They're Watching

They're Watching (2010)

Gregg Hurwitz

*

THEY'RE WATCHING

Navigating a hairpin turn, I gripped the steering wheel hard and did my best not to slide in the driver's seat. If the butcher knife tucked beneath the back of my thigh shifted, it would open up my leg. The blade was angled in, the handle sticking out toward the console, within easy reach. The acrid smell of burning rubber leaked in through the dashboard vents. I resisted the urge to flatten the gas pedal again; I couldn't risk getting pulled over, not given the deadline.

I flew up the narrow street, my hands slick on the wheel, my heart pumping so much fear and adrenaline through me that I couldn't catch my breath. I checked the clock, checked the road, checked the clock again. When I was only a few blocks away, I pulled the car to the curb, tires screeching. I shoved open my door just in time. As I retched into the gutter, a gardener watched me from behind a throttling lawn mower, his face unreadable.

I rocked back into place, wiped my mouth, and continued more slowly up the steep grade. I turned down the service road as directed, and within seconds the stone wall came into sight, then the iron gates that matched the familiar ones in front. I hopped out and punched in the code. The gates shuddered and sucked inward. Hemmed in by jacaranda, the paved drive led straight back along the rear of the property. At last the guest quarters came into view. White stucco walls, low-pitched clay-tile roof, elevated porch--the guesthouse was bigger than most regular houses on our street.

I pulled up beside the cactus planter at the base of the stairs, tight to the building. Setting my hands on the steering wheel, I did my best to breathe. There were no signs of life. Way across the property, barely visible through a netting of branches, the main house sat dark and silent. Sweat stung my eyes. The stairs just outside the driver's-side window were steep enough that I couldn't see up onto the porch. I couldn't see much of anything but the risers. I supposed that was the point.

I waited. And listened.

Finally I heard the creak of a door opening above. A footstep. Then another. Then a man's boot set down on the uppermost step in my range of vision. The right foot followed. His knees came visible, then his thighs, then waist. He was wearing scuffed worker jeans, a nondescript black belt, maybe a gray T-shirt.

I slid my right hand down to the hilt of the butcher knife and squeezed it so hard that my palm tingled. Warmth leaked into my mouth; I'd bitten my cheek.

He stopped on the bottom step, a foot from my window, the line of my car roof severing him at the midsection. I wanted to duck down so I could see his face, but I'd been warned not to. He was too close anyway.

His knuckle rose, tapped the glass once.

I pushed the button with my left hand. The window started to whir down. The knife blade felt cool hidden beneath my thigh. I picked out a spot on his chest, just below his ribs. But first I had to find out what I needed to know.

His other hand came swiftly into view and popped something fist-sized in through the open gap of the still-lowering window. Hitting my lap, it was surprisingly heavy.

I looked down.

A hand grenade.

I choked on my breath. I reached to grab it.

Before my splayed fingers could get there, it detonated.

Chapter 1

TEN DAYS EARLIER

In my boxers I stepped out onto the cold flagstones of my porch to retrieve the morning paper, which had landed, inevitably, in the puddle by the broken sprinkler. The apartments across the street, Bel Air in zip code only, reflected the gray clouds in their windows and sliding glass doors, mirroring my mood. L.A.'s winter had made a late entrance as always, slow to rise, shake off its hangover, and put on its face. But it had arrived, tamping the mercury down to the high forties and glazing the leased luxury sedans with dew.

I fished out the dripping paper, mercifully enclosed in plastic, and retreated back inside. Sinking again into the family-room couch, I freed the Times and pulled out the Entertainment section. As I unfolded it, a DVD in a clear case fell out, dropping into my lap.

I stared down at it for a moment. Turned it over. A blank, unmarked disc, the kind you buy in bulk to record onto. Bizarre. Even a touch ominous. I got up, knelt on the throw rug, and slipped the disc into the DVD player. Clicking off the surround sound so as not to wake Ariana, I sat on the floor and stared at the plasma screen, rashly purchased when our bank account was still on a northerly heading.

A few visual hiccups jerked the image, followed by a placid close-up shot of a window framed by plantation shutters, not quite closed. Through the window I could see a brushed-nickel towel rack and a rectangular pedestal sink. At the edge of the frame was an exterior wall, Cape Cod blue. The view took only a second to register--it was as familiar as my reflection, but, given the context, oddly foreign.

It was our downstairs bathroom, seen from outside, through the window.

A faint pulse came to life in the pit of my stomach. Apprehension.

The footage was grainy, looked like digital. The depth of field didn't show compression, so probably not a zoom. My guess was it had been taken a few feet back from the pane, just far enough not to pick up a reflection. The shot was static, maybe from a tripod. No audio, nothing but perfect silence razoring its way under the skin at the back of my neck. I was transfixed.

Through the window and the half-open bathroom door, a slice of hall was visible. A few seconds passed in a near freeze-frame. Then the door swung in. Me. I entered, visible from neck to knee, the shutters chopping me into slices. In my blue-and-white-striped boxers, I stepped to the toilet and took a leak, my back barely in view. A light bruise came into focus, high on my shoulder blade. I washed my hands at the sink, then brushed my teeth. I exited. The screen went black.

Watching myself, I'd bitten down on the inside of my cheek. Stupidly, I glanced down to determine what pair of boxers I had on today. Plaid flannel. I thought about that bruise; I'd banged my back standing up into an open cabinet door just last week. I was trying to recall which day I'd done it when I heard Ariana clanking around in the kitchen behind me, starting breakfast. Sound carries easily through the wide doorways of our fifties open-plan two-story.

The DVD's placement--tucked into the Entertainment section--struck me as deliberate and pointed. I clicked "play," watched again. A prank? But it wasn't funny. It wasn't much of anything. Except unsettling.

Still gnawing my cheek, I got up and trudged upstairs, past my office with the view of the Millers' much bigger yard, and into our bedroom. I checked my shoulder blade in the mirror--same bruise, same location, same size and color. In the back of the walk-in closet, I found the laundry basket. On the top of the mound were my blue-and-white-striped boxers.

Yesterday.

I dressed and then went down to the family room again. I pushed aside my blanket and pillow, sat on the couch, and started the DVD once more. Running time, a minute and forty-one seconds.

Even if it was just a tasteless joke, it was the last thing Ariana and I needed to deal with right now. I didn't want to upset her, but I also didn't want to withhold it from her.

Before I could work out what to do, she walked in carrying a breakfast tray. She was showered and dressed, a mariposa lily from her greenhouse shed tucked behind her left ear, the flower a striking contrast with the chestnut waves of hair. Instinctively, I clicked off the TV. Her gaze scanned over, picked up the green light on the DVD. Shifting her grip on the tray, she flicked her thumbnail against her gold wedding band, a nervous tic. "What are you watching?"

"Just a thing from school," I said. "Nothing to worry about."

"Why would I worry?"

A pause as I worked out what to say. I managed only a contrived shrug.

She tilted her head, indicating a thin scab across the knuckles of my left hand. "What happened there, Patrick?"

"Caught it in the car door."

"Treacherous door lately." She set the tray down on the coffee table. Poached eggs, toast, orange juice. I paused to take her in. Caramel skin, the mane of almost-black hair, those big dark eyes. At thirty-five, she had a year on me, but her genes kept her looking at least a few younger. Despite her upbringing in the Valley, she was a Mediterranean mutt--Greek, Italian, Spanish, even a little Turkish thrown in the mix. The best parts of each ethnicity had been distilled into her features. At least that's how I'd always seen her. When I looked at her, my mind drifted to how things used to be between us--my hand on her knee as we ate, the warmth of her cheek when she awakened, her head resting in the crook of my arm at the movies. My anger toward her started to weaken, so I focused on the blank screen.

"Thanks," I said, nodding at the breakfast tray. My low-grade detective work had already put me ten minutes behind schedule. The edginess I was feeling must have been evident, because she gave a frown before withdrawing.

Leaving the food untouched, I got up from the couch and stepped out the front door again. I circled the house to the side facing the Millers'. Of course the wet grass beneath the window showed no marks or matting, and the perp had forgotten to drop a helpful matchbook, cigarette butt, or too-small glove. I sidestepped until I got the perspective right. A sense of foreboding overtook me, and I glanced over one shoulder, then the other, unable to settle my nerves. Gazing back through the slats, I felt a surreal spasm and half expected to watch myself enter the bathroom again, a time warp in striped boxers.

Instead Ariana appeared in the bathroom doorframe, looking out at me. What are you doing? she mouthed.

The ache in my bruised knuckles told me my hands were clenched. I exhaled, relaxed them. "Just checking the fence. It's sagging." I pointed at it like an idiot. See, there. Fence.

Smirking, she palmed the slats closed as she set down the toilet seat.

I walked back into the house, returned to the couch, and watched the DVD through a third time. Then I removed the disc and stared at the etched logo. It was the same cheap kind I used to burn shows from TiVo when I wanted to watch them downstairs. Purposefully nondescript.

Ariana passed through, regarded the untouched food on the tray. "I promise I didn't poison it."

Grudgingly, I smiled. When I looked up, she'd already headed for the stairs.

I tossed the DVD into the passenger seat of my beater Camry and stood by the open door, listening to the quiet of the garage.

I used to love this house. It was at the summit of Roscomare Road near Mulholland, barely affordable and only because it shared the block with those cracked-stucco apartments and a neighborhood shopping strip. Our side of the street was all houses, and we liked to pretend we lived in a neighborhood rather than on a thoroughfare between neighborhoods. I'd had so much pride in the place when we'd moved in. I'd bought new address numbers, repaired the porch light, torn out the spinsterly rosebushes. Everything done with such care, such optimism.

The sound of steadily passing cars filtered into the dark space around me. I clicked the button to open the garage door and sneaked under it as it went up. Then I circled back through the side gate and past the trash cans. The window overlooking the kitchen sink gave a clear view of the family room, and of Ariana sitting on the arm of the couch. Steam wisped from the coffee mug resting on her pajamaed knee. She held it dutifully, but I knew she wouldn't drink it. She'd cry until it got cold, and then she'd pour it down the sink. I stood nailed to the ground as always, knowing I ought to go in to her but blocked by what little remaining pride I had left. My wife of eleven years, inside, crying. And me out here, lost in a haze of silent devastation. After a moment I eased away from the window. The bizarre DVD had pushed my vulnerability up another notch. I didn't have it in me to punish myself by watching her, not this morning.

Chapter 2

For me, growing up, there was nothing like the movies. A dilapidated theater within biking distance had second-run matinees for $2.25. As an eight-year-old, I paid in quarters I earned collecting soda cans for recycling. Saturdays the theater was my classroom, Sundays my temple. Tron, Young Guns, Lethal Weapon--through the years those movies were my playmates, my baby-sitters, my mentors. Sitting in the flickering dark, I could be any character I wanted, anyone other than Patrick Davis, a boring kid from the suburbs of Boston. Every time I watched the credits roll, I couldn't believe that those names belonged to real people. How lucky they were.

Not that movies were all I thought about. I played baseball, too, which made my father proud, and I read a lot, which pleased my mom. But most of my childhood daydreams were celluloid-induced. Whether I was shagging fly balls and thinking of The Natural or pedaling my Schwinn ten-speed and praying I'd lift off like in E.T., I owe the movies for imbuing my rather ordinary childhood with a sense of wide-eyed wonder.

Follow Your Dreams. I heard it first from my high-school guidance counselor as I sat on her couch gazing down at a glossy admissions pamphlet from UCLA. Follow Your Dreams. It's scrawled on every celebrity-signed eight-by-ten, regurgitated by every Oprah success story, flop-sweating valedictorian, and for-a-fee guru. Follow Your Dreams. And I did, all the way across the country, a carpet cleaner's kid, trading one puzzling culture for another, rocky shorelines for smooth ones, buttoned-up Brahmin lockjaw for surfer drawl, ski sweaters for tank tops.

Like every other wannabe, I started typing a screenplay within the first week of my move, hammering away on a Mac Classic before I bothered to unpack into my dorm room. As much as I loved it at UCLA, I was an outsider from the start, nose up against the glass, a window-shopper. It took years for me to realize that in L.A. everybody is an outsider. Some are just better at nodding along to the music we're supposed to be hearing. Follow Your Dreams. Never Give Up.

My first stroke of luck came early, but like most priceless things it was entirely unexpected and not at all what I was looking for. A freshman-orientation party, lots of too-loud laughter and teenage posturing, and there she was, slumped against the wall by the exit, her disaffected posture betrayed by lively, clever eyes. She was, impossibly, alone. Steeled with a cup of warm keg beer, I approached. "You look bored."

Those dark eyes ticked over to me, took my measure. "Is that a proposition?"

"Proposition?" I repeated lamely, stalling.

"An offer to unbore me?"

She was worth getting nervous over, but still, I hoped it didn't show. I said, "Seems like that could be the challenge of a lifetime."

"Are you up to it?" she asked.

Ariana and I got married right out of college. There was never really any question that we wouldn't. We were the first to get hitched. Rented tuxes, three-tiered frilly cake, everyone dewy-eyed and attentive, as if it were the first time in history a bride had step-pause-stepped down the aisle to Handel's Water Music. Ari was stunning. At the reception I looked over at her and got too choked up to finish my toast.

For ten years I taught high-school English, writing screenplays on the side. My schedule gave me ample time to indulge myself--out at 3:00 P.M., long holidays, summers--and every now and then I'd mail a script out to friends of friends in the industry and hear nothing back. Ariana not only never complained about my time at the keyboard but was happy for the satisfaction I generally got out of it, just as I loved her devotion to her plants and design sketches. Ever since we'd fled that orientation party together, we'd always kept a balance--not too clingy, not too aloof. Neither of us had an interest in being famous, or all that rich. Mundane as it sounds, we wanted to do things we cared about, things that made us happy.

But I kept hearing that nagging voice. I couldn't stop California dreaming. Less often about red carpets and Cannes than about being on a set watching a couple of actors mouthing stuff I'd devised for better actors to say. Just a low-budget flick to limp onto the sixteenth screen at the multiplex. It wasn't that much to ask.

A little more than a year ago, I met an agent at a picnic, and she enthused about my script for a conspiracy thing called They're Watching, about an investment banker whose life comes apart after he improbably switches laptops on the subway during a blackout. Mob heavies and CIA agents start dismantling his life like a NASCAR pit crew. He loses his perspective and then his wife but of course wins her back in the end. He returns to his life battered, wiser, and more appreciative. Not the most original plot, certainly, but the right people found it convincing. I wound up getting a good chunk of change for the script, and a decent rewrite fee on top of that. I even got a nice write-up in the trades--my picture beneath the fold in Variety and two column inches about a high-school teacher making good. I was thirty-three, and I had finally arrived.

Never Give Up, they say.

Follow Your Dreams.

Another adage, perhaps, would have been more apt.

Careful What You Wish For.

Chapter 3

Even before the footage of me showed up in my morning newspaper, privacy had been hard to come by. My one haven--an upholstered interior, six feet by four-and-change--still required six windows. A mobile aquarium. A floating jail cell. The only space left in my life where someone couldn't walk in and catch me covering the tail end of a crying jag or convincing myself I'd make it through another workday. The car was pretty banged up, the dashboard in particular. Dented plastic, cracked faceplate over the odometer, air-conditioner dial barely holding on.

I slotted the Camry into a space in front of Bel Air Foods. Walking the aisles, I gathered up a banana, a bag of trail mix, and a SoBe black iced tea, which came loaded with ginkgo, ginseng, and a handful of other supplements designed to kick-start the bleary-eyed. As I neared the checkout lane, my eye caught on Keith Conner, gazing from a Vanity Fair cover. He reclined in a bathtub filled not with water but with leaves, and the headline read CONNER TRADES GREEN FOR GREEN.

