Survival Of The Fittest

42

On Wednesday morning, Milo called to tell me he'd caught up with Loren Bukovsky, the local Mensa chapter chairman.

“Not a bad fellow, understandably curious about why I was looking into Meta. I told him it was a financial thing, large-scale covert investigation, hinted around that it had something to do with stolen computers, and asked him to keep it to himself. He promised to and my sense is he might keep his word, because he doesn't like Meta, thinks they're “insufferables' who look down on Mensa.”

“Because Mensa folk aren't smart enough for them?”

“Bukovsky denies that. Emphatically.”

“What if Bukovsky doesn't keep it to himself and it gets back to someone in Meta?”

“Then we deal with it. It could even work out to our advantage: One or more of their members turn out to be bad guys and show their hands and give us moving targets. Which is better than none.”

“That,” I said, “sounds like rationalization.”

“No, Alex, it's the truth, you didn't screw things up. As it stands, we're nowhere with this group. Even Bukovsky, for all his hostility, didn't know much about them, just that they'd started back east, cropped up in L.A. two or three years ago, then took a low profile.”

“Two years ago,” I said. “Right around the time of Sanger's article. And publication of The Brain Drain.”

“Next item: got hold of Zena Lambert's tax returns for the last three years. Her sole income was the salary from PlasmoDerm. Before that she made no money at all. So how she started the store is still an open question.”

“Maybe a trust fund,” I said. “Like Andrew Desmond.”

He looked at me. “Andrew's got rich parents?”

“Comfortable.” I gave him the profile.

“Sounds like a charming fellow,” he said. “The only other thing to report is Melvin Myers's body was clean of drugs and Bob Pierce says none of the local crackheads knew him, so it wasn't dope that got him in that alley… You're really up for this secret-agent stuff, aren't you?”

“Got my shoe-phone in gear.”

At 4:00 p.m., Daniel phoned.

“I'd like to show you the cover apartment on Genesee. You may never actually have to use it, but this way you'll be accustomed to it.”

“I'll meet you there. What's the address?”

“I'm near your house,” he said. “If you don't mind, I'll come by and take you.”

He was there ten minutes later and he gave me a brown paper Ralph's Market bag. Inside was a change of clothes: lightweight black cotton pants, black cotton mock turtleneck washed nearly gray, baggy gray herringbone sportcoat with the label of Dillard's department store in St. Louis on the inside breast pocket, rubber-soled black shoes from Bullock's, L.A.

“Costume rehearsal?” I said.

“Something like that.”

“No underwear?”

“Underwear is underwear.”

“True. I don't see Andrew going for flaming red silk.”

I inspected the jacket. The wool emitted a weak scent of insipid cologne.

“The St. Louis touch is nice,” I said, “but Andrew's lived in L.A. for several years.”

“I don't see him as someone who likes to shop,” he said. “His mother sent it to him.”

“Good old Mom.” I put the clothes on. The sportcoat was a little baggy but not a bad fit.

The mirror showed me a nicely shabby getup that would play well in lots of L.A. settings. The beard helped, too. It had grown into the itch stage, thick and coarse and straight with more gray hairs than I'd expected. From my cheekbones to my Adam's apple I was covered, the lower half of my face effectively obscured.

We drove down the glen in the gray Toyota. Just past the Beverly Hills line, he said, “Try these,” and gave me a pair of eyeglasses. Tiny, round lenses, gray-tinted, in bronze frames.

I slipped them on. No prescription.

“I like the effect,” he said, “but I'd remove them from time to time. Your eyes are good for the part- nice and red. Have you been sleeping well?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Well,” he said, “you look world-weary, anyway.”

“Method acting.”

“Andrew's an insomniac?”

“Andrew's not a happy man.”

The Genesee building was a two-story stucco quadriplex nearly the exact gray of the Toyota, between Beverly and Rosewood. Flat roof, barred windows, all the charm of a storage depot. The front door was locked.

“The small round key,” he said.

I turned the latch and we entered a central corridor carpeted in cheap maroon felt. Boiled-onion smell. Stairs at the back, four-slot brass mailbox just inside the door.

The paper DESMOND label was on Unit 2. Brown paper, water-stained. My neighbors were Weinstein and Paglia and Levine.

Two was the ground floor, right-hand unit. A pair of nail-holes pierced the doorpost like the fang-holes of a big-jawed snake. Between them was a three-inch column one shade paler than the surrounding woodwork.

“Andrew removed the mezuzah?” I said.

“He's not Jewish.”

“Still, to go to the trouble-”

“Apparently, he's not a man of much faith, Alex. The square key opens both locks.”

Two good dead bolts, each shiny, with the crisp feel of new fixtures.

The apartment was dim and stuffy, more of that same weak cologne overlaid with must and mothballs.

Bare wood floors in need of varnish, some of the boards bowing. Off-white walls, off-white polyester drapes over the small protected windows, each with borders of little turquoise yarn-balls. Thrift-shop furniture in hues of ash and earth and not much of it.

