She looked down at the box. "I glanced through it. Seems to be mostly Holocaust history. The origins and structure of the Nazi party and neo-Nazi groups. At least that's what he checked out. We've got a very comprehensive civil rights collection, and we put together an entire section on black slavery. But he didn't check out any of that. I was surprised. Which just reminds me how easy it is to stereotype-you've got to fight it constantly. Still, it's the first time I can remember a black kid focusing exclusively on the Holocaust. There was something about him, Milo. A naivete-an optimistic sincerity-that was really touching. You just knew that in a couple of years he was going to get disillusioned and lose some of that. Maybe even all of it. But in the meantime it was nice to see. Why would anyone want to kill him?" She stopped. "Pretty dumb question coming from me."

"It's always a good question," Milo said. "It's the answers that stink. Did he ever mention any family or friends?"

"No. The only time he got even remotely personal was toward the end of his . . . Must have been early September. He came into my office to deliver some books, and after he put them down he kept hanging around. I didn't even notice at first-I was up to my elbows in something. Finally I realized he was still there and glanced up. He looked nervous. Upset about something. I asked him what was on his mind. He started talking about some pictures he'd come across while cataloguing-dead babies out of the crematoria, Mengele's experiments. He was really affected. Sometimes it just hits you, out of the clear blue-even after you've seen thousands of other pictures, one will set you off. I encouraged him to talk, get it all out. Let him go on about why, if there was a God, He could let those things happen. Why did terrible things happen to good people? Why couldn't people be kind to one another? Why were people always betraying one another-brutalizing one another?

"When he was through I told him those were questions humanity had been asking itself since the beginning of time. That I had no answers, but the fact that he was asking them showed he was one cut above the crowd-had some depth to him. The wisdom to question. That the key to making the world a better place was to constantly question, never accept the brutality. Then he said something strange. He said Jewish people question all the time. Jewish people are deep. He said it almost with a longing in his voice-a reverence. I said thanks for the compliment, but we Jews don't have a monopoly on either suffering or insight. That we'd swallowed more than our share of persecution, and that kind of thing did tend to lead to introspection, but that when you got down to it, Jews were like everyone else-good and bad, some deep, some shallow. He listened and got this strange smile on his face, kind of sad, kind of dreamy. As if he were thinking about something else. Then he turned to me and asked me if I'd like him better if he were Jewish.

"That really threw me. I said I liked him just fine the way he was. But he wouldn't let go of it, wanted to know how I'd feel if he were Jewish. I told him we could always use another bright penny in the tribe-was he thinking of converting? And he just gave me another strange smile and said I should be flexible in my criteria. Then he left. We never talked about it again."

"What did he mean, 'criteria'?"

"The only thing I can think of was that he was con-sidering a Reform or Conservative conversion. I'm Orthodox-he knew that-and the Orthodox have more stringent criteria, so maybe he was asking for my approval, asking me to be flexible in my criteria for conversion. It was a strange conversation, Milo. I made a mental note to follow up on it, try to get to know him better. But with the workload it just never happened. Right after that, he stopped showing up. For a while I wondered if I'd said the wrong thing, failed him in some way."

She stopped, laced her hands. Opened a desk drawer, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and blew out smoke.

"So much for quitting. My first all week. Talking about this isn't good for my willpower. Since I got your message I've been wondering if there was something he was asking from me that I didn't give. Some way I could have-"

"Come on, Judy," said Milo. "Dead-end thinking."

She held the cigarette at arm's length. "Yes, I know."

Milo took it and ground it out in an ashtray.

She said, "Been talking to my husband?"

"It's my job," he said. "Protect and serve. Got a few more questions for you. Hate groups. Anything new on the local scene?"

"Not particularly, just the usual fringies. Maybe a slight upswing in incidents that seems to be related to the situation in Israel-a lot of the printed material we've been seeing lately has been emphasizing anti-Zionist rhetoric: Jews are oppressors. Stand up for Palestinian rights. A new hook for them since the U.N. passed the Zionism-is-racism thing. Basically a way for them to sanitize their message. And some of the funding for the worst anti-Semitic literature is coming from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Syria, so I'm sure that's got something to do with it."

