20Captain Gregory of the Missing Persons Bureau laid my card down on his wide flat desk and arranged it so that its edges exactly paralleled the edges of the desk. He studied it with his head on one side, grunted, swung around in his swivel chair and looked out of his window at the barred top floor of the Hall of Justice half a block away. He was a burly man with tired eyes and the slow deliberate movements of a night watchman. His voice was toneless, flat and uninterested.
‘Private d**k, eh?’ he said, not looking at me at all, but looking out of his window. Smoke wisped from the blackened bowl of a briar that hung on his eye tooth. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m working for General Guy Sternwood, 3765 Alta Brea Crescent, West Hollywood.’
Captain Gregory blew a little smoke from the corn
