The rain in Los Angeles doesn't wash anything clean. It just makes the dirt wetter. I watched it hit the windshield of my office and slide down the glass in lazy tracks, like they were trying to escape.

I'm Jack Moran. I was a cop once. Then I asked questions I shouldn't have asked, and being a cop became being a private investigator with worse hours and the same amount of danger.

The woman in the red dress came in at four-thirty on a Tuesday. Tuesdays are the deadest day. Everyone's either busy pretending to work or already halfway to the weekend. She didn't look like a weekend kind of woman.

She put a stack of bills on my desk. Not a lot. Not a little. Just enough to make me stop looking at the rain and start looking at her.

"I need you to investigate something," she said. Her voice was the kind of voice that had learned to be quiet and hadn't forgotten how.

"Everyone needs something."

"This is different."

"Usually it is until it isn't."

She told me about an account. A money laundering account connected to the Moretti operation. For three months running, it had shown an excess. Ten thousand dollars. Every month. Money that wasn't theirs, that they hadn't put there, that appeared like a ghost in a machine that didn't believe in ghosts.

"Who puts money in an account they're trying to hide?" I asked.

"That's what I'm paying you to find out."

I took the case. Not for the money. I was bored. I had been bored for three years, ever since I left the force and the city forgot my name. Boredom is a dangerous thing for a man with a gun and a habit of asking questions.

I started with the accountants. Sal "Fingers" Moretti—no relation to the boss, just a nickname that had stuck since high school when he could pick a lock with a fingernail. He was thirty-five, smart, and unlucky. His partner was Vito, a guy who spoke maybe ten words a day and spent the other fourteen looking over his shoulder.

They were both terrified. Not of each other. Of whoever had put that extra money in the account.

"It's a trap," Sal said. We were in a diner on Sunset. He was stirring his coffee without actually putting anything in it. "Someone's cleaning house. They put the money in so we'd notice. So we'd panic. So we'd talk."

"Who's cleaning house?"

"That's the thing. I don't know. And that's what keeps me up at night."

I dug deeper. The account was part of a network that stretched from downtown LA to City Hall to a precinct on Temple Street. Three layers. Three masters.

The first layer was the Moretti family. They were purging. Someone inside the operation was loose ends, and the extra money was a test. Put something in, see who moves it, find the rats.

The second layer was Captain Eddie Russo, the police captain. Russo was a protector. He took money from the Morettis and made problems disappear. But he was also talking to the FBI. Or the FBI was talking to him. Or maybe nobody was talking to anyone and everyone was just talking at everyone, hoping something useful landed.

The third layer was the woman in red. Her name was Lena. I found out later she worked for the FBI. She had been feeding me information through the case. Using me to investigate the Morettis from the inside, where the cops couldn't go without starting a war.

Everyone was using everyone. Everyone was lying to everyone. The extra ten thousand dollars was the only honest thing in the whole operation.

I found the source. Or I thought I did.

The money wasn't a trap. It was a signal. Someone was telling someone else that it was time. Time for what, I couldn't figure out. Time to move. Time to disappear. Time to kill.

I tried to walk away. In this city, you can't walk away. The Morettis would kill you. The FBI would sue you. The cops would arrest you for something you didn't do and then forget to charge you with.

Sal found me at my office on a Thursday. He looked worse than usual. The kind of worse that comes from not sleeping and not eating and thinking about things you can't unthink.

"Moran," he said. "You're digging too deep."

"I'm digging at the depth I always dig. You're the one who's afraid of shallow water."

He didn't smile. "There's a name. Someone you think is dead. But he's not. And he's the reason the money's there."

"What name?"

"Tommy Vassetti."

I knew the name. Everyone in this city who was old enough to remember knew the name. Tommy Vassetti was the guy who had tried to clean up the city in the fifties. He'd had files on everyone. The Morettis. The cops. The politicians. He was going to release them all on the same day.

Then he was dead. Found in a canal with his head under a concrete block. The official report said accident. I never believed it.

Tommy Vassetti was supposed to be dead for twenty years.

Sal said the money was Tommy's. Or Tommy's people's. A signal that he was still alive, or that his files still existed, or that someone was acting in his name.

I didn't know what to believe. In this city, belief was a luxury you couldn't afford.

I'm writing this from a motel off the 101. The sign outside my window says VACANCY in letters that are missing three bulbs. I know I'm being followed. I know it probably won't be tonight. I know that when it is, it won't be dramatic. It'll be quick and ugly and nobody will care.

But someone will read this. Maybe you. If you're reading this, it means I didn't lose everything.

The money is still in the account. Sal and Vito are still guessing. Captain Russo is still playing both sides. Lena is still waiting for something. And I'm just a former cop with a typewriter and too much time, trying to answer a question that might not have an answer:

Why did ten thousand extra dollars appear in a account that was supposed to be invisible?

The answer doesn't matter. The question does.

The rain is still falling. My cigarette is almost gone. Things can't get worse.

They can only get worse.