“I could try right now.”

“That would be great. Thanks.” She lifted the phone from the desk and thrust it at me.

Milo said, “I could use something to drink.”

She looked at him, then at me. “Sure. Let’s go get something from the kitchen.”

Alone, I dialed Mal Worthy’s home number in Brentwood. A machine with his third wife’s voice on it answered. I began leaving a message and he broke in.

“Alex. I was meaning to call you- got a juicy one coming up. Two psychologists splitting up, three really screwed-up kids. I’ve got the wife and it’s shaping up as one of the nastiest custody fights you’re ever going to see.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“You bet. How’s your calendar, let’s say five weeks from now?”

“I don’t have it in front of me but that far in advance I don’t see a problem.”

“Good. You’re going to love this- these are two of the craziest people you’ll ever meet. The thought of them messing with other people’s heads is- What is it with your profession, anyway?”

“Let’s talk about your profession,” I said. “I need a referral.”

“For what?”

“Estate and taxation.”

“Word-processing or litigation?”

“Could be both.” I gave him a general summary of Melissa’s situation, leaving out names, numbers, and identifying marks.

He said, “Suzy LaFamiglia, if your client doesn’t mind a woman.”

“A woman would be fine.”

“Only reason I mention it is, you’d be surprised how many people still come in with rules- no women, no minorities. Their loss, because Suzy’s the best. CPA as well as a law degree, worked for one of the big accounting firms and brought in more business than any other associate until they kept passing her up for partnership because she had the wrong genitals. She sued, settled out of court, used the money to go to Boalt- top of the class. She’s a real black-hearted litigator. Made her mark working for film people, getting money back from the studios. In situations where the finances are so hairy they go beyond my not inconsiderable skills, she’s my main man.”

He laughed at his own wit.

I said, “Sounds perfect for my client.”

He gave me a number. “Century City East- she’s got a whole floor in one of the towers. I’ll call you on the other thing. You’re going to love it- our little pair of snarling, snapping therapists. I call them the Paradox. TrÈs À propros.” He laughed more heartily.

I hung up without telling him I’d heard the joke before.

Milo came back without Melissa, holding a can of Diet Coke.

“She’s in the bathroom,” he said. “Throwing up.”

“What happened?”

“She just gave out. Started in with more of the tough talk- getting the bastards. I said something to her- then boom, she’s crying and gagging.”

“I saw you looking at her like a detective. Then you got her out of the room while I called. Why?”

He looked uncomfortable.

I said, “What?”

“Okay,” he said, “I have an evil mind. It’s what I get paid for.” He hesitated. “I didn’t want her out. I wanted to get her alone- get a closer look, without you running interference for her. Because her demeanor, just now, bothered me. It got me thinking- we’d missed one possibility in our little dinner discussion. Very ugly possibility, but sometimes those are the most important ones.”

“Melissa?” I said, feeling my gut tighten.

He started to turn away, reversed direction, and faced me. “She’s the sole heir, Alex. Forty million bucks. And she’s sure ready to fight for it before the body’s even cold.”

“There is no body.”

“Figure of speech. Don’t chew my head off.”

“You just come up with this?”

He shook his head. “I guess it’s been floating around in the back of my head from the beginning. Because of my training: when there’s money involved, look for the person who benefits. But I repressed it, or whatever- maybe I just didn’t want to think about it.”

“Milo, she’s fighting because she’s channeling her grief into anger. Taking the offensive instead of letting herself be crushed. I trained her to do that in therapy. In my book, it’s still good coping.”

“Maybe,” he said. “All I’m saying is that in a normal situation, I’d have looked at her early on.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Hey,” he said, “I didn’t say I thought it was a probability. Just something we left out. No, not we-me. I’m the one trained to think ugly. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been working for the city.”

“Well, you’re not,” I said, raising my voice, “so why not allow yourself a vacation from that kind of thinking?”

“Hey,” he said, “don’t kill the messenger.”

“She had no opportunity,” I said. “She was here when her mother disappeared.”

“The Drucker kid could have had one- where was he?”

“I don’t know.”

He nodded, but without satisfaction. “From what I’ve seen, he digs her enough to eat her fingernail dirt and call it caviar. And he took care of the family’s cars. He’d know all about how the Rolls worked. Gina would’ve picked him up, that’s for sure. And you yourself said he twanged your antennae.”

“I didn’t say I sensed anything psychopathic about him.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, man,” I said, feeling a grinding headache coming on. “No way, Milo. No way.”

“It’s sure not anything I want to believe, Alex. I like the kid and I’m still working for her. She was just looking a little too… hardbitten, just now. Going on and on about getting the bastards. What I said to her out in the kitchen was “sounds like you’re raring to go.’ And she just stopped and fell apart. I felt shitty for making her feel bad, but also better. Because she started looking like a kid again. If I did something untherapeutic, I’m sorry.”

“No,” I said. “If it was that close to the surface it would have happened sooner or later.”

“Yeah,” he said.

Neither of us putting into words what we were thinking: if it was real.

Feeling suddenly weary, I sat down in the chair near the phone table. The paper with Suzy LaFamiglia’s number was between my fingers. “Just got a lawyer for her. Female, tough, combative- likes to take on the system.”

“Sounds good.”

“Sounds,” I said, “like someone Melissa could grow up to be.”

Melissa came back to the five-sided room looking a long way from grown up. Her shoulders were stooped, her gait had slowed, and she dabbed at her mouth with a piece of toilet paper. I gave her the lawyer’s number and she thanked me in a very soft voice.

“Want me to call for you?”

“No, thanks. I’ll do it. Tomorrow.”

I sat her down behind the desk. She gazed out blankly in Milo’s direction and gave a weak smile.

Milo smiled back and looked at his soda can. I wasn’t sure for whom I felt sorrier.

Melissa sighed and put her hand under her jaw.

I said, “How’re you doing, hon?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “This is all so- I feel like I’m just being- Like I’ve got no… I don’t know.”

I touched her shoulder.

She said, “Who am I fooling- fighting them? I’m a nothing. Who’s going to listen to me?”

I said, “It’ll be your lawyer’s job to fight. Right now you should be concentrating on taking care of yourself.”

After a long time she said, “I guess.”

Another stretch of silence, then: “I’m really alone.”

“Lots of people around here care for you, Melissa.”

Milo was looking at the floor.

“I’m really alone,” she said again, with an eerie wonderment. As if she’d run a maze in record time, only to find it led to an abyss.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I think I’ll sleep.”