Roger’s twenty-four-hour diner was on Exeter in the heart of downtown—as much as LA had a downtown back in those days. The restaurant had a plate-glass window-wall that looked out on the street. In the old days Melvin would order three eggs over easy with sides of pork sausage and maplewood bacon along with a slab of baked ham.

But that morning he supped on a cup of oatmeal with no raisins, brown sugar, or cream.

He was sitting in a booth next to the window frowning at his repast when I slid into the seat across from him.

He looked up, a beast with beautiful eyes, and squinted.

“It’s a couple of things,” he said.

I was wearing a blue sports coat, cotton brown trousers, and a yellow shirt open at the throat. If Mary’s implied warning was as bad as it sounded I might get arrested and forced to take a mug shot; if that was the case I wanted to look good.

“Yesterday evening,” Suggs recited, “a report came in from a San Bernardino heist that went down two and a half months ago.”

“I remember that one,” I said. “They stole the whole armored car.”

“Along with three guards—presumed dead. They got away with something like eighty-six thousand dollars.”

“How many in the crew?” I asked.

Mel didn’t like his flow interrupted but he said, “A witness happened to be driving by just as three Negroes wearing construction clothes were winching what he later realized was an armored car into the back of a big rig.”

“Would’a had to been a semi,” I said, adding, “hardly worth the weight on a serious crime like that for less than thirty thousand dollars apiece.”

“Is there any dollar amount that would make it okay for someone to murder a man?”

“Aw, c’mon, Mel. You know what I mean. You think I could do something to help you and San Bernardino find these guys?”

“And so we come to Craig Kilian,” Suggs replied.

I felt a chill at the back of my neck and wished, absurdly, I had killed that long-ago German soldier.

“What about him?”

“He was shot dead at close quarters and nobody heard a thing,” the head cop opined. “We found a stack of hundred-dollar bills from the armored car job in an envelope in his closet. The wrapper was from the bank the car was delivering for.”

I loved being a PI. The work suited me. It didn’t matter much that Suggs was wrapping a chain around the box he thought I was in. The case was starting to come clear and I liked that.

“I have no idea about any money from a robbery,” I said. “The kid wanted me to find a girl named Dee Dee. I couldn’t and went to his place to tell him so.”