Low Life

3 SURFACING

He lay in bed looking up at the ceiling. It was smooth and white. The only light in the room came in through the window from the fish-hook moon.

His right hand stung and blood oozed from a network of slices in his flesh like veins of color in a marble surface. It poured onto the white comforter and spread there, blooming like a flower, as the fabric absorbed it.

Then a sound came from the living room, the sound of a key sliding into a lock, a lock tumbling, a door opening. A brief cool breeze blew through the house. The door was closed, the deadbolt twisted, the breeze stilled. Simon listened, waiting to hear who it was. He thought he knew. He was waiting for their call: It’s the police. We have a warrant for the arrest of—

‘Jeremy?’

It was Samantha. Of course. The police wouldn’t have a key. Her footsteps thudded across the hardwood floor, nearing him and growing louder.

The door was pushed open, squeaked open, brushed across the carpet, making a sound like leaves in a breeze, and a silhouette stood in the doorway, like a backlit gunman in an old Western movie who’s just shoved through the batwings.

‘Jeremy?’

‘I’m in bed.’

Simon sat up, putting his back against the headboard.

‘Do you mind if I turn on the light?’

‘Go ahead. How was the rest of the night?’

‘It was good. Too much talking. That Marlene Biskind turned out to be very nice. We exchanged information. I think we’re gonna have coffee tomorrow.’

The overhead light clicked on.

Samantha kicked off her shoes.

‘It was fun,’ she said, ‘but I’m glad it’s over. Are you feeling better?’

She looked at him for the first time since coming into the room. Her face blanched. Her mouth hung open and then snapped shut.

‘Oh my God.’

‘Is something the matter?’

‘Your hand.’

Simon lifted his hand up in front of his eyes and looked at it. It was gloved in blood, and the blood was running down his arm, tickling the thousands of blondish hairs beneath the sleeve of his shirt, which was stained red.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I hurt myself.’

‘How?’

‘Broke the medicine cabinet. It was – ’ he closed his eyes to think and then opened them again – ‘it was confusing me.’

He sat on the edge of the bathtub. He was wearing slacks and a white shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. Samantha sat on the bathtub beside him, carefully picking shards of mirror from his flesh. Once she got the largest pieces out, she picked the tiny slivers from his hand with tweezers, and then wiped the blood away with cotton balls.

A shiver jerked through Simon’s body.

‘Hold still.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Are you cold?’

Simon nodded. ‘So your show went well?’

‘I told you it did. We sold out. I wasn’t expecting that at all.’ She went silent and continued wiping at his hand for a moment. Finally: ‘I want you to see Dr Zurasky tomorrow.’

‘He’s not that kind of doctor. He can’t do anything for my hand.’

‘It’s not your hand I’m worried about.’

‘I don’t trust him.’

Samantha wrapped gauze around Simon’s hand. The bottom layers turned red with blood as more of it oozed from beneath his flesh. She continued wrapping his hand until the gauze was thick enough that the blood didn’t soak through it.

‘I know that, Jeremy,’ she said. ‘You never trust anyone when you get like this. But you need to see him.’

She taped the gauze into place.

‘I’m not going to see him. Not as a patient, anyway.’

‘What does that mean?’

Simon shook his head but said nothing else.

‘You need to see someone.’

‘How can I see someone when I don’t know who can be trusted?’

Samantha let go of Simon’s hand. She sat staring for a moment, her eyes glazed over and far away. Her chin trembled. Then her body collapsed into itself as she let go of her posture – her shoulders drooping, her chin nearly resting on her chest – and she breathed out heavily through her nostrils. Then she looked up at Simon. The emotion was gone from her eyes. Her mouth was tight. She swallowed.

‘I don’t know if I can keep doing this, Jeremy,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep pretending you’re still the man I married. You’ve changed. I’m tired of picking up the pieces. I’m tired of having to pick up the pieces. I’m just – I’m fucking tired.’

After Samantha fell asleep Simon crawled out of bed and slipped back into his clothes, overcoat included. He picked it up from the back of the couch, where Kate had tossed it after pulling it off him, and put it on as he walked toward the door. He stepped out of the front door and into the night. He packed his cigarettes, slapping the packet against the back of his hand, opened it, put it to his mouth, pinched a filter between his teeth, and pulled the box away. He lighted his cigarette. He inhaled deeply and walked out to the sidewalk. The street was quiet, the world asleep all around him.

But something was wrong. Something out here had changed – in a bad way, in a way that had something to do with what was happening to him.

He closed his eyes and tried to create an image of what the street had looked like earlier, when he had left for the college this morning. He laid that image over what the street looked like right now, like a transparency, trying to see the difference. Something had been added or removed. Something had changed.

After a moment he knew. His Volvo was gone.

When he first arrived this morning he’d parked his Volvo on the street about six houses down, but now someone’s yellow Mustang was parked there.

Someone had taken it. Someone was manipulating things. Someone who could be in many places simultaneously, or coordinate several people.

He took a deep drag from his cigarette and exhaled through his nostrils.

He needed to walk, to think about this, to figure out what to do next. He started down the sidewalk, heading toward Colorado. He had no destination in mind. He just needed to move, to get blood flowing through his brain so he could think. He felt dull and stupid. He felt scared.

An engine roared to life, a pair of headlight beams splashed across his back. He froze a moment, considered glancing over his shoulder, but changed his mind. He would just keep walking, pretending he wasn’t bothered, and see what the car did. It was probably nothing, just some guy who worked nights. As he walked the car rolled along behind him. It didn’t gain speed and take off down the street. It simply followed.

Unable to resist any longer Simon glanced over his shoulder. A Cadillac – big and rectangular and funereal – was rolling along behind him. He thought it was black, but color was a strange thing beneath the light of the moon, and because of the headlights shining in his eyes he could not see who was driving.

He continued walking. No matter how much he tried to resist the urge to increase his speed, he found himself moving faster and faster. By the time he reached Colorado he was running, and still the Cadillac was behind him, following him.

He ran along Colorado, glancing behind him again and again as he did, feeling cool night air stinging his throat. The Cadillac was still there. It was in the right lane, simply following him, other cars swerving around it. He ran through the night from shadow to light, shadow to light, through the spotlights of the street lamps on the boulevard. A stitch sewed itself into his side. His legs started to feel rubbery and weak. Closed businesses sat dark on either side of him.

He turned down a side street and kept running. The car turned behind him and continued to follow.

A train was nearby. The sound of metal wheels rolling along metal tracks, the wind that the train’s motion was creating, the screech of the train braking.

He looked around, saw steps leading down to the Memorial Park train platform. He saw the light rail train stop and the doors open. It was only three cars long, as almost no one was using the metro at this late hour. A few people got on and a few people got off.

He leaped down the stairs, in two long strides, and ran for the train.

The doors closed when he was still ten feet away.

He pounded the button and the doors opened.

He looked over his shoulder and saw a shadowy figure in sunglasses and a black suit coming down the stairs toward the train, black tie flapping over the left shoulder.

He stepped on. The doors closed. The figure was still outside.

The train started moving, rolling along the tracks.

The figure stood on the platform outside and watched him as the train rolled away.

He rode the train – past Highland Park and Chinatown – to the end of the line. All the doors opened. A voice over a loudspeaker said everyone had to get off. The train was now out of service. He stepped onto a platform. Amtrak and Metro-Link trains were stopped at other platforms. People were standing and sitting with luggage piled beside them.

For a moment Simon considered getting on one of those trains, a train that led out of town, away from all of this. It was a great urge, but he suspected that whatever this was, whatever was going on, it couldn’t be remedied geographically. Walk the mile: he had to see this to the end, whatever it was.

He took the stairs down into Union Station.

It was nearly empty inside. A janitor was pushing a dust mop back and forth across the red and black concrete. His face was skeletal, cheekbones large and jutting, hollows in his cheeks like he was sucking them in, eyes like two black holes, mouth droopy on the left side and a little bit of drool hanging there.

Simon knew he was being paranoid, but he couldn’t help but feel that the man was watching him as he walked by. He didn’t turn his head as Simon passed, but his eyes seemed to follow him.

After looking at a map of the various train routes, Simon made his way down two sets of escalators to the subway, walking beneath a concrete ceiling that looked like it was dripping sewage through several cracks, brownish-yellow stalactites clinging on up there as liquid ran down them and splashed to the ground beneath. Orange cones blocked off the corridor beneath the worst of the drippage. The Red Line would take him to within a quarter mile of the Filboyd Apartments. Then he could walk the rest of the way.

He didn’t know where else to go.

Whoever was following him knew where Shackleford lived, but he might not know where Simon’s apartment was. He might, of course – but he might not. And he needed to get a grip on what was happening here, to wrap his mind around it.

The Volvo was parked on the street in front of the Filboyd Apartments. It was empty and dark, the doors locked. It just sat there being a car and Simon stood looking at it as if he expected it to do otherwise.

‘Well, take him.’

He spun around. The sidewalk was empty. He was sure, though, that he’d heard Helmut Müller’s thin voice. It still echoed in his mind.

He pushed his way through the front doors and walked up the narrow flight of stairs toward his apartment. As he walked up he saw someone’s back, and then a pair of legs and feet at the top of the stairs. The shoes were old suede, slick with age. The sport coat the man was wearing was brown corduroy with leather elbow patches. The hair was gray. He was spray-painting something onto the wall opposite the stairs. There was a hissing sound coming from his direction.

‘Hey!’

Simon ran up the last several steps.

The man in the corduroy coat finished painting quickly and darted left, out of Simon’s sight.

When he reached the top of the stairs he turned left and looked down the corridor. A brown blur vanished around the corner. Simon ran after it, past his apartment, down the leopard-spotted carpet. He could smell roasting beef coming from an apartment that opened into the corridor. He turned left again, not knowing what was just around the corner.

As soon as he did, something hit him on the forehead – two fists clenched together and brought down like a hammer – knocking him to the ground. The floor rushed up and hit him in the backside. The ceiling spun. He heard an involuntary grunt escape him, pushed out by the fall.

And then he was being trampled on. He turned over onto his belly, got onto his hands and knees, and then pushed himself up onto his feet. He looked back down the corridor, in the direction from which he’d just run. It was empty.

He thought he could hear the man thudding down steps.

His heart was pounding in his chest. He walked back through the corridor and looked into the dark stairwell.

Halfway down lay a lump on one of the steps. The stairwell was so dark, he couldn’t tell what it was. He walked down and picked it up. It was a shoe. He recognized it, the old suede, the broken and tied-together shoelaces. He’d left these shoes back in Pasadena this morning, along with his car and the corduroy coat the man had been wearing. He carried the shoe back upstairs.

On the wall opposite the stairwell, on a patch of fresh white paint (Leonard must have just had it done earlier today), the graffito said

Simon touched the paint and looked at his finger. It was black, like he’d just been booked down at the police station. He wiped it off on the wall, smearing an ‘s’ above the lettering.

He stared at it for a long time.

He was inside his apartment and twisting the deadbolt home before he realized that the door had been repaired. He unlocked the door, opened it, looked out into the empty corridor, then closed it and listened to it latch. He locked it again. He slid the chain into place. Had it still been broken when he came back earlier to get Francine? He couldn’t remember. He remembered taking out his keys and unlocking the door. He remembered that. But he couldn’t remember whether he’d stuck a key into the doorknob or a padlock. Could Leonard have had it done today while someone was here painting the corridor wall? It was possible, he supposed, but then wouldn’t there be screw holes in the wood of the door? Certainly Leonard wouldn’t have replaced—

He turned his back to the door and leaned against it.

He tossed the suede shoe onto the coffee table.

Vertigo swept over him. The world tilted sideways. He grabbed onto the wall to keep himself upright. Once the feeling passed, he looked around the room.

It was empty but for him and the furniture – his old couch, his coffee table.

Someone upstairs flushed a toilet and the pipes in the walls let out a sad cry. He could hear someone’s radio playing, the sounds of traffic coming into the building through the paper-thin windows; someone with a deep voice boomed laughter.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Is anybody here?’

He searched the apartment and found it empty and got a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen and sat down on the couch. Tonight was no night to bother with glasses. He twisted off the top and drank directly from the bottle. It was harsh and strong and good. There was half a bottle left and he wanted to down it all but he knew he couldn’t allow himself to do that. He needed his mind working. He already felt confused and afraid as it was and drinking more would only make it worse. It would make him feel better but it would make it worse in the long run. He took another swig, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, wiped at the corners of his mouth with thumb and index finger, rolled what he found there together between them, flicked it to the floor, and set the bottle down on the coffee table.

