The Furies

THE HOLLYWOOD MUSICIAN: LA JOLLA

A man from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base turns up with thick spectacles and frizzy hair, declares himself to be Dr. Hardcastle, and shows a computer simulation. We still don't know the flight characteristics, he explains, and so we're relying heavily on the eyewitness reports. He tells the FBI team that to disperse anthrax over a wide area just by spinning the spores out, you'd need a helluva spin, but on the other hand, maybe the UFO — except that it isn't a UFO anymore, it's an Identified Flying Object, making it an IFO — did have a helluva spin. He hints at heavy pressure from the White House and a rush job.

Then he shows a movie. This gives some preliminary simulations for a Manhattan hit. They watch the little saucer drifting like a Frisbee above the skyscrapers, spirals of white stuff coming out like water from a lawn sprinkler before spreading into invisibility. The death toll could be as little as forty thousand or as much as a million, depending on the time of day, wind, and weather — little arrows show a system of whirls and eddies around the skyscrapers — and the unknown rate of spin. It has to be assumed that the bad guys know all this stuff and have their own scenarios worked out. True, Arizona hillbillies probably don't know aerodynamics from Milk Duds, but the guys who built the machine surely did, and they might have left notes or an instruction manual.

Are you telling us that home-grown terrorists couldn't have built this machine? Caddon wants to know. Badly.

This device is the product of a highly sophisticated team of scientists and engineers backed up by industrial muscle. Whether moonshine-drinking survivalists could attain those standards is your department, guys. By the way, Wright-Patterson hasn't considered sites for mass burial, or the financial knock-on and suchlike, doesn't consider stuff like that as part of their remit. Hardcastle hints at an imminent White House briefing and takes his leave, trailing aftershave and dismay.

Caddon and Spada leave, too, heading for La Jolla and an interview with the governor's friend. It is both the slenderest of leads and all they've got. They maintain a thoughtful silence all the way down Interstate 5. Hardcastle's throwaway phrase, mass burial, travels in the car with them.

"I love this Spanish Revival stuff."

"It's Hollywood Spanish, boss. Fake to the core."

"Ten-million-dollar fakes, Tony." They are winding up a long, quiet road. Here and there, through screening poplars, they glimpse red pantiled roofs, sprinklers on lawns, pools with springboards.

"Number 1100, here we are." Spada trickles the car through open gates and takes it up a long winding driveway. A metal plaque, discreetly stuck in the lawn, informs them that INTRUDERS FACE ARMED RESPONSE.

"Mr. Demos? FBI." Caddon shows his badge.

The Hollywood musician is wearing shorts, sandals, sunglasses, and a hairy chest. American-born or not, there is a Mediterranean inflection in his deep voice. "I deny everything."

Caddon remembers that this is the governor's friend and smiles. "We'd like to ask you some questions, sir."

"What about?" He isn't inviting them in, Caddon notices.

"May we come in?"

"I don't think so."

"If you prefer, we can go downtown. We'd rather keep things informal, though. Easier for everyone."

Demos grunts and gestures them in with his head.

He leads them into a room, air-conditioned cool, with a simple rustic charm that Caddon mentally prices at a quarter of a million. Rough adobe walls converge gently toward a high beamed ceiling. Everything is new. No history reveals itself, not an item or a memento to hint at a past that was anything other than wealthy. Demos has just sprung from the earth, rich.

The musician indicates chairs, hand-tooled leather. Through the French windows Caddon glimpses a blond, suntanned man splashing in the pool. He is young and muscular and has dragons tattooed on his biceps. The Pacific lies below them, in the middle distance.

"You were in Strawberry yesterday lunchtime, sir."

"Was I? Never heard of the place." Demos's eyes are inscrutable behind the sunglasses.

"If you blink, you miss it. You had a meal at Katie's Diner."

"If you say so."

"Your credit card says so. You had spaghetti bolognese, a glass of Chianti, a coffee."

"That sounds kind of intrusive."

"What were you doing in Strawberry?"

"I'm a musician, Agent Caddon. I compose theme tunes for movies."

"Sorry. I don't see the connection."

"Atmosphere."

"Atmosphere, right."

Demos adopts an air of patient explanation. "In the movie I'm doing, these guys bury a body in the mountains and years later it's found by some backpacker. And when they find a letter in the remains, it opens up a can of worms. I need to get that sense of wilderness, a sort of edgy primitiveness, into the music, and to do that I need to surround myself with that ambience. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I'll take your word for it, Mr. Demos. Creative thinking isn't my thing. Did you have lunch with two men in Katie's Diner?"

