"Don't know you well enough," I said.

"They- the interns over at County- said I had an affective disease- severe mood swings. Then they cut off my methadone."

He clicked his teeth together and waited for me to comment. When I didn't, he said, "Supposedly I was using stuff to self-medicate- being my own psychiatrist." He laughed. "Bearshit. I used it to be happy."

Milo said, "Back on track: what else do you know about Gritz?"

"That's it." Smile. "Do I still get to keep the money?"

"Is Terminator Three still here?" I said.

"Who?"

"A kid from Arizona. Missing pinkie, bad cough. He has a girlfriend and a baby."

"Oh yeah, Wayne. He's calling himself that, now?" Laughter. "Nah, they all packed up this afternoon. Like I said, people come and go- speaking of which…"

He hooded himself with the blanket and, keeping his eyes on us, began edging toward the fence.

"What about your room for the night?" said Milo.

The man stopped and looked back. "Nah, I'll camp out tonight. Fresh air." Grin.

Milo laughed a little bit with him, then eyed the food. "What about all this?"

The man scrutinized the groceries. "Yeah, I'll take some of that Gatorade. The Pepsi, too."

He picked up the beverages and stashed them under the blanket.

"That's it?" said Milo.

"On a diet," said the man. "You want, you can bring the rest of it inside. I'm sure someone'll take it off your hands."

• • •

The hooded man led us through the darkness, walking unsteadily but without hesitation, like a well-practiced blind man.

Milo and I stumbled and fought to keep our balance, hauling boxes with only the skimpy guidance of the penlight beam.

As we progressed, I sensed human presence- the heat of fear. Then the petrol sweetness of Sterno.

Urine. Shit. Tobacco. Mildew.

The ammonia of fresh semen.

The hooded man stopped and pointed to the ground.

We put the boxes down and a blue flame ignited. Then another.

The concrete wall came into focus, in front of it bedrolls, piles of newspaper. Bodies and faces blue-lit by the flames.

"Suppertime, chillun'," shouted the man, over the noise of the freeway. Then he was gone.

More lights.

Ten or so people appeared, faceless, sexless, huddled like storm victims.

Milo took something out of the box and held it out. A hand reached out and snatched it. More people collected around us, blue tinted, rabbity, openmouthed with expectation.

Milo leaned forward, moving his mouth around his cigar. What he said made some of the people bolt. Others stayed to listen, and a few talked back.

He distributed more food. I joined in, feeling hands brush against mine. Finally our boxes were empty and we stood, alone.

Milo swung the penlight around the lot, exposing cloth heaps, lean-tos, people eating.

The hooded black man, sitting with his back up against the freeway wall, plaid legs splayed. One naked arm stretched out over a skinny thigh, bound at the biceps by a coil of something elastic.

A beautiful smile on his face, a needle buried deep in his flesh.

Milo snapped his head away and lowered the beam.

"C'mon," he said, loud enough for me to hear.

• • •

He headed west rather than back toward Beverly Hills, saying, "Well, that was a big goddamn zero."

"None of them had anything to say?"

"The consensus, for what it's worth, is that Lyle Gritz hasn't been seen for a week or two and that it's no big deal, he drifts in and out. He did, indeed, mouth off a bit about getting rich before he split, but they've all heard that before."

"The next Elvis."

He nodded. "Music fantasies, not fish murder. I pressed for details and one of them claimed to have seen him get into someone's car a week or so ago- across the street, over at the cement yard. But that same person seemed rather addled and had absolutely no clue as to make, model, color, or any other distinguishing details. And I'm not sure he didn't just say it because I was pushing. I'll see if Gritz's name shows up on any recent arrest files. You can ask Jeffers if he was ever a patient at the center. If he was, maybe you can get her to point you in any direction he may have gone. But even if we do find him, I'm not convinced it means a damn thing. Now you up for a little rest-stop? I'm still smelling that hellhole."

• • •

He drove to a cocktail lounge on Wilshire, in the drab part of Santa Monica. Neon highball glass above a quilted door. I'd never been there, but the way he pulled into the parking lot told me he knew it well.

Inside, the place wasn't much brighter than the overpass. We washed our hands in the men's room and took stools at the bar. The decor was red vinyl and nicotine. The resident rummies seemed to be elderly and listless. A few looked dead asleep. The jukebox helped things along with low-volume Vic Damone.

Milo scooped up a handful of bar nuts and fed his face. Ordered a double Chivas and didn't comment when I asked for a Coke.

"Where's the phone?" I said.

He pointed to a corner.

I called Robin. "How's it going?"

"Not bad," she said. "The other man in my life and I are cuddled up watching a sitcom."

"Funny?"

"I don't think so, and he's not laughing- just drooling. Any progress?"

"Not really, but we did give away lots of food."

"Well," she said, "good deeds don't hurt. Coming home?"

"Milo wanted to stop for a drink. Depending on his mood, I may need to drive him home. Go ahead and eat without us."

"Okay… I'll leave a light in the window and a bone in your dish."

16

Though Milo seemed coherent by the time we reached Benedict Canyon, I suggested he sack out in one of the bedrooms, and he agreed without protest. When I awoke Saturday morning at seven, he was gone and the bed he'd slept in was in perfect order.

At nine, my pond maintenance people called to confirm they'd be moving the fish at two p.m.

Robin and I had breakfast, then I drove to the biomed library.

I looked up Wilbert Harrison in the psychiatric section of the Directory of Medical Specialists. His most recent listing was ten years old- an address on Signal Street in Ojai, no phone number. I copied it down and read his bio.

Medical education at Columbia University and the Menninger Clinic, a fellowship in social anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and a clinical appointment at the de Bosch Institute and Corrective School.

The anthro training was interesting, suggesting interests that stretched beyond private practice. But he'd had no academic appointments and his fields of specialty were psychoanalysis and the treatment of impaired physicians and health professionals. His birthdate made him sixty-five. Old enough to have retired- the move to Ojai from Beverly Hills and the lack of a phone listing implied a yearning for the quiet life.

I flipped forward to the R's and found Harvey Rosenblatt's citation, complete with the NYU affiliation and an office on East Sixty-fifth Street in Manhattan. Same address as the Shirley I'd been trying to reach. Had she ignored my call because they were no longer together- divorced? Or something worse?

I read on. Rosenblatt had graduated from NYU, done his clinical training at Bellevue, the Robert Evanston Hale Psychoanalytic Institute in Manhattan, and Southwick Hospital in England. Fields of specialty, psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Fifty-eight years old.

He was listed in the next volume of the directory, too. I worked my way forward in time, until his name no longer appeared.

Four years ago.

Right between the Paprock and Shipler murders.

You're wondering if they've been visited, too.

One way to check: like most house organs, the Journal of the American Medical Association ran obituaries each month. I went up to the stacks and retrieved bound copies, four and five years old for Rosenblatt, ten and eleven for Harrison.