Milo hadn't touched his soda. He held it up, squinted as if inspecting for taint, and put it down.
'Sorry,' he said. 'That would be against regulations.'
'I'm afraid I don't understand,' said the attorney coldly.
In lieu of a reply, Milo got up, opened the doors, and stood aside as a young uniformed officer wheeled in a video monitor on a stand. Atop the monitor was a Betamax recorder. Both monitor and recorder fed into a battery rack.
'Set it up there,' said Milo, pointing to the far end of the table. The officer complied, working quickly and competently. When he was through, he gave Milo a hand-held
remote control unit and asked if there was anything else.
'Nothing for now, Frank. Stay close.'
'Yes, sir.'
Dwight had followed the installation with a baffled look on his face. Now he filled his tumbler with scotch and emptied it. His wife watched him drink, allowing herself a momentary look of loathing. Erasing it quickly, she pulled a white silk handkerchief out of her evening purse, dabbed at her lips, and held on to it, veiling the lower part of her face. The grey eyes visible above the silk were still, yet dilated with interest. But not in her husband, for when he spoke again, they failed to follow him.
'This is damned outrageous,' he said, trying to sound authoritative. But his voice had risen in pitch, leavened by anxiety.
Milo pushed a button and the monitor lit up, pushed again and the tape began to roll. The screen filled with a series of numbers - LAPD file codes - which gave way to a medium shot of a small yellow room, unfurnished except for a metal table and chair.
On the table were an ashtray and a pile of Polaroid pictures. On the chair sat Tully Antrim, dressed in a blue jump suit, eyes furtive, a cigarette smouldering between the fingers of one hand. The other lay flat on the table, big-boned, scarred, terminating in blunt fingertips capped by dirty nails. At the upper right edge of the picture was a dark fuzzy shadow of vaguely human proportions: the back of someone's head.
Antrim picked up the cigarette and inhaled. Blew smoke through his nostrils, looked up at the ceiling. Picked something out of the corner of his eye. Coughed and stretched.
'Okay, Tully,' said the shadow, speaking in Milo's voice. 'Let's go through that again. Who was the first?'
Antrim picked up a photograph and flexed it.
'This one.'
'You've just identified Darrel Gonzales.'
'Whatever.'
'You never knew his name?'
'Nope.'
'Did you know him by any other name?'
'Nope.'
'Little D. Tinkerbell?'
Antrim dragged on his smoke and shook his head. 'Never heard any of that.'
'Where did you meet him?'
'Boystown.'
'Where in Boystown?'
Antrim bared his teeth, amused.
'I think it was near Larabee. Just off Santa Monica. That what I said the first time?'
'Tell me about the pickup,' said Milo
Antrim yawned.
'Again?'
'Again.'
'Yo. We cruised Boystown looking for someone to off. A scuzzy one, zoned-out, so there wouldn't be any problem getting him in the van, you know? Found this one, agreed on a price, and he climbed on in.'
'Then what?'
'Then we drove around, got him blasted on downers, played with him, and offed him in the van.'
'You and Skull?'
Something savage came into Antrim's eyes. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth, ground it out on the tabletop, and leaned forward, hands warped into claws, lower jaw extended prognathically.
'I told you before,' he said between clenched teeth, 'I did it all, man. All she did was drive. Got it?'
Milo said, 'Uh-huh,' and looked at his fingernails. He waited until Antrim had relaxed before asking his next question
'How'd you kill him?'
Antrim nodded his approval of the question.
'First I cut him a little,' he said blithely. 'Then I used the silk to choke him out; then I cut him up some more - that was my orders, to make it look like a psycho. Afterward I dumped him.'.
'Where?'
'Some alley off Santa Monica. Near Citrus, I think.'
'Why there?'
'That was the orders - between this street and this street.'
'Which streets?'
'La Brea and Highland.'
'That was your dumping zone?'
'Yup..'
'Was it the same way for each of the killings?'
'Yup. Except the streets changed for each one.'
Milo pulled out a map, unfolded it in front of Antrim, and pointed.
'These dots are where we found the bodies, Tully. The numbers refer to the sequence of the murders, one for the first, two for the second, et cetera. You dumped them from east to west.'
Antrim nodded.
'How come?'
'That was the orders.'
'Any idea why?'
A shake of the head.
'Never asked,' he said, lighting up another cigarette.
'Ever wonder why?'
'Nope.'
Milo put the map away and said:
'What about the blood?'
'What about it?'
'The blood in the van. How'd you handle that?'
'We had tarps. What wouldn't wash out we burned later. The metal we hosed down. It wasn't no big deal.'
'Who was the second one?'
Antrim examined the photos, picked up a pair.
'One of these, they look kind of the same.'
'Keep looking. See if you can remember.'
Antrim lowered his face, chewed his moustache, and stuck out his tongue concentrating. A mop of hair fell across his forehead.
'Yo,' he said, letting one photo fall to the table and waving the other. 'This one. The bigger one '
Milo examined the snapshot. 'You've just identified Andrew Terrence Boyle.' 'If you say so, Chief.' 'You didn't know his name either?' 'Nope. Didn't know any of their names, except the nigger.'
'Rayford Bunker.' 'Not that name. Quarterflash.' 'How come you know that?' Antrim smiled.
'He was an uppity type, you know? Kept bragging, batting his lashes and singing, 'I'm Quarterflash, I'm a hot
