“New York to L.A. for the weekend?”

“These were rich kids,” he said.

“Anything’s possible, but I just don’t see it. Hansen’s different from the other King’s Men. His life took a whole different turn, and unless you can uncover some present-day dealings with Coury and the Cossacks and Brad Larner, my bet is he distanced himself from the group and maintained that distance.”

“So he’s no use to us.”

“On the contrary. He might be able to provide insights.”

“We just drop in and say we want to chat about his old pals the sex-killers?”

“Any other promising leads at the moment?” I said.

He didn’t answer.

I said, “So what’d you do today?”

“Nosed around about Coury, Junior. His daddy was the nasty piece of work the papers made him out to be. Used gang-bangers to collect the rent. And looks like Junior’s continued the relationship. The dubious citizens working his parking lots have that homeboy thing going on.”

“Funny about that.” I told him about my visit to the garage.

“Chopping the Seville as a cover story?” he said. “Did it ever occur to you Coury didn’t want to do the job ’cause he wasn’t buying your story? Jesus, Alex—”

“Why wouldn’t he buy it?” I said.

“Because maybe someone in the enemy camp knows we’ve been snooping around the Ingalls case. You got the goddamned murder book in the first place because someone knew we worked together. Alex, that was goddamned stupid.”

“Coury wasn’t suspicious, just apathetic,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “My take is that he doesn’t need the money.”

“Was he doing other chop jobs?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Meaning he works, but he just didn’t want to work with you. Alex, no more improvisation.”

“Fine,” I said. “Gang connections would have given Coury ready personnel for odd jobs. Like taking care of Luke Chapman, and possibly Willie Burns and Caroline Cossack. Maybe Lester Poulsenn, too. I located him—safely, all computer work—and guess what, he died less than two weeks after Caroline left Achievement House. Shot in the head in a house in Watts, then the house was burned down. He’d just been transferred from IA to Metro, meaning maybe he was working on Janie’s case, right?”

“Burned to death,” he said. His voice was tight. “What was he doing in Watts?”

“The paper didn’t say. Sacramento paper, by the way. A detective got murdered in L.A. but the L.A. papers didn’t print a word about it.”

“The article say where in Watts?”

I read off the address.

No answer.

“You still there?”

“Yeah . . . okay, meet me in Beverly Hills in an hour. Time for art appreciation.”

CHAPTER

32