“I do my best.”

“Sure you do,” said Schoelkopf. “Okay, that’s all. Show G.I. Joe the ropes. Maybe he’ll turn out to be a lucky guy, too.”

She returned to the detectives’ room, calmed herself down, glanced at the scrap. Expecting a capsule background on her new partner. But all Schoelkopf had scrawled on the form was a name.

Eric Stahl

Eric. Cute-sounding. A military guy. Petra got herself a hot chocolate from the vending machine downstairs and climbed back up with her imagination in high gear. Picturing Eric as buff and cut, a Clint Eastwoody type, maybe one of those precision military buzz do’s. An outdoor dude who surfed and biked, skydove, bungee-jumped, did all those adrenalized things.

A high-energy partner was fine with her. He could do the driving.

He showed up twenty minutes later. She’d been right about the haircut, but nothing else.

Eric Stahl was thirty or so, five-ten, tops, painfully thin, stoop-shouldered and gangly-limbed. The buzz was medium brown, prickly hairs riding the narrow, brooding face of a starving poet. Lord, this white boy was white! A too-many-hours-in-the-library complexion. Except for incongruous coins of pink on his cheeks- fever spots.

Sunken cheeks. Dagger-point chin, lipless mouth, the deepest-set eyes Petra had ever seen. As if someone had poked them with two fingers and pushed them back into his skull. Same matte brown as the hair. Static.

He said, “Detective Connor? Eric Stahl,” without extending a hand or moving. Just stood by her desk, wearing a black suit, white shirt, and gray tie.

Petra said, “Hi, why don’t you sit down.”

Indicating a chair at the side of her desk.

Stahl considered the offer, finally accepted.

His black suit seemed to compound her own outfit: an ebony Vestimenta pantsuit she’d bought at the Barney’s hanger sale two seasons ago. Funereal; the two of them looked like the welcoming committee at Forest Lawn.

Stahl didn’t bat a lash. High energy, indeed. That face… grow out the buzz cut and dress him in leather pants and a bunch of other punky whatnot, and he’d fit right in with any of the dissolute hustlers you saw staggering down the boulevard.

Keith Richard’s younger brother. Keith, himself, at the worst of his junkie days.

She said, “So, what can I do for you, Eric?”

“Cue me in.”

“About?”

“Anything you think is important.”

Up close, Stahl’s skin was chalky. No inflection in the guy’s voice. Only a throbbing vein at his left temple hinted at ongoing body function.

“You can use that desk,” she said. “And that’s your locker.”

Stahl didn’t move. He hadn’t brought anything with him.

“How about,” said Petra, “we drive around, and I show you the neighborhood.”

Stahl waited for her to stand before he did. As they walked down the stairs, he lingered behind her. Creepy.

Schoelkopf had partnered her with a creepy robot.

They cruised down the dark boulevard. Hollywood at 4 A.M. was dotted meagerly with nightcrawlers and shadow-lurkers. Petra pointed out drug bars, illegal clubs, hangouts of known felons, taco joints where transvestite hookers congregated. If Stahl had an impression, he wasn’t letting on.

“Different from the Army,” she said.

No answer.

“How long were you in the military?”

“Seven years.”

“Where were you stationed?”

Stahl thumbed his chin and grew contemplative.

It wasn’t a trick question.

“All over,” he finally said.

“All over domestic, or all over foreign?”

“Both.”

“What,” said Petra, smiling, “were you some top-secret op? If you tell me you have to kill me?”

She glanced at Stahl as she continued to drive. Expecting at least minimal levity.

Nothing.

Stahl said, “Overseas was the Middle East.”

“Where in the Middle East?”

“Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Djibouti, Dubai.”

“The emirates,” said Petra.

Nod.

“Fun?” said Petra.

Five-second digital delay. “Not much. They hate Americans. You couldn’t bring a Bible in, or anything else that showed you were Christian.”

Aha. A born-again.

“You’re religious.”

“No.” Stahl turned away from her, stared out the window.

“Were you involved in the Cole bombing?” she said. “Stuff like that?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Nothing like that,” Petra echoed.

Stahl said, “I think that car over there is stolen.”

Indicating a white Mustang two lengths ahead of them. Petra saw nothing fishy about the plates or the way the driver was handling the vehicle.

“Do you?” said Petra.

Stahl picked up the radio and phoned a cruiser. Totally comfortable with the equipment and the LAPD codes. As if he’d been working the division for years.

Petra’s jaw hurt from conversational strain.

They rode around for another half hour in dead silence, and when Petra pulled into the parking lot, Eric Stahl said, “Anything I should do before tomorrow?”

“Show up,” she said, making no attempt to hide her irritation.

“I will,” said Stahl and he left the lot on foot, disappeared into darkness.

What, he took the bus? Or he doesn’t want me to see what kind of car he drives?

Later, before she locked up her desk, Petra called Auto Theft and found out the white Mustang had been stolen.

After leaving Robin’s house, I went home and got back on the computer, tried to track down China Maranga’s band mates.

The guitarist who called himself Squirt was nowhere to be found in cyberspace, but the drummer, self-titled Mr. Sludge and the bass player, Brancusi, were easy to locate.

A year ago, Sludge, née Christian Bangsley, had been condemned on the “page of shame” Web site of a music zine called misterlittle: Hot Flash: ex-Chinawhiteboy sells out, peddles junk-slop, ends up cap-pig cancerous bigtiiime!!!!

During the three years since China’s murder, Bangsley had made significant lifestyle changes: moving to Sacramento, investing a “small inheritance,” and ending up the co-owner of a small chain of “family-style” restaurants called Hearth and Home. The zine noted Bangsley’s plans to “fester and postulate this tumor of phony-fuck normanrockwellism into a malignant metastasizing!!!franchise!!!. Sludge dludes (sic) himself that he’s cleeeen, now, but he’s sludgier than ever.”

Along with the tirade, misterlittle ran before-and-after photos, and the contrast was so remarkable that I questioned the truth of the story.

During his band days, Sludge had been a scrawny, angry-eyed nightcrawler.

Christian Bangsley was well fed and Beatle-mopped, in a white shirt and tie. These eyes sparkled with contentment.

I found Brancusi on his personal Web site. His real name- shockingly- was Paul Brancusi. Local; he worked as an animator for Haynes-Bernardo, a Burbank studio, one of the major players in kids’ TV.

Brancusi’s bio listed two years as an art major at Stanford, an equal amount of time spent as a member of China Whiteboy, then another year at CalArts, where he’d picked up skills in computer graphics and animation.

He worked on a morning show called The Lumpkins, described as “Edgy but kindly. Imaginary creatures live in a suburb that evokes some of the humor, nostalgia, and rib-tickling situations of a human neighborhood. But in Lumpkinville, imagination and fantasy reign supreme!”

Home and Hearth’s Sacramento corporate headquarters was listed. I called and asked to speak to Christian Bangsley.

The receptionist was cheerful- nourished by family-style food? “Mr. Bangsley’s in a meeting. May I help you?”