“Fuck, yeah. Sometimes I don’t go home for days. Ed LaMoca set the record twenty years ago, ten days without bathing. Dominated the droobs with radioactive ambition and cosmic body odor. They fade easily, the droobs, mostly Ivy League brats thinking they’re gonna waltz from Harvard to repping Brad Pitt. I went to Cal State North-ridge. Hunger gives me the edge.”

Milo said, “Anything you can tell us about Kat Shonsky?”

“Big faker,” said Cline. “Not just about that, about everything. Like she wanted to live someone else’s life.”

“Whose life?”

“Someone lazy and rich. She had half of it down.”

“You didn’t like her.”

“I already told you that.”

We asked a few more questions, slipping in cues about fancy cars and sexual kinks. All of that went right past Cline as he talked about himself.

When we turned to leave, he stood there.

Milo said, “You can go back to work.”

Cline didn’t move. “Listen, if it does turn out to be a story, let me know. If it’s something Brad or Will or Russell can use, I’ll make sure you’re in it in a way that pays off big.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Milo.

“Excellent.” Cline pumped air, ran back inside.

As Milo drove to the Valley, I reached one of Rory Cline’s past girlfriends, a lawyer named Lori Bonhardt. She described Cline as “a wimp and a dishrag,” denied ever witnessing a violent side.

“What’s he done?”

“He knows someone who got hurt.”

“Knows someone?” She laughed. “If that’s all it is, forget it. Aggression would take effort and Rory’s hobbies are drinking and sleeping. I used to tell him he should get on speed or something. Might give him some ambition. My Lhasa apso used to hump his leg and Chi never does that to anyone else. Know what that means?”

“Submissive personality,” I said.

“Beta male. Pure vice president.”

Michael Browning’s eyes got moist when he heard about Kat.

He was a barrel-chested, rust-bearded fireplug, five six in thick-soled shoes, with sturdy, hirsute wrists and lumberjack hands. He wore a yellow-and-blue windowpane shirt, a big-knotted red tie of gleaming silk brocade, leather knit suspenders. The shoes were mocha suede wingtips, maintained impeccably.

The stylish duds of a full partner at Kaufler, Mandelbaum and Schlesinger, but Browning’s office was a cubicle on the ground floor, one of two dozen in a fluorescent warren.

He spoke freely. Kat had stopped seeing him four months ago after learning he was married.