“I just heard his girlfriends calling him Monte.”

“Where’s the house?”

“Two blocks east, one block north. He drives a black pickup truck. She drives a Honda. Gray, the other girlfriend. Never saw the pretty one with a motor vehicle, always riding with one of the other two.”

“You wouldn’t have the address by any chance, would you?”

“You swear on a stack my name won’t appear anywhere?”

“Scout’s honor, sir.”

“You were a scout?”

“Actually, I was.”

“I would’ve liked to be a scout,” said George S. Kaplan. “No colored scouts in Baton Rouge back then. I learned to be prepared, anyway.” Denture grin. He reached for a bureau drawer. “Let me find that address and copy it for you. Do it in block lettering so no one can trace my handwriting.”

CHAPTER

37

The house was a flat-face stucco bungalow the color of curdled oatmeal, narrow and tar-roofed and shuttered tight. Cement square instead of lawn, no vehicles parked there, no mail pileup.

Milo and I did a quick drive-by, parked half a mile up. He celled Moe Reed, asked for an assessor’s check.

Owned and managed by a Covina real estate firm, rented to a tenant named M. Carlo Scoppio.

“Looked him up, Loo. Male white, thirty-two years old, no wants or warrants, no NCIC. Owners can’t evict him but they’d like to.”

“What’s the problem?”

“He always pays his rent but does it chronically late,” said Reed. “Like he’s trying to irritate them by squeezing out every bit of delay. They say getting rid of a tenant is a hassle even when you’re faced with a total deadbeat and Scoppio makes sure not to give them grounds. Top of that, he’s a lawyer, they don’t want the aggravation.”

“What are his physical stats?”

“Five nine, one seventy-eight, brown and green. The picture makes him a guy you’d never notice. You anywhere near a fax?”

“Nope, but the stats are consistent with Hood-boy. Where does Scoppio practice law?”

“Haven’t checked yet, but I will.”

“Don’t bother, I can do it. Thanks, Moses, you can climb back up Olympus, now.”

I said, “Monte Carlo?”

Milo said, “Smells right but ol’ George really is ol’ George. More like ancient. Scoppio gives him attitude, Kaplan builds up resentment, a few days later he sees a drawing on TV, convinces himself he just got dissed by a murderer.”

“Ol’ George seemed pretty lucid to me. More important, you’ve got nothing else and who knows if that rib joint is still in business.”

“Desperation time … always been a favorite season of mine.”

A search for the working address of M. Carlo Scoppio, attorney at law, pulled up nothing. Same for an inquiry at the bar association.

Milo said, “He lied, excellent start.”

I said, “Lawyers can work in other capacities.”