When I got home, I drank three tall glasses of water and took four aspirin. Eight hours later I woke nauseated, fuzzy-headed and aching all over. I am not hung over, I told myself. I am not hung over. I am not hung over. I don’t know whether I was in a deep state of denial or if I was attempting a New Age cure, but neither worked. No matter how many times I told myself I didn’t have a hangover, I still did.

Maybe I should have stayed home longer, but Sundays were actually pretty busy days at Pinx Video. People did their errands on Sundays and the Mayfair was a few blocks away, not to mention the dry cleaners next door. It was easy to combine errands and get a lot accomplished in a short time. Renting and returning videos were tasks always on people’s lists.

When I arrived, Mikey was in a lather. Missy worked Saturday nights with her best friend, Lainey. Lainey was new and still on probation. Probation was Mikey’s idea, of course, and I barely paid attention to it.

“They’re terrible together,” he said. “They do nothing but gossip with each other, barely paying any attention to the customers.”

“How do you know that? Did you send in a spy?” I asked. He wasn’t above that.

“A friend happened to stop by. My friends know the store is important to me, and they call me when—”

“So it’s a spy network?”

He pursed his lips at me. “There was a line and it took forever to check out, and the girls were giggling every time someone rented a porno.”

“That’s a lot of giggling.”

“And look at that,” he said, waving at the end of the counter. “They didn’t even take out the trash.”

I didn’t get too upset about the trash. Missy had told me she didn’t like to go out behind the building at night. It frightened her. I did probably need to ask her not to giggle when the customers rented porn, though. That was a no-no.

“They’re both on this week, Friday and Saturday?”

He nodded.

“I’ll come in both nights for a couple of hours just to make my presence known. How about that?”

“It’s a start.”

“And I’ll take the trash out,” I said.

“No! You have five employees, you shouldn’t be taking the trash out. You should never take out the trash.” Sometimes, he was just as protective of me as he was of the store. It was one of the things that made him tolerable.

He pulled the plastic bag of trash out of the tall plastic waste bin and tied it off. There was the strong smell of day-old Thai food in the air. Missy and Lainey must have ordered in. I’d told them to each take a half an hour lunch one after the other, but they always ate lunch together behind the counter and tried to get paid through lunch. I’d stood on my head trying to get them not to do it, but the girls didn’t understand annoying little things like labor laws.

Mikey walked by me and went out the back. I looked out at the store and noted there were seven customers browsing the shelves.

A woman of about thirty-five, still wearing her aerobics outfit, came up to the counter and asked, “Do you have Batman Returns? My nephew really wants to see it.”

“Actually, that’s not even in theaters yet.”

“Oh, I know, June nineteenth. You don’t have any under-the-counter copies, do you?”

“No, we don’t have any under-the-counter videos.”

“Really?”

Some video places did have under-the counter-videos. They were videos that had been pirated, leaked by studio vendors or their employees. They were almost always incomplete with whole scenes still in green screen. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would watch—

Mikey came running back into the store. “Noah, Noah, there’s somebody in the dumpster. Dead.”

I said, “Excuse me,” to the woman trying to rent illegal videos for her nephew and walked out the back of the store. There was a green metal garbage dumpster in the small parking lot we shared with the dry cleaner and Taco Maria.

The dumpster was shoved up against the back of the building. It sat on wheels about six inches off the ground and was about four feet deep. That meant the rim of the container was almost at eye level. It was picked up on Mondays and Thursdays, and was nearly full. Most of the garbage came from Taco Maria’s. And most of it had been sitting there all weekend.

I stood on my tippy-toes to get a good look and saw that a man’s body was sprawled atop the garbage, almost like a garnish on a plate of enchiladas. He lay face down, so I couldn’t see who it was. He did look dead, though.

I went back into the store and found Mikey checking out the woman who’d wanted Batman Returns. She was renting Hudson Hawk and Robin Hood, probably two of the worst movies from the year before. In my book, she was getting what she deserved.

“Did you call the police?” I whispered into Mikey’s ear.

He shook his head.

“Okay, I’ll do it.” I went over to the phone and dialed 911. When the dispatcher came on the line, I said, “This is Pinx Video store on Hyperion. We have a dead body in the garbage container behind the store. Could you send someone out?”

I was ridiculously calm, probably because Mikey was freaking out for me. He finished checking the Batman Returns woman out, then turned to me. “Oh my God! How long do you think there’s been a body out there?”

“Not long. A few hours maybe.”

“How can you tell?” he asked.

“There’s no garbage on him. If he was dumped there last night before Taco Maria’s closed he’d be under a couple of big bags of Mexican food gone wrong.”

“Do you think it has something to do with Taco Maria’s? Was he Mexican? I didn’t get a good look.”

“I couldn’t see very well and he’s face down, but I think he’s white. His hair is kind of a light brown.”

“Probably a homeless person. They’re always getting themselves killed.” That seemed to make him feel better, though I had no idea why.

“We should probably close the store,” I said.

“What? No. Sunday is always one of our best days.”

“I think we’re going to be crawling with policemen in just a few minutes.”

And just on cue, we heard a siren coming closer and closer. Mikey looked at me and said, “This is going to be awful, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

* * *

“Let’s start with this,” Javier O’Shea said. “Why is Guy Peterson’s body in your dumpster?”

Of course, I should have known it was Guy in the dumpster. I knew that he had light brown, sandy hair, and I knew that people wanted him dead. I mean, people who knew he was alive wanted him dead. And maybe that’s why I didn’t think it was him right off. I assumed there weren’t enough people who knew he was alive.

“I don’t have any idea what Guy’s doing in the dumpster,” I said, quite honestly.

“Did you know that he was alive?” O’Shea asked.

