Madge at the back door, looking out. Heavy makeup-Pan-Cake over bruises.

Ray nudged me. "She doesn't look Armenian."

"She's not, and their kids don't look it either. Ray--"

"Yeah, I'll pad it."

Back to the street--rubberneckers swarming. Junior and Tommy K. locking eyes.

Tommy, porch loafer: bongo shirt, pegger pants, sax.

Junior sporting his new look: whipped dog with a mean streak.

I braced him--avuncular. "Come on, don't let that guy bother you."

"It's those looks of his. Like he knows something I don't."

"Forget about it."

"You didn't have to kowtow to him."

"I didn't disobey my CO."

"Dave . . ."

"Dave nothing. Your father's an inspector, he got you the Bureau, and my Ad Vice command was part of the deal. It's a game. You owe your father, I owe your father, I owe Dan Wilhite. We both owe the Department, so we have to play things like Exley's off the deep end on this deal. Do you understand?"

"I understand. But it's your game, so just don't tell me it's right."

Slap his f.u.c.king face--no--don't. "You pull that idealistic s.h.i.t on me and I'll hand your father a fitness report that will bounce you back to a teaching job in record G.o.dd.a.m.n time. _My game got you where you are_. You play along or you see 'ineffectual command presence,' 'overly volatile' and 'poor composure in stress situations' on Daddy's desk tonight. You call it, Sergeant."

Punk bravado: "_I'm playing_. I called the p.a.w.nshop Detail and gave them a description of the silverware, and I got a list of Kafesjian's drycleaning shops. Three for you, three for me, the usual questions?"

"Good, but let's see what the patrolmen turn first. Then, after you hit your three, go downtown and check the Central burglary files and Sheriff's files for 459s with similar MOs. You turn some, great. If not, check homicide unsolveds--maybe this clown's a G.o.dd.a.m.n killer."

A stink, fly swarms--lab men hauled the dogs out, dripping garbage.

"I guess you wouldn't tell me these things if you didn't care."

"That's right."

"You'll see, Dave. I'll prove myself on this one."

Tommy K. honked his sax--spectators clapped. Tommy bowed and pumped his crotch.

"Hey, Lieutenant! You come and talk to me!"

J.C. on the porch, holding a tray out. "Hey! We have an eye opener!"

I walked up. Bottled beer--Tommy grabbed one and guzzled. Check his arms: skin-pop tracks, swastika tattoos.

J.C. smiled. "Don't tell me too early for you."

Tommy belched. "Schlitz, Breakfast of Champions."

"Five minutes, Mr. Kafesjian. Just a few questions."

"I say all right, Captain Dan said you okay, this thing is not your idea. You follow me. Tommy, you go offer the other men Breakfast of Champions."

Tommy dipped the tray a Ia carhop. J.C. bowed, follow-me style. I followed him into the den: pine walls, gun racks. Check the parlor-- print men, carhop Tommy hawking beer.

J.C. shut the door. "Dan told me you just going to go through the motions."

"Not quite. This is Ed Exley's case, and his rules are different than ours."

"We do business, your people and mine. He knows that."

"Yeah, and he's stretching the rules this time. He's the Chief of Detectives, and Chief Parker lets him do what he wants. I'll try to go easy, but you'll have to play along."

J.C.: greasy and ugly. Face scratches--his own daughter clawed him. "Why? Exley, he's crazy?"

"I don't know why, which is a d.a.m.n good question. Exley wants the major-case treatment on this one, and he's a better G.o.dd.a.m.n detective than I am. I can only bulls.h.i.t him so far."

J.C. shrugged. "Hey, you smart, you got more juice. You a lawyer, you tight with Mickey Cohen."

"No. I fix things, Exley runs things. You want smart? Exley's the best detective the LAPD's ever seen. Come on, help me. You don't want regular cops nosing around, I understand that. But some piece-of-s.h.i.t burglar breaks in here and rips up-"

"I clean my own house! Tommy and me, we find this guy!"

Easy now: "No. We find him, then maybe Dan Wilhite gives you a shot. No trouble, nice and legal."

Head jerks no-no. "Dan says you got questions. You ask, I answer. I play ball."

"No you'll cooperate, no you won't?"

"I cooperate."

Notebook out. "Who did it? Any ideas?"

"No"--deadpan--no read.

"Enemies. Give me some names."

"We got no enemies."

"Come on, you sell narcotics."

"Don't say that word in my home!"