He wanted to go to sleep, but he couldn’t – not here.

That man might be back, or somebody else might, and he’d be defenseless in his sleep.

He had come here to get away, but he’d gotten away from nothing. Until he worked this thing out he could stay neither here nor at the house in Pasadena. He would have to get a motel room. That man might be back at any moment.

He got to his feet and headed for the door.

His keys were gone. He had found the door unlocked or he would have noticed when he got here. At some point in the day someone must have taken them from his pocket. That explained how his car had gotten here. Whoever took his keys – the man who was wearing his clothes – had driven it here.

Kate Wilhelm was the only person who’d been close enough to take them but she hadn’t done it alone. She had seduced him, gotten him separated from his keys, and someone else had taken them. While he had been with Kate in the bedroom someone had sneaked into the living room. That was where he’d left his overcoat, which had had both sets of keys as well as Jeremy’s wallet stuffed into its pockets. But only one set of keys was taken – Simon’s. And apparently the clothes he was wearing when he arrived in Pasadena this morning.

But what mattered was who was behind this. The man behind the curtain. The Great and Powerful Oz. Someone was organizing this; someone was trying to drive him mad. It had to be Zurasky. The doctor was the only connection between him and Jeremy, and whoever was doing this knew who he was. Robert still might be involved somehow, maybe simply as an informant, but Zurasky had to be organizing this. Simon didn’t know why or how, but it had to be him. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed there was no alternative. He had been manipulating Jeremy during their sessions, must have talked Jeremy into breaking into his apartment, into trying to kill him.

Simon couldn’t remember doing anything that deserved death, but he must have done something to warrant death in someone’s eyes: someone had tried to kill him.

Zurasky would be home in bed at this hour. His office would be empty. His records would be there unguarded. Perhaps there was something in Shackleford’s file that would prove useful, or maybe something in his own file.

He wanted sleep, but he thought he should take care of this first. If he didn’t do it tonight, it would have to wait another day, and by then – well, who knew what might have happened by then?

He had no vehicle here. He was a payroll accountant and knew nothing about hot-wiring cars, which meant his Volvo was useless to him. And Los Angeles’s train system didn’t go within two miles of Zurasky’s office. He had to take the train back to Pasadena to get the Saab, then drive that into North Hollywood. Then he would find a motel room and get the sleep he so desperately needed.

He just had to hope that the Cadillac that had been following him was no longer there. He didn’t want whoever was driving it to be a witness to tonight’s activities. For all Simon knew the guy worked for Zurasky. In fact, it seemed likely. Simon couldn’t think of anybody else who might want him followed.

If the Cadillac was there, Simon would have to ditch it before going to Zurasky’s office. He didn’t want to be followed, and he didn’t want to be stopped.

He stayed out of the light of the moon, sticking to shadows, as he walked through the night-quiet suburban neighborhood toward the Saab. As he slithered from shadow to shadow, he kept an eye on the street, looking for the Cadillac. He didn’t see it.

He reached the Saab, used Jeremy’s keys to unlock the door, and slid inside. It smelled of stale cigarettes and flop sweat.

Though he’d merely been walking, he was breathing hard. Only a little over two weeks ago he had been a man who worked eight hours and then drank himself to sleep; he’d been a man who talked to fewer than half a dozen people on any given day, and usually the same half dozen; a man whose days were so like one another that more than once he’d awakened on a Sunday – he worked Saturdays – and driven to the office only to find it closed. And been disappointed. How was he supposed to fill these hours? The days and weeks changed, but his routine did not.

And now look where he was.

He slid the key into the ignition and started the car.

The radio blared at him, screaming out loud rock music, and he quickly shut it off.

Had he left it on? No. He didn’t like rock music. He only listened to acoustic blues. But still, maybe he’d been listening to—

It didn’t matter. He didn’t think it did. But then how could he know what mattered and what didn’t any more?

Everything couldn’t be significant.

Maybe there were messages for him in the rock song that was—

He closed his eyes. He breathed in and he breathed out. He opened his eyes and put the car into gear and drove toward the corner.

He was turning left onto Colorado when he saw the headlights come to life in his rear-view mirror. It was dark out, and the headlights were half a block behind him, but he thought they might belong to the same Cadillac. It looked the same beneath the light of the moon. What light the thin sliver of the crescent moon refracted anyway.

After turning onto Colorado he watched his rear-view mirror to see what the other car did. It turned left a few seconds later, staying behind him.

He had to lose it before he started toward Zurasky’s place of business – if it was the car he thought it was.

A light in front of him turned red. He slowed the car to a stop at the intersection, found his cigarettes in his inside coat pocket, and lighted one.

The other car pulled up beside him on the right. It was definitely the same Cadillac.

Simon tried to get a look at the driver without being obvious. He stole several glances from the corner of his eye. He was a short man, his head a full six inches from the roof of the car. Simon figured that made him about five and a half feet tall, three inches shorter than Simon himself. He had the build of a jockey. Simon put him at eight stone – a hundred and twelve pounds. He was pale as a snake’s belly. He wore dark sunglasses despite the night. His greasy black hair hung down to his jaw, was cut straight there, and was tucked behind his ears. He looked straight ahead, not even a glance in Simon’s direction.

A car horn honked. The light was green.

Simon gassed it.

At the next block Simon cut right and swerved across two lanes. He heard the Cadillac screeching to a stop behind him. He cut right again and found himself on another empty street. He pulled to the curb and shut off his lights, letting the engine idle quietly while he sat in darkness, watching the street behind him in his side-view mirror.

The Cadillac drove by. The pale face of the driver hovered behind the side window, but the Cadillac simply went past.

After another moment of silence Simon made a u-turn and drove back out to the main street. Once he’d turned onto it, he flipped his headlights back on. All the way to the freeway he glanced around him, expecting to see the Cadillac, but it seemed that he’d successfully lost it.

The strip mall was dark and the parking lot empty. Doors were bolted. Alarms were set. Simon didn’t know if Zurasky’s office was wired with one. He had never looked for it and he had never seen one. Even if it was, he had thirty or forty minutes, unless a police cruiser happened to roll by or someone saw broken glass. Simon didn’t know how else he might get inside; he was no lock picker. Unless he could get in through a window in the—

He got out of the car and walked around to the back alley, where several dumpsters sat. If he could get in through the back, that would save him the worry of witnesses. It looked like Zurasky’s office window was half open. The question was whether he could get inside through it.

After a moment’s thought, he walked over to the dumpsters. It was tough work moving one of them, as the wheels didn’t roll very well and the thing was half-filled with garbage and heavy. It reeked and when he started pushing it he put his left hand into something slimy and rancid-smelling. He pulled his hand away and shook off what was either noodles or maggots – it was impossible to tell which – and then continued pushing. Once he had it against the wall beneath Zurasky’s open window, he climbed atop it. The plastic lids were slippery, and because the dumpster’s back was higher than the front, he felt like he would slip backwards and fall. He didn’t.

Even on the dumpster, standing on tiptoe and reaching up, his fingers were nearly a foot shy of the window sill. He jumped up and punched through the screen and pulled it out. It fell on top of him, a corner of the aluminum frame crashing into the top of his head before it clattered to the asphalt below. Fortunately the screen was light. Still, he slipped and fell onto his side on the dumpster’s lid.

But the window was clear. There was no sound of alarm. He’d been worried there would be some kind of motion sensor attached to the window, but apparently not – unless it was a silent alarm. He’d find out soon enough.

He got back onto his feet, jumped up, and found himself hanging from the window sill. The metal frame cut into the palms of his hands. His right hand started bleeding again and throbbing with pain. He grunted and struggled to pull himself up. It was much more difficult than it looked. He hadn’t done any kind of exercise in years and his arms felt weak and thin. But he pulled with his arms and kicked with his feet, scuffing the toes of his shoes. After a few minutes, his upper body was over the ledge, and he just lay there, breathing hard, window frame cutting into his gut.

Once he’d got his breath back he climbed the rest of the way into Zurasky’s office.

He examined the window and decided there was no alarm attached to it, and then he pulled the shade closed and turned on the office light, illuminating the desk and the blue walls and carpet and the vinyl chair and couch. He looked around for a file cabinet but didn’t see one. He thought it was probably in the front office, but his chest hurt from the physical exertion, so he decided to sit down for a minute first. He looked through Zurasky’s desk. He found a bottle of vodka in the bottom right drawer. Vodka wasn’t usually his drink of choice, but it would do in a pinch. Hell, mouthwash would do in a pinch – a little spearmint wine to pass the time. He unscrewed the cap, wiped the top of the bottle off with his overcoat’s sleeve, and took a swallow. He closed his eyes.

Eventually his breathing went back down to normal and his chest stopped hurting.

After another swallow of vodka he got to his feet and went out to the front office. It was strange to be in here alone. It felt unnatural. There was no file cabinet out here either. All the files must be digital. He walked to Ashley’s desk and sat down and moved the mouse around. The previously silent computer began to hum as its interior fan whirled, and the dark screen came aglow.

After some clicking around he found what he thought were probably the patient files, but the folder was password-protected. He tried seven or eight passwords, guessing what Zurasky’s thought processes might be for each, and each time he was wrong. He looked through Ashley’s drawer, hoping she had the password written down somewhere. He knew people often wrote their passwords down so they were handy in case they forgot them themselves. He did the same thing at work, not that it would have taken a genius to guess 1910 – ‘s’ being the nineteenth letter in the alphabet and ‘j’ being the tenth. Simon Johnson. He found a yellow notepad with the single word

written on it in red ink, and thought that might be the password, but when he tried it it got him nowhere. He was sure it was the password for something, but not what he wanted.

Half an hour later – after more failed guesses and another swig (or three) of vodka – he climbed back out of the window. The only thing he had gotten out of it was Zurasky’s home address.

He pulled his car to the curb in front of Dr Zurasky’s house. The windows were dark and only silence seeped through the walls.

He pushed open the car door and stepped out into the night.

Zurasky lived in a single-storey blue-stucco tract house that looked like it’d been built in the seventies. It was shaped like a cracker box on its side, and had thin windows with vertical blinds, asphalt shingles on the sloped roof, and a flat yellow lawn with a small flowerbed butted up against the outer wall. The flowers in it were pink and purple and healthy despite the yellow lawn. The sound of traffic hummed in the distance.

He walked to the front door, raised his hand to knock, dropped it, and raised it again.

He told himself this wasn’t like earlier. He would be asking the questions. This wasn’t a session – this was an interrogation, and he was in control. Not Zurasky.

He knocked on the door, and then listened, ear tilted toward the house. He thought he could hear an inner door squeaking open, then the sound of footsteps padding toward him.

‘Who – wha?’

‘It’s Jeremy Shackleford.’

‘Jeremy – oh.’ He was asleep still. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s—’

‘We need to talk.’

‘Don’t you think this can wait till—’

‘No. It can’t wait.’

‘How did you get my home add—’

‘Open the door.’

A sigh. The sound of various locks being unlatched. The door was pulled open and light splashed out onto the porch. Zurasky was on the other side. He wore blue pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. His hair was even wilder than it normally was. There were pillow creases embedded into the flesh of his right cheek. His eyes were red. He scratched at the end of his smoothly rounded-off stump, and stepped aside, leaving the doorway empty for Simon.

‘Come on in, Jeremy. Let’s talk.’

The living room was long and narrow. A white couch sat in the middle of it atop a white carpet surrounded by white walls on which abstract paintings hung. The coffee table was glass and had issues of psychiatry and science magazines sitting on it. Various wood sculptures sat in the corners – giraffes and elephants and something that might have been a monkey climbing a tree.

‘How did you get my home address?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I’d like to know.’

‘I broke into your office.’

Zurasky nodded slowly, acting as if that surprised him not at all.

‘And your hand?’

‘Garbage disposal accident.’

Another slow nod.

‘Do you want coffee?’

‘Do you have whiskey?’

‘I have whiskey. I’m not giving you any. Would you like a coffee?’

Simon nodded.

‘Have a seat.’ Zurasky gestured toward the white couch. ‘I’ll be back.’

