Spooning lentils into his mouth, he said, “Someone that old. Weird.”

“You know what they say. Seventy’s the new fifty.”

He reached for a lobster claw. “And up is down and low is high.”

I said, “If we are talking some kind of organized crime link, that could mean teamwork. One person steals the car, passes it along to the killer, and is available to help scrub it down afterward, maybe drive it back. Combine all that with the killer making sure to limit his contact to the front seats, and the time pressure would reduce.”

“Homicidal pit crew,” he said. Cracking the claw along the joint, he sat motionless, as if taking in the sound. “The goodfellas haven’t been a major factor since Mickey Cohen, but there are some loan sharks floating around the Valley and over in that arcade on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills.”

“Canon’s also close to the rental lot.”

“So it is.” He pulled a tube of meat from the claw, ate, repeated the process with another leg. “So what, our nice little retired schoolteacher has a dark past as a moll?”

“Or a hidden vice. Like gambling.”

“She managed to rack up a big enough debt on her pension to get sliced and diced? Make no sense, Alex. The last thing a shark wants to do is snuff the minnow and end any hope of getting paid.”

“Unless the shark has given up on collecting,” I said. “Or she wasn’t the gambler, someone else was, and they used her as an example.”

I described the unhappy exchange Moskow had witnessed between Ella and the blond man he assumed was her son.

“Arguing,” he said.

“Nothing causes conflict like money. Maybe Junior asked Mom for money and she turned him down.”

“What I don’t see is even a big-time shark butchering an old lady just to strike terror into her mope kid’s heart.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But it is a new, cruel age.”

“Meaning?”

“Turn on the news at random.”

He dove back into his food.

I said, “Here’s another way to spin it: The blond man’s not her son, he’s the collector.”

Removing a blue plastic binder from his attaché, he handed it over. Inside was a prelim crime report form yet to be filled out, a few of what looked to be Ella Mancusi’s personal papers, and an envelope that held a three-by-five color photo.

In the snapshot, a tiny white-haired woman in a belted floral dress and high heels stood next to a flabby-looking fair-haired man in his forties. Behind them was mint-green stucco. Ella Mancusi had a bird-face and sparkling dark eyes. Her lips were rouged and her nails were polished. Smiling, but something was missing from the upturn of lip.

The blond man stood with his arms at his sides. Tight around the shoulders, as if posing for the picture had been an imposition.