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When we got together I introduced him and Leaf.
“Ah,” the lifelong cop said, “the lovely young maid who stole old sad Joe’s heart.”
The smile on her face alone made it worth involving the devious policeman in my plans.
“Where can I drop you, Glad?” I asked him.
“I have a friend in North Hollywood who says she has an extra room over the garage.” His smile told another story, but that was none of my business.
On the ride over the mountain, I was deep in my own thoughts while my passengers talked. Glad was in the back seat, and Leaf at my side.
“You live in Manhattan, don’t you, love?” Glad asked.
“Sometimes. For the past while I’ve been out in the West.”
“Here in LA?”
“No. Alaska.”
“Anchorage?”
“No. That’s too far south.”
“Then Fairbanks?”
“Yeah. Around there.”
“What kind of work did you do?”
“Joined a women’s collective.”
“They had some kinda co-op thing?”
“Yeah, but not your usual organic-corn co-op.”
“Doing what, then?” Glad sounded as if he were truly interested.
“We hunted.”
“Rabbits and deer?”
“Uh-uh.”
“No? You girls out there huntin’ bear?”
“Sometimes. Caribou mostly.”
“That’s pretty serious,” he crooned. “You don’t look like you could take the recoil of a huntin’ gun.”
“You have to know how to shoot no matter how big you are. I’ve seen big inexperienced men break their shoulders when they didn’t know how to hold a seven hundred Remington.”
We dropped Glad off at his friend’s house and then went down toward the coast. When we got to my Airbnb it was close to ten. Neither one of us was feeling sexual, but somewhere on a higher plane, our embraces managed to hold back the night.
29.
LAPD DETECTIVE CARLTON Van Arc had secured a small cabin deep in the heart of rustic and wild Runyon Canyon. The place was used by an ex-cop who stayed there when he worked security on the nights he was on call. It was a simple place but way too far off the beaten path for our cabal to be eavesdropped on, even in the morning.
“Malto never meets with anyone in the same place where they get together at first,” Caledonia Reese was saying. “He’s too worried about being spied on.”
