Maybe interesting.

Schwinn grinned and bit off a wad of burrito. Milo had figured the guy for a late-sleeping pension-sniffing goldbrick and turned out the sonofabitch had been working overtime, doing a solo act, and producing. The two of them were partners in name, only.

He said, "The father didn't report it to MP?"

Schwinn shrugged. "The father's a little bit… marginal."

"Lowlife?"

"Marginal," Schwinn repeated. Irritated, as if Milo was a poor student, kept getting it wrong. "Also, the girl's done this before- goes out partying, doesn't come home for a few days."

"If the girl's done it before, why would this be different?"

"Maybe it's not. But the girl fits stat-wise: sixteen, around five-seven, skinny, with dark hair, brown eyes, nice tight little body."

An appreciative tone had crept into Schwinn's voice. Milo pictured him with the source- some street letch, the source laying it on lasciviously. Hookers, pimps, perverts, Schwinn probably had a whole stable of lowlifes he could count on for info. And Milo had a master's degree…

"She's supposed to be cute," Schwinn went on. "No virgin, a wild kid. Also, at least one time before, she got herself in trouble. Hitchhiking on Sunset, got picked up by some scrote who raped her, tied her up, left her in an alley downtown. A juicehead found her, lucky for her he was just a bum, not a perve fixing to get himself some sloppy seconds. The girl never reported it officially, just told a friend, and the story made the rounds on the street."

"Sixteen years old, tied and raped and she doesn't report it?"

"Like I said, no virgin." Schwinn's hatchet jaw pulsed, and his Okie squint aimed at the ceiling. Milo knew he was holding back something.

"Is the source reliable?"

"Usually."

"Who?"

Schwinn's headshake was peevish. "Let's concentrate on the main thing: We got a girl who fits our vic's stats."

"Sixteen," said Milo, bothered.

Schwinn shrugged. "From what I've read- psychology articles- the human rope gets kinked up pretty early." He leaned back and took another big bite of burrito, wiped salsa verde from his mouth with the back of his hand, then gave the hand a lick. "You think that's true, boy-o? Think maybe she didn't report it cause she liked it?"

Milo covered his anger with a shrug of his own. "So what's next? Talk to the father?"

Schwinn righted his chair, swabbed his chin, this time with a paper napkin, stood abruptly, and walked out of the room, leaving Milo to follow.

Partners.

Outside, near the unmarked, Schwinn turned to him, smiling. "So tell me, how'd you sleep last night?"

Schwinn recited the address on Edgemont, and Milo started up the car.

"Hollywood, boy-o. A real-life Hollywood girl."

Over the course of the twenty-minute ride, he laid out a few more details for Milo: The girl's name was Janie Ingalls. A sophomore at Hollywood High, living with her father in a third-floor walk-up in a long-faded neighborhood, just north of Santa Monica Boulevard. Bowie Ingalls was a drunk who might or might not be home. Society was going to hell in a handbasket; even white folk were living like pigs.

The building was a clumsy pink thing with undersized windows and lumpy stucco. Twelve units was Milo's guess: four flats to a floor, probably divided by a narrow central corridor.

He parked, but Schwinn made no attempt to get out, so the two of them just sat there, the engine running.

"Turn it off," said Schwinn.

Milo twisted the key and listened to street sounds. Distant traffic from Santa Monica, a few bird trills, someone unseen playing a power mower. The street was poorly kept, litter sludging the gutters. He said, "Besides being a juicehead, how's the father marginal?"

"One of those walking-around guys," said Schwinn. "Name of Bowie Ingalls, does a little of this, little of that. Rumor has it he ran slips for a nigger bookie downtown- how's that for a white man's career? A few years ago, he was working as a messenger at Paramount Studios, telling people he was in the movie biz. He plays the horses, has a chicken-shit sheet, mostly drunk and disorderly, unpaid traffic tickets. Two years ago he got pulled in for receiving stolen property but never got charged. Small-time, all around."

Details. Schwinn had found the time to pull Bowie Ingalls's record.

"Guy like that, and he's raising a kid," said Milo.

"Yeah, it's a cruel world, isn't it? Janie's mother was a stripper and a hype, ran off with some hippie musician when the kid was a baby, overdosed in Frisco."

"Sounds like you've learned a lot."

"That what you think?" Schwinn's voice got flinty, and his eyes were hard, again. Figuring Milo was being sarcastic? Milo wasn't sure he hadn't meant to be sarcastic.

"I've got a lot to learn," he said. "Wasting my time with those MP clowns. Meanwhile you're getting all this-"

"Don't lick my ass, son," said Schwinn, and suddenly the hatchet face was inches from Milo's and Milo could smell the Aqua Velva and the salsa verde. "I didn't do dick, and I don't know dick. And you did way less than dick."

"Hey, sorry if-"

"Fuck sorry, pal. You think this is some game? Like getting a master's degree, hand in your homework, and lick the teacher's ass and get your little ass-licking grade? You think that's what this is about?"

Talking way too fast for normal. What the hell had set him off?

Milo kept silent. Schwinn laughed bitterly, moved away, sat back so heavily against the seat that Milo's heavy body rocked. "Let me tell you, boy-o, that other shit we've been shoveling since I let you ride with me- niggers and pachucos offing each other and waiting around for us to pick 'em up and if we don't, no one gives a shit- you think that's what the 187 universe is all about?"

Milo's face was hot from jawline to scalp. He kept his mouth shut.

"This…" said Schwinn, pulling a letter-sized, baby blue envelope from an inside suit pocket and removing a stack of color photos. Twenty-four-hour photo lab logo. The Instamatic shots he'd snapped at Beaudry.

He fanned them out on his skinny lap, faceup, like fortune-teller's cards. Close-ups of the dead girl's bloody, scalped head. Intimate portraits of the lifeless face, splayed legs…

"This," he said, "is why we get paid. The other stuff clerks could handle."

The first seven murders had gotten Milo to think of himself as a clerk with a badge. He didn't dare agree. Agreement seemed to infuriate the sonofa-

"You thought you were gonna get some fun for yourself when you signed up to be a Big Bad Homicide Hero," said Schwinn. "Right?" Talking even faster, but managing to snap off each word. "Or maybe you heard that bullshit about Homicide being for intellectuals and you've got that master's degree and you thought hey, that's me! So tell me, this look intellectual to you?" Tapping a photo. "You think this can be figured out using brains?"

Shaking his head and looking as if he'd tasted something putrid, Schwinn hooked a fingernail under a corner of a photo and flicked.

Plink, plink.

Milo said, "Look, I'm just-"

"Do you have any idea how often something like this actually gets closed? Those clowns in the Academy probably told you Homicide has a seventy, eighty percent solve rate, right? Well, that's horseshit. That's the stupid stuff- which should be a hundred percent it's so stupid, so big fucking deal, eighty percent. Shit." He turned and spit out the window. Shifted back to Milo. "With this"- plink plink- "you're lucky to close four outta ten. Meaning most of the time you lose and the guy gets to do it again and he's saying 'Fuck you' to you just like he is to her."

Schwinn freed his fingernail and began tapping the snapshot, blunt-edged index finger landing repetitively on the dead girl's crotch.