Head jerks no-no. “Dan says you got questions. You ask, I answer. I play ball.”

“No you’ll cooperate, no you won’t?”

“I cooperate.”

Notebook out. “Who did it? Any ideas?”

“No”—deadpan—no read.

“Enemies. Give me some names.”

“We got no enemies.”

“Come on, you sell narcotics.”

“Don’t say that word in my home!”

EASY NOW: “Let’s call it business. Business rivals who don’t like you.”

Fist shakes no-no. “You make the rules, we play right. We do business fair and square so we don’t make no enemies.”

“Then let’s try this. You’re what we call a suborned informant. People like that make enemies. Think about it and give me some names.”

“Fancy words for snitch and fink and stool pigeon.”

“Names, Mr. Kafesjian.”

“Men in prison can’t break into nice family houses. I got no names for you.”

“Then let’s talk about Tommy and Lucille’s enemies.”

“No enemies, my kids.”

“Think. This guy breaks in, breaks phonograph records and mutilates your daughter’s clothing. Did those records belong to Tommy?”

“Yes, Tommy’s long-play record albums.”

“Right. And Tommy’s a musician, so maybe the burglar had a grudge against him. He wanted to destroy his property and Lucille’s, but for some reason he didn’t get upstairs to their bedrooms. So, their enemies. Old musician buddies, Lucille’s old boyfriends. Think.”

“No, no enemies”—soft—say his brain just clicked on.

Change-up: “I need to fingerprint you and your family. We need to compare your prints against any prints the burglar might have left.”

He pulled a money clip out. “No. It’s not right. I clean my own—”

I squeezed his hand shut. “Play it your way. Just remember it’s Exley’s show, and I owe him more than I owe Wilhite.”

He tore his hand free and fanned out C-notes.

I said, “Fuck you. Fuck your whole greasy family.”

Rip, tear—he trashed two grand easy.

I waltzed before it got worse.

Chapter Seven

Shitwork time.

Pinker labbed the dogs. The print guys got smudges, partials. The crowd dwindled; blues canvassed. Junior logged reports: nothing hot that night, archetypal Kafesjian rebop.

Dig: epic family brawls, all-night sax noise. J.C. watered the lawn in a jock strap. Tommy pissed out his bedroom window. Madge and Lucille: wicked tantrum shouters. Bruises, black eyes—standard issue.

Slow time-let it drag.

Lucille and Madge took off—adios in a pink Ford Vicky. Tommy practiced scales—the lab men popped in earplugs. Beer cans out the windows—Lunch of Champions.

Junior fetched the Herald. A Morton Diskant announcement: press conference, 6:00 tonight.

Time to kill—I hit the lab van, watched the techs work.

Tissue slicing, extraction-our boy jammed the dogs’ eyes down their throats. Back to my car, a doze-bum sleep two nights running stretched me thin.

“Dave, rise and shine”—Ray Pinker, too goddamn soon.

Up yawning. “Results?”

“Yes, and interesting. I’m not a doctor and what I did wasn’t an autopsy, but I think I can reconstruct some things conclusively.”

“Go. Tell me now, then route me a summary report.”

“Well, the dogs were poisoned with hamburger laced with sodium tryctozine, commonly known as ant poison. I found leather glove f ragments on their teeth and gums, which leads me to believe that the burglar tossed them the meat, but didn’t wait for them to die before he mutilated them. You told me you smelled chloroform, remember?”

“Yeah. I figured it was the washrags in their mouths.”

“You’re close so far. But it wasn’t chloroform, it was stelfactiznide chloride, a dry-cleaning chemical. Now, J.C. Kafesjian owns a string of dry-cleaning shops. Interesting?”

The man broke in, stole and destroyed. A psycho, but precise-no disarray. Bold: and time-consuming. Psycho-crazy shit: and neat, precise.

“You’re saying he might know the family, might work in one of the shops.”

“Right.”

“Did you find the girl’s pants?”

“No. We found charred fabric mounds in that garbage can with the dogs, so there’s no way to test the semen for blood type.”

“Shit. Fried pedal pushers sounds just like J.C.”

“Dave, listen. This verges on theory, but I like it.”

“Go ahead.”

“Well, the dogs were chemically scalded right around their eyes, and the bones in their snouts were broken. I think the burglar debilitated them with the poison, clamped down on their snouts, then tried to blind them while they were still alive. Stelfactiznide causes blindness when locally applied, but they flailed too much and bit him. They died from the poison, then he gutted them postmortem. He had some strange fix on their eyes, so he carefully pulled them out, stuffed them down their throats and stuffed the washrags soaked in chemical in their mouths. All four eyeballs were saturated with that chloride, so I rest my case.”

Junior and a bluesuit hovering. “Dave—”

Cut him off: “Ray, have you ever heard of watchdog torture on a 459?”

“Never. And I’ll go out on a limb for motive.”

“Revenge?”

“Revenge.”

“Dave…”

“What?”

“This is Officer Bethel. Officer, tell the lieutenant.”

Nervous—a rookie. “Uh, sir, I got two confirmations on a prowler on this block the night of the burglary. Sergeant Stemmons, he’s had me checking on the houses where nobody was home earlier. This old lady told me she called the Wilshire desk, and this man, he said he saw him too.”

“Description?”

“J-just a young male Caucasian. No other details, but I called the desk anyway. They did send a car out. No luck, and no white prowlers got arrested or Fl carded anywhere in the division that night.”

A lead—shove it at Junior. “Call Wilshire and get four more men to hit the not-at-home addresses, say from six o’clock on. Have them go for descriptions on possible prowlers. Check those files I told you to and go by the first three Kafesjian shops on your list. Ray?”

“Yeah, Dave.”

“Ray, tell Stemmons here your chemical angle. Junior, hit that angle with the employees at the shops. If you get a rabbit, don’t do something stupid like kill him.”

“Why not? Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

“You dumb shit, I want to hear this guy’s take on the Kafesjians.”

Three E-Z Kleen shops—1248 South Normandie closest. I drove over—the pink Ford stood out front.

I double-parked; a guy ran out looking anxious. Make him: Abe Voldrich, Kafesjian high-up.

“Please, Officer. They don’t know anything about this goddamn break-in. Call Dan Wilhite, talk to him about the… uh. .

“Ramifications?”

“Yeah, that’s a good word. Officer—”

“Lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant, let it rest. Yes, the family has enemies. No, they won’t tell you who they are. You could ask Captain Dan, but I doubt if he’d tell you.”

Smart little hump. “So we won’t discuss enemies.”

“Now we’re cooking with gas!”

“What about stelfactiznide chloride?”

“What? Now you’re talking Greek to me.”

“It’s a dry-cleaning chemical.”

“That end of the business I don’t know from.”

Walking in: “I want an employee list—all your shops.”

“No. We hire strictly colored people for the cleaning and pressing work, and most of them are on parole and probation. They wouldn’t appreciate you asking questions.”

Jig crime-no-it played wrong. “Do you have colored salespeople?”

“No, J.C. doesn’t trust them around money.”

“Let me check your storeroom.”

“For that what you call it chemical? Why?”

“The watchdogs were burned with it.”

Sighing: “Go, just don’t roust the workers.”

I skirted the counter. A small factory in back: pressers, vats, darkies folding shirts. Wall shelves: jars, bottles.