When The Bough Breaks

3

Morton Handler's last residence — if you didn't count the morgue — had been a luxury apartment complex off Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. It had been built into a hillside and designed to give a honeycomb effect: a loosely connected chain of individual units linked by corridors that had been placed at seemingly random locations, the apartments staggered to give each one a full view of the ocean. The motif was bastard Spanish: blindingly white textured stucco walls, red tile roofs, window accents of black wrought iron. Plantings of azalea and hibiscus filled in occasional patches of earth. There were lots of potted plants sunk in large terra-cotta containers: coconut palms, rubber plants, sun ferns, temporary-looking, as if someone planned on moving them all out in the middle of the night.

Handler's unit was on an intermediate level. The front door was sealed, with an L.A.P.D. sticker taped across it. Lots of footprints dirtied the terrazzo walkway near the entrance.

Milo led me across a terrace filled with polished stones and succulents to a unit eater-cornered from the murder scene. Adhesive letters spelling out the word MANGER were affixed to the door. Bad jokes about Baby Jesus flashed through my mind.

Milo knocked.

I realized then that the place was amazingly silent. There must have been at least fifty units but there wasn't a soul in sight. No evidence of human habitation.

We waited a few minutes. He raised his fist to knock again just before the door opened.

"Sorry. I was washin' my hair."

The woman could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. She had pale skin with the kind of texture that looked as if a pinch would crumble it. Large brown eyes topped by plucked brows. Thin lips. A slight under bite Her hair was wrapped in an orange towel and the little that peeked out was medium brown. She wore a faded cotton shirt of ochre and orange print over rust-colored stretch pants. Dark blue tennis shoes on her feet. Her eyes darted from Milo to me. She looked like someone who'd been knocked around plenty and refused to believe that it wasn't going to happen again at any moment.

"Mrs. Quinn? This is Dr. Alex Delaware. He's the psychologist I told you about."

"Pleased to meet you, Doctor."

Her hand was thin and cold and moist and she pulled away as quickly as she could.

"Melody's watchin' TV in her room. Out of school, with all that's been goin' on. I let her watch to keep her mind off it."

We followed her into the apartment.

Apartment was a charitable word. What it was, really, was a couple of oversized closets stuck together. An architect's postscript. Hey, Ed, we've got an extra four hundred square feet of corner in back of terrace number 142. Why don't we throw a roof over it, nail up some drywall and call it a manager's unit? Get some poor soul to do scutwork for the privilege of living in Pacific Palisades…

The living room was filled with one floral sofa, a masonite end table and a television. A framed painting of Mount Rainier that looked as if it came from a Savings and Loan calendar and a few yellowed photographs hung on the wall. The photos were of hardened, unhappy-looking people and appeared to date from the Gold Rush.

"My grandparents," she said.

A cubicle of a kitchen was visible and from it came the smell of frying bacon. A large bag of sour cream-and-onion-flavored potato chips and a six pack of Dr. Pepper sat on the counter.

"Very nice."

"They came here in 1902. From Oklahoma." She made it sound like an apology.

There was an unfinished wooden door and from behind it came the sound of sudden laughter and applause, bells and buzzers. A game show.

"She's watchin' back there."

"That's just fine, Mrs. Quinn. We'll let her be until we're ready for her."

The woman nodded her head in assent.

"She don't get much chance to watch the daytime shows, being' in school. So she's watchin' 'em now."

"May we sit down, ma'am?"

"Oh yes, yes." She flitted around the room like a mayfly, tugging at the towel on her head. She brought in an ashtray and set it down on the end table. Milo and I sat on the sofa and she dragged in a tubular aluminum-and-Naugahyde chair from the kitchen for herself. Despite the fact that she was thin her haunches settled and spread. She took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one up and sucked in the smoke until her cheeks hollowed. Milo spoke.

"How old is your daughter, Mrs. Quinn?"

