"Schwinn being symbolic?" he said. "These two represent Willie Burns and Caroline Cossack?"

"They're missing information because they represent the missing Willie Burns and the missing Caroline Cossack. Schwinn designated no locations because Burns's and Cossack's whereabouts remain unknown. Then he followed up with Janie's picture and wrote NS for No Solve. Right after Janie, he placed three drive-bys, grouped together. I don't think that's a coincidence, either. He knew how you'd see them: business as usual, just like you said. He's outlining a process here: A missing black man and mentally ill white woman are connected to Janie, whose murder is never solved. On the contrary: She's abandoned, and then it's business as usual. He's describing the cover-up."

He pulled at his lower lip. "Games… pretty subtle."

"You said Schwinn was a devious sort," I said. "Suspicious, verging on paranoid. LAPD dumped him, but he continued to think like a rogue cop, played games to the end, in order to cover his rear. He decided to communicate with you, but set it up so that only you would get it. That way, if the book went astray, or was ever traced back to him, he could disclaim ownership. He took pains to make sure it wasn't traced to him- no fingerprints. Only you were likely to recall his photography hobby and make the connection. He might have planned to send you the book himself, but changed his mind and chose someone else as a go-between, as another layer of security."

He studied the dead black man. Paged to the truck-crash nightmare, then Janie. Repeated the process.

"Willie and Caroline's surrogates… too weird."

I pointed to the black man's corpse. "How old does he look to you?"

He squinted at the ashen face. "Forties."

"If Willie Burns were alive today, he'd be forty-three. That means Schwinn saw the dead man as a surrogate for Willie in the here and now. Both the pictures are faded, probably decades old. But Schwinn oriented them toward the present. Meaning he finished the book fairly recently, wanted to focus you on the present."

He rolled the empty shot glass between his palms. "Bastard was a good detective. If the department got rid of him because someone was worried about what he knew about Janie, that means they didn't worry about me."

"You were a rookie-"

"I was the dumb shit they figured would just follow orders. And guess what?" He laughed.

"It's likely when Schwinn learned he'd been forced out and you hadn't, it confirmed his suspicions of you. Maybe he figured you'd played a role in his dismissal. That's why he didn't tell you what he'd learned about Janie for years."

"And then he changed his mind."

"He came to admire you. Told Marge."

"Mr. Serenity," he said. "So he enlists his girlfriend or some old cop washout to serve as go-between. Why'd whoever it was wait until seven months after Schwinn died?"

I had no answer for that. Milo tried to pace, but the confined quarters of the laundry area made it a two-step exercise.

He said, "Then the guy falls off a horse."

"A horse so gentle Marge felt comfortable with Schwinn riding up into the hills alone. But Akhbar got spooked, anyway. Marge said, by 'something.' Maybe it was someone."

He stared past me, reentered the kitchen, washed out the shot glass, returned, and glared at the book. "Nothing says Schwinn's death wasn't an accident."

"Nothing at all."

He pressed his hands flat against the wall as if straining to push it down.

"Bastards," he said.

"Who?"

"Everyone."

We sat down in his living room, each of us thinking in silence, neither of us coming up with anything. If he felt as weary as I did, he needed a break.

The phone rang. He snatched up the receiver. "This is him… what? Who- yes… one week. Yeah… I did… that's right. What's that? Yeah, I just told you that, anything else? Okay, then. Hey, listen, why don't you give me your name and number and I'll-"

The other party cut him off. He held the phone at arm's length, began gnawing his upper lip.

"Who was that?" I said.

"Some guy claiming to be from Department Personnel downtown, wanting to verify that I was indeed taking vacation time and how long did I plan to be away. I told him I'd filled out the forms."

"Claiming to be from Personnel?"

"I've never known the department to make calls like that, and he hung up when I asked his name. Also, he didn't sound like a department clerk."

"How so?"

"He sounded like he gave a damn."

He slipped the murder book back into the plastic bag, and said, "This goes in the safe."

"Didn't know you had a safe," I said.

"For all my Cartier and Tiffany. Wait here."

He disappeared and I stood there, humbled once more by the truism I'd learned a thousand patients ago: Everyone has secrets. At the core, we're alone.

That made me think of Robin. Where was she? What was she doing? With whom?

Milo returned, minus his necktie. "Hungry?"

"Not really."

"Good, let's eat."

He locked up and we got back in the car. I said, "That call from Personnel. Maybe procedures have tightened up with John Broussard in charge. Isn't troop discipline his pet issue?"

"Yeah. How about Hot Dog Heaven?"

I drove to San Vicente just north of Beverly and parked at the curb. Hot Dog Heaven was built around a giant hot dog, yet another testament to L.A.'s literal thinking. The fast-food joint became a landmark when the pony ride that had occupied the corner of La Cienega and Beverly for decades was replaced by the neon-and-concrete assault known as the Beverly Center. Too bad Philip K. Dick had committed suicide. A few years later and he'd have seen Blade Runner spring to life. Or maybe he'd known what was coming.

Back during pony-ride days, the dirt track had been a favorite weekend visitation hangout for divorced dads and their kids. Hot Dog Heaven had thrived peddling nitrites to lonely men who smoked and hung around the low-slung corral, watching their progeny go round and round. Where did displaced dads go now? Not the mall. The last thing kids at the mall wanted was proximity to their parents.

Milo ordered two jumbo chili cheese dogs with extra onions, and I got a knockwurst. We filled out the bill with two large Cokes and sat down to eat as traffic roared by. It was late for lunch and early for dinner and only two other tables were occupied, an old woman reading the paper and a tall, long-haired youth in hospital blues- probably a Cedars-Sinai intern.

Milo wolfed the first chili dog without the aid of respiration. After tweezing every scrap of cheese from the wax paper with his fingers, he gulped Coke and got to work on the second. He finished that one, too, sprang up, and bought a third. My wurst tasted fine, but it was all I could do to feign hunger.

He was counting his change when a bronze Jeep Cherokee parked in front of my Seville and a man got out and walked past me toward the counter. Black suit, pearl shirt, soot-colored tie. Smiling. That's what made me notice him. A big, wide, toothy grin, as if he'd just received terrific news. I watched him stride quickly to the counter and come to a stop just behind Milo, where he waited, bouncing on his heels. His black suede loafers were lifted by two-inch heels. Without them he was an easy six feet. He stood close to Milo, kept bouncing. Milo didn't seem to notice. Something made me put down the wurst and keep my eyes on both of them.

Smiley was thirty or so, with dark hair gelled and combed back, curling over his collar. Big-jawed face, prominent nose, golden tan. The suit was well cut- Italian or pretending to be, and it looked brand-new, as did the suede shoes. The gray shirt was satin-finish silk, the tie a bulky knit. Dressed for an audition as a game show host?