“Don’t know and wouldn’t tell you if I did.” The woman’s jaw jutted.

“Why’s that, ma’am?”

“It’s the law. Bill of Rights. You need a warrant.”

Petra relaxed her posture, tried a soft smile. “You’re absolutely right, ma’am, but I don’t want to search the box. I’d just like to know how long it’s been since the tenant vacated.”

“Don’t know and wouldn’t tell you if I did.” The woman’s smile was tight-lipped and triumphant.

“Were you working here when GrooveRat occupied the box?”

Shrug.

“Who picked up GrooveRat’s mail?”

Ditto.

“Ma’am,” said Petra. “I can come back with a warrant.”

“Then you do that,” said the woman with sudden savagery.

“What’s the problem, ma’am?”

“I got no problem.”

“This could be related to a homicide investigation.”

The smudgy eyes remained resolute. Petra fixed on them, mustered a hard stare. The woman said, “You don’t impress me.”

“Homicide doesn’t impress you?” said Petra.

“It’s always homicide,” said the woman. “Everything’s homicide.”

“What?”

The woman jabbed a finger. “This is my place, and I don’t have to talk to you.” But she followed that with: “Protect yourself, and it’s homicide. Stand up for your rights, and it’s homicide.”

Battle of stares.

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“I don’t have to tell-”

“You sure do, or you’ll be arrested on an obstruction charge.” Petra reached for her cuffs.

“Olive Gilwhite,” said the woman, jowls flittering.

“Are you sure you don’t want to cooperate, Ms. Gilwhite?”

“I’m not saying nothing.”

Rather than deliver a grammar lesson, Petra left the mail drop and drove back to the station. Eric Stahl was at his desk phoning and taking notes. She ignored him and played with the computers, plugging in Olive Gilwhite’s name and the mail drop’s address and finally coming up with something.

Two years ago, the proprietor of a Hollywood Mailboxes N’ Stuff, a man named Henry Gilwhite, had been busted for homicide.

Petra fished in the files and found the case summary. Gilwhite, sixty-three, had shot a nineteen-year-old male trannie prostitute named Gervazio Guzman to death in back of the mail drop. Gilwhite had claimed self-defense in an attempted mugging, but his semen on Guzman’s dress told a different story. The case had been pled down to manslaughter, and Gilwhite was serving time at Lompoc. Five to ten, but at his age, that might very well mean life.

Leaving Mrs. Gilwhite to run the store and drink herself to death.

Protect yourself, and it’s homicide.

Petra resolved to find some way to lean on the nasty old biddy.

As she thought about it, Stahl got up and approached her desk.

“What’s up, Eric?”

“I’ve got a few possibles on Yuri Drummond.”

“Possibles?”

“There’s no Yuri Drumonds anywhere in the state, so I looked up all the Drummonds in our zip codes.”

“Why limit it to Hollywood?” said Petra.

“It’s a place to start. If Drummond’s a star-chaser, maybe he wants to live in the hub.”

“Eric, the stars live in Bel Air and Malibu.”

“I was speaking metaphorically,” said Stahl. He drew a three-by-five index card from his suit jacket. Still wearing his black suit coat. Every other detective was in shirtsleeves.

Petra said, “What’d you come up with?”

“DMV has twelve Drummonds listed, five of them females. Of the seven males, four are older than fifty. These are the three remaining.”

The longest speech she’d ever heard from him. His flat eyes had acquired a murky glow, and the coins in his cheeks had deepened to vermilion- this one got off on tedium. He handed her the index card. Neat printing in green ink; a list.

1. Adrian Drummond, 16. (A Los Feliz address that Petra recognized as a gated street in Laughlin Park. Rich kid? That fit, but 16 seemed young to be publishing anything, even a low-level zine.)

2. Kevin Drummond, 24. (An apartment on North Rossmore.)

3. Randolph Drummond, 44. (An apartment on Wilton Place.)

“The first two have no records,” said Stahl. “Randolph Drummond has a five-year-old prior for vehicular manslaughter and DUI. Should we start with him?”

“Bad car crash?” said Petra. “It’s not exactly serial murder.”

“It’s antisocial,” said Stahl. Something new came into his voice- harder, more intense. His eyes had narrowed to slits.

Petra said, “Still, my money’s on the second one- Kevin. The voice I heard was younger than forty-four, and the zine’s got an immature flavor. Of course, all this assumes any of these are our guy. For all we know our Drummond lives out in the Valley.” But even as she said that, she doubted it. The GrooveRat POB had been rented in Hollywood. Stahl’s instincts were good.

He said, “Okay.”

“For all we know his name’s not even Drummond,” said Petra. “Yuri’s probably fake and so why not the surname?” The incident with Olive Gilwhite had left her combative.

Stahl didn’t answer.

“Let’s go,” Petra said, shoving the card at him and grabbing her purse.

“Where?”

“On a Drummond-search.”

Kevin Drummond’s Rossmore address matched an eighty-year-old, three-story brick-faced, mock Tudor just below Melrose, where the street turned into Vine and commercial Hollywood began.

The mansions of Hancock Park were a brief stroll south, and between that high-priced real estate and Drummond’s block, sat the Royale and the Majestic and other elegant, doorman-guarded buildings. Gorgeous old vanilla-colored dowagers, facing the green velvet links of the Wilshire Country Club, built when labor was cheap and architecture meant ornament. Petra had heard that Mae West had lived out her days in one of them, clad in satin gowns and keeping company with young men till the end. God bless her.

But any vestiges of glamour had faded by the time you got to Drummond’s street. The bulk of the buildings were ugly boxes knocked into place during the fifties, and the remaining older structures appeared ill tended, like Drummond’s. Several bricks were missing from the facade and a warped slat of cardboard shielded a second-story window. On the ground floor, protection was provided by rusty security grates across the front door and the street-level windows. The alarm sign on the scrubby little lawn was that of a shoddy company Petra knew had been out of business for years. The hub, indeed.

To the right of the entrance were twenty call buttons, most with the tenant IDs missing from the slots. No identification for Drummond’s second-story unit. The names that remained in place were all Hispanic or Asian.

Petra pushed Drummond’s button. No answer. She tried again, leaned on the buzzer. Nothing.

Unit One was the manager, G. Santos. Same result.

She said, “Let’s try the other two.”

Randolph Drummond’s place on Wilton was a sixty-unit, pink-stucco monster built around a cloudy swimming pool. Drummond’s apartment was at street level, facing the traffic. No security here, not even a symbolic gate across the cutout that led to the complex, and Petra and Stahl walked right in and up to Drummond’s door.

Petra’s knock was answered by a boomy “Hold on!” The lock turned and the door opened and a man leaning on aluminum elbow crutches said, “What can I do for you?”

“Randolph Drummond?”

“In the flesh. Such as it is.” Drummond’s torso canted to one side. He wore a brown v-neck sweater over a yellow shirt, spotless khakis, felt bedroom slippers. His hair was white, neatly parted, and a snowy beard bottomed a full face. Weary eyes, seamed skin, mild tan. Hemingway on disability.