"Bonita. Call me Bonita. Melody's the girl. She's just seven this past month." Talking about her daughter seemed to make her especially nervous. She inhaled greedily on her cigarette and blew little smoke out. Her free hand clenched and unclenched in rapid cadence.

"Melody may be our only witness to what happened here last night." Milo looked at me with a disgusted frown.

I knew what he was thinking. An apartment complex with seventy to one hundred residents and the only possible witness a child.

"I'm scared for her, Detective Sturgis, if someone else finds out." Bonita Quinn stared at the floor as if doing it long enough would reveal the mystic secret of the Orient.

"I assure you, Mrs. Quinn, that no one will find out. Dr. Delaware has served as a special consultant to the police many times." He lied shamelessly and glibly. "He understands the importance of keeping things secret. Besides—" he reached over to pat her shoulder reassuringly. I thought she'd go through the ceiling "—all psychologists demand confidentiality when working with their patients. Isn't that so, Dr. Delaware?"

"Absolutely." We wouldn't get into the whole muddy issue of children's rights to privacy.

Bonita Quinn made a strange, squeaking noise that was impossible to interpret. The closest thing to it that I could remember was the noise laboratory frogs used to make in Physiological Psych right before we pithed them by plunging a needle down into the tops of their skulls.

"What's all this hypnotism gonna do to her?"

I lapsed into my shrink's voice — the calm, soothing tones that had become so natural over the years that they switched on automatically. I explained to her that hypnosis wasn't magic, simply a combination of focused concentration and deep relaxation, that people tended to remember things more clearly when they were relaxed and that was why the police used it for witnesses. That children were better at going into hypnosis than were adults because they were less inhibited and enjoyed fantasy. That it didn't hurt, and was actually pleasant for most youngsters and that you couldn't get stuck in it or do anything against your will while hypnotized.

"All hypnosis," I ended, "is self-hypnosis. My role is simply to help your daughter do something that comes natural to her."

She probably understood about 10 percent of it, but it seemed to calm her down.

"You can say that again, natural. She daydreams all the time."

"Exactly. Hypnosis is like that."

"Teachers complain all the time, say she's driftin' off, not doing her work."

She was talking as if she expected me to do something about it.

Milo broke in.

"Has Melody told you anything more about what she saw, Mrs. Quinn?"

"No, no." An emphatic shake of the head. "We haven't been talkin' about it."

Milo pulled out his notepad and nipped through a few pages.

"What I have on record is that Melody couldn't sleep and was sitting in the living room — in this room at around one in the morning."

"Must've been. I go in by eleven-thirty and I got up once for a cigarette at twenty after twelve. She was asleep then and I didn't hear her for the while it took me to fall off. I'd 'a' heard her. We share the room."

"Uh-huh. And she saw two men — here it says "I saw big men." The officer's question was "How many, Melody?" And she answered, "Two, maybe three." When he asked her what did they look like, all she could say was that they were dark." He was talking to me now. "We asked her black, Latino. Nothing. Only dark."

"That could mean shadows. Could mean anything to a seven-year-old," I said.

"I know."

"Which could mean two men, or one guy with a shadow, or—"

"Don't say it."

Or nothing at all.

"She don't always tell the truth about everything."

We both turned to look at Bonita Quinn who had used the few seconds we had ignored her to put out her cigarette and light a new one.

"I'm not sayin' she's a bad kid. But she don't always tell the truth. I don't know why you want to depend on her."

I asked, "Do you have problems with her chronically lying-about things that don't make much sense — or does she do it to avoid getting in trouble?"

"The second. When she don't want me to paddle her and I know something's broken, it's got to be her. She tells me no, mama, not me. And I paddle her double." She looked to me for disapproval. "For not tellin' the truth."

"Do you have other problems with her?" I asked gently.

"She's a good girl, Doctor. Only the daydreams, and the concentration problems."

"Oh?" I needed to understand this child if I was going to be able to do hypnosis with her.

