“Do you have any other examples of Tony’s gambling?”

“No, but Arnold said from the way Tony was sitting – all hunched over, hiding his cards – it looked like he was used to it.”

“Drugs and gambling,” said Milo. “Anything else?”

“And gay,” Hoschswelder reminded him. “But I’m not accusing, just passing the information along. Don’t want you to think I’ve got something against Tony. I don’t, I feel sorry for him. Frankly, Tony Senior couldn’t have been easy to live with. That one had a bad temper, the Italian hot blood. But with what happened to Ella… I just thought I should talk to you.”

Milo said, “Let’s be theoretical, Mr. Hochswelder, and assume Tony does have some connection to Ella’s murder. What motive would you say he’d have?”

“Oh, no, Lieutenant, I couldn’t go that far.”

“Theoretically,” said Milo. “Just between us, right now, with nothing on the record.”

Hochswelder gnawed his upper lip. “Knowing Ella, she probably left everything to Tony. No reason she shouldn’t, he was her only child. Though, in my opinion, giving money to someone who doesn’t work is like flushing it down the toilet.”

“You don’t buy Tony’s injury.”

“Who knows?” said Hochswelder. “It’s between him and God.”

“How would you describe Tony’s relationship with his mother?”

“Like I said, Ella didn’t talk about her personal life.”

“Ever see any animosity between them?”

“No, I can’t say that. Except for that time at Thanksgiving.”

“Ella got mad at him?”

“They both looked tense when they arrived. Ella wore kind of a frozen smile, like she was pretending to be happy.”

“What about Tony?”

“Off in his own world.”

“Any idea what would’ve made them tense?”

“None whatsoever.”

Milo said, “Let’s switch gears for a second. Who were Ella’s friends?”

“I never saw that she had any,” said Hochswelder. “She and Tony Senior tended to keep to themselves. Every year we invited her to Christmas, told her to bring Tony Junior. Every year she showed up with a nice fruit basket. He never showed up. Frankly, we wondered if she even told him.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“She knew he was antisocial. And after that scene at Thanksgiving four years ago, maybe she was embarrassed.”

“Leaving before dessert.”

Hochswelder adjusted a bulb. “Trust me, Lieutenant, our desserts are worth sticking around for. My wife bakes and so does my brother’s wife. That year we had six kinds of pies, as well as bread pudding and compote. From the way Tony looked at the spread the girls put out, you’d think we were trying to serve him garbage.”

We left the lighting store and stepped out into a mild evening.

Milo said, “Place is Dante’s Inferno. Charming fellow, huh?”

“Not that he wants to bad-mouth Tony.”

We got back in the unmarked and he began driving. “Close-knit clan except when they’re not. Any ideas from what he said?”

“His description of the Mancusis is interesting. Asocial father with a bad temper, isolated family. Abusers are great at corralling the herd, so Tony may have had a rough childhood.”

“You see that as grounds for Junior hating Mom bad enough to have her carved?”

“Abused kids can resent the parent who didn’t save them. Moskow said when Tony did visit, Ella never walked him out, so there were issues.”

“He wasn’t worth getting off her chair for but the morning paper was.”

“And that’s when she got it,” I said. “Interesting.”

“Bit of a reach?”

“Maybe not. Getting symbolic can lead to all sorts of dark places.”

“Ol’ Tony’s sitting on a whole lot of primal anger and chronic pain doesn’t improve his disposition?”

I said, “As long as Ella helped him financially, he was able to keep his feelings under control. She turns off the tap, he views it as yet another abandonment. Comes to see her, pleads his case, she says no. He argues. She gets mad. If she really lost her cool and threatened to change the will, leave it all to the Salvation Army, that could’ve done it.”

“She told Barone she didn’t want a copy of the will at home. Maybe to shield it from Tony.”

“A million three for that house,” I said. “More than tempting. If he does have a gambling problem, he could know bad guys who’d take on the job.”

He drove for a while. “It’s as logical as any scenario, but Hochswelder labeled Tony a compulsive gambler based on a secondhand account of a single episode. And he doesn’t like Tony, so anything he says is suspect.”

A block later: “A slovenly fat guy who’s not a decorator or a florist or a choreographer being gay? Impossible.”

I laughed. “You see his sexuality as relevant?”

“You don’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something else for Mama to disapprove of,” he said. “Parents can get picky that way.”

Back at the station, he checked in with the plainclothes officer surveilling Tony Mancusi. The subject had left his apartment once to get a burrito and a soda at a stand on Sunset near Hillhurst. Walking distance but Mancusi had taken his car, which he’d used as his dining room, munching in the parking lot.

“Officer Ruiz also observed that subject tossed his junk out the car window onto the ground, rather than use a trash basket ten feet away. Officer Ruiz began a violation roster on the subject. When I pointed out to Officer Ruiz that littering private property was bad behavior but nothing citable, he was conspicuously disappointed.”

“Eager,” I said.

“Twenty-one years old, six months out of the academy. The other two are just as green. I feel like I’m running a day care center, but at least they’re motivated.”

“Mancusi go anywhere after lunch?”

“Right back home and he’s still there. I’d love to have grounds for his phone records.”

Shuffling through the message slips on his desk, he tossed the first four, read the fifth, and said, “Wonders never cease. Sean got creative.”

Binchy, though still on Auto Theft, had continued combing the crime reports for incidents coinciding with the time period the Bentley had been missing. Coming up empty on homicides, rapes, and assaults just as Milo had. But the young detective had gone further and a missing person had surfaced.

Milo phoned him, grunted approval, got the details.

“Katrina Shonsky, twenty-eight-year-old female Caucasian, blond and brown, five four, one hundred ten. Out partying that night with friends, drove home alone, hasn’t been heard from since. Mother reported it three days later. Took this long to make it into the computer.”

“Go Sean,” I said. “You run a good day care, Papa Sturgis.”

Mr. and Mrs. Royal Hedges lived in a vast, loft-like condo on the fourteenth floor of a luxury building on the Wilshire Corridor. Walls of glass opened to a southward view that avoided the ocean and stared down at Inglewood, Baldwin Hills, LAX flight paths. Altitude and a starless night transformed miles of tract housing into a light show.

Royal and Monica Hedges sat on a low, black Roche-Bobois sofa, smoking in unison. The condo’s floors were black granite, the walls white diamond plaster that threw off its own glints, the artwork big and blotchy with an emphasis on gray.

Monica Hedges was somewhere between fifty and sixty. Tiny and blond and skinny to the point of desiccation, she had heavily lined brown eyes, a face stretched past the point of reason, and great legs displayed by a little black dress.

Royal Hedges looked to be seventy, minimum, sported a red-brown toupee nearly good enough to pull off the illusion, and a Vandyke dyed to match. He wore a red silk shirt, white slacks, pink suede loafers without socks. Hid his fourth yawn behind liver-spotted hands and flicked ashes into a chrome tray.