“The baby's mine.” Smile. His remaining teeth were pink with fresh blood.

“Congratulations.”

“Got a cigarette?”

“I don't smoke.”

“Then gimme money. I aks around for you, man. You come back and I tell you everything I aksed.”

I counted what I had in my wallet.

Two twenties and three singles. Gave him all of it. The jacket, too.

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER

14

He scrambled back through the fence and disappeared. I hung around until his footsteps died, then walked back to the car. The air had cooled—sudden shifts were becoming the rule this autumn—and a soft wind from the east was nudging scraps of garbage off the sidewalk.

I gassed up the Seville at a station on Olympic and used the pay phone to get the number of the nearest Social Services office. After being put on hold several times and transferred from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, I managed to reach a supervisor and tell her about the infant living under the freeway.

“Was the baby being mistreated, sir?”

“No.”

“Did the baby look malnourished?”

“Actually, no, but—”

“Were there bruises or scars anywhere visible on the baby's body or other signs of abuse?”

“Nothing,” I said. “The mother was caring for the baby, but they're living in filthy conditions out there. And the boy who might be the baby's father has a cough that sounds tubercular.”

“Was the baby coughing?”

“Not yet.”

“For a tuberculosis investigation, you'd have to call public health. Ask for a communicable disease officer.”

“There's nothing you can do?”

“Doesn't sound like there's anything we should be doing, sir.”

“How 'bout getting the baby some shelter?”

“They'd have to ask, sir.”

“The baby would?”

“The legal guardians. We don't just go out looking for people.”

Click.

The dial tone was as loud as the freeway. I felt nuts. How did the certifiable psychotics handle it?

I wanted to call Robin. Then I realized I hadn't memorized my new phone number, didn't even know the name of the house's owner. I called Milo. He was at his desk and gave me the seven digits, then said, “Before you hang up, I just got through with Myra Paprock's file. She wasn't a therapist. Real estate agent, killed on the job. Showing a house and somebody cut her, robbed her, raped her, and wrote “bad love' on the wall with her lipstick.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Yeah. In the photos, the lipstick looks like blood.”

“Real estate agent,” I said. “That's sometimes a second career. Maybe she worked as some kind of therapist first.”

“If she did it's not down here in the file, and the Van Nuys guys seem to have done a pretty thorough job. Plus Shipler—the beating victim—wasn't a shrink, either, so I don't see any obvious mental health connection here.”

“What did he do?”

“Janitor. Night custodian at Jefferson High. I haven't gotten his file yet, but I had a records clerk over at Central give me the basics.”