By 2:45 in the morning she was completely lost. To make it worse, the marine layer had moved in and was dumping athick, stained mist across her windshield which the undersized, worn old wipers could only smear around. She wished she could remember where Murph's was, and she felt like crying, and didn't know why, and her head was beginning to ache. Somewhere east of Melrose, peering through the driver's window, halfway around the pillar of the old 122S to see her way ahead, she saw the flashing lights, and caught a glimpse of a badly mashed Merc, an accordion-nosed flatbed truck, and a couple of paramedics moving someone onto an x-lift stretcher dolly from the sidewalk. Oh, god! That poor person!, she thought, and continued her struggle through the early morning mists of Los Angeles, looking for Blake Madison, private eye.