“Idiot nephew of a city councilman, still doesn’t know who I am. For the last three days I’ve gotten no messages, which is fine, except when I’m actually trying to solve a case. Turns out all my slips ended up in someone else’s box— a D named Sterling who’s out on vacation. Luckily it was all junk.”

He punched Angeline Wasserman’s number. Barely had time to recite his name before he was listening nonstop. Finally, he broke through and set up an appointment to meet in an hour.

“Design Center, she’s at a rug place, doing a ‘high-level multi-level Wilshire Corridor condo.’ The day she got ripped off she thinks some guy was checking her out in the outlet parking lot.”

“Who?”

“All I got was a guy in an SUV, she said she’d work on her recollection. Wanna hypnotize her?” He laughed. “She sounded excited.”

“Just like Topher the designer. You didn’t know you were in a glam profession.”

He showed his teeth to the rearview mirror, scraped an incisor. “Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. Time to scare small children and household pets.”

* * *

Manoosian Oriental Carpets was a cavernous space on the ground floor of the Design Center’s Blue Building, crammed with hundreds of hand-loomed treasures and smelling of dust and brown paper.

Angeline Wasserman stood in the center of the gallery’s main room, red-haired, cheerfully anorexic, facially tucked so many times her eyes had migrated, fishlike, toward the sides of her head. Lime-green shantung pants fit her stick legs like Saran around chicken bones. Her orange cashmere jacket would’ve flared if she had hips. Bouncing like a Slinky toy among hemp-bound rolls of rugs, she smiled orders at two young Hispanic guys unfurling a waist-high stack of 20 x 20 Sarouks.

As we approached her, she sang out, “I’ll do it!” and launched herself at the rugs. Tossing back dense flaps of woven wool, she passed instantaneous judgment on each. “No. No. Definitely no. Maybe. No. No. No on that one, too— we’ve got to do better, Darius.”

The stocky, bearded fellow she addressed said, “How about some Kashans, Ms. W?”

“If they’re better than these.”

Darius waved to the young guys and they left.

Angeline Wasserman noticed us, inspected a few more piles, finished, and patted her hair and said, “Hello, police people.”

Milo thanked her for cooperating, showed her the photos.

Her index finger tapped. “No. No. No. No. No. So, tell me, how come LAPD’s involved when it happened in Ventura?”

“It might be related to an L.A. crime, ma’am.”

Wasserman’s piscine eyes glowed. “Some sort of big-time crime ring? Figures.”

“Why’s that?”

“Someone who recognizes a Badgley Mischka is clearly a pro.” She waved away the photos. “Think you’ll ever find my little beauty?”

“Hard to say.”