"How's Ariana?" Bill asked, cuing me to move along. A flustered mother with her kid was waiting behind me, grinning impatiently.

A plastic smile flashed onto my face, instinctive as a nervous laugh. "Okay, thanks."

I set my items down, the belt whirred, and Bill rang me up, saying, "You got one of the last good ones, that's for sure."

I smiled; Flustered Mom smiled; Bill smiled. We were all so happy.

In the car I pinched the metal post where the button used to be and twisted on the radio: Distract me, please. Down the hill I veered around the turn onto lurch-and-go Sunset Boulevard, and the sun came on bright and angry. Lowering the visor, I confronted the photo rubber-banded into place. About six months ago, Ariana had discovered an online photo site and had tortured me for a few weeks by reprinting flashes-from-the-past and hiding them various places. I still found new pictures now and then, vestiges of playfulness. Of course, this one I'd discovered immediately. Me and Ariana at some intolerable college formal, me wearing a shoulder-padded blazer with, alas, cuffed sleeves, her in a poofy taffeta contraption that resembled a life-saving device. We looked uncomfortable and amused, painfully aware that we were playacting, that we didn't belong, that we didn't really fit in like everyone else. But we loved that. That's how we were best.

You got one of the last good ones, that's for sure.

I hit the dashboard to feel the sting in my knuckles. And kept hitting. The scab cracked; my wrist stung; the air-conditioner dial split. With smarting eyes, my chest heaving, I looked out one of my six windows. An older blonde in a red Mustang studied me from one lane over.

I cranked that plastic smile onto my face. She looked away. The light changed, and we drifted back off into our private lives.

Chapter 4

After I sold my screenplay, Ariana was even more elated for me than I was. The production got fast-tracked. Dealing with studio executives, producers, and the director, I was intimidated but determined. And Ariana pep-talked me every day. I quit my job. That gave me plenty of time to obsess on the project's almost daily ups and downs--interpreting the nuances of each two-line e-mail, having meetings about meetings, taking a cell-phone call on a sidewalk while my entree went cold and Ariana ate hers alone. Mr. Davis, tenth-grade American lit teacher, was out of his depth. I had to choose roles, and I chose wrong.

Follow Your Dreams, they say. But no one ever tells you what you have to give up in the process. The sacrifices. The thousand ways your life can go to hell while you keep your eyes on the horizon, waiting for that sun to rise.

I was too distracted to write--or at least to write well. As They're Watching progressed through development, my agent reviewed what I was putting out now, and it didn't catch her fancy any more than the scripts that had been moldering in my desk drawers. I sensed a slow leak in my aspirations, like a tire with a nail through it, and my agent, too, seemed to be running out of steam. My lack of focus built to full-blown writer's block, and still I couldn't seem to find the time to pay proper attention to the people around me. I was lost in the typhoon of possibilities, unsure if the movie was actually going to move forward, if I had what it would take, if I was, at bottom, a fraud.

Ariana and I never quite found our footing again after the shift our relationship took following the script deal. We harbored silent resentments, misread the currents of each other's emotions. Sex grew awkward. We were too far in for lust, and falling out of love. We'd lost the connection, the heightened awareness. We couldn't get it started, and so we stopped trying. We buried ourselves in routine.

Ariana had forged a friendship of commiseration with Don Miller, our next-door neighbor--coffee twice a week, the occasional walk. I told her she was naive to think he didn't have a thing for her and that this wouldn't affect her relationship with his wife, Martinique. Ariana and I had never been controlling with each other, so I didn't press her on it, but that reflected my own naivete--not about Ariana, but in how far she and I could let things slide.

Hard as it was to admit, I checked out on everyone but myself for the better part of that year. I lost sight of everything but the movie, which finally entered preproduction, and then production.

Shipped to frigid mid-December Manhattan to fulfill my obligation for production rewrites, I had a kind of time-release panic attack. The director's cell-phone ban on set made things worse, since I was way too timid to use the lines wired to the important people's trailers to talk to my wife. Even though Ariana was worried about me, I managed to return her calls only a few times, and even those conversations were cursory.

On the set, it rapidly became apparent that I'd been hired not as a production rewriter but to take dictation from the twenty-five-year-old lead, Keith Conner. Sprawled on his couch in his trailer, slurping a lumpy green health drink and yakking half the day on the sole ban-exempt cell phone, Keith offered endless notes and dialogue changes, interrupting them only to show off photos of naked, sleeping girls he'd snapped on his Motorola RAZR. The high weekly rate they were paying me was not for ideas. It was for baby-sitting. Tenth-graders were a lot less work.

After a little more than a week of eighteen-hour days, Keith summoned me into his trailer to say, "I just don't think my character's dog would have a squeaky toy. I think he'd have, like, a knotted rope or something, you know?" To which I'd wearily replied, "The dog didn't complain, and he actually has talent."

The friction that had built up between us gave way like a crumbling of tectonic plates. Jabbing a finger at me, Keith lost his footing on the rewrite pages he'd thrown on the floor and banged the counter with his well-defined jaw. When his handlers rushed in, he lied and said I'd hit him. There were major contusions. Having the star's face in that condition would mean shutting down the shoot for at least a few days. Given the Manhattan location, that would cost about a half a million per day.

After realizing my lifelong dream, it had taken me just nine days to get fired.

As I waited for the taxi to arrive to take me to the airport, Sasha Saranova empathized with me in her trailer. A sometime model from Bulgaria, she had a knee-weakening accent and natural eyelashes longer than most Hollywood prenups. Playing opposite Keith, she'd endured his personality in close-up. Her visit was motivated more out of self-concern than genuine friendship, but I was shaken and didn't mind the company.

It was just then when Ariana called the set. I had been off the radar with her, not returning phone calls for three days, worried that if I heard her voice, I might just crumble under all the pressure. And Keith happened to be on hand to grab the phone from the production assistant. Still icing his swollen jaw, he told Ariana that Sasha and I had withdrawn to her trailer, as we did every evening after wrap, and our standing instructions were that we were not to be interrupted. "For anything." It may have been his best performance.

Ironically, I left Ariana a message on her cell at almost the same time, breaking the news and reciting my flight information. Little did I know that Don Miller had dropped by with the enrollment paperwork from the Writers Guild, accidentally messengered to his doorstep. I'd imagined her many times in the sweaty, regretful aftermath, listening to the voice mail from me and putting my miserable explanation together with Keith's little ruse. A stomach-turning moment.

I had a long and reflective flight home to L.A. Pale and shaken, Ariana was at the Terminal 4 baggage claim, waiting with even worse news. She never lied. At first I thought she was crying for me, but before I could talk, she said, "I slept with someone."

I couldn't speak for the ride home. My throat felt like it was filled with sand. I drove; Ariana cried some more.

The following afternoon I was served with my very first legal complaint, filed by Keith and the studio. Errors-and-omissions insurance, it turns out, doesn't cover tantrum-inflicted injuries, so someone had to be held accountable for the shutdown costs. Keith had sued me in order to back up his lie, and the studio, in turn, had jumped on board.

Keith's version of the story was leaked to the tabloids, and I was smeared with such cold proficiency that I never felt the guillotine drop. I was a has-been before I'd really been, and my agent recommended a pricey lawyer and dropped me like a sauna rock.

No matter how hard I tried, I could no longer find the interest to sit at the computer. My writer's block had become fixed and immobile, a boulder in the middle of that blank white page. I suppose I could no longer suspend disbelief.

Julianne, a friend since we'd met eight years ago at a small-time film festival in Santa Ynez, had thrown me a lifeline--a job teaching screenwriting at Northridge University. After long days spent avoiding my stagnant home office, I was thankful for the opportunity. The students were entitled and excited, and their energy and the occasional spark of talent made teaching more than just a relief. It felt worthwhile. I'd been at it only a month, but I was starting to recognize flashes of myself again.

And yet still, every night I went home to a house I no longer felt I belonged in, to a marriage I no longer recognized. And then came the legal bills, more listlessness, the mornings waking up on the downstairs couch. And that feeling of deadness. The feeling that nothing could cut through. And for a month and a half, nothing had.

Until that first DVD fell out of the morning paper.

Chapter 5

"Do it," Julianne said, rising to refill her mug from the faculty lounge's machine. "One time."

Marcello riffled his blow-dried hair with a hand and refocused on the papers he was ostensibly grading. He wore tired brown trousers, a button-up and blazer, but no tie. This was, after all, the film department. "I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling it."

"You have a responsibility to your public."

"For the love of Mary, relent."

"C'mon. Please?"

"My instrument isn't prepared."

Standing at the window, I was checking Variety since I'd gotten distracted from the Times' Entertainment section earlier. Sure enough, page three carried a fluff piece on They're Watching--production had just wrapped, and anticipation was through the roof.

I said, over a shoulder, "Marcello, just do it so she shuts up already."

He lowered the papers, letting them tap against his knee. "IN A WORLD OF CONSTANT NAGGING, ONE MAN STANDS ALONE."

The voice that launched a million movie trailers. When Marcello uncorks it, you feel it in your bones. Julianne clapped, one hand rising as the other fell to meet it, a hee-haw display of amusement. "That is so fucking fantastic."

"IN A TIME OF OVERDUE GRADES, ONE MAN MUST BE LEFT ALONE."

"All right, all right." Wounded, Julianne came over and stood next to me. I dropped Variety quickly to my side before she could see what I was reading, returning my gaze to the window. I should've been grading papers, too, but in the wake of the DVD I was having trouble focusing. At a few points in the morning, I'd caught myself studying passing faces, searching out signs of menace or masked glee. She followed my troubled stare. "What are you looking at?"

Students poured out of the surrounding buildings and into the quad below. I said, "Life in progress."

"You're so philosophical," Julianne said. "You must be a teacher."

The film department at Cal State Northridge draws mainly three kinds of faculty. There are those who teach, who love the process, turning young minds on to possibilities, all that. Marcello is such a teacher, despite his well-cultivated cynicism. Then there are the journalists like Julianne, wearers of black turtlenecks, always rushing from class, on to their next review or article or book on Zeffirelli. Next, the occasional Oscar winner enjoying the dusk of his career, basking in the not-so-quiet admiration of adoring hopefuls. And then there's me.

I watched the students below, writing on laptops and arguing excitedly, their whole disastrous lives in front of them.

Julianne pushed back from the window and said, "I need a smoke."

"IN AN AGE OF LUNG CANCER, ONE SHITHEAD MUST TAKE THE LEAD."

"Yeah, yeah."

After she left, I sat with some student scripts but found myself reading the same sentence over and over. I got up and stretched, then walked to the bulletin board and flipped through the pinned flyers. There I stood, perusing and humming a few notes: Patrick Davis, the picture of nonchalance. I was acting, I realized, more for my own sake than Marcello's; I didn't want to admit how much I was disquieted by the DVD. I'd been numbed for so long by dull-edged emotions--depression, lethargy, resentment--that I'd forgotten what it was like when sharp concern pricked the raw skin beneath the calluses. I'd had a rough run, sure, but this footage seemed to be signaling a fresh wave of . . . of what?

Marcello cocked an eyebrow but didn't glance up from his work. "Seriously," he said. "Are you okay? The screws seem a little tight. Tighter than usual, I mean."

He and I had forged an accelerated intimacy. We spent a good amount of downtime together here in the lounge, he'd been privy to plenty of my and Julianne's conversations about the state of my life, and I found him helpful in his sometimes brutal and always irreverent incisiveness. But still, I hesitated to answer.

Julianne came back in, cranked open a window irritably, and lit up. "There's a parent tour. The judgmental stares wear on me."

Marcello said, "Patrick was just about to tell us why he's so distracted."

"It's nothing. This stupid thing. I got a DVD delivered to my house, hidden in the morning paper. It kind of weirded me out."

Marcello frowned, smoothing his neatly trimmed beard. "A DVD of what?"

"Just me."

"Doing what?"

"Brushing my teeth. In my underwear."

Julianne said, "That's fucked up."

"Probably some kind of prank," I said. "I don't even know that it's personal. It could've been some kid skulking around the neighborhood, and I was the only jackass taking a leak with the shutters open."

"Do you have the DVD?" Julianne's eyes were big, excited. "Let's look at it."

Minding the fresh divots on my knuckles, I removed the disc from my courier bag and slid it into the mounted media unit.

Marcello rested a slender finger on his cheek and watched. When it finished, he shrugged. "A little creepy, but hardly chilling. The production quality sucks. Digital?"

"That's what I figure."

"Any students you've pissed off?"

That hadn't occurred to me. "No standouts."

"Check if anyone's failing. And think if there are any faculty members who you may have rubbed the wrong way."

"In my first month?"

"Your track record's hardly been exemplary this year," Julianne reminded me, "when it comes to . . . well, people."

Marcello waved a hand to indicate the building. "Department full of folks who make movies. Most of them just as accomplished as that one. Suspects abound. I'm sure it's nothing more than someone having a little mean-spirited fun." Losing interest, he returned to his papers.

"I don't know. . . ." Julianne lit a fresh cigarette off the end of her last. "Why inform someone that you're watching them?"

"Maybe they flunked spy school," I said.

She made a thoughtful noise in her throat. We watched students trickle out of our building below. With its giant windows, colonnades, and a metal swoop of roof, Manzanita Hall always struck me as oddly precarious, seeing that it was a product of the rebuilding effort after the '97 quake.

"Marcello's right. It's probably just harassment. If so, who cares? Until it becomes something else. But the other possibility"--she blew a jet of smoke through the window slit--"is that it's an implicit threat. I mean, you're a film teacher and a screenwriter--"

Over his papers, Marcello volunteered, "Screenwroter."

"Whatever. Which means whoever did this probably knows you've seen every thriller in the Blockbuster aisle." Wrist cocked, elbow to hip, cigarette unspooling--she looked like a film noir convention in her own right. "The recording-as-clue thing. It's Blowup, right?"

"Or Blow Out," I said. "Or The Conversation. Except I didn't accidentally happen upon this. It was delivered to me."

"But still. They'd have to know you'd pick up on that movie stuff."

"So why do it?"

"Maybe they're not after the usual."

"What's the usual?"

"To reveal a long-buried secret. To terrorize you. Revenge." She chewed her lip, ran a hand through her long red hair. I noticed how attractive she was. It was something that took effort for me to notice. From the first we'd had a sibling-like rapport. Ariana, even with her southern Italian sensibilities, had always been notably unjealous, and justifiably so.

"Someone at the studio could be behind the DVD," Julianne added.

"The studio?"

"Summit Pictures. There is this little matter of a lawsuit. . . ."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "The lawsuit."

"You have a lot of enemies there. Not just executives but legal, investigators, the whole posse. One of them could be fucking with you. And they've certainly made clear they're not on your side."

I mused on this. I had a friend in Lot Security who it might be worth risking a visit to. The DVD had been hidden in the Entertainment section of the paper, after all. "Why not Keith Conner?"

"True," she said. "Why not? He's rich and nuts, and actors always have plenty of time on their hands. And shady entourage members to do their bidding."

The chimes sounded from the library, and Marcello exited, giving us a parting bow at the door. Julianne accelerated her inhales, the cherry glow jerking its way down the cigarette. "Plus, you did punch him in the face. I've heard movie stars don't like that."

"I didn't punch him in the face," I said wearily.

She watched me watching her smoke. I must have had a longing expression, because she held out the butt, ash up, and asked, "You miss it?"

