The spot was ideal for watching the Porsche. Close enough to make out movement and details, sufficiently distant not to raise suspicion. The only negative was the Seville, itself. In a row of newish chrome and paint, a thirty-year-old car stood out. I’d rolled back as far as I could, leaving the larger SUVs to serve as walls on wheels. Milo and I sat low. He began to nap.

Nothing happened for fifteen minutes. He was snoring lightly when that changed.

I nudged him. His instincts were finely tuned and even as he blinked into consciousness, he lowered himself farther.

Two people were approaching the Porsche. A tall, crane-like woman in a navy suit with gold buttons was instantly identifiable as Flora Sullivan. At her side, a shorter, stocky ape-like man wearing an open-necked white dress shirt and slacks.

No body contact between Sullivan and Grant Fellinger, but lots of smiling, animated conversation.

Milo said, “My, my.”

I said, “Maybe he likes pleather, too.”

We watched for several more minutes as attorneys Sullivan and Fellinger conferred. Then he opened the driver’s door of the Porsche and she folded her long body inside.

Fellinger walked away, moving quickly, a spring in his step. He was out of view by the time Sullivan roared off.

Milo said, “What the hell was that?”

I said, “Who knows? But now it’s confirmed: He does get out of his suit.”

CHAPTER

20

Café Moghul serves competent, generic Indian food from a spot on Santa Monica Boulevard near Butler Avenue, a quick walk from the West L.A. station. Milo’s been eating and working from there for years. Shortly after he discovered the place, he handled a few derelicts who wandered in from the street. The bespectacled woman who runs the place remains convinced he’s a one-man security system and treats him like a deity.

The fare’s decent enough but I’ve rarely seen the restaurant crowded. A mail-out offering temporary discounts on the already cutrate lunch buffet ended up at the station, briefly attracting hordes of cops. That, too, was attributed to Milo despite his denials.

Nor was he blamed when the horde thinned.

“You are a modest man,” the woman had assured him, heaping his plate with lobster claws absent from the buffet table.

At five fifteen, we were the sole patrons. The woman ushered us in, moving smoothly in a lime-green and lemon-yellow sari. I don’t know her name and I’m pretty sure Milo doesn’t either.

“Your table, Captain.”

“Lieutenant.”

“Soon it will be Captain,” she said. “After that, Major.”

As she scooted away, Milo muttered, “After that, six feet under.”

He pulled out his cell phone. When she came back with chai and cumin-rich papadum and three kinds of chutney, he was well into his recent calls, deleting “toll-free bullshit” and “departmental bullshit” with grim satisfaction.

“What will you be having, Captain-Leftenant?”

“Anything’s fine.”

“Lamb?”

“Sure, great, thanks.”