Simon walked to the couch and sat down. The cushions were firm and uncomfortable.

From the kitchen, the sound of the microwave running, and then a ding. A minute later Zurasky came walking out of his kitchen with two cups of coffee. He was holding them both by their handles with his good hand and balancing them on the stump of his bad arm. It was the instant kind. There was a swirling scrim of half-melted crystals and milk foam on the surface of the liquid. Steam rose from the cups. Simon’s cup was blue and Zurasky’s was red. There was a chip on the top of Simon’s, the white porcelain stained brown by coffee.

‘Thank you.’

Zurasky nodded. Then he walked to a white chair and sat down. He sipped his coffee.

‘What is this about, Jeremy?’

Simon looked down at the coffee mug, decided that he didn’t trust it, and set it down on the glass coffee table without so much as a sip. That surface scrim didn’t look right. He picked up a pen from the table and thumbed at the button, making the tip go in and out of the plastic casing. The pen advertised an anti-depressant whose name Simon doubted he could pronounce.

‘Jeremy?’

Simon looked up.

‘I know you’re involved in this,’ he said finally.

‘In what?’ Zurasky said. ‘It’s late. I’m not in the mood for mysteries.’

‘In what’s happening to me.’

‘What is happening, Jeremy?’ His voice was calm and his eyes were large and kind despite their sleepy redness.

‘That’s what I want you to tell me.’

‘You’re not giving me much to go on.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘How can I help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on?’

‘Help me? You think I believe you want to help me?’

‘What do you believe?’

‘I believe you’re part of this. What I want to know is how big a part – and why. Is Robert involved too? How long have you been planning it?’

‘Who’s Robert?’

‘You mean he’s not a part of it?’

‘Part of what?’

‘What’s happening to me.’

‘You’re talking in circles, Jeremy.’

‘You’re the only person connected with both lives.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Simon Johnson.’

Zurasky was silent for a moment, eyes looking up at the ceiling to his right. Finally he shook his head. ‘Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘He was a patient of yours.’

‘When?’

‘Up till last April – or maybe May, but I think April.’

‘For how long?’

‘Couple of years, on and off – mostly off.’

‘No. I would remember that.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Jeremy.’

‘He called you just over two weeks ago to make an appointment, then cancelled.’

Zurasky’s bottom lip stuck out, a thin layer of whitish skin coating it. He shook his head again.

Simon closed his eyes. He felt confused.

‘When we have sessions,’ he said, ‘what do we talk about?’

‘Whatever you want to talk about. You lead the conversation, Jeremy.’

‘What do I usually want to talk about?’

Zurasky shrugged.

‘Marriage troubles, problems at work, the accident. Speaking of which, I noticed you cut yourself again.’

He traced a finger across his own face from cheekbone to chinbone.

‘Again?’

Zurasky nodded, then said, ‘After the accident,’ as if that explained everything.

‘What accident?’

Zurasky sighed. ‘You know damned well what accident, Jeremy,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?’

‘You tried to kill me.’

‘I – what?’ He looked genuinely shocked.

‘You’re playing head games with me. You’re trying to confuse me. But I know you did. You sent Jeremy to kill me. What I want to know is why. I’ll get it out of you one way or another, so you might as well tell me.’

‘You’re not making the least bit of sense.’

‘My name is Simon Johnson. I live at the Filboyd Apartments on Wilshire. You know the place. A little over two weeks ago Jeremy Shackleford broke into my apartment and tried to murder me. He failed. Jeremy Shackleford was a patient of yours. So was I – once. You’re the only human connection between us. What I want to know is why you did it. I want to know what you’re up to. What I want, in short, is answers.’

Zurasky was silent for a very long time. His face was pale. He looked afraid. Simon thought that was a good thing. It meant he was on the right track. It meant he was getting to the good doctor.

‘What’s the matter? You seem a little—’

There was a knock at the door.

Simon jumped to his feet.

‘Who is that?’

Zurasky set his coffee down on the table and stood up.

‘Calm down, Jeremy. It’s the police. I called them when I was in the kitchen. I was worried about you.’

‘You son of a bitch.’

Simon looked around frantically, trying to find a way to escape. Zurasky had set him up. He probably had the body stored somewhere. Maybe it was in the trunk of his Volvo. Maybe this had all been part of it. Maybe Zurasky hadn’t even wanted Jeremy to kill him. Maybe he’d planned this step by step and this was what it had all been leading to – his arrest for the murder of Jeremy Shackleford – his way of getting rid of both him and Jeremy. Hell, if it had happened the other way, then he’d be dead and Jeremy could be arrested for his murder. It wouldn’t even matter who killed whom, as long as someone died. And Zurasky could get it done without bloodying his own hands at all – his own hand. But it was Simon who killed Jeremy, and Zurasky had put the body in the trunk of the Volvo and then tipped off the police as to where it was. That’s what had happened. And now they were here and—

Zurasky reached out and put a hand on Simon’s shoulder.

‘Calm down, Jeremy,’ he said. ‘They’re here to help.’

Simon jerked away from him.

‘You calm down.’

He swung the pen in his fist toward the doctor, shoving several inches of it into the meat of his bad arm, right through his T-shirt’s short sleeve. Zurasky let out a scream. Blood poured from the wound, into the cotton of the T-shirt, down his arm, and dripped from the end of it. The doorknob rattled – ‘Police! Open up!’ – but the door was locked.

Simon turned and ran toward the back of the house.

He heard Zurasky unlatch the door lock, heard hinges squeak in the living room.

In the laundry room he found a door leading into the backyard. He swung it open and the darkness greeted him.

He ran out into the night, leaping over a fence and into the next yard.

Half an hour later the police had left. As had Zurasky – in an ambulance. Simon had watched from a distance and no one had even glanced at the Saab. He got lucky there.

He made his way to it and got inside. He started the engine and drove away. It was three o’clock in the morning and he was exhausted. He needed to find a place to sleep.

He took the 101 south and got off the freeway in Hollywood. He figured if he drove around he could find a dive that would take cash and wouldn’t ask too many questions. He stopped at three seedy joints before he was proved correct. It seemed in this day and age even gray-market businesses expected some form of ID and a card with the Visa logo.

At first the guy behind the counter, a jowly fellow who looked like he might have insects living in his hair, wanted to charge him for thirty minutes and to see the girl Simon was bringing in – he must have just had that whoremonger look – but eventually he convinced the guy that he wanted a room for sleeping purposes only.

The guy scratched a fat face beneath a gray beard, looked at what he’d managed to scrape off with a fingernail, flicked it away, and said, ‘Suit yourself. It’ll be a hundred and forty,’ and slapped a key onto the stained yellow counter. ‘One thirteen’s around the corner, third door on the left.’

Simon thanked the guy, grabbed the key from the counter, and went to find room 113.

It stunk of misery. The threadbare yellow curtains seemed to be dripping with it. Rape and abuse and a thousand different sadnesses permeated the walls.

Simon closed the door behind him, locked it, and walked to the bed. He didn’t bother undressing. He simply laid himself down on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling. He felt ragged, but didn’t think he’d be able to sleep. He’d been through far too much today for that kind of peace to find him – for any kind of peace to find him.

Forty-seven seconds later he was snoring quietly.

He awoke to the sound of a phone ringing. It was daylight outside, sunshine splashing in through the curtains. His eyes stung. He felt like he’d just closed them. His head felt like it was stuffed with broken glass and rusted screws – and now the phone was ringing. He cleared his throat and rubbed at his face and padded to the writing desk on the wall opposite and picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Checkout’s in thirty.’ He recognized the voice. It was the desk clerk he’d met last night.

‘Oh. Okay. What time is it?’

‘Half till ten.’

‘Okay. Thank you.’

‘Also,’ the guy said – and Simon could tell from the tone that this was the real reason he’d called – ‘and I know this ain’t none of my business, but if you’re wanted by the coppers, they found you.’

Suddenly there was no heartbeat in his chest, just silence and a sound like a desert wind. He swallowed. His heart started again.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Guy in a black Cadillac’s been parked out front watching your car all morning. Looks like the fuzz to me.’

‘Okay.’

He set the phone in its cradle.

He knew the man in the black Cadillac hadn’t tailed him. He thought he knew that. He’d lost him last night before he was even half a mile from his house.

He pinched his eyes closed, and then opened them again.

The room didn’t have its own shower – a hundred and forty bucks and no fucking shower – just a toilet and a sink. He needed to head back to Pasadena and get cleaned up and change clothes. He hoped Samantha was out. He didn’t want to have to deal with her right now. He needed time to figure out what was happening. He also hoped the cops weren’t staking the place out. Stabbing a guy in the arm wasn’t murder. Nor was breaking into a business. Hopefully the cops had more important things to deal with. This wasn’t a small town. Ten million people called Los Angeles County home. Out of that ten million people, thousands of them were surely capable of making much more trouble than he had created. Hopefully the cops were busy with them. Still – if it looked sketchy he’d forget about the shower and the change of clothes, but he needed to check it out.

But what was he going to do about the black Cadillac?

The guy wasn’t a cop. The only reason for a cop to be following him before last night – before he’d stabbed Dr Zurasky and broken into his office – would be because the police knew he’d killed Jeremy Shackleford, and if the police had known that, they wouldn’t have been following him. They would have been arresting him. Which meant the guy was working with – who? Not Zurasky. Zurasky wanted him in police custody, so if the guy was working for him, and he knew where Simon was, the police would be close behind. And since they weren’t – well, who then?

Fuck it. For now he wasn’t going to worry about it. After a few hours’ sleep, it was less intimidating than last night. He’d let the son of a bitch follow him and see what happened.

As he drove he thought about seeing the dead walk. That didn’t fit in with the Zurasky hypothesis. Unless somebody had drugged him and he’d hallucinated Müller and the dog. He’d seen them earlier and they’d stuck in his head because of their violent deaths and later he’d hallucinated them. Samantha had handed him pills she claimed were Tylenol. Perhaps they’d been something else altogether. He couldn’t remember now if she gave him the pills before or after he’d seen the dead walking. Or maybe someone had replaced the blood thinners he had to take daily with something else – but then he last took those two nights ago. And if someone had replaced his blood thinners with some other drug, they’d done it before he had stepped into the role of Jeremy, and they’d known about his heart murmur, his caged-ball heart valve, the fact that he had to take pills daily, and that the best way to drug him was to slip those drugs into his bottle of blood thinners. But then whoever was orchestrating this had already demonstrated a thorough knowledge of both him and Shackleford, and the ability to get things done.

He simply couldn’t wrap his brain around all this, he couldn’t connect the dots. Maybe if he drank less. He’d had whiskey and wine and vodka throughout the day yesterday.

But this was making him feel panicky and lost and the booze calmed him. He hated this. He didn’t know what to do at any moment, didn’t know where to turn. He just had to take it one step at a time and hope he could untangle things – unfortunately they seemed to be more tangled than ever.

He parked two blocks from the house and walked the rest of the way. If cops were there, they might be looking for his car. The Cadillac pulled to the curb several car lengths behind him. The man behind the wheel did not step out into the sun. He just sat. Good.

Simon shivered as he walked through the sunshine of early fall.

After he turned the corner onto his street he paused. He looked down the length of the quiet suburban neighborhood and saw just that – a quiet suburban neighborhood. There was nothing out of the ordinary going on. Houses sat, lawns were green, and a gentle breeze ruffled eucalyptus leaves. That was all.

Samantha’s car was not in the driveway. Maybe she was out at the police station filing yet another missing person report – or being questioned about where he might be as a result of last night’s activities. Whatever she was doing she wasn’t doing it here, and that suited Simon just fine.

As he keyed open the front door, someone behind him spoke.

‘I really need that hammer, Jeremy.’

Simon jumped and turned around. The fat guy whose hammer Jeremy had – apparently – borrowed was jogging in place and looking at him.

‘Now’s a bad time.’

‘I’m building a bookcase and I really need that hammer. That was my plan for the weekend.’

‘What’s today?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Then it’s not the weekend.’

Simon pulled open the front door and went inside without another word. He slammed the deadbolt home behind him.

