I picked up the phone and dialed. I probably should have cooked up a ruse in advance, but sometimes action without planning makes just as much sense. And sometimes not. The phone rang three times, and then someone picked up. “Hello?” Female, gravelly voiced, and blunt.

I pictured a habitual smoker over the age of fifty. She’d uttered only one word and somehow managed to sound rude. “May I speak to Chris?”

“Who?”

“Christian?”

There was dead silence for a beat. “Honey, you’re not going to have any luck with that one,” she said.

And then she hung up.

I replaced the handset in the cradle, wondering what she meant. I wasn’t going to have any luck with that one, meaning asking for someone named Chris or Christian? Or I wasn’t going to have any luck with the man himself? Were women calling the house all day long and bombing out right and left? All I’d wanted to know was whether the number would net me one parolee. Calling again probably wasn’t going to prove any more informative. I needed to settle the issue, and Hallie wasn’t paying me enough to extend the task any longer than was absolutely necessary.

I picked up the folder in which I’d tucked the copy of the newspaper clipping that included Satterfield’s photograph. I slid the file into the outer pocket of my shoulder bag, locked the office, and trotted out to my car. I’d recently sold my 1970 Mustang, a Grabber Blue Boss 429 that was much too conspicuous for the work I do. I’m supposed to blend in to the background, which was much easier with my current boring vehicle, a Honda so nondescript that I sometimes failed to spot it in a public parking lot. The only element common to the two cars is the overnight bag I stash in the trunk in case of an emergency. My definition of an emergency is being without a toothbrush, toothpaste, and fresh underpants. I slid under the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. I missed the resounding throatiness of the Mustang’s oversize engine as it rumbled to life. It always sounded like a Chris-Craft powerboat to me.

I drove to the end of the block and turned right on Santa Teresa Street, continuing six blocks north before I cut over to Dave Levine. I took a left and followed the one-way street south toward the ocean. I spotted Trace Avenue, passed it, and then found a parking place a block away. I locked the car and walked back.

The house at 401 Trace turned out to be a small one-story frame structure on the corner of Trace and Dave Levine. A wide apron of dead grass formed an L on two sides of the property, and a plain wrought-iron fence marked the perimeter. The house itself sat on a slab of poured concrete made level by a low wall of cinder block with a planting bed along the upper edge. The shrubs, like the lawn, were so brown, they looked singed.