The office was on the fourth floor of a building on Flower Street that smelled of boiled cabbage and bad decisions. The door had no name on it. The hallway light flickered like it was thinking about giving up. And inside, Jack Malone sat behind a desk that was really just a door mounted on two sawhorses, staring at an empty whiskey bottle that had been empty for three days and wondering if three days counted as a streak.

He had been a detective in the LAPD for eleven years before he wasn't. The official reason was "conduct unbecoming." The unofficial reason was that Jack had taken money from a guy named Ray Volkov and didn't know what Volkov was going to do with it until it was too late. By the time Jack figured out that the money was a down payment on something ugly, he was already compromised. He quit before they could fire him, which was the same thing in LA in '47.

Now he was a private investigator, which in LA meant he spent his days following the wives of men who could afford to pay him to find out if their wives were having affairs, and his nights drinking whiskey that cost less than a hotel room.

The woman who walked in on a Tuesday in October was the kind of woman who shouldn't have been walking into offices with no names on their doors. She was tall and dressed in a dark coat that probably cost more than Jack's monthly rent. Her hair was dark and pulled back severely, and her face was the kind of face that made men lean forward in their chairs without knowing why.

"Mr. Malone?" she said.

"I'm him."

"My name is Sally Moore. My father--Edward Moore--he was a man who worked with numbers. Accountant. He worked for a man named Raymond Volkov for six years, preparing documents. Three weeks ago, he died."

Jack lit a cigarette. "Sorry to hear it."

"He didn't die naturally." Sally's voice was steady, but Jack noticed her hands were resting on the edge of the sawhorse desk, and her knuckles were white. "He was found in his apartment. The police ruled it suicide. But he hadn't written a note. He hadn't been depressed. And the night before he died, he called me and said--and I'm quoting him exactly--'If anything happens to me, look at the books behind the false panel in my study.' There was a false panel. It was empty. Someone had been there."

Jack exhaled smoke toward the water-stained ceiling. "You want me to find out who killed your father."

"I want you to find out what he was doing for Volkov. And I want you to find out who took the books."

Jack took another drag. He could say no. He should say no. Volkov was the kind of name that ended conversations with broken knees. But the woman had put an envelope on the desk when she sat down, and Jack had glanced at it without looking like he was glancing, and he had seen that it contained enough money to keep the bottle stopped for a while.

"Half now," Jack said. "Half when you have something for me."

She nodded and left the envelope. When she left, Jack opened it and counted the bills. It was more than he had seen in six months. He put it in the bottom drawer, next to a gun he hadn't fired in two years and a photograph of a woman he hadn't thought about in three.

The first thing Jack did was visit Edward Moore's apartment. It was a small place in a building on Sunset Boulevard that had once been elegant and was now just tired. The police tape was gone, but the smell of the place hadn't been. It was the smell of a man who had lived alone for a long time and was about to die alone--stale food, old newspapers, the sour breath of a room that no one opened a window in.

Jack found the false panel easily. It was behind a bookshelf in the living room, marked by a hairline crack in the plaster that anyone would have missed. Behind it was a hollow space. Empty. Someone had been here before him, and that someone had taken whatever Edward Moore had been hiding.

Jack stood in the empty space and felt the particular kind of anger that comes from knowing there's a hole in the world where something important should be and you don't have the tools to fill it.

Then he started looking into Volkov.

Raymond Volkov was not what you'd call a small-time operator. He was a Lithuanian immigrant who had come to LA in the twenties, started in the garment district, moved into loan sharking in the thirties, and by the end of the war had built what Jack was starting to understand was a nearly perfect criminal enterprise. Volkov didn't use violence the way other loan sharks used it--not randomly, not emotionally. He used it like a surgeon uses a scalpel. Precise, targeted, memorable. If you owed Volkov money and didn't pay, he wouldn't break your legs. He'd find something you loved more than your legs and threaten to take it. That was how he got paid. That was how he stayed in business.

