“Like a princess but nobody knows her unless she wants, you know?” said Mutter. “First time I saw her, that’s what I thought. She’s probably famous but I don’t know enough.” Smiling. “She was nice and really hot. Hope she gets her watch back.”

Chapter 5

e left Mutter sitting on the sofa bed and drinking his Big Gulp.

Milo slipped behind the wheel of the unmarked. “Unless Tasha’s lying for him, the time frame clears him.”

“He was good for one thing,” I said. “Her accent. So maybe it will come down to a waylaid tourist.”

“Let’s see what Big Brother has to say about recent entries of young, cute U.K. citizens.”

He put in a call to “Ralph” at Homeland Security, got a voice-mail litany that necessitated six button-pushes, finally left a vague message about “the British invasion.”

I said, “They’ve got that kind of data at their fingertips?”

“So they claim. All part of the war on terrorism—’scuse me, the alleged struggle with alleged man-made disasters. Now let’s work on my disaster.”

At West L.A. station, we climbed the stairs and passed the big detective room. Milo’s closet-sized office is well away from the other D’s, at the end of a narrow hall housing sad, bright interview rooms where lives change.

Closet-sized allotment; he claims the privacy makes it worthwhile. Grow up in a large family, you appreciate any kind of space.

His lone-wolf status began years ago, when he was the only openly gay detective in the department, and continued as part of a deal cut with a previous police chief, a man with a media-friendly demeanor and slippery ethics. Working a long-cold murder case handed Milo enough info to ruin the boss. The barter got the chief honorable retirement with full pension and earned Milo promotion to lieutenant, with continuation as a detective and none of the desk work that went with the rank.

The new chief, brutal and statistics-driven, learned that Milo’s close rate was the highest in the department and chose not to fix the unbroken.

When he closes the door to the office, it starts to feel like a coffin but I’m getting used to that. I’ve been slightly claustrophobic since childhood, a souvenir of hiding from an enraged, alcoholic father in coal bins, crawl spaces, and such. Working with Milo has been therapeutic on many levels.

I wedged into a corner as he wheeled his desk chair inches from my face, swung long legs onto the desk, loosened his tie and suppressed a belch. A sudden reach for a pen knocked a pile of papers to the floor. On top was a memo from Parker Center marked Urgent. When I moved to pick up the sheaf, he said, “Don’t bother, it’s all trash.”