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afternoon, with scattered showers through the weekend, clearing by Monday night. In Santa Teresa, rain is not a common event, and it takes on a festive air when it comes. My impulse, always, is to shut myself inside and curl up with a good book. I’d just picked up a new Len Deighton novel and I was looking forward to reading it.
    At 9:00, reluctantly, I dug out a windbreaker and picked up my handbag, locked the apartment, and headed over to the office. The sun was shining with a brief show of warmth while the bank of charcoal clouds crept in from the islands twenty-six miles out. I parked in the lot and went up the back stairs, passing the glass double doors of California Fidelity, where business was already under way.
    I unlocked my office and dropped my bag on the chair. I really didn’t have much to do. Maybe I’d put in a little bit of work and then head home again.
    My answering machine showed no messages. I sorted through the mail from the day before and then typed up the notes from my visit with Lovella Daggett, Eugene Nickerson, and his sister, Essie. Since no one seemed to know where John Daggett was, I decided I’dtry to get a line on Billy Polo instead. I was going to need data for an effective paper search. I put a call through to the Santa Teresa Police Department and asked to be connected to Sergeant Robb.
    I’d met Jonah back in June when I was working on a missing persons case. His erratic marital status made a relationship between us inadvisable from my point of view, but I still eyed him with interest. He was what they called Black Irish: dark-haired, blue-eyed, with (perhaps) a streak of masochism. I didn’t know him well enough to determine how much of his suffering was of his own devising and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. Sometimes I think an unconsummated affair is the wisest course, in any event. No hassles, no demands, no disappointments, and both partners keep all their neuroses under wraps. Whatever the surface appearances, most human beings come equipped with convoluted emotional machinery. With intimacy, the wreckage starts to show, damage rendered in the course of passions colliding like freight trains on the same track. I’d had enough of that over the years. I wasn’t in any better shape than he was, so why complicate life?
    Two rings and the call was picked up.
    â€œMissing Persons, Sergeant Robb.”
    â€œHello, Jonah. It’s Kinsey.”
    â€œHey, babe,” he said, “What can I do for you that’s legal in this state?”
    I smiled. “How about a field check on a couple of ex-cons?”
    â€œSure, no sweat,” he said.
    I gave him both names and what little information I had. He took it down and said he’d get back to me. He’d fill out a form and have the inquiry run through the National Crime Information Computer, a federal offense since I’m really not entitled to access. Generally, a private investigator has no more rights than the average citizen and relies on ingenuity, patience, and resourcefulness for facts that law enforcement agencies have available as a matter of course. It’s a frustrating, but not impossible, state of affairs. I simply cultivate relationships with people plugged into the system at various points. I have contacts at the telephone company, the credit bureau, Southern California Gas, Southern Cal Edison, and the DMV. Occasionally I can make a raid on certain government offices, but only if I have something worthwhile to trade. As for information of a more personal sort, I can usually depend on people’s tendencies to rat on one another at the drop of a hat.
    I made up a check sheet for Billy Polo and went to work.
    Knowing Jonah, he’d call Probation and pick up Polo’s current address. In the meantime, I wanted to tag some bases of my own. A personal search always pays unexpected dividends. I didn’t want to bypass the possibility of surprise, as that’s