Milo looked up his number and called. Generally, he switches to speaker so I can listen in. This time, he forgot or chose not to do so and I sat there as he introduced himself, explained the reason for calling as an “occurrence” at John J. Del Rios’s old family home, listened for a while, said, “Thank you, sir,” and hung up.

“Sounds young for his age, more than happy to talk about the good old days. But it needs to be tomorrow, he’s entertaining a ‘lady friend.’ He also let me know he’d been on the job.”

“LAPD?”

“Sheriff.”

He typed some more. Commander John J. Del Rios had run the Sheriff’s Correctional Division from 1967 through 1974, retired with pension, and received a citation from his boss for distinguished service. Further cyber-snooping pulled up a ten-year stretch at a private security firm. After that, nothing.

Milo made a few calls to contacts at the tan-shirts. No one remembered Del Rios.

I said, “Entertaining a lady friend? Maybe he’s our playboy. He’d have been in his twenties, prime time for an active sexual life.”

“We’ll check him out tomorrow. Eleven a.m. After his golf game.”

“Golf, women, the good life,” I said. “A good long life.”

“The priest dies young, the hedonist thrives? Yeah, I love when justice prevails.”

CHAPTER
6

The following morning, I picked Milo up on Butler Avenue and Santa Monica, just north of the West L.A. station.

The bones had made the morning news, print and TV, with Holly Ruche’s name left out and the neighborhood described as “affluent Westside.” Milo was carrying a folded Times by his side. He wore a lint-gray suit, algae-green shirt, poly tie the color of venous blood. The sun wasn’t kind to his pockmarked face; that and his size and his glower made him someone you’d cross the street to avoid.

He appreciates the value of publicity as much as any experienced detective. But he likes to control the flow, and I expected him to be angry about the leak. He got into the Seville, stretched, yawned, said “Top of the morning,” thumbed to the editorial pages. Scanning the op-ed columns, he muttered cheerfully: “Stupid, stupid, stupid, and big surprise … more stupid.”

Folding the paper, he tossed it in back.

I said, “Any tips come in from the story?”

“Nothing serious, so far. Moe and Sean are working the phones. The good news for Mr. and Mrs. Ruche is the dogs turned up nothing else, ditto for radar and sniff-tubes. Nothing remotely iffy in the house, either, so looks like we’ve got a lone antique whodunit, not a psycho cemetery.”

He stretched some more.

I said, “You’re okay with the leak.”

“That’s like saying I’m okay with earthquakes. What’s my choice?”