The living room was cool and quiet. He had a strong urge to stretch out on the couch. He was still incredibly tired. He’d managed almost six hours of sleep, but that didn’t seem to be enough. It took everything he had not to do it. Instead he walked down the hallway, through the master bedroom, and into the bathroom. He peeled away the layers of bloody sweat-stinking clothes and let them fall to the tiled floor, then stepped naked into the shower and turned on the water. It felt good to wash away the filth. The gauze covering his right hand got soaked, and he ended up pulling it away and dropping it to the shower floor. His wounds were no longer bleeding, anyway.

After drying off he walked to the bedroom and put on a gray suit. He put on a green tie, and the overcoat, and, still feeling cold, he wrapped a scarf around his neck.

Once dressed he walked to the living room. Since he was here he figured he might as well feed Francine. But she was gone.

After a moment’s thought Simon decided he knew exactly where she was – and he wanted to go there anyway. There was a trunk he wanted to pry open.

The Volvo was gone. Maybe the police had taken it. Maybe they had gotten a warrant and taken it and were now searching it. Maybe they’d already searched it and had found Jeremy Shackleford’s body in the trunk – his bones, anyway.

He shook his head at that thought. He didn’t think that was it.

If the police had the car, and if Zurasky or someone working for him had planted Shackleford’s body in its trunk, he wouldn’t still be standing here. There’d be a dozen cops on him by now. Instead there were none. Someone else had the car.

Who?

He closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead just above his left eyebrow. It throbbed with pain. He exhaled. After a moment he opened his eyes again, decided he couldn’t worry about that right now, and turned toward the back alley. He had locked the door last night when he left – creature of habit that he was – and had to break in.

He jumped up, grabbing for the ladder, but missed. He looked around for something to stand on. A broken cinder block leaned against the wall ten feet away. That might give him just enough added height. He grabbed it and set it beneath the ladder, stood atop it, and jumped again.

This time he managed to wrap a fist around the rusted fire-escape ladder and pull it down. Rust flakes fell around and on him. The third rung from the bottom fell right off the rusted ladder and onto the ground. He brushed himself down and then climbed the ladder, glad he’d only lived on the second floor.

He pushed the dead ficus on his fire escape aside with a dull-polished, scuff-toed shoe and climbed in through the bathroom window, trying to be as quiet as possible in case someone was here. How strange – having to break into his own apartment, having to worry about someone else lurking here.

His stomach felt tight. His head throbbed.

The apartment was hollow, a husk, a cocoon from which the moth had emerged. You could hear the dull hum of silence like tinnitus in your ear. Simon walked through this, feeling a slight droop as the floorboards gave beneath his weight.

As soon as he walked into the living room he saw it. The Mason jar sat atop the coffee table, Francine swimming inside.

He walked to the coffee table and picked up the jar. When he did he noticed something else: the picture of Shackleford and Samantha he had stolen was missing.

He strapped Francine into the passenger’s seat and started the car. The black Cadillac was nowhere to be seen – when he’d walked back to the Saab in Pasadena, it had been gone. It bothered him that the guy had found him at that rat-hole motel in Hollywood. He knew he hadn’t been followed there. He thought he knew he hadn’t been followed there. But just lately he didn’t know he knew anything.

No – two plus two still equaled four, and four plus four still equaled eight, and eight plus eight sixteen.

Some things could be depended upon.

Simon put the car into gear.

He would drop Francine off at the house in Pasadena and then figure out what his next move would be. Right now he didn’t know what direction to turn in, what lead to follow. What he saw before him was a tangle, and no visible end piece with which to work.

He was on Virgil, heading toward Silver Lake Boulevard, when the black Cadillac swept out of a side street and started tailing him again.

That’s when he became certain his car had a transponder attached to it someplace. It should have been obvious to him this morning. It would have been if he were capable of thinking clearly. He needed to be able to think clearly. He needed to stop letting his emotions overwhelm him – the fear and the paranoia and the confusion. He needed to look at these events like a math problem. Instead he was letting each moment overwhelm him and acting on instinct and instinct wasn’t—

He needed to lose the guy in the Cadillac and then pull into a parking lot or something and find the transponder on his car. The guy was tracking him for someone. He wasn’t going to make a move; he would just continue to follow. And since Simon didn’t know why, he didn’t want it done. It didn’t matter so much this morning – he’d just been going to take a shower, and the guy knew where Shackleford’s house was already – but it would matter once he dropped off Francine and got to work on figuring this out. He didn’t want anybody following him then.

Instead of continuing on toward home – toward Pasadena – he swung right onto Beverly Boulevard, made another right onto Rampart, and tried to lose the guy by turning randomly on a series of side streets just north of MacArthur Park. Unfortunately the guy didn’t seem to care that Simon knew he was being followed – he tailed close – and with traffic Simon found it impossible to get enough distance between him and the Cadillac to lose it.

Fine, then, if this guy wanted him so badly, Simon would make himself available. He was tired of being followed.

He led the Cadillac into a blind alley off Figueroa and slammed down on the brakes, screeching to a stop. Then he swung the driver’s side door open and stepped outside.

‘What do you want with me?’ he said as he walked toward the Cadillac. ‘What is it? I’m here. I’m right here. What the fuck do you want!?’

The jockey in the driver’s seat looked left and then right, seemingly in a panic. It was hard to be sure, his eyes were impossible to see through the black lenses of his sunglasses, but his movements made it look to Simon like he was in a panic, squirming in his seat.

And then the guy put the Cadillac into reverse and screeched backwards down the alleyway. His left front fender banged against a brick wall and he lost a side-view mirror, and then he screeched into the street. A car horn blared. Brakes squealed. Metal crunched and the Cadillac spun in a half circle.

The car that hit it was a yellow Gremlin, and after a moment a heavy-set Hispanic woman stepped from it and started storming toward the jockey saying, ‘You stupid motherfucker. What the fuck do you think you’re fucking doing!? I’m gonna call my husband, he’s gonna kick your fucking—’

The jockey put the Cadillac into gear and it roared away.

‘Where the fuck do you think you’re—’

She threw her cell phone at the car and it bounced off the back window and then shattered against the asphalt.

‘Fuck!’ she said.

It was tucked under the right-front wheel well, a simple black box with a red light on one end. It blinked steadily. Simon threw it to the ground and then stepped into the car. He started the engine and was backing out of the alley when he realized that Francine was missing. The seatbelt was still snapped into place but there was no Mason jar there under the strap.

He stepped out of the car, looked around, and saw no one. The alleyway was empty.

The jar was sitting on the coffee table when he walked back into the apartment on Wilshire.

Instead of driving back to the house to drop off Francine he drove directly to the Pasadena College of the Arts. He had wasted enough of his day chasing Francine around and he wanted to get Kate Wilhelm’s address so he could pay her a visit. She knew something and he wanted to get it out of her. She knew something about his past and how it was connected with Jeremy Shackleford – something he couldn’t remember. And he was becoming more and more certain that everything revolved around that something. He couldn’t see it but he knew it was there the same way scientists knew of a planet they couldn’t see: by its gravitational effect on everything around it that they could see. Everything seemed to revolve around this invisible part of his past. His past and Jeremy Shackleford’s.

He walked through the parking lot, carrying Francine, and thinking about that. Something had happened last May and he couldn’t remember it. Kate knew what it was, and who he was. She had called him Simon and she knew he couldn’t remember last May. That had to be where he was connected with Shackleford, the point at which their paths had first crossed. Samantha had said that Jeremy’d had an accident last year. She didn’t say it had been in May but Simon now knew it had been. It had to have been.

He was digging through desk drawers, pulling out stacks of papers and flipping through them, looking for Kate’s information, when Howard Ullman knocked on the office door and then pushed his way in without waiting for a response.

‘I thought I heard you in here.’

‘Hi.’

‘Samantha’s been in a panic. She called four times to see if you’d come in to work. The cops have had her at the station all morning, asking her questions she doesn’t know the answers to. You missed your algebra class. What the hell is going on?’

‘I’m in the middle of something. Can this wait?’

‘You’re in the middle of something?’

‘Yes.’

‘A nervous breakdown perhaps?’

‘I can’t explain it.’

‘Does it involve Kate Wilhelm?’

Simon looked up and really examined Ullman’s face for the first time since he’d walked in. He was unshaven. His lips were chapped and there was a bloody scab on the bottom one where he had scraped away at the dead skin with his teeth. His eyes were marijuana-reddened but sharp with intelligence and perception and Simon didn’t like the shine they had at all.

‘Why – ’ he licked his lips – ‘what makes you think that?’

‘I can’t think of what else it might be.’

‘But what would it have to do with Kate Wilhelm?’

Ullman was quiet for a minute. He ran his tongue over his teeth, sucked at something stuck behind his eyetooth, swallowed.

‘You’ve not been yourself,’ he said finally. ‘You need to get help. I don’t think you can save your job at this point. Carol has it in for you – and at this point I’m way past defending your behavior. But you might – just maybe – be able to save your marriage. Samantha loves you. She’s put up with more than any woman in her right mind would. You’re lucky for that. But I don’t think she’s gonna put up with much more, Jeremy. In fact, I won’t let her. If you fuck up again, I’ll have to rip out your heart.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want Samantha to have to watch you fall apart.’

Ullman left without answering any of his questions.

He continued digging through paperwork for another twenty minutes but mostly what he found were absences. He didn’t have a Wilhelm in any of his classes, for instance. No Kate or Kathryn or Kathy or Katrina – no Wilhelm at all. But while he looked for Kate’s information, he also hoped to find something else that might be useful. He knew more now than when he’d first searched the office, so maybe now something that meant nothing then would be of significance. He found no reference to himself. He found no reference to Zurasky. He found one reference to Kate – if it was the same Kate, and he thought it was – the beginning of a letter addressed to her that had been crumpled and shoved into a desk drawer unfinished.

That was the whole thing. It was written on a sheet of yellow paper in blue ink. There was a coffee stain on the bottom right-hand side, and the word

was scrawled in big letters across the two paragraphs.

He folded it up and slipped it into a pocket. Then he grabbed Francine from the top of the desk and headed toward his car in the parking lot.

As he reached the Saab and unlocked the car door he realized his hands were empty. He was almost certain he’d grabbed Francine from the desk before walking out of the office – almost. He could close his eyes and remember the way he’d reached across the desk, the way his hip had bumped a stack of papers and knocked it down, the way the papers spread across the floor like a fanned deck of cards, the feel of the cool glass against his fingertips hard and smooth – and yet his hands were empty.

The jar wasn’t in the office.

He knew he was wasting time, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He parked the car on the south side of Wilshire, in front of the Korean barbecue joint, and jogged across the street toward the Filboyd Apartments, dodging a smattering of cars as he went.

The man in the Cadillac, the jockey, was parked on the north side of the street, in front of his building, watching him through the black lenses of his sunglasses. Had he known Simon was going to come back here or had it been a lucky guess? Had he taken the jar knowing that Simon would—

Maybe he was being followed by more than one person. He couldn’t see the jockey’s eyes. He was pretending to examine the backs of his fingers, nibbling at bloody hangnails there, but Simon knew the man was really watching him.

He pushed his way through the front doors before he remembered he had no key to get in, pushed his way back out, and walked around the corner of the building toward the fire escape in back. As he walked up the sidewalk toward the alleyway he saw Helmut Müller. The man was walking toward him, looking down at his feet, making small steps and watching the sidewalk like if he didn’t stay focused he’d forget what he was doing. Maybe he would. Death was a pretty good excuse for a bad memory. When he heard Simon’s footsteps he looked up at him.

‘Well, take him,’ Müller said, then looked past Simon’s shoulder and nodded.

Simon looked behind him, saw nothing. Then he walked past Müller without a word and into the alley.

The Mason jar was resting on the coffee table and Francine was swimming inside it. He picked it up and started back to the bathroom. The man in the Cadillac was out on Wilshire right now, probably putting another transponder under one of his wheel wells. He’d had enough of that son of a bitch.

He walked into the bathroom and crawled back out through the open window. With Francine tucked into his armpit, snuggled under his right arm like an infant, he made his way precariously down the ladder. Once at the bottom he looked around the alley for a weapon. The cinder block was too large and awkward. Nothing else seemed remotely intimidating. He was about to give up when, turning in a circle to see what the alley contained, his foot kicked something metal. A rusty rung knocked from the fire escape lay on the ground amongst a thatch of weeds growing up through a crack in the asphalt. He vaguely remembered it falling there. He picked it up and felt it for weight.

