s hinky bass, Hawley’s Farfisa organ. This was ready-for-radio stuff, cascading and plunging like a waterfall into a smooth lake of harmony. A percolating synth rhythm drove the whole thing forward, pedal to the metal—had Bahari tacked it on?

The big wide world