“I’ve got your attention, I can hear it in your voice. He dropped out when he was seventeen—a good four to five years before Ben Little was murdered—but it does open up all sorts of possibilities. Hold on…” Muddled noise in the background. “We’re pushing back, Pete, I’ve got to turn off the cell.”

Decker dialed Banks again, and when he got the same message, he gently placed the phone back in the cradle. He pulled out a phone book and found what he was looking for in a matter of minutes. Rudy Banks had an address in the phone book. It could have been a residence or an office. It was time to do some legwork.

IF RUDY WAS making money from his litigious adventures, he wasn’t spending it on the outer trappings of success. His place was in old Hollywood about thirty blocks from downtown. The apartment was on the fourth floor of a French Normandy–style building that had probably reached its glory days ninety years ago. Since then it had gone through some serious decay, including peeling plaster on the outside and an interior smell of mold. There was a small, stuffy red lobby with terrazzo floors and no attendant. An ancient nonoperative elevator was on the right and appeared as if it hadn’t been working for a very long time. The staircase was to the left of the entrance, and Decker trekked up the four flights. The building had no air-conditioning, and by the time he reached Banks’s door, he was sweating.

He rang the bell several times, then loudly knocked on the door, but there was no response. Decker fished around in his billfold for his official card, hearing the clop, clop, clop of some other soul traipsing up the steps. The sound stopped at the fourth floor, and when Decker looked up, a man was approaching. He seemed to be in his late thirties or early forties, tall and thin. He wore tight jeans and a black short-sleeved T-shirt, his arms festooned with tattoos of all shapes and colors. Pointed lizard-skin cowboy boots projected from the hem of his denim. His face was clenched and he kept pounding a fist into an open palm. He stopped in front of Banks’s apartment.

“Bastard’s not in?”

“Looks that way.”

“Did you bang hard?”

“I did.” Decker sized up the man. “You look like you’re out to settle a score.”

The eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

Decker showed the man his badge and gave him his card. “And you are?”

“I’ve been called all sorts of names, so take your pick.” The man had hazel eyes haloed by red rims, but there was intelligence behind the windows to his soul. He focused on Decker’s face and then pocketed the card. “My mum still calls me Liam.”

His voice sang with a slight brogue. Decker said, “As in Liam ‘Mad Irish’ O’Dell.”