“It will be offered to one of your less-capable competitors, and you will never hear from me again,” Catling said. “I only ask that you keep our meeting in the utmost confidence.”

Keegan imagined it: some other schmo sent to Papa’s Pizza and treated to the limo ride. Some other hungry flatfoot slipping the fat envelope of cash into an inner jacket pocket.

He leaned over and looked out the side window. The neon sign for Cole’s swept past. They must have turned down Sixth Street. It would be a hot fifteen-minute slog back to his car in the worst of the afternoon heat, but what choice did he have? “This is my stop,” he said when the car pulled up at the light on South Los Angeles. “I’m not your man.”

KEEGAN WALKED A block out of his way up to Hill Street, keeping on the south side of Sixth, so he’d be out of the sun.

Lusk’s newsstand, on the eastern corner of Pershing Square, was like any other sidewalk rag-rack in town: a stall where you could pick up The Times or Herald Examiner or maybe a pulp novel, if your tastes weren’t too highbrow. You could get a Baby Ruth or some breath mints for a dime—even a bottle of aspirin, if your bus was due and you didn’t have time to cross Fifth Street to the drugstore.

There weren’t many people on the Square for a weekday. Empty park benches baked in the sun. Even the pigeons flocked by the fountain. A couple of teen girls stood in front of the newsstand in short-sleeved blouses and pedal pushers, taking chatty inventory of the candy rack.

While Keegan waited for them to make up their minds, he glanced at The Times’ headline. TWO SOVIET SPACESHIPS ORBIT EARTH. Great. Just when his Monday was going so well.

Keegan wondered who might be sitting at his old desk right now in the southwest corner of The Times’ newsroom. He could hear the clatter of typewriters, smell the ink. Part of him missed the hubbub and commotion, the hive-like feeling of so many people swarming around him in common pursuit. He thought of Judy Reynolds, down in the archives room, chain-smoking her Winstons and scissoring up the morning edition. He made a guilty mental note to give her a call, maybe meet her at some air-conditioned bar later on in the week to finally pay out on all the drinks he owed her for favors.

“Seeing how much you can read free without me catching you?”

Keegan looked up from the headlines.