“Okay,” she said, “I'm calling that Sturgis right now and checking you out.”

“He's in Santa Barbara. You can reach him at the police department there.” I fished around, retrieved Sarah Grayson's card, and read off the number.

She hung up without comment.

Ten minutes later, my service put her through.

“He wasn't in,” she said, “but I spoke to a woman cop who said you're for real. So, okay, I'm sorry for what you're going through—once you been through it you get sorry a lot for other people. Okay, what can I do for you?”

“I was just wondering if Becky ever talked about her work. Said anything that might help find Gritz and clear this up.”

“Talked? Yeah, she talked. She loved her . . . hold on . . . my stomach . . . hold on, I thought I was okay, but now I feel like I have to throw up again—let me go do that, and then I'll call you back—no, forget that, I hate the phone. Phone rings now, my heart starts going like it's going to explode—you want to come down and see me it's okay. Let me see what you look like, I hate the phone.”

“How about I come to your house?”

“Sure—no, forget it. The place is depressing. I never was a homemaker, now I don't do a darn thing. Why don't you meet me over in Hancock Park? Not the neighborhood, the actual park—know where it is?”

“Over by the tar pits.”

“Yeah, meet me on the Sixth Street side, behind the museums. There's a shady area, some benches. What're you gonna wear?”

“Jeans and a white shirt.”

“Fine. I'll be wearing—no, this is wrinkled, gotta change it—I'll be wearing a . . . green blouse. Green with a white collar. Just look for an ugly old woman with a green blouse and a crappy disposition.”

The blouse was grass green. She was sitting under a thatch of mismatched trees, on a bench facing the rolling lawn that separated the County Art Museum from the dinosaur depository George Page had built with Mission Pack money. At the end of the lawn the tar pits were an oily black sump behind wrought iron pickets. Through the fence, plaster mastodons reared and glared at the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Tar leaked through the entire park, seeping up in random spots, and I just missed stepping in a bubbling pool as I made my way toward Rolanda Basille.