The Seattle Post Intelligencer had offered him a job the moment word got out that he’d been fired, but Keegan couldn’t bring himself to get on a plane. What was there for him in Seattle? Ferries and fish markets, and all that dismal rain. Not even any decent crime to speak of. LA averaged thirty-five days of measurable rain a year, and eighty homicides. It had the Black Dahlia, Mickey Cohen and Johnny Stompanato. And now it had brought out the Brooklyn Dodgers. Better a hungry PI in the City of Angels than a well-fed newsman somewhere else.

“I’m a private eye now,” he told Catling. “I quit the news game. But I’m guessing you already know that, too.”

Catling waved the information away. Of course, he knew it. “And you are a most capable detective, I am told,” he said. He pulled a silver cigarette case from somewhere inside his trim suit and clicked it open with his thumb. “We have some acquaintances in common,” he said. He held the cigarette case out to Keegan. It contained a neat row of short, unfiltered cigarettes in hazel wrappers. They infused the air with a peculiar scent, something like raisins and orange rind. These were not Lucky Strikes.

Keegan shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. He didn’t want to add nicotine to the chemical mayhem that was only now beginning to settle in his gut. “Sounds like you’ve been talking to Louis Moore,” Keegan said.

Louis Moore—now Lieutenant Moore—was a cop Keegan had championed in the pages of The Times. He was one of the few black beat cops on the force in the old days, and Keegan gave him regular appearances in the Cityside column. Over the years, they’d traded favors and helped each other along in their respective careers. Moore had made lieutenant, around the time Keegan lost his job, and he had greased some gears to get Keegan his PI license without the typical rigmarole. There wasn’t a whole lot either could do for the other after that, except to buy a round every now and again or to put in few kind words when they counted.

But the wily smile on Simon Catling’s face slipped at the mention of Moore’s name. The man took a cigarette for himself and snapped the silver case shut. He gave the cigarette three smart taps on the case and then tucked the case inside his suit again. “He was not the acquaintance who endorsed you,” Catling said frostily. “I can assure you of that.”

Keegan shrugged. So, it wasn’t the lieutenant.