I pictured her running through the lobby, tear-streaked. What was the weather in Vancouver? Had she remembered her coat? Had Sheridan followed, ever ready with consolation?

“Sir?” said the operator. “Would you like her voice mail?”

“Uh . . . sure, why not.”

I was connected, listened to Robin’s voice deliver a canned message. Waited for the beep.

Chose my words carefully, but ended up choking and letting the phone drop from my hand.

I moved to my office, drew the drapes, sat in gray-brown darkness, listened to the throbbing in my head.

A fine fix you’ve gotten yourself into, Alexander . . . the hell of it was Bert Harrison had warned me.

Bert was a wise man, why hadn’t I listened?

What to do . . . send flowers? No, that would insult Robin’s intelligence, make matters worse.

Two tickets to Paris . . .

It took a long time before I was able to shove my feelings somewhere south of my ankles, turn suitably numb.

I stared at the wall, visualized myself as a speck of dirt, worked hard at disappearing.

I booted up the computer and downloaded Google, because that search engine could locate a hamburger joint on Pluto.

“Walter Obey” pulled up three hundred and some-odd hits, 90 percent of them pertaining to the billionaire, with a quarter of those repetitive. Most were newspaper and business journal articles, about evenly divided between coverage of Obey’s philanthropic activities and his financial dealings.

Walter and Barbara Obey had contributed to the Philharmonic, the Music Center, Planned Parenthood, the Santa Monica Mountains Convervancy, the Humane Society, shelters for homeless youth, a slew of foundations raging battle against tragic diseases. The Sierra Club, too, which I found interesting for a developer.

I came up with no connection to organized sports nor to any link between any of the aborted plans to bring sports teams to L.A. In none of the articles was Obey’s name mentioned alongside those of the Cossack brothers or the Larners. He and his wife socialized very little and lived an understated life—for billionaires. A single, albeit baronial, residence in Hancock Park, no live-in help, off-the-rack clothing, no expensive hobbies. Barbara drove a Volvo and volunteered at her church. If the press could be believed, both Obeys were as wholesome as milk.

One item, a year-old Wall Street Journal piece, did catch my eye: One of Obey’s development companies, a privately held corporation named Advent Builders, had invested in a huge parcel of land south of the L.A. city limits—an unincorporated county area where the developer planned to build an entire community, complete with ethnically diverse, low-to-middle-income housing, public schools, well-landscaped commercial districts and industrial parks, “comprehensive recreational facilities.”