“A memorial,” Dagmar said. “At Austin’s company, so it won’t be just the two of us and the Katanyans.”

“Good idea,” Charlie said. “I’ll call them and set it up.”

“Call everyone who knew him, whether they worked for the company or not.”

“It better be you who calls BJ,” Charlie said. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t take any calls from me.”

Surprise eddied through Dagmar’s veins. She hadn’t thought about inviting BJ at all.

Well, she thought, why not? BJ wasn’t on bad terms with Austin the way he was with Charlie.

“I’ll call him,” she said, and then couldn’t stop herself from adding another question. “You won’t mind if BJ’s there? ”

“I won’t like it,” Charlie said, “but I’ll remind myself that he’s poor and I’m not, and I’ll feel better.”

Dagmar hadn’t seen much of BJ since her return to California: she met him for lunch every three months or so, usually at an inexpensive diner so that BJ could afford to pay his half. He was very much the man she remembered: smart, quick, witty, easily distracted. She’d kept the conversation away from Charlie and AvN Soft, the company that BJ had cofounded and from which he’d been fired before it achieved success.

It was sad, that the man she remembered as being so brilliant had succeeded in nothing. She would have helped him if she could, but she couldn’t-there was no way Charlie would tolerate her hiring BJ for any of her projects.

His cell phone number was on her handheld and she dialed it. He answered on the third ring.

“Hi,” he said.

There were the sounds of clashing weapons and explosions in the background, electronic combat.

“BJ? ” she said. “Can you pause the game? ”

“No, I’m with a party and on real time. But go ahead and talk.”

His voice was fast and staccato, and Dagmar diagnosed too many cans of Red Bull.

“BJ,” said Dagmar, “did you hear that Austin was murdered? ”

For a long moment all she could hear were the sounds of combat, and she wondered if BJ had heard her. She was about to repeat herself when he spoke.

“No,” he said. “I hadn’t heard that. I guess I’ve been kind of busy.” His voice had slowed, as if shock had somehow knocked the Red Bull off-line.

“There’s going to be a memorial at Katanyan Associates in the next few days. Do you want to come? ”

“Yeah, but…” His voice faded away, and Dagmar heard a particularly violent explosion, followed by a series of gonging sounds. Then the voice came back.

“What happened to Austin? Who killed him? ”

Annoyance at BJ crackled through Dagmar. What did he think he was doing, continuing his game play in the face of this kind of news? She let the annoyance show in her voice.

“It’s too complicated to explain with you distracted,” she said.

“Okay. Sorry. This is how I make my living now, okay? ”

“Right.”

“I’ll call you tonight, okay? ”

“Fine.”

A tone of mischief entered his voice. “Is Charlie coming to the memorial? ”

“He’s organizing it.”

“Maybe I’ll mad-dog him from across the room.”

“No”-sternly-“you won’t.”

“Okay,” he said. “Only if I catch him alone.”

She stabbed the Stop button and cut off the call. It was only then that her phone chimed to tell her that she had voice mail. Her nerves gave a jolt as she recognized Joe Clever’s voice.

“Dagmar,” he said, “I found Litvinov! He’s in room three twenty-two of the Seahorse Hotel in Santa Monica, registered under the Vilumanis name. I wanted to make sure that it was the right guy, so I got a pizza and went to the door and pretended I was delivering to the wrong room. It was him all right!”

Dagmar stared at the office window, the twilight outside.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Joe Clever went on. “Do I call the police or what?

“He was pretty good,” he added. “He stayed in character the whole time.”

Dagmar had reached for a pen and jotted down the relevant information. It took her a few frantic moments to locate Lieutenant Murdoch’s card, and then when she called, he wasn’t in. She persuaded whoever had answered that it was an emergency, and he told her to hang up and expect a return call from Murdoch.

The call came in two minutes. But by the time the police burst into Litvinov’s room, the assassin was gone.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN This Is Not a Code

FROM: Joe Clever

SUBJECT: Re: Stakeout

No, it wasn’t that I alarmed him with the pizza trick. I thought that

went real smooth. I think the police must have made a mistake setting

up their raid.

The Seahorse is a big hotel and I couldn’t watch every exit, so I kept the

front office under surveillance in case Litvinov checked out, but he must

have gone out the back way. His transportation must have been back

there, too, because the police didn’t find his bike or a car or anything.

What do I do now? Keep checking hotels and stuff?

FROM: Dagmar Shaw

SUBJECT: Re: re: Stakeout

Keep checking hotels and stuff.

Don’t contact him this time. Once is intelligible; twice begins to look

like carelessness.

It was hard dealing with Austin’s parents. The mother was prone to silent weeping, and the father was angry. He insisted on going straight to the coroner’s office to make certain that they hadn’t made some kind of mistake. Charlie drove the minivan he’d rented for them, and Dagmar sat in the back with Austin’s mother.

She knew that Austin’s parents had met over gaming, playing D &D back in the seventies. She tried to find the college-aged gamers in them and failed.

She couldn’t bring herself to see Austin’s body. When the father emerged after the viewing, he was pale but angrier than ever. He complained over the forms necessary to ship Austin’s body home to Connecticut and then demanded to meet Lieutenant Murdoch.

Murdoch worked out of the North Hollywood Station, which rather implausibly shared its building with the Studio City Chamber of Commerce. Murdoch had met a lot of grieving parents, fortunately, and met Austin’s father with a bland, helpful demeanor that helped to redirect his anger. He explained that Litvinov would certainly be caught sooner or later, probably when he tried to leave the country, and that a police raid had missed him only by a few minutes the day before, in Santa Monica.

Murdoch tactfully refrained from telling Austin’s parents that the raid had been spoiled when Litvinov was spooked by the appearance on his doorstep of a wild-haired amateur detective claiming to be a pizza delivery man.

Dagmar watched the detectives in their squad room, knowing this would end up in a piece of fiction one day. She noted the metal desks in cubicles, the glowing computers, the pictures of family on the desks, the soft-spoken detectives who contrasted with the wild variety of other people in the room-the slumped or frantic victims, the defiant suspects, the transvestite with the calico dress and the heavy five o’clock shadow, and others too drunk or stoned to do more than sit and stare dully at their surroundings.

Everyone seemed right out of central casting. All that was needed were three sassy hookers.

Lots of guns, she noted. She didn’t know if that made her feel safe or not.

By the time Charlie returned Austin’s parents to their hotel on Cienega, they were clearly exhausted.

“I’ll let you rest,” Charlie said, “and then I’ll take you to Katanyan Associates tomorrow morning.”

Charlie and Dagmar left the room, and Charlie turned to Dagmar. “Can we talk? ”

“Sure.”

“This way.”

Dagmar followed Charlie down the corridor to another hotel room, where his thumbprint opened the lock. She followed him into the room, which turned out to be a corner suite decorated in a Hollywood version of Louis Quinze and scented with sachets of potpourri. A notebook computer sat on a white marble-topped table in the corner, its display showing a Pinky and the Brain screensaver.