“I see you expected me to take you up on this,” I said.

“You get six percent of all monies recovered and I forget about your little misdemeanors.”

I went home to get Feather and then drove us both up to a motel I knew in Isla Vista. There we swam in the ocean; I for forty-five minutes and she for two and a half hours.

Exhausted, we went to Benny’s Seafood Shack and ate shellfish until the sun went down.

Our room had two single beds and we were both dead tired.

“Daddy?” Feather called out from the darkness.

“Yes, Genevieve?”

“I’m not gonna use that name.”

“Okay. What were you going to ask?”

“I think my life is just about perfect.”

“Me too,” I said, and then I was asleep.

27

27

The Stephanopoulos Talent Agency was on the south side of Sunset Boulevard a few blocks east of La Cienega. The Gruen chronometer said it was 11:07 in the morning when I parked John’s green Pontiac across the street from there. It was a cheaply constructed building, three floors high with the front walls made from glass. The visual effect was something like the plastic ant farms that children used to watch emmets aimlessly tunneling, their hearts thundering for a queen that does not exist.

There might have been eighteen employees and of them there were only women visible. No elevators, so you could see them climbing and descending the stairways, sitting at desks, and walking from here to there. The women were of all races. That was the late sixties and rock ’n’ roll had taught us that difference sold. These women were office workers but they were hired for their age and looks as well as their secretarial skills. This made sense to me because the business concerned itself with beauty. That’s what they bought and sold.

Fourteen minutes passed before I got out of the car. The lag was because I had learned to reconnoiter a place before going in. That way you knew what to expect, or at least had a good idea how things worked. Most detectives learned that skill on the job, but I had been practicing my entire life. Poor blacks from the Deep South had to keep on the lookout for trouble; either that or fall into its trap.

I walked in the front door and up to the high podium-like reception desk. A young woman with impossibly long eyelashes looked up from a paperback book she was reading, giving me an insincere smile. She had Asian blood and also some Caucasian flowing in her veins. There was something darker there too but I couldn’t quite tell what.

“Can I help you?” She dog-eared the book and laid it facedown.

“What you readin’?” I asked.

The question threw her off her game a little. It wasn’t the kind of question that should be on my mind. At least not the first thing I’d ask.