‘Hold the phone,’ said his father wearily. He was sitting on the edge of the armchair now, leaning well forward, his head bent very low as he prepared to light his cigar. ‘MacIver was here?’ He said it to the carpet.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Billy Stein.

‘When was MacIver here?’

‘You said never interrupt your poker game.’

‘When?’ He struck a match and lit his cigar.

‘Five o’clock, maybe six o’clock.’

‘You watching TV tonight?’

‘It’s just quiz shows and crap. I’ve been running video.’

‘MacIver is dead.’ Charles Stein drew on the cigar and blew smoke down at the carpet.

‘Dead?’

‘It was on Channel Two, the news. Some kid blew off the top of his head with a sawed-off shotgun. Left the weapon there. It happened in one of those little bars on Western Avenue near Beverly Boulevard. TV news got a crew there real quick… cars, flashing lights, a deputy chief waving the murder weapon at the camera.’

‘A street gang, was it?’

‘Who then threw away a two-hundred-dollar shotgun, all carefully sawed off so it fits under your jacket?’

‘Then who?’

Charles Stein blew smoke. ‘Who knows?’ he said angrily, although his anger was not directed at anyone in particular. ‘MacIver the Mouth, they called him. Owes money all over town. Could be some creditor blew him away.’ He drew on the cigar again. The smoke tasted sour.

‘Well, he sold his war memoirs. He showed me the advertisement. Some movie producer he met. He’s selling him a story about Nazi gold in Germany in the war.’

Charles Stein grunted. ‘So that’s it, eh? I wondered why that bastard had been going around talking to all the guys from the outfit. Sure, I saw a lot of him in the army, but he wasn’t even with the battalion. He was with some lousy military police detail.’

‘He’s been getting the story from you?’

‘From me he got nothing. We were under the direct order of General Patton at Third Army HQ for that job, and we’re still not released from the secrecy order.’ He ran his hands back through his wispy hair and held his hand on the top of his head for a minute, lost in thought. ‘MacIver has been writing all this stuff down, you say, and passing it to some movie guy?’

‘Bernie Lustig. MacIver was going to introduce me to him,’ said Billy. ‘Poor guy. Was it a stick-up?’

‘He won’t be doing much in the line of introductions, Billy. By now he’s in the morgue with a label on his toe. Lustig-where’s he have his office?’

‘ Melrose -he hasn’t yet made it to Beverly Hills or even to Sunset. That’s what made me think it was true… If MacIver had been inventing this guy, he would have chosen somewhere flashier than Melrose.’

‘Go to the top of the class, Billy.’ He eased off his white leather shoes and kicked them carelessly under the table.

‘What was he like, this MacIver guy?’ MacIver had now achieved a posthumous interest, not to say glamour. ‘What was he really like, dad?’

‘He was a liar and a cheat. He sponged on his friends to buy drinks for his enemies… MacIver was desperate to make people like him. He’d do anything to win them over… ” Stein was about to add that MacIver’s promise to get Billy a job in the movie industry was a good example of this desperate need, but he decided not to disappoint his son until more facts were available. He smoked his cigar and then studied the ash on it.

‘Did you know him in New York, before you went into the army?’

‘He was from Chicago. He was on the force there, working the South Side-a tough neighbourhood. He leaned heavily on the “golden-hearted cop” bit. He joined the army after Pearl Harbor and gave them all that baloney about being at Harvard. There was no time to check on it, I suppose… ’

‘It was baloney. He as good as admitted it.’

‘They wouldn’t let MacIver into Harvard to haul the ashes. Sure it was baloney, but it got him a commission in the military police. And he used that to pull every trick in the book. He was always asking for use of one of our trucks. A packing case delivered here; a small parcel collected there. He got together with the transportation section and the rumours said they even sold one of our two-and-a-half-tonners to a Belgian civilian and went on leave in Paris to spend the proceeds.’ Suddenly Stein felt sad and very tired. He wiped a hand across his face, as a swimmer might after emerging from the water.

‘What are you going to do now, dad?’

‘I lost five hundred and thirty bucks tonight, Billy, and I’ve put away more wine than is good for my digestion… ’ He coughed, and looked for his ashtray without finding it. In spite of all his reservations about MacIver, he was shocked by the news of his murder. MacIver was a con-man, always ready with glib promises and the unconvincing excuses that immediately followed them. And yet there were good memories too, for MacIver was capable of flamboyant generosity and subtle kindness, and anyway, thought Charles Stein, they had shared a lifetime together. It was enough to make him sad, no matter what kind of bastard MacIver had been.

‘You going to find this Bernie Lustig character?’ said Billy.

‘Is that the name of the movie producer?’

‘I told you, dad. On Melrose.’

‘I guess so.’

‘You don’t think this Lustig cat had anything to do with the killing, do you?’

‘I’m going to bed now, Billy.’ Again he looked for the ashtray. It was always on the table next to the flower vase.

‘If he owed MacIver twenty-five thousand dollars… ’

‘We’ll talk about it in the morning, Billy. Where’s my ashtray?’

‘I’ll catch the TV news,’ said Billy. ‘Think they’ll still be running the clip?’

‘This is a rough town, Billy. One killing don’t make news for long.’ He reached across the table and stubbed his cigar into the remains of Billy’s beans.

The man behind the desk could have been mistaken for an oriental, especially when he smiled politely. His face was pale and even the sunshine of southern California made his skin go no darker than antique ivory. His hair was jet black and brushed tight against his domed skull. ‘Max Breslow,’ he said, offering a hand which Charles Stein shook energetically.

‘I was expecting to meet Mr Bernie Lustig,’ said Stein. He had selected one of his most expensive cream-coloured linen suits but already it was rumpled, and the knot of his white silk tie had twisted under his collar. He lowered his massive body into the black leather Charles Eames armchair, which creaked under his weight.

‘Mr Lustig is in Europe,’ said Max Breslow. “There is work to do there for our next production.’

‘The final secret of the Kaiseroda mine?’ said Stein, waving his large hand in the air and displaying a heavy gold Rolex watch and diamond rings on hands that were regularly manicured. When Breslow did not react to this question, Stein said, ‘Mr Miles MacIver is an old friend of mine. He promised to get my son a job with your film.’ Breslow nodded. Stein corrected himself. ‘MacIver was a close friend of mine.’

‘You were in the army with him?’ He had a faint German accent.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Stein. He stroked his sideburns. They were long and bushy, curling over his ears.

Breslow picked up a stainless-steel letter-opener, toyed with it for a moment and looked at Stein. ‘It was a sad business with Mr MacIver,’ said Breslow. He said it with the same sort of clinical indifference with which an airline clerk comforts a passenger who has lost his baggage.

Stein remembered MacIver with a sudden disconcerting pang of grief. He recalled the night in 1945 when MacIver had crawled into the wreckage of a German Weinstube. They were in some small town on the other side of Mainz. The artillery had long since pounded it flat, the tanks had bypassed its difficult obstacles, the infantry had forgotten it existed, the engineers had threaded their tapes all through the streets, and left ‘danger booby traps’ signs in the rubble. Stein remembered how MacIver had climbed down from their two-and-a-half-ton winch truck saying that goddamned engineers always put those signs on the booze joints so they could come back and plunder it in their own sweet time. Stein had held his breath while MacIver climbed over the rubble and across the wrecked front parlour of the wine bar. For a moment he had been out of sight but soon he reappeared, flush-faced and grinning in triumph, fingers cut on broken glass and sleeve dark and wet with spilled red wine that shone like fresh blood. He was struggling under the weight of a whole case of German champagne.