Starkey didn't wait for them to notice us or excuse the interruption. She badged the older guy.

"LAPD. I'm Starkey, he's Cole. Are you the boss here?"

The older man identified himself as Darryl Cauley, the general contractor. His face closed with suspicion.

"Is this an INS thing? If someone's sneaking under the wire, I got a signed bond from every sub saying these people are legal."

The younger guy started away, but Starkey stopped him.

"Yo, stay put. We want to talk to everyone."

Cauley darkened even more.

"What is this?"

Talking to people wasn't one of Starkey's strengths, so I answered before he decided to call his attorney.

"We believe that a kidnapper was in the area, Mr. Cauley. He parked or drove on this street every day for the past week or so. We want to know if you noticed any vehicles or people who seemed out of place."

The electrician hooked his thumbs on his tools and perked up.

"No shit? Was someone kidnapped?"

Starkey said, "A ten-year-old boy. It happened the day before yesterday."

"Wow."

Mr. Cauley tried to be helpful, but explained that he divided his time between three different job sites; he rarely stayed at this house more than a couple of hours each day.

"I don't know what to tell you. I got subs coming and going, I got the different crews. Do you have a picture, what do they call it, a mug shot?"

"No, sir. We don't know who he is or what he looks like. We don't know what he was driving, either, but we believe he spent a lot of time around the curve where your crew is parked."

The electrician glanced toward the curve.

"Oh, man, that is so creepy."

Cauley said, "I'd like to help, but I don't know. These guys here, their friends drop by, their girlfriends. I got another site over in Beachwood, last month a limo pulls up with all these suits from Capitol Records. They signed one of the carpenters to a record deal for three million dollars. You never know, is what I'm saying."

Starkey said, "Can we talk to your crew?"

"Yeah, sure. James, you wanna call your guys? Tell Frederico and the framers to come down."

Between the framers and the electricians, Cauley had nine men working that day. Two of the framers had trouble with English, but Cauley helped with the Spanish. Everyone cooperated when they heard that a child was missing, but no one remembered anyone out of the ordinary. The day felt half over by the time we finished even though it was not yet noon.

Starkey fired up a cigarette when we reached the Dumpster.

"Okay. Let's do the houses."

"He wouldn't have parked more than five or six houses on either side of the curve. The farther he had to walk, the bigger the risk that someone would see him."

"Okay. And?"

"Let's split up. I'll take the houses on the far side and you take the houses on this side. It'll be faster."

Starkey agreed. I left her with the cigarette and trotted back past our cars to the houses on the far side of the curve. An Ecuadorian housekeeper answered at the first house, but she hadn't seen anyone or anything, and wasn't able to help. No one answered at the next house, but an elderly man wearing a thin robe and slippers answered at the third. He was so frail with osteoporosis that he drooped like a dying flower. I explained about the man on the slope and asked if he had seen anyone. The old man's toothless mouth hung open. I told him that a boy was missing. He didn't answer. I slipped my card into his pocket, told him to call if he remembered something, then pulled the door closed. I spoke with another housekeeper, a young woman with three small children, then reached another house where no one was home. It was a weekday and people were working.

I thought about trying the houses farther up the street but Starkey was leaning against her Crown Vic when I got back to our cars.

I said, "You get anything?"

"C'mon, Cole, do I look like it? I've talked to so many people who haven't seen anything that I asked one broad if she ever went outside."

"People skills aren't your strong point, are they?"

"Look, I've gotta call Gittamon to get some help out here. I want to run down the garbage men, the mailman, the private security cars that work this street, and anyone else who might've seen something, but you and I have taken it as far as we can. You gotta split."

"C'mon, Starkey, there's plenty to do and I can help do it. I can't walk away now."

She spoke carefully, with a soft voice.

"It's scut work, Cole. You need to get some rest. I'll call you if we get something."

"I can call the security companies from my house."

My voice sounded desperate even to me. She shook her head.

"You know that movie they make you watch before the plane takes off, when they're telling you what to do in an emergency?"

My head was filled with a faraway buzz as if I were drunk and hungry at the same time.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"They tell you that if the plane loses pressure, you're supposed to put on your own oxygen mask before you put on your kid's. The first time I saw that I thought, bullshit, if I had a kid I'd sure as shit put on her mask first. It's natural, you know? You want to save your child. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. You have to save yourself first because if you're not alive, you sure as hell can't help your child. That's you, Cole. You have to put on your mask if you want to help Ben. Go home. I'll call you if something pops."

She walked away from me then and joined Chen at his van.

I climbed into my car. I didn't know if I would go home, or not. I didn't know if I would sleep, or could. I left. I drove around the curve and saw a pale yellow catering van parked by the Dumpster because that's the way it works. You lay the bricks until you get a break.

The van had just arrived.

Maybe if I hadn't been so tired I would have thought of it sooner: Construction crews have to eat, and catering vans feed them, twice a day every day, breakfast and lunch. It was eleven-fifty. Ben had been missing for almost forty-four hours.

I left my car in the street and ran to a narrow door at the back of the van that had been propped open for the heat. Inside, two young men in white T-shirts were bent over a grill. A short round woman barked orders at them in a mix of Spanish and English as they dished up grilled chicken sandwiches and paper plates spilling over with tacos and salsa verde to the line at the window. The woman glanced over and nodded toward the open wall of the van.

"You got to stand in line over here."

"A little boy has been kidnapped. We think the man who took him spent a lot of time on this street. You might have seen his car."

She came to the door, wiping her hands on a pink terry towel.

"Wha' you mean, a little boy? You the police?"

The electrician from earlier was in line at the window.

He said, "Yeah, he's with the cops. Some guy stole a kid, can ya believe that, right around here? They're trying to find him."

The woman stepped out of the van to join me in the street. Her name was Marisol Luna, and she owned the catering business. I described the scene on the other side of the curve, and asked if she had noticed any vehicles parked in that area during the past two weeks or anyone who didn't seem to fit.

"I don' think so."

"What about when no one else was parked there? One vehicle by itself."

She rubbed her hands through the towel as if it helped worry up her memories.

"I see the plumber. We finish the breakfast here and we goin' that way -"

She pointed toward the curve, and the buzzing in my head grew worse.

"- an' I see the plumber go down the hill."

I glanced toward the work crew, searching for Cauley.

Marisol Luna was the first person I found who had seen anything.