"The concentratin' — it's hard for her."

No wonder, in this tiny, television-saturated cell. No doubt the apartments were Adults Only and Melody Quinn was required to keep a low profile. There's a large segment of the population of Southern California that views the sight of anyone too young or too old as offensive. It's as if nobody wants to be reminded from whence they came or to where they will certainly go. That kind of denial, coupled with face lifts and hair transplants and makeup, creates a comfortable little delusion of immortality. For a short while.

I was willing to bet that Melody Quinn spent most of her time indoors despite the fact that the complex boasted three swimming pools and a totally equipped gym. Not to mention the ocean a half-mile away. Those playthings were meant for the grownups.

"I took her to the doctor when the teachers kept sendin' home these notes sayin' she can't sit still, her mind wanders. He said she was overactive. Somethin' in the brain."

"Hyperactive?"

"That's right. Wouldn't surprise me. Her dad wasn't altogether right up there." She tapped her forehead. "Used the illegal drugs and the wine until he—" she stopped cold, looking at Milo with sudden fear.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Quinn, we're not interested in that kind of thing. We only want to find out who killed Dr. Handler and Ms. Gutierrez."

"Yeah, the headshrinker—" she stopped again, this time staring at me. "Can't seem to say anythin' right, today." She forced a weak smile.

I nodded reassurance, smiled understandingly.

"He was a nice guy, that doctor." Some of my best friends are psychotherapists. "Used to joke with me a lot and I'd kid him, ask him if he had any shrunken heads in there." She laughed, a strange giggle, and showed a mouthful of teeth badly in need of repair. By now I had narrowed her age to middle thirties. In ten years she'd look truly elderly. "Terrible about what happened to him."

"And Ms. Gutierrez."

"Yeah, her too. Only her I wasn't so crazy about. She was Mexican, you know, but uppity Mexican. Where I come from they did the stoop labor and the cleanup. This one had the fancy dresses and the little sports car. And her a teacher, too." It wasn't easy for Bonita Quinn, brought up to think of all Mexicans as beasts of burden, to see that in the big city, away from the lettuce fields, some of them looked just like real people. While she did the donkey work.

"She was always carryin' herself like she was too good for you. You'd say hello to her and she'd be lookin' off into the distance, like she had no time for you."

She took another drag on her cigarette and smiled slyly.

"This time I'm okay," she said.

We both looked at her.

"Neither of you gents is a Mex. I didn't put my foot in it again."

She was extremely pleased with herself and I took advantage of her lifted spirits to ask her a few more questions.

"Mrs. Quinn, is your daughter on any sort of medication for her hyperactivity?"

"Oh yeah, sure. The doc gave me pills to give her."

"Do you have the prescription slip handy?"

"I got the bottle." She got up and returned with an amber vial half full of tablets.

I took it and read the label. Ritalin. Methylphenidate hydrochloride. A super-amphetamine that speeds up adults but slows down kids, it's one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for American youngsters. Ritalin is addictive and potent and has a host of side effects, one of the most common of which is insomnia. Which might explain why Melody Quinn was sitting, staring out the window of a dark room at one in the morning.

Ritalin is a sweetheart drug when it comes to controlling children. It improves concentration and reduces the frequency of problem — behaviors in hyperactive kids — which sounds great, except that the symptoms of hyperactivity are hard to differentiate from those of anxiety, depression, acute stress reaction, or simple boredom at school. I've seen kids who were too bright for their classroom look hyper. Ditto for little ones going through the horrors of divorce or any other significant trauma.

A doctor who's doing his job correctly will require comprehensive psychological and social evaluation of a child before prescribing Ritalin or any other behavior modifying drug. And there are plenty of good doctors. But some physicians take the easy way out, using the pills as the first step. If it's not malpractice it's dangerously close.

I opened the vial and shook some pills onto my palm. They were amber, the 20-milligram kind. I examined the label. One tablet three times daily. Sixty mg was the maximum recommended dosage. Strong stuff for a seven-year-old.

