"J" is for Judgment/Where There's Smoke/The Animal Hour/Perfect [antikvár]

"J" IS FOR JUDGMENTo.'n the face of it, you wouldn't thinic there was any connection between the murder of a dead man and the events that changed my perceptions about my life. In truth, the facts about Wendell Jaffe had nothing to do with my family history, but murder is seldom tidy and no one ever said revelations operate in a straight line. It was my investigation into the dead man's past that triggered the inquiry into my own, and in the end the two stories became difficult to separate. The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same. It began with a phone call, not to me, but to Mac Voorhies, one of the vice-presidents at California Fidelity Insurance for whom 1 once worked.My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a licensed California private investigator, working out of Santa Teresa, which is ninety-five miles north of Los Angeles. My association with CF Insurance had been terminated the previous December, and 1 hadn't had much occasion to return to 903 State. For the past seven months I'd been leasing office space from the law firm of Kingman and Ives. Lonnie Kingman's practice is largely criminal, but he also enjoys the complexities of trials involving accidental injury or wrongful death. He's been my attorney of record for a number of years, stepping in with legal counsel when the occasion arises. Lonnie is short and beefy, a bodybuilder and a scrapper. John Ives is the quiet one who prefers the intellectual challenges of appellate work. I'm the only person 1 know who doesn't express routine contempt for all the lawyers in the world. Just for the record, 1 like cops, too: anyone who stands between me and anarchy.Kingman and Ives occupies the entire upper floor of a small building downtown. The bulk of the day-to-day work is attended to by the two legal secretaries, Ida Ruth and Jill. We also have a receptionist named Alison and a paralegal named Jim Thicket.rf-i '