EASY NOW: "Let's call it business. Business rivals who don't like you."

Fist shakes no-no. "You make the rules, we play right. We do business fair and square so we don't make no enemies."

"Then let's try this. You're what we call a suborned informant. People like that make enemies. Think about it and give me some names."

"Fancy words for snitch and fink and stool pigeon."

"Names, Mr. Kafesjian."

"Men in prison can't break into nice family houses. I got no names for you."

"Then let's talk about Tommy and Lucille's enemies."

"No enemies, my kids."

"Think. This guy breaks in, breaks phonograph records and mutilates your daughter's clothing. Did those records belong to Tommy?"

"Yes, Tommy's long-play record alb.u.ms."

"Right. And Tommy's a musician, so maybe the burglar had a grudge against him. He wanted to destroy his property and Lucille's, but for some reason he didn't get upstairs to their bedrooms. So, _their_ enemies. Old musician buddies, Lucille's old boyfriends. _Think_."

"No, no enemies"--soft--say his brain just clicked on.

Change-up: "I need to fingerprint you and your family. We need to compare your prints against any prints the burglar might have left."

He pulled a money clip out. "No. It's not right. I clean my own--"

I squeezed his hand shut. "Play it your way. Just remember it's Exley's show, and I owe him more than I owe Wilhite."

He tore his hand free and fanned out C-notes.

I said, "f.u.c.k you. f.u.c.k your whole greasy family."

Rip, tear--he trashed two grand easy.

I waltzed before it got worse.

CHAPTER SEVEN

s.h.i.twork time.

Pinker labbed the dogs. The print guys got smudges, partials. The crowd dwindled; blues canva.s.sed. Junior logged reports: nothing hot that night, archetypal Kafesjian rebop.

Dig: epic family brawls, all-night sax noise. J.C. watered the lawn in a jock strap. Tommy p.i.s.sed out his bedroom window. Madge and Lucille: wicked tantrum shouters. Bruises, black eyes--standard issue.

Slow time-let it drag.

Lucille and Madge took off--adios in a pink Ford Vicky. Tommy practiced scales--the lab men popped in earplugs. Beer cans out the windows--Lunch of Champions.

Junior fetched the _Herald_. A Morton Diskant announcement: press conference, 6:00 tonight.

Time to kill--I hit the lab van, watched the techs work.

Tissue slicing, extraction-our boy jammed the dogs' eyes down their throats. Back to my car, a doze-b.u.m sleep two nights running stretched me thin.

"Dave, rise and shine"--Ray Pinker, too G.o.dd.a.m.n soon.

Up yawning. "Results?"

"Yes, and interesting. I'm not a doctor and what I did wasn't an autopsy, but I think I can reconstruct some things conclusively."

"Go. Tell me now, then route me a summary report."

"Well, the dogs were poisoned with hamburger laced with sodium tryctozine, commonly known as ant poison. I found leather glove f ragments on their teeth and gums, which leads me to believe that the burglar tossed them the meat, but didn't wait for them to die before he mutilated them. You told me you smelled chloroform, remember?"

"Yeah. I figured it was the washrags in their mouths."

"You're close so far. But it wasn't chloroform, it was stelfactiznide chloride, a dry-cleaning chemical. Now, J.C. Kafesjian owns a string of dry-cleaning shops. Interesting?"

The man broke in, stole and destroyed. A psycho, but precise-no disarray. Bold: and time-consuming. Psycho-crazy s.h.i.t: and neat, precise.

"You're saying he might know the family, might work in one of the shops."

"Right."

"Did you find the girl's pants?"

"No. We found charred fabric mounds in that garbage can with the dogs, so there's no way to test the s.e.m.e.n for blood type."

"s.h.i.t. Fried pedal pushers sounds just like J.C."

"Dave, listen. This verges on theory, but I like it."

"Go ahead."

"Well, the dogs were chemically scalded right around their eyes, and the bones in their snouts were broken. I think the burglar debilitated them with the poison, clamped down on their snouts, then tried to blind them while they were still alive. Stelfactiznide causes blindness when locally applied, but they flailed too much and bit him. They died from the poison, then he gutted them postmortem. He had some strange fix on their eyes, so he carefully pulled them out, stuffed them down their throats and stuffed the washrags soaked in chemical in their mouths. All four eyeb.a.l.l.s were saturated with that chloride, so I rest my case."

Junior and a bluesuit hovering. "Dave--"