"Do I need a lawyer for that?"

"Who were they?"

"I've no idea. ‘Having lunch' makes it sound business-like, but it wasn't like that at all. It was just a casual conversation with a couple of guys I met by chance. Is that what this is about?"

"It is, Mr. Demos. Can you describe these men?"

"Bet you got them on CCTV somewhere."

"We'd rather get the descriptions from you."

"Hell, I can hardly remember them. One guy was about my age and height, brown leather jacket, dark-skinned, Southern California accent. Wrinkled face, like mine, come to think of it. The other guy was about forty, five feet ten, thin, pale-faced, didn't say much, smoked a lot. I doubt if I'd even recognize him if he walked in the door."

"What did you talk about?"

"Nothing much."

"Please try to remember."

"The hiking trails, the clean air compared with LA, stuff like that."

"Did they tell you anything of their business?"

"Not a thing."

"Do you know where they had come from? Where they were going?"

"How would I know? I told you, they said nothing."

"And you don't know these men?"

"You must be having difficulty with your hearing. I keep telling you: never seen them before, never seen them since."

Caddon stands up, and Spada follows. "Well, that's it. It was just something we had to check out."

The mouth below Demos's sunglasses forms a lopsided grin. "Am I allowed to know what these people were up to?"

Caddon grins back. "They're owing on a parking ticket."

Spada unwraps chewing gum with his forearms on the steering wheel. "These guys were waiting for him."

Caddon looks wistfully out at the ten-million-dollar fakes. "Edgy primitiveness. I wish I could do edgy primitiveness to music."

"And he's never heard of Strawberry but he just happens to know the area all around it. You agree, boss? He's lying through his teeth?"

They reach El Paseo Grande and turn right, heading north, back toward LA and the real world. The Pacific sparkles to their left, but its horizon is lost in a brown haze. Caddon says, "Tony, he's lying through his teeth."

"Right, boss."

"Why? What's in it for him? Do the preacher, the fried dentist, and the musician connect? And how does a rich Hollywood musician connect to a freaking anthrax bomb?"

"Don't know, boss. But if you believe the limeys, we'd better find out before Saturday."

Alekos Demos, with a worried frown, watches the FBI men disappear down the hill.

He walks back to the French windows toward the pool. Dragon biceps — what's his name, Romer or Romeo, something like that? — has helped himself to gin and tonic from the cart and is lounging back on a deck chair. He looks up languidly at the approaching musician, takes a sip. Something faintly over-familiar, insolent even, about the body language.

Sad little nonentity, thinks he has a hold over me. I've seen off a dozen guys like you. "Put the booze down, I need you fit to drive. Get dressed, get down the road, and make a call from a public phone in town. I'll give you the number."

"Hey, what am I, your lackey?"

"So long as you're using my pool and drinking my gin, yes. Now move."

Fifteen minutes later, the young man is putting coins in a pay phone and punching numbers. The voice that answers is English, cultured, female. "Mr. Goldstein's office."

"I've been asked to give you a message. I don't understand it."

"Oh, and who asked you? Who might you be?" "He told me to say this is one of his nancy-boys." The humiliating bastard.

A cool, "I see. And the message?"

"He needs to speak to the tin can right away. That's what he said. He says invite the tin can and his friends to the party. Like I say, I don't know what he means."

"You wouldn't. Tell him I'll arrange it. Good-bye."

SEARCH WARRANT: DOWNTOWN LA, MIDAFTERNOON

"His Honor will see you now."

About frigging time, Your Honor. For two hours Caddon has fumed in the small anteroom to courtroom 341 of the Royal Federal Building, East Temple, downtown LA, unable even to smoke a cigarette. Laws and Torts, he's decided by the third or fourth reading, is the most boring magazine ever produced in the history of the universe.

"Remember. Stick to the factual stuff. Let me do the talking on the legalities. We're way out on a limb here." For the tenth time. Caddon grunts. The FBI lawyer is small, female, and Chinese in origin.