A living room with one wall of plywood shelving crowded with books and a Taiwanese stereo system. The kitchen looked greasy but felt clean. Down a skinny dark hall were a cracked-tile bathroom, mattress-on-the-floor bedroom, and a rear door out to the tiny yard with a sagging clothesline and three-car garage.

It reminded me of something. Nolan Dahl's place.

Lonely bachelor living. The places it could lead…

“What do you think?” said Daniel.

I looked around. Everything was worn and stained and nicked in all the right places. No one would suspect it was a set.

Who lived here the rest of the year?

“Perfect,” I said, and he led me back to the back door and out into the yard. Half dry grass, half bird-specked cement.

“An alley runs behind the property,” he said. “The garage can be entered from both sides.” From his pocket he removed a remote control and pushed the button. The central garage door opened. Inside was a Karmann Ghia painted legal-paper yellow.

Back in the house, he gave me the remote and we returned to the living room, where he stood back, inviting me to inspect. I checked out the stereo and the books. The music was a mixture of LPs, tapes, and CDs. Small collection, maybe fifty selections in all: Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Bach, Cat Stevens, the Lovin' Spoonful, Hendrix, the Doors, the Beatles' Abbey Road, nothing recent. Some of the covers bore resale labels from Aaron's on Melrose. The store had moved to Highland years ago.

The books were on psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, a smattering of other subjects, some with USED stickers, many bearing the conspicuous irrelevance of assigned texts. At the bottom was fiction: Hemingway, Faulkner, Kerouac, Burroughs, Camus, Sartre, Beckett. Piles of old psych journals and magazines- Evergreen Review, Eros, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly. The Nation resting comfortably atop the National Review. Like Nolan, Andrew Desmond had covered a wide swath of political territory.

Except for that, it could have been my library from college, though my apartment on Overland had been half the size of this place, a stuffy cell neighboring an auto-repair shop. I'd struggled each month to make the ninety-dollar rent; no trust fund…

I pulled out an abnormal-psych text. Foxed pages gave off the vomitous odor old books sometimes acquire. Inside was the inked stamp of the student bookstore at the University of Missouri, Columbus. Sold and resold twice. Pages full of yellow underlining.

A newer-looking tome that I recognized as the major grad-school work on the same topic came from the Technical Bookstore on Westwood Boulevard in L.A. Purchase date ten years ago.

Meticulous.

“I guess you have the original receipts, too.”

“I didn't see Andrew as someone who'd save receipts.”

“Unsentimental?”

He sat down on a sagging couch and dust puffed.

“Lucky I'm not allergic,” I said.

“Yes. I should have asked.”

“Can't think of everything.”

“Is there anything you'd change, Alex?”

“Not so far. Where are the bugs?”

He crossed his legs and managed to get his bad hand on his knee, where it rested like a lumpy gray toad.

“In the phone,” he said, “in a bedroom lamp, and here.” He hooked a thumb toward the front windowsill. I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“How many phones?” I said.

“Two, here and in the bedroom.”

“Both tapped?”

“Neither's been tampered with, actually. The entire line is monitored.”

“What cologne is that?” I said.

“Pardon?”

“There's a scent in the apartment. On this jacket, too.”

His nostrils widened. “I'll find out.”

Neither of us spoke and I found myself focusing on sounds. Someone's air conditioner rattling upstairs, the occasional car from the street, the chitter of passing conversation.

“Anything else?” I said.

“Not unless you've got suggestions.”

“You seem to have covered everything.”

He stood and so did I. But as we headed for the door, he stopped, reached behind his waistband, and took out a pager and looked at it.

“Silent,” he said. “Excuse me, I just got a call.”

He walked to the living-room phone and punched numbers, greeted someone with “Alo?” and listened, eyebrows arching. Wedging the receiver under his chin, he reached in his jacket and extricated a small notepad. A miniature pencil was Velcroed to the back and he peeled it off.

“Okay,” he said, placing the pad on a fake-wood end table and leaning over, pencil poised. “American- eyzeh mispar?”

He copied, said, “Todah. L-hitra'ot,” hung up.

As he tucked the book back in his windbreaker, I saw the black plastic gun nesting in a black mesh nylon holster under his right armpit.

“That,” he said, “was a source in New York. Our lawyer friend Farley Sanger has booked a flight to Los Angeles this Friday. American Airlines, Flight 005, scheduled to arrive at seven P.M. We almost missed it, the arrangements weren't made through his firm's travel agent. One of our people followed him to a meeting with Helga Cranepool. Sanger had dinner with her at the Carlyle Hotel and then the two of them took a cab downtown to lower Manhattan. To a travel agent we hadn't known about. Which means there may have been other trips we never found. She paid for the ticket but it's his. He's not traveling under his own name. He's calling himself Galton.”

“Francis Galton?” I said.

“Close,” he said. “Frank.”