father kept it out of the papers, but everybody knew.”

That would be Bill Danko’s mugshot.

“I guess it was a wild time,” Jean said. “Nineteen seventy-seven. Things were coming apart, getting a little crazy. Clubs and . . . polyester. And platform shoes. My father drove a Karmen Ghia. The papers called it a ‘Euro pean sports car.’ They all drank a lot, played around, I don’t know what else. Loose but not yet too crazy. Just so it didn’t get in the papers. Jerry Brown was governor. My father was about to be named to a judgeship.”

She swirled her drink, took out an ice cube and touched it to her lips. Jimmy didn’t say anything, let her walk around in her memories.

“I remember the seawall in front of the house,” she said. “Trying to climb up onto it. But afraid.”

“It’s about two feet tall,” Jimmy said.

“Daddy nervous, Mother laughing . . .”

A moment passed. Noise from down on the boulevard floated up again. Her longing had turned, as it does, to tiredness.

“I guess I’ll go to sleep,” she said. “Do you have anything for me?”

Jimmy looked up at the four-story apartment building across the narrow street from where he’d parked, the one with the terrace around two sides of the penthouse.

“You mean like a glass of warm milk?” He opened the door of the Mustang, got behind the wheel.

“I mean, can you tell anything yet?” she said. “I don’t know how you work.”

Jimmy started the engine. “This is pretty much it,” he said. He put it in gear.

“Watch out for the dog,” Jean said, over the phone.

Jimmy looked up at her. She was at the railing of the penthouse, looking down at him.

“That’s Roscoe. He’s blind.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Jimmy said into his phone, looking at her.

She stayed at the railing, watched as he pulled out of the shadows. He waited for the dog to move out of the way, drove up the hill, pulled into a stub of a driveway, turned around, came down past her, pulled onto Sunset, headed west, never looking up at her again.

She wondered how many cars he had.

She hadn’t told him where she lived. She wondered about that, too.

The Mustang was parked in front of a tiki bar on Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach. There wasn’t much traffic. The front door of the bar was propped open with a five-gallon can filled with sand and cigarette butts. The cleanup lights were on. You could smell the beer in the carpet from twenty feet away.

Jimmy opened the hatchback and lifted out the frame of a bike, minus the wheels. He put it together, tightened the hardware, gave the wheels a turn. He was wearing a light-colored zip-up jacket. He took it off, folded it, put it over the rear seat and pulled on a black hooded sweatshirt. The moon was bright in the clear sky but ready to set. He closed the hatchback. He’d kept looking for the tails, the pale men, but they never caught back up with him. He was feeling all alone, so alone even some trouble would have cheered him up a little.

He rode the bike up and over the bridge into the Naples area, rode along the lane, along the backs of the houses, the row of garages, almost silent, almost invisible when he was between the streetlights. The cars in the alley were tucked into their covers. No one was out. A possum crossed the alleyway. There weren’t even any free dogs to give chase.

Jimmy stowed the bike behind a hedge and came down the walkway alongside Rivo Alto Canal. He stood in front of the murder house, letting his eyes dilate all the way, now that he was away from the streetlights. A wind came up, rustling the dry, brown palm. The surrounding neighborhood was dark except for the dancing blue light of a television in one house across the lane of water.

Jimmy went to the backdoor, clicked on a penlight with a red cap lens. He read the lock in the knob. It wasn’t much of a challenge, so old a good twist would probably open it. He shined the light on a ring of keys, the head of each wrapped in black tape to silence it. He made the match, put the key in and the knob turned. He wondered who the last person to touch it had been.

The door stuck, then gave way. He was in.

A few ancient dirt-crusted plates sat in the sink