Every police chief before Broussard had lived in his own house, but John G. had convinced the mayor to give him an empty mansion on Irving Street, rent-free. The three-story edifice, donated to the city years ago by the heirs of a long-dead oil tycoon, was twelve thousand square feet of English Tudor with big lawns, a pool, and a tennis court. Milo knew because he’d done security years ago at a party for an ambassador—the envoy from some small Asian state that had since changed its name.

Set aside originally as a mayor’s residence, the Irving house had sat dormant for years because the mayor’s predecessor had his own place in Brentwood and the current mayor’s even larger spread in Pacific Palisades was just fine, too.

John G. Broussard’s crib, prior to his promotion, had been a too-small affair in Ladera Heights and John G. claimed he needed to be closer to headquarters.

Ladera Heights was a half hour ride downtown, the mansion on Irving was fifteen minutes up Sixth Street. The mayor’s drive from the Westside could stretch to over an hour, but no one saw the inconsistency in John G.’s logic, and the new chief got himself baronial lodgings.

Irving Street, less than a mile from Walt Obey’s estate on Muirfield.

Obey was one of the mayor’s big donors. Had supported Broussard for chief over three other candidates.

The mayor and Obey. Obey and Broussard. Obey and a bunch of lowlifes supping nouvelle-whatever cuisine in a private room at Sangre de Leon.

Private enterprise and municipal government and the long arm of the law arm in arm. And Schwinn had thrown him right into it.

He left his house, looking in all directions and over his shoulder, got into the rented Taurus, and drove north. IDing the asshole who claimed to be Paris Bartlett shouldn’t have been a problem, if his hunch about a department plant was true. Just head over to the police academy in Elysian Park and thumb through the face books. But that was too conspicuous; for all he knew it was his sneaky little trips to Parker Center and back to his West L.A. desk that had sicced the department on him in the first place. Besides, Bartlett was a minor player, just a messenger, and did it really matter who’d sent him?

Stay healthy . . .

Maybe he should return to Ojai and nose around a bit more up there. But what more could he learn? Schwinn was the Ojai link, and he was gone.

Falling off a goddamn horse . . .

He pulled over to the curb, yanked out his cell phone, got the number of the Ventura County morgue. Using an insurance-investigator lie, he spent the next half hour being bounced from desk to desk, trying to get the full facts on Schwinn’s death.