“I’m not the one to say. There are professionals who specialize in that kind of thing.”

“Where do I find them?”

“Let me check,” I said. “I might be able to help you with that.”

“Your court connections?”

“Something like that. In the meantime, why don’t we proceed as planned. I’ll contact the Gabneys and see if it’s okay for me to meet with your mother. If it is, I’ll let you know and you can set up an appointment for me to come by. If it isn’t, we’ll take another look at our options. In either event, you and I should be talking some more. Want to make another appointment?”

“How about tomorrow?” she said. “Same time. If you’ve got the time.”

“I do.”

“Thank you- and sorry if I got too hot under the collar just now.”

“You’re fine,” I said, and walked her to the door for the second time.

“Thanks, Dr. Delaware.”

“Take care of yourself, Melissa.”

“I will,” she said. But she looked like a kid overloaded with homework.

After she was gone, I thought about the way she’d dropped a crumb-trail of crucial facts: her mother’s remarriage, the young man in her life, Dutchy’s death, McCloskey’s return. All of it delivered parenthetically. With an offhandedness that screamed self-defense.

But given everything she had to deal with- loss, ambivalence, crucial decisions, the erosion of personal control- self-defense was damn reasonable.

The control issue had to be especially hard for her. An inflated sense of personal power was the logical legacy of all those years of raising her parent. She’d used it to guide her mother to the brink of change.

Playing matchmaker. Referral service.

Only to be defeated by her own success: forced to stand back and surrender authority to a therapist. To share affection with a stepfather.

Add to that the normal strains and doubts of young-adulthood and it had to be crushing.

Who, indeed, was taking care of Melissa?

Jacob Dutchy had once filled that role.

Though I’d barely known the man, thinking of him gone saddened me. The faithful retainer, ever protective. He’d had a certain… presence.

For Melissa, that amounted to paternal loss number two.

What did that bode in terms of her relationships with men? The development of trust?

If her comments about Don Ramp- and Noel Drucker- were any example, that road hadn’t been smooth, so far.

Now the folks from Cambridge, Mass., were demanding a decision, raising the specter of further surrender.

Who was really afraid of separation?

Not that her fears were totally without foundation.

A Mikoksi with acid.

Why had McCloskey come back to L.A., nearly two decades after his conviction? Thirteen years of imprisonment plus six on parole made him fifty-three years old. I’d seen what prison years could do. Wondered if he was nothing more than a pallid, weary old con, seeking out the comfort of like-minded losers and dead-end haunts.

Or perhaps he’d used the time at San Quentin to let his rage fester. Nursing acid-and-blood fantasies, filling his bottle…

A discomfiting sense of self-doubt began nagging at me, the same feeling of missing the mark that I’d experienced nine years ago- bending all my rules to treat a terrified child.

A feeling of not really having a grip on the core of the problem.

Nine years ago, she’d gotten better despite that.

Magic.

How many rabbits were left in the hat?

A machine answered at the Gabney Clinic, listing numbers and emergency beeper codes for both doctors. No other staff members were named. I left a message for Ursula Cunningham-Gabney, identifying myself as Melissa Dickinson’s therapist and requesting a call-back as soon as possible. During the next few hours several calls came in, but none from Pasadena.

At ten after seven Milo arrived, wearing the same clothes he’d had on that morning, but with grass stains on the pants and sweat stains under the armpits. He smelled of turf and looked tired.

I said, “Any holes in one?”

He shook his head, found a Grolsch in the fridge, popped it, and said, “Not my sport, sport. Chasing a little white blur around the crab grass drives me crazy.”

“Putts you crazy. We’re talking short-distance, guy.”

He smiled. “The only putz is me, for thinking I could go suburban.” Tilting his head back, he guzzled beer. When the bottle was empty he said, “Where to, dinner-wise?”

“Wherever you want.”

“Well,” he said, “you know me, always pining for the haut monde. See, I even dressed for success.”

We ended up at a taco stand on Pico near Twentieth, in the bad part of Santa Monica, inhaling traffic fumes and sitting at a knife-scarred picnic table, eating soft steamed tortillas filled with coarse-ground pork and marinated vegetables, and drinking Coca-Cola Classic over crushed ice out of waxed-paper cups.

The stand stood on a corner patch of devastated asphalt, between a liquor store and a check-cashing outlet. Homeless people, and a few people who wouldn’t live in homes if they had them, loitered and scrounged nearby. A couple of them watched us collect our food at the counter and find our seats. Panhandling fantasies or worse brightened their clouded eyes. Milo kept them at bay with policeman’s looks.

We ate looking over our shoulders. He said, “Basic enough for you?” Before I could answer, he was up and heading toward the order counter, one hand in his pocket. A filthy, emaciated, mat-bearded man around my age seized the moment and approached me, grinning and flapping toothless gums incoherently as he waved randomly with a short-circuited arm. The other limb was drawn up to his shoulder, frozen stiff and bent like a chicken wing.

I held out a dollar bill. The mobile arm snapped it up with crustacean precision. He was off before Milo returned with a cardboard carton full of yellow-papered parcels.

But Milo’d seen it, and scowled as he sat down. “What’d you do that for?”

“The guy was brain-damaged,” I said.

“Or faking it.”

“Either way, he’d have to be pretty desperate, wouldn’t you say?”

He shook his head, unwrapped a taco, and bit into it. When the food had traversed his gullet he said, “Everyone’s desperate, Alex. Keep doing that and they’ll be all over us like fungus.”

It didn’t sound like something he would have said three months ago.

I looked around, saw the way the rest of the street people were regarding him, and said, “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

He pointed at the food parcels. “Go ahead, this is for you, too.”

I said, “Maybe in a little while,” and drank Coke that had turned insipid.

A moment later I said, “If you wanted information about an ex-con, how would you go about it?”

“What kind of information?” he said, forming the words around a mouthful of pork.

“How the guy behaved in prison, what he’s up to now.”

“This con on parole?”

“Post-parole. Free and clear.”

“A paragon of rehabilitation, huh?”

“That’s the question mark.”

“How long’s Mr. Paragon been free and clear?”

“ ’Bout a year or so.”

“What was he in for?”

“Assault, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder- he paid someone to damage someone else.”

“Paid for it, huh?” He wiped his lips.

“Paid with the intent of doing serious damage or worse.”

“Then just assume he’ll continue to be scum.”

“What if I wanted something more specific?”

“To what end?”

“It’s related to a patient.”

“Meaning hush-hush confidential?”