“No one I can think of.”

“No one Kat met at the club that night?”

“She didn’t meet anyone. That was what p.o.’d her. We thought of inviting her but figured it would be uncomfortable.” She walked faster, gritted her teeth, cried silently.

“Beth, did Kat ever talk to you about problems with anyone?”

“Just her mother. They didn’t get along.”

“What about people at work?”

“She hated her job, thought the girl she worked with was a suck-up. That made me feel a little bad because I was the one who told her about it.”

“What’d she hate about the job?”

“Lousy money, boring, you name it. Kat had a tough life. Her real dad died when she was young. Her mother was a slut, had men coming and going all the time. Finally, she found a rich guy.”

“How’d Kat get along with the rich guy?”

“She actually liked him better than her mother. Said he was more laid-back, didn’t pressure her. With her mother it was always criticism.” She sucked in breath, took a long time to exhale. “Kat was beautiful but didn’t know it. The truth is – I’m realizing this now – I’ve never seen her really happy.”

“How’d she deal with her unhappiness?”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes people escape.”

“Oh,” she said. “Her drinking. Yeah, it could get out of hand. But you just said DUI had nothing to do with it.”

“It didn’t. So there’s no one she had conflict with recently?”

“I can’t think of anyone.”

“Someone told us a strange story, Beth.”

“What’s that?”

He repeated the incident with the cross-dresser.

She said, “Oh, that.”

“Kat told you.”

“She thought it was hilarious.” A trace of a smile said Beth had agreed.

“She describe this guy?”

“Omigod – you think he could be-”

“We’re just collecting facts, Beth.”

“Did she describe him… just that he didn’t look queer-y on the outside, you’d never know.”

“Masculine.”

“I guess.”

“Let me ask you something else, Beth. Would Kat have been impressed by money?”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“How about a special attraction?”

The pretty face went slack with confusion.

“Fancy houses, expense accounts – real nice cars. Any of that float her boat?”

“Sure, all of the above,” said Beth Holloway. “That just makes her normal.”

Milo ran backgrounds on Rory Cline and Michael Browning.

Cline was easy – one motorist with that name in L.A. County. Studio City apartment, no criminal record, wants, or warrants, eleven-year-old Audi.

Sixteen Michael Brownings. Narrowing the search to the three who lived in the Valley and cross-checking business listings turned up one accountant: Michael J. Browning, office on Lankershim, near Universal Studios.

One-year-old Saab, another clean record.

“A mailroom flunky and a number cruncher,” said Milo. “No reason for either of them to have car-boosting skills, but let’s talk to them anyway.”

Creative Representation and Promotion occupied a travertine-and-green-glass fortress near the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica. Inside was more of the same beige stone. A mural of stiff people watching a movie dominated the three-story, skylit lobby. A milky sky-light aimed for an indoor-outdoor effect but missed. Mussolini loved travertine but got strung up before he could remodel Rome.

A pair of male receptionists in gunmetal silk shirts hid themselves behind a high counter and whispered into tiny phones suspended from their ears. A beefy black man in a bad suit stood to their side.

Milo strode up to one of the gray-shirts and held out his badge. The security man smiled and remained in place. The receptionist kept talking. From the sound of it a personal chat.

Milo waited, slapped a hand on the counter. The security guy smiled wider as the receptionist jumped.

“Hold on.” Sudden smile, as sincere as silicon. “Are you here for a meeting?”

“We’re here to see Rory Cline.”

“Who might that be?”

“He works in the mailroom.”

“The mailroom doesn’t take calls.”

“It’s taking this one.”

“Uh-uh-uh. Working hours are-”

“Irrelevant. Call him.”

Grayshirt shrank back. Glanced at the security guard. Saw a broad back.

“Look, I don’t even know how to get anyone there.”

Milo said, “Time to learn.”

It took several calls delivered in a perplexed whisper, and frantic repetition of the word “police” before Grayshirt said, “He’s on his way, you can wait over there.”

We hung by the brown chairs. Five minutes later an elevator slid open and a narrow, round-shouldered, dark-haired man strode toward us.

Rory Cline looked every minute of forty and then some, with hollow cheeks and eyes to match. His spiky do fit him like lipstick fits a goldfish. His white shirt was wrinkled and limp as a used Kleenex. A skinny black tie dangled below the cinched belt line of gray pipe-stem trousers.

He pointed to the front doors, hurried past us, left the building.

We found him half a block down on Linden Drive, hands jammed in his pockets, pacing.

“Mr. Cline?”

“What are you doing to me? Now everyone’ll think I’m a felon!”

Milo said, “In your business, maybe that could be career-enhancing.”

Cline’s eyes bugged. “Funny funny funny. I can’t believe she sent you here. I already gave you guys my version and they believed me that her story was total bullshit. Now you’re back? Why, because she’s got beaucoup bucks, that’s the way you guys do it, like that Eddie Murphy movie? What, I’m living a fucking Beverly Hills comedy?”

Herky-jerk movements, rat-a-tat speech, constricted pupils.

“She,” said Milo.

“Her, she, whatever,” said Rory Cline. “Let me cue you in: The only reason she’s pursuing this is she probably heard I’m due to move up and she wants to get in on the gravy train.”

Milo said, “Congrats on the promotion.”

“Yeah, it’s happening. Or was going to until you guys showed up and maybe fucked everything up. I’m being considered for an assistantship to Ed LaMoca. Get it?”

“Big-time guy.”

“As in,” said Cline, rattling off a list of movie stars. “Everyone wants to work for him, it’s taken me shit-all years to get in position, and now you show up and they’re going to think – how could you do this just because those assholes tell you to? They’re fucking lying, the whole thing is a fucking put-up.”

The pace of his speech had ratcheted from frantic to nearly unintelligible. I wondered if the building was vast enough to conceal a meth lab.

Milo said, “Who do you think called us, Mr. Cline?”

“Who do I think? Them. Persian bitch and her fucking Persian husband. No matter how they’re spinning it, she hit me, fucked up my bumper, fucked up my trunk, fucked up a taillight. I was in front, she was behind me, and there’s no fucking way I rolled backward, it wasn’t even uphill. I didn’t call you guys because there were no injuries and she admitted it was her fault, promised to pay A-sap. Then she goes home, tells her rich fucking asshole rug merchant husband, he starts spinning. Fine, they wanna fight, I’ll fight. What I don’t get is you wasting your time when I already gave a statement to her insurance and they said they believed me, it’s obvious I didn’t roll back into her. The only reason I didn’t have my own insurance was it lapsed after I moved here from ICM and if you read the insurance reports you’d know that.”

He embarked on a ten-step march, came back. “May I go back to work and try not to get fucked up?”

Milo said, “This isn’t about your fender-bender.”