taste.”

The waiter came with two plates, put them in front of the men, and filled their glasses with red wine.

“But maybe you already know all about lamb,” Turner said.

“I didn’t know that,” Jimmy said. “I even thought I liked it.” He picked up a lamb chop and chewed off a bite.

It was the best lamb in the world, the lamb of kings.

Or kingmakers.

“Guess I see what you mean,” Jimmy said.

“You know how to eat it,” Turner said. He picked up a chop with his fingers, too, out of the puddle of blood.

Turner said what Jimmy had already figured out, that a group of them in the Valley had gotten together to make this place, a private dining hall, built it, built the road out to it, hired a chef away from some hotel.

“French,” Turner said. “But he’s all right.”

Jimmy ate his spinach. From that first Mr. Mayor out in the fields under the nonstop sun, he knew Turner was onto him. He also knew that was the way to get in to see someone like Harry Turner. You lied to him in the right way, in this case the smart-ass way.

You sure didn’t come in trying to flatter him. A man like Harry Turner had stood before a line of flatterers stretching away to the horizon. You didn’t bow and scrape. Even the waiter knew that.

So Turner was onto him. The question was how much.

The waiter stepped in to top off Turner’s wineglass. Turner looked at him.

“We’ll do that.”

The waiter left the bottle and backed away. The wine was a Jordan Beaujolais.

“I understand you want to know about my brilliant defense of Florence Gilroy in the poisoning death of her third husband,” Turner said.

So they’d radioed out to the fie lds that the mayor of Rancho Cucamonga was there to see him. And Turner had said bullshit and told them to call in the plate on the Mustang. Then who knows what other calls he’d made, even before he started riding in from the date palm oasis. Whomever he’d called, Harry Turner knew everything he needed to know. Or thought he did.

“I do want to know. Sometime,” Jimmy said.

Turner wasn’t in a hurry to eat. It made Jimmy know that this was more important to him than it could have been, maybe even than it should have been.

“Did you look up Barry Upchurch?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Is he still alive?”

Turner said, “You know, I don’t know.” It was a lie.

The last three men left together. One of them, the one who’d introduced his man to Turner, put a hand on Turner’s back as he passed and leaned in close and said something, three or four sentences, into his ear.

Turner nodded. And then shook his head no.

“That’s what I said,” the man said, loud enough to hear.

Then they were alone. The waiter even disappeared.

Turner said, “Where were we?”

“You were saying Jack Kantke couldn’t possibly have done it because he was talking about the Dodgers with the gas station guy in Barstow at eight-fifteen and the time of the murders was determined to be between eight and midnight.”

“Six and midnight,” Turner said. “They couldn’t peg it any closer, not then. 1977. Maybe today.”

“Six and midnight,” Jimmy corrected. “Still . . .”

“He drove fast,” Turner said.

“I thought of that,” Jimmy said.

“You like to drive fast.”

“I just like to drive. I even like to sit in cars in my driveway.”

Turner ate a good half of his meal before he said anything else. There were linen napkins. He wiped the blood off of his lips onto one.

“I never understood why the other side didn’t say that,” he said. “He drove fast.”

“People hate math,” Jimmy said.

Turner nodded. He thought he was being likeable.

Jimmy tried to come at it from another angle, got out a few words of a question, when Turner cut him off.

“We bought the guy at the gas station in Barstow. Six hundred dollars, as I recall. And I think he asked for a pair of Dodgers tickets, his idea of a joke. He’s dead now.”

“But not because he had a bad sense of humor,” Jimmy said.

Turner gave a little hint of that sour smile again.

The waiter reappeared without being called, put a cup of black coffee beside Turner’s left hand. He was left-handed.

“So what time did Kantke stop for gas?” Jimmy asked.

Turner said, “About two hours after he shot and killed his wife and Bill Danko.”

Just like that.

There it was.

In case Jimmy didn’t get it the first time, Turner said again, “He drove