“Full-service girlfriend.” She worked on my muscles some more, stepped away, unsnapped the overalls, let them fall to the kitchen floor. The black T-shirt and a navy blue thong contrasted with smooth, tawny skin. She stretched, flexed each lovely leg. I stood.

“I’m filthy, hon, going to shower off. After that, we can figure out what to do about dinner.”

I was waiting when she emerged from the bathroom, armed with a few restaurant suggestions.

She unpeeled her towel, folded it neatly, stood there naked. Holding out a hand, she led me to the bed. “Time for you to be a full-service boyfriend.”

Afterward, she ran her nails lightly over my cheek. Bobbled my lips with the side of an index finger the way kids do when they’re goofing. I let out a high-pitched moan, did a fair imitation of a leaky drain. When we both stopped laughing, she said, “How are you doing now?”

“A lot better.”

“High point of my day, too. How about Italian?”

CHAPTER
11

I’d heard nothing new about the bones for two days when the Times ran a follow-up piece.

The article was stuck at the bottom of page 15, trumped by water issues and legislative ineptitude, a shooting in Compton, the usual petty corruption by various civic employees. The byline was Kelly LeMasters, the reporter Milo had belatedly called.

The coverage boiled down to a space-filling rehash ending with the pronouncement that “A priority request to analyze the bones for DNA at the state Department of Justice lab is LAPD’s best hope for yielding fresh information on a decades-old mystery.”

The newspaper was in Milo’s hand when he rapped on my door at ten a.m.

I said, “Pleasant surprise.”

He strode past me into the kitchen, flung the fridge door open, did the usual bear-scrounge, and came up with a rubbery-looking chicken leg that he gnawed to the bone and a half-full quart of milk that he chugged empty. Wiping the lacto-mustache from his nearly-as-pale face, he thrust the Times piece at me. “Compelling and insightful, call the Pulitzer committee.”

I said, “Pulitzer was a tabloid shlock-meister.”

He shrugged. “Time heals, especially with money in the ointment.” He flung the article onto the table.

I said, “So you spoke to LeMasters.”

“Not quite. I spoke to His Grandiosity’s office begging for DOJ grease. That was yesterday afternoon. Next morning, voilà.”

“The chief leaks?”

“The chief plays the press like a harmonica. Which is fine in this case because everything’s dead-ended. Social Security can’t turn up records of our Eleanor Green, and I can’t find dirt on Swedish. Even the oldest vice guy I know doesn’t remember it, one way or the other. So if they were breaking the law, they were doing it discreetly.”