"I know."

"I've got a college education. I have a good job. You're supposed to go out a lot, but I don't do that. You're supposed to be complete and whole all by yourself, but if I can't have him I feel like I'll die."

"You're in love. People who say the other stuff are saying it either before they've been in love or after the love is over and it hasn't worked out for them, but no one says it when they're in the midst of love. When you're in love, there's too much at stake."

She said, "I've never been with anyone who makes me feel the way that he makes me feel. I've never tried to be. Maybe I should've. Maybe it's all been a horrible mistake."

"It's not a mistake if it's what you wanted." I was breathing hard and I couldn't get control of it.

She stared down into her flute glass, and she traced her fingertip around its edge, and then she stared at me. She didn't look sixteen, now. She was lean and pretty, and somehow available. She said, "I like it that you make me laugh."

I said, "Jennifer."

She put down the flute glass. "You're very nice."

I put down my glass and stood. She went very red and suddenly looked away. She said, "Ohmygod. I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

She stood, too. "Maybe you should go."

I nodded, and realized that I didn't want to go. The sharp pain came back behind my eyes. "All right."

"This wine." She laughed nervously, "and still didn't look at me.

"Sure. Me, too."

I backed away from her and went into the entry hall by the kitchen. I liked the way the tights fit her calves and her thighs and the way the sweatshirt hung low over her hips. She was standing with her arms crossed as if it were cold. "I'm sorry."

I said, "Don't be." Then I said, "You're quite lovely."

She flushed again and looked down at her empty glass and I left.

I stood in the street outside her apartment for a long time, and then I drove home.

Pike was gone and the house was cool and dark. I left it that way. I took a beer from the refrigerator, turned on the radio, and went out onto my deck. Jim Ladd was conning the air waves at KLSX. Playing a little George Thorogood. Playing a little Creedence Clearwater Revival. When you're going to listen to radio, you might as well listen to the best.

I stood in the cool night air and drank the beer and, off to my left, an owl hooted from high in a stand of pine trees. The scent of jasmine now was stronger than it had been earlier in the evening, and I liked it. I wondered if Jennifer Sheridan would like smelling it, too. Would she like the owl?

I listened and I drank for quite a long while, and then I went in to bed.

Sleep, when it finally came, provided no rest.

CHAPTER 15

At ten-forty the next morning I called my friend at B of A. She said, "I can't believe this. Two calls in the same week. I may propose."

"You get that stupid, I'll have to use the Sting tickets on someone else."

"Forget it. I'd rather see Sting." These dames.

"I want to know who financed the purchase of a place called the Premier Pawn Shop on Hoover Street in South Central L.A. " I gave her the address. "Can you help me on that?"

"You at the office?"

"Nope. I'm taking advantage of my self-employed status to while away the morning in bed. Naked. And alone." Mr. Seduction.

My friend laughed. "Well, if I know you, that's plenty of company." Everybody's a comedian. "Call you back in twenty."

"Thanks."

She made the call in fifteen. "The Premier Pawn Company was owned in partnership between Charles Lewis Washington and something called the Lester Corporation. Lester secured the loan and handled the financing through California Federal."

"Ah ha."

"Is that 'ah ha' as in this is important, or 'ah ha' as in you're clearing your throat?"

"The former. Maybe. Who signed the papers?"

"Washington and an attorney named Harold Bellis. Bellis signed for Lester and is an officer in that corporation."

"Bellis have an address?"

"Yeah. In Beverly Hills." She gave it to me, then I hung up, showered, dressed, and charged off to deepest, darkest Beverly Hills. Portrait of the detective in search of mystery, adventure, and a couple of measly clues.

The Law Offices of Harold Bellis were on the third floor of a newly refurbished three-story office building a half block off Rodeo Drive and about a million light-years from South Central Los Angeles. I found a parking space between a Rolls-Royce Corniche and an eighty-thousand-dollar Mercedes two-seater in front of a store that sold men's belts starting at three hundred dollars. Business was brisk.

I went into a little glass lobby with a white marble floor and a lot of gold fixtures and took the elevator to the third floor. Harold Bellis had the front half of the building and it looked like he did very well. There was a lot of etched glass and glossy furniture and carpet about as deep as the North Atlantic. I waded up to a receptionist seated behind a semicircular granite desk and gave her my card. She was wearing one of those pencil-thin headphones so she could answer the phone and speak without having to lift anything. "Elvis Cole to see Mr. Bellis. I don't have an appointment."

She touched a button and spoke to someone, then listened and smiled at me. There was no humor in the smile, nor any friendliness. She said, "We're sorry, but Mr. Bellis's calendar is full. If you'd like an appointment, we can schedule a time next week."

I said, "Tell him it's about the Premier Pawn Company. Tell him I have a question about the Lester Corporation."

She said it into the microphone, and a couple of minutes later a rapier-thin woman with prominent cheeks and severely white skin came out and led me through a long common office where secretaries and aides and other people sat in little cubicles, and then into her office, and then into his. Her office held a bank of designer file cabinets and fresh-cut tulips and the entrance to his office. You want to see him, you've got to get past her, and she wouldn't be easy to beat. She'd probably even like the fight.

Harold Bellis had the corner office and it was big. She said, 'This is Mr. Cole."

Harold Bellis stood up and came around his desk, smiling and offering his hand. He was short and soft with pudgy hands and a fleshy face and thinning gray hair that looked as soft as mouse fur. Sort of like the Beverly Hills version of Howdy Doody. "Thanks, Martha. Harold Bellis, Mr. Cole. Martha tells me you're interested in the Premier Pawn Shop. Would you like to buy it?" He sort of laughed when he said it, like it was an obvious joke and we both knew it. Ha ha.

"Not today, Mr. Bellis, thanks."

Martha looked down her nose at me and left.

Harold Bellis's handshake was limp and his voice was sort of squeaky, but maybe that was just confidence. An original David Hockney watercolor and two Jésus Leuus oils hung on the walls. You don't get the Hockney and the Leuus by being sissy in the clinches. "I'm working on something that brought me across the Premier and I learned that you're an officer in the company that owns it."

"That's correct." Bellis offered me a seat and took the chair across from me. The decor was Sante Fe, and the seating was padded benches. Bellis's chair looked comfortable, but the benches weren't. He said, "I have a meeting with a client now, but she's sorting through records in the conference room, so we can squeeze in a few minutes."

"Great."

"Does this involve Mr. Washington's death?"

"In part."

Bellis gave me sad and shook his head. "That young man's death was a tragedy. He had everything in the world going for himself."

"The police say he was fencing stolen goods. His family suspects that, too."