We returned to the Robbery-Homicide room. A Dunkin' Donuts takeout box dominated Mile's desk. He said, "Shouldn't you be getting home to Robin?"

"I told her it might take a while."

He studied the notes he'd scrawled in the interrogation room. "Heidi," he said. "Our little mountain girl. Too bad everything she's come up with is probably worth a warm bucket of spit.... 'Choo choo bang bang.' What's next? Peake reads selections from Dr. Seuss?"

He rubbed his eyes, stacked some papers, squared the corners with his thumbs.

"You think it was poor judgment?" he said. "Asking her to check on Pelley?"

"Not if she's discreet."

"Worse comes to worst, Swig finds out, gets all huffy. He can't afford to make too big a deal of it-bad publicity."

"Anything new on Pelley's whereabouts?" I said.

"Zilch. Ramparts was notified by the P.O., so there's something positive. Other than that, the P.O. wasn't very helpful. Caseload in the hundreds; to him, Pelley was just another number. I doubt he could point him out in a crowd."

He pulled a folded sheet out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. LAPD Suspect Alert. Pelley's vital statistics and a photo so dark and blurry I couldn't see it being useful for anything. All I could make out was a round, clean-shaven Caucasian face smudged with indeterminate features. Thin, light-colored hair. Serious mouth. The crime was failure to report.

"This is what they're using?" I said, placing the paper on the desk.

"Yeah, I know-not exactly Cartier-Bresson. But at least they're looking. I did some looking, too. Driving around the neighborhood, checking out MacArthur Park, Lafayette Park, alleys, con bars, some other bad-guy spots I know. Visited the halfway house, too. Old apartment building, cons out in front, some Korean guy running the place-sincere enough, told me he'd been a social worker in Seoul. But he barely speaks English, and basically all he does is warehouse the residents, do random drug tests maybe four times a year. Counseling consists of asking the cons how they're doing. The ones I saw hanging around didn't look at all insightful. As for Pelley, all the Korean could say was that he'd been quiet, hadn't caused problems. None of the cons remembered a damn thing about him. Of course."

He reached for a piece of stale cinnamon roll. "He could be a thousand miles away by now. I didn't do much better with Stargill's investment records. The Newport money managers wouldn't talk to me, and they informed him I'd been asking around. He calls me, all irate. I tell him I'm just trying to clear him, how about he voluntarily gives me a look at his stock portfolio. If everything checks out, we call it a day. He says he'll think about it, but I could tell he won't."

"Hiding something?" I said.