“Take a guess, Officer—’scuse me, Detective. You’re a detective, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your guess? Don’t worry, I won’t be insulted.”

“Normally, I’d say seventies, Mr. Kaplan, but if you worked at the Ambassador for forty-eight years and it closed around—”

“It closed in 1989. Place gave sixty-eight years of service and they let it go stone-cold. Architectural masterpiece, designed by Mr. Myron Hunt. Know who he was?”

“No, sir.”

“Famous architect. Designed the Rose Bowl. Ambassador was a palace, drew in all the finest people. You should’ve seen the weddings, the black-tie galas, I did my share of last-minute patent-leather touchup and that’s a lost art. City bought the property, says it’s going to be a school. Just what we need, teenagers making a mess. So how old am I?”

“Eighty …”

“Ninety-three.”

“You look great, Mr. Kaplan.”

“Then appearances are deceiving. I’m missing a whole bunch of internal organs, doctors keep taking things out of me. Apparently, God gives us extra organs that can be removed without serious consequence. As to why, you’d have to ask Him. Which I’m figuring I’ll get a chance to do, soon. Care for crackers?”

“No, thanks, sir.”

“Peanuts?”

“We’re fine, sir.”

“So what about George S. Kaplan is of interest to the Los Angeles police?”

“Monte.”

Kaplan looked at his knees. “I got a Jewish name, in case you didn’t notice. Kaplan comes from Hebraic. Means chaplain. I still haven’t figured it out. Someone said my family might’ve worked for Jewish slave owners but that’s wrong, we’ve been freemen since the beginning. Came over after emancipation, from Curaçao, that’s an island in the Caribbean, lots of Jews used to live there so who knows? What do you think, Detective? Can the mystery be solved?”

“The Internet has lots of genealogy websites—”

“Tried all that. My great-grandson Michael, he’s a computer geek—that’s what he calls himself. That’s how I learned about the Hebraic origin of my name. But it led nowhere. Guess some mysteries don’t like being solved.”

“Some do, sir. Monte?”

“How’d you locate me?”

“We traced your tip-call to the pay phone.”

“Lots of people use that pay phone.”

“Not as many as you’d think, Mr. Kaplan.”

“Cell phones. Don’t want one. Have no need for one.”

“An officer watching the booth saw you approaching it yesterday. It appeared to him as if you were ready to make another call, changed your mind.”

Kaplan laughed. “And here I was, being careful.”

“You wanted to help but didn’t want to get overly involved.”

“He’s a frightening person, Monte. I lived ninety-three years, would like a few more.”

“There’s no need for him to know, Mr. Kaplan.”

“You arrest him based on my word, how’s he not going to know?”

“You’ll be listed in my notes as an ‘anonymous source.’”