“Hoo-hah to the max. She said she couldn't promise anything, but she'd be willing to at least talk to you. Maybe there'd be some way to work something out. The more we talked, the friendlier she got. My feeling is she wants to help but is afraid of being burned by more publicity. So be gentle with her.”

“No brass knucks,” I said. “How much do I tell her?”

He ate another piece of roll. “As little as possible.”

“When can she see me?”

“This afternoon. Here's the number.” He took a scrap of paper out of his pocket, gave it to me, and stood.

“Where you going?” I said.

“Over the hill. Van Nuys. Try to find out what I can about who cut up Myra Paprock five years ago.”

After he was gone, I called in for messages—still nothing from Shirley Rosenblatt in New York—then wrote a letter to the bulldog club informing them I'd found what might possibly be a member's pet. At nine-thirty, I phoned Jean Jeffers and was put through to her secretary, who sounded as if she'd been expecting me. An appointment with Ms. Jeffers was available in an hour if I was free.

I grabbed a roll, put on a tie, and left.

The center was in a block of cheerless, pastel-colored apartments, in a quiet part of West L.A. not far from Santa Monica. An old, working-class district, near an industrial park whose galloping expansion had been choked off by hard times. Constructus interruptus had left its mark all over the neighborhood—half-framed buildings, empty lots dug out for foundations and left as dry sumps, pigeon-specked FOR SALE signs, boarded-up windows on condemned prewar bungalows.

The clinic was the only charming bit of architecture in sight. Its front windows were barred, but boxes filled with begonias hung from the iron. The spot on the sidewalk where Dorsey Hewitt had fallen dead was clean. But for a couple of trash-choked shopping carts in front, it could have been a private sanitarium.

A generous lot next door was two-thirds empty and marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. NO PATIENT PARKING. I decided a consultant qualified as someone's employee, and parked there.

I made my way back to the front of the building, passing the section of wall that had been obsessed upon by the TV camera. A cement cornerstone etched with names of forgotten politicos stated that the building had been dedicated as a veterans clinic in 1919. The door Hewitt had come out of was just to the right, unmarked and locked—two locks, each almost as large as the one sealing Roddy Rodriguez's brickyard.