Dating is Murder by Harley Jane Kozak

for granted.”
    Marty left his post at the doorway to join me behind the desk, perhaps feeling he’d made a tactical error in leaving it. He was shorter than me, and there was a subtle smell emanating from his shirt, the kind that comes from ironing clothes that aren’t quite clean, trying to get another day’s wear out of them.
    “Get out of here,” he said. “This is private property and you’re trespassing.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Call 911.”
    Joey strolled to Marty’s other side, so that he was now pinned between desk and wall, Joey and me. “Go for it, Marty. Tell them you’re being menaced by two tall girls.” Joey
was
tall, and as menacing as a stalk of celery. Still, Marty could not physically remove us without resorting to violence and considerable loss of dignity.
    “You media people are sick,” he said. “What do you want from me?”
    “What’s the discrepancy on her application you referred to?” I said.
    “This isn’t for publication. I’m not giving you permission to print this.”
    “I guarantee it won’t make it into print.”
    “There was an incident with the police back in Germany that she didn’t tell us about.”
    “What kind of incident?”
    “All I know is, she lied about it. You want specifics, ask the German police.”
    “Marty,” Joey said. “We came to San Pedro. That’s our limit. Why not just tell us?”
    “I’m telling you. There’s a police report on her. Unspecified.”
    “How’d you find out about it?” I asked.
    “I got a phone call, I don’t know who from. They said, Take a closer look at her application. I put in a call overseas, and sure enough, they got something on her.”
    “But it could be something minor?” I said. “Unpaid parking tickets?”
    “Doesn’t matter. Any run-in with the law is a no-no. She lied about it, that’s fraud, that gets her deported.”
    “So you were getting ready to deport her?” I asked.
    I saw his mind working, trying to figure out which answer would sound best. “We were considering our options.”
    “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Annika had a police record, but you didn’t bother to find out what it was, or tell her host family?”
    A mulish look came over his face. “We had the matter under investigation. Things of this nature take time.”
    “Yes, we can certainly see how swamped you are,” Joey said.
    “Go to hell.”
    We’d pushed him into a corner. I took a conciliatory tone. “What else? You said there were complaints, plural.”
    “I don’t have another word to say to any goddamn reporters,” he said. “And I’m calling the
Times.
”
    I smiled. “Oh, did you think we work for the
L.A. Times
? I’m sorry, you misunderstood. We read the
L.A. Times.
Joey even subscribes. Me too, but only on Sundays.”
    “Sometimes we write letters to the editor,” Joey added.
    Marty turned red, then pushed past me with some force and marched over to the receptionist’s station. “Get out.”
    “Gladly,” I said, moving to the door. “By the way, Annika is not fat, drunk, stupid, lazy, irresponsible, or blinded by the American way of life. Happy Thanksgiving.”
    “Bye, Marty,” Joey said. “Enjoy the job while you have it.” She joined me out in the sunshine and aimed her keys at the BMW, which beeped in response. “Just when you think a used car salesman is as bad as it’s going to get,” she said, “you meet Marty. Where to now?”
    “Where nobody else wants to go,” I said. “To the cops.”

6
    T he West Valley Community Police Station was on Vanowen Street just west of Wilbur, in a neighborhood that hadn’t changed its socks since the 1950s. Cramped bungalows occupied tiny lots, tract houses in need of paint jobs, the kind I might one day afford. Yards were area rugs of patchy grass, a far cry from the lawns of the Quinn estate in Encino. Probably the only thing these people had in common with the Quinns, in fact, was this branch of the LAPD.
    If I hadn’t been obsessed