Larner was no doubt the Achievement House director’s son. The harasser’s son. Yet another link between the families. Daddy putting up Crazy Sister Caroline at Achievement House, buying jobs for himself and Junior.

Connections and money. So what else was new? Presidents were selected the same damn way. If any of this provided a hook to Janie Ingalls, he couldn’t see it. But he knew—on a gut level—that it did matter. That Pierce Schwinn’s forced retirement and his own transfer to West L.A. had resulted from more than Schwinn’s dalliances with street whores.

Twenty-year-old fix, John G. Broussard doing the dirty work.

Schwinn had sat on whatever he’d known for two decades, pasted photos in an album, finally decided to break silence.

Why now?

Maybe because Broussard had reached the top and Schwinn wanted his revenge to be a gourmet dish.

Using Milo to do the dirty work . . .

Then he falls off a docile horse . . .

Headlights from the north end of Robertson slapped him out of his rumination. Two sets of lights, a pair of vehicles approaching the Melrose intersection. The traffic signal turned amber. The first car passed through legally and the second one ran the red.

Both pulled up in front of Sangre de Leon.

Vehicle Number One was a discreet, black, Mercedes coupe—surprise, surprise!—whose license plate he copied down quickly. Out stepped the driver, another business-suit, moving so quickly the pink ladies had no time to get his door. He slipped a bill to the nearest valet, anyway, let Milo have a nice, clean look at him.

Older guy. Late sixties to midseventies, balding, with a sparse gray comb-over, wearing a boxy beige suit, a white shirt, and a dark tie. Medium height, medium build, clean-shaven, the skin falling away from the bone at jowls and neck. No expression on his face. Milo wondered if this was Larner, Senior. Or just a guy out for dinner.

If so, it wouldn’t be a solo dinner, because the occupants of the second car nearly tripped over themselves to get to his side.

Vehicle Two was also black, but no feat of German engineering. Big, fat Crown Victoria sedan, anachronistically oversize. The only places Milo’d seen those things, recently, were government offices, but this one didn’t have state-issue e plates.

But neither did lots of unmarkeds and for a second, he thought, department brass? and experienced a rush of expectations met too easily: documenting cop honchos with the Cossacks, why the hell hadn’t he remembered to bring a damn camera?

But the moment the first guy out of the Crown Victoria turned and showed his face, it was a whole different story.

Long, dark, lizard face under a black pompadour.