The clerk faced him and smiled. “Everyone needs one—tell all your friends.” He reached for the Rolodex, but Milo held on to it, thumbing back from Bl to Ba. No Bartlett. Then up to P. No Playa del Sol.

The Pakistani said, “Stop, please. What if someone comes in?”

Milo released the Rolodex, and the clerk placed it under the counter.

“How long have you been working here?”

“Oh,” said the clerk, as if the question was profound. “Ten months.”

“So you’ve never dealt with anyone from Playa del Sol.”

“That is true.”

“Who worked here before you?”

“My cousin.”

“Where is he?”

“Kashmir.”

Milo glared at him.

“It’s true,” said the man. “He had enough of this place.”

“West Hollywood?”

“America. The morals.”

No curiosity about why Milo wanted to know about Playa del Sol. Given the guy’s line of work, Milo supposed he’d learned not to be curious.

Milo thanked him, and the clerk rubbed his index finger with his thumb. “You could show your thanks in another way.”

“Okay,” said Milo, taking a very low bow. “Thank you very much.”

As he left, he heard the man utter something in a language he didn’t understand.

He drove to the Cynthia Street apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Block, pretended to be a census taker, and enjoyed an affable five-minute chat with the possibly hundred-year-old Selma Block, a blue-caftaned, champagne-haired pixie of a woman so bent and tiny she might very well have fit into one of the mailboxes. Behind her sat Mr. Block on a green-and-gold sofa, a mute, static, vacant-eyed apparition of similar antiquity whose sole claim to physiologic viability was the occasional moist and startling throat clear.

Five minutes taught Milo more about the Blocks than he’d wanted to know. Both had worked in the Industry—Selma as a costume mistress for several major studios, Irwin as an accountant for MGM. Three children lived back East. One was an orthodontist, the middle one had gone into “the financial world and became a Republican, and our daughter weaves and sews hand-fashioned—”

“Is this the only address you keep, ma’am?” said Milo, pretending to write everything down but doodling curlicues. No chance of Mrs. B. spotting the ruse. The top of her head was well below the pad.

“Oh, no, dear. We keep a post-office box over by the Healthy Foods.”

“Why’s that, ma’am?”

“Because we like to eat healthy.”

“Why the post-office box, ma’am?”

Selma Block’s tiny claw took hold of Milo’s sleeve, and he felt as if a cat was using his arm for a spring post.

“Politics, dear. Political mailers.”

“Oh,” said Milo.

“What party do you belong to, dear?”

“I’m an independent.”

“Well, dear, we like the Green Party—rather subversive, you know.” The claw dug in deeper.

“You keep the box for Green Party mailers?”