I was dressed in black jeans and a gray T-shirt. My shoes were cotton topped and rubber soled. He might have thought that I was the cleanup man. But to think something is not the same as saying it.

The Italian’s rudeness would have bothered me if I hadn’t had so many other issues to deal with. Asiette, on the other hand, turned her head toward him as if she had just been slapped.

“You got a connect to Christmas Black’s private line, baby?” I said.

“Three six seven,” she answered, still looking at the man who shared her kisses.

I went behind her desk, sat down, and pressed the numbers.

“Hello,” Christmas said on the second ring.

“I’ll be down at the entrance on the Wilshire side,” I said and hung up.

“You let him sit at your desk?” Stefano asked Asiette.

“I got to go,” I said to the Frenchwoman.

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I will call you later.”

I drove.

Christmas wore a military-like dark blue suit with a tan dress shirt that was underscored by a tight red ascot nestled behind the open top button.

“What’s up?” he asked after we’d gone a block.

I told him about Lola’s visit but not Eddie Brock. Compartmentalization is one of the indispensable bulwarks of the detective game.

“Jackson Blue told me that you talked to him about me. What do you think of him?” I asked the question because I didn’t want to speculate about the job at hand. Sometimes you just have to wait until you get there.

Christmas seemed not to have heard the question. He stared out the windshield, scowling at the world.

“It’s like Kirkland,” he said after a minute or two.

“What is?”

“Your friend Blue. Really he’s worse. He’s a coward, scared of his own shadow. I looked up his record. Do you know that he’s been arrested thirty-two times—in Los Angeles alone?”

“For half that number he went to trial,” I bragged, “and every time he was his own lawyer. He’s seen the inside of the county jail often enough but he’s never gone to prison.”

“Yeah,” Christmas allowed. “And he knows more about the history of warfare than my grandfather Moses Black did.”

“Did you go to Jean-Pierre with Jackson’s record?”

“It’s my duty to report to the boss.”

“What did the big man say?”

“He said that all a soldier was responsible for was to do his job. I could never be friends with Blue but I can’t fault him either. Given his limitations he has been an extraordinary asset.”

A few minutes after he said these words I pulled up to the curb in front of Craig’s blowsy apartment building.