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may as well understand that right now.”
    “How much will you need?”
    “A fifteen-hundred-dollar retainer up front, then a-hundred-and-fifty dollars a day after that. Plus expenses. You have that kind of money?”
    “Yes.” Flowers never flinched, just nodded his head once more.
    Gunner wanted to ask how Flowers could have come into that kind of wealth—he didn’t exactly look like someone a banker would race down the street to meet, deposit slip in hand—but the investigator couldn’t think of a way to phrase the question that any self-respecting adult wouldn’t find insulting. So instead, he merely asked, “You’re sure this thing means that much to you?”
    Again, Flowers’s head inched up and down affirmatively. “I’ve had eight months and all weekend to think about it,” he said. “I’m not going to turn back now.”
    He was giving Gunner one final chance to bow out gracefully, his eyes issuing a silent promise that he would bear no grudges if the investigator did. For a split second, Gunner almost had the sense that he really had a choice in the matter—but of course, that was only a hopeless delusion. What he had told Flowers about the sorry state of his client list had been no overstatement; he needed the work, and badly.
    And so common sense lost yet another duel with practicality. The wide berth he was always so careful to give the police in Los Angeles was about to be dispensed with, and all because he didn’t know where his next meal was going to come from.
    Chalk up another one for hunger, Gunner thought to himself. The great motivator.
    “You’re going to have to tell me everything, starting at the very beginning,” he told Flowers, trying to sound optimistic. “But first, I’m going to need another beer.”
    He stood up and headed for the kitchen.

2

    One good thing about Matthew Poole was, he wasn’t a fancy eater. You could take him to any International House of Pancakes in town and he would feel more than sufficiently bribed. Gunner considered himself lucky that Poole, one of his few decent contacts within the LAPD, didn’t have richer tastes; homicide detectives, in general, usually charged a private operator an arm and a leg just to relate the time of day.
    “Nobody’s gonna tell you shit, that’s number one,” Poole said, stuffing a sausage into his mouth with great relish. “Do you really need a number two?”
    He and Gunner were part of a small, prenoon crowd patronizing the IHOP franchise on Manchester Avenue in Inglewood, only a short jog west of the Great Western Forum where the Lakers mourned the loss of Magic Johnson when they weren’t doing it out on the road. As usual, Gunner had called the detective on short notice—less than ten hours after having agreed to take Mitchell Flowers on as a client—but Poole had driven halfway across the city from his Seventy-seventh Street station environs to meet with Gunner nevertheless. His love of a free meal was that reliable.
    “I was kind of hoping it would help to be on the home team’s side for a change,” Gunner told Poole, stirring some stale cream into his coffee.
    “Hope springs eternal, friend, but it won’t save your ass in a pinch.”
    “If I put that on a plaque and hung it up somewhere, would you charge me for the privilege, Poole?”
    “Look, Gunner—I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Nobody down at Southwest’s gonna talk to you. You’re a private ticket, it’s not gonna matter who you say you’re working for.” He went to work on his eggs without missing a beat and said, “Who’d you say your client was, again?”
    “I didn’t say. And it wasn’t because I forgot to mention.”
    “You see? You fucking PI’s are all alike. Take, take, take, that’s all you know. You wanna ask a shitload of questions, but not have to answer any. Is that fair?”
    “I’m not implying that you’d let it get around, Lieutenant, but if I were to tell you who my client is, it’s