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the door clicked behind Dave, when she peered up at him over reading glasses that made her look like a small girl playing grandma.
    “Dave Brandstetter,” Dave said. “Is he in?”
    She read her watch, frowned. “He’s just going home.”
    “He’ll see me,” Dave said. He and Ken Barker went back thirty years, at least. They’d often butted heads. But this had slowly, grudgingly established respect in each man for the other. They’d met when Barker was still a plain detective. Years and work had made him a lieutenant. Now in his sixties, he was a captain. His hair had gone from solid black to pure white. The inner door opened and he bulked in it now, shoulders straining the seams of his shirt, which was, as usual, open at the collar, the knot of his tie pulled down. His nose had been broken long ago, flattened. Heavy brow ridges helped make him look like a boxer. Under them his eyes were gray. He smiled. “You caught me just in time. I’m off to London for a conference tomorrow. Come in.” He waved a thick hand. Dave went past him into the inner office. Barker said, “Tell anyone who calls I’ve already left.” He closed the door.
    Dave said, “Your man Leppard neglected to put into his report on the Adam Streeter death that he’d confiscated the victim’s papers, computer storage disks, cassettes.”
    “The writer? Down at the marina?” Barker sat down.
    “I found only old stuff,” Dave said. “His daughter told me he was working on a hot story about Los Inocentes. There’s nothing there. Not even a note.” Barker nodded at a chair and Dave took it. Day was dying outside the wide vertical steel strips that were blinds on the windows. The place was called the glass house. Until the blinds went up, all that glass made it too hot. Lord, how long ago that was. “He was an active and successful writer. There should have been papers. I’d like to look at them.”
    “Just a minute,” Barker said, “I’ll check.” He worked a telephone on his desk, murmured instructions into it, and hung up the receiver. “You’re on this for which insurance company? Not Medallion.”
    “Somehow,” Dave said, “they never think of me. No, it’s Banner. Otis Lovejoy. I wish I had a secretary.”
    “What about that youngster, Harris?” Barker said.
    “You saw his bullet scars,” Dave said. “He’s gone back to television news. If you look sharp, you may see him.”
    Barker nodded. “I have.” He got out of his chair. Not with the spring of thick muscle he used to possess. Heavily. He opened a cabinet of burled wood. Inside stood bottles and glasses. “Martini?” He didn’t turn to see if Dave nodded. He bent to the bottom section of the cabinet and found ice cubes there. “Just the other night.” Barker dropped ice cubes into glasses. “That shooting in San Feliz—the young Latino with no ID. Your kid was right on top of it. He knows how to ask questions.” Barker came with Dave’s drink, set his own on the desk, went back and folded shut the glossy cabinet doors. He sat behind the desk, lifted his glass, gave Dave a tight little grin. “I wonder where he learned that.”
    Dave twitched him a smile. “I wonder,” he said.
    The phone rang and Barker picked it up. He listened and frowned. He listened some more, grunted, hung up the receiver. “Leppard didn’t find any papers. Just like you.”
    “Is he looking for them?” Dave said. “I think the papers are what got Streeter killed. Find the papers, find the killer. Leppard doesn’t strike me as wide awake.”
    “He was this morning,” Barker said. “He arrested the killer. A writer called Mike Underhill.”
    “Did Underhill have the papers?” Dave said.
    “No, but he had something better—a hundred thousand dollars in cash. Streeter’s money from a deal he’d struck with a television producer. Leppard got confirmation of that from Streeter’s bank.”
    “It was to buy a Cessna 404 from a man named McGregor.”
    Barker cocked an