“Maybe there is.” Decker inhaled. It hurt to breathe. “If you give me a chance to figure this out, then maybe we’ll both know what happened.”

Silence.

Decker needed Donatti’s cooperation; he didn’t want to get in Chris’s way. Mistakes could be lethal. “So you’ll back off, right?”

“No, I won’t back off,” Donatti snapped back. “But since it’s your family, I’ll give you a twenty-four-hour head start. Then it’s everyone for himself.”

“Even I can’t work that fast. Seventy-two hours, Chris. At the end of three days—solve or no solve—I’m out of here.”

“Right.”

“Donatti, I’m not jerking my chain over this. No one has a one-hundred-percent solve rate.”

“What’s yours?”

“High enough. But it’s not one hundred percent.”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Sixty hours, starting now. You broke my nose, you bastard. You owe it to me.”

Chris leaned over the desk and examined Decker’s features. “No, I didn’t break your nose. I just clipped it. I got you on the cheek— bone’s swollen, but not too bad. It wasn’t full force, Decker. If I had meant business, your face would have been a Cubist study.”

“If you’re asking me to thank you, forget it. Sixty hours.”

“This is stupid! You want me to back off until you leave town, I’ll do it. But I’m not paying for your funeral.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m serious, Lieutenant. You may be a good cop in L.A., but out here you don’t know horseshit.”

“So fill me in.”

“That’s impossible. Could you fill me in on what makes a good Homicide cop in Los Angeles? These kinds of things are intuitive. I’ve lived on these streets and with these people all my life. It’s just this… feel—this sixth sense. Here I can do in a day what you couldn’t do in a year. I’d actually be an asset to you.”

“I don’t think a partnership would enhance either one of us in the reputation department.”

“I’ve worked with cops before.”

“Not honest ones.”

“No such animal.”

Decker didn’t argue. What was the point?

“I could turn you into a homicidal maniac in a minute because I know your weakness. But why bother? Cleaning your family isn’t gonna solve my problems.”

“That is very true. Give me sixty hours solo, Donatti. I need to know I won’t be stepping on your toes.”

“All right.” Donatti threw up his hands. “I’ll give you till Friday, if you last that long. If you land on your ass, I finish up my business my way. Deal?”

Decker said, “You stay out of my hair—”

“I said, ‘Deal.’” Abruptly, Donatti jumped over the desk and planted his mouth on Decker’s bloody lip. “There. Signed, sealed, and delivered with a kiss.”

Decker grimaced as he wiped his mouth. “What the hell was that for?”

“I dunno.” Donatti was amused by Decker’s repugnance. “I’m used to kissing authority figures. I used to kiss my uncle on the lips all the time.”

“I’m not your friggin’ uncle, Chris.”

“You said you were my father figure. In therapy, they call that transference.”