"Not the smoking. The ritual. Tapping down the pack, my silver lighter, a smoke in the morning, in the car, with a cup of coffee. There was something so soothing about it. Knowing you could count on it. It was always there."

She ground out the cigarette against the edge of the window frame, her eyes never leaving mine. Puzzled. "You trying to give something else up?"

"Yeah," I said. "My wife."

Chapter 6

When I pulled in to our driveway, Don Miller strode out his front door. Like he'd been waiting. It was just before ten o'clock--popcorn and Milk Duds for dinner at the Arclight cineplex. I'd promised a student I'd go to this pseudo-indie film he was ripping off for his assigned short, which was good because I'd seen all the other releases. It beat time at home.

As I walked over to grab the mail, Don met me at the curb. A broad, confident guy, ex-athlete handsome. He cleared his throat. "The . . . ah, the fence at our property line is falling down. Section in the back there."

I shifted the dry cleaning slung over my shoulder. "I'd noticed that."

"I was gonna have my guy fix it. Just wanted to make sure that's okay with you."

I looked at his hands. I looked at his mouth. He'd grown a goatee. Animal hatred bubbled to the surface, but I just nodded and said, "Fine idea."

"I . . . ah, I know things have been a little thin for you lately, so I figured I'd just cover it."

"We'll cover half." I turned to head inside.

He stepped forward. "Listen, Patrick . . ."

I looked down. His boot was across the pavement line, in my driveway. He froze and followed my stare. His face colored. He withdrew his foot, nodded, then nodded again, backing away. I watched until his front door closed behind him. Then I continued up my walk.

I went inside, dumped the mail and dry cleaning on the kitchen table, and chugged down a glass of water. Leaning against the sink, I ran my hands over my face, doing my best to ignore the mounting stack of dignified taupe envelopes on the counter, from the Billing Department of my lawyer's firm; his evergreen retainer had dipped beneath its thirty-thousand-dollar threshold yet again and needed refreshing. Beside it sat a forgotten dry-cleaning tag, set out by Ariana yesterday; in the morning commotion, I'd neglected to grab it. Despite everything, we were still trying to split our chores, maintain civility, dodge the mines floating beneath the calm surface. She needed that suit for a big client meeting tomorrow. Maybe by some miracle, the dry cleaner had pulled it with our other laundry. As I crossed to check, the little mound of mail caught my attention. The red prepaid Netflix envelope looked different, altered somehow. Blood moved to my face, warming it. I walked over, picked it up. The outside flap had been lifted and retaped. I tore it free, tilted the envelope. A blank sleeve slid out.

Inside was another unmarked DVD.

My hands shook as I fed the disc into the player. I was doing my best not to overreact, but my skin had gone cold and clammy. As much as I hated to admit it, I was as creeped out as a kid listening to a camp-fire ghost story, the ragged unease starting in my bones and moving outward, eating me up in reverse.

Falling back onto the couch, I fast-forwarded through footage of our front porch. It's weird how dread turns to impatience--can't wait for the ax to fall. Same shitty picture quality. The oblique angle, I slowly realized, had to be from the neighboring roof.

Don and Martinique's roof.

I'd made up the couch like a bed this morning, but already the sheets were shoved around from my fidgeting. Fists pressed to my knees, I waited, watching the screen to see what the action would be.

Sure enough, it was me again. The sight of my face sent a bolt of ice down my spine. Watching spy footage of me going about my clueless business was something I doubted I'd adjust to anytime soon.

On-screen, I stepped into view and glanced around nervously. The clothes I was wearing were the same ones I had on now. I appeared gaunt and not a little unwell, my expression sour and troubled. Was that really how I looked these days? The last year had taken its toll on me. How much younger I'd seemed in that bright-eyed picture they'd run in Variety when my script had sold.

As I stepped off the porch, the picture wobbled a little to keep me in frame. I went blurry, then came back into focus.

This effect, however minor, set my nerves on edge. The angle on the last DVD had been static, fixed; it suggested that someone had set up the camcorder and gone back to retrieve the footage later. This new clip left no doubt: Someone had been behind the camera, actively tracking my moves.

I watched myself walk around the house. Studying the ground, my head bent, I paused by the bathroom window. Adjusted my position. Inspected the wet grass. The Millers' chimney edged into the shot. I looked around, my gaze passing disturbingly close to the camera's position, Raymond Burr in Rear Window, only oblivious. A slow zoom to a close-up found my face drawn and angry. I said something to the window, and then the slats closed, pushed down from inside by Ariana's invisible hand. I trudged back to the porch, disappearing into the house.

The screen went black, and I realized I was standing up halfway to the TV. Breathing hard, I stepped back to the couch and sat again. I shoved a hand through my hair. Sweat dampened my forehead.

Ariana was in bed upstairs; I could hear the TV through the floorboards. When I wasn't there, she liked to have a sitcom keep her company; she didn't like being alone, as I'd painfully learned. A few cars zipped by on Roscomare, their headlights brushing the family-room blinds.

Too agitated to sit still, I rushed around the downstairs, closing blinds and curtains and then peering through. Was there a camera trained on our house right now? My emotions were a blur--concern bled through anger into fear. Scored at intervals by the laugh track from the television upstairs, my movements quickened, grew a touch frantic. First the Entertainment section of the newspaper. Then Netflix. Both seemed to point to Keith or someone at the studio. But the on-set altercation had happened months ago--an eternity ago in Hollywood time, so someone outside the industry might have read about it and decided to make use of it to misdirect me.

A light shone in the Millers' bedroom. Their roof was dark. I thought about how Don had popped out of his house when I'd pulled up. And the new video had been shot from his roof--this morning, when it would have been tough for someone to sneak up there unseen. He was the obvious choice.

I started out for his house but balked at the brink of the street. It struck me that I might be gravitating toward Don because that was reassuring. He was familiar, a known entity. An asshole, sure, but what reason would he have to film me?

I went to the front of his house, staying a step back from the curb. Still couldn't make out whether there was a camera set up on the roof. Scrambling up there to search for it was my logical next move. So, clearly, not what I should do.

Spinning in a full circle, I peered across the other rooftops, the windows, the parked cars in the shopping strip a half block up. I imagined lenses peering back from every shadow. From what I could see, no stalkers or hidden cameras were in evidence, waiting to watch me climb onto the Millers' roof. But I couldn't see very well.

I needed to find a better vantage to see if the camera was still up there. The apartment balconies across the road would offer only a partial view onto the Millers' roof. As would the nearest two streetlights and a telephone pole. And the roof of the grocery store was too far away. Maybe I could see up there from another position on the ground? I hurried up and down the street, trying different perspectives, getting winded. But the pitch of the Millers' roof was too flat to allow a clear glimpse of the spot from which I'd been filmed. It became apparent that the only unobstructed view would be from our own roof.

I jogged back to our house, more deliberately now. As I pulled myself onto the low eaves over the garage, the unchecked wind was strong, cutting through my shirt, rising up the cuffs of my jeans. An elm blocked the yellow throw from the nearest streetlight. I tried to minimize the noise of the shingles under my sneakers. Crossing to the slope above the kitchen, I hooked a leg up over the second-story gutter.

"Hey!" Ariana, in the driveway in sweatpants and a long-sleeved T, hugging herself. "Checking that sagging fence again?" More irritated even than sarcastic.

I paused midclimb, my leg still up past the gutter. "No. The weather vane's loose. It's been rattling."

"I hadn't noticed."

We were almost shouting. The idea of the stalker's camera capturing Ariana--let alone our exchange--made me all the more uneasy. My shoulders tensed, a wolf's hackles rising protectively. "Look, just go inside. You're freezing. I'll be down in a minute."

"I have to be up early. I'm going to bed. So that should give you plenty of time to come up with a better story." She disappeared under the eaves. A moment later the front door closed, hard.

The pitch was steep, and I lowered my body, keeping a knee and a forearm in constant contact with the shingles. Scuttling like a crab, I worked my way up and diagonally to the highest peak, near the Millers' house. I eased around our chimney.

There was no camcorder on the Millers' roof.

But the view onto the balconies, streetlights, and other rooftops was pristine; this was the best vantage yet to search out hiding places. Houses, neighboring trees, backyards, vehicles, telephone poles--I scrutinized them until my eyes ached.

Nothing.

Sagging against the brick, I exhaled with mixed disappointment and relief. I turned to start back. That's when I saw it, glinting in the dim light. Way at the edge of the east-pointing run of roof extending out over my office, raised elegantly on a tripod and looking alertly at me, was a digital camcorder.

My heart seized. I felt a calm terror, the kind that comes in a nightmare in which horror is mitigated by the suspicion that you're only dreaming. The tripod, a few feet down from the peak, had been adjusted for the slope. The rise of roof behind acted as a windbreak, the trembling weather vane just above attesting to the necessity. Whoever had placed the camera there--aimed not at Don's roof but at where I would come to look at Don's roof--had planned my move for me, had thought through everything I had and come out one step ahead. Across the rutted stretch of dark shingles, the blank lens and I regarded each other, gunslingers on a dusty boomtown street. The wind whirred in my ears, Ennio Morricone on the upsurge.

My rubber soles gripping the rough surface, I left the safety of the chimney, heading toward where the rooflines met. Getting on all fours, I worked along the spine. My mouth had gone dirt dry. The two-story fall looked higher from up here, and the wind, though hardly gale force, didn't help. As I reached the brink, the drop confronted me dizzyingly. I hugged the rusty rooster weather vane, getting my first up-close view of the camera perched barely out of reach below.

It was mine.

The swung-out viewfinder framed the stretch of roof I'd just come across. No glowing green dot, so my passage hadn't been recorded.

Cars whined by on the turn below, light streaming fluidly across metal, disorienting me further. I leaned down and snagged the unit. The digital memory had been wiped. And the camera hadn't been set to record. So why was it here? As a decoy?

The light in the Millers' bedroom switched off. Fair enough--it was ten-thirty. Yet I couldn't help but find the timing suspect.

Awkwardly hauling the camcorder--a cheap Canon I hardly ever used--I worked my way back along the roof's ridge and then jumped from an interior corner to our bed of ivy.

I hurried inside and sat at the sleek, dark walnut dining table--one of Ariana's designs--and turned the camera over in my hands. With optical zoom, extended battery life, and a straight-to-DVD recording option, it was fairly idiotproof.

I got up, shoveled water over my face, and then stood with my hands resting on the lip of the sink, staring blankly at the closed blinds two feet from my nose.

Finally I went upstairs to my office. A chipped desk, bought at a fire sale, predominated. I checked the cabinet where I stored the camcorder, stupidly confirming that yes, it was missing. Downstairs, moving with purpose, my thoughts burning like a fuse. Collecting the two discs, I compared them. Identical. I forced myself not to take the stairs back up to my office two at a time, which would wake Ariana.

I retrieved the spindle of blank DVDs from my office bookshelf. Same cheap kind, all right. Same exact cheap kind, down to the write speed, gigabyte capacity, and the brand stamped on the polycarbonate. Since I'd started burning shows from TiVo last year, I'd used maybe a third of them. The plastic cover said Paquet de 30. A quick count showed that nineteen remained, stacked unused on the spindle. Could I account for the missing eleven?

Downstairs once more--this was turning into a workout. In the entertainment center, I found four discs containing reruns of The Shield, two 24s, and a Desperate Housewives (Ariana's). An American Idol from the Jordin Sparks season bore visible beer-glass rings. So eight total. Despite the fact that I rarely rewatched shows, I'd yet to throw away any of the DVDs once I'd burned them. Which meant three were unaccounted for. Three.

I scoured the cabinets beneath the TV again, then craned to see if a disc had fallen behind the unit. Nothing. Three missing DVDs, of which I'd received only two back.

I checked the porch, letting in a blast of cold air. No magical delivery had shown up. I closed the door, dead-bolted it, set the security chain. I peeped out the peephole. Then I turned and put my back to the door.

Was the third DVD en route? Had I been caught by another camera from somewhere else as I'd recovered my own from the roof? Was that why my Canon had not been set to record?

The obvious finally hit me, and I laughed. It wasn't a laugh of amusement, not at all. It was the kind of laugh you let out when you lose your footing and fall down concrete steps, the kind of lying laugh that says everything's okay.

I crossed to the kitchen. I sat at the dining table. I popped the loader on the camcorder.

The third DVD was inside.

Chapter 7

Fade in on the rear of our house. Horror-movie low angle, a few branches adding menace to the nighttime view. Cutting into one side of the frame was the green corrugated-plastic wall of the shed where Ariana cultivated her flowers. Advancing, the point of view pushed through the brushy sumac and began a psycho-killer crawl toward the other side of the wall I sat facing, the wall holding the flat-screen I was staring at. The sound track, were there one, would have been shrilling strings and huffy breathing. Silence was worse. Through patches of shadow, images loomed--here a solar-powered garden light, there a patch of grass caught in the cone-throw of a porch lamp. Moving up on the house, the angle stayed low, approaching the windowsill, then creeping north to take in the family-room ceiling, dimly lit by the flickering of the TV.

My back was slick with sweat. My eyes moved involuntarily to the window. Through the semi-sheer sage green curtains, the black square of glass stared back, giving up nothing. Until that moment I'd never grasped the stale phrase "knotted stomach." But I felt my fear sitting there, deep in the pit of my gut, dense and unyielding. Every second my eyes were off the screen caused a rise in my panic. Surreally, the TV seemed to contain the present threat, and the window itself--outside which someone could be lurking at that very minute--seemed fictitious. The screen reclaimed my absolute attention.

Growing bolder, the perspective rose above the sill. Brazenly sweeping the interior through the window, it settled on a form slumbering beneath a blanket on the couch.

As the camera pulled back, I heard the low rush of my heart shoving adrenaline through my veins.

The image bounced along, moving parallel to the wall, toward the kitchen. A rapid swing to our rear door, autofocusing from the blur. My breath stopped.

A hand gloved in latex reached out and twisted the knob. It turned. Despite Ariana's reminders, I often forgot to relock that door after running trash out to the cans. A gentle push and the intruder was inside, next to our refrigerator.

My eyes pulled frantically to the kitchen, back to the screen.

The point of view floated farther into the kitchen, not hurried but not cautious either. Crossing the threshold to the family room, it angled toward the couch, the couch on which I lay sleeping, the couch where I now sat, stupidly willing myself not to look over my left shoulder for a camera on its way, grasped by a gloved hand.

I couldn't move my eyes from the screen. The angle dipped. The intruder was standing over me. I slept on. My cheek was white. My eyelids flickered. I stirred, rolled over, curling an edge of blanket around a fist. The camcorder zoomed in. Closer. Closer. A blur of REM-shifting eyelid. Closer still, until the flesh was no longer distinguishable, until all bearings were lost, until only the twitching remained, as detached as lines of static across the bleached screen.

Then darkness.

My hand was curled in the blanket, just as in the clip. I swiped a palm across the back of my neck, wiped the sweat on my jeans, leaving a dark smudge.

I ran upstairs, heedless of waking Ariana, and pushed open the door of the darkened master bedroom. She was there asleep, oblivious. Safe. Her mouth was slightly open, and her hair fell forward over her eyes. Relieved, I felt the rush of adrenaline drain from me, and I sagged against the doorway. On the TV, Clair Huxtable was riding Theo about his schoolwork. I had an urge to go over and wake Ari, just to check, but I contented myself with the rise and fall of her bare shoulders. The new bed, an oak sleigh with hand-carved scrolls, looked solid. Protective, even. She'd replaced our old bed last month. The mattress, too. I hadn't slept on either.

