Reed said, “I called embassies in D.C., got nowhere until I reached the Israeli embassy and some guy barks, ‘DSD? That’s not Arab, it’s Sranil.’ When I asked what Sranil was, he hung up. So I went online, learned about Sranil. Including the fact that the Indonesians don’t like it, worry it could be used one day as a base for insurgents. So I figured maybe I could take advantage of that and went over to the Indonesian consulate. It’s a suite in an office building in Mid-Wilshire, you’d never know from the outside. The front office was full of cute girls, friendly, smiling, all of them shined me on, claimed they’d never heard of Sranil. So I leave and when I get to my car, one of the girls runs out and says, ‘I’ll tell you about that place but don’t come back.’ Real nervous and she’s taken off her I.D. badge. Anyway, she made it clear she doesn’t like the Sranil tribe, they were barbaric heathens before they became Muslims, the sultan pretends to be some righteous religious dude, meanwhile he’s covering up for his brother Tariq, who’s a major lowlife. She says that’s what you’re here about, right? Which takes me by surprise but I say sure. That’s when she gets into it, telling me how there’s a rumor Tariq killed some foreign party girl in L.A., it got covered up, he split. I tried to get details out of her but she said she had no firsthand knowledge, it’s just what she heard.”

“Heard where?”

“Around,” said Reed. “That’s all she’d say.”

“And she doesn’t like Sranil.”

“So she could be badmouthing them, sure. I couldn’t find anything on the Web about any murder.”

“Foreign girl as in non-Asian?” said Milo.

“As in European, she thought Swedish, but couldn’t pinpoint. Think it means anything, Loo?”

Milo filled him in on my research.

“Interesting,” said Reed. “But I’m not seeing any obvious link to the Borodi murders.”

“Me neither, Moses, but the fact that our female vic was snooping in Masterson’s files and Masterson’s in cahoots with the Sranilese government is a start. Let’s try to find out if the rumor about Prince Tariq has any substance. Look at unsolveds during the period he lived in L.A. Spread a wide net but focus on foreign female vics.”

I said, “Our female victim was a good-looking woman. She could’ve been a party girl, too.”

“Friend of the victim,” said Reed. “Maybe she’s foreign, herself, and that’s why she faked her identity—some sort of immigration issue.”

Milo said, “Cheap clothes says maybe the party was over, maybe she was aiming for a big score. The Borodi site definitely interested her. In addition to going there with Backer, she was spotted hanging around by herself.”