“Yes?”

“Police.”

“Yes?”

“We'd like to talk to you, ma'am.”

“To me?” Husky voice, thick accent.

“Yes, ma'am. Could you please open the door?”

“Police?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“It's very late.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but this is important.”

“Yes?”

“Ma'am-”

“You wish to talk to me?”

“About Hermes Electric, ma'am.”

The peephole shut.

The door opened.

She was forty or so, five three and stout and barefoot, wearing a white Armani X sweatshirt over black sweatpants. Her brown hair was chopped short and her face was pleasant, maybe pretty ten years ago, with a small but bulbous nose shadowing full lips.

Beautiful complexion- rosy cheeks over ivory. Gray eyes, searching and alert under precisely plucked brows.

She'd opened the door just enough to accommodate her hips. Over her head was a darkened front room.

“Ms. Budzhyshyn?” said Milo.

“Yes.”

“Hermes Electric?”

One-beat pause. “I am Hermes Language School,” she said, pronouncing it Hoor-meez. She smiled. “Is there problem?”

“Well, ma'am,” said Milo, “we're a little confused. Because your address also matches a company called Hermes Electric out in the Valley.”

“Really?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“That is… a mistake.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What about Mr. Almoni?”

She backed away from the door and narrowed the opening.

“Who?”

“Almoni. P. L. Almoni. He drives a van for Hermes Electric. Has a post-office box not far from here.”

Irina Budzhyshyn said nothing. Then she shrugged. “I don't know him.”

“Really.” Milo leaned forward and his foot slid closer to the door.

She shrugged again.

He said, “You're Hermes and they're Hermes and their number is listed with your address.”

No answer.

“Where's Almoni, ma'am?”

Irina Budzhyshyn stepped back farther, as if to close the door, and Milo took hold of it.

“If you're protecting him, you could be in deep trouble-”

“I don't know this person.”

“No such guy? It's a fake name? Why does your boyfriend need one?”

Barking out the questions. The stout woman's lips blanched but she didn't answer.

“What else is phony? Your language school? The data-manager job at Metropolitan Title? What do you really do for a living, Ms. Budzhyshyn? Whether or not you tell us, we'll find out, so save yourself some trouble right now.”

Irina Budzhyshyn remained impassive.

Milo forced the door wider and she sighed.

“Come in,” she said. “We'll talk some more.”

She turned on a table lamp shaped and colored like a larva. Her living room was like thousands of others: modest proportions, low ceiling, wall-to-wall brown nylon, forgettable furniture. A folding card table and three folding chairs established a dining area. Behind a white Formica counter was a pale oak kitchen.

“Please sit,” she said, fluffing her short hair to no visible effect.

“That's okay,” said Milo, gazing at a back doorway blocked by strings of wooden beads. Through it I saw an open bathroom door: night-light dimness, underwear over a shower door.

“How many other rooms back there?”

“One bedroom.”

“Anyone there?”

Irina Budzhyshyn shook her head. “I am alone… Would you like some tea?”

“No thanks.” Milo took out his gun, passed through the beads, and turned left. Irina Budzhyshyn stood there, not moving, not looking at me.

A minute later he returned. “Okay. Tell us about Hermes Electric and Mr. P. L. Almoni.”

This time the name made her smile. “I need to make a phone call.”

“To who?”

“Someone who can answer your questions.”

“Where's the phone?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Anything else in there I should know about?”

“I have a gun,” she said calmly. “In the drawer next to the refrigerator, but I'm not going to shoot you.”

With a few quick strides, he retrieved it. Chrome-plated automatic.

“Loaded and ready.”

“I'm a woman living alone.”

“Any other arms?”

“No.”

“And no P. L. Almoni lurking in some attic?”

She laughed.

“What's funny?”

“There's no such person.”

“If you don't know him, how can you be sure?”

“Let me make the call and you'll understand.”

“Who're you going to call?”

“I can't tell you until after I make the call. You're not a county sheriff so I don't even have to cooperate with you.”

Statement of fact, no defiance.

“But you're cooperating anyway.”

“Yes. It's… practical. I'm going to call now. You may watch me.”

They went into the kitchen and he stayed right next to her, towering over her, as she punched numbers. She said something in a foreign language, listened, said something else, then handed the receiver to him.

As he pressed it to his ear, his jaws bunched.

“What? When?” He was growling now. “I don't… okay, all right. Where?”

He hung up.

Irina Budzhyshyn left the kitchen and sat on a couch, looking content.

Milo turned to me. He was flushed and his shirt looked tight. “That was Deputy Consul Carmeli. We're to meet him at his office in fifteen minutes. Sharp. Maybe this time we'll actually get past the goddamn hall.”

24

Wilshire was empty as we pulled up in front of the consulate building. By the time we were out of the car, someone was standing in front of the unlit lobby door.

He studied us, then came forward into the streetlight. Young man in a sportcoat and slacks. Big shoulders, big hands, one of them carrying a walkie-talkie. His hair was dark and very short, just like that of the guard behind the consulate reception window. It could have even been the same man.

“I'll take you up,” he said in a flat voice.

Striding ahead of us, he unlocked the door and walked across the echoing lobby. The three of us rode up to the seventeenth floor. He looked bored.

The door opened on Zev Carmeli standing in the corridor. He said, “B'seder,” and the young man remained in the elevator and rode down.

Carmeli was wearing a dark suit and white shirt, no tie, and he reeked of tobacco. His hair had been watered and combed but several cowlicks sprouted.

“This way.” He did an abrupt about-face and led us to the white door of the same conference room. This time we walked through and out the back into the cubicles of the work area. Office machines, a water cooler, corkboard full of memos, the travel posters I'd seen through the reception window. The fluorescent panels in the ceiling were off and light came from a single corner pole lamp. Nothing to distinguish the place from any other site of repetitive-motion injury.

Carmeli kept going, hunched, arms swinging loosely, til he reached a door with his name on it. Twisting the knob, he stood aside and let us enter.

Like Irina Budzhyshyn's apartment, his office was characterless, with blue drapes over what I assumed were windows, a wall of half-empty board-and-bracket shelves, a wooden desk with steel legs, gray sofa and love seat.

A man sat on the love seat and when we came in he stood, keeping his left hand in the pocket of his blue jeans.

Late thirties to forty, five seven, around 140, he wore a black nylon windbreaker, pale blue shirt, black athletic shoes. His tightly kinked hair was black tipped with gray and trimmed to a short Afro. His face was lean, very smooth, cafÉ-au-lait skin stretched tightly over finely molded features. A strong nose was anchored by flared nostrils and his lips were wide, full and bowed. Very light brown eyes- golden, really- and shaded by long, curved lashes. Arched eyebrows gave them the look of permanent surprise but the rest of his face contradicted that: static, unreadable.