Judge Woodman has vertical gray hair and a wrinkled face. His complexion is purplish, which might be due to heart, booze, or sun. He is leaning back, staring quizzically at the FBI agent over half-moon spectacles. Caddon glimpses bright yellow suspenders under the judge's robe and thinks all he needs is overalls, a clay pipe, and a plow. The judge waves a hand at plastic chairs, and Caddon and Ms. Wang spread themselves around the big office. A deli sandwich on the judge's desk lies on top of its plastic casing. It is beginning to curl at the edges, but it reminds Caddon that he is hungry. He has a brief whimsy about asking the judge for the sandwich and being locked up for contempt.

"Okay," says the judge. He has an accent like a midwestern rancher. "Been through your affidavit. Don't like it. Don't like it one little bit. In fact it smells."

Caddon's heart sinks. "Your Honor, this is our first and only lead in the matter. Alekos Demos is a musician who writes scores for movies. He's well known in the business. Lives alone, part of the LA gay scene."

The judge waves sheets of paper. Caddon recognizes them as the affidavit. "I guess I'm missing something. What's the nature of the lead?"

"What it says. A few hours before the bomb exploded, the guys who hired the Pontiac had a boozy lunch with this musician."

There is a silence. Then: "Forgive me, Agent Caddon, but my question was, What is the nature of your lead?"

"That's it."

The judge puffs out his cheeks. "I'll try again. What's the evidence that the lunch was connected with the bomb? Maybe it had to do with his sexual activities."

"Sir, it wasn't a casual meeting. These people were waiting for an hour for Demos to arrive."

"I guess I'm stupid." Judge Woodman scratches his head, trying to look stupid. "Do you want a search warrant because the guy was late for a meeting, or because he's gay, or because he's a musician? Or maybe because he's Greek?"

Ms. Wang says, "Give us a chance here, Your Honor. Because he's connected with two men who pulled an anthrax bomb out of a mine shaft. There could be a lot of lives riding on this, sir."

"I sympathize, but Ms. Wang, you know damned well I can't lawfully issue a warrant without a legal basis. You can't just get a warrant to do anything you like. Now, what I'm asking you for the fourth and I hope the last time, is this: What do you claim is the allowable circumstance for a legal search?"

"Your Honor, the legal basis is obvious. Probable cause that a crime has been committed and that another one — a major atrocity — is about to be committed against American citizens."

The judge takes off his spectacles and wipes them with a handkerchief.

Caddon's frustration boils over. "Look, I know this guy's a pal of the governor…"

Ms. Wang shoots Caddon a look of pure invective. Woodman says, gently, "Stop right there, Agent Caddon." He turns to the FBI lawyer. "Justify your probable cause."

"Demos met two of the terrorists a few hours before the bomb went off. His claim that it was a casual meeting was unconvincing. His demeanor when questioned about it was suspicious. He claimed he'd never heard of Strawberry but then changed his story when the agents told him they knew otherwise." This last is an elastic interpretation of Demos's testimony, but she hopes it might slip through.

"The demeanor of the musician," Woodman repeats thoughtfully. "Shifty-eyed, was he?"

Come on, Judge. Ms. Wang says, "Your Honor, case law is clear on this matter. The central issue has to be probable cause. As you know it's not defined in the Fourth Amendment. It's a judicial invention, no more. Dumbra versus United States, 268 US 435, 1925: The term probable cause means less than evidence that would justify condemnation. It doesn't have to be strong enough to prove guilt in a criminal trial."

"You've come anticipating the problem, Ms. Wang, I'm impressed." Woodman taps at a laptop, grunts, and then shambles heavily over to the bookcase. He takes a heavy volume back, flops it down on his desk, and flicks through the pages. "On the other hand, since we're quoting cases, Byars versus United States, 273 US 28, 1927. Mere assertion isn't enough. The fact that Agent Caddon here declares that Demos is shifty-eyed…"

"Come on, sir, United States versus Ventresca, 1965. Warrants are favored in law and should not be frustrated by the hypercritical interpretations of legal technicians."

"Being shifty-eyed is good enough, then?"

"And there was the meeting." Frustration is creeping into the FBI lawyer's voice.

"You want me to intrude on the rights of everyone these guys ever spoke to? What would you do with the warrant, anyway?" The judge scans the pages again. "It says here you're trying to pursue this inquiry with discretion, before the bomb incident becomes public knowledge."

Caddon says, "Which could happen at any moment. We'd search the house in his absence. In and out like ghosts. He'd never know we'd been in."