I stepped back into the hall, eased the door closed, and put my shoulders to the wall, exhaling hard. It made no sense that she'd have been harmed, of course; the footage was shot last night at the latest, and I'd seen Ariana less than an hour ago. But rationality was about as helpful right now as it had been when I'd braved my first post-Psycho shower.

I went back downstairs. To the couch where the intruder had pointedly shown me sleeping apart from my wife. The foldout couch that I'd steadfastly refused to fold out for fear that would add a level of permanency to the current arrangement. In the clip, the blanket covered whichever boxers I'd been sleeping in, so more laundry forensics wouldn't help me deduce when it had been shot. Bracing myself, I picked up the remote and clicked "play" again. Seeing that grainy approach to the house sent another jolt through my system. I tried to detach myself and watch closely. No gauging how recently the lawn had been mowed. No fresh scratches on the back door. The kitchen--no plates in the sink showing the remains of a meal. Trash! I punched "pause" and studied the full can. Empty cereal box. A crinkly ball of foil stuck in the mouth of a yogurt cup.

I rushed into the kitchen. The trash in the can matched the screen snapshot precisely, in content and composition. Nothing on top of the cereal box or yogurt cup. Today was Tuesday--Ariana had worked late as usual and probably ordered takeout to the showroom, so she'd added no new trash since yesterday. I checked the coffeemaker, and sure enough the soggy filter from this morning was still parked inside.

The footage of me sleeping had been shot last night. So that clip, on the third DVD, had been shot before the second clip, which in turn showed me checking out the location of the first. Pretty good planning. I almost had to admire the care being taken.

I checked the back door. Locked. Ariana must've caught it this morning. I wouldn't require any more reminders to throw the dead bolt. Handling the DVD, as before, with a tissue, I snapped it into a spare case.

Julianne's nicotine-fueled commentary in the faculty lounge took on fresh significance. Clearly this had gone beyond harassment. Three DVDs like this in under eighteen hours constituted a threat, and that scared me. And pissed me off. It seemed certain that, as Marcello has intoned in innumerable trailers, this was only the beginning. I would have to tell Ariana now, that was certain; for all its shortcomings, our marriage had a full-disclosure policy. But first I wanted to cross Don, the obvious red herring, off the list.

I headed out, turned left at the sidewalk. The night was brisk, the clean air and bizarre mission making me light-headed. Just a neighborly visit.

A bus rattled by, unnervingly close, a behemoth on creaky joints. It carried a coming-this-summer ad for They're Watching: a figure in a raincoat, made blurry by Manhattan rain, descending into the subway. He toted a briefcase, his shadowy face peering over his shoulder with a furtive panic that implied paranoia. As the bus passed, I skipped back to the curb, dodging a slapstick obituary.

The chimes sounded unusually loud inside the Millers' foyer. Charged from fear, the night air, my proximity to their house, I shifted from foot to foot, composing myself. An interior light clicked on. A shuffling, some grumbling, and then Martinique at the front door. Don's long-suffering, beautiful wife, with her sad eyes and contrived L.A. name. The flesh at the backs of her arms was feathered, loose from the sixty pounds she'd dropped. Her waist now looked like you could fit a napkin ring around it. Stretch marks formed half-moons emanating from her belly button, the lines of a cartoon explosion. They were faded, microdermabraded into submission, and looked soft and feminine. Even roused, she looked impeccable--her hair shiny and brushed, satin pajama bottoms matching her burgundy halter camisole. She was aggressively competent--ethnically appropriate holiday cards, morning thank-you calls after our infrequent dinner parties, twigs and raffia adorning neatly wrapped birthday presents.

"Patrick," she said, casting a wary glance over her shoulder, "I hope you're not going to do anything you'll regret." She clipped some of her words, only barely, but enough to broadcast that she was Central American instead of Persian.

"No. Sorry to wake you. I just stopped by to ask Don something."

"I don't think that's a great idea. Especially right now. He's wiped. Flew back this morning."

"From where?"

"Des Moines. Work. I think, anyway."

"How long was he gone?"

She frowned. "Just two nights. Why--did she take a trip, too?"

"No, no," I said, trying to hide my impatience.

"Someone lies once, you know. How am I supposed to believe he went to Iowa?" She was standing quite close. I felt her breath on my face. It smelled faintly of mint toothpaste. It seemed odd to be close enough to a woman to breathe her breath, and it brought home how long Ariana and I had been keeping our distance from each other. "It's hard, isn't it?" she said. "They'll never understand. We were the victims here."

I balked at the word "victims" but didn't say anything. I was trying to figure out a good segue into asking for Don again.

"I'm sorry, Patrick. I wish we all didn't have to hate each other now." She spread her arms, her perfect nails flaring. We embraced. She smelled divine--faded perfume, feminine soap, sweat mixed with lotion. Hugging a woman, really hugging her, brought back a flood of sensations--not quite memories, but impressions. Impressions of my wife, of another time. Martinique's muscles were tighter than Ariana's, more compact. I patted her back and let go, but she clutched me another moment. She was trying to hide her face.

I pulled away. She wiped her nose, looked around self-consciously. "When Don and I got married, I was beautiful."

"Martinique. You are beautiful."

"You don't have to say that."

I knew from experience there was no winning this battle with her. My fingers drummed involuntarily against my forearm.

"You guys all think because you only value us for what we look like, that's what we value in ourselves. It's kind of pathetic how often you're right." She shook her head, hooked a wisp of hair back over an ear. "I gained so much weight after we got married. It's hard for me. My mom's huge, and my sister . . ." She drew her fingertips along her lids to remove smeared eyeliner. "And Don lost interest in me. He lost his regard for me. And now I understand. Once it's lost, it's lost."

"Is that true?"

She looked at me anxiously. "You don't think so?"

"I hope not."

And then, abruptly, he was there at her shoulder, nervously cinching his bathrobe. His bare chest was wide and sported a salt-and-pepper scattering of hair. The muscles of my lower back tightened instinctively, pulling me into a harder defensive posture. The air took on a different charge.

"Martinique," he said firmly, and she withdrew, padding down the hall, casting a glance at me over her shoulder. He waited for the bedroom door to close, and then his big, handsome head bobbed on his thick neck, his eyes darting to my hands. He looked as nervous as I felt, but he wasn't letting on. "What do you want, Patrick?"

"Sorry to wake you. I know you're tired from your trip." I studied him, looking for some poker tell that he hadn't really been out of town but instead tiptoeing around rooftops with camcorders like a perved-out Santa Claus. "Someone's been surveilling our house. Have you seen anything?"

"As in watching you?" He looked genuinely confused. "How do you know?"

I held up the unmarked DVD. "They sent this. And the POV on it seems to be from your roof. Have you had any workers at the house or anything?"

"Patrick, you're starting to concern me." He put a thick hand on the door, ready to slam if I lunged.

"Let's skip past this part," I said. "We both know this script. You push the buttons and I'm supposed to respond."

"I'm not pushing any buttons, but it sure seems like you're responding." He started to swing the door closed.

I put my hand out, stopped it. Gently.

I said, "Look, I'm not storming over here making threats. I'm not calling the cops. I just want to ask you, calmly--"

"The cops now? I don't know what you're trying to set up here, Patrick, but I'm not going for it. I'm gonna shut the door now."

I removed my hand. Not taking his eyes from mine, he slowly closed the door. I heard the dead bolt clunk, the chain fuss into the catch.

I walked back home. Locked the front door behind me.

Ariana was sitting on the couch. Those dark eyes lifted, looking straight at me. And then she raised her hand, holding two of the DVDs. "What the hell is this? Are you paying someone to watch our house? To keep an eye on me? Or is this Martinique's doing? She spies on me while you spy on Don? Not even getting into how fucking invasive this is, I thought we were beyond this."

"Whoa, wait a minute. Those recordings are of me--"

"They're surveillance. So a few clips caught you. How many others are there? What have they been watching me do?"

"I have no idea who's behind those videos."

I took a quick step forward, and she recoiled in fear. I froze. She'd never flinched from me before, not ever. We stood in the still house for a moment, both of us horrified by her reaction.

She brushed a lock off her forehead and flattened her hand against the air, willing us both to calm down, slow down. "You're telling me you're not part of this."

"No. No. Of course not."

She looked away, took a deep breath. "Patrick, you're starting to scare me here. You've been like a coiled spring. And now it's as if you've gone off the deep end. You're snooping by their fence, up on our roof spying on them, now you go storming over there. I didn't know what to do. I thought this whole thing was going to blow up on their porch. Don has all those hunting rifles. This is gonna get you killed, and then I'm gonna have to feel guilty."

"Get me killed?"

"I thought Don was going to shoot you." She gave a dark little cry, half anger, half relief. "And if anyone's gonna shoot you right now, it should be me."

I held up the third DVD. "You need to see this one."

Still using the tissue to preserve any prints, I slotted it in, and the blue screen quickly gave way to the shaky view of the back of our house. As the clip ran, Ariana pulled her legs under her, distressed, and pressed a cushion across her thighs. She gasped when the latex glove materialized to grip our doorknob. For the first time, I noted the black sweatshirt covering the brief flash of the intruder's wrist.

The footage ended, and Ariana said hoarsely, "Why didn't you tell me about this? Why didn't you go to the cops?"

"I didn't want to scare you." I held up a hand. "I know. But I just found this one tonight. On our roof. I was coming to tell you, right now. But I wanted to rule Don out first, for obvious reasons."

She said firmly, "There's no way this is Don."

"I agree. But still, the cops aren't going to do any good."

"What do you mean? Someone came inside our house."

"It's creepy, but it's not proof of a crime. They'll say they don't have a way to know who did it. They'll say it could've been you."

"Me? Patrick--"

"They won't be able to do anything. 'Contact us again if there's further trouble. Blah, blah, blah.' "

The doorbell rang. She froze. "Shit, oh, shit," she said. "You might not want to answer that."

Chapter 8

I opened the door, revealing a vast, pyramidal woman with oval, plastic-frame glasses. Her hair, a touch puffy, was center-parted and feathered. The pooch under her belt said she was a mother, and she had the brisk, no-nonsense demeanor to back it up.

"I'm Detective Sally Richards. This is Detective Valentine. He'll give you his first name if he's feeling social."

A slender black man stepped out from behind her. His hair was about two inches deep all around--no shape, no notched part, just a uniform rise of dense black curls. His mouth twitched, his mustache undulating. Like her, he wore slacks, a button-up, and a blazer.

Behind me, Ariana said faintly, "Detectives? I assumed they'd just send a couple patrolmen."

"Bel Air service." Richards hoisted her belt, weighed down with a hip-holstered Glock and a flashlight. "The surveillance tape sounded bizarre, so Dispatch kicked it to us. Plus, we're bored. West L.A. station. There's only so much Starbucks you can drink. Even the doughnuts aren't doughnuts. They're gourmet cupcakes."

Valentine blinked twice, displeased.

Ariana had called them to protect me from Don's guns, but now that they were here, they required an explanation of some sort. I ushered them in. We sat at the dining table like it was some sort of social visit. Richards's gaze caught on my bruised knuckles. I dropped my hand quickly into my lap.

"Would you like something to drink?" Ariana asked.

Valentine shook his head, but Richards smiled brightly. "I would love something to drink. Glass of water. With a spoon."

Ariana arched an eyebrow but brought both over. Richards plucked three Sweet'N Lows from her inside lapel pocket and shook the pink packets down. She tore off the ends, dumped the sweetener in, and stirred. "Don't ask. It's a fucking diet so I can fit into a boat tarp by beach season. Now, what's going on here?"

I ran through it all for them, Richards quietly noting Ariana's surprise at some of the revelations. Halfway through, Valentine got up and stood at the kitchen window, staring out despite the fact that the blinds were closed. After I finished, Richards knocked the table twice and said, "Let's take a look at these DVDs, then."

I fed in the first disc, Richards and Valentine exchanging a glance over my tissue-handling of the evidence. We stood before the flat-screen, all four of us, arms crossed, scouts watching batting practice. After the last one finished, Richards said, "Well, well."

Back to the dining table. She sat, and Ariana and I followed suit. Valentine stayed in the family room, poking through the cabinets. Ariana glanced over her shoulder at him a few times, nervously. I realized, with approval, that Richards had taken a chair on the far side so Ariana and I would wind up sitting with our backs to her partner as he snooped.

Richards smoothed her hands across the lacquered surface. "This one of your designs?"

Ariana said, "How did you . . . ?"

"Stacks of trade mags on the table by the front door. Sketch pad on the stairs, there. Charcoal smear on your left sleeve. Lefty--creative. And your hands"--Richards reached across the table, took Ariana by the wrists, like a fortune-teller--"rougher than suburban. These hands work with abrasives, I'd guess. So: a furniture designer."

Ariana withdrew her hands.

Valentine was behind us. "You keep a house key outside somewhere? Hidden?"

"Fake rock by the driveway," I answered. "But like I said, I probably left the back door unlocked myself."

"But you're not certain," he told me.

"No."

"Alarm? You got two signs out front, stickers in the windows."

"Just the signs. From the last owner. As deterrents. We dropped the service."

Valentine made a noise in the back of his throat.

Richards asked, "Why?"

"Expensive."

Valentine looked around with pursed lips, presumably at the nice furnishings.

"Okay," I said, "we'll call the company, get it hooked up again."

He asked, "It work by code or keys?"

"Both."

"How many keys?"

"Two."

"You still have 'em?"

I walked over, pulled them from the back of the silverware drawer. "Yes."

"Anyone else know where those keys are?"

"No."

Valentine took them from me and dropped them into the trash can. "Get new ones. Change your code. Don't tell anyone. Not the cleaning lady, not your Aunt Hilda, nobody." His flat stare was unreadable. "Only you two should know."

Richards stood, winked at me. "Let's take a look outside, Patrick." Ariana started to stand, and Richards said, "It's cold out there. Why don't you wait inside with Detective Valentine?"

Ariana eyed her a beat too long. "Fine. I'll go get the key in the fake rock, then."

Richards gave me an after-you flourish of the hand, and we went through the rear door. Outside, she crouched, studied the knob.

"Detective Richards--"

"Please. Sally."

"Okay, Sally. Why was he wearing latex gloves?"

"Leather ones leave distinctive marks, just like fingerprints."

"So if the guy used leather gloves twice, you'd be able to ID them."

She cocked her head, taking me in from an angle. "Screenwriter, yeah?"

I grinned. Her Sherlock routine in the kitchen with Ariana's charcoaled sleeve was probably just stage dressing on a Google search. "Teacher, really."

" 'Guy,' " she noted. "You said 'the guy.' "

"Better odds for an intruder. Plus, the gloved hand looked masculine."

"Just a little big, really. Maybe it's a woman retaining water."

I crouched next to her. "He used his right hand to open the door. So I'm guessing he's left-handed."

She paused in her examination of the doorframe, just for a split second, but I knew I'd surprised her. "Ah," she said, "because you figure he'd use his dominant hand for the camcorder." Another sideways glance at me. "Glad to see you're not obsessing about this."

A faint mark in the thin layer of dirt on the rear step caught her attention. The edge of a footprint. She swept me back and leaned over it, fists on her knees.

My heart quickened. "What can you tell?"

"It was made by a Mexican male, six-two, goes about a buck ninety, had a backpack slung over his right shoulder."

"Really?"

"No. It's a fucking footprint."

I laughed, and her eyes crinkled a bit at the edges; it seemed she found me as amusing as I did her.

But there'd be no lingering in our joint fondness. "Lemme see your shoe," she said. "No, take it off."

I tugged my sneaker off. She held it over the imprint. A perfect match. "Square one."

"How 'bout that."

