He grinned. “Nice catch. I figured psychological sensitivity was called for.”

“Flattered.”

“It had nothing to do with the fact that I don’t sleep with women.”

“That never occurred to me.”

“No?”

“Who is more aware than I of your painful shyness?”

“To be honest, Alex, if we were dealing with men, I’da come out and asked. Because men can’t wait to talk about their sex lives. I figured women were different, it would be like oral surgery, but go know. Sorry for your having to deal with Blondie’s lack of filter.”

“Mercy me, the trauma,” I said. “Where’s the self-help group?”

He laughed. Turned serious. “A married woman old enough to be his mama, a wild girl, and a shy, nerdy type. Guy was all over the map.”

“What strikes me,” I said, “is that none of them seem particularly impacted by his death. There was initial shock but once that wore off, all three discussed him objectively. Same way they did at the cocktail lounge. He meant very little to them emotionally and probably vice versa, but what if Jane Doe was different?”

“Someone Don Juan actually got involved with. Maybe. When you factor in the zip code, he did take her on a fancy date.”

Several plates full of Italian food later, I drove back to the city over Benedict Canyon while Milo phoned a judge known to skim rather than read and requested a victim search warrant for Desmond Backer’s residence.

The next call was to Santa Monica PD, making nice with the day-shift homicide lieutenant by promising not to tie up her detectives and convincing her to send a locksmith to Backer’s apartment as soon as possible.

We reached Santa Monica at the end of a nice beach day; tourists and wild-eyed homeless people divvied up Ocean Front Boulevard. Backer’s building on California was four stories of rain-streaked white stucco pimpled by juliet balconies too small to be functional and bottomed by a subterranean lot. The view was the massive, five-story condo across the street.

Three blocks east of the beach bought you the smell of the ocean but no big blue kiss.

The building’s interior was cool and gray and sterile. The locksmith was already in place at the door to Backer’s second-floor flat, looking sleepy. He said, “Murder case, huh?” and opened his bag. Milo gave him latex gloves and sheathed his own hands and mine. The locksmith said, “Must be a biggie,” and got to work. The deadbolt yielded quickly, a receipt was signed, the locksmith tossed his gloves onto the hallway carpet and left.

I waited until Milo called out the all-clear.

Desmond Backer had been trained in structural design and aesthetics but he’d lived in a plain-wrap one-bedroom, one-bath, had made no attempt to personalize.