“Louis, you had me to dinner yesterday,” I said into the receiver. I’d barely walked in when the phone rang. It was around six-thirty.

“Are you inviting us up, then?”

“God no,” I said, quickly. There was nothing in my refrigerator except a half a dozen Budget Gourmets. Something I imagine he already knew since he’d poked around my kitchen at breakfast.

“Come down whenever you’re ready,” he said and hung up.

I had planned to curl up on my sofa, eat one of the Budget Gourmets—I was partial to the Swedish meatballs—and watch a couple of movies I’d brought home from Pinx: Coal Miner’s Daughter and All That Jazz. But since I’d learned several things about Guy Peterson’s murder since breakfast, I felt I owed it to Marc and Louis. I’d try to be back upstairs by eight so I could watch at least one of the movies.

I changed into an old baggy sweater—that, sadly, looked like something Bill Cosby might wear—and a pair of comfy shorts, and went downstairs barefoot. When I got to the courtyard, I saw the table was set for four with a lit candelabra in the center.

Leon came out of the apartment with a Mexican beer in his hand saying, “We’re having cerveza.”

Louis was right behind him carrying a basket of chips and a bowl of salsa. “I made an enchilada casserole. It’s a weeknight so nothing fancy.”

“Louis was just catching me up,” Leon said. “Finding a corpse, you are a busy boy.”

“He’s been ruthlessly interrogated by the police,” Louis said. “Don’t leave that out.”

“Twice,” I said, though neither time was exactly ruthless.

“Really?”

“Yeah, Detective O’Shea stopped by Pinx this morning.”

“What did Tall, Dark and Menacing want?” Louis asked.

“He wants to find Ted Bain.”

“Does that mean they don’t think you killed Guy the Camera Guy?”

“I think it means something else. I think they want something he has or something he knows. Something that has to do with Guy’s death.”

“And Mr. Crispy’s, too,” Leon said.

“Detective Thomas Gaines,” Louis said.

“We think,” I corrected.

“Can I get you a beer?”

“Um, I’m not big on beer,” I explained. It made me feel too full. “Do you have any wine?”

“Red or white?”

“What goes with an enchilada casserole? I always forget,” Leon interrupted before I could answer.

“It’s a chicken casserole,” Louis said.

“Ah, white then.”

“Yes, I’ll have white, thanks.”

Leon and I sat down. He took a chip and dipped it into the bowl of salsa. “So, I missed the memorial service for the man who wasn’t dead yet. What is his family going to think having to bury him twice?”

“They hadn’t released the body, so they didn’t bury anyone. I doubt they’ve released the real Guy either.”

“I’m piecing this together. Someone died in the fire, possibly this Detective Gaines. Guy Peterson disappeared so he must have had something to do with that. Someone shot Guy. Presumably, that someone also had something to do with Gaines death. Then, Guy’s body was dumped behind your store, which means that you now have something to do with all of this.”

I thought about what he’d just said. It was all true and yet it didn’t feel especially true. It left out a lot. I decided to give it a shot myself.

“Things began before the riots. Guy did a photo shoot and managed to get an exhibit at a gallery. When the gallery owner started doing publicity she was threatened. Something about the photos made the police want to shut her down. But they haven’t tried to come and get the photos from me even though they know I have them. Ted Bain has gone into hiding and the police are desperate to find him.”

“Interesting,” Leon said. “Your double murder doesn’t sound very much like mine.”

“Yet,” I said. “We’re still missing big parts of the story.”

Louis came back and set a glass of white wine in front of me. I took a sip; it was very tart.

“So, what did you find out today, Noah?”

“How do you know I found out anything? I do have a business to run, you know.”

Louis sat down and stared at me. “I’m waiting.”

