He pulled the cover from the desk that stood in the middle of his living room. I’ve never known either why he keeps it there, where he must bump into it a hundred times a week, or why he thinks it’s a good idea to drape it. From the jumble of papers stacked on top and spilling from the drawers I figured it wasn’t going to be an easy search. I skirted the operation and went over to check on Peppy.

The puppies had grown amazingly in one week. Their soft fur coverings were starting to show distinctive colors. They were still blind, though, and helpless. They squealed and squirmed in terror when Peppy stood up and left them. She sniffed my legs to make sure it was me and indicated that she wanted to go outside.

“Yeah, you take her out, doll. I’m still tracking down Mitch’s address,” Mr. Contreras called to me.

Peppy didn’t want to stay out long. She made a brief circuit of the yard to spot any changes in her domain and headed straight back to the kitchen door. Our quick tour suddenly reminded me of my insane agreement to do evening duty with Mrs. Frizell’s dogs.

When we returned to the living room, Mr. Contreras was leafing through a crumbling address book.

“Got it, cookie,” he announced. “I’ll just write it down for you.” A handful of pages dropped to the floor while he hunted for a pencil and paper.

“Just tell me what it is,” I suggested. “I can remember it long enough to get upstairs.… By the way, did Mrs. Hellstrom up the street drop off keys for Mrs. Frizell’s house?”

“Huh?” He was copying Mitch’s address onto an old envelope with the slow hand of someone who doesn’t write much. “Keys? Oh, yeah, slipped my mind in my worry over Mitch, but I got them here for you. Hang on a second. I thought you wasn’t going to get involved with any more dogs. Isn’t that what you said?”

“My lips said ‘No, no,’ but my imbecile conscience said ‘Yes, yes.’ But I’m not backing down on an addition to our menagerie.”

“Okay, doll, okay. Cool your jets.” He handed me the envelope with Kruger’s old address, Thirty-fifth Street west of Damen, spelled out in caps. Really just walking distance from Diamond Head.

“Is that where you lived too?”

“Huh, doll? Oh, you’re thinking about when we was kids. No, no. My folks lived on Twenty-fourth, off Oakley. Part of Little Tuscany. Mitch lived closer to California. We was always on his case about how he was gonna end up at the county jail. It’s right there, you know.”

“I know.” A lot of my life had been spent at Twenty-sixth and California in my days with the Homicide Task Force.