"You give her these three times a day?"

"Uh-huh. That's what it says, don't it?"

"Yes, it does. Did your doctor start off with something smaller — white or blue pills?"

"Oh yeah. We had her takin' three of the blue ones at first. Worked pretty good but I still got the complaints from the school, so he said it was okay to try these."

"And this dosage works well for Melody?"

"Works real fine for me. If it's gonna be a rough day with lots of visitors comin' over — she don't do real good with lots of people, lots of commotion — I give her an extra one."

Now we were talking overdose.

Bonita Quinn must have seen the look of surprise and disapproval that I tried unsuccessfully to conceal, for she spoke up with indignation in her voice.

"The doc says it was okay. He's an important man. You know, this place don't allow kids and I get to stay here only on account as she's a quiet kid. M and M Properties — they own the place — told me any time there's complaints about kids, that's it."

No doubt that did wonders for Melody's social life. Chances are she had never had a friend over.

There was cruel irony to the idea of a seven-year old imprisoned amidst single-swingle splendor, tucked away in a slum pocket on an aerie high above the high Pacific, and dosed up with Ritalin to appease the combined wishes of the Los Angeles school system, a dimwitted mother and M and M Properties.

I examined the label on the vial to find out the name of the prescribing physician. When I found it, things began to fall into place.

L.W. Towle. Lionel Willard Towle, M.D. One of the most established and respected pediatricians on the West Side. I had never met him but knew him by reputation. He was on the senior staff of Western Pediatric and a half dozen other Westside hospitals. A big shot in the Academy of Pediatrics. A guest speaker, highly in demand, at seminars on learning disabilities and behavior problems.

Dr. Towle was also a paid consultant to three major pharmaceutical concerns. Translate: pusher. He had a reputation, especially among the younger doctors who were generally more conservative about drugs, as easy with the prescription pad. No one said it too loudly, because Towle had been around a long time and had lots of important patients and plenty of connections, but the whispered consensus was that he was a Dr. feel good for tots. I wondered how someone like Bonita Quinn had ended up in his practice. But there was no easy way to ask without appearing unduly nosy.

I handed the vial back to her and turned to Milo, who'd been sitting through the exchange in silence.

"Let me talk to you," I said.

"Just one moment, ma'am."

Outside the apartment I told him, "I can't hypnotize this kid. She's drugged to the gills. It would be a risk to work with her, and besides, there's little chance of getting anything worthwhile out of her."

Milo digested this.

"Shit." He scratched his head. "What if we take her off the pills for a few days?"

"That's a medical decision. We get into that and we're way out of bounds. We need the physician's permission. Which blows confidentiality."

"Who's the doc?"

I told him about Towle.

"Wonderful. But maybe he'll agree to let her off for a few days."

"Maybe, but there's no guarantee she'll give us anything. This kid's been on stimulants for a year. And what about Mrs. Q? She's scared plenty as is. Take her darling off the pills and first thing she'll do is lock the kid inside twelve hours a day. They like it quiet here."

The complex was still silent as a mausoleum. At one-forty-five in the afternoon.

"Can you at least look at the kid? Maybe she's not that doped."

Across the way the door to the Handler apartment was open. I caught a glimpse of elegance in disarray — oriental rugs, antiques, and severe acrylic furniture broken and upended, blood-spattered white walls. The police lab men worked silently, like moles.

"By now she's had her second dose, Milo."

"Shit." He punched his fist into his palm. "Just meet the kid. Give me your impression. Maybe she'll be alert."

She wasn't. Her mother led her into the living room and then left with Milo. She stared off into the distance, sucking her thumb. She was a small child. If I hadn't known her age I would have guessed it at five, maybe five-and-a-half. She had a long, grave face with oversized brown eyes. Her straight blond hair hung to her shoulders, held in place by twin plastic barettes. She wore blue jeans and a blue-green-and-white-striped T-shirt. Her feet were dirty and bare.

