Elise Freeman's DMV picture elicited a blank stare. Same for the other men. Milo handed out five cards, told the men cooperating would bring good luck. Five blank faces stared back.

Heading back to the car, Milo re-read the jumpy guy's stats. "Hector Ruiz, lives in Beverly Hills north of the boulevard where the estates are. Some forger's got a sense of humor."

"Maybe he was a live-in employee."

"Oh, sure, they dress him in livery and call him Jeeves. So... you see any obvious reason for a day laborer to need thirty pounds of ice? And the quantity's damn close to the techies' estimate."

"Unless Anteater picked his shirt with significance, my bet's on a paid buy to muddy the trail."

"Or nervous little dude's our killer." Laughing. "Like I believe that."

His cell played Beethoven's "Fur Elise." Dark joke? No sense asking.

A twenty-second conversation ensued. Milo's part consisted of several "yessirs." Each one lowered his posture.

He pocketed the phone. "Summoned to the mount, A-sap."

"Have fun."

"We, not me."

"I'm invited?"

"You're demanded."

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER
4

In dream traffic, the police chief's office at Parker Center is a twenty-minute eastbound glide from Van Nuys.

Change of venue and bad traffic turned the drive into a seventy-minute, westbound stop-and-fume.

The Stagecoach Bistro abutted the ninth hole of a Calabasas country club built to look exclusive but open to anyone who could come up with the monthly.

As we drove toward the restaurant's gravel lot, perfect lawns and barbered pepper trees ill suited for the climate gave way to dust and rustic fencing. The sprinkle of cars out front included a navy Lincoln Town Car that Milo identified as the chief's civilian ride. No bodyguard, no auxiliary vehicle in sight.

The building was logs and shingles. A posted menu listed a French chef and described the fare as "nouveau-Tex-Mex-Thai comfort cuisine."

A perky ponytailed hostess guided us to a redwood picnic table tucked in a corner of a patio shaded by vegetation that fit: ancient California oaks, twisted by centuries of Santa Ana winds. The chief had concealed himself behind the rhino-thick trunk of the granddaddy tree.

He continued chopsticking as we sat, pointed to two menus.

Comfort cuisine translated to heroic portions and headache-inducing prose.

The chief's rectangular platter was two feet wide.

"What're you having, sir?"

"Number Six."

Thirty-two spicy Mekong shrimp swimming in asparagus coulis and tinctured by a lemongrass-oregano reduction nestled in a terroir of goat-cheese livened by refried black beans and guarded by palace walls of home-cured porkbelly.

The chief said, "Seeing as you're a gourmet, Sturgis."

"Appreciate that, sir."

The chief lowered the brim of a gray suede baseball cap. Instead of the usual black suit and five-hundred-dollar tie, he wore jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket. The hat and mirrored aviator shades obscured a healthy portion of his mercilessly pitted, oddly triangular face. Additional tortured flesh was shielded by a bushy white mustache.