"You must be desperate. You know damned well there are rules. Before a law enforcement officer can break and enter the premises, he has to give notice."

The FBI officer recrosses her legs. "You could issue a no-knock warrant, Your Honor. It can be authorized if there's probable cause to believe that evidence may be quickly destroyed."

"You're pushing your luck, Ms. Wang. That applies to narcotics cases."

"You could and should extend it to the present situation. I believe it's vital, for the protection of Americans, that the FBI has access to this man's home. The Patriot Act allows federal agents, with the permission of the courts, to obtain business records where terrorism affecting national security is concerned. And this is a terrorism case down to its toenails."

Caddon says, before the judge has a chance to open his mouth, "And we want to look at his business records."

"I seem to have missed that bit in the affidavit."

We're losing it. Caddon knew it wasn't going to work, but he said it anyway: "Actually, Your Honor, you're right. We are desperate. Maybe there's another bomb, we just don't know. But we need to find out before it gets used, next time maybe against a conurbation instead of an Indian reservation."

Damn.

Woodman gives Caddon a stony stare. "I guess, ah, Native Americans don't count."

Wang says, "My colleague didn't mean that. It's been a long wait out there."

"Don't lose your cool, Agent Wang, I know exactly what he meant."

Wang says, "It's not as if we're asking to torture him, Judge."

"I know, I know. It's just a little thing, this Alekos Demos won't even know you've been in his house. We're all jittery. Every few weeks we get a security alert. Hell, I have a daughter in New York and a son and grandson in Chicago, do you think I don't want you to get this other bomb? If it exists, and that's a matter we haven't touched on."

"Your Honor…"

Woodman raises his hand, cutting off Caddon. "Sometimes I wonder if all these alerts are intended to control us in some way."

"This isn't a political matter, Your Honor."

"But you know damned well where the barricade starts, Ms. Wang. Isn't it tempting, with what's riding on this, to give way on the little thing? In and out like ghosts and he'll never know? But it's a slippery slope, Ms. Wang. The moment you concede on that, you no longer have a limit beyond which you can't go. You end up with Watergate." Woodman bows his head, unconsciously slips a hand under his robe, and pings his suspenders a few times. Then he says, "In my opinion what you're requesting amounts to an unacceptable violation of this citizen's constitutional rights. The request for a search warrant is denied."

"Your Honor…"

The judge at last picks up the sandwich and takes a massive bite. With his mouth full he says, "And that's final."

"The governor's friend, right?" Caddon, next to Spada at the wheel, is visibly angry.

"What are you saying, boss?"

"You know what I'm saying."

"You think Judge Woodman was got at?" Spada's tone is incredulous.

"It makes no sense, rejecting a warrant like that. Woodman was got at."

"Boss, the governor can't bend the Justice Department, not even for a pal. It could finish his career."

"If it got out. Take a risk like that, the stakes have to be sky-high."

Spada takes a nervous look in the mirror, slows the vehicle to a trickle. The Dodge truck behind them slows, then accelerates and pulls past swiftly. "It worries me, what you're saying. As if the governor might somehow be in on the UFO and the judge might be bent. That's insane."

"Yeah. I can't believe I said it." Caddon looks out reflectively at the broad city streets. Then: "I want surveillance on the musician, 24/7."

THE MOVIE CRITIC: BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL, EVENING

"Screw the Constitution," Caddon finally says. "The hell with citizens' rights."

"Exactly my opinion, boss. Judicial oversight is horse manure."

"Can I quote you people?" Ambra asks.

It is now twenty minutes to six, and Ambra Volpe, having snatched a few glorious hours of sleep in the Radisson Wilshire Plaza, has been in the FBI building for almost two hours with Caddon, Spada, and half a dozen other agents. In midafternoon Demos emerged from his La Jolla pad, headed north on the freeway to LA, and ensconced himself in the L'Ermitage Hotel on Burton Way. However, since he has now been questioned by the FBI, he has in effect been alerted, and the team thinks he's unlikely to contact anyone on nefarious business, either in the hotel or in any public place, assuming he's into that sort of thing.

But there's a worrying gap in the hoped-for 24/7 surveillance, a place where, for a few vital hours, not even the FBI can penetrate. The logic connecting Demos to the crashed Arizona UFO is slender to vanishing point in the first place, but they have nothing else and Hardcastle's mass burial remains a potent, unspoken phrase driving them to desperation.