“I went to the gallery and talked to the owner. She said some weird things about Guy’s photographs and I left. I stopped off and asked Guy’s father why he’d identified the wrong body. He said the LAPD pushed him into that. I found out where Ted Bain lived and went—”

“I think I hear Marc,” Louis said. “We should wait for him.” He got up and went to get a beer. He was right; there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and moments later Marc appeared in the courtyard. He came right over to the table and peeled off his jacket. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket saying, “Oh my God, what a day. They actually expected me to do something.” He worked in the art department for television distribution repackaging old sitcoms and new talk shows for syndication.

Lighting a cigarette as he talked, he continued, “I had a two-hour meeting about the color red. It was for this new talk show. I don’t know what this girl was in before, but she lost a hundred pounds and apparently that’s enough to make you famous these days. Anyway, we started talking about Pantone colors and her eyes glazed over. I had to resort to fruit. Do you like strawberry red or apple red? What do you think of ketchup red? It was mind-numbing.”

“Which red did she choose?” Louis asked, setting a beer in front of him.

“Radish.”

“I never know what to make of a radish,” Leon said. “Do people really eat them? Or is it just there in the supermarket to make the other vegetables look good?”

“People eat them,” Louis said. “You can roast them. I’ll make them sometime with a London Broil.”

“I did get some time to work on our investigation,” Marc said.

“Oh, don’t call it that,” I said, though I can’t say exactly why. It was what we’d been doing, after all.

“There’s no other word for it,” Marc said.

“I just don’t like the official sound of it.”

“When I grow up I want to be Angela Lansbury,” Leon said.

“You’d look good in a sweater set and pearls,” Louis told him.

“Do you know that show’s been on for eight years? That’s more than a hundred and sixty dead bodies she’s accidentally tripped over.”

“Marc, what did you find out?” I asked, getting impatient with all the talk about Murder, She Wrote.

“Well, remember I thought there was some connection between the Trailblazers and the Frontier Scouts in Guy’s pictures? I decided I should really find out more about the Trailblazers.”

“How did you do that?” Louis asked.

“I dialed information. I thought I’d be lucky to get one number, but I was on with the operator for at least ten minutes. It’s quite an organization. They have directors of this and managers of that and executive managers of other things. Finally, she found me a number for the executive director of the Trailblazer program, this guy named Wally George. So I called him.”

“What was that like?” I prompted.

“I pretended I had a son who was a Frontier Scout and considering the Trailblazer program. So I had Wally tell me all about it. The kids work after school and weekends. In the summer they work a regular schedule—for which they’re not paid by the way. They learn about law enforcement. That’s what they’re getting, supposedly. But then the conversation started to get weird.”

“Wait a minute,” Leon said. “Systematically breaking child labor laws wasn’t weird enough?”

“It’s worse than that. I have to pay fees for my son and buy him expensive uniforms.”

“I told you I didn’t want children,” Louis said. “This is why.”

“Shut up. So, the whole time Wally keeps bringing up the importance of family and family values, and making men out of these boys, real men. Finally he asks me ‘what church I took my family to?’ I’m at a complete loss. I haven’t been to church in nearly a decade. I drew a blank. Finally, I said, ‘Holy Virgin Mother of Christ.’”

“That’s not a church,” Louis pointed out.

“I know, right? But he says, ‘Oh, Catholic’ like I’d just mentioned I had foot fungus. I knew right then I’d made a mistake, so I did some quick thinking and told him it’s my wife who’s Catholic.”

“And as a matter of fact, I am,” Louis said.

“I tell him I’m really a Baptist, and imply that this has been a constant source of pain for me, bringing up my children Catholic. So then Wally starts to tell me that my son will get the right sort of religious instruction from the Trailblazers, that they’ll make a man out of him, and that they have these retreats with the officers once a month.”

“Well, that all sounds kind of pervy,” Leon said.

“Don’t say anything else important,” Louis said. “I think the casserole is done.”

He ran into the apartment.

“Well, don’t you hate this weather?” Leon said. “I thought we were supposed to have June Gloom in June not May.”

“This isn’t June Gloom, it’s May Gray,” Marc said. “Obviously you’re not a native.”

