Marsh moaned, covered his face with his hand.

We watched his shoulders heave.

“At least,” he said, “she wasn’t going crazy.”

“That’s important to you.”

“My grandparents- they raised me well, in a pseudo-moral sense. But I came to realize that they weren’t moral people. The way they demeaned Christi, her mother. Even Dad. I hated him but I came to realize that everyone deserves grace and charity. Grandmother and Grandfather always said Christi would end up like her mother. Made jokes about it. ‘Mad as a loon.’ ‘Weaving baskets in Bedlam.’ This was a child they were talking about. My sister. I didn’t like hearing it but I never objected.”

He gathered a handful of hair and twisted it hard enough to pucker the top of his brow.

“They were wrong. That’s good.”

I said, “Did Christi mention any names of people she was working with in the secret agencies?”

“She said she couldn’t. ‘This is covert, Teach. This is the real mindfucking powerful mojo, Teach.’ ”

Marsh slid his cup closer. “Someone misled her… who?”

“Can’t say anything more at this point, sir,” said Milo.

Marsh’s smile was resigned, but it warmed up his face. A man comfortable being disappointed. “Running your own covert operation?”

“Something like that.”

“Can you at least tell me this: Are you feeling any optimism? About finding out who did it?”

“We’re making progress, sir.”

“I guess I have to be satisfied with that,” said Cody Marsh. “Is there anything else?”

“Not at this point, sir.” Milo took his number, and Marsh stood.

“So you’ll call the coroner for me? I really want to see my little sister.”

We watched him leave.

Milo said, “Secret agent mojo. Think she coulda been going off the deep end?”

“I think someone convinced a girl with learning problems that she was playing spy games. Think prepaid phones.”

“Jerry Quick.”

“He hooked her up with Gavin,” I said. “Maybe he decided to give her another assignment: spying on his fellow scamsters. What if he was pulling a con within a con and got discovered and that’s why he’s on the run?”

“Running Christi as a mole.”

“She’d be perfect for the assignment. Undereducated, gullible, low self-esteem, living on the fringe. Growing up with a neglectful alchoholic father, she would’ve craved an older man’s attention. Jerry was an operator who didn’t pay his rent on time, but he did drive a Mercedes and he lived in Beverly Hills. To girls like Angie Paul and Christi, he would seem like a sugar daddy.”

“Christi would be perfect for something else,” he said. “Partying with Hacker and Degussa and bringing Jerry back the info. Compared to those slatterns we just saw them with, Christi would’ve been a prize.”

The saried woman came over and asked if we needed anything.

“How about some mixed appetizers?” said Milo.

She walked off, beaming.

He said, “Bastard buys her Jimmy Choos.”

“And Armani perfume and various other toys,” I said.

“Parks claims he wouldn’t recognize any of the women Hacker and Degussa partied with, but I could show him Christi’s death shot. Problem with that is, he’d freak out and want to evict Hacker and Degussa, so I can’t trust him to keep quiet.”

A tray of fried things arrived.

“Want some?”

“No thanks.”

“All for me, then.” He dipped something round into parsley-topped yogurt. “Christi wasn’t killed just because she happened to be with Gavin. Her cover got blown- hell, maybe she was the target, not Gavin, like we thought at the beginning. That would explain the sexual overtones.”

I thought about that. “Degussa impaled men in prison, and did the same to at least three women. He didn’t impale Gavin. You could be right, he concentrated his rage on Christi. Even with that scenario, though, Gavin was more than an accidental victim. As Jerry Quick’s son, he’d be a target for revenge. Or, Degussa was replaying Flora Newsome.”

“What do you mean?”

“The jealousy scenario,” I said. “If Degussa had partied with Christi, seeing her make love to Gavin would not have made him happy.”

“Degussa was dating Flora,” he said. “Christi was a party girl. This asshole picks up floozies in bars, he’s not into emotional involvement.”

“Maybe he is. Not romantically, but in terms of ownership. You said it yourself: Christi would’ve been a step up. Young, good-looking, compliant. What if Degussa wanted her to himself? Think about the Mulholland crime scene, the way the bodies were found: Gavin’s fly was open and Christi’s top was off. Degussa followed them, watched them park, watched them engage in foreplay. If all he was after was a quick execution, he could’ve stepped in earlier and gotten it over with. Instead, he waited. Watched them. The timing was significant: no consummation. The message was: You may try, but you won’t succeed. By shooting Gavin in front of Christi, he demonstrated to her that he was the dominant male. She was shocked, terrified. Maybe she tried to flirt her way out of it. Degussa shot her, too, then had fun with his iron rod.”

Milo put his fork down. Looked as if the last thing he wanted to do was eat.

I said, “The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. This is a hypermacho, action-oriented psychopath who doesn’t take well to rejection.”

He put cash on the table, called Sean Binchy and ordered him to find two other cops and do a careful surveillance on Hacker and Degussa. “Don’t lose them, Sean.” Hanging up, he rubbed his face. “If you’re right about Jerry Quick assigning Christi to Gavin and to Degussa, he used her in ways she couldn’t imagine.”

He snatched up an appetizer. Gulped it down. Frowned.

“Bad batch?” I said.

“Bad world.”

CHAPTER 44

Roxbury Park-4:40 P.M.

The picnic tables. Shade from the Chinese elms and a declining sun turned the redwood the color of old asphalt.

This late in the afternoon, only four children occupied the play area. Two little boys roaring and running wildly, a toddling girl, hand held by her mother, making her way up the stairs of a double-hump slide and whooshing down. Over and over. Another boy, pensive, alone, sitting and scooping sand and letting it trickle through his tiny fingers. Three uniformed maids discussed something with glee and animation. Blue jays squawked and mockingbirds aped them. Traffic from Olympic was distant and hushed.

The ten-year-old ice-cream truck, once white now gray, was parked facing the fence. The truck’s flanks were decorated with hand-painted renderings of sugary delights in unlikely colors. An elaborately calligraphic statement of ownership read: GLO-GLO FROZEN DESSERTS, PROP: RAMON HERNANDEZ, COMPTON, CALIFORNIA.

On the front passenger seat was a cooler stocked with juice bars, cream sandwiches, and pop-ups. In case anyone asked.

So far, no one had. The trickle of kids and the lateness of the hour combined to discourage commerce. And the truck’s position, too, just out of sight of the play area.

Parked close enough to have a clear view of the picnic tables.

In the driver’s seat sat a detective named Sam Diaz, a technical specialist from Parker Center. Thirty-five, compact, mustachioed, Diaz wore a white sweatshirt over baggy white cotton painter’s pants. A coin dispenser hung from his waist. In his pocket was a commercial food license identifying him as Ramon Hernandez and a wallet full of small bills. Under the sweatshirt rested his holstered 9 mm.

Jerry-built into the truck’s dashboard was forty thousand dollars of long-distance, outdoor recording equipment. The kind National Geographic uses to memorialize birdcalls. The mikes were turned down, and the arias of the jays and mockingbirds were reduced to peeps. So was the noise from the play area: squeaks of high-pitched glee, the murmur of adult voices.