"Who'd be breaking into houses and painting anti-Semitic slogans on the walls?"

"That sounds kind of adolescent," she said. "Why? Are you getting a lot of that? If you are, we should know about it."

"Just one incident. At the place Ike used to live and the apartment next door. His landlady was Jewish and the next-door neighbor's a rabbi, so it probably has nothing to do with Ike."

"Milo," she said, "you don't think he was killed because of his work here?"

"Nothing points to that, Judy."

"But you're not ruling it out. You're here because you have at least some suspicion he might have been killed because of his race."

"No, Judy," he said, "I'm a long way from that."

"Kennedy," I said softly.

It was the first time I'd spoken since we entered the room. Both of them stared at me.

"Yeah," said Milo. "There is something else. Along with the anti-Semitic stuff, they wrote, Remember John Kennedy! That make any sense to you?"

"Could," she said, "depending on which John Kennedy you're talking about."

"What do you mean?"

"If they scrawled "John F. Kennedy that wouldn't make much sense. But there was another John Kennedy. Confederate veteran. Lived in Pulaski, Tennessee, and started a social club for other Confederate veterans called the Ku Klux Klan."

I said, "Punks who know history?"

Milo didn't say anything.

We left, taking along the carton of books Ike Novato had checked out.

I said, "What do you think?"

Milo said, "Who the hell knows?"

"Seems to me it's starting to smell more like politics than drugs. Both Novato and Gruenberg have a strong interest in Nazis. Both get killed. Someone breaks into their apartment and paints racist slogans."

Milo frowned, rubbed his face. Then his beeper went off.

I said, "Want me to find a phone?"

"Nah, I'll call from your place."

He did and put down the phone. "Gotta go, fresh d.b. Don't worry-nothing to do with Nazis. Paraplegic in a rest home on Palm-looks like natural causes."

"How come the D-Three goes out on something like that?"

"One of the attendants pulled my guy aside and told him the paraplegic had been pretty healthy the day before-and this wasn't the first funny death they'd had there. Place was full of health code violations, patients getting beaten, sitting in their own shit, not getting their medicine. Owner of the home is politically connected. My guy got nervous. Wanted to know procedure. Procedure is I go out there and play nursemaid."

He walked to the door. "Got any plans for tonight?"

"Nothing."

He pointed at the carton of books. "Got time for some reading?"

"Sure."

"There's a lot of stuff there. You might wanna check first for notes in margins, underlining, that kind of thing. Barring that, maybe a trend in the kind of books he chose-a subpattern, something more specific than just an interest in Nazis. Depending on how complicated it gets over in Palms, I'll try to get back tonight, see if you've come up with anything."

"Am I being graded?"

"Nah, it's pass/fail. Just like real life."

26.

Mahlon Burden had left a message at four.

"He said to tell you," the operator said, "that he's free to pick up where the two of you left off. Any time."

"Thanks."

"He sounded kind of eager," she said. "Burden. Why's that name familiar?"

I told her I had no idea, hung up, finished a long-overdue report, then sat down with the carton of books at seven o'clock.

The first volume I picked up was an English translation of Mein Kampf. I flipped the pages, found no notes in the margins or underlining.

The second book was entitled This Must Not Happen Again: The Black Book of Fascist Horror by Clark Kinnaird. Large print, small press, publication date of 1945.

Flipping through these pages revealed a note in the margin of page 23. The adjoining text read: "Unless it is understood that the Germans made their heinousities as well as their war profitable they are incomprehensible."

What followed was a description of the financial benefits the Nazis had reaped from the racial laws that allowed them to confiscate Jewish property. Next to it, someone had neatly printed in pencil: "Same old story: power and money, no matter what wing."

I turned more pages, found no more notes. Just a clearly written chronology of World War II and lots of pictures, the same kinds I'd seen in the Exhibit Room. I got caught up in the horrors and was still reading at nine-fifteen, when Milo returned.

He said, "Anything?"

"Not yet. How was the rest home?"

"Nothing overly weird, homicide-wise. Despite what the attendant said, the patient did have a history of respiratory problems. Have to wait on the coroner for a definite cause of death."

