Ellen didn’t leave her house until late the next afternoon, when the sky was already inching to purple. I was getting itchy—I’d been there for hours, and I’d promised to meet Lou at Olvera Street for dinner, scope out the location for Carrigan’s upcoming fund-raiser. I told myself that if Ellen didn’t budge soon, then I’d been wrong, at least for today—that she was planning on staying put or going to see her mother or a friend or something. Anyone else except Klein.

I told myself that I was chasing her for nothing, and I kept telling myself that right up until a pearly black Jaguar pulled up across from her complex and purred for a full two minutes before Ellen bounded out to meet it, practically bouncing in her stilettos. She clicked into the car, not even pausing to look around to see if anyone was watching. That made me angrier than anything. It was one thing to flout my rules, another to do it so blatantly, without any discretion or fear of being caught.

The driver of the Jag turned his head so she could kiss him, full lip smack, a lover’s kiss, and my blood ran cold. Ears like a jug. A jowly face that had always had enough money that he’d never needed to work hard at being handsome. Joel Klein, Hiram’s loathsome creep of a son, peeled away from the curb with Ellen’s hand down his pants, tires squealing.

I waited thirty seconds, long enough to put inconspicuous distance between us, and then followed. At the first stoplight, heading west along Sunset Boulevard, I could see her tilt down the driver’s side mirror, tip her head, practice smiling. Gave the mirror her best bedroom eyes and checked her teeth for lipstick. Furry pink fronds poked up from the bodice of her dress and turned the underside of her chin fuchsia. Klein Jr. goosed her under her armpit and she jumped. The light turned, and she went back to practicing seductive expressions.

I guessed where we were headed before we got there. Paramount Studios sat between a country club and a cemetery. Most other studios had moved out of Hollywood years before, finding cheaper or chicer digs in other parts of the city. But Paramount held on, locked away like a castle from the small-time wannabes a few blocks over who cruised Hollywood and Vine dressed as Marilyn or Elvis or King Kong.