Jack's investigation led him to a man named Pete Russo, who worked for Volkov as a "collections specialist." Jack found Pete at a diner on Sunset, eating eggs and reading a baseball card. Pete was thirty-one, broad-shouldered, with a face that had been punched enough times to lose its ability to look innocent.

Jack sat across from him and laid out a five-dollar bill on the table. "I want to know about Edward Moore."

Pete looked at the bill, then at Jack. "You're Malone. The detective who fell off the wagon."

"I'm the guy who's asking the questions."

Pete picked up the five dollars. "Edward was Volkov's bookkeeper. He prepared the documents for the--let's call them 'non-standard' loans. The ones that wouldn't hold up in court. Edward was good at it. He was the kind of guy who could make a hundred different lies look like the truth."

"Did Volkov know what the documents were for?"

Pete shrugged. "Volkov knows everything. That's how he stays on top. But Edward--there was something else. In the last few months, he was meeting with someone regularly. A woman. Young. Dark hair. I don't know who she was, but Edward was scared of her. Not scared like she was going to hurt him. Scared like she knew something he didn't want anybody to know."

Sally. Jack left the five dollars and walked back to his office.

He was still thinking about Pete's words when his phone rang. It was late, past eleven, and calls at that hour were never good.

"Malone."

"Mr. Malone," a man's voice said. Smooth, cultured, with an accent Jack couldn't place--maybe European, maybe just money. "This is Raymond Volkov. I understand you've been asking questions about Mr. Moore."

Jack felt the cold slide up his spine that told him he was in over his head. "Just a private inquiry, Mr. Volkov. A family matter."

"A family matter," Volkov repeated. There was no emotion in the words. They might have been a compliment or a death sentence. "I appreciate you calling me directly, Mr. Malone. That shows discretion. I would like to meet you. Tomorrow. Noon. The Palm Court Hotel, the Palm Court restaurant. I'll be waiting."

The line went dead.

Jack sat in his office and listened to the silence. Then he picked up the whiskey bottle, found it empty, and threw it in the trash. It made a hollow thud. He had a meeting with a man who could make him disappear, and he had no idea what he was walking into.

But he went. Because in Jack Malone's experience, the only thing worse than walking into a trap was standing still while it closed around you.

Noon at the Palm Court was sunlight through stained glass and white tablecloths and men in expensive suits talking in low voices about things that couldn't be discussed in rooms with waiters. Volkov was exactly what Jack had imagined and nothing like it. He was a small man, thin, with silver hair and glasses that made his eyes look distant and unthreatening. He ordered coffee and waited for Jack to sit.

"Mr. Malone," Volkov said. "Let me be frank with you. I know what you're doing. I know about the woman--Sally Moore. I know she's collecting documents against me. And I know that your father, God rest him, once worked for me. Before he left. Before he--" Volkov paused, and for a moment his eyes sharpened "--before he decided that honesty was more important than survival."

Jack said nothing.

"Here is what I will offer you, Mr. Malone. I will pay you ten thousand dollars to walk away. Ten thousand dollars. You could buy a bar. You could buy a life. Or you could continue down this path, in which case I will destroy you. Not violently. Not crudely. I will simply remind the police department of your particular history with me, and you will find that your father's reputation will be questioned, your license will be revoked permanently, and you will be drinking water from the fountain outside the courthouse by Friday."

Jack looked at this small, thin man and thought about the scar on his ribs and the empty whiskey bottle and the forty-seven hours since he had last slept.

"What if I say no?"

Volkov smiled. It was not a nice smile. "Then I will remind you that your father worked for me. And that he died alone in an apartment with a gun to his head and a note on the table that said he couldn't live with what he'd done. You can draw your own conclusions about that note, Mr. Malone."

Jack drew his own conclusion. It was that he was already dead and just hadn't fallen down yet.

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Author Note & Copyright: