“I really broke my ass to find this stuff. Christ, I had it in storage in Glendale and I was two hours in traffic. You gonna tell Peter? You gonna tell Peter that I came through?” Peter making a little flipping gesture with his drink. Fuck’m.

“Sure, Oscar. I’ll tell him.”

Oscar said, “Oh, man.” Excited at the possibilities.

I said, “Hey, Oscar? Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Oscar Curtiss laughed. “Yeah, your thanks and appreciation won’t buy dick. Just tell Peter, okay? This town, you’re on Peter’s team, you’re made.”

“You bet, Oscar. Made.” Fuck’m.

I hung up.

At nine-forty that morning, I looped down Mulhoiland to the Cahuenga Pass, then followed the pass down to Franklin Avenue and across the northern part of Hollywood to Beechwood Canyon. Beechwood Canyon starts high, just beneath the Hollywood sign, and winds its way down to Franklin at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills. There is a school at the bottom and a gas station and a lot of large apartment houses that used to be small apartment houses and don’t look as nice large as they did small. Urban redevelopment. Between the big places sat small stucco bungalows that were neat and pretty and still managed to look like garages. The higher up the mountain you went, the more you saw of the bungalows and the less you saw of the developers.

3484 was four narrow green stucco apartments stepping up the side of the hill in a line from the street, each one higher than the one in front. Cement steps went up along the left side, the steps cracked and uneven where a couple of ancient yucca trees had lifted them. The front apartment had a little porch with wooden wind chimes and lots of little cactuses in old clay pots that were painted the way maybe Indians would paint them, only the paint was chipped and faded just like the apartments. Four big century plants nested at the street, overgrown with the silver weeds you always see around them. All of it looked clean and all of it looked tended to, but only partway, as if whoever did it couldn’t quite get the high spots and couldn’t quite get in the corners and couldn’t quite get all the grime or the weeds or the litter out. There was no driveway and no garage. Curb parking only.

I drove past, turned around, and parked the Corvette on the steep grade across the street, then went up onto the little porch. The door opened before I could knock and a woman in her seventies looked out past three security chains. She was wearing a paisley housecoat. She said, “Can I help you?” high and hard, like maybe if she didn’t like my answer the sort of help she’d give me was the LAPD’s Metro Squad.