“Ten months. She’s been living here since February?”

“Guess so- yeah. It was right after New Year’s. I used the garage apartments for a party- artists and writers and terrific fakers. When I was cleaning up I decided to rent one of them and use the other for storage, so I wouldn’t be tempted to throw another party next year and hear all that bad dialogue.”

“Was Kathy invited to the party?”

“Why would she have been?”

“Being a writer.”

“No, I didn’t meet her till after the party.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“Ad in the Reader. She was the first to show up and I liked her. Straight on, no bullshit, a real no-nonsense Sapphite.”

“Sapphite?”

“As in Lesbos.”

“She’s gay?”

“Sure.” Big smile. “Tsk, tsk- looks like Sister Whitebread didn’t brief you thoroughly.”

“Guess not.”

He said, “Like I said, culture clash. Don’t be shocked, Marlowe- this is West Hollywood. Everyone here is either queer or old or both. Or me. I’m into chastity until something monogamous and heterosexual and meaningful comes along.” Tugging the ponytail: “Don’t let this fool you- I’m really right-wing. Two years ago I owned twenty-six button-down shirts and four pairs of penny loafers. This”- another tug-“was to make the neighbors more comfortable. I’m already dragging down the property values, not letting them bulldoze and put up another Spa-Jacuzzi-Full-Security.”

“Does Kathy have a lover?”

“Not that I saw, and my guess would be no.”

“Why’s that?”

“Her persona projects as profoundly unloved. As if she’s just come off something hurtful and isn’t ready to juggle with razor blades again. It wasn’t anything she said- we don’t talk too much, don’t run into each other much. I like to sleep as much as I can and she’s gone most of the time.”

“Gone this long?”

He thought. “This is the longest, but she’s usually on the road- I mean, it’s not weird for her to be away for a week at a time. So you can tell her sister she’s probably okay- probably doing something Miss Pasadena doesn’t really want to hear about.”

“How do you know she’s gay?”

“Ah, the evidence. Well, for starts, the stuff she reads. Lesbo mags. She buys them regularly- I find them out in the trash. And the mail she gets.”

“What kind of mail?”

His smile was a wide, white pin-stripe on wooly stubble. “Not that I go out of my way to read it, Marlowe- that would be illegal, right? But sometimes the mail for the back unit gets put in my box because the carriers don’t realize there’s a unit back there- or maybe they’re just too lazy to go back there. A lot of it’s from gay groups. How’s that for deductive reasoning?”

“After a month you must have quite a bit of it collected,” I said.

He stood, went into the kitchen, and returned a moment later carrying a sheaf of envelopes bound with a rubber band. Rolling the band off, he examined each piece of mail, then held on to it for several moments before passing the entire collection to me.

I fanned it and counted. Eleven pieces.

“Not much for a month,” I said.

“Like I said, unloved.”

I inspected the mail. Eight pieces were computer-addressed postcards and advertisements made out to Occupant. The remaining three were envelopes addressed to Kathy Moriarty by name. One appeared to be a solicitation for funds from an AIDS support group. So did another, from a clinic in San Francisco.

The third envelope was white, business-sized, postmarked three weeks previously in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Typewritten address: Ms. Kathleen R. Moriarty. Return address preprinted in the upper left-hand corner: THE GAY AND LESBIAN ALLIANCE AGAINST DISCRIMINATION, MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, CAMBRIDGE.

I pulled out a pen, realized I hadn’t brought paper, and copied the information onto the back of a gasoline receipt that I found in my wallet.

Skidmore was studying me, amused.

I turned the envelope over several times, more for his benefit than anything else, finally gave it back to him.

He said, “So what did you learn?”

“Not much. What else can you tell me about her?”

“Brown hair, butch-do. Green eyes, kind of a potato face. Her fashion statement tends to be oriented toward baggy and sensible.”

“Does she have a job?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but she could have.”

“She never mentioned a job?”

“Uh-uh.” He yawned and rubbed one knee, then the other.

“Other than being a writer,” I said.

“That’s not a job, Marlowe. It’s a calling.”

“Have you ever seen anything she wrote?”

“Sure. We didn’t talk at all the first couple of months she was here, but once we discovered we had the muse in common, we did do a little show-and-tell.”

“What’d she show?”

“Her scrapbook.”

“Remember what was in it?”

He crossed his legs and scratched a hairy calf. “What do you call this? Getting a profile on the subject?”

“Exactly,” I said. “What kinds of things did she have in her scrapbook?”

“All give, no take, huh?” he said, but without resentment.

“I don’t know anything, Richard. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

“That make me a snitch?”

“A source.”

“Aha.”

“Her scrapbook?”

“I just skimmed it,” he said. Yawning again. “Basically it was articles- stuff she’d written.”

“Articles on what?”

Shrug. “I didn’t look at it too closely- too fact-bound, no fancy.”

“Any chance of my seeing the scrapbook?”

“Like how would that be possible?”

“Like if you have the key to her apartment.”

He raised his hand to his mouth, a parody of outrage. “Invasion of privacy, Marlowe?”

“How about you stand right over me while I read it?”

“Doesn’t take care of the constitutional issues, Phil.”

“Listen,” I said, leaning forward and putting major effort into sounding ominous, “this is serious. She could be in danger.”

He opened his mouth and I knew he was going to crack wise. I blocked it by holding out a hand and said, “I mean it, Richard.”

His mouth closed and stayed that way for a while. I stared at him hard and he rubbed his elbows and knees and said, “You’re serious.”

“Very.”

“This has nothing to do with collecting?”

“Collecting what?”

“Money. She told me she’d borrowed lots from her sister, hadn’t paid any of it back, and her sister’s husband was getting pissed- he’s some sort of financial type.”

“Mr. Robbins is a lawyer,” I said, “and he and his wife are concerned about Kathy’s debt. But that’s not the issue anymore. She’s been gone too long, Richard.”

He rubbed some more and said, “When you told me you were working for the sister, I figured it had something to do with collecting.”

“Well, it doesn’t, Richard. Her sister- whatever their culture clash- is worried about her and so am I. I can’t tell you more than that, but Mr. Sturgis considers this case a priority.”

He undid his ponytail and shook his hair loose. It was thick and shiny as a cover girl’s, and fanned across his face. I heard his neck crack as he lowered it and continued fanning. When he looked up some of the hair was in his mouth and he chewed it while wearing a thoughtful expression.

“All you want to do is look at it, huh?” he said, pulling strands away from his lips.

“That’s it, Richard. You can watch me every second.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why not? At the worst, she’ll find out and get pissed and I’ll invite her to find a cheaper place.”

He stood and stretched and shook his hair again. When I got up, he said, “Just stay right there, Phil.”

Another trip to the kitchen. He came back too soon to have gone very far, carrying a loose-leaf notebook bound in orange cloth.

I said, “She left it with you?”

“Uh-uh. She forgot to take it back after she’d given it to me to look at. When I realized it, she was already gone, so I stuck it somewhere- got so much junk around here- and she never asked about it. We both forgot. Meaning it probably isn’t that important to her, right? That’s the rationale I’ll use if she gets pissed.”