The rain in Los Angeles doesn't wash things clean. It just makes the grime slicker.

I was sitting in my office on Sunset, nursing a whiskey that cost less than the glass it was in, when Webb's secretary came to see me. She was young, efficient, and wore a suit that cost more than my car. She didn't sit down. She never sits down. People who work for Webb don't sit.

"Mr. Webb would like to speak with you," she said. Not a question. A statement of fact, like the weather or the time.

"I'm busy," I said.

"He said you'd say that. He also said the job pays double your usual rate."

I put down the whiskey. "Tell him I'll be there tomorrow."

Marcus Webb was sixty-two and looked fifty. He had the kind of face that belonged on a building—solid, unremarkable, expensive. His office was on the forty-fifth floor of the Webb Tower, which he owned, with walls of glass that showed you the entire city spread out below like a circuit board. From up there, everyone looked the same. Tiny. Controllable.

"Jack," he said, extending a hand that was warm and dry and firm. "Good to see you."

"We've met," I said. I hadn't forgotten. Three years ago, he'd hired me to find his ex-wife's new address. She didn't want him finding her. I found her anyway. He paid me. That's what I do.

"This is different," he said, sitting behind his desk. The desk was bigger than my apartment. "I have three people who are making problems. I need them to stop making problems."

"Who are they?"

He slid three photographs across the desk. I looked at them. Three men. Middle-aged, tired faces, the kind of faces you see on bus platforms and in diners at two in the morning.

"Debt collectors," Webb said. "They've been harassing my partners. I want them to understand the situation."

"Your partners?"

"Men I did business with, fifty years ago. They think they still have a claim on things they don't have."

I picked up the photographs. "You want me to scare them."

"I want you to handle it."

The word hung in the air between us. Handle it. In my experience, handle it meant a lot of things, and none of them involved a handshake and a smile from a man who owned forty-five floors of a city.

I took the job. The money was too good to pass up.

The first man lived in a small apartment in Boyle Heights. I found him on a Tuesday, sitting at a kitchen table that had seen better decades, drinking coffee from a chipped mug. He looked up when I sat down without knocking and didn't look surprised.

"Webb sent you," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I'm Jack Callahan."

"I know who you are. Everyone in this town knows who you are. You're the man Webb sends when he wants something done."

"I'm the man Webb pays to handle problems."

He nodded slowly. "How much did he give you?"

"Enough."

He laughed, and it sounded like gravel in a tin can. "Fifty years. We built this city together, him and the other two. We started with nothing. Three guys, a loan from a bank that didn't want to give it to us, and a whole lot of foolish optimism. We bought land when nobody wanted it. We built apartments when people were living in shacks. We made something out of nothing."

"Something," I said.

"Webb made something out of everything. He bought the bank. He bought the land we were building on. He bought the permits. He bought the judges. Fifty years, and he owns all of it."

"Is that my problem?"

He looked at me for a long time. Then he looked at the photograph of himself—older, thinner, sitting at a table that was too big for his apartment—and he nodded again.

"Tell Webb I'm not going anywhere," he said. "This apartment belongs to me. I signed the lease. I pay the rent. It's mine."

I told Webb. He didn't seem surprised. He seemed amused.

"The second one," he said, sliding another photograph across the desk. "Same approach. Different location."

The second man lived in a motel on Vermont. The third lived in a room above a laundromat in East LA. I visited them all. They all had the same story. They had all been Webb's partners. They had all built something with him. And they had all lost it.

On the fourth night, after the third visit, Webb's office called me. Not his secretary. Webb himself.

"Jack," he said. His voice was calm, measured, the voice of a man who was used to being heard. "I think you've misunderstood the situation. Come to my office. I'll explain it to you myself."

I went. He poured two glasses of bourbon—expensive bourbon, the kind that costs more than my weekly rent—and sat across from me with the glass in his long fingers.

"You've been talking to my old partners," he said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"They told you their story."

"They told me their story."

He took a sip of bourbon. "Everyone has a story, Jack. The question is whose story is true."

"Whose story is true?"

"This one." He set down the glass and leaned forward. "Fifty years ago, I was a small-time landlord. I had three buildings in downtown LA. Three buildings, Jack. Three. I worked eighteen hours a day. I fixed toilets, I evicted tenants who didn't pay, I negotiated with city inspectors who wanted bribes I couldn't afford. I did everything that needed to be done, and I did it better than anyone else because I had nothing to lose."

"That's not a crime."

"No. It's not. But the world doesn't reward virtue, Jack. It rewards results. And my results were better than my partners' results. So I bought them out. Legally. Completely. Every contract was reviewed by lawyers who cost more per hour than my partners made in a year. Every transaction was above board. Every signature was voluntary."

"Voluntary," I repeated.

"They could have kept their shares. But the numbers didn't work. The city was changing. The land values were rising. They didn't have the capital to keep up. I did. So I offered to buy them out, and they accepted, because they had no choice. That's not cruelty, Jack. That's capitalism. That's the way the world works."

I looked at him. He was looking at me with those pale, calm eyes, and I understood something that made me feel cold in a way that had nothing to do with the California night air.

Webb wasn't cruel. He wasn't even cruel in the way that matters. He was simply rational. Completely, absolutely rational. And that was worse than cruelty, because cruelty at least acknowledges the humanity of its victims. Rationality doesn't.

"I understand," I said.

"I know you do." He picked up his glass again. "You're a professional, Jack. You handle problems. These three men are a problem. They're nostalgic. They think the past belongs to them. It doesn't. The past is a country that everyone visits but no one lives in. I live in the present. The present is mine. That's all there is."

I finished my bourbon. It tasted like smoke and surrender.

I went back to my office and sat in the dark. The rain had started again, tapping against the window like someone trying to get my attention. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl up toward the ceiling.

My phone rang. I let it ring three times before I picked it up.

"Mr. Callahan?" It was the secretary. "Mr. Webb would like to inform you that the job is complete. He also wanted to let you know that your apartment building has been sold. The new owners are taking possession next week. You'll need to find new quarters."

I looked around my office. The desk, the chair, the bottle of whiskey, the stained carpet. All of it belonged to me. Or it had, until five minutes ago.

"Thank you," I said. "I'll be on my way."

I hung up the phone. I sat in the dark. I smoked another cigarette.

Outside, the rain fell on Los Angeles, on the buildings Webb owned, on the streets Webb owned, on the people who lived in the buildings Webb owned and breathed the air Webb owned and paid Webb for the privilege of existing within his property lines.

I picked up my gun. I held it in my hand and felt its weight. The weight of a tool. The weight of a choice.

I put it back in the drawer.

I turned off the light. I sat in the dark and listened to the rain and thought about the three men I had visited, the three men who had signed leases and paid rent and believed, foolishly, that the four walls around them belonged to them.

The rain kept falling. The city kept breathing. And I sat in the dark, in the building Webb owned, breathing the air Webb owned, waiting for morning that I knew would bring nothing new.

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