Spada's team have found that there is a movie premiere in Burbank that very evening. Demos composed the score for The Andromeda Dossier and is a guest. In fact the movie is due to start in an hour and twenty minutes. This party is being held, eccentrically, in a garden center well out of town, in an area called Ramirez Canyon. Their problem is that entry to the aforesaid party is by invitation only, and since a number of major stars are in the movie, security is tight. The center is ringed with an electronically sensitive fence and night-vision cameras. It's a place where 24/7 fails, where Demos knows that he can talk freely with anyone inside. Caddon needs to get someone inside the party like a drowning man needs air. The question of planting someone in the party is involving the FBI agents in ever more inventive scenarios, some of which would do credit to a movie script, and none of which survives scrutiny.

The exchange between Caddon and Spada doesn't reflect any subversive or revolutionary beliefs on their part so much as desperation, compounded by Judge Woodman's suspicious rejection of a reasonable search warrant application and the fact that the movie is due to start in an hour and twenty minutes. Most of all, however, the radical comments reflect the fact that the federal officers have finally seen how to get someone into the party; but to do so, they are going to have to take someone else out. In fact, they are going to have to poison him. And they are feeling bad about that.

Joshua Bernstein is fiftyish, wrinkled, with thinning, curly hair and a permanent, carefully cultivated sour expression. He started his journalistic career covering births and deaths for a small Orange County newspaper and, discovering a talent for wit and sarcasm, found himself drawn first into sports coverage, then politics, and finally into the business of theater and movie criticism. It was in this arena that he found his natural home. A single bad review, delivered with the classic Bernstein wit and sneer, could keep audiences out like a steel barrier, crash a new production, cost a million or two, and damage careers. And the more feared he was, the more he was lionized by those at his mercy.

And so it is that Bernstein finds himself in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel, rounding off a dinner of lobster pie with zabaglione and sambuca; while Caddon, three tables away, stares reflectively into a glass of bourbon, and Spada, dressed as a waiter, slips a card into the lock of Bernstein's second-floor room.

No warrant applications to corrupt judges, not this time.

Around ten o'clock, Bernstein finishes his fifth sambuca; why not, Universal is picking up the tab. A black girl of stunning beauty, wearing a red cocktail dress, on her own at a nearby table, gives him a coy smile. He replies with a look that says Wrong sex, darling. He stands up unsteadily, wonders about a couple of bourbons at the Sunset Lounge, but decides he'd had enough live piano music to last him the rest of the year. Instead he makes his way erratically to his room. He wonders vaguely about using the hotel pool, and even in a fantasy moment thinks about the jogging paths, but it has been a long day. Easier just to watch some crap on TV and then crash out.

In the bathroom he runs water and turns on the controls for the whirlpool tub; in a minute it is foaming like a witch's cauldron. He slips his clothes off and only then sees the silver tray, the champagne bottle, and the crystal goblet on the big oval table, next to a basket of flowers.

FROM THE PRODUCTION TEAM OF THE ANDROMEDA DOSSIER. Bernstein tosses the card aside and works on the bottle; the cork pops and hits the ceiling. He sniggers, stumbles toward the oversized walk-in closet, and comes out with a packet of cigars. He switches on the bathroom TV and settles into the hot Jacuzzi, alternating between swigging from the champagne bottle and puffing the Don Tomás.

At first, he thinks it might be the sudden hot water and the cigar, maybe with a little too much alcohol. Then, as he feels his brow begin to sweat, he wonders about the lobster pie. And finally, as nausea and giddiness suddenly take a grip and he struggles out of the whirling water, an unworthy thought enters the noble Bernstein's head: He can't sue for hot water, cigar smoke, or alcohol, but they might pay him to shut up about iffy lobster.

Fifteen minutes later, exhausted and evacuated, he crawls toward the nearest of the three telephones, leaving a trail of vomit and slime. He almost reaches it, gasping and pulling himself up to the desk, when another surge of bloody diarrhea pours down his legs onto the Turkish rug. His stomach seems to be in flames. He manages to lift the receiver, looks at the instructions through blurred eyes, mucus dribbling from his mouth, and then jabs a number. His voice comes out as a croak. "Help."

"Sir?"

"You and your lobster pie." And another painful spasm grips his stomach, and bloody diarrhea pours down his legs again, and he vomits noisily into the mouthpiece, and he thinks maybe he is about to die.