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clean the house.”
    I nodded.
    “Someone has to hold this family together.”
    I thought there might be tears but her eyes were clear and sharp and hard behind the glasses. Determined. She put the remainder of her papers back into the box, put the top on the box, and again sealed it with the big rubber band. The matter-of-fact eyes came back to me and she dug out the wad of bills. “We never settled the amount of your fee.”
    “Forget it.”
    The eyes hardened. “How much?”
    We sat like that, and then I sighed. “A hundred dollars should do it.”
    The hard eyes narrowed. “In your office you said two thousand.”
    “It’s not as big a job as I thought. A hundred now, a hundred when I find him.”
    She peeled off two of the hundreds and gave me both. “Take it all now. I’d like a receipt.”
    I gave her the receipt, and then I left to find her father.

4
    I phoned information for Enright’s address, then left Teresa Haines alone with her coffee and laundry, and headed south along La Cienega toward Culver City. I wanted to tell her not to drive, and to be careful if she walked to the mall, but I didn’t. She had been living like this for quite a while, and I knew she would ignore me because I would be saying it more for me than for her. That’s the way adults often talk to children. You know they’re not going to listen, but you want to tell them anyway just so you know that you have.
    Enright Quality Printing was located in a two-story industrial building just off Washington Boulevard three blocks from Sony Pictures. On the way down, I was thinking it would be a small copier place like a Kinko’s, but it wasn’t. Enright was a big commercial outfit with employees and overhead and presses that run twenty-four hours a day, the kind that does large-scale jobs on contract for businesses and government. The building occupied most of the block, and what wasn’t building was a neat, manicured parking lot for their corporate customers and a loading dock for the six-wheelers that delivered their products. The loading dock was busy.
    I put the car in the parking lot, then went through the front entrance into a little waiting room. An industrial rack was built into one wall, filled with pamphlets and magazines and thick heavy manuals of the kind Enright produced. There were chairs for waiting and a counter with a young woman behind it. I showed her a card and said, “Is there someone in charge I might see?”
    She looked at the card as if it were written in another language. “Sorry. We don’t do cards.”
    I took back the card. “I don’t want cards. I’d like to speak with someone in authority.”
    She squinted at me. “You mean Mr. Livermore?”
    “Is he in charge?”
    “Unh-hunh.”
    “Then that’s who I’d like to see.”
    “Do you have an appointment?”
    “Nope.”
    “He might be busy.”
    “Let’s give it a try.”
    If we’re patient we’re often rewarded.
    She said something into her phone and a few minutes later a short, thin man who was maybe a hundred years old came out of the offices and scowled at me. “You want something printed?”
    “Nope. I want to ask you about a former employee.”
    I gave him the card and he scowled harder. “This is shit work. Ya oughta get your money back.” He handed the card back and I put it away. Just the way you want to start an interview, getting crapped on by an expert. “You the cops?”
    “Private. Like it says on the card.”
    He made a brushing gesture. “I didn’t get that far. I see shit printing, I gotta look away.” This guy wouldn’t let up. He said, “Listen, you wanna talk, I’ll talk, but you gotta walk with me. I got some ass to kick.”
    “No problem.”
    I followed him along the hall and onto the floor of the printing plant, walking fast to keep up with him. I guess he was anxious to start kicking ass.
    The plant itself was large and air-conditioned and brightly lit with fluorescent lights. It smelled of warm paper.