It had been a bad time for Gina and me, and it was mostly my fault. A ridiculous circumstance, a failure to come clean, and what we had threatened to disintegrate. I met Claudia Acuna around the same time I met John Santini, had a brief flirtation, didn’t let it get any further. She quit her job at Channel 6, quickly got herself rehired, continued covering whatever dross they sent her out on. One day six months later I realized I hadn’t seen her on TV in three or four. I figured she’d quit again, or moved to New York for another try with a guy she was entangled with there.

Then, maybe two weeks ago, I caught her on CNN. She was reporting from New Orleans on the day before Gustav hit, standing in the still-sunny French Quarter and relating how all the tourists had been kicked out the day before, and how many of them had spent the night at the airport because they couldn’t move up their Sunday flights. She looked happier, more confident, more mature somehow. I felt glad for her. Then I put her out of my mind.

But here she was, in the flesh, in the passenger seat of my decrepit Datsun pickup, holding her umbrella out the open door and shaking off some of the rain, slamming the door, sliding the umbrella between seat and door frame.

“Back on the case, I see,” she said.

“You too.”

She ran her hand under her hair, freeing the part that had gotten trapped under her trench coat. “But not with the morons anymore.”

“I saw you in New Orleans.”

“Before, during, or after?”

“Before. You were in the French Quarter.”

“Then you missed the good stuff. Getting blown over on-camera during.”

“I’m sure you were fabulous. CNN, huh?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“Headquartered where?”

“Atlanta.”

“Like it there?”

“It’s okay. Are we done with the small talk yet?”

“I am if you are. How come you’re hanging out outside Jessica Love Dooitt’s house?”

“Hoping to run into someone like you who knows something about something.”

“How do you know I know something?”

“You knew her name, didn’t you?”

“Could’ve heard it on the radio.”

“The way you said it. Not like a name you just heard on the radio. Unless you’re a fan.”

“More like an acquaintance.”

“Do tell.”

“Though I’ve seen her naked and been to Las Vegas with her.”

“I’m waiting for the punchline.”

“Naked on the set, on a job. Las Vegas, Gina was with us.”

“Ah. How is the little wife?”

“Good. Things are good.”

She stared at me, seemed to come to a decision. “You want to work together again?”

“On what?”

She gestured outside. “This.”

“A bit of a comedown from hurricane duty.”

“There’s a bigger story.”

“Oh,” I said. “Does it have anything to do with housing L.A.’s teeming homeless?”

“Son of a bitch,” she said.

“I’ll take that as a yes. I have a feeling this’ll take a while. Let’s go somewhere that’s not this truck.”

I vaguely remembered a Peet’s on Ventura Boulevard. I found it before too long and we went inside and ordered a couple of pots of Assam. Bold, hearty, good for a rainy day.

She excused herself and came back in a couple of minutes all put back together. Sat down, sipped her tea, said, “So?”

“You first.”

“Why me?”

“You know more about what happened this morning. It seems more time-critical.”

She picked up her mug again, put it down, fished a pen out of her purse. “A warrant went out for Billy Ventura early this morning. Somebody tipped the police to where he was.” She wrote Billy Ventura on a paper napkin. “Then somebody at the police tipped somebody at the network. A couple of somebodies later, I got a call. Because they know I’ve been looking for him. His brother, really—”

“Walter.”

“Right. Him.” She added Walter to the napkin, put a ditto mark under the existing Ventura. “So I come down here, just in time to see him get taken away.Eventually the locals leave, I have a hunch, I stick around. A little while later, the cops are back. They haul away Jessica.”

“For hiding him?”

She shook her head. “Accessory before the fact.”

“Meaning she did what?”

“That part I didn’t get. Okay. Now you.”

“First tell me why you’re interested in Walter.”

“Some fishy deals that may or may not have something to do with the homeless business.”

“And why are you interested in the homeless business?”

“Because I’m interested in Leslie Mars. Who’s got some friends who don’t want the project to happen.” She wrote Leslie Mars on the napkin.

I thought of Frankie Roja in a men’s room. Making the universal hand sign for intercourse.

“This is getting good,” I said.

“You think so?”

“What I think,” I said, “Is that you’re going to need a bigger napkin.”