Keegan settled back into his seat and looked the man over some more. What else was there to do? The car was smooth and silent as it moved. The tinted windows made the street passing outside look like it was dusk.

The little man nodded almost imperceptibly. A small, smug smile tugged up the corners of his mouth. “I am Simon Catling,” he said. This was not the broad American voice Keegan had heard a moment ago on the payphone. Catling’s speech was soft and precise, with a hint of something exotic, the accent of a man who had wandered the world but put down no roots.

“I’m Jim Keegan,” Keegan said. “Though I’m guessing you already know that.”

Catling’s features were delicate, pale and perfectly symmetrical, except for a small vertical scar etched on his left cheekbone. The parting in his coppery hair was steel-edge straight. Gold rings glimmered on both his pinkies. His smooth skin was the blue-white hue of fish bellies—like the man had remained forever untouched by the searing sun outside his car. Mrs. Dodd was right: he was foreign, alien in some conspicuous but unclassifiable way. Then again, there was something altogether contrived about the man, Keegan thought. Even his scar seemed too perfectly placed on his cheek—like a starlet’s penciled-in beauty mark.

Without changing position, Catling held out his hand, and, with effort, Keegan leaned forward far enough to shake it. The hand was dry and quick to pull away. The ring on his pinky felt unnaturally cold.

Keegan settled back in his seat and let Catling study him. Despite the man’s small-boned frame, Catling had the air of someone whose power was in no way limited by his physique. The universe, he made it clear, could wait for him to speak—and so, apparently, could Keegan. The limo slowed to a stop at a light.

“I used to read your articles in The Times,” Catling finally said, when the car moved forward again. He gazed out the window at the passing gray buildings. The sunlight—glinting dimly off passing cars—played upon his pale face. “I admired your technique,” he said airily. “You always unearthed some curious—what is it you newsmen say? Angle? Slant? You knew how to shape mere events into a true story.”

Almost every private detective in the Los Angeles Yellow Pages was a retired cop. They signed on with the LAPD or the Sheriff’s Department and worked their beat while their pensions ripened. Then they retired and ran out the clock, double-dipping as bodyguards or PIs.

Keegan was the rare exception. For twenty years, he’d covered crime for The Los Angeles Times. But the paper had cut him loose a few days before his forty-fifth birthday. It was the old hack-writer cliché: the bottle of whiskey in a desk drawer; the missed deadlines; the angry, ill-chosen words to the wrong people.