Back at the office I checked to see if I had any messages. I would go to see Tommy Hutchings and find out what Cathy Vega had been doing in the days before she was killed.

He had told Lupe he was working at Paramount Studios over on Melrose. I hoped this was true. I went to my office to clean myself up. Harvey had not locked up after me. The door was still open, and books scattered out into the hallway. Picking my way across the books, I climbed over the fallen bookcase. It took me some time to right it and shove it back against the wall. As I shelved the books, I thought alternately about Lupe and Cathy Vega until they began to become one person in my mind. I rearranged the black plastic chairs in front of my desk. I cleared off the top of my desk so I could find the phone. My message machine was flashing red. Dropping into the swivel chair behind the desk, I turned the machine on.

I had a call from the printers again about the bill I owed them. A call early in the morning from the clerk of Division 82 telling me to come right down to Bauchet Street to pick up a case they were holding for me. I couldn’t believe it. It was the first time they had called me. All the work I’d gotten from them in the past was stuff I had begged while I was down there. My first foot in the door and I had blown it. As I picked up the phone to call the clerk, the message machine rolled off that familiar voice that had started it all.

Monica Fullbright.

She got right to the point. Someone was trying to kill her. She told me to meet her at four at the northeast corner of Sunset where it hits Hillhurst near Sunset Drive. After everything she had put me through it was as simple as that for her, as simple as calling the hairdresser for an appointment, like ordering a bouquet of flowers for Mother’s Day. It pissed me off. Trying to erase from my voice the rage I felt at Monica Fullbright, I called the clerk of Division 82. It was too late, the clerk informed me frostily. I slumped back in the chair, the phone resting against my breast, the breath kicked out of me for a moment, before I called information for the number of Paramount.