She stood, arched to crack her back. It didn't crack, but she got in a good groan. Clicking on her Mag-Lite, she started along the wall, reversing the course the camera had traveled. "Any problems with your left-handed wife?"

Don and Martinique's bedroom light was still on. "All couples have problems," I said.

"Any serious disputes with anyone else?"

"Keith Conner. And Summit Pictures. There's a lawsuit--it was all over the tabloids. . . ."

"I don't read The Enquirer much. Tell me about it."

"The judge issued a gag order until the matter's resolved. The studio didn't want any bad press circulating."

She looked mildly disappointed in me, as if I were a dog that messed the carpet. "Maybe that's not so important right about now."

"It's so stupid you wouldn't believe it."

"I probably would. I had to arrest a director last month for taking a dump in his agent's pool. I can't mention any names, but it was Jamie Passal." She looked at me flatly, not pushing.

I drew in a breath of cool air. Then I told her about the confrontation with Keith, how he'd slipped and banged his jaw on the counter, how he'd lied and said I'd hit him, how the studio had joined him in suing what was left of my ass.

When I finished, she looked unmoved. "Money disputes are our bread and butter." She looked at me, then added, "And stupid domestic disputes." She ran her fingers along the wall, as if checking for wet paint. "So this thing with Summit and Keith is ongoing."

"Right."

"And expensive."

Right.

"Seems like a pretty elaborate and time-consuming method for an actor or a studio to harass you," she said.

I pressed my lips together and nodded. I'd considered the same.

"Besides," she said, "what would they hope to gain by this?"

"Maybe they're wearing me down in preparation for a demand of some sort."

It sounded thin, and Sally's face showed that she thought so, too.

"Let's get back to Ariana." Sally had maneuvered our exchange so we were looking through the window into the family room. "She have any enemies?"

We stood side by side, a big-screen view of the blanket and pillow on the couch. I took a deep breath. "Aside from the neighbor's wife?"

"Okay," Sally said. "I see." A pause. "I'm not gonna find out anything about those bruised knuckles that makes me mad, am I?"

"No, no. I hit the dashboard now and again. When I'm alone. Don't ask."

"Make you feel better?"

"Not yet. I don't know of Ariana's having any real enemies. Her only sin is being overfriendly."

"Often?" she hazarded.

"Once."

"People can surprise you."

"All the time." Following her out across the lawn to the sumac, I stayed on the underlying question. "Ariana doesn't lie well. Her eyes are too expressive."

"How long until she told you about the neighbor?"

We'd established an easy rapport, Sally and I. She seemed trustworthy, genuinely interested in my take on the matter at hand. Or was she just a skilled detective at work, making me feel special so I'd keep flapping my mouth about personal matters? Either way, I heard myself answer again: "About six hours."

"What took so long?"

"I was on a flight. She picked me up at the airport. After I didn't punch Keith."

"Six hours is good. I wonder if she's taking longer to tell you something else." She shoved aside the sumac branches. No footprints on the spongy ground beneath. She shot the light through the plastic sheeting of the greenhouse shed. Row after row of flowers poking up from the sagging wooden shelves. "Lilies?"

"Yeah. Mostly mariposas."

She whistled. "Those are hell."

"Three to five years from seed to grow the bulb up. Everything eats them."

"Plant 'em a foot deep and pray."

"Like the dear departed."

"Progressive the way you take an interest in your wife and her activities." She hoisted her considerable frame onto our rear fence, peered across at the quiet street beyond. "Could've hopped over from here."

I nodded at the other fence, the drooping one dividing our backyard from the Millers'. "Or there."

"Or there," she conceded. She dropped back down with a huff of breath, and we started along the property line.

"Now what?" I asked, a bit anxiously.

"Neighbor's name?"

"Don Miller." Saying it made my mouth sour.

"It was shot from his roof. I'll have to talk to him."

I stopped in my tracks, looking across at the Millers' property. "Shouldn't be hard."

"Why's that?"

"He's still awake." I pointed over the sagging fence at his silhouette in the bedroom window.

He stepped away from the curtain, but Sally kept her stare on the house. "We'll be back in a jiffy, Patrick. Go be with Ariana. She's scared. Those expressive eyes." She turned her back on me politely, starting for our house to retrieve her partner.

Ariana and I watched the DVDs again, all three, one after another. The hand in the latex glove did look masculine. The cuff of the black sweatshirt had been tucked into the glove so no skin would show, but I freeze-framed forward just to make sure.

"I'm sorry I called the cops without talking to you. You lied to me, but still. I thought you were out of your head and going to do something stupid that would get you shot." Ariana was pacing around the couch, her hands laced on her head. "It's amazing how little it takes to make someone suspicious. A misinterpretation, a white handkerchief, and a few well-placed nudges, right?"

I watched the scoop of tan skin at her neckline. "Is there anyone you can think of . . . ?"

"No. Please. I don't know anyone that interesting."

"I'm serious. Are there any other men who--"

"Who what?" Pink crept along her throat into her face. When Ari got flustered, she was usually a half step away from anger.

"Who've taken an interest," I said evenly. "At the showroom, the grocery store, wherever."

"I don't have a clue," she said. "He was prying at me about that. Detective Valentine. Who the hell does something like this? It's gotta be someone from the studio. Or that asshole Conner." More pacing. A glance at the clock--it was nearly 2:00 A.M. "They're gonna take the DVDs into evidence. We should copy them." She held up a hand to stop me. "I know, I'll handle them with an oven mitt."

While she picked up the disc carefully by the edges, I went upstairs and searched the Internet for Keith Conner. It didn't take long to find a picture that included his hands. He wore a great old Baume & Mercier on his right wrist, so he was likely left-handed. I pulled an image into Photoshop and enlarged his right hand. Was this how celebrity stalkers whiled away their lonesome evenings? Keith's hand looked like most men's, like the hand used to open my back door. But even if he was behind this, he would have outsourced the break-in.

Ariana's voice startled me. "You're not gonna believe this." She cradled her silver laptop, open. "Look at this." She tried to play the loaded DVD. Blank. "I dragged the icons to my desktop, but when I went to burn them, the disc drive made this sound"--she demonstrated--"and then I double-clicked on the icons, and they all vanished."

"DVDs don't erase themselves," I said.

Her stare hardened. "Well, these ones do."

I looked at the two other DVDs, in a Ziploc bag. "And you dragged them all to the desktop before burning. So you're saying they're all blank now."

She nodded. "I guess they were designed to erase as soon as someone tried to copy them."

I gritted my teeth, shoved the heels of my hands into my eyes.

The doorbell rang.

I swallowed, trying to moisten my throat. "Ari, let me handle the detectives. Pretend you went to bed." She started to say something, but I cut her off. "Just please trust me on this."

She ejected the last disc, carefully put it in the Ziploc with the others, and handed it to me without a word. Tense, I jogged down the stairs and opened the front door.

Sally said, "Come in?"

"Of course. How 'bout Valentine?"

He was sitting in the passenger seat of the Crown Vic, jotting notes. Sally shrugged. "As I said, he's less social."

We went inside. I said, "Make you a cup of tea or something?"

"You have that chai stuff?"

I zapped two mugs in the microwave and brought them over. She shook a packet of Sweet'N Low into hers, and then another. She curled her hands around the mug. "You're lonely, Patrick."

"Yeah. You?"

She shrugged--it was something of a tic. "Sure. Single parent. Female detective. It's a lot of time with people who don't talk back. Or do. You know?" She pulled off her plastic-frame glasses, buffed a lens on her shirt. "Don was out of town last night and this morning, when--according to you--the second and third DVDs were shot. He was attending a due-diligence meeting for a mutual fund in Des Moines. Sounds too soul-destroying to make up."

"He doesn't have the imagination to do this."

That same shrug. "I'm not a child psychologist. So I asked him to show me the boarding passes. Plus, he's right-handed." She took a sip. "Maybe the wife was in on it."

"No, she's a sweetheart. Harmless."

"Yeah, I don't see her tottering up on your roof in spikes."

I laid the Ziploc full of discs on the table between us. "I just tried to copy these. They deleted themselves."

"Did they, now?"

"I know what it looks like. Don't start."

Through the steam of her tea, her eyes held steady on me. Yellowish brown, dull, not particularly keen. As deceiving as the rest of her.

"And guess what else?" I asked.

"What else?"

"I'm thinking the only fingerprints on those DVDs will be mine and my wife's. And?" I waved her on.

"And now, all of a sudden, the footage no longer exists." Her fingertips tapped the jewel cases. "Because these are magical self-erasing DVDs."

"Like I said, I know what this looks like. But someone broke in to my house, took my camcorder, my DVDs, videoed me sleeping in my own family room. You and your partner both saw the videos."

"Yes, but we didn't have the opportunity to analyze them, did we?" She offered an affable frown, as if we were two scientists puzzling over the same theorem. "I'll add that it didn't look like the intruder broke in. Looked like he turned a knob that was unlocked and came into your and your wife's house. But okay. So let's think about the next question: Why?"

"How do I know?"

"Aren't you a screenwriter or something? Why would someone do this in a movie?"

"To show that they can."

"Or to show you and your wife that they can." She matched my frustrated expression. "I don't have the answers. Valentine and I read signs. The signs here all say the same thing: domestic. Now, I don't mean that makes it simple, but we know not to waste a lot of time once a couple closes ranks."

"Here's the part where you tell me there's not much you can do."

"There's not much we can do."

"That I should contact you if anything else out of the ordinary happens."

"You should contact us if anything else out of the ordinary happens."

"I like you, Sally."

"Hey, I like you, too. How 'bout that." She stood, gulped the last of the chai, and shook her head. "Needs real sugar."

She set her mug gently on the counter. Outside, she stopped on the walk, Valentine waiting in the car. "Here's what I'm saying, Patrick. If you wanna dig, we're ready to come back here with a backhoe, compliments of the county. But you gotta make up your mind if you wanna know what we might turn up."

Chapter 9

In the family room, I plugged in my camcorder to recharge. A creak on the stairs startled me, but it was Ariana, descending.

"Well, that went just like you predicted," she said. "So there's nothing we can do but wait for the next installment?"

"I don't want to wait," I said, "because we don't know what's coming next."

Ariana tugged at her hair in the back, then realized she was doing it and stopped. Her hands tapped her hips nervously. "They questioned Don. So now he's officially pulled into it. If he tries to talk to me about this, what do I say?"

"I don't like setting rules."

"Implication: You should just be able to trust me."

"Ariana. Someone is menacing us. Do you think I give a shit whether you talk to Don?"

She made an exasperated noise and went into the kitchen. As she filled a glass with slow-filtering water from the fridge, I watched her back. The smooth skin of her shoulders, framed by the tank top she slept in.

For a brief stretch there, Ariana and I had been a team again. The familiar closeness, forced to the forefront by crisis. But now the detectives had gone, and there was just us with all the old problems and a handful of new ones.

Ariana sat at the dining table, fingers around her glass, facing away. Her shoulders, hunched, looked frail and bony. Without turning, she said, "In the movies the guy cheats. Before a wedding, whatever. He feels awful, sleeps outside her door, humiliates himself in romantic fashion, and is forgiven. But never the woman. Never the woman."

I said, "Ulysses."

"Yeah, but it didn't do box office." She sipped her water, set it down on the table. I walked over, sat across from her. She didn't look up at me. Her lips were trembling. "Why didn't you ever yell?"

"At who?"

"Anyone. Me, him."

"He's not worth it," I said.

"I thought maybe I was."

"You want me to yell?"

"No, but maybe you could figure out some other way to show you give a fuck." She laughed. One bitter note, and then she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "Look, I make overpriced furniture and sell it to people who mostly don't appreciate it. They gonna carve that on my gravestone? I'm thirty-five. Most of my friends are busy with car pools and play dates, and the ones who aren't have developed exercise disorders or stay on vacation. It's a weird age, and I'm not handling it so well. The world closed in on me in a hurry, and my life doesn't have a lot of what I hoped it would. The one thing I have that feels special is you." Her voice cracked. She chewed her lip, trying to recapture the thread of her thoughts. "Is it the end of the world you don't feel that way about me? No. But it still sucks. So when I talked to Keith, and he told me you were with Sasha . . ." She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew into it heartily. "And then Don came over, and maybe I thought I could still surprise myself, surprise you. To jar us out of whatever shitty place we'd gotten ourselves into. I don't know." She shook her head. "The sex was miserable, if it's any consolation."

"Some." I'd fought every instinct in my body not to ask about what happened, not to torture through the beads one by one--who wore what, who put whose hand where. I was at least smart enough to know that the more I knew, the more I'd want to know, and the worse it would get.

I reached a hand awkwardly toward her on the table. "I neglected you. I get that. Keith hit you when you were vulnerable. When you were primed to believe it. But what I can't get past is that you didn't talk to me first."

"I'd been trying to talk to you for days, Patrick."

"I was barely holding it together. I couldn't cut it. Keith was just my excuse to bail out." I couldn't manage to meet her eye. "The notes--the stupid rewrite notes morning after night." I stopped myself. "I know, you've heard it all already. But I was . . ."

She sensed the change in my tone. "What?"

I looked at my hands. "I made so many compromises and still wound up a failure."

She looked at me silently, her dark eyes mournful.

"I never knew that," she said. "That you felt that way."

I said, "So I wasn't there for you. Fine. A marriage should grant you the right to be uselessly self-absorbed for a period, like, say, nine days before your spouse goes jumping in the sack with someone. It's not as if I didn't have opportunities. I was on a movie set, for Christ's sake."

"Yeah, as the writer."

I had to laugh.

She bit her lip, tipped her head. Smoothed a hand across the varnish. "Look at this walnut, Patrick. Chocolate brown, open-grained, even-textured. We quartersawed it to pick up a prettier angle on the annular rings. You know how hard it is to get wood this fine? Problems everywhere. Splits. Shakes. Decay. Pitch pockets. Honeycombing. Blue stain from fungi." She knocked it with her knuckles, hard. "But not here. I chose the best."

"But?"

"Give me your hand." She ran my palm slowly across the tabletop. I sensed the faintest bulge toward the center. "Feel that? That's warp. Look overhead."

I did. The heating vent, breathing from the cornice down onto the table.

Her eyes were waiting for mine when I lowered my head. "Seam of stored moisture in the wood, maybe. You can't catch everything."

I said, "I'd never noticed it."

"It catches the light differently, bends the sheen. I see it every time I come down the stairs. And here"--she traced my fingertips across the slight bump of a dark circle--"we varnished over a knot. It was smooth here just three months ago. Having a knot in there's a risk, too, but some defects make it more beautiful. You want uniform, go to IKEA." She took my other hand, too. "You can't see all the flaws. But it's a good goddamned table, Patrick. So why throw it away?"

"I'm still here, aren't I?"

"Technically." She pressed my hands together, like I was praying, except hers were clasped over mine, gentle across my bruised knuckles. As she leaned forward, her dark hair curved to crowd her face. "This isn't good for either of us. Whatever steps we have to take, I'm willing to take them with you. But I'm not doing this anymore. Whatever that means for you, I'll have to find a way to live with."

She shoved out her chair, stretched across the lacquered surface, and kissed me on the forehead. Her footsteps moved up the stairs, and the bedroom door closed quietly.

Chapter 10

I had an excess of energy, the kind that tends to overtake me the morning after a wakeful night. Desultory, slightly frantic, edged with desperation. For four dizzy hours, I'd fussed under a twist of blankets on the couch, distracted by stairway creaks, bobbing tree-branch shadows, the dark yard beyond the semi-sheer curtains. Ariana's last words to me had left me with plenty more to gnaw on in my more lucid moments of unsleep. She'd called me out on the inevitable: Stay or leave, but do one properly. Even in those brief spells where I'd drifted off, I'd dreamed of myself lying on the uncomfortable couch, frustrated and unable to sleep. Several times I'd gotten up to peer out the windows and check the yard. Just after 6:00 A.M., when the L.A. Times landed, I'd searched it anxiously but found no DVD lurking inside.

