She said, ‘Why don’t you come up and tell me about it?’

Just like that. As if he’d been on vacation and she wanted to see the photos. Vincent told her he’d be there in ten minutes. He showered and dressed, and took the stairs to get the blood moving, knocked on her door at nine minutes past the hour. She opened the door looking good: showered, lightly made up, a bit of volume in her hair—freshly blow-dried, he figured.

She said, ‘Was the suit just a one-off?’

He was back in his Lamar-approved uniform: t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops. He said, ‘I thought it was better as evening wear. Like, if I’m on bodyguard duty at a black-tie dinner or something.’

He noticed he couldn’t shut off that instinct. There was a part of him always wanting to turn out something clever, amuse her. He followed her in and shut the door behind him. The sliding door to the balcony was open, a breeze rolling in the drapes, a pot of coffee on a room-service trolley. She asked if he wanted a cup, and Vincent said he did. She poured one and handed it to him and then sat down on the sofa, her back to the balcony.

She said, ‘All right, tell me.’

He liked how she’d done that: getting them down to business, but not rushing it, leaving room to trade lines and give him coffee. Focused, but not over-anxious, even with the murders less than a day old. She was cool.

He wasn’t sure how candid he should be, but she was giving him a look that said she would hear truth in the story irrespective of what he told her, and he might as well save himself the effort of omission.

Vincent said, ‘The guy in the SUV was called Delroy Clemons. We followed him to Page’s place up in Laurel Canyon. Delroy went in, and I followed with a shotgun and asked what’s going on.’

There, he’d told her and she hadn’t fallen out of her chair. And now for better or worse she was part of it, in a small way. Complicit after the fact.

She took a moment working through his opener, and he thought he was in for a Beauden Ash–type admonition that he’d gone too far. But she just sipped her coffee, looking at him over the rim of the cup, and then said, ‘So did he tell you anything? Or did he exercise his right to silence?’

‘He didn’t tell me anything. But like I said in the text, I got the impression he’s caught in the middle of something rather than running it.’

‘Based on the fact he was scared shitless. As you put it.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Which meant too scared to get into the details.’

‘Apparently.’

Erin said, ‘But not so scared he couldn’t relay the message I left him last night.’