Nodding to himself – it was good and heavy, and rust had decayed one end to a sharp point – he walked out of the alley.

He walked all the way around the block so that he could come up behind the Cadillac and the jockey would remain unaware of his presence unless he happened to glance in his rear-view mirror. But he would be looking for Simon to come out the front of the building or around the corner, so Simon remained hopeful. About a half block behind the car was the bench that sat in front of Captain Bligh’s. Simon set Francine down beneath it, pushing the jar against the wall so no one would kick it over.

‘Wait here.’

Then he continued toward the black Cadillac and the man inside. The metal gripped in his fist felt grimy and was turning his palm a reddish orange. His hands were moist with sweat. His mouth was dry. He walked carefully and smoothly forward. The sounds of the cars and trucks driving by on Wilshire faded away. The world seemed very clear and clean and crisp, like it did after rain. He walked out into the street, continuing onward. He raised the pipe in his right hand up over his shoulder.

As he walked past the left rear fender the jockey glanced him in his side-view mirror, slammed a hand down on the door lock, and tried to roll up the window. But he was too late. Simon reached through and grabbed him by the collar of his thin black sport coat and fought him bodily through the window. Once more of him was outside the car than inside, Simon let him go, and gravity threw him to the street.

A car in the right lane had to swerve to miss him, and its driver laid on the horn.

The man scrambled out of the street, crawling backwards in a crabwalk toward the curb, between the front of his Cadillac and the bumper-sticker-covered red Toyota parked in front of it.

Simon walked toward him with the rusty pipe in his hand, heart pounding in his chest.

‘Wait,’ the jockey said. ‘You don’t wanna do that. You do not wanna do that. Just wait. Wait wait – wait.’

‘Who are you and why are you following me?’

‘I don’t – I don’t know what you’re talking about. I—’

Simon swung the pipe down and slammed it against the jockey’s left knee.

He let out a scream.

‘Why are you following me?’

‘I don’t—’ turned into another scream as Simon hit him again.

‘Who are you?’

‘I—’

‘Take off your glasses.’

‘What?’

‘Take them off. I wanna see your eyes.’

‘I don’t know—’

Simon smashed the pipe against the jockey’s neck. It left an orange rust stain on his flesh. He screamed in pain, grabbing at the point of contact with pale fingers. There was dirt under his fingernails and they were surrounded by the pink gashes of torn-away hangnails.

‘I’m not gonna let you lie to me. Let me see your eyes. I want to know you’re telling me the truth.’

‘I can’t take them off.’

Simon raised the pipe again.

The guy held up his hands. The palms were dirty and small pebbles were embedded in the meat of them from his crawl away from Simon.

‘Okay. Okay, okay – okay.’

Simon waited.

The jockey let out a sigh. He rubbed at his neck. It was welting and turning red beneath the rusted orange. He swallowed. His throat made a dry clicking sound when he did.

Simon noticed for the first time that they weren’t standard sunglasses he was wearing. They were flying goggles, a leather strap wrapping them around the jockey’s head.

‘Take them off.’

‘I am.’

‘I won’t say it again.’

‘I’m taking them off.’

Finally he reached to the glasses with both hands and pulled the lenses up onto his forehead.

His eyes became slits as he squinted in the sunlight. A gasp escaped his mouth. Pink tears – part blood and part water – streamed down his cheeks. His eyes were nothing but tiny black pupils floating in a sea of white, like a single dot on an otherwise blank page. With no color in their centers the whites of the eyes seem unbelievably white, like snow-covered mountainsides through which no black rocks or treetops were jutting.

Suddenly Simon remembered what Chris had told him about UFOs and the travelers who came here within them. They got crazy eyes. He hadn’t gotten to say what their eyes looked like before Robert cut him off but—

It couldn’t be true – could it? It had to be bullshit. And yet—

At this point he was ready to believe anything.

‘Are you – are you one of them?’

‘What? One of who?’

‘Where do you come from?’

‘Where do I – Culver City. Well, just east of Culver City. Near Washington and La Brea.’

‘No – where are you from originally?’

‘I don’t—’

‘Stop stalling!’

‘Ohio. All right? I don’t know what you want from me.’

‘You were born in Ohio?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What city?’

‘Westerville.’

‘Westerville a big town?’

‘No.’

‘What’s the population?’

‘I – uh – it was about thirty thousand when I left.’

‘When was that?’

‘Ninety-seven.’

‘Nineteen ninety-seven?’

‘No, eighteen ninety-seven.’

Simon raised the pipe in his hand.

‘Yes! Yes – nineteen ninety-seven.’

‘You’re not one of them?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talk—’

‘Fine. Why are you following me?’

‘I’m a private investigator.’

‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’

‘Lack of pigment. I was born that way.’

‘Your hair’s black.’

‘Localized to the eyes.’

‘What’s that called?’

‘What’s what called?’

‘When you have albino eyes.’

‘I don’t know.’ He wiped at the bloody pink water running down his face. ‘It’s a long name. I can never remember.’

‘And you’re not one of them?’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘Who hired you?’

‘Can I put the glasses—’

‘No. Who hired you?’

‘I can’t tell you that. Client privilege. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Who fucking hired you?’

‘Listen—’

Simon slammed the pipe down onto the man’s shoulder and it let out a sick ring so low in tone it was barely a ring at all. The man let out a yelp and rubbed at the orange stain on his black coat.

‘I already gave you three chances. I’m gonna give you one more. That’s more than you’d get in baseball.’

‘Your wife.’

Simon nodded. He wasn’t surprised. He didn’t think anything the man said would surprise him. If the guy had admitted to being one of them, Simon thought he would have believed that – believed it and gone on from there.

‘Why did she hire you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I’m not. She didn’t say. She just said she wanted me to follow you, keep track of where you were going, tell her what I saw. I assumed she suspected another woman, but she didn’t say so, so I don’t know.’

‘You’re fired.’

Simon tossed the rusty pipe away.

‘Is there a transponder on my car?’

The jockey hesitated.

‘Where is it?’

‘Right front wheel well.’

‘You put it in the same place twice?’

The guy shrugged.

‘I figured you’d look everywhere but the same spot.’

‘Keep whatever retainer my wife gave you, but don’t let me see you again.’

‘Okay.’

The man pulled the goggles back down over his eyes.

When Simon went back to get Francine she was gone.

He was halfway down the rusted fire-escape ladder when he realized his arm was empty.

He stopped, holding onto a rung, and considered climbing back up to get her, but he knew what would happen – the same thing that’d been happening all day.

It was a distraction. He had to let her go. Chasing after his goddamn goldfish was not getting him any closer to finding out what was happening. Besides, he was no longer certain she was real.

‘Sorry, Francine.’

He continued down the fire escape.

He yanked the wheel to the right and the Saab rolled up the curb and onto a strip of lawn growing between the curb and the sidewalk before screeching to a stop, grass tearing beneath a tire, revealing moist black soil and the insects and worms that lived within. He pushed open the driver’s side door and stepped out into the day. He felt tense. Samantha had hired a private detective to follow him. She had given him pills and – if he was remembering correctly – he had hallucinated shortly thereafter. Or had he hallucinated before? He couldn’t remember now. He had certainly been hallucinating since. Helmut Müller was dead. That stray dog was dead. The thing with the goldfish was just weird.

He pushed his way through the front door.

‘Samantha?’

Silence.

‘Samantha?’

Faint, from the bathroom: ‘Jeremy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hold on.’

The sound of the toilet flushing, water running, the door opening.

Samantha emerged from the hallway with damp hands. She wiped them back then front on her shirt.

‘Where have you been? The police came by looking for you. Did you stab Dr Zurasky?’

‘What are you doing to me?’

‘What?’

‘You had someone following me.’

‘Calm down.’

‘You had someone following me.’

‘Jeremy, I – I didn’t.’

‘I’m not asking. I’m telling you I know you did.’

‘But – listen.’

‘Okay.’ He crossed his arms. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Okay.’

She opened her mouth but nothing came out. She looked jumpy and alarmed. Her eyes searched his face, he knew not what for. She licked her lips nervously, swallowed.

‘I—’

‘Yes?’

‘I – I did it for your own good, Jeremy. I didn’t want you to disappear again.’

‘My own good?’

‘Fine. If that’s not acceptable, how about my own good – my sanity? I did it so I would know where you were, so I would know you were safe, so I would know—’

‘What is it to you where I am?’

‘I’m your wife.’

‘Are you?’

Simon took a step forward; Samantha took a step back.

‘What are you doing?’

‘That’s my question for you. What are you doing? Have you been drugging me?’

‘What?’

‘Have you?’

‘No. Of course I—’

‘Not that you would admit it even if you were.’

He took another step forward, she took another step back.

‘Don’t do this, Jeremy. You’re scaring me.’

‘Then tell me what’s happening to me.’

‘I don’t know,’ Samantha said. ‘If I did, don’t you think I’d stop it?’

Simon tongued the inside of his cheek and simply looked at her.

Finally he said, ‘How would I know what you’d do? I don’t even know you.’

‘What do you mean?’

He turned back toward the door.

That’s when he saw it.

There was a framed photograph sitting on an end table. Simon recognized it. It was the photograph he’d stolen from the house on that day he’d first sneaked in. It felt like that had happened years ago rather than just over two weeks ago. There were Samantha and Jeremy standing side by side. Samantha’s arm was through Jeremy’s. Jeremy was wearing a suit Simon had worn himself. And he recognized the background – he knew where the picture’d been taken. Two weeks ago he hadn’t, but he did now.

He picked it up and looked at it for a long moment.

‘Where – where did this come from?’

Samantha was holding herself and looking at him with sadness.

‘That woman Marlene Biskind brought it by about twenty minutes ago. It was one of the pictures she took at my show last night and she thought I might want to have it.’

Simon looked from her to the picture in his hand. He could feel it shaking.

‘This is,’ he licked his lips, ‘this is a picture of me?’

‘Who else would it be a picture of?’

He pulled the Saab’s driver’s side door open.

‘I really need that hammer, Jeremy.’

Simon spun around.

He wasn’t jogging now. He was wearing slacks and a tucked-in T-shirt.

Simon pulled out his – Jeremy’s – wallet and looked inside. He grabbed a hundred-dollar bill and thrust it forward.

‘Here. Just buy a hammer.’

‘I don’t want to buy a hammer. I loaned you a hammer and I want it back.’

‘It’s a hundred dollars.’

‘I just want my hammer.’

‘Fine. I’ll get your fucking hammer.’

He slammed the car door shut and stormed toward the house, flung the door open, and started digging around, looking for a hammer in various drawers. He didn’t find one, but he found a Stanley screwdriver, thought he could use it to switch his license plates, keep the cops off him for a while longer, and stuffed it into his overcoat pocket. Then he continued searching.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Looking for a hammer.’

Samantha disappeared and a moment later emerged from the garage with one.

‘This hammer?’

He took it from her without a word and walked back outside, holding it up.

‘Is this the hammer you want?’ He felt suddenly furious. Rage flushed his cheeks. His chest felt tight. His brain was boiling with anger and thoughtless. ‘Is this the fucking hammer you want?’

‘What other hammer would I—’

Simon swung it down against the side of the son of a bitch’s head.

‘There’s your fucking hammer.’

The guy collapsed to the ground screaming and holding his face. Simon let go of the hammer and it dropped to the driveway and then bounced onto the lawn. After a moment blood began to pour from between the man’s fingers and into the grass. The guy flailed about on his side, staining his jeans and his T-shirt with grass. Neighbors walked from their front doors, asking if everything was okay, wondering if—

Simon got into his car, mumbling under his breath. He was tired of everyone coming at him. He was tired of feeling frantic and lost and not knowing what direction to turn. And everyone coming at him. Samantha. That private detective. Zurasky. And that son of a bitch and his fucking hammer. Goddamn them all.

He drove the car off the curb, and screeched away from there.

He drove around the Fillmore train station parking lot till he found a spot, parked his car, and got out. He dug the screwdriver from his overcoat’s inside pocket and walked to the Ford Explorer beside which he’d just parked. Glancing left and then right, he sat on his haunches and began unscrewing the plates.

He drove along Hollywood Boulevard, past Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Ripley’s museum. There was a crowd in front of the theater.

A cop car drove by going in the opposite direction. Simon’s chest tightened but the cop didn’t even glance at him.

