“What’s the deal with you two? I didn’t sense a whole lot of mutual admiration there.”

“We used to be partners. When I was still on the force.”

“Partners? You were partners?”

“Yeah, well, maybe sometime I’ll tell you all about it. We still on for tonight?”

“Of course. I was afraid, after what happened to Miles, maybe you wouldn’t let me tag along.”

“No, it’s okay. Meet me at ten, doughnut shop around the corner from Brentwood’s. Still too much traffic that time of night for anyone to try anything. Anything happens, it’ll be later.”

“You think they’ll come out, the night after they hit a store and ended up killing a guy?”

“Honestly, no.”

“I hate to ask, but you go anywhere near Crandall on your way?” If he wasn’t able to pick me up at home, I’d have to grab a cab, what with Angie needing the car.

Lawrence said nothing for a moment. He was probably consulting one of several mental maps he kept upstairs. “Yeah, sure, why?”

“No car tonight. But if it’s out of your way, I can get a cab, bill the paper—”

“No, no, that’s fine. Give me your address.” I did. “See you round nine forty-five.”

We were parked in the same place we’d been the night before, on Garvin, half a block down from Brentwood’s.

Although we’d not had to meet at the doughnut shop, Lawrence and I still pulled in there. He still had the old Buick, what Lawrence called his “business” car, at least the one he used when the business involved surveillance. When he wanted to make a better impression, he drove a Beemer or Jaguar or some other type of high-end yuppiemobile that he kept back at his apartment.

“Don’t get coffee,” Lawrence warned me. “You’ll be having to take a leak every twenty minutes.”

I ignored him and got an extra-large, triple cream with two low-cal sweetener packets, and half a dozen doughnuts.

“That makes sense,” Lawrence said. “Why don’t you get one more sweetener, and then you can get two more doughnuts.”

But later, sitting in the car, he said, “You got a double chocolate in there?”

“Aren’t you the one who mocked me for buying these?”

“You got one or not?”

I fished around, found a chocolate doughnut with chocolate icing slathered on top, and handed it to him with a napkin. Then I reached down for my coffee, tucked down in the cup holder, and had a sip. “Ohhh, my thanks to whoever invented coffee,” I said. “This is the only thing that will get me through this.”

“Yeah, well, when your bladder’s ready to burst, don’t think that you’re using my emergency kit,” Lawrence said, nodding his head in the direction of the backseat, where he kept a plastic juice bottle with a screw top.