“He’d have no reason to resent me.”

Silence.

“The plan was to meet him away from my place,” I said.

“That’s a start.”

“I’m not minimizing what he did, Milo. He, himself, admitted hitting Kristal. But I always felt Troy Turner was the primary force behind the murder and Rand got caught up in the situation.”

“Put him in another situation and he’ll get caught up again.”

“I suppose.”

“Hey,” he said. “You called me, not another shrink. Meaning you were looking for hard truth, not empathy and understanding.”

“I don’t know what I was looking for.”

“You craved sage detective advice and Uncle Milo’s instinctual protective stance. Now that the former has been dispensed, I’ll do my best to provide the latter while you’re gallivanting up Fifth Avenue with a lovely lady on your arm.”

“That’s okay— ”

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “Though it falls well outside of my job description, I will drive by your house at least once a day, twice if I can swing it, pick up your paper and your mail, be on the lookout for shady characters lurking around the premises.”

“Gallivanting,” I said.

“You do know how to gallivant? Put one foot in front of the other . . . and just blow.”

* * *

At one p.m. he called back. “When were you planning to leave for New York?”

“Tomorrow morning. Why?”

“A body showed up last night in Bel Air, dumped in some bushes near the 405 North on-ramp. White male, young, six-two, two hundred, shot in the head, no wallet or I.D. But wadded down in the little front pocket of his jeans was a piece of paper. Greasy and frayed, like it had been pawed a lot. The writing, however, was still legible and guess what it was: your phone number.”

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 12

I met Milo in his office on the second floor of the Westside substation. It’s a windowless cell, formerly a utility closet, set away from the collaborative buzz of the big detective’s room. There’s barely room for a two-drawer desk, a file cabinet, a pair of folding chairs, and a senile computer. The station’s a no-smoking zone but sometimes Milo puffs panatelas, and the walls have yellowed and the air smells like a dozen old men.

He’s six-three, and when he pays attention to his diet, two-sixty. Hunched at the undersized desk, he’s a cartoon.

It’s a setup unbefitting a lieutenant, but he’s not the typical lieutenant, and he claims it’s fine with him. Maybe he means it, maybe having a second office helps— an Indian restaurant a few blocks away where the owners treat him like royalty.

The leap from Detective III to brass had resulted from leverage he’d never sought: ugly secrets unearthed about the former police chief.