Upon dinner with my parents in the main house, I phone Joel, who only lives a couple of estates down, and tell him that I'll soon be over. How's the car? he asks me. It's fine, I tell him.

Although Lee had said repeatedly that the wheels were the only things he tried to fix on my car, I had a couple of my father's mechanics rush over to Lee's house. They put the wheels back on and then checked the rest of the car out thoroughly for anything else that Lee might have fixed. Thankfully, there wasn't anything else. All the while that the mechanics were at work in Lee's yard, Lee paced a few feet away, worrying intensely that all the activity taking place in front of his house would attract cops. No cops had come and we left without incident.

Now, before I leave, I've got a question for my father concerning Lee's insomnia. My father studied medicine once as a hobby and so should have some knowledge on the subject. I find him in the library where he smokes his usual cigar immediately following dinner.

"What happens to a person when they go more than seven days without sleep?" I ask.

He drops the cigar in the ashtray beside his chair. "Seven days without sleep?" he questions. It's for McGinnis's final, I tell him. "Well, well," he says. "It's good to see that you’re taking this seriously." He sits up to answer me. "Muscles in the body need rest. If they don't get any then, first of all, they'll go through mild stages of shock."

Lee's twitching spasms.

He continues, "But the most severe effects happen in the brain. Long periods of sleep deprivation can cause lapses in memory. . .and, ah. . .in more extensive cases, hallucinations. Even temporary insanity."

I've heard enough. In a hoarse voice I thank him and hastily depart, lest he notice the alarmed look I'm fighting to conceal.

By the time I pick up Joel, travel through L.A., and arrive in Venice Beach it's going on eleven.

"You bros are late!" Lee exclaims when we walk through his open door. In the same anxious voice, he rattles, "I'm all out of speed. I should a took some more a couple hours ago. I can feel myself coming down."

I miss most of his words as my attention is riveted on the coffee table. There a small number of car stereos lays in a tangled group of wires. Joel also notices. He says, "What's all that?"

"You guys said you'd be here at nine. After a few minutes I got bored of waiting."

"You weren't bored!" Stephanie interrupts, making her appearance from the kitchen. "You ran out of the house to go look for them. You said 'the cops must have caught them.' An hour later, you came back with those." She's pointing at the car stereos.

"Like I said, I'm out of crank. We'll, I'm also strapped for cash. So I'm going to swap a couple car decks for some instead."

"Why don't you tell Mylan and your cousin here how you got them?" She says sharply.

"I took 'em."

"You stole them."