We sat down in his living room, each of us thinking in silence, neither of us coming up with anything. If he felt as weary as I did, he needed a break.

The phone rang. He snatched up the receiver. “This is him . . . what? Who—yes . . . one week. Yeah . . . I did . . . that’s right. What’s that? Yeah, I just told you that, anything else? Okay, then. Hey, listen, why don’t you give me your name and number and I’ll—”

The other party cut him off. He held the phone at arm’s length, began gnawing his upper lip.

“Who was that?” I said.

“Some guy claiming to be from Department Personnel downtown, wanting to verify that I was indeed taking vacation time and how long did I plan to be away. I told him I’d filled out the forms.”

“Claiming to be from Personnel?”

“I’ve never known the department to make calls like that, and he hung up when I asked his name. Also, he didn’t sound like a department clerk.”

“How so?”

“He sounded like he gave a damn.”

CHAPTER

20

He slipped the murder book back into the plastic bag, and said, “This goes in the safe.”

“Didn’t know you had a safe,” I said.

“For all my Cartier and Tiffany. Wait here.”

He disappeared and I stood there, humbled once more by the truism I’d learned a thousand patients ago: Everyone has secrets. At the core, we’re alone.

That made me think of Robin. Where was she? What was she doing? With whom?

Milo returned, minus his necktie. “Hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Good, let’s eat.”

He locked up and we got back in the car. I said, “That call from Personnel. Maybe procedures have tightened up with John Broussard in charge. Isn’t troop discipline his pet issue?”

“Yeah. How about Hot Dog Heaven?”

I drove to San Vicente just north of Beverly and parked at the curb. Hot Dog Heaven was built around a giant hot dog, yet another testament to L.A.’s literal thinking. The fast-food joint became a landmark when the pony ride that had occupied the corner of La Cienega and Beverly for decades was replaced by the neon-and-concrete assault known as the Beverly Center. Too bad Philip K. Dick had committed suicide. A few years later and he’d have seen Blade Runner spring to life. Or maybe he’d known what was coming.

Back during pony-ride days, the dirt track had been a favorite weekend visitation hangout for divorced dads and their kids. Hot Dog Heaven had thrived peddling nitrites to lonely men who smoked and hung around the low-slung corral, watching their progeny go round and round. Where did displaced dads go now? Not the mall. The last thing kids at the mall wanted was proximity to their parents.