I walked the four flights down to the deli, ate my sandwich at a little table that they have by the door, then left to find out whether or not LAPD Officer Mark Thurman was telling the truth, or telling a lie.

Either way, Jennifer Sheridan wouldn't like it.

Chapter 3

D riving along Santa Monica Boulevard through West Hollywood and Beverly Hills is a fine thing to be doing in late March, just at the end of the rainy season. It was warmer than it should have been, with highs in the mid-eighties and mare's-tail cirrus streaking the sky with feathery bands, and there were plenty of men in jogging shorts and women in biking pants and Day-Glo headbands. Most of the men weren't jogging and most of the women weren't biking, but everyone looked the part. That's L. A. At a traffic light in Westwood I pulled up next to a woman in pristine white biking pants and a white halter workout top sitting astride a white Japanese racing bike. I made her for Jennifer Sheridan's age, but maybe she was older. The line of her back was clean and straight, and she leaned to the right, her right toe extended down to kiss the street, her left toe poised on its pedal. Her skin was smooth and tanned, and her legs and body were lovely. She wore a ponytail and bronze-tinted sunglasses. I gave her the big smile. A little Dennis Quaid. A little Kevin Costner. She stared at me through the bronze lenses and said, "No." Then she pedaled away. Hmm. Maybe thirty-nine is older than I thought.

At the western edge of UCLA, I climbed the ramp onto the 405 freeway and headed north into the San Fernando Valley. In another week the smog and haze would build and the sky would be bleached and obscured, but for now the weather was just right for boyfriends tailing girlfriends and girlfriends hiring private eyes to check up on boyfriends and private eyes spending their afternoons on long drives into the valley where they would risk life and limb snooping around police officers' apartments. If Randy Newman were here, he'd probably be singing I Love L. A.

I edged off the 405 at Nordhoff and turned west, cruising past the southern edge of Cal State, North-ridge, with its broad open grounds and water-conscious landscaping and remnants of once-great orange groves. In the prewar years before freeways and superhighways the valley was mostly orange trees, but after the war the orange groves began to vanish and the valley became a bedroom community of low-cost family housing tracts. When I came to L. A. in the early seventies, there were still small bits of orchard dotted around Encino and Tarzana and Northridge, the trees laid out in geometric patterns, their trunks black with age but their fruit still sweet and brilliant with color. Little by little they have melted away into single-family homes and minimalls with high vacancy rates and high-density apartment complexes, also with high vacancy rates. I miss them. Minimalls are not as attractive as orange trees, but maybe that's just me.