It felt strange. How could he feel so guilty – how could he be so guilty: of killing a man and trying to dispose of the body, of breaking and entering, of two assaults – and not draw the attention of every officer of the law within a hundred miles? Especially when everything was falling apart. It seemed the natural progression, the next step, and yet—

He stuck a cigarette between his dry lips as he drove and reached for his Zippo. It was gone. He had lost it. He thumbed in the car’s built-in lighter and after a few moments it popped back out. He lighted his cigarette and inhaled deeply. The smoke made his lungs feel like overfilled balloons, taut and ready to pop.

He exhaled.

As he drove he tried to wrap his mind around the events of the last couple weeks. He tried to put the clues in some kind of working order. He tried to untangle the ugly, messy knot of events. He couldn’t do it. But as he neared the motel – beige stucco with gray patches of concrete where the exterior had recently been repaired after, from the look of the damage, a car had been driven into the manager’s office – something clicked. And while it didn’t make sense of everything, it gave him something to work with.

Walk the mile. Well, take him.

Yeah, he had something to work with.

He hoped he did.

‘You’re back,’ the guy behind the counter said, then he grabbed a hair from his nostril, plucked it, examined it, and threw it to the floor.

‘I am. But I’d like it if you could forget you ever saw me.’

‘Not a problem. You gotta be forgetful around here.’

Simon nodded.

‘You ditch the fuzz?’

‘Wasn’t the police. Private investigator.’

‘Marital trouble?’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘Nothing, man. Just conversatin’.’

‘Anyways, you got a pen or a marker or something I could write with?’

The guy dug a black marker from a coffee mug and set it on the counter.

‘How long you staying for this time? I can give you a discount if it’s three days or more.’

‘I don’t know how long. We’ll take it day by day.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Simon paid and the guy gave him his key. It was for the same room he’d had last night. One thirteen: bad luck plus one. He was at the manager’s door – looking out into the parking lot – when he stopped and turned around.

‘If anybody asks, who stayed in my room?’

‘Blond fellow with a harelip. Had a birthmark on his neck shaped like Texas.’

‘Unfortunate fellow.’

‘Most folks are who end up here – their days of shitting in tall cotton far behind ’em. If they ever had any of those days to begin with.’ He looked sad and contemplative.

Simon nodded and held up the marker. ‘I’ll bring this back when I’m done.’

When he couldn’t find paper he wrote both phrases on the wall.

One a, two e’s, one h, one i, one k, two l’s, one m, one t, one w – same letters for both of them. They were anagrams – just as he’d thought. But what else? He stared at them for a long time, those phrases scrawled in his shaking hand on the lumpy motel-room wall, illuminated by pale yellow lamplight. When was the last time he’d eaten? His stomach felt empty and sour and was grumbling and boiling. Could stomachs consume themselves?

This wasn’t the time to think about that. He could eat later.

Anagrams.

After a while he started writing, slowly at first, but gaining speed as he continued on, as he got the hang of it:

He chewed on his bottom lip as he wrote, one anagram after another, none of them making the least bit of sense to him, though he paused after a couple, and stared, trying to make them mean something. He couldn’t do it, though, and so he continued on – writing away.

Then he stopped again and sat on the bed.

He looked at his collection of nonsensical anagrams. He could think of another dozen, no problem – maw hike tell, aw theme kill, ha me well kit, math like Lew, and on and on – but saw no point in writing them down when they meant nothing to him.

He threw the marker against the wall, watched it fall to the floor, and fell back on the mattress. He stared at the ceiling. It was covered in spray-on texture – what he’d called popcorn ceiling as a kid – except in one section. That section looked like it had been recently repaired. Maybe there had been a roof leak and the rotten section had been cut out and replaced. Or maybe—

He sat up, got to his feet, picked up the marker, and wrote two words on the wall at the end of his list:

One a, two e’s, one h, one i, one k, two l’s, one m, one t, one w – Kate Wilhelm. He stared at the two words for a long time. It should have been obvious. If he’d been able to think clearly it would have been.

He thought of the letter Jeremy Shackleford had written to her.

What had she done? He had said she couldn’t continue on this path. He had said she would end up hurting herself as much as she hurt him. How had she hurt him? What had she done?

‘You thought I was too stupid to figure out it was you.’ He licked his lips. ‘You won’t think I’m so stupid now.’

He sat at the writing desk in the corner of the room, picked up the telephone, and dialed 4–1–1.

‘City and state, please.’

‘Los Angeles, California.’

‘How can I help you, sir?’

‘The number for a Kate Wilhelm.’

‘Wilhelm?’

‘Wilhelm.’ He spelled it for her.

‘Okay, sir, there’s twenty-three results for Wilhelm but no Kate.’

‘Is there a K?’

‘No, sir. It goes from John to Mack.’

Simon was silent.

‘Sir?’

‘Would it be possible to get them all?’

‘All twenty-three, sir?’

‘Yeah.’

A sigh.

‘Do you have a pen and paper, sir?’

‘I have a marker.’

‘Okay, sir. This first one is Amanda.’

‘Okay.’

He took down names and numbers, scribbling them upon the wood surface of the writing desk since he didn’t have a piece of paper, the meat of his hand just below the pinky occasionally smearing a last name or the last four digits of a phone number as he dragged his hand over it. Eventually he had them all.

He hung up the phone. He turned around, looking over his shoulder at the digital clock on the night stand. The red numbers claimed it was

It was still early enough to call.

He turned back around and looked at the phone. He had a knot in his stomach. For some reason this filled him with dread, with a vague fear that had no direction to turn, that had no focus at all. He swallowed and looked at that first number.

He had to do it so he might as well just get on with it.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, is Kate there?’

‘Kate?’

‘Kate Wilhelm.’

‘What number are you calling?’

He told her.

‘Right number,’ the woman on the other end of the line said, ‘wrong person.’

‘Okay. Sorry to bother you.’

‘No bother.’ Click.

Keeping the phone to his ear, he severed the line with his left hand, dropping his first two fingers on the button, then lifted his hand, listened to the dial tone, and dialed the next number. He got a similar response – on and on he got that response. Sorry, no, wrong number, nobody here by that name, who are you trying to call, I don’t know anyone by that name, huh-uh, nope, bye.

That was how it went until he got to John Wilhelm.

‘Yeah?’

‘Hi. Is uh—’

‘What?’

‘Is Kate there?’

Silence.

‘Hello?’

Finally: ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Who is this?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Is – is Kate there?’

‘I said, who’s calling?’

‘Simon.’

‘When was the last time you saw Kate, Simon?’

‘It’s – it’s been a while.’

More silence.

‘Hello?’

‘Kate’s dead.’

‘What?’

‘Dead.’

‘When?’

‘Last April.’

‘That’s not – when?’

‘Last April, I said.’

He didn’t respond. Eventually the guy on the other end of the line grew impatient with the silence: ‘Hello?’

‘That’s not possible.’

‘I’m afraid it is. Goodbye.’

Then the sound of the line being severed. Simon sat with the phone pressed against his ear for some time. Eventually a recorded voice broke through the silence. ‘If you would like to make a call, please hang up and—’

He set the phone in its cradle, looked down at his lap, thinking about what to do next, and then picked it up again and again dialed 4–1–1.

‘City and state, please.’

‘Los Angeles, California,’ he said. ‘I need the address for a John Wilhelm.’

‘There’s no John Wilhelm in Los Angeles, sir, but there’s one in Burbank.’

‘That’s the one.’

In the dream he was driving a yellow Chevy Nova, and though he was not a particularly tall man – five foot nine – his knees were brushing against the steering wheel. The seat was adjusted for a shorter person. This was not his car. He saw blood on his hands as they gripped the wheel, in the creases of his skin, under his thumbnails. He glanced to his right, but the passenger’s seat was empty.

That didn’t make sense; he knew Kate was in the car.

He turned his head to look in the back seat and saw—

Someone banging on the door awoke him. He didn’t know where, when, or who he was. He looked around to reorient himself with his surroundings. He had fallen asleep in the chair at the writing desk. He’d decided to go pay John Wilhelm a visit, put his face into his hands and closed his eyes, just for a minute, just to think about how he’d handle the situation, and must have fallen asleep. His neck was killing him.

How long had he slept?

‘Open up, motherfucker!’

The banging continued.

He rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles, looked out of the window. His eyes itched. It was night. The clock said it was nine forty-five. He wondered if an entire day had passed. He didn’t think so. He thought it was still Tuesday. It had been Tuesday, right? He just couldn’t think at—

‘I’ll kick this fucking door down!’

‘Who is it?’

‘Open the fucking door I know she’s in there.’ The words slurred together.

‘There’s no she in here at all.’

‘Open the fucking door and prove it.’

Simon walked to the door and pulled it open as far as the chain would allow. He looked out and saw a praying-mantis-looking guy in a wife-beater and cargo shorts. He was bare-footed. The guy looked at him with confusion.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘The guy whose door you’ve been banging on.’

‘What room—’ He looked at the number on the door. ‘Man, this is the wrong fucking room.’ He said it in a tone that suggested Simon had made the mistake: he’d obviously put his room in the wrong spot. The guy walked away shaking his head.

Simon shut the door.

A moment later he heard banging on someone else’s.

‘Open up. I know she’s in there!’

Simon was glad the guy’d woken him up. He had to pay someone a visit.

Steering with his knee as he drove, he stuck a cigarette between his lips and lighted it (this time with motel matches; he couldn’t believe he’d lost his lighter on top of everything else). Then he pressed a button on the door and the window hummed and slid down a couple of inches. A breeze blew against his face. Traffic was light but the noise of humming tires was loud.

The lights of the city flickered to his left like grounded stars.

The house was small and dark – nearly all the lights inside turned off. Only one room’s window glowed with a dim yellow light, like a jack-o’-lantern. The yard was flat and bare, no flowers or trees or shrubbery of any kind, just a lawn littered with crabgrass and dandelions. The stucco looked dull and unpainted. It was just concrete gray. A light blue Ford Pinto station wagon sat in the driveway, the back window shattered, replaced by a black trash bag which was held in place by now-peeling duct tape, crisped by the sun. The tags on the license plate were eight months past expiration.

He pulled to a stop at the curb and stepped out into the night. He dropped his cigarette into the gutter. The flame was snuffed out by a slow trickle of water coming from someone’s sprinkling system several houses down. The sound of freeway traffic echoed through the cul-de-sac. A cool breeze tousled his hair. He swallowed.

Finally, after simply standing for several long moments, he walked across the lawn – feeling dead grass crunch beneath the soles of his feet despite the moisture of the soil in which it was rooted – and when he reached the front door he knocked.

There was silence from within – and then the sound of footsteps nearing the door, the rattle of the doorknob being turned, the pained moan of sore hinges.

And then a man in his forties was looking at Simon. He was barrel-chested and bare-chested, wearing only a pair of canvas shorts. His torso was covered in a thick layer of hair in which crumbs of food were nestled. His hair was brown except at the temples, which were gray, and his beard – which was long and tangled – matched his temples. The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes cut deep lines into his flesh. He was holding a can of Budweiser. His eyes were dull as he opened the door but when he finally got around to looking at Simon they went sharp and bright and angry.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘I’m – what?’

‘Why are you here?’

‘I’m—’ Simon swallowed. ‘I’m here to see Kate. Is she here?’

‘What?’

‘I’m here to—’

‘You called me earlier tonight.’

‘What? No.’

Simon didn’t know why he lied. It was simply his first instinct. When someone asks you if you did something and he’s got an accusatory tone in his voice you say no.

‘I recognize your voice. I thought it sounded familiar.’

‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I called. I just want to see Kate. I don’t know what she told you, but I really—’

‘What she told me? Are you out of your mind? Kate is dead.’

‘That’s what you said on the phone, but I—’

‘But nothing. What did you come here for?’

The man – John – now had moisture in his eyes, and they were going red. He blinked several times quickly and looked away at something in the corner.

‘She can’t have died last April. I saw her yesterday.’

‘Just get out of here.’

‘Maybe I can come in and look aro—’

‘No. I told you at the inquest I never wanted to see your fucking face again and I meant it. In fact, if I recall, I told you I’d kill you if I ever saw you again, and you’re really tempting me. Get off my lawn. Get out of here. Never come back.’

