“Okay.” With a tired sigh, she nodded. “Just give me a sec, okay?” She disappeared behind the door again. Bentz paced through the lobby past brochures of fishing trips, movie studio visits, and museums. He could only hope the badge had made an impression. Nervously jangling the change in his pocket, he walked to the large plate-glass window and peered out. He saw only a few cars parked between faded stripes in the parking lot.

“Okay, here ya go.” Rebecca returned to the lobby with a business card. Handing him the card, she said, “Only one call.”

“Only had one. Thanks.” He scanned the number jotted in her neat handwriting. A local number.

“Anytime,” she said without the slightest bit of enthusiasm. “Anything else?”

“This’ll do.”

“Good.” She scraped her pack of Marlboro Lights and her lighter from the counter, then followed Bentz outside.

He heard her lighter click as he reached his room.

Inside, using his cell phone, he dialed the single number listed on the printout. It rang ten times. He hung up; hit redial. Twelve more rings, no answering machine, no voice mail. He hung up and tried one last time, counting off the rings. On the eighth, a male voice said, “Yeah?”

“Who is this?” Bentz demanded.

“Paul. Who is this?” Indignant.

“I’m returning a call.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Someone called me from this phone.”

“Big surprise,” the guy said, his speech slightly slurred. “Duh. It’s a pay phone.”

A pay phone? Probably only a handful of those dinosaurs left in the country and you get a crank call from one. “Where?”

“What?” the stranger, Paul, demanded.

“The phone you’re on right now. Where is it?”

“I dunno…uh…in L.A. What do you think? Here on Wilshire. Yeah…there’s a bank on the corner. California Something, I think.”

“What’s the cross street?”

“Who the hell knows? It’s around Sixth or Seventh, I think…hey, look, I gotta use the phone, okay?”

Bentz wasn’t going to let the guy go. Not yet. “Just a sec. Did you see a woman using this phone, say, twenty minutes ago?”

“What is this?” The guy on the other end was getting pissed.

“I thought you might have been waiting for the phone and seen someone. A woman.”

“Shit, dude, I said no! Oh, for Christ’s sake!” He hung up, severing the connection.

Bentz clicked off his cell phone, gathered his keys, and slipped into his shoes. He didn’t know what good driving around L.A. in the dead of night would do, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep any time soon. Rebecca was just crushing her cigarette into the large ash can by the front door. The night air was still tinged with the faint smell of smoke as she watched him climb into the Ford.