Now I positioned my camcorder by the front window of our tiny living room, angling the lens out onto the porch and walk. I'd tucked the tripod behind a potted palm so the camera was lost among the blunt-tipped leaves. The strategically drawn curtains left only the necessary slice of view. Slurping my third cup of coffee, I checked the setup yet again and pressed the green button, recording onto the well-advertised 120-hour digital memory.

Ariana's voice startled me. "Is that what you've been doing down here?"

"I woke you?"

"I was up already, but I sure heard you thunking around." She yawned, finishing it with a feminine roar, then nodded at the hidden camcorder. "Giving them a taste of their own medicine?"

"I hope so."

"I'll call the alarm guys today."

"That doesn't sound like a vote of confidence."

She shrugged.

I went up to my office, where I shuffled my lecture notes into the soft leather briefcase I'd bought to look more professorial. When I came back down, Ariana was leaning against the sink, a desert mariposa behind her ear. Vibrant orange. I contemplated this. The color of lily she wore in her hair gave away her mood. Pink was playful, red angry, and lavender, lavender she saved for when she was feeling particularly in love. So . . . not in a very long time. In fact, for months she hadn't gone with anything but white, her safety color. I'd forgotten which mood orange broadcast, which ceded my advantage.

Ariana shifted her grip on her coffee mug, uneasy under my gaze. I was still focused on that orange bloom. "What?" she asked.

"Be careful today. I'll keep my cell phone on, even during class. Just . . . watch out for anything weird. People. Anyone approaching your car. Keep the doors locked."

"I will."

I nodded, then nodded again when it was clear neither of us was sure what to say next. Feeling her eyes on my back, I headed out to the garage and knuckled the button. The door shakily rose. I dropped my briefcase through the open passenger window and leaned over, my hands on the sill. Her words from last night returned to me--I'm not doing this anymore.

In a sealed clear plastic bin on one of the overburdened shelves, I could make out Ariana's wedding dress through its transparent wrapping. Like her, modern with traditional flourishes. Again came the seesaw tilt, betrayal and pain, anger and grief. That goddamn in-good-times-and-in-bad gown, preserved for a future we might not have.

I walked outside, past the trash cans, and peered in the kitchen window. Ari sat in her usual spot on the arm of the couch, clutching her stomach as if to quell an ache. Mug resting on her knee. She wasn't crying, though; today her face expressed only disillusionment. She plucked the flower from her hair and twirled it, staring into the orange folds as if trying to read the future. Why did I feel let down, pushed away? Did I want her to cry every morning? To prove what? That she was still hurting as much as I was? I hadn't known it, not consciously, and revealed to me, it felt petty and foolish.

Given the DVDs, I didn't want to startle her if she looked up. Just as I was about to step back, she crossed to the kitchen door. Contemplated it. Then she unlocked the dead bolt and set it again, firmly.

I stood there a moment after she'd disappeared upstairs.

Chapter 11

The Formosa Cafe was a Hollywood haunt long before Guy Pearce's Ed Exley mistook Lana Turner for a hooker there in L.A. Confidential. At the bar beneath black-and-whites of Brando, Dean, and Sinatra, I gulped a scotch, gathering my courage. At least I had fortifying company. The throw of buildings that composed Summit Pictures loomed in the west-facing windows, as did a tall-wall ad for They're Watching--Keith Conner's overblown face adhered to the side of the executive building. From Bogart to Conner with a half turn of the head. Except Bogart was an eight-by-ten and Conner a high-rise. Poetic injustice.

The six-story ad dwarfed the passing cars. They'd redone it--I could tell from the missing square of banner at the bottom that revealed the old version beneath. Keith squinting in inflated close-up, ready to take danger head-on, had replaced the image of the hazy figure descending into the subway. Principal photography on the movie had barely finished, and a trailer hadn't even been cut yet, but the early buzz had jumped Keith to the next tier, made him worthy of an ad campaign built around his face. He was now an A-lister in waiting. Which was partially my fault.

The barkeep paused from topping off the mixers to collect my glass. Recognizing me as a former regular, he'd waved me in, though they'd yet to set up for lunch. He didn't ask if I wanted another.

Using my cell, I called the Summit switchboard. "Yes, can I please have Jerry in Security?"

Jerry and I had become friends when I was at the studio every day during preproduction. We'd met in the commissary and before long were having lunch together a few times a week. Of course, we hadn't spoken since things went sideways.

Each ring sounded like a countdown. Finally he answered. My voice was dry when I said, "Hey, Jerry, it's Patrick."

"Whoa," he said. "Patrick. I can't talk to you. You may have noticed that you're in the middle of a lawsuit with my employer."

"I know, I know. Listen, I just want to ask you something. I'm across the street at Formosa. Can you give me two minutes?"

His voice lowered. "Just being seen with you could land me knee-deep."

"It's not about the lawsuit."

He didn't respond right away, and I didn't push it. Eventually he blew out a breath. "It'd better not be. Two minutes."

He hung up and I waited, my heart pounding. After a time he scampered in, giving a nervous glance around the empty restaurant. He slid onto the stool next to me with no greeting, none of the gruff conviviality cultivated by his stint in the marines.

"The only reason I'm here is because we both know you caught the raw end," Jerry said. "Keith is a prick and a liar. He tangled us all up. Be honest with you, I can't wait to get out of this racket." An irritated gesture at the window and studio lot beyond. "Get back to real security. An honest dishonest living."

"I heard you guys just signed Keith for two more."

"Yeah, but the idiot's doing some bullshit environmental documentary next. Mickelson tried to get him to wait until he had another hit under his belt, but it had to be now." He smirked. "I guess Mickelson told him the environment'll still be up shit creek in two years. I don't think that won him over." His broad shoulders lifted, then fell. "But he's with us after that." He reached for my untouched glass of ice water and took a long sip. Peeked at his watch. "So . . . ?"

"Someone's been messing with me. Videotaping me. Came into my house at night, even. I was thinking it might be someone from the studio going off the tracks. I know you're overseeing the investigative files. Anyone you think has taken an extracurricular interest?"

"No, man." The relief was audible. "Look, this lawsuit's a mess, but it's not anything they don't deal with all the time. It's business."

"This business at least," I said. His stare stayed level. Uninterested. "So as far as you know," I asked, "no one here seems bent out of shape enough to want to make it personal?"

"As far as I know. And I know pretty far, Patrick. I monitor e-mails, sweep for bugs, interface with Legal, all that shit. You know how this type loves security. I'm the in-house tough guy and the good daddy all in one. Someone chips a nail, they call me bawling. A valet's gaze lingers on the wrong set of legs, I have to go have a conversation. That kind of bullshit. It's a complicated world now. But one thing's still like the old days--if they wanted you ruffled, I'd be the guy they'd call."

I wasn't sure what I expected. Certainly Jerry wasn't going to come clean if the studio was running a harassment campaign. But I looked him in the eye and I believed him. Whatever was coming down on me, it wasn't studio business.

He glanced nervously at the door. "Anything else?"

"Can you tell me Keith Conner's new address?"

"What do you think?" he said. I held up my hands. He asked, "You really believe Keith Conner would sneak into your house?"

"Not personally, but he's got plenty of money and underlings and what looks like a vindictive streak. I need to talk to him."

"I think that's the only thing his lawyers, your lawyers, and our lawyers all agree on. You don't talk to him. Ever." He shoved back from the bar and walked out.

Chapter 12

"Is Keith Conner as hot in person?" Front row, blond, sorority sweatshirt. Shanna or Shawna.

"He is fairly handsome," I said, pacing in front of the class, chewing gum to cover that nerve-settling morning scotch. Some tittering up and down the rows of stadium seating. Introduction to Screenwriting--you couldn't cross city limits without enrolling. "Now, are there any questions about screenwriting?"

I glanced around. Several of the kids had digital camcorders on their writing tablets and atop their backpacks. Even more students typed notes on laptops equipped with embedded cameras. A guy in the middle used his phone to snap a picture of his buddy next to him. I tore my attention away from the myriad cameras and found a raised hand. "Yes, Diondre."

His question was something about talent versus hard work.

I'd been distracted all day, finding myself searching out hidden meaning in student remarks. During the break I'd gone through past assignments to note how many fails I'd handed out. Only seven. None of the students had seemed to take the grade personally. Plus, anyone who was doing poorly was still well within the deadline to drop the class, which had to cut the odds further that my stalker was an aggrieved student.

I realized I hadn't been paying attention to what Diondre was saying. "You know what, since our hour and a half's up, why don't you stick around and we can get into that?" I made the little half-wave to dismiss class. You'd think it was an air-raid warning the way they dispersed.

Diondre lingered behind, clearly upset. He was one of my favorite students, a talkative kid from East L.A. who usually wore baggy Clippers shorts, a do-rag that even I knew to be dated, and a crooked smile that inspired immediate trust.

"You okay?"

A faint nod. "My mama said I'll never make it, that I ain't no filmmaker. She said I'd just as soon be a Chinese acrobat. You think that's true?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't teach Chinese acrobatics."

"I'm serious. Man, you know where I'm from. I'm the first person in my family to finish high school, let a-lone go to college. All my relatives are up on my shit for studying film. If this is a waste of time, I gotta give it up."

What could I say? That despite fortune cookies and inspirational posters, dreams aren't sufficient? That you can dig down and do your best but in real life that's still not always good enough?

"Look," I said, "a lot of this comes down to hard work and luck. You keep at it and keep at it and hope you catch a break."

"Is that how you made it?"

"I didn't make it. That's why I'm here."

"What do you mean? You done writing movies?" He looked shattered.

"For now. And that's okay. If there's one piece of advice I'd offer, and you shouldn't listen to it anyway, it's to be sure this is what you want. Because if you're pursuing this for the wrong reasons, you might get there and realize it's not what you thought it was."

His face was pensive, empathetic. Pursing his lips, he nodded slowly, took a few backward steps toward the door.

"Listen, Diondre . . . I've been receiving some weird threats."

"Threats?"

"Or warnings, maybe. Do you know of any students who'd want to mess with me?"

He feigned indignation. "And you askin' me 'cuz I'm black and from Lincoln Heights?"

"Of course." I held his stare until we both laughed. "I'm asking you because you're good at reading people."

"I dunno. Most of the students are fine with you, from what I've heard. You don't grade too hard." He held up both hands. "No offense."

"None taken."

"Oh." He snapped his fingers. "I'd watch out for that little Filipino kid. What's his name? Smoke-a-bong?"

"Paeng Bugayong?" A small, quiet kid who sat in the back row, kept his head down, and sketched. Figuring him for shy, I'd called on him once to draw him out, and he'd taken an aggressively long time before finally offering a one-word response.

"Yeah, that one. You seen that kid's drawings? All fucked-up beheadings and dragons and shit. We joke he gonna go V Tech up in here, you feel me?"

"V Tech?"

"Virginia Tech." Diondre made a pistol of his hand and shot it around the empty chairs.

"In my day," I said with a grimace, "we called it 'postal.' "

"Goddamn it," Julianne said. "Someone broke the swing-out thing."

"INCONSIDERATENESS ABOUNDS. AND THE FATE OF MR. COFFEE HANGS IN THE BALANCE."

"Knock that shit off, Marcello. I'm getting a no-caffeine headache."

He looked to me for support. "One day they can't get enough, the next you're old news."

"Town without pity," I drawled.

We had the faculty lounge to ourselves, as usual. Marcello was kicking back on the fuzzy plaid couch, thumbing through The Hollywood Reporter, and I was rereading the few assignments Paeng Bugayong had handed in, mini-scripts for shorts he could shoot later in a production class. So far he had a castrating wizard who targeted jocks, a serial vandal who kidnapped Baby Jesuses from Christmas nativity scenes, and a girl who had resorted to cutting because she was so misunderstood by her parents. Standard disaffected adolescent fare, half goth, half emo, and all seemingly harmless enough.

When I'd asked the department assistant to pull Bugayong's student file for me earlier, bumbling out some pretext about wanting to make sure he wasn't recycling skipped-attendance excuses, she'd held eye contact a beat too long. My nervous grin had frozen on my face even after she said she would put in a request to Central Records.

"Either of you teach a kid named Bugayong?" I asked.

"Odd name," Marcello said. "On second thought, that's probably like John Doe for Korean people."

"Filipino," I said.

Julianne banged the coffeemaker with the heel of her hand. It appeared unmoved. "Little weird kid, looks like he's always sucking a lemon?"

Marcello asked, "So Pang Booboohead is your lead stalking suspect?" He was starting to take an interest in the updates. Or didn't like being left out. "Is his writing troubling or something?"

Julianne said to me, "If someone read your scripts, they'd think you were paranoid."

"Good thing no one reads them, then." Marcello, ever supportive.

Julianne came over, stirring coffee into hot water. Not freeze-dried instant, but ground. She said, "I know," took a sip, then retreated and dumped it into the sink.

"A student of mine told me he's a little loose around the hinges," I said.

"And they're such good judges of character at this age," Marcello said.

"Bugayong's a wuss," Julianne said. "I'll bet you a new coffeemaker that he pees sitting down."

I tested one of the scabs on my knuckles. "I know. It's not him. He's got the imagination for it. I doubt he has the nerve."

"And your neighbor has the balls but not the imagination," Marcello said. "So who's got both?"

Simultaneously, Julianne and I said, "Keith Conner."

Her zeroing in on the same name unsettled me. Not that any of the prospects were good ones, but given Keith's resources, his targeting me was a pretty chilling scenario to contemplate.

Julianne sank into a chair, picked at her flaking black nail polish. "You never really think about it," she said. "How thin the line is that separates everyday resentments from obsession."

"The stalker's obsession or mine?" I headed for the door. I wasn't sure what I hoped to accomplish, but if my scuttled career had taught me anything, it was that a protagonist has to be active. I wasn't gonna sit around and wait for the next escalation--the intruder, inside my house, with a camcorder and a claw hammer.

From behind, I heard, "ON FEBRUARY NINTH, PATRICK DAVIS HAS. NOWHERE. LEFT. TO HIDE."

I said, "Today's the tenth, Marcello."

"Oh." He frowned. "ON FEBRUARY TENTH--"

I closed the door behind me.

Chapter 13

I found Punch Carlson in a lawn chair in front of his ramshackle house, staring at nothing, his bare feet up on a cooler. A scattering of Michelob empties lay crushed next to him, within ape-swing of his arm. Punch, a retired cop, worked as a consultant on movie sets, showing actors how to carry guns so they didn't look too stupid. We'd met several years ago when I was doing research for a script I never sold, and we stayed in touch over the occasional beer.

Bathed in the glow of the guttering porch light, he took no notice as I approached. That blank gaze, fixed on the house, held an element of defeat. It occurred to me that maybe he dreaded being inside. Or perhaps I was just projecting my feelings of late for my own house.

"Patrick Davis," he said, though I couldn't tell how he knew it was me. He was slurring, but that didn't stop him from cracking a fresh brew. "Want one?"

I noticed the script in his lap, folded back around the brads. "Thanks."

I caught the can before it collided with my forehead. He kicked the cooler over at me. I sat and took a sip. It was good as only bad beer can be. Punch lived four blocks from a seedy stretch of Playa del Rey beachfront, and the salt air burned my eyes a little. A plastic flamingo, faded from the sun, stood at a drunken, one-legged tilt. A few lawn gnomes sported Dada mustaches.

