This was the south end of Main Street, where calculated edgy nudges random do-your-thing and parking’s a challenge. Milo said, “Use that pay lot, on me.”

He flashed his shield to the attendant, had to shell out seven bucks anyway. The walk back took us past boutiques featuring the kind of clothes you never see anyone wearing. Sunny weekday morning in Venice, only a scatter of pedestrians, but a piercing parlor was doing brisk business. Back in his acting days, the governor had bought up chunks of Main Street, accumulating rental income that helped finance his new hobby.

Maybe he owned the architectural firm’s avant-garde charmer.

A pair of isosceles triangles jousted with each other in precarious tilt, the larger one pumpkin-orange stucco, the other bluish green aluminum. A black shroud of solar panel capped the roof. A cement trough running along the base was crowded with horsetails, plant-tops lopped with neurosurgical care.

The triangles overlapped just enough to provide walk-space for the non-obese. Milo’s been working on his weight. At a relatively svelte two thirty or so, there was no need to turn sideways, but he did so anyway. Body-memory runs long.

Inside was a courtyard roofed by corrugated metal, bordered by an inch-deep, rectangular pond. Too shallow for fish; maybe microorganisms frolicked.

The front door was an oxidized-iron slab. Milo’s knock produced no sound.

No bell. He said, “Business is either real good or real bad.”

Pounding harder evoked a sorry thud. He said, “This is gonna hurt,” and poised a foot to kick. Before he made contact, the slab swung inward silently, catching him off balance.

A gorgeous woman with a shaved head watched him stabilize. “What is it?” All the warmth of a voice-simulator.

She was thirty-five or so, with some sort of Teutonic accent. Hemp disks the size of saucers dangled from exquisitely shaped ears. Nothing overtly medical about her hairlessness; lashes and brows were dark and luxuriant, the eyes below them a spectacular aqua. Her skull was smooth, round, and tan, stubbled white-blond, as if rubbed in salt. Like a minimal frame on a painting, the absence of coiffure emphasized everything else about her. So did a clinging, white tank top, ectodermal black tights, red spike-heeled boots.

Milo flashed the badge. “Police, ma’am.”

She said, “And?”

“We’d like to speak to someone about Desmond Backer.”

“Des is in trouble?”

“The worst kind of trouble, Ms….”

“Desmond did something illegal?”

“Desmond’s dead.”

“Dead,” she said. “And you want to come in.”

She marched back inside, left us to follow. Swinging her hips and stepping high.

The interior was one big space, unfurnished but for a black desk and a rolling chair in a corner. White walls, high windows, carpeting that matched the bald beauty’s hemp earrings. Skylights in odd places, some of them partially blackened by the solar panel. Others bore the streaks and splotches of moisture damage.