“How much wiring of our mope do we have to do?” said Reed.

“Recorder goes in his pants pocket, we cut a hole in there, run one cable up to the pen in his shirt pocket, I substitute the button for one of his and install the video feed. Any of you guys sew?”

Silence.

“Great, so now I’m your tailor. Be sure he’s wearing a shirt with a pocket and that it already has buttons the same color. And don’t even think of asking me to donate one of mine. There are limits.”

Reed said, “He’s wearing a blue button-down with white buttons. Brand new, courtesy his lawyer.”

“Wallenburg,” said Fox. “I thought she was corporate. What’s her connection to him anyway?”

“It’s complicated,” said Milo. “Ever work with her?”

“I wish-hey, maybe if this works out, you can put in a good word and she’ll send me some of those Enron-Worldcom cases.”

Reed said, “Maybe if?”

“I wish you the best,” said Fox, “but hardware’s one thing, the human factor’s another. When I play with these toys I’m in charge-wearing it myself, or rigging up one of my freelances. My people usually have SAG cards. You’re working with a guy with mental problems.”

“He’s motivated,” said Reed.

“Good intentions, and all that?”

Milo said, “Road to heaven.”

“If you say so.”

Travis Huck’s reaction to the plan had changed his demeanor. Evaporation of fear, a smile almost broad enough to hide his lopsided mouth. I wondered if his concept of heaven included early arrival but said nothing. What would be the point?

Aaron Fox said, “You’re sure all you want me to do is sit on my ass and check the feed?”

“That’s it,” said Milo.

“Aw, shucks.”

“You want action, Aaron, you can always come back to the real job.”

“Gee, why didn’t I think of that. I guess billing for my time on this-not to mention having the department insure my gear-is a fantasy.”

Milo said, “I’ll guarantee full coverage of the hardware on my own ticket. And who knows, everything works out you might get the dough Simone owes you.”

“Oh, I’ll get it,” said Fox. “One way or the other.”

CHAPTER 41

Seven fifty p.m., La Costa Beach, Malibu.

The world has compressed, its boundaries the black-rimmed rectangle of a nineteen-inch laptop screen.

Green-and-gray world, tinted by infrared illumination. In the background, waves roll in a lazy, almost sexual rhythm.

A man stands by the tide line, motionless.

I sit at a long table of ancient pine. My seat affords me an oblique view of the screen. Milo faces the laptop, moves his face close to it at times, then he retreats, polishing off more Red Bull.

Aaron Fox is positioned to his left. He drinks sparingly, almost daintily, from his personal bottle of Norwegian Fjord Spring Water. In between swallows, he chews cinnamon gum.

Moe Reed stands in a corner and watches the ocean.

The table is a seven-foot trestle, waxed and knotted and criss-crossed with scars that look calculated. It fills most of the dining space of a house ten lots north of the late Simon Vander’s beach escape. Like Vander’s place, this residence is a smallish two-story box on battered, creosote-coated pilings, worth eight figures. Unlike Vander’s wood-sheathed bungalow, its walls have been stuccoed whale-belly blue, its windows upgraded to copper-tinted, rust-resistant double-hungs. The interior is cozy, under a beamed ceiling, wired for concert-hall sound and cutting-edge video. The walls are dead-white diamond plaster, set sparingly with the type of art that gets people cracking wise about their kids being able to paint just as well.

The furniture’s at odds with all that, a carryover from the house’s former life as a “rural beach cottage.” Rattan and wicker and chunky easy-use wood pieces, many of which resemble the thrift-shop discards they are, are set up carelessly over faded machine-made Oriental rugs slightly soured by mold. The kitchen is barely big enough for two people to stand in. A stainless-steel Sub-Zero and purplish granite counters overachieve.

Décor doesn’t matter, tonight. I suspect it never matters much, with a western wall of sliding glass offering a fine view of the Pacific.

The doors are open, the ocean shouts, I catch glimpses of stars above the overhang of the deck.

My eyes return to the screen.

The miniature world remains inert. I touch the smooth, waxed surface of the table. Nice; maybe it really was “rescued” from a monastery in Tuscany, as the house’s current resident claims.

She’s the sister of the owner, sponging happily. Her brother is an expatriate British rock star, now on reunion tour in Europe. Moe Reed gave me credit for finding the place but the real connection was Robin, who’d worked on the star’s guitars years ago, when he had to pay her on the installment plan.

The beach house joins four other residences in his real estate portfolio: Bel Air, Napa, Aspen, a pied-à-terre in the San Remo on Central Park West.

The sister is a fifty-three-year-old self-described “production assistant” named Nonie who doesn’t bother to tell us her last name, as if we don’t deserve more than the minimum. Tall and white-blond and sun-seamed; her midriff blouse reveals a navel that should never have been pierced. She works hard at looking thirty, hasn’t labored at anything else for years. Her attitude is imperiously clear: Police work is one step above septic-scrubber and Milo and Reed and Fox and I should be genuflecting every ten seconds for the privilege of using her borrowed space.

Her brother would not approve of such frost. Terming her “an insufferable mooch” when Robin reaches him in Lisbon, he agrees readily to donate the house.

“Thanks, Gordie.”

“Sounds exciting, luv.”

“Hopefully it won’t be.”

“What-oh, yeah, of course. Either way, it’s yours for as long as you need it, luv. Thanks for cleaning the bridge pickup on the Tele. Just played it in front of seventy-eight thousand people and it sang.”

“That’s great, Gordie. You’ll tell Nonie we’ll be showing up?”

“Did it right off, told her to cooperate fully. She gives you any trouble, tell her there’s always her own pathetic dive.”

Gordie’s call notwithstanding, Nonie chooses to be cranky. Milo adopts a more diplomatic approach than that suggested by Gordie, listening patiently as Nonie drops name after name, flicks her hair, drinks brandy, struggles pathetically to bask in her sibling’s reflected fame.

When she stops to take a breath, he gets her talking about the table from Tuscany, applauds her good taste without laying it on too thick. Despite the fact that she’s never actually come out and claimed she found it.

She peers at him suspiciously, but is eventually won over by his persistence and her own need to feel important.

When the time is right, he gives her a hundred dollars and asks her to leave for her own safety, have a nice dinner on LAPD. The money comes out of his own pocket. Nonie looks at the cash. “The places I go, this might cover drinks.”

Milo peels off more bills. She accepts them with a look of great personal sacrifice, fetches her Marc Jacobs bag, puts on her Prada shawl, stomps toward the door on her slingback Manolos.

Moe Reed walks her outside to her Prius. Remains with her until she hangs a reckless right turn onto Pacific Coast Highway, narrowly avoids collision with an oncoming SUV, speeds off amid a chorus of horns.

Before Reed returns to the house, he gazes south, though he has no hope of spotting Detective Sean Binchy a hundred fifty yards away, stationed in an unmarked sedan in front of a shuttered pizza joint. A cheap laptop sits on the passenger seat, programmed to stream the same feed Aaron Fox has rigged into his computer. Getting the “inferior piece of crap” to cooperate has turned out to be the biggest hitch so far, with Aaron Fox cheerfully demeaning civil service “snitware” before finally succeeding. Even after the connection is made, transmission is spotty, sound obscured by the traffic on PCH.