He gave a disgusted look. "Place was a real Disney land-all those empty eyes. Remind me to amend my will: First signs of infirmity, have me taken out to the desert and shot. You hungry?"

"Not really." I held up the book.

"Hey," he said, "if I only took nutrition when life was pretty, I'd goddam starve to death."

We drove to a sushi bar on Wilshire near Yale. It had been a while since we'd been there and the place had undergone a redecoration: pine bar and shoji screens and samisen music thrown over for purple and black velvet walls, smoked mirrors, laser-art rock posters, and a sound system that would have done DeJon Jonson proud. Same chefs, but new costumes-black pajamas and headbands. They brandished their knives and shouted greetings over the disco beat.

Milo looked at them and said, "Reminds me of the fucking Cong."

"Wanna try someplace else?"

He scanned the array of raw fish at the bar and shook his head. "Comestibles still look good. I'm too tired to go hunting."

We took a table as far away from the noise as possible, ordered hot sake and ice water and lots of food. He finished quickly, called the waitress back, and ordered more shrimp and yellowtail. Just as it arrived, he said, "Oh, shit."

"What."

"Beeper just went off."

"I didn't hear it."

"That's 'cause it didn't make a sound. I've got it on Silent/Vibrate-I can feel it buzzing in my pocket. Rick insisted on it-same one he's got. So when we go to the theater, we won't be offensive to the other theatergoers. 'Course, the last time we went to the theater was back in '85."

I said, "Sounds like something out of Burden's catalogue. Pretty high-tech for the Department."

"What Department? Rick bought it. Promotion gift." He wiped his mouth and got up. "Be back in a sec. Don't touch my shrimp."

But he was gone for a lot longer than a sec, and when he came back he looked very grim.

"What is it?"

"Two more d.b.'s. Double homicide." He stuffed a piece of shrimp in his mouth, threw money on the table, and loped away fast.

I caught up with him. "What's the rush? Thought you were off duty."

"Not for these." We were out on the sidewalk. He ran faster. Passers-by stared.

"What is it, Milo? More nursemaiding?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Nursemaiding like crazy. One of the d.b.'s used to be Samuel Massengil."

The address was on Sherbourne just south of Olympic, a block from Beverly Hills. A maple-lined street of well-kept older two-story duplexes and newer apartments. Quiet neighborhood, solidly middle class. The blinking lights of police cars were visible a block away, a vulgar intrusion.

Milo's ID got us through fast. A uniformed officer directed us to one of the duplexes on the west side of the street: white, Spanish style, wrought-iron grillwork, tasteful landscaping. A yellow Fiat Spider was parked in the driveway under an arched porte-cochere. It had reflector vanity plates that read CHERI T. Crime-scene tape had been stretched across the stucco arch that led to the duplex's ground-level entry. Next to the arch was a large oleander, pruned to tree shape, in full pink bloom.

A young black cop with a long bony face came out of the house. When he saw Milo he touched his hat and said, "Burdette, sir. I'm the one you spoke to."

Milo said, "What do we know, Burdette?"

Burdette looked at me. His eyes filled with questions but he kept them there. "Two bodies out in back, both male cauc, possible gunshot wounds to the head. Definitely d.b. but we called the ambulance anyway-quiet, no siren, just like you said. One's the assemblyman; the other I don't know-ID may be in the pockets but we haven't touched them."

"Probable gunshot wounds?"

"That's what it looks like. The light's not real great out there and we didn't want to get too close, mess up the scene. There's copious pooling blood near both heads and I didn't see any slash marks or bludgeon wounds. Also, the witness . . . the party reporting heard gunshots."

"You're sure it's him?"

"Yes, sir. I'd know that face anywhere, and the P.R. confirmed it."

"Where is the P.R.?"

"Inside. Ground floor."

"Name?"

Burdette pulled out a pad and shined a flashlight. "The name on her license is Cheryl Jane Nuveen. Female black, black and brown, five six, one fifteen, DOB four/eight/fifty-three. This address. No wants or warrants. But some or all of it might not be righteous."

"Why's that?"

"She's a pro."