I led her to a chair and sat opposite her on the couch.

"Hello, Melody. I'm Dr. Delaware. I'm a psychologist. Do you know what that is?"

No response.

"I'm the kind of doctor who doesn't give shots. What I do is talk and draw and play with kids. I try to help kids who are sad, or angry, or scared."

At the word scared she looked up for a second. Then she resumed staring past me and sucked her thumb.

"Do you know why I'm talking to you?"

A shake of the head.

"It's not because you're sick or because you've done anything wrong. We know you're a good girl."

Her eyes moved around the room, avoiding me.

"I'm here because you may have seen something last night that's important. When you couldn't sleep and were looking out the window."

She didn't answer. I continued.

"Melody, what kind of things do you like to do?"

Nothing.

"Do you like to play?"

She nodded.

"I like to play too. And I like to skate. Do you skate?"

"Uh-uh." Of course not. Skates make noise.

"And I like to watch movies. Do you watch movies?"

She mumbled something. I bent closer.

"What's that, hon?"

"On TV." Her voice was thin and quivering, a trembling breathy sound like the breeze through dry leaves.

"Uh-uh. On TV. I watch TV, too. What shows do you like to watch?"

"Scooby Doo."

"Scooby Doo. That's a good show. Any other shows?"

"My mama watches the soap operas."

"Do you like the soap operas?"

She shook her head.

"Pretty boring, huh?"

A hint of a smile, around the thumb.

"Do you have toys, Melody?"

"In my room."

"Could you show them to me?"

The room she shared with her mother was neither adult nor childlike in character. It was no more than ten foot square, low — ceilinged with a solitary window set high in the wall, which gave it the ambience of a dungeon. Melody and Bonita shared one twin bed unadorned by a headboard. It was half unmade, the thin chenille spread folded back to reveal rumpled sheets. On one side of the bed was a nightstand filled with bottles and jars of cold cream, hand lotion, brushes, combs and a piece of cardboard onto which a score of bobby pins were clasped. On the other side was a huge, moth-eaten stuffed walrus, made of fuzzy material and colored an atrocious turquoise blue. A baby picture was the sole adornment on the wall. A sagging bureau made of unfinished pine and covered with a crocheted doily, and the TV, were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.

In one corner was a small pile of toys.

Melody led me over to it, hesitantly. She picked up a grimy, naked plastic baby doll.

"Amanda," she said.

"She's beautiful."

The child clutched the doll to her chest and rocked back and forth.

"You must really take good care of her."

"I do." It was said defensively. This was a child who was not used to praise.

"I know you do," I said gently. I looked over to the walrus. "Who's he?"

"Fatso. My daddy gave him to me."

"He's cute."

She walked over to the animal, which was as tall as she, and stroked it purposefully.

"Mama wants me to throw him out 'cause he's too big. But I won't let her."

"Fatso's really important to you."

"Uh-huh."

"Daddy gave him to you."

She nodded, emphatically, and smiled. I'd passed some kind of test.

For the next twenty-five minutes we sat on the floor and played.

When Milo and the mother returned, Melody and I were in fine spirits. We'd built and destroyed several worlds.

"Well, you're sure lookin' frisky," said Bonita.

"We're having a good time, Mrs. Quinn. Melody's been a very good girl."

"That's good." She went over to her daughter and placed a hand on her head. "That's good, hon."

There was unexpected tenderness in her eyes, then it was gone. She turned to me and asked:

"How'd it go with the hypnotism?"

She asked it the same way she might inquire, how's my kid doing in arithmetic.

"We haven't done any hypnosis yet. Melody and I are just getting to know each other."

I drew her aside.

"Mrs. Quinn, hypnosis requires trust on the part of the child. I usually spend a little time with children beforehand. Melody was very cooperative."

