Conscience Calls . . .

The only difference between man and beast, someone once remarked, is a tail, pointed ears and a conscience.

It was conscience that caught up with a person who, holding a packet full of things he’d stolen, decided recently to give it back. So he sent it to me.

I’m guessing it was a man. The neatly typed note that accompanied the package was unsigned but it just seems more logical that a guy would do what the letter-writer did in the first place.

The envelope was postmarked Santa Clarita and in it were some damaged photographs, a sheet of negatives, some Christmas cards and few other items of only personal value.

The letter begins, “Many years ago a friend and I were driving in the Hollywood Hills at night and we came upon a home that had been destroyed by fire. Being young (too young, obviously), we began exploring around inside. Being foolish, I took some things. . . .”

He goes on to say he wasn’t proud of what he did and held the contraband for about 20 years, wanting to get it back to its owner but not knowing how. He didn’t say why he’d sent it to me, he just did.

I wasn’t sure if I was being scammed or not but the idea of tracking the owner down intrigued me. I did some investigative reporting once, before I discovered that people were a lot more interesting than issues, and the problem piqued my ancient calling.

*

The first clue in the package came in the black-and-white photograph of a somber, dark-haired young man sitting on a couch. There was nothing in the picture that offered any hint of his identification. But on the back was a notation: “Photo by Jonathan Exley.” I looked in The Times’ computerized library file and found that we had used pictures taken by Exley, but he wasn’t on our staff. I turned next to the Internet and, running his name through a search engine, came up with the fact he’d taken numerous photographs for People magazine.

I figured that if he took celebrity pictures he no doubt had a studio in Celebrityville, which is to say Hollywood. Almost. It was in Silver Lake.

I found him through the simple expediency of dialing information and then called him and went to his home, which is also his studio, one of those beautiful old stucco houses built in the 1920s that overlooks the lake itself.

Exley, who has photographed everyone from Hillary Clinton to Alice Cooper, is a big man with a ponytail and a master at what he does. More celebrities have walked through his front door than just about any other door in town.

He identified the man in the photo as Michael Hazlewood, a friend from long ago and a songwriter who, with partner Albert Hammond, had written “It Never Rains in Southern California.”

Exley hadn’t seen Hazlewood in about 10 years and had no idea where he was. But he too got caught up in the mystery and went to work. My job pretty much ended there. Exley did the rest.

*

He called a friend who knew a woman who used to cut Hammond’s hair. She’d moved to Tennessee but the friend had her telephone number. Exley called and left a message, after which she telephoned Hammond, who called Exley and gave him Hazlewood’s number. Exley gave the number to me. You follow that? Good.

To say Hazlewood was stunned by it all is to say Dewey was only mildly surprised when Truman beat him in 1948. It was like the old television show “This Is Your Life,” in which a person’s past was laid out before him. While I couldn’t bring Hazlewood his sixth-grade chemistry teacher, I at least had one small piece of his past. He loved it.

He lives in a Santa Monica condo with a dazzling view of the ocean and still writes songs. One, “The Air That I Breathe,” is included in k.d. lang’s new album “Drag.” It was written with Hammond.

Going through the photographs, not quite believing it all, Hazlewood identified, among others, a young Elton John, a singer from the group “America” and a scratched-up picture of the actress Joyce Van Patten, all longtime friends.

The home that burned was one of 18 buildings destroyed by a wind-driven fire that swept through Laurel Canyon in September 1979.

“I was listening to Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird Suite’ on headphones and heard a crackling sound,” Hazlewood said. “I looked down the canyon and saw a little fire. I knew what would happen. . . .”

The “little fire” quickly became a firestorm and Hazlewood had time only to save a play he’d been writing. Later he returned to the rubble of his house, saw only fire-scarred boxes, left everything and walked away. He moved to New York, then back to his native London and only recently returned to L.A.

The story ends there. The effort, if nothing else, returned the stolen mementos to their rightful owner, reestablished the friendship between Exley and Hazlewood and, I guess, cleared the conscience of the man in Santa Clarita who started it all.

Me? Well, I’m moving on to the next case, which will occur in about two hours at a restaurant in Venice. I’m going to call it “The Case of the Missing Martinis.” I plan on drinking them. Here’s looking at you, kid.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com