"What brings you to Camelot?" he asked.

I laid it out for him, starting with the first DVD showing up unannounced in yesterday's morning paper.

"Sounds like some bullshit," he said. "Leave it alone."

"Someone's laying the groundwork for something, Punch. The guy went inside my house."

"If he was gonna hurt you, he would've already. Sounds like an elaborate crank call to me. Someone trying to get a rise out of you." He looked at me pointedly.

"Okay. So it worked. But I want to know what it's about."

"Leave it alone. The more attention you pay to it, the more it'll turn into." He waved at me. "If you remove a woodpecker's beak, it'll pound itself to death. It doesn't know, right? And it keeps bashing its little woodpecker face against the tree. So--"

"Is that true?"

He paused. "Who gives a shit? It's a metaphor--ever hear a' them?" He frowned, took another sip. "Anyways"--he struggled to recapture his momentum--"you're like that woodpecker."

"A powerful image," I concurred.

He took a healthy swig, wiped the dribble from his stubbled chin. "So where do I come in on this little boondoggle?"

"I want to talk to Keith Conner. You know, given our whole fiasco, he's my top contender. But he's not listed. Obviously."

"Try Star Maps."

"It still shows his Outpost address," I said. "He's in the bird streets now, above Sunset Plaza."

He flipped halfheartedly through the script. It seemed he'd zoned out.

"What do you say?" I pressed. "You think you could dig up an address for me? And nose around on him a little?"

"Police work?" He raised the script, let it fall back into his lap. "If I was any good, you think I'd be doing this shit?"

"C'mon. You always know the right moves, who to talk to to get something done. All that LAPD-brotherhood stuff."

"Going official routes never got anything done, my friend. You do it all unofficially. Call in a favor here, return another there. Especially when you're shooting a movie. You need a street permit, some asshole needs to rent the SWAT chopper, whatever. You're on a deadline." He smirked. "Not like, say, when you're trying to catch a serial rapist."

I could read his tone, so I said, "And?"

"A tired dog like me, I only got so many favors. I gotta spend 'em for rent."

I stood, drained the beer, dropped it on the lawn beside the others. "Okay, thanks anyway, Punch."

I went back to my car. When I closed the door, he was at the window. "When did you start givin' up easy?" He jerked his head toward the house.

I got back out and followed him across the front yard and into the kitchen. Dirty dishes, a dripping faucet, and a trash can overstuffed with bent pizza boxes. A strip-club magnet pinned a child's drawing to the fridge. A crayon depiction, nearly desperate in its cheer, portrayed a family of three, all stick figures, big heads, and oversize smiles. The requisite sun in the corner seemed the single spot of color in the dingy room. I couldn't blame Punch for having retreated to the front lawn.

I looked for somewhere to sit, but the sole chair was piled with old newspapers. Punch poked around for a while before producing a pen. He tugged the drawing off the fridge, the magnet popping off and rolling beneath the table. "You said he's on the bird streets?" he asked.

"Blue Jay or Oriole, maybe."

"An asshole like Conner probably put title of his new house in the name of a living trust or whatever to make him harder to track down. But someone always fucks up. DirecTV or DMV registration or something goes in his name. Wait for me outside."

I went out and sat in his lawn chair, wondering what he thought about when he contemplated the same view. Finally he emerged.

With great ceremony he handed me the crayon drawing, an address now scrawled on the reverse. He snickered. "Nice part of town your boy took up in." He waved me out of his chair. "I'll ask around a bit about Conner, see if anything comes back."

Something about actually having the address made me uneasy. As a movie star, Keith Conner seemed like fair game, but of course that was bullshit. Digging into his life was invasive. And the past two days had retaught me the meaning of the word. My actions--and my motives--gave me sudden pause. But I folded the paper into my pocket anyway. "Thanks, Punch."

He waved me off.

I took a few steps to the car, then turned. "Why'd you help me out? I mean, with everything you were saying about calling in favors?"

He rubbed his eyes, hard, digging with his thumb and forefinger. When he looked up, they were more bloodshot than before. "When I had the kid in the minute and a half before I fucked it all up and Judy lowered the boom on custody, that time he got jammed up in school? You helped him. That book report."

"It was nothing."

"Not to him it wasn't." He trudged back to his lawn chair.

When I pulled out, he was just sitting there motionless, watching the facade of his house.

My apprehension grew on my way home, rising with the altitude as I crawled up Roscomare in evening traffic. All the lights were off at the Millers'. I pulled in to the garage next to Ari's white pickup, then went back and checked the mailbox--lots of bills, but no DVD.

I let go a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. Don and Martinique were minding their own business, our mailbox was clear, and all was momentarily right with the world.

When I opened the front door, an alarm screeched through the house. I started, dropping my briefcase, papers sliding out across the floor. A door shoved open upstairs, and a moment later Ariana thumped down the stairs, wielding a badminton racket. Taking note of me, she exhaled, then jabbed at the keypad by the banister. The alarm silenced.

I said, "Lawn party?"

"It was the first thing I could grab in the closet."

"There's a baseball bat in the corner. A tennis racket. But badminton? What were you gonna do, pelt the intruder with birdies?"

"Yeah, and then he'd slip on your papers."

We took a moment to smirk at our feeble reactions.

"The new code is 27093," she said. "The new keys are in the drawer."

Tonight, if I wanted to check the property, I'd have to remember to turn off the alarm before going outside. We stood there looking at each other, me with papers across my shoes, her with a badminton racket at her side. Suddenly awkward.

"Okay," I said cautiously. Her implicit ultimatum from last night hung between us, clogging the air. I knew I had to say something, but I just couldn't land on it. "Well, good night," I offered lamely.

"Good night."

We regarded each other some more, not sure what to do. In a way the strained politeness was even worse than the standoff atmosphere that we'd been inhabiting these past months.

Defeated, Ari forced a smile. It trembled at the edges. "Want me to leave you the racket?"

"Given the size of his hands, I think it would just aggravate him."

She paused by the banister and punched in the alarm code to rearm the system. A moment later, through the open bedroom door, I could hear rerun-reliable Bob Newhart.

Even after the door closed, I stood at the bottom of the dark stairs, looking up.

Chapter 14

I slept fitfully on the couch again, rising for good when the morning light once more accented the futility of semi-sheer curtains. Swiftly, I got up and raced to the front of the house, anxious to see if another DVD had been folded into our morning paper. I yanked the door open, forgetting about the alarm until I heard the blare of it in my skull. Racing back to the pad, I turned it off. Ariana was at the top of the stairs, hand pressed to her chest, breathing hard.

"Sorry. Just me. I was checking outside for . . ."

"Is there one?"

"I don't know. Hang on." The front door was still open. I jogged across to retrieve the newspaper and searched it, dropping rumpled sections all over the foyer. "No."

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Maybe this whole thing'll just blow over." She reached out, knocked drywall superstitiously.

I had my doubts, but so did she. No need to say it.

We moved through the morning routine on autopilot, tamping down panic, doing our best not to pause and acknowledge the threat hanging over us. Shower, coffee, brief polite exchanges, mariposa from the greenhouse. Orange again. I wondered what to make of that.

After checking my pseudo-security footage of the porch and walk, then repositioning the camcorder in the lady palm, I hurried out, eager to keep moving. Once again I stood in the garage, the slanted sheet of sunlight through the open door capturing the trunk of my car, the wedding dress peering out at me through the clear side of the plastic bin. For the first morning in recent memory, I didn't want to sneak around to watch my wife. It took me a moment to figure out I was afraid. Afraid that she'd be crying, and maybe more afraid that she wouldn't.

I climbed into the Camry, reversed out into the driveway. Cars whizzed behind me, the morning commute well under way. On bad days it could take me five minutes to back out onto Roscomare. I tapped the wheel impatiently; I had a full schedule of classes in front of me. And the piece of paper on the passenger seat had Keith Conner's address scrawled on it in Punch's hand.

Movement next door caught my attention. Don strolling to his driveway-parked Range Rover, talking into a Bluetooth earpiece. He was focused on his conversation, gesturing, as if that would help drive home his point. A moment later Martinique came running after him with his forgotten laptop carrier. She wore workout clothes, spandex to show off the new body. It was practically her uniform; the woman worked out four hours a day. Don paused to take the laptop. She leaned forward to kiss him good-bye, but he'd already turned to climb into his truck. He pulled out, taking advantage of a break in traffic I'd been too distracted to notice. Martinique stood perfectly still in the driveway, not looking after him, not heading back to the house. Her face was surgery smooth, expressionless. Her eyes moved, just slightly, focusing on me, and I could tell that she knew I'd watched what had just transpired. She lowered her head and walked briskly inside.

I sat for a long time, the beat-up dashboard looking back at me. My eyes pulled again to the paper in the passenger seat with the address. I flipped it over so Punch's kid's crayon drawing was faceup. A big, sloppy sun, stick figures holding hands. A heartbreaking picture, primitive and wistful.

I put the car in park, climbed out. When I came in, Ariana was sitting where she always sat when I left, on the arm of the couch. She looked surprised.

I said, "I have spent six weeks trying to find any way not to be in love with you."

Her mouth came slightly ajar. She lifted a shaking hand, set her mug down on the coffee table. "Any luck?"

"None. I'm fucked."

We faced each other across the length of the room. I felt something budge in my chest, emotion shifting, the logjam starting to break up.

She swallowed hard, looked away. Her mouth was quivering like it wanted to smile and cry at the same time. "So where's that leave us?" she asked.

"Together."

She smiled, then her mouth bent down, and then she wiped her cheeks and looked away again. We nodded at each other, almost shyly, and I withdrew back through the door to the garage.

Chapter 15

I brought Julianne a Starbucks from across the street, which I held before me like a sacrificial offering as I entered the faculty lounge. She and Marcello sat facing each other, but at different tables to maintain the pretense that they were working.

She regarded me warily. "What do you want?"

"Cover my afternoon classes."

"I can't. I don't know how to write a screenplay."

"Right. You're the only person in Greater Los Angeles who actually knows she doesn't know how to write a screenplay. You're already overqualified."

"Why can't you teach?" Julianne said.

"I have to look into some things."

"You're gonna have to do better than that."

"I'm going to talk to Keith."

"Conner? At home? You have his address?" She clasped her hands with excitement, a girlish gesture that looked about as natural as a Band-Aid on Clint Eastwood.

"Not you, too," I said.

"He is sort of dishy," Marcello offered.

"Perfidy everywhere."

"Why don't you just go see him after work?" Julianne said.

"I have to get right home."

"Home?" she said. "Home? To your beautiful wife?"

"To my beautiful wife."

Marcello, in monotone: "Halle-fuckin'-lujah."

"That's all I get?"

"ON FEBRUARY"--Marcello checked his watch--"ELEVENTH, PATRICK DAVIS DISCOVERS THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY . . . IS THE ONE THAT TAKES YOU HOME."

"That's more like it." I waved the Starbucks cup in Julianne's direction, letting her attack-dog nose pick up the scent.

She eyed the cup. "Gingerbread latte?"

I said, "Peppermint"--she sagged a little with desire--"mocha." Her head drooped wantonly. I walked over and extended the cup. She took it.

I heard her slurping contentedly as I walked out. Classes were in session, the halls empty. My footsteps seemed unnaturally loud without bodies there to absorb the echoes. As I went by each classroom, the voice of the teacher inside rose and fell like the whine of a passing car. Despite the full classrooms all around, or perhaps because of them, the preposterously long hall felt desolate.

There was a clap like a gunshot, and I jumped, my files spilling all over the floor. Wheeling around in a panic, I saw that the noise had been nothing more than a kid dropping his binder, which had struck the tile flat on its side. I mock-grabbed my chest and said, too loudly, "You scared me."

I'd intended it lightly, but it had come out angry.

The student, crouched over his binder, glanced up lethargically. "Relax, dude."

His tone got under my skin. I said, "Hold on to your stuff better, dude."

Two girls paused in the intersecting hall, rubbernecking, then scurried away when I glanced at them. A few students had collected at the far end also, by the stairwell. I was breathing hard from the scare, still, and from my reaction now. I knew I was handling this poorly, but my blood was up and I couldn't find my composure.

The kid nodded at my spilled papers. "You, too"--he turned to walk away, coughing into a fist to mask his last word--"asshole."

"What the hell did you just say to me?" My words rang down the corridor.

A teacher I vaguely recognized stuck her head through the doorway of the nearest classroom. Lines of disapproval notched her forehead between her eyebrows. I stared her back into her classroom, and when I refocused, the offending student had vanished into the stairwell. The others milled and gestured.

Embarrassed, I gathered my papers swiftly and left.

Chapter 16

Vast iron gates greeted me a mere two steps from the curb. A ten-foot stone wall ran the length of the property line. The only point of access was a call box with a button, mounted on a pillar beside the gate.

Though it was three o'clock--and February--the cold had given way to a hot snap, the sun harsh off the concrete. I was supposed to be in class discussing dialogue, not chasing down movie-star litigants.

Before I could push the call button, a screech jerked me around--a door rolling back on a beat-up white van at the opposite curb. The clicking of a high-speed lens issued from the dark interior. I froze, nailed to the pavement. Leading with a giant camera, a man emerged and walked deliberately toward me, snapping pictures as he came. He wore a black zipped hoodie pulled up so the camera blocked out his face; there was just a lens protruding from the hood like a wolf snout. I could see the dark amoeba of my reflection in the curved glass. My thoughts revved as he neared, but I was caught off guard, my reaction lagging.

Just when I'd balled my hand into a fist, the giant zoom lens lowered to reveal a sallow face. "Oh," he said, disappointed. "You're not anybody."

He'd mistaken my immobilization for apathy. "How'd you know?"

"Because you don't give a shit if I take your picture."

I took in his scraggly appearance, the multipocketed khaki shorts weighed down with gear, and finally put it together. "National Enquirer?" I asked.

"Freelance. Paparazzi market's gotten tough. Have to sell where you can."

"Conner's a big catch now, is he?"

"His price has gone up. Hype over the upcoming movie, you know, and the paternity suit."

"I hadn't heard."

"Some club skank. She threw up on Nicky Hilton, made her stock rise."

"Ah. Got herself a media profile."

"They're paying twenty grand for a clear shot of Conner doing something embarrassing. Nothing like a sleaze-success cocktail to stoke a bidding war."

"Cocktails that stoke. I could use one."

He looked at me conspiratorially. "You a friend a' his?"

"Can't stand him, actually."

"Yeah, he's a dickhead. Kneed me in the nuts outside Dan Tana's. Lawsuit pending."

"Good luck with that."

"Gotta get them to hit you, not the other way around." He eyed me knowingly. "He'll settle."

I hit the button. Asian chimes. The crackle of static told me the line had gone live, though no one said anything. I leaned toward the speaker. "It's Patrick Davis. Please tell Keith I need to talk to him."

The guy said, "That's your game plan for getting inside?"

The gates buzzed. I slipped through. He tried to follow, but I stood in the gap. "Sorry. You need your own game plan."

He shrugged. Then he flicked an ivory card from his wallet: Joe Vente. Below, a phone number. That was it.

I tilted it back at him. "Spartan."

"Call me if you want to sell out Conner sometime."

"Will do." I pulled the gate shut, making sure the lock clicked.