"She didn't tell you nothin'?" She reached into the breast pocket of her shirt and pulled out another cigarette. I lit it for her and the gesture surprised her.

"Nothing of importance. With your permission I'd like to come over some time tomorrow and spend a little more time with Melody."

She eyed me suspiciously, chewed on the cigarette, then shrugged.

"You're the doctor."

We rejoined Milo and the child. He was kneeling on one leg and showing her his detective's badge. Her eyes were wide.

"Melody, if it's okay with you, I'd like to come by tomorrow and play with you some more."

She looked up at her mother and began sucking her thumb again.

"It's fine with me," Bonita Quinn said curtly. "Now run along."

Melody sprang for her room. She stopped in the doorway and gave me a tentative look. I waved, she waved back and then she disappeared. A second later the TV began blaring.

"One more thing, Mrs. Quinn. I'll need to talk to Dr. Towle before I do any hypnosis with Melody."

"That's okay."

"I'll need your permission to talk with Dr. Towle about the case. You realize he's professionally bound to keep this confidential, just as I am."

"That's okay. I trust Dr. Towle."

"And I may ask him to take her off her medicine for a couple of days."

"Oh all right, all right." She waved her hand, exasperated.

"Thank you, Mrs. Quinn."

We left her standing in front of her apartment, smoking frantically, taking the towel off her head and shaking her hair loose in the midday sun.

I took the wheel of the Seville and drove slowly up toward Sunset.

"Stop smirking, Milo."

"What's that?" He was looking out the passenger window, his hair flapping like duck wings.

"You know you've got me hooked, don't you? A kid like that, those big eyes like something out of a Keene painting."

"If you want to quit right now, it wouldn't make me happy, Alex. But I wouldn't stop you. There's still time for gnocchi."

"The hell with gnocchi. Let's talk with Dr. Towle."

The Seville was consuming fuel with customary gluttony. I pulled into a Chevron self-serve at Bundy. While Milo pumped gas I got Towle's number from information and dialed it. I used my title and got through to the doctor in a half-minute. I gave him a brief explanation of why I needed to talk with him and told him we could chat now over the phone.

"No," he said. "I've got an office full of kids." His voice was smooth and reassuring, the kind of voice a parent would want to hear at two in the morning when the baby was turning blue.

"When would be a good time to call you?"

He didn't answer. I could hear the bustle of activity in the background, then muffled voices. He came back on the line.

"How about dropping by at four-thirty? I've got a lull around then."

"I appreciate your time, Doctor."

"No bother." And he hung up.

I left the phone booth. Milo was removing the nozzle from the rear of the Seville, holding it at arm's length to avoid getting gasoline on his suit.

I settled in the driver's seat and stuck my head out the window.

"Catch the windshield for me, son."

He made a gargoyle face — not much of an effort — and gave me the finger. Then he went to work with paper towels.

It was two-forty and we were only fifteen minutes from Towle's office. That left over an hour to kill. Neither of us was in a good enough mood to want first rate food, so we drove back to West L.A. and went to Angela's.

Milo ordered something called a San Francisco Deluxe Omelette. It turned out to be a bright yellow horror stuffed with spinach, tomatoes, ground beef, chilies, onions and marinated eggplant. He dug into it with relish while I contented myself with a steak sandwich and a Coors. In between bites he talked about the Handler murder.

"It's a puzzler, Alex. You've got all the signs of a psychotic thrill killer — both of them trussed up in the bedroom, like animals ready for the slaughter. And stuck about five dozen times. The girl looked like she ran into Jack the Ripper with her—"

"Spare me." I pointed to my food.

"Sorry. I forget when I'm talking to a civilian. You get used to it after wading in it for a few years. You can't stop living, so you learn to eat and drink and fart through all of it." He wiped his face with his napkin and took a long, deep swallow of his beer. "Anyway, despite the craziness, there's no sign of forced entry. The front door was open. Normally that would be very puzzling. Except in this case with the victim being a psychiatrist, it might make sense, his knowing the bad guy and letting him in."

