Milo said, “Hill Street, in the big mall, right? Big restaurant downstairs, upstairs banquet room.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Great dim sum at lunch, it closed down a few years ago.”

“If you say so.”

“So how’d you come to be there, Ati?”

“It was a business party, jewelry. I went with a businessman from Cambodia. He gave me a gold chain to keep. Mostly he talked to other jewelers and I could do what I wanted.”

“Who else was at the party?”

“Jewelry guys. Armenians, Israelis, Chinese, Persians. Some white guys. The speaker was a white guy. From the mayor’s office, or something like that, welcoming the jewelry business to L.A.”

“What brought Dahlia there?”

“She was with one of the white guys. He sold watches.”

“Remember his name?”

“Never knew it,” said Ati Meneng. “Older, white hair, fat. Swedish, like her.”

“Dahlia told you she was Swedish?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Actually, she was Swiss.”

Huge black eyes expanded to cartoon proportions. “Yeah, that’s what it was. You probably think I’m stupid.”

“It’s an easy mistake to make,” said Milo. “Dahlia didn’t like to talk about it. Being Swiss.”

“Why not?”

“She said it was a boring place to live, that’s why she sometimes said she was from other places.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe Sweden—maybe that’s where I got it. She only told me about being Swiss after we hung out for a while. The guy she was with that night, she said she knew him from back home, he was a big watch dealer, knew her father because her father collected watches, had hundreds of them in little boxes that kept moving to keep them winded. She was at the party to do him a favor. The watch guy.”

“Being his arm candy.”

“We all were. The men were really into business, the girls were mostly left alone and a whole bunch of us ended up at the bar. That’s where I met Dahlia. We were both getting drinks and hers was weird, bright blue. I said something about it looking like dishwashing liquid. She laughed. We started talking, before she left, she said, ‘It’s been fun, let’s hang,’ and she gave me her number.”

“You guys hit it off,” said Milo.

“Easy with Dahlia,” said Ati Meneng. “She was pure sunshine. Even though she was rich she was cool about it, I didn’t even know until we’d hung out awhile.”

“How’d you find out?”

“I mean I kind of suspected it because she didn’t have a job and she drove a Porsche Boxster, really cool little red one. When I found out for sure was when she took me to her house. Real nice and all done up. She said her parents bought it for her ’cause they hated her.”

“Interesting way to show hatred,” said Milo.