The flophouse on Skid Row smelled of urine and stale beer and something that Jack Morrisey could not name but would never forget. Room 13 was at the end of a hallway that had never been cleaned, and the door had a crack in it that ran from the top to the bottom, like a scar.

Jack pushed the door open with his foot. The room was small—a bed that had never been made, a chair with one leg shorter than the others, a window that looked out onto a brick wall. And sitting on the bed, counting crumpled dollar bills, was his father.

Frank Morrisey was older than Jack had imagined. Older and meaner. His face was the color of old leather, and his eyes were small and sharp, like a rat's eyes in the dark. He was wearing a shirt that had been white once and was now the color of dishwater.

The first thing Frank did when he saw Jack was look at his wallet.

"You got a job, boy?" he asked.

Jack felt something cold move through his stomach. He had spent eleven years looking for this moment, and this was the first thing his father said to him.

"I do," Jack said.

"Good. Good." Frank went back to counting his money. He did not ask Jack to sit down. He did not ask how he had found him. He just counted his money and smiled a small, tight smile.

Jack sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress was lumpy and smelled of mildew. He looked at his father's hands—thin, spotted with age, the fingers crooked from years of picking locks and opening pockets.

"I'm taking you home," Jack said.

Frank stopped counting. He looked at Jack the way a man looks at a bug he has decided not to crush. "Home," he said. "What's home?"

"A room I have. Above a laundromat. It's small, but it's clean."

Frank laughed. It was not a kind laugh. "That's a prison."

"It's a home."

"It's nothing." Frank went back to his money. "You can stay for dinner. I know a place. Cheap. But after that, you're on your own."

Jack stayed in Los Angeles for three weeks. He tried everything. He pleaded. He argued. He threatened. He brought his father clothes he had bought at a thrift store. He brought him a photograph of the room above the laundromat. He showed him the hot plate, the mattress, the small window that looked out onto a fire escape.

His father looked at it all with the same expression he used to look at everything—disdain, mixed with a calculation of how much it was worth.

On the twenty-first day, Jack came back to the flophouse after a long shift at the auto repair shop. His hands were covered in grease. His left hand—the one with the tremor from the Korean War—was shaking worse than usual.

Room 13 was empty.

Not just empty of his father. Empty of everything. The bed was stripped. The chair was gone. Even the crack in the door seemed wider, like the room itself was breathing easier.

Jack checked his apartment. His wallet was gone. His savings—four hundred dollars, cash, hidden under the floorboard where nobody knew—were gone. He lifted the board and stared at the hole. Four hundred dollars. Twelve weeks of rent. Three months of food. All of it, gone.

He went to the police. Detective Vasquez sat behind a desk that was covered in coffee stains and cigarette burns. He was a large man with a face that had been punched too many times and had healed wrong.

"Your old man's a smart one," Vasquez said, not looking up from the paper he was reading.

"I want him back," Jack said.

Vasquez looked at him. His eyes were tired. Not sad—tired. The kind of tired that comes from seeing the same thing every day for twenty years and knowing you will see the same thing twenty more.

"Your old man's a smart one," he said again. "He'll be gone by morning. Maybe sooner."

Jack went back to the auto repair shop the next day. He worked with his hands because his hands were the only thing that made sense. He tightened bolts, replaced brakes, changed oil. He fixed cars that other people had broken, the way he was trying to fix something inside himself that had been broken in Korea and never repaired.

Three days later, he heard about the fire.

It was a building on Temple Street—a warehouse that stored old furniture and discarded machinery. The fire started in the basement and spread fast. By the time the fire department got there, the whole building was burning.

A body was found in the ashes. Identification was impossible. The face was burned beyond recognition. The clothes were burned beyond recognition. But the desk clerk at the flophouse recognized a photo Jack had left with him—a recent photo of Frank, taken the week Jack found him.

The report called it an accident. Jack knew better.

He had not gone to the funeral. There was no funeral. He had gone to the pawnshop on Temple Street instead—the one his father had been trying to steal from, according to the police report. He stood across the street and watched the charred shell of the building. The windows were gone. The walls were black. The roof had collapsed inward, like a hand closing into a fist.

He thought about the four hundred dollars. He thought about the letter his mother had written before she died, telling him that his father was a bad man. He should have listened.

He went back to the auto repair shop. He got into the driver's seat of a car that would not start—a 1947 Chevrolet with a cracked engine block. He turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died.

He turned it again. Nothing.

He sat in the driver's seat and watched the rain hit the windshield. The wipers moved back and forth, back and forth, going nowhere.

He turned the key one more time. The engine died.

He got out and walked home in the rain.