‘But she can’t be—’

‘She is!’ John yelled. ‘And you fucking know it. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you and I don’t care. Now leave!’

As he said the last word he pulled back and threw his can of Budweiser. It was almost full and when it slammed against Simon’s chest from only three or four feet away it knocked the wind out of him. He stumbled backwards and then fell on his ass on the lawn.

The can dropped to the front porch and vomited foaming liquid from its metal mouth while rolling along the gentle grade toward the grass.

An image like a shard of glass cut through his mind: a yellow Chevy Nova smashing through a guardrail. There were trees thirty or forty feet below, growing on the edge of a cliff, and in a moment, once gravity kicked in, the car would be dropped into them.

As the Nova flew through the air its front end tilted downward, the headlights splashing across the tops of trees, and from where he sat in the passenger’s seat, Simon could see a flock of birds take flight from one of them, frightened by the sound of the car’s engine.

He glanced to his left, to the driver’s seat, and—

‘Was it a car accident?’

Simon looked up from the lawn toward John Wilhelm. The man looked back at him momentarily and then without a word slammed the door shut. That was followed by the sound of a lock clicking into place. Apparently he wasn’t going to answer that question.

Simon got to his feet and dusted himself off. His ass was wet from the grass, his chest wet with beer.

He walked to the car and got inside.

When he got back to his room he found the thermostat and turned on the heater – a small, rusty radiator that looked like an accordion. The night air had chilled him to the bone – that and the moisture from the grass, and the beer which poured down the front of his shirt – despite the overcoat and scarf he had on. With the heater on, he sat at the wood chair in front of the writing desk and picked up the telephone. He dialed 4–1–1.

‘City and state, please.’

‘Glendale, California.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘Christopher Watkins.’

‘One minute, sir.’

‘Okay.’

There was the sound of fingers tapping away at a keyboard.

‘I have it, sir. Would you like me to connect you?’

‘Yes, please.’

Silence as if the line had been severed, then a dial tone, and then the phone began ringing. It rang four and a half times.

‘Hello?’

The voice sounded groggy, full of phlegm.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘Simon?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hey, man, what’s going on? It’s like eleven-thirty.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right. What’s up?’

‘I need to ask you something.’

‘Ask away.’

‘When you watched the special about UFOs – what did it say about the eyes?’ Simon knew he was grasping at straws, but ever since he left Burbank that private detective had been on his mind and he couldn’t figure out why, but something in the back of his mind had put him and Kate together in some way.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The UFO special you mentioned. On TV.’

‘Oh, that’s on tomorrow night.’

‘What are you talking about? We talked about it at lunch over two weeks ago.’

‘Nope.’

‘Is it a repeat?’

‘No, man, they been pushing this thing like it’s cocaine. It’s brand new.’

‘That doesn’t – okay. I gotta go.’

He put the phone into its cradle.

‘Bye,’ he said to the empty room.

He walked to a liquor store on the corner and bought a bottle of whiskey. He drank it and watched TV till very late. He wondered if when this was over he might be able to get his old job back. He’d not called Mr Thames again after that first time. He was certain he’d been fired. But maybe he could get his old job back. He’d been a very good employee right up until—

He walked to the phone and dialed the office number and the extension and got the answering service. He rambled into the phone for a while and then hung up. He walked to the bed and lay down and by the time he was asleep he didn’t even remember he had done it.

He woke up with two things – a hangover, and the knowledge of where the private detective and Kate fit together. The guy’d been tailing him on Monday night when he met up with the woman impersonating Kate Wilhelm. If she really was dead. Maybe it had been her. Maybe Mr Wilhelm had been lying. He didn’t seem to be, but—

He’d remember it. The detective. And if it was someone impersonating Kate, maybe he knew something about her real identity.

He grabbed his keys and headed out.

He unlocked the front door and stepped quietly into the foyer. He hadn’t seen any cop cars, unmarked cars, or anything that seemed suspiciously out of place, but even so, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find cops waiting for him. They weren’t. It was almost disappointing.

Samantha’s car was in the driveway, but the living room was quiet and empty.

Her purse was sitting on the couch.

He walked to it and started digging through it, looking for that private detective’s business card.

‘Jeremy?’

He looked up. Samantha was standing in the entrance to the hallway in a pink silk nightgown, arms wrapped around her body. Her hair was a tangle and her make-up was smeared – she must have gone to bed without washing her face – but she still looked beautiful.

‘Where is it?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘His business card. Where is it?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The private detective you hired to follow me. I need to talk to him.’

‘Why?’

He threw the purse to the ground.

‘Just tell me where he is!’

The detective’s name was Adam Posniak and he had an office in a street-front strip of beige stucco on Washington Boulevard just east of La Brea. Simon pulled the Saab into the gray asphalt parking lot, found a spot, and slipped the car into it.

He recognized the car to his left. It was a black Cadillac, dented up from a recent accident.

The private detective’s office was between a barbecue place and a manicure-pedicure place. There was no sign on the tattered green awning above it. The door said only

no name, and the glass was soaped so you couldn’t see inside, as was the glass in the windows to the left and right of the door. Simon pushed his way inside.

A blonde woman – maybe twenty-five – sat behind a gray metal desk facing the door. A cone of incense burned on a metal plate on top of a waist-high bookshelf to her right and beneath the scent of incense there was an odd vinegar smell. Behind her head was a very bad painting of Santa Monica Pier, the Ferris wheel shaped like a deflated basketball. Her eyelids were painted blue, eyebrows plucked thin and then penciled back on again, lips the color of raw meat. Her fingernails were green but the polish was chipped off the top and the nails had grown half in new since the last time they were painted. There was a white scar that puffed out like foam on her chin. It was shaped like a check mark. There was a laptop computer on the desk, but she was typing out a form on a metallic-blue Remington Letter-Riter typewriter as the rusted bell above the door gave its choked impersonation of a ring. Then she looked up from what she was doing.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I need to see Posniak.’

‘He’s not in at the moment. I’d be happy to take a message.’

‘His car’s here.’

She made a tight-lipped pinch-nosed face – like she had just smelled something unpleasant, Simon perhaps – and then, after a pause, said, ‘But he’s stepped out.’

‘Well, if he’s on foot he’s not far. I’ll wait.’

She sighed.

‘What did you say your name was?’

‘I didn’t.’

She gave him a deadpan, and then said, ‘What is it?’

Simon hesitated, wondering what he should say, and decided on, ‘Jeremy Shackleford.’

‘Just a second.’

She picked up the phone and put it to her ear, whispered, cupping her hand over her mouth, looking at Simon with her hazel eyes. She hung up the phone.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s not available at the moment. But he’d be happy to schedule an appointment to talk about—’

‘He’s available.’

Simon walked to the door in the left wall and grabbed the knob, figuring it’d be locked and he’d have to push it in. He just hoped the thing was set loose in its frame and it wouldn’t be difficult. Instead the door swung right open and Simon stepped into the office and slammed the door on the protesting secretary, who didn’t get out more than ‘Hey wait a—’ before the swinging slab of wood silenced her. The smell of vinegar was much stronger in here, and beneath it a strange chemical stench that Simon couldn’t place.

He locked the door behind him.

Adam Posniak was at his desk. A smoke-blackened spoon and a lighter and a small bag of brownish powder were on its surface. His coat was off and his left sleeve was rolled up and a rubber hose was wrapped around his bicep, one end gripped in his teeth and pulled tight. In his right hand was a syringe, his thumb on the plunger. The needle was still inches from the soft flesh on the inside of his elbow, which was dotted with scars and wounds like bad acne. One brown but blackening hole looked – to Simon’s untrained eye – like it might be infected. It was a mountain of red flesh topped with an oozing brown scab. In his eagerness Posniak had already begun pressing the plunger and a few drops splashed from the end of the needle and onto the pale flesh on the inside of his arm.

Posniak let the hose fall from his mouth and set the syringe on the desk. His pale face was covered in beads of sweat. He opened the top right drawer, and simply laid his hand in it. Simon guessed, but wasn’t certain, that the hand was resting upon a gun of some kind.

‘I’m not a junky, Mr Shackleford.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I’m in constant pain. My eyes. This relieves it.’

‘Ever think of Tylenol? It’s a little less extreme.’

A pause. Posniak licked his lips.

‘Why are you here?’

Simon reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes and lighted one with a match.

‘Mind if I smoke?’

Posniak pushed a glass ashtray across the desk toward him. It was half-filled with cigarettes already, most of their filtered ends smeared with various shades of red.

Then he grabbed a handkerchief from his desk – yellowed by sweat – and dabbed at his forehead.

‘Why are you here, Mr Shackleford?’ he said again.

‘I wanted to talk.’

‘I’ve already informed your wife that I’m off the case.’

‘That’s not what I want to talk about.’

‘Well, sit down,’ Posniak said. ‘It’s your party.’

Simon sat down in the padded wooden chair that faced the desk, dragged off his cigarette, dropped ash in the tray.

‘Cold in here, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Let’s get to the point. What did you want to talk about?’

‘The night you followed me to the train station.’

Posniak actually blushed.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘research I can do – I’m actually very good at it – but when it comes to tailing people, I don’t know what it is, I have never been able to do it subtly.’

‘You’re awful.’

‘You’re not here to discuss my trade, are you?’

‘Tell me about Kate Wilhelm.’

‘The conversation would probably go better if you told me about her. I have no idea who that is.’

‘The little brunette you saw me with that night.’

‘What night?’

‘Monday. The night you followed me to the train station.’

‘Night before last?’

‘Night before last.’

‘Little brunette?’

Simon nodded.

‘You mean the photographer, Marlene Biskind?’

‘You saw—’

‘I was there. Then I followed your cab back to the house.’

‘Where a little brunette was sitting on the steps waiting for me.’

Posniak shook his head.

‘There was nobody on the steps.’

Simon tongued at his cheek and looked at the man, trying to figure out why he’d lie to him. If he was off the job there was no percentage in lying – or in telling the truth.

‘Is it money?’

‘Is what money?’

‘Do you want money? Is that why you’re not being honest with me?’

‘Like I want you to pay for information?’

‘So it is money.’

‘Listen, Mr Shackleford. I’m not withholding information. I’m in pain. I want to tell you what you want to know so you’ll leave and I can get back to what I was doing. I don’t care about scoring a twenty off you.’

‘Then tell me about the brunette.’

‘I’m telling you what I know. There was no brunette. You got out of the cab, you walked to the steps, you paused a moment, did some strange little move with your arms like you were reaching out to grab something with both hands, and then you went into the house. You came out twenty minutes later, stood on the porch muttering to yourself – I don’t know what about; listening to your conversations with yourself wasn’t part of my arrangement with Mrs Shackleford; she just said she wanted to know where you were at all times – and after a while you went back inside. An hour or two later Mrs Shackleford came home and an hour or so after that you left again. You spotted me and managed to lose me by getting on the train. You came back some time later and got your car. I tried to follow you but you spotted me. It was late, I was tired, and in any case there was a transponder on your car. I figured if you wanted to lose me, fine. I’d catch up with you in the morning. I went home and went to bed. That’s it. That’s the whole night. Now can you please go? I’ve got shit to attend to.’

Simon’s chest felt tight with fear, though he had no idea what he was afraid of. Was it possible he’d hallucinated—

How was he supposed to figure this out when he didn’t even know which pieces of evidence were real and which were hallucinations? What if he wasn’t even sitting here? What if he was in a rubber-walled room with—

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said finally.

‘I don’t care.’ The guy pulled his hand from his desk drawer and there was a little silver .25 in it. He laid it on his desk with a surprisingly heavy thunk, keeping his hand atop it. ‘I have been more than patient with you. I’ve done my best to tell you what I know. Now I’m telling you to leave. Now.’

After a final drag Simon butted his cigarette out in the glass ashtray and got to his feet.

For a while he just drove around. He knew it was stupid. He should be on the road as little as possible – any place he could be identified was a dangerous place. But he didn’t know what else to do. He was barely aware that he was driving at all – he was on automatic pilot while his mind tried to untangle this mess – and when it was over he remembered nothing of where he had gone or how he had ended up in front of the library. He had no recollection of traffic signals or other cars on the road or pedestrians or anything, but here he was parked on Grand just past Fifth Street. And he was glad.