We were crammed into my small office. O’Shea sitting in my chair behind the desk, Nino Percy leaning against the wall hulking over me, and little ole me in the guest chair. I had a split second to decide whether to tell the truth or not. If I told them everything they could easily get to my apartment, find the photos, destroy them and, eventually, I’d end up in a different dumpster in another part of the city.

“No. Did you?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Percy asked. I didn’t like the anger in his eyes. Or the contempt.

“You’re the ones who’ve been investigating Guy Peterson, wouldn’t you be more likely to know he’s alive? Was alive. Whatever.”

“Don’t be a smart ass. Smart asses are always guilty.”

“I wasn’t being a smart ass. I was making a valid point. It’s only logical that you’d know more about this than I do.”

“Not if you’re the killer. I have a bad feeling about you.”

I had a bad feeling about Nino Percy, but it didn’t seem a good idea to say so.

“Your car was seen in the parking lot last night after midnight,” Percy said.

“Yes, I parked it there when I went to a bar down the street. I got a little drunk last night.”

I glanced at O’Shea. Did his partner know he was in Detour last night? I wondered.

“Did anyone see you at this bar?” Percy asked.

“Well, it was full of people, so, yes.”

“Anyone you can name?”

I glanced at O’Shea who was being far too quiet. I didn’t like what was going on. They could put me at the spot where the body was found, probably somewhere around the time it was dumped. In fact, the body probably was dumped while I was down at Cuffs. And, if they figured out Guy was in my apartment just the night before…

There was already more so-called evidence against me than I liked.

I stared at Percy for a second and said, “I think I’d like to call my lawyer.”

“We’re not arresting you,” O’Shea said.

“Good. I’d still like to call my lawyer.” I reached over my desk and picked up my address book. “I get a phone call, right?”

“After,” Percy said. “You get a lawyer and a phone call after we read you your rights.”

“That sounds like you’re telling me I can’t make a phone call right now. But, see, if you haven’t arrested me, I can make as many phone calls to as many lawyers as I want. Isn’t that true?”

It was, so neither of them said anything.

I opened my address book to the page that had the number of the attorney who’d helped me with Jeffer’s family, Franklin Carlotto. I smiled at them while I dialed.

“Hello?” It was Marc on the other end. I’d dialed their number from memory and on purpose.

“Yes, Mrs. Carlotto. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday.”

“I think you have the wrong number,” Marc said.

“This is Noah Valentine. Can I speak to your husband?”

“Okay. What’s going on?”

I waited. Smiling at O’Shea and Percy. “This will just take a minute,” I whispered to them. Legally, I’m sure I could have asked them to leave the room. They knew that. They didn’t have any right to listen to my half of a conversation with my lawyer. And that meant they weren’t going to budge unless asked. My whole idea, though, was to have them listen.

“Franklin, yes. Listen, a dead body was found in the dumpster behind the store this morning and I’m here with the police.”

“Oh shit,” Marc said. “Was it Guy Peterson?”

“Yes, it is very distressing.”

“You need us to do something, don’t you?” Marc guessed. “But you’re not alone.”

“That’s right. As I said I’m here with the police and I want to make sure of something. I don’t have to talk to them if I don’t want to, do I?”

“I have no idea,” Marc admitted.

“I do, I do want to be cooperative. But if I feel like I might be a suspect…uh-huh, uh-huh…”

“Oh,” Marc said, suddenly getting it. “If you’re a suspect, they’ll search your apartment.”

“Uh-huh…”

“You want us to go upstairs and get the photographs.” He was very good at this game.

“Yes, I understand. He was an acquaintance. I didn’t know him well.”

“Ah, and we should maybe wipe down the window Guy crawled through in case there are fingerprints.”

“Yes, all right. Well, thank you.”

“Come to dinner later,” Marc said. “Provided you’re not in jail.”

“All right, well, thank you very much.”

I hung up and looked at the two detectives. “So, as I said to my lawyer, I’m happy to cooperate unless I feel like I’m a suspect at which point we stop talking.”

“Listen, you snotty little fag—” Percy started, but O’Shea was out of his chair pushing his partner out of the room. They had a classic good cop/bad cop thing going, but it wasn’t working too well.

After about a minute, O’Shea came back in.

“Sorry about that. He’s a little passionate at times.”

“He’s a bully.”

He shrugged. “We deal with bullies.” He left the idea that sometimes you have to be the bigger bully unspoken. Of course, if you weren’t a member of the LAPD the ‘sometimes’ seemed a lot more like all the time.

“So, after you saw me at Detour, you went to Cuffs.”

That stopped me. I’d never said the name of the bar. Should I ignore it or should tell him? I felt safer with O’Shea, but that’s not the same as feeling safe.

“Yes, I went to Cuffs. I stood outside in the line for about fifteen minutes. Then I got in. I wasn’t there very long. Maybe twenty minutes.”

“And you didn’t see anyone you knew.”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you stay longer?”

“Because I didn’t see anyone I knew.”

“You didn’t go there to see people you know. That’s not why people go to Cuffs, is it?”

“How do you know? Last night I was explaining how guys connect. Now you know what goes on at Cuffs?”

“I know all the gay bars in Rampart. I don’t know the specifics, I guess, the details. But I have a pretty good idea what goes on in this neighborhood and where it goes on.”

“We’re not doing anything illegal.”

“That’s not entirely true. There’s a lot of drugs being bought and sold, a healthy trade in male prostitution, and occasionally you guys kill each other. Or manage to get yourselves killed.”

He kind of had a point. A homicide detective in this neighborhood would need to know at least a little about the bars. Maybe this was why he knew where I went without my having to say.

“Did you go home after Cuffs?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You do see that Guy Peterson’s body showing up in your dumpster is suspicious.”

“Except for one thing. If I killed Guy Peterson I would have left his body somewhere else. Don’t you think?”