“Wow.”

Nothing about the house whispered murder scene. Any trace of blood had long since been scrubbed clean. I wondered if Echevarria’s ghost roamed the place. I listened for it, but all I heard was a loud grinding sound.

“A full one horsepower,” Julie Roberts said, turning off the garbage disposal. “Anything you want — chicken bones, peach pits. Gone. They don’t make ’em like these anymore.”

“Remind me not to put any fingers down there.”

She led me into the bathroom. The tile top on the vanity was mint green with a darker green bull-nose trim. The grout had gone gray with age and was streaked with rust stains. Somebody had hung a new vinyl shower curtain with lime green polka dots. The bathroom reeked of Lysol.

“The seller, by the way, is highly motivated. He’ll entertain any reasonable offer.”

“Why’s he selling?”

“He owns several rentals. He’s just tired of the whole scene. Bad tenants, late payments, cats going pee-pee on everything, pardon my French — though not in this property, thank heavens, because you can never get that smell out, believe-you-me. He and his wife are retiring to Arizona. They want to be closer to the grandkids.”

California law requires that a homeowner disclose any known problems associated with the history of the property they’re selling. A leaky roof, barking dogs, people shot to death in the entryway— all must be revealed to the prospective buyer. The owner of the house had to have known about Echevarria’s murder. Whether or not Julie Roberts did was another story. If she did, she covered it well.

“Let me show you the backyard,” she said. “It has loads of potential.”

The backyard was a mirror image of the front. A small patch of parched earth, only populated with vastly more dandelions. There was a chain-link fence and a gate that led to an alley. Piled against the gate were three rolls of stained carpeting and a half-dozen black Hefty bags filled with trash.

“You could build a fantastic deck out here,” Julie Roberts said. “Put in a grill, hot tub, a privacy fence. Your own little Shangri-la. You ask me, the possibilities are ab-so-lutely endless.”

“Ab-so-lutely.”

I knelt, ripped open a trash bag and began sifting through the contents, much to Julie Roberts’ bewilderment.

“May I ask what you’re doing?”

“Recycling.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ten cents a bottle. It’s like found money.”

The agent cleared her throat and smiled nervously. “I’m all for going green, but I, uh, really don’t believe that rummaging through the trash like you’re doing is, um, permissible.”

“Our little secret,” I said, scavenging an empty Snapple bottle like I’d just unearthed the treasure of Sierra Madre. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

That’s when it occurred to her that she was alone, in a sketchy neighborhood, with a strange man who quite possibly was a few tacos short of a combo plate.

“Listen, not to be rude,” she said with an anxious little chuckle, backing up toward the house, “but I really should be running along. I’ve got some, um, uh, you know, other pressing appointments. So, ah, um, feel free to, ah, you know, just look around, and uh… You’ve got my number. Call with any questions. Just do me a favor and lock up when you leave, OK?”

“Will do. By the way, I loved your sister in Pretty Woman.”

Julie Roberts didn’t hear me. She was already out of there.

The trash bag was mostly filled with used cleaning supplies. Mop heads. Rags. An empty bleach jug. I opened the second bag. Inside were empty paint cans, plastic tray liners stiff with dried white paint, and wads of used blue masking tape. The third bag held mounds of machine-shredded paper and unopened junk mail addressed to “Current Occupant.” There were also several mail order catalogs. One was from the “Harry and David” company. Purveyors of fruits and nuts, soliciting business in the land of fruits and nuts. I had to smile.

The catalog was sticky with what looked and smelled like maple syrup. I was about to toss it back with the rest of the garbage and move onto the next bag when I noticed a shred of paper stuck to the back page. I peeled it free: it was a ticket stub from Turkish Airlines, a seat assignment, ripped in half. A partial name, “—mas Magnum” was printed on the remnant half — Thomas Magnum, Echevarria’s nom de guerre. All of us in Alpha used such aliases in the field — usually the names of television characters we identified with. The reasoning was, were the bad guys to know our true identities, they might just come looking for us. And so we were Matt Dillon and Maynard G. Krebs and Jim Rockford and Gomez Addams and myriad others. Buzz’s handle was Andy Sipowicz. I favored Napoleon Solo or Steve Urkel, depending on my mood.

The date printed on the ticket stub indicated that Echevarria had flown less than a week before he died. There was a flight number: 3183.

I called directory assistance and got a reservations number for Turkish Airlines.

“Please listen carefully as our prompts have changed.” I punched “0.” Fifteen seconds later, I was speaking with a real live Turk.

“Thank you for calling Turkish Airlines, a proud member of the Star Alliance. My name is Bedia. How may I assist you today?”

“This is Thomas Magnum. I flew your airline a couple months ago. Unfortunately, United says they have no record of my having been on the flight. Unless I send them proof, they won’t credit my Mileage Plus account. Can’t you help me?”

“I would be pleased to assist you with that, Mr. Magnum. What was the date and number of the flight?”

I gave her the particulars. She asked me how to spell Magnum. I could hear computer keys clicking over the phone.

“Here we are,” she said after a few seconds. “Flight 3183, originating Ataturk, Istanbul, to New York’s JFK, continuing on to Los Angeles International. I can email you a copy of the original ticket if you’d like, as well as ticket copies for any other flights you took that day.”

“If you could check my other flights that would be great.”

“Certainly.” More computer keys clicking. “Yes, sir. It looks like you made an earlier connection from Atyrau to Istanbul.”

I could feel my pulse surge. “Did you say Atyrau?”

“Yes, sir. Atyrau.”

I told her emailed copies would not be necessary and thanked her for her time.

After I slipped the ticket stub in my pocket, I tossed the trash bag in which I’d found it into the trunk of Savannah’s Jaguar along with another bag I’d yet to go through.

Savannah was sitting cross-legged on the lawn in front of her house, reading the Style section of The New York Times. She was barefoot, wearing a broad-brimmed straw sun hat, a black, formfitting leotard top, and Daisy Duke-style cutoff jeans, short enough to reveal the bottoms of her front pockets. I tried to imagine that she weighed 400 pounds, but it didn’t work.

I popped open the trunk and hauled out the two Hefty bags I’d taken from Echevarria’s backyard.

“What are those?”

“What do they look like?”

“You’re driving around with garbage bags in my Jaguar?”

“They’re from your late husband’s house.”

“You found something,” Savannah said, her voice rising with excitement.

I debated telling her about the Turkish Airlines ticket, about how Echevarria had apparently visited the port city of Atyrau in Kazakhstan days before he died. Having flown in and out of Atyrau more than a few times myself on various assignments, I knew that it was the commercial airport nearest the burgeoning Kashagan oil fields, where Savannah’s father had prospective business interests with the men I’d lunched with in El Molino. It had to have been more than happenstance, Echevarria traveling through Atyrau just before he was murdered. Could be Buzz was correct. Could be Echevarria had gotten too close to Tarasov, uncovered something he shouldn’t have, and paid for it with his life. I didn’t know where the truth lay. I did, however, know that sharing what little of it I knew at that point with my ex-wife would only make it more difficult for me to explain to her the covert nature of how Echevarria and I once earned a living. I wasn’t prepared to tell her that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be.