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What you're talking about is still murder."
    Shaw let out a sigh of futility. "But you two have forgotten that, haven't you? All right, let's deal with this on a less philosophical plane. How do we find someone you and the mayor can both live with?"
    Shaw walked in a broad circle around Stocker and Macklin. "What do we do, gentlemen? Approach someone and just say, 'Hello, we've got an assassin working for us. Would you mind playing referee?' Suppose we approach the wrong man and he goes to the Los Angeles Times ?"
    "You'll just have to find the right man, Ronny," Macklin said.
    "I will?" Shaw half smiled. "Guess again."
    Shaw was the one person under Stocker's influence whom Macklin could trust, the only person Macklin knew would look out for his interests as well as the LAPD's. "Ronny, revenge won't work as justification anymore."
    "It never did, Mack." Shaw shook his head. "You're kidding yourself if you think anything will justify it now."
    "Injustice, Ronny, that's our justification," Macklin replied. "The law isn't working. Too many criminals are going free and too many innocent people are getting hurt."
    "Oh, spare me the ethical bullshit and let's get to the point, okay?" Stocker shuffled to his desk and fell into his seat. "We're talking about a fourth man. Someone else who knows, Macklin, that you're Mr. Jury."
    "And knows you're encouraging me."
    "What kind of man are we talking about?" Stocker ran his hands through his hair. Macklin had him by the balls. He had to show Macklin just how crazy the idea was. "A neoconservative ex-judge like Sinclair Thompson, a lunatic liberal lawyer like Frank Swift, or a mercurial Harlan Fitz clone? Face it, Macklin, the three of us are in it alone. We are inextricably bound to each other."
    "Harlan Fitz . . . ," Macklin mused.
    "A big-mouthed, headline-mongering ex-judge turned talk-show personality who has his head securely up his ass," Stocker snapped. Jesus, why can't Macklin understand? "The guy can't figure whether he's on our side or the ACLU's. He's a jackass. We both hate him. Case closed. We're back to square one."
    "I've never heard of Harlan Fitz," Macklin mused, "but he sounds like our man. If both sides can't stand him, he must be doing something right."
    Macklin walked toward the door. "Ronny, you approach him while I scope out Mr. Saputo."
    Before either Stocker or Shaw could object, Macklin was gone.

CHAPTER THREE
    There's no business like show business, it's like no business I know . . .
    The needle was stuck on Brett Macklin's mental turntable. Ethel Merman belted out that lyric again and again in Macklin's head as he glided toward the red light at Overland and Culver Boulevard. He could understand why the song droned on. It was the toll charge the neighborhood exacted for driving through.
    The MGM Studios water tower, with the logo of the company's latest film emblazoned on it, loomed a few blocks up under a blanket of bruised clouds. To his right he saw the Veterans Memorial Building fountain, frothy water gurgling through the sprockets of three intertwined steel strips fashioned like movie film.
    This is movieland, he heard the neighborhood try to convince him, and there is glitter here. You may not see it, but it's here.
    The neighborhood merchants apparently saw it, somewhere behind the age-beaten Premiere Motel or beside Celebrity Hair Styling or around the corner from Al's Star Burgers.
    Macklin didn't see any. Maybe Wesley Saputo, riding in a tan four-door Seville two cars in front of him, did. The light switched to green and the traffic crawled eastward on the rain-slicked street toward downtown Culver City.
    Macklin studied the buildings as he passed them. They looked like the facades pretending to be buildings on a Hollywood backlot. Cement and gray, art deco, fantasyland, urbanity. If one could buy a business district at Ralph's, Macklin thought, this would be in the plain-wrap section.
    He sighed. He'd driven past here a thousand times and never cared