The next morning at ten thirty, just as I set out for Gretchen Stengel’s place, Milo called in.

“Princess’s face will be flashed on the news tonight but no dice on Black Suit. I have failed to establish sufficient cause linking the two of them and unnecessary exposure of an innocent individual could have dire legal consequences. Let’s hope she pulls up some tips. One thing for sure, she ain’t royalty. If Homeland Security can be believed.”

“No princesses on holiday in SoCal?”

“Just the ones born in B.H. and Bel Air. They did send me passport photos of young women loosely matching the description, I followed up and everyone’s alive. I faxed Shimoff’s drawing of Black Suit to the security companies. Nada. All this futility’s making me hungry. You up for lunch?”

“When?”

“Now.”

“I’ve got an appointment at eleven.”

“Seeing patients again?”

I hummed.

“Got it,” he said. “Much as I enjoy your company, the gastrointestinal tract will not hold out, so we go our respective ways. Sayonara.”

Chapter 9

ittle Santa Monica Boulevard turns into Burton Way past Crescent, so cruising by the Fauborg on the way to Gretchen’s was preordained.

Two jagged crumbling stories stood where there’d once been four. A skyscraping crane hovered above the ruins, a steel mantis poised to strike. The colossal machine idled as hard hats purchased nutrition from a roach coach. A man wearing an orange Supervisor vest noticed me as he chewed his burrito.

“Do something for you?”

“Just looking. I was here the other night.”

“What was it, some kind of old-age home?”

“Something like that.”

“Real piece a shit,” he said. “Going down like paper.”

Gretchen’s building was four intact stories of sage-green, neo-Italianate exuberance dressed up by gnarled olive trees planted in gravel. Il Trevi in gilt topped the sales sign out front. Fifteen luxury two- and three-bath units (All Sold! See Our Sister Project on Third Street!), the apartments rimmed an atrium fenced with iron but open to street view. A stone fountain burbled.

I was buzzed up to Gretchen’s top-floor unit without comment. She waited in her doorway, wearing a pink housecoat and fuzzy white mules and breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank on wheels. A plastic tube dangled from her nostrils. She pulled it out and it hissed like a snake. Showing me brown, eroded teeth, she gripped my hand between both of hers and squeezed.

Her skin was cold and papery. The housecoat billowed on a wasted frame but her face was bloated. What remained of her hair was white lint.

I’d researched her last night. Despite the passage of time, she pulled up more hits than ten years’ worth of Nobel Prize winners. Various bios listed various birth dates but each put her at barely into middle age. She looked seventy-five.

“Beauty fades,” she said, “but obnoxious lingers. Come on in.”