He turned on Rossmore, drove south to Fifth Street, hooked back to Irving, and pulled over to the curb, six houses north of Sixth. On the other side was Chief Broussard’s city-financed mansion. An immaculate white Cadillac sat in the driveway. A single plainclothesman stood guard, looking bored.

Milo stared at the house, same hostility as when he’d eye-zapped the guard in the Cossacks’ lobby. Before I could ask what was up, he U-turned, headed south, then west to Muirfield, where he cruised slowly to the end of the block and stopped at a property concealed behind high stone walls.

“Walt Obey’s place,” he said, before I could ask.

Stone walls. Just like the Loetz estate that neighbored the party house. The kill spot. Build walls, and you could get away with plenty.

Janie Ingalls abused by two generations of men. A closed-circuit camera atop one gatepost rotated.

Milo said, “Say cheese.” Waved. Jammed the Mustang into DRIVE and sped away.

He dropped me back home, and I slept until 5 P.M., woke in time to turn on the news. The Cossack brothers’ deaths missed the network affiliate broadcasts but was featured an hour later on a local station’s six o’clock spot.

The facts were just as Georgie Nemerov had reported: Single-car accident, probably due to excessive speed. Thirty seconds of bio identified Garvey and Bobo as “wealthy Westside developers” who’d built “some controversial projects.” No identifying photos. No suspicion of foul play.

Another death occurred that night, but it never hit the L.A. news because it went down ninety miles north.

Santa Barbara News-Press item, forwarded to me by e-mail, with no accompanying message. The sender: [email protected]. That was a new one.

The facts were straightforward: The body of a sixty-eight-year-old real estate executive named Michael Larner had been found two hours ago, slumped in the front seat of his BMW. The car had been driven into a wooded area just north of the Cabrillo exit off the 101, on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. A recently fired handgun sat in Larner’s lap. He’d died of “an apparent single wound to the head, consistent with self-infliction.”

Larner had come to Santa Barbara to identify the body of his son, Bradley, forty-two, the recent victim of a heart attack, who’d also—irony of ironies—succumbed in a car. Bradley’s vehicle, a Lexus, had been discovered just a few miles away, on a quiet street on the north end of Montecito. The grieving father had left the morgue just after noon, and investigators had come up with no accounting of his whereabouts during the three hours leading up to his suicide.

A homeless man had discovered the body.