It was a little after 1 A.M., and I had the roads pretty much to myself. After making the turn off of Ventura, I pulled to the curb, opened the trunk, grabbed everything I might need, and dropped it into the little black leather satchel I use for what I think of as house calls. Then I put the Toyota into gear and powered up the hill toward Vinnie’s. Virtually no traffic in the neighborhood, not many lights on in the houses. This part of the Valley is still more an early-to-bed community than, say, Silverlake or Venice, where a demographically significant number of people stay up well into the night. I took the last couple of turns with the lights out and pulled to the curb, careful not to let my tires squeal against it, grabbed the satchel, which was fairly light, and hoofed it up the driveway, steep enough to get me breathing hard. My cheap Chinese sneakers, which I’d dyed black long ago, were reassuringly soundless. The windows I could see were all dark. Just to make sure nobody was up, nursing night sweats or whatever, I decided to make a complete circuit, trying at the same time to reassemble the puzzle of the floor plan in my mind’s eye.