"You think it was one of his patients?"

"It's a good possibility. Psychiatrists have been known to deal with crazies."

"I'd be surprised if it turned out that way, Milo. Ten to one Handler had a typical West Side practice — depressed middle-aged women, disillusioned executives, and a few adolescent identity crises thrown in for good measure."

"Do I detect a note of cynicism?"

I shrugged.

"That's just the way it is in most cases. High priced friendship — not that it's not valuable, mind you. But there's very little real mental illness in what most of us — psychiatrists, psychologists — see in practice. The real crazies, the really disturbed ones, are hospitalized."

"Handler worked at a hospital before he went out on his own. Encino Oaks."

"Maybe you'll dig up something there," I said doubtfully. I was tired of being the wet blanket so I didn't tell him that Encino Oaks Hospital was a repository for the suicidal progeny of the rich. Very little sexual psychopathy there.

He pushed his empty plate away and motioned for the waitress.

"Bettijean, a nice slab of that green apple pie, please."

"A la mode, Milo?"

He patted his gut and pondered.

"What the hell, why not. Vanilla."

"And you, sir?"

"Just coffee, please."

When she had gone he continued, thinking out loud more than talking to me.

"Anyway, it appears as if Dr. Handler let someone in to his place sometime between midnight and one and got ripped up for his efforts."

"And the Gutierrez woman?"

"Your quintessential innocent bystander. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"She was Handler's girlfriend?"

He nodded.

"For about six months. From the little we've learned she started out as a patient and ended up going from couch to bed."

A not uncommon story.

"The irony of it was that she was hacked up worse than he was. Handler got his throat slit and probably died relatively quickly. There were a few other holes in him but nothing lethal. It looks as if the killer took his time with her. Makes sense if it's a sexual crazy."

I could feel my digestive process come to a halt. I changed the subject.

"Who's your new love?"

The pie came. Milo smiled at the waitress and attacked the pastry. I noticed that the filling was indeed green, a bright, almost luminescent green. Someone in the kitchen was fooling around with food dyes. I shuddered to think what they could do with something really challenging, like a pizza. It would probably end up looking like a mad artist's palette.

"A doctor. A nice Jewish doctor." He looked heavenward. "Every mother's dream."

"What happened to Larry?"

"He's gone off to find his fortunes in San Francisco."

Larry was a black stage manager with whom Milo had conducted an on-again, off-again relationship for two years. Their last half-year had been grimly platonic. "He's hooked up with some show sponsored by an anonymous corporation. Something racy for educational television, along the lines of "Our Agricultural Heritage: Your Friend the Plough." Hot stuff."

"Bitchy, bitchy."

"No, really, I do wish the boy well. Behind that neurotic exterior was genuine talent."

"How did you meet your doctor?"

"He works the Emergency Room at Cedars. A surgeon, no less. I was following up an assault that turned into manslaughter, he was commandeering the catheters, and our eyes locked. The rest is history."

I laughed so hard the coffee almost went up my nose.

"He's been out of the closet for about two years. Marriage in medical school, messy divorce, excommunication by family. The whole bit. Fantastic guy, you'll have to meet him."

"I'd like to."

"Give me a few days to slog through Morton Handler's life history and we'll double."

"It's a deal."

It was five to four. I let the Los Angeles Police Department pay for my lunch. In the best tradition of policemen the world over, Milo left an enormous tip. He patted Bettijean's fanny on the way out and her laughter followed us out on to the street.

Santa Monica Boulevard was beginning to choke up with traffic and the air had started to foul. I closed the Seville's windows and turned on the air conditioning. I slipped a tape of Joe Pass and Stephane Grappelli into the deck. The sound of "Only a Paper Moon," delivered hot forties style, filled the car. The music made me feel good. Milo took a cat nap, snoring deeply. I eased the Seville into the traffic and headed back to Brentwood.