“No. At least not yet anyway. I’m just making some contacts buying black-market Japanese electronics. Nothing to worry about so far.”

“Okay. But don’t cut it too close.”

“Don’t worry. Tell Niska I’m saving the expense reports for when I get home.”

“Okay. Talk to you later.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Lynx!” Niska shouted before I hung up.

“He says he’ll have the expense reports when he comes back.”

“That’s what he always says. Tinsford’s gone too.”

“Where?”

Niska started organizing her desk while answering my question.

“This older white lady named Tella Monique came in last Tuesday,” she said. “She wanted for him to find her son Mordello because her husband had disowned him and threw him out when he had married a Catholic woman nine years ago.”

“Nine years?”

“Uh-huh. But now that her husband died she wants her son and his family back.”

“So where’s Whisper doin’ all this?” I asked.

“He’s in Phoenix ’cause the son was mixed up with a motorcycle gang called the Snake-Eagles, somethin’ like that, out there.”

“A black motorcycle gang?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Damn. I hope he got his will up to date.”

Niska grinned and said, “Nobody ever sees Mr. Natly. They won’t even know he was there.”

“Any news for me?”

“Not really. You got the check from Mr. Zuma?”

“Um . . .”

Charles “Chuck” Zuma was a millionaire who had a twin sister named Charlotte. It took Charlotte most of her thirties to run through her half of their sizable inheritance. Then she used a loophole in the family trust to turn Chuck’s twenty-eight million into bearer bonds. After that Charlotte Zuma disappeared.

Her brother offered me two-tenths of one percent of as much of the money as I could return. I took the job because there was no violent crime attached. I was trying to take on easy jobs that didn’t include, for instance, motorcycle gangs and left-wing paramilitary groups.

“Did you get the money?” Niska asked again.

“Technically.”

“Technically how much?”

“The sister learned from her wasteful years,” I said. “Her investment advisers increased Chuck’s money to nearly forty million.”

“That’s an eighty-thousand-dollar fee.” She did this calculation without using her fingers.

“The forty million is all tied up in funds that a whole army of forensic accountants have to disentangle.”

“But all you need is eighty thousand.”

“Chuck’s broke. He’s living with a rich cousin up north of Santa Barbara.”

“So we don’t get paid?”

“It’ll take at least a year before he gets his and we get ours. But he gave me collateral.”

“What kind of collateral?”

“A pale yellow 1968 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI.” I might have grimaced a little while reciting the name.

“A car?”

“They only made a few hundred of ’em,” I said. “And none in America. It’s worth at least twice what Zuma owes.”

“But you can’t put a car in the bank.”