Still unable to reach Milo. Unable to get a bored desk officer at the West Side station to tell me where he was.

Where were the cops when you needed them?

I remembered Judy Baumgartner’s account of her cryptic conversation with lke. Relax your standards. If I was interpreting my dictionary correctly, that made sense. I phoned her again at the Holocaust Center. Her secretary informed me she was out of the office and was cagey about saying more. Remembering what Judy had said about death threats, I didn’t push, but finally managed to convince the secretary that I was legitimate. Then she told me Judy had flown back to Chicago, wasn’t expected back for three days. Did I want to leave a message? Thinking about what kind of message I could leave, I declined and thanked her.

As I hung up, I thought of someone else who’d be able to firm up my theory. I looked up the number of the Beth Shalom Synagogue and dialed it. No one answered. The directory yielded three Sanders, D., only one with no address listed and a Venice exchange. I called it. A woman with an accent similar to the rabbi’s answered. Children’s voices filled the background, along with what sounded like recorded music.

“Rabbi Sanders, please.”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Alex Delaware. I met him at the synagogue the other day. Along with Detective Sturgis.”

“One moment.”

Sanders came on saying, “Yes, Detective Delaware. Any progress on Sophie?”

“Still an ongoing investigation,” I said. Amazing how easy that came…

“Yes, of course. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a theological question for you, Rabbi. What are Orthodox Judaism’s criteria for determining if someone’s Jewish?”

“Basically, there are two,” he said. “One must either be born to a Jewish mother or undergo a proper conversion. Conversion is predicated upon a course of study.”

“Having a Jewish father wouldn’t be enough?”

“No. Only the Reform Jews have accepted patrilineal descent.”

“Thank you, Babbi.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Have I? Does your question have anything to do with Sophie?”

I hedged, repeated the open investigation line, thanked him for his time, and hung up. Tried Milo again beth at the station and at home. At the former, the desk officer’s boredom had progressed to torpor. Answering machine at the latter. I told it what I’d learned. Then I tried the network again.

“Mr. Crevolin’s in a meeting.”

“When will he be free?”

“I can’t say, sir.”

“I called yesterday. Dr. Alex Delaware? Regarding Ike Novato?”

“I’m sure he got your message, sir.”

“Then how about we try to get his attention with a new message.”

“I don’t really-”

“Tell him Bear Lodge claimed nine victims, not ten.”

“Barry Lodge?”

“Bear, as in the animal. Lodge as in Henry Cab- as in hunting lodge. Bear Lodge- it’s a place. It claimed nine victims. Not ten.”

“One second,” she said. “I’m still writing.”

“You can also tell him that apathy claimed the tenth. Just a few months ago. Apathy and indifference.”

“Apathy and indifference,” she said. “Is this some kind of concept for a script? ’Cause if it is, I know for a fact the season’s completely programmed and it’s really not worth pitching anything until they clear the board for the next sweeps.”

“Not a concept,” I said. “A true story. And it would never play on prime time.”

She called me back an hour later to say “He’ll see you at four,” unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.

At five to four, I walked across a network parking lot crammed with German and Swedish cars. I was wearing a tan gabardine suit and carrying my briefcase. A roving security guard in his seventies took down my name and directed me to a flight of metal stairs that led up to the second floor of the bulky deco building. On the way, I passed a canopied waiting area filled with hundreds of people lined up for tickets to the latest late-night talk show. A few of them rotated their heads to inspect me, decided I was nobody to be concerned with, and turned their attention elsewhere.

At the top of the stairs were double plate-glass doors. The reception area was big as a barn: thirty feet high, walls bare except for a giant reproduction of the network logo on the south side and, just below it, a door marked PRIVATE. The floor was travertine tile, over which a surprisingly shabby maroon area rug had been laid. In the precise center of the rug was a rectangular glass coffee table. Hard black leather sling chairs ran along both sides. On the far side of the room a young black security guard sat behind a white counter. To his left a white Actionvision monitor played some sort of game show. The sound was off.

I gave him my name. He opened a ledger, ran his finger down a page, turned to the next page, did more finger-walking, stopped, made a call on a white phone, listened, and said, “Uh-huh. Okay, yeah.” To me: “Be a couple of minutes. Whyncha have a seat.”

I tried to get comfortable in the sling chair. The glass table was empty- no magazines, not even an ashtray.

I said, “Nothing to read. That supposed to be a philosophical statement?”

The guard looked over as if noticing that for the first time, chuckled, and returned his attention to the monitor. A hefty woman in a print dress was bouncing up and down, embracing a male host who was trying hard to maintain a blow-dried smile. As the woman continued to hug him, the smile finally faded. The host tried to get loose. She held tight. Colored lights flashed in the background.

The guard saw me looking. “They turn off the sound. Don’t ask me why- I just started. That’s some kind of new show-Fair Fight, I think it is. Still trying to figure out exactly what it’s all about. What I think it is, is that you got to insult your friends, give away their secrets, in order to answer questions and win the big money.”

The host finally pried himself free of the hefty woman. She started bouncing again. The name tag on her bosom fluttered. Despite her bulk, she was firm as a canned ham. The host smiled again and pointed and said something. In the background a beauty-contest runner-up in a black mini-dress spun something that resembled a bingo bin. The camera closed in on numbers incandescing along a giant roulette wheel rimmed with flashing light bulbs.

The guard studied the screen, squinting. “Tough to know what they’re saying,” he said. “I figure a couple of more weeks on the job and I’ll be able to read lips.”

I settled back and closed my eyes. At four-ten the PRIVATE door opened and a young woman with strawberry-blond hair stepped out. She wore a sequined red T-shirt over black jeans and had a reluctant, tired smile.

“Dr. Delaware? Terry can see you now.” She gave the door a shove and walked through, leaving me to catch it. Treating walking as if it were an athletic event, she took me past a half-empty secretarial area to a short, bright hallway marked by six or seven doors. The third door was open. She said, “Here,” waited until I went in, and left.

No one was in the office. It was a medium-sized room with an eastern view of more parking lot, tar-paper rooftops, intestinal twists of hammered metal ductwork, and the smog-softened contours of central L.A. The walls were gray grass cloth; the carpeting, tight-nap industrial tinted the dull aqua of a poorly serviced swimming pool. Floating in the center was a clear-plastic desk with matching chair. Perpendicular to the desk was an anorexic couch upholstered in slate-blue tweed. Facing the desk were two blue chairs with chrome legs. Warm and comfy as an operating room.

Three of the gray walls were unadorned. The one behind the desk was filled with color animation celluloids. Cinderella. Pinocchio. Fantasia. Given what Judy had told me, I hadn’t expected political posters, but Disney took me by surprise. My gaze lingered on Snow White about to accept a poisoned apple from a gleeful crone.