“And neither are you. I don’t think there is such a thing as a native Californian.”

“I saw one once,” I said. “In an exhibit at the L.A. zoo.”

And then Louis was back with a glass baking dish full of bubbling, cheesy casserole. Marc moved the candelabra and Louis set the dish in the middle of the table.

“Louis, that looks wonderful,” Marc said. I had the feeling he said that a lot.

As he dished out the casserole, Louis said, “I have something to contribute to the investigation.” He paused dramatically and handed me a plate with far too much food on it. “After dinner, we’ll be going on a field trip. So, eat up boys.” He smirked as he dished out the casserole.

It was delicious. I ate nearly half my portion.

* * *

“Couldn’t we have driven?” Leon asked, as we walked down the hill.

“It’s two blocks.”

“Yes, but two blocks downhill now is two blocks uphill later.”

“Leon, behave or there will be no dessert for you,” Louis said; under his arm he carried a manila envelope. To me he explained, “So, I took those two boxes of photos to work with me and locked them in a drawer.”

“That was a good idea. Thanks.”

“And then I went through them at lunchtime.”

“You have photos in that envelope, don’t you?” I said.

“Very good, Sherlock.”

“And you think they’re going to tell us something?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said, as we turned into a small park, the name of which was on a sign at the gate, but that sign had been tagged so many times it was unreadable.

It was nearly seven, the sun was setting and it would be dark soon. I didn’t like the idea of being in the park after dark. It was well lit, but that had never dampened its bad reputation. We passed a concrete picnic table. Four Latino teenagers in loose jeans, over-sized sweatshirts and tattoos were hanging out there.

“If you boys have a hankering for some crystal, now would be a good time,” Leon teased.

“Have you ever tried crystal?” I asked him.

“Why, no, officer, I was just holding that for a friend.”

I took that as a yes.

“What about you?” he asked me.

“I never did anything worse than cocaine and not a lot of that.”

“Louis, where are you bringing us?” Marc asked.

“Just relax, we’re almost there.”

We were halfway through the park. We’d gone past the parking lot, the playground for tots and the picnic area with the tables and public grills. Abruptly, Louis stopped.

We stood in front of a tree. A distinctive tree, with a thick trunk and a tangled map of roots surrounding it. Its branches hung low and it was covered in newly emerged green leaves.

“It’s a fig tree,” Louis said.

“What does botany have to do with murder?” Leon asked. It was a good question, I had a feeling I knew why we were standing there, but I didn’t know for sure until Louis took the photos out of the envelope.

Before he’d gotten them all the way out, I said, “Oh my God, the tree. It’s in the pictures.”

“Oh no,” Marc said. “This is where that guy was killed.”

“What guy?” I asked.

“You didn’t live here yet,” Louis said.

“It was two years ago, I think, when all those gay bashings were happening,” Marc explained. “The guy’s name was Pachuk—which I remember because it sounds like paycheck. I know, weird.”

“Wait. What gay bashings?” I asked.

“Teenagers beating up guys every so often. The LAPD did nothing of course, except make it sound like gangs. There were even a couple of articles about tension between the gays and the Latinos in Silver Lake. Then this Pachuk guy died and the LAPD finally cracked down. But mostly on gay guys, arresting them for being drunk or in the wrong place.” Marc took a photo from Louis.

Leon and I took a photo too. Standing there we studied them. The fig tree was behind the line of policemen. In some pictures you could barely see it at all; in others it was very prominent.

“Is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?” Louis asked.

“I am,” I said. It was starting to make sense. “When I went to the gallery this afternoon, the owner said the photos were true. I said, they’re obviously staged and she agreed, but she still insisted that they were true.”

“So, Guy the Camera Guy re-created something he’d seen before,” Leon said. “He witnessed it.”

“No, not Guy,” I said. “If he was the witness he could have spoken up himself. The witness has to be Ted Bain. He’s what Percy and O’Shea want. They don’t want the pictures, they want the witness.”