I’d arranged to stay for at least a month, getting the new partnership up and running, during which time-here’s the pleasure part-I would be on an extended honeymoon. Today-January 15, 1947-was in fact our one month anniversary, the former Peggy Hogan and me.

My wife and I were staying in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel-expensive digs, but the A-1 had landed a security-consultant contract with the hotel management, and this was a perk, a hell of a nice one. Less than half an hour before I found myself shooting photos of a bisected nude corpse in a Leimert Park vacant lot, Fowley had picked me up at my hotel, after breakfast, in a blue ’47 Ford.

I had the use of one of the agency’s cars, but my wife would be taking it to go shopping (I prayed it wasn’t Rodeo Drive again), so Fowley was escorting me to his paper, where he and I and Jim Richardson were supposed to work out the exclusive arrangement whereby the A-1 fed information to the Examiner in exchange for ongoing, positive publicity, starting with a big spread that would announce the merger of the Rubinski and Heller agencies.

“You understand, Bill,” I’d told him, as he made his leisurely way east along Venice Boulevard, “the A-1’s clients’ interests come first.”

“Do I look like a T-bone steak?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then spare me the friggin’ A-1 sauce.” Fowley said this with a friendly sneer, cigarette dangling. “Sure, a couple Chicago boys like you would never think of sellin’ out a client.”

“Well, we wouldn’t. It’s not good for business.”

He shrugged. “My biggest worry about this arrangement is your pal Bugsy Siegel.”