With a stack of microfilm on the desk to his left and one roll stretched between reels on the reader before which he was sitting, Simon scanned through old newspaper archives. April or May of last year was when it would have happened. The accident. Jeremy Shackleford had been a professor and Kate Wilhelm had been his student; a late-night car accident involving both of them might have been controversial enough to get a few inches of newsprint. The papers could milk it for drama – what were they doing together, this man in his mid-thirties in a position of authority and this college freshman who still lived with her father in Burbank? They could insinuate that alcohol was involved without out-and-out saying it. They could quote anonymous sources who heard such and such from their own anonymous sources. Or perhaps—

Then he found it.

A picture of the wreck was included with the news story, taken from above. The car was upside-down on top of a tree which the car had, apparently, tipped over with its weight. It was still burning when the photographer snapped his shot. The piece read:

He remembered – a knock at the front door.

He walked to it, his stomach sick. Samantha was gone. She had gone out to dinner with a group of girlfriends, leaving him home alone, and left alone all he could think about was Kate. She was going to destroy his marriage. He loved his wife. They had a level of comfort with each other that he’d never felt with anyone. And now this little bitch was going to ruin it.

He’d never moved on a student. She’d come on to him. He had fucked up; he should have rejected her. And he certainly shouldn’t have let it continue for a month before getting up the nerve to end it. But he did not deserve this – her refusing to have an abortion, threatening to make a formal complaint with the college, threatening to tell Samantha. He had told her he loved his wife, he had told her there was no future in what they were doing – from the very beginning he had told her those things. It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t taken him at his word. It wasn’t his fault she’d thought she could change his mind. Goddamn her.

He grabbed the doorknob – a large reeded faux-Edwardian job that Samantha had picked up at some antique store and asked him to install – and pulled open the door. Kate was standing there looking sad. Her face was pale and the patches of skin beneath her eyes were dark. She wasn’t wearing make-up. Her hair was lying flat on her head. Her clothes were wrinkled. She only looked into his eyes for brief moments before her gaze flickered away, darting around the room, lighting only momentarily on any one thing before moving on. He was shocked by how young she looked.

‘Come in.’

She walked into the house and he closed the door behind her.

‘Do you want something to drink?’

She shook her head.

‘Sit down.’

She shook her head again and just remained there, standing in front of the closed front door, eyes refusing to stay fixed anywhere.

‘We need to figure this out,’ he said.

‘What’s to figure out?’ she said without looking at him. ‘I already told you what I’m gonna do. There’s nothing you can say to change my mind. I don’t even know why I came here.’

Her arms were crossed in front of her. Her mouth was a hard straight line.

‘But why? I told you there was no future for us – I never lied to you.’

‘You never lied to me?’ She looked up briefly, making eye contact, and then allowed her eyes to drop again. ‘A person can lie with more than words.’

‘But I told you—’

Her hand whipped through the air and clapped against his cheek. He tongued the corner of his mouth, felt the beginnings of beard there, and tasted blood.

‘You loved me. You made me think you loved me, and then when you were done you threw me away. Left me with this.’ She glanced down toward her belly.

‘I never loved you,’ he said. ‘And I never pretended to.’

‘You loved me with your body.’

‘That wasn’t love.’

Another slap across the face. He rubbed his cheek. His stomach and chest went tight with anger. He could feel the pink welts rising on his skin.

‘Don’t hit me again.’

‘Or what?’

‘Just don’t.’

There was something defiant in her brief glance at him – defiant and angry. Her mouth twitched. Her hands formed fists. But she remained there, and she didn’t swing again.

He licked his lips. ‘You’re eighteen. You’re a college freshman. You have this child and everything you planned for your future changes. Don’t you understand that? You’re mad at me now, you want to get back at me now, but in a year you’ll barely remember my name. You’ll move on to other boyfriends, you’ll finish college, and then move on to a career, and I’ll just be a mistake you made when you were a kid. I’ll—’

‘Stop. Stop talking. I’m not a child so don’t condescend to—’

‘You’re not a child?’ A bitter laugh escaped his throat. ‘That’s exactly what you are. An angry child willing to throw your whole future away on a fucking tantrum.’

Her hand swung out again, clapping against his face.

He immediately swung back with his open hand, thudding against the side of her head, spinning her around.

‘I told you not to fucking hit me again.’

Simon continued to scroll through newspaper archives. He was confused, and as he read, as memories came to him – memories that were not his own – his confusion grew, as well as his sense of dread.

What kind of person had Jeremy been?

How could another man’s memories be invading his mind?

He didn’t want to be him any more. He didn’t want to be married to Samantha or have that house in Pasadena, or any of it, not if it meant becoming this person he was becoming. And that’s what it was, wasn’t it? He was becoming what he had pretended to be.

Simon Johnson had lived a quiet life in which he hurt no one. He had lived a quiet life and each day had resembled the one that came before. He said hello to people and he did his job and he got too close to no one and he hurt no one because you can’t hurt someone you’re not close to. Simon Johnson had lived a quiet life – but as soon as Jeremy Shackleford broke into his apartment, everything had changed. Simon had killed him accidentally, but it had changed him, hadn’t it? The coldness he felt over it that matched the coldness of the rest of his life – and this hot desire for something more that had begun to burn in the midst of it like a single hot ember.

And he had become a monster – he had become Jeremy Shackleford, hadn’t he? Or he was becoming him – was in the process of it. All those things that had been so far below the surface of his life that they were, for the most part, mere shadows without form – all those tentacled creatures came bursting forth, all those beasts of his low life began surfacing, and they were ugly, terrible things.

He hated what he was becoming.

She spun around, lost her balance, and fell. Her face slammed hard against the jutting brass doorknob with a force that shook the walls and rattled the windows in their frames – her head hanging there for a moment despite her body going limp, sagging like an overloaded bookshelf – and then she collapsed to the floor. She did not move. She simply lay on her side on the floor with her back to him.

‘Kate?’

He stood looking down at her. Then he saw a drop of blood splash against the hardwood floor. It dripped from the doorknob. The doorknob itself was covered in blood, and something meaty was hanging from it like a wet string cut from a roast. He leaned down and reached out with his hand and grabbed her shoulder. He pulled her toward him, knowing what he was going to find even before he found it. She rolled onto her back. She was staring at the ceiling with a single blank eye. The other eye was gone, the socket collapsed inward and expanded as the bone surrounding it shattered and fell like the dirt surrounding a sinkhole. Blood had flowed from the hole and coated that side of her face. Her mouth was partially open, her tongue sticking out between her white teeth. Her lips seemed exceptionally red in contrast to her colorless face, as did the blood itself. Her skin was so white. The blood was so red.

He turned and stumbled toward the kitchen and the contents of his stomach splashed into the stainless-steel basin.

Then he stood there, bent over the sink, looking at his dinner, hair hanging down in his face, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead, and a shaky moist chill still possessing him.

After a while he stood up straight and turned on the hot water and washed the mess away. Then he cupped his hands under the water, brought them to his mouth, sucked in water, gargled, and spit. He did this twice.

If he called the police, would they believe it had been an accident? They couldn’t possibly believe he had planned to kill her by smashing her face against a doorknob. It was too absurd. They would have to believe it had been an accident – except that he didn’t even believe that. Not completely. He knew he hadn’t planned it, but there was a satisfaction in it which only increased his feeling of guilt. And hadn’t murder crossed his mind? Sure, it had only been for a moment, an angry urge that he would never have acted upon – except maybe he had. Part of him believed he must have done it on purpose. And so would other people. He had recently broken things off with her, she was pregnant with his child, she had threatened to tell his wife what had been going on: despite the absurd circumstances under which she had died, no one would believe it had been an accident. It would still be third degree murder. And even if it was an accident, even if they believed the death itself was an accident, it was still manslaughter. Or involuntarily manslaughter. Something like that.

He walked back to the living room, where Kate lay on the floor. He looked at her there – dead. He licked his lips. If he killed her, he was going to prison. But if she killed herself in a way that could do the kind of damage that was done to her, that was different. And if he got badly injured in the same accident, all the better.

A sane man, for instance, wouldn’t run himself off Mulholland Drive. Maybe she came here to talk to him about things. Maybe they made up. Maybe they decided to drive up to Mulholland with a picnic basket and eat sandwiches at one of the overlooks and watch the city lights twinkling in the night like stars reflected in the sea. Maybe that’s exactly what happened, only maybe they misjudged a turn and went over the edge.

He nodded to himself. Why not? People died in car accidents all the time, and there was no telling what kind of damage an accident could do. Accidents were unpredictable. That’s why they called them accidents.

But if that was how it was to happen, he had to get her in the car and over the edge fast. Coroners had ways of finding out time of death – rigidity of body and such – and he needed the car accident to be in the right time-frame.

He grabbed her by an arm and a leg and dragged her away from the closed door. Then he stepped out into the spring night, bloodying his hand in the process of opening the door. The air was cool and fresh-smelling after recent rain. No one was around. It was late and this was a neighborhood that went to bed early. Her car was across the street. He couldn’t imagine carrying her body all that distance in the open air; he would pull the car into the garage, load her body into it, and leave.

He went back inside and washed the blood off his hand. Then dug through her purse for her keys, found them, and pulled her car into the cave-dark garage. Then he went back to the living room. There she was, part of her face caved in. His stomach went sour, and he had to swallow back bile, which burned in his throat.

He walked over to the body, sat on his haunches, scooped one arm under the backs of her knees – she was still warm – and the other under an armpit and her neck, and then lifted. She was small, but a hundred pounds and change was still a lot of weight, and a muscle in his back spasmed, and he almost fell. He stumbled as he stood. Then finally he managed to gain his balance. He carried her to the garage, struggled to get the door open and the passenger’s seat forward, and forced her body into the backseat like oversized luggage.

With that done, he went back to the living room, cleaned the blood off the floor and the doorknob – using his thumbnail to scrape between the reedings – and walked the bloody paper towels to his neighbor’s trash bin five houses down.

Then he packed a picnic. He made turkey sandwiches with pesto and put pickles and olives into plastic bags. He sliced apples. He put a bottle of wine and a corkscrew into the basket with the food. They’d just gone up to Mulholland to share an evening together, to sip wine and eat sandwiches and talk.

He grabbed the picnic basket and carried it out to the garage.

He got into the car and pulled it out into the street and he was on his way.

It was almost eleven by the time he reached Mulholland Drive. The gray cratered moon hung over him and as he rounded certain bends he could see the sea of the city spread out below him. On one side a dirt wall lined with pink-flowered bougainvillea and brown rock and weeds and shrubbery, on the other a steep drop blocked occasionally by guardrails or chain-link fence, sometimes not blocked by anything. It made you woozy to see that long drop as your car rounded a bend, to see the ground forty or fifty feet below and know your car tires were only an arm’s length from the edge. He drove past various overlooks – dirt sections on the edge of the road lined with wood fencing, designed so you could park your car and gaze out at the city below. He drove past houses built into the cliffside, past pink-berried trees growing on the drop, past a few parked cars.

When he got to the Universal City Overlook, he pulled the car to the side of the road, tires throwing gravel off the edge of the cliff.

He was really going to do this.

He got out of the car, fought with Kate’s corpse, put it into the driver’s seat and buckled it in. It looked surreal sitting there. It looked waxy and fake. Blood dripped from her eye socket and onto her clothes.

A car passed while he was standing there looking at the body, but it didn’t stop; the driver didn’t even glance in his direction.

He slammed the driver’s side door shut and walked around to the passenger’s seat.

It was harder to drive a car from the passenger’s seat than you would think. Fortunately, he didn’t have very far to go. He put the car into drive and swerved jerkily out onto Mulholland, gassing it with Kate’s dead right leg while her head lolled on her neck and blood dripped from her caved-in eye socket and onto her lap. And then he saw the guardrail illuminated by the headlights and he realized it was actually happening. He might die. Part of him was glad of that – hoped he would die – because even if the police bought that this was an accident, Samantha would know about the affair, and he would have to face her. He didn’t want to have to face her. If he died it was over.

The car smashed into the guardrail, which tore into two pieces and peeled back, creating an opening through which the car continued on its course. And then there was nothing beneath the car but air and his stomach dropped like an elevator with a cut cable. The car tilted forward and he could see the trees beneath them illuminated by the headlights. A flock of birds flew from one, frightened by the sound of the car’s engine.

And then the green of the trees rushed up at him – and then there was nothing.