we talk? It could be important.”
He looked uncomfortable. He didn’t like the idea, but he opened the door anyway. We followed him inside.
Instead of opening into a room, the door led to a narrow hallway. The place was underlit, making everything seem dark and faintly unclean. The air smelled of unvacuumed carpet and Szechwan spices. “Thank you for giving us your time.” I extended my hand. “I’m Ray Lilly.” Someday, I was going to have to come up with a decent alias for society missions.
He shook it. “Lino Vela. I don’t understand who you guys are or why you’re here. The police are already working on this.”
This time, it was Talbot who cut me off. “Anyone else in the house?”
Lino was startled and alarmed by the question. “What?”
“That’s not important,” I said to Talbot.
He gave me an annoyed look. “Experience tells me it is. So how about it? Anyone else here?”
“No,” Lino said out of politeness, but I could tell he resented it.
I tried to steer the conversation back to the job. “I understand nothing was taken?”
“Who are you guys? Why are you here?”
“That’s not important,” Talbot said.
“We’ve been asked to look into these break-ins. We’re not with the police, and you don’t have any obligation to talk to us. But we’re hoping you’ll help us put a stop to this.”
He’d been about to ask us to leave, which would have ruined my chance to get information from him, not to mention that I couldn’t tell how Talbot would react. Now he hesitated.
“Who are you working for? Is it Jade?” The familiarity of his tone threw me for a second, until I realized we were talking about a movie star. He probably thought of her as a part of his extended family.
“That’s not something we can talk about. I’m sorry. And if the police knew we were asking questions, that would make things hard for certain parties.”
“It’s not her, I guess. Or is it?”
I made an expression of regret. “Will you help us?”
He sighed. “Let’s go sit down.”
He led us into a front room. The lights in there were brighter, and there was so much furniture—chairs, shelves, desks, cupboards—that the room felt cramped. All of it was old, made of dark wood, and just about every horizontal surface had something on it. I walked past hand-painted plates, battered oil lamps, fabric dolls, hand-stitched leather balls, and an antique sewing machine with a foot pedal. It was all crammed together as though this was a showcase instead of a home.
Lino offered us tea, but we declined. “Why don’t you guys take the sofa?” he said. He settled into a creaky wooden rocking chair beside the curtained window. Talbot and I sat on the red couch. The velvet had been worn shiny, but it was comfortable. Opposite us were the only modern touches in the room: a flat-screen TV, a mini- fridge, and an Xbox. A tiny end table was covered with coasters but nothing else. In the back corner was a desk littered with papers and stacks of books.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s our understanding that nothing was taken?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, as I told the cops, if I’d been robbed, there’d be someplace to put down a drink. But it’s not just that. I double-checked against the list.”
“The list?”
“The list of antiques,” Lino said, waving reluctantly toward the room as though he was obligated to show it. “It’s what I do.”
“What do you mean?” Talbot asked. “How is it what you do?”
He folded his hands over his little paunch as though holding his guts in. “I’m something of a curator—a historian by training. I earned my Ph.D. at a little Texas college you probably never heard of, then fell off the tenure track. I came to L.A. for … actually, I’m not sure why I came. Hope, I guess. Hope for something better. Not that I found it. I was about to take a job teaching for the L.A. Unified when I noticed an ad in the paper for this place.
“This is my home, but I don’t own it. It’s the official residence of another man—I just live and work here. His inheritance is in the form of a trust—it’s a great deal of money, but to access it, he has to maintain this family antique collection in his own home.”
“He lives here, too?” Talbot asked.
Lino looked a little uncomfortable. “As I mentioned, this is officially his home. In reality, he spends three hundred sixty-five days out of the year traveling, often to his vacation home in Bel Air. The trustee turns a blind eye to it, if you understand my meaning. The owner visits once a month to check on things. It’s my job to keep the house and make sure the antiques are maintained.”
“That’s it?” Talbot said.
Lino spread his palms as though he couldn’t believe it, either. “The terms of the trust require my services, so I am here. I’m not paid very much, but my duties give me ample free time to work on personal projects—”
“That’s what you do for a living?” Talbot let his scorn show. “Dust all this shit and play the latest Splinter Cell?”