The Spanish Colonial Revival was spread out with no regard for the price of L.A. real estate. To my left, the row of garage doors was raised, presumably to vent the heat. Revealed inside were two electric coupes, plugged in, three hybrids, and various makes of alternative-fuel cars. A private fleet for conservation; the more you spend, the more you save. The front door, sized for a T-Rex, wobbled open. A waif, made waifier by the giant doorway, waited for me, holding a clipboard. She had impossibly pale skin, a neck that looked like she'd stretched with tribal rings, and a model's expression of perennial boredom.

"Mr. Conner is out back. Follow me, please."

She led me across a house-size foyer and through a sitting room and a set of double doors open to the expansive backyard. Stopping at the threshold, she waved me on. Maybe she'd ignite in direct sunlight.

Keith bobbed on a yellow inner tube in the middle of the pool, a black-bottomed monstrosity interrupted by a confusion of waterfalls, fountains, and palm trees sprouting from island planters. He said, "Hi, asshat," and started paddling in. Then he shouted past me, "Bree, the pool bar's out of flaxseed chips. Think you can get them restocked?"

The waif jotted a note on her clipboard and disappeared.

Two rottweilers frolicked on the far lawn, all fangs and cords of saliva. Knotted ropes--of course--abounded. To my right, a woman reclined on a teak deck chair, filling out a yellow one-piece and reading a magazine. Her blond hair, turned almost white by the sun, tumbled down around her face in a Veronica Lake peekaboo. She looked far too refined for the company, and too old--she was at least thirty.

Keith collapsed onto the chair next to her and lit up, of all things, a clove cigarette. I hadn't seen one since Kajagoogoo clogged the airwaves.

"Meet Trista Koan, my lifestyle coach." Keith set a hand on her smooth thigh.

She unceremoniously removed it. "I know. The name's a laffer. My parents were hippies and shouldn't be held accountable."

"What's a lifestyle coach do, exactly?" I asked.

"We're working on reducing Keith's carbon footprint."

"I'm gonna save the whales, dawg," Keith said. His teeth appeared seamless; the sun off them was squint-inducing.

My expression made clear I was missing the connection.

"L.A. is all about environmentalism, right?" he said on the inhale.

"And hair restoration."

"So we gotta get people thinking that way everywhere." Inspired, he swept his arm to indicate, presumably, the world beyond the park-size backyard. The grand gesture was undercut by the jet trail of clove smoke left behind. "It's about constant awareness. I was all into the electric-car thing first, right? Even ordered a Tesla Roadster. Clooney ordered one, too. They inscribe your name on the sill--"

"But the problem is . . ." Trista said, keeping him on track.

"The problem is, electric cars still plug in to the grid and suck energy. So then I bought some hybrids. But they still use gas. So I switched to"--a glance to Trista--"what're they called?"

"Flex-fuel vehicles."

"Why not take a bus?" I thought it was pretty funny, but neither he nor Trista laughed. I said, "Whales, Keith. This started with whales."

"Right. They're using this high-intensity sonar, it's like three hundred decibels--"

"Two thirty-five," Trista corrected.

"You know how many times louder that is than the level that'll hurt humans? Ten."

"Four point three," Trista said, with faintly disguised irritation. I was beginning to understand her role better.

"That's as loud as a rocket blasting off"--he paused to look at Trista, but evidently he'd gotten this one right--"so it's no wonder whales are beaching themselves. Bleeding out their ears, around their brains. The sonar also gives them, like, air in their bloodstreams--"

"Emboli," I said, figuring Trista might need a break.

"--so imagine how much other sea life is killed we don't even know about." He was waiting for my reaction with an almost sweet eagerness.

"The mind boggles."

"Yeah, well," he said, as if that were something to say. "So I'm a dumb-ass actor. I'm twenty-six, and I make more money in a week than my dad made his whole miserable working life. It's a miracle, and I know I don't deserve it, because no one does. So what? I can still tune in, make a difference. And this movie's really important to me. A passion project." He looked to his life coach for approval, which Trista withheld.

He'd leapfrogged our animosities, momentarily, for a pitch and some pious confabulation. He was using me to work out his new material, the green-friendly repackaging of Keith Conner, which would give him the edge on the red carpet, where it really mattered. But now playacting was over and it was time to get down to business. Sensing this, Keith held out his arms. "So what the hell are you doing here, Davis? Aren't we suing each other?" He flashed his camera-ready smile. "How's that going, by the way?"

"I'm here to take possession of the house."

Trista didn't look up, but she touched a fist to her lips. Keith smirked and beckoned for me to talk.

"I have something of yours." That got his attention. I removed a DVD, a matching one from my office, and held it up.

"What is it?"

"It looks like a disc, Keith," Trista said.

I liked her as much as I liked looking at her.

"Yeah, but what's on it?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Didn't you have someone leave it for me?"

"Me send you a DVD? Davis, I haven't thought of you since you got kicked off my movie." He gestured around, appealing to an invisible supporting cast. "They said you were a little nutty, man, but hell." His stare hardened. "What's on it? Is this some bullshit from that paparazzi ass-suck who's stalking me? You here to fucking extort me?"

Maybe he was a better actor than I gave him credit for. "No." I flipped the case to him. "It's blank."

Trista was finally interested enough to set the magazine down on her tan knees.

Keith was getting worked up. "What'd the delivery guy say?"

I rolled with it. "That he was told to bring it by, since you were shooting pickups in New York."

"No, I've been right fucking here, cranking preproduction on The Deep End. It's a race against time, man."

I said, "The Deep End?"

"I know," Trista said. "Keith's manager's title. We had to agree to it before Keith came on board and got us the green light."

I said, "Producer-lifestyle coach? That's an unusual hyphenate, even for this area code."

Keith said, "She's hooked in with the environmental group behind the production company. She knows everything about this stuff, so they flew her in as a, you know . . . resource."

The picture resolved, their relationship finally becoming clear to me. Trista's job was a new version of my old job. Monitor Keith so he didn't get caught looking too hypocritical or saying anything too stupid. I'd rather push a boulder uphill in Hades, but maybe that's why I was teaching screenwriting in the Valley and Trista was reading glossy magazines next to an Olympic-size tiki pool.

Keith tossed the jewel case back over, giving me a nice clean set of prints. I wanted them on record in case he vanished behind locked mansion doors or hopped a carbon-free jet to Ibiza.

"I wouldn't send you shit." He leaned forward. "Not after you assaulted me."

For the thousandth time, I replayed what I'd reconstructed of the phone conversation between him and Ariana. I pictured the words going in, straight to the pit of her gut. Everything that had followed. Until I lowered my guard and took a step back, I didn't realize how badly I'd wanted him to go for me so I could knock in those shiny teeth. I wanted it all to be his fault.

I slid the DVD case into my back pocket, careful not to smudge it too much with my own fingerprints. "Don't get worked up, Keith. I'd hate to see you lose another fight with a countertop."

He nodded at the double doors behind me, where Bree had materialized, a clipboard-wielding apparition. "She'll see you out."

Chapter 17

An officer accompanied me up to the second floor, where Sally Richards sat at a desk, intently focused on her computer screen. I crossed and set a Costco box of Sweet'N Low beside a picture of her holding a toddler.

She glanced over at my offering and bobbed her head, amused. "Great. That'll get me through lunch tomorrow."

"This a bad time?"

"Sorta." She nodded at the monitor. "A Japanese guy pulling a live snake through his nostril on YouTube." She shoved back and folded her arms. "A new disc show up on your doorstep?"

"No. Did you manage to retrieve anything off the old ones?"

"Totally wiped. Though our tech-head could tell there'd been something burned on them once. He said the data was totally obliterated by some self-devouring software program. He's never seen anything like it."

I chewed on that dread-inducing tidbit a moment. "Any prints?"

"Just yours. Your wife's. You're in the database for background checks for community service you guys did in college?"

I nodded.

She continued, "And the discs have some marks consistent with latex gloves. In other words, fucking smudges."

I handed her the DVD case from my back pocket. "This has Keith Conner's fingerprints on it."

"Wonder what you could get for it on eBay."

"I was hoping you'd pulled a partial and we could use this for a match."

"A partial? Easy there, Kojak."

I pressed on: "Even if Keith had someone else do the drop or break-in, I figured he might have touched the disc at some point. He's not the brightest bulb on the string."

"You don't say." She followed my gaze to the picture of her with the toddler. "Artificial insemination, since you asked. Miracle of life, my ass. The nausea alone." She whistled. "If I had it to do over again, I would've adopted from China like any self-respecting daughter of Sappho." Her voice rose. "Now, Terence there, Terence has four boys. Four. Imagine that." Valentine paused at the top of the stairs, regarded us with sad, tired eyes, then trudged up a corridor. Sally said, "He loves having me as a partner. Makes him the envy of the squad room."

"I would've thought it was his ready smile."

She said, "Sit."

I obeyed, easing into the humble wooden chair at the end of the desk. On her blotter was a to-do list. Call gopher guy. Rebate on dryer. Sitter for Tues night shift. The glimpse into the cogs and gears of her life struck a chord. Perhaps it resonated with the banal tasks I'd been crossing off my own checklist while my insides crumbled.

I kept my gaze on the floor. "Ever feel stuck?"

"Like that U2 song? Part of being a grown-up, I suppose."

"Yeah, but you always hoped it wouldn't be you."

She smirked. "The only new surprises are you can't eat Indian on an empty stomach and how expensive patio furniture is."

"Just how it goes, I guess. It's okay. If you like where you are." I looked away quickly; I'd revealed more than I'd wanted to. "No prints at all? Maybe you should've dusted the camera and tripod."

She noted my discomfort, the rushed segue. "Sure. We could shoot an episode of CSI at your house. Maybe call in FBI profilers."

"Okay, okay," I said. "You have limited resources. As of now it's still a camcorder prank."

"Not just that, Davis, but the guy wore latex gloves. The jewel case, sleeve, and discs are totally clean. If we believe your version, the DVDs autoerased like something out of a Bond film. Whoever's behind this went to great care. He's not suddenly gonna push a 'record' button with a bare thumb." She poured water from a bottle into a mug and busted into the Costco box, digging out a few pink packets and dumping the crystals. "Now, I shouldn't tell you this, but you did bring me Sweet'N Low. . . ." She used a pencil to stir. "You have any other cops to the house?"

"That's a question, Sally. You didn't actually tell me anything."

"How 'bout that."

"Why are you asking about other cops?"

She took a sip, leaned back in her distressed little chair. "The boot print came back--"

"Wait a minute. Boot print?"

"From the mud patch by the leaky sprinkler in your front yard. We saw it when we went over to talk to your neighbor." She tugged open a drawer, then tossed down a file in front of me. Numerous photos spilled out. A decent impression of a thick worker's sole, pointed toward the street. Left behind, I guessed, when the intruder split the premises. In a few of the shots, the print was illuminated by a Mag-Lite flashlight, just like Sally's, lying in the grass to give a sharp angle.

"When did you take these?" I asked.

"I didn't. Valentine did when I went back to talk to you."

I pictured Valentine waiting out in the Crown Vic and then her sitting with her tea, holding my attention and keeping me turned away from the front window.

"It's a nice three-dimensional track," she said. "Severe sole wear on the outside by the ball of the foot. Pebble wedged deep in the ridges here in the heel. See?"

"Did you cast a print?"

"Like I said, Kojak, we can't roll criminalists because someone sent you a spooky home video."

"Great. So we'll get slaughtered in our bed and then you'll send a van."

She lifted an eyebrow. "First of all, you'll get slaughtered on your couch. And yes, then we would send a van."

I thumbed through the photos. One was taken from directly above, Valentine's radio lying beside the print. "The radio's for scale?"

"No, for period atmosphere. Yes. Scale. The print's from a size-eleven-and-a-half Danner boot. The make is Acadia, common uniform footwear, eight inches high at the ankle. They're comfortable as hell, and you can resole them. Cops love 'em, but they're twice the price of Hi-Tecs or Rockys, so you don't see them around as much. They're a field boot, for patrolmen or SWAT guys. Detectives wear bad dress shoes." With a grunt, she set her long-suffering loafer on the edge of the desk. "Payless if you're on a single-mother budget."

"So it's a law-enforcement boot?"

"But anyone can order them. Just like handguns. And we all know how deranged members of our society have been known to fetishize police gear."

"Especially when they're already working in law enforcement."

"Don't look at me. I wanted to be an astronaut."

My eyes wandered around the squad room, taking in the black boots of various makes attached to various officers. "What size shoe is Valentine?"

Her lips pursed with irritation. "Not eleven and a half. And he was on shift with me when that footage of you was taken. Surely you can do better than that, Inspector Clouseau."

"Well, there haven't been any cops to our house that we know of. I think ever."

"Like I said, it could be a cop in a cop boot, or it could be a wackjob in a cop boot." She stood, pulled on her jacket, bringing the conversation to a close. "If you want to be doing something useful, you should be thinking about who you've pissed off lately. Or who your lovely wife has."

"I have been," I said. "Where else am I supposed to look?"

"There are rocks everywhere," she said. "We just usually don't kick 'em over."

Chapter 18

Heading back up Roscomare, I called Ariana at the showroom. "I'm going home early."

"You're not going to the movies?" she asked.

"I'm not going to the movies."

"Okay. I'll finish up here, too."

There was a courtship excitement to our exchange, unspoken but understood, like we were smitten teenagers planning a second date. It hit me how rarely these past six weeks I'd come home before she was in bed for the night. And now I was nervous but eager, unsure what the evening with her would hold.

Simmering unease eroded my optimism. Ariana's meeting--the one I hadn't picked up the suit for--was supposed to be in the afternoon. So why had she been at the showroom when I'd called? For a half block, I actually debated calling back and checking with her assistant. As Ariana had pointed out, it doesn't take much more than a white handkerchief and a few well-placed nudges. My paranoia, I realized, was bleeding outward, making me question--however stupidly--everything going on around me.

I passed the shopping strip, and the reception bars blinked off the cell-phone screen, offended by the altitude. As I slowed for the driveway, a sense of foreboding seized me, and I couldn't help but crane to see if a new surprise was waiting. The front yard looked normal, and the doorstep was empty. But a ripple at the curtain snagged my focus. I caught a flash of a white hand before it withdrew. Too white.

A latex glove.

It was so odd, so out of place, that at first it stunned me into a kind of mental blankness. Then, through my rising alarm, I registered the figure behind the curtain, shadow-smudged like a fish in murky waters.

My body had gone rigid. But I didn't slow the car further; I rolled right past my driveway and the house next door before pulling over to the curb. I debated hooking back to the grocery-store pay phone to call 911, knowing that the intruder would likely be long gone by the time the cops arrived. Gripping the door handle, staring at my fist-battered dashboard, I fought with myself for several prolonged seconds, but my fury--and burning curiosity--won out.

I climbed out and jogged back. Cutting up the driveway, I slid along the fence, reaching the door to the garage. I paused for a silent twenty-second freak-out, my fists shoved against my head, and then I regained what composure I could muster, slipped my key into the door, and pushed it tentatively open. The garage's walls and ceiling seemed to amplify my rapid breathing. My eyes darted around, settling on the golf bag languishing beneath a veil of cobwebs, where it had lived since my then-agent bought it for me to celebrate the screenplay sale. My hand fussed across dusty club heads, upgrading from wedge to iron to driver.

The door leading into the dining nook had a creak. I knew this. I'd been meaning to WD-40 the hinges for months. I was in the garage; why not do it now? I found the blue-and-yellow can, sprayed the hinges until they dripped. Under the guidance of my white-knuckle grip, the door swung in, slowly, without complaint. I realized, too late, that it could have sounded the alarm, but the intruder had disarmed the system.

A bead of sweat held to the line of my jaw, tickling. I slipped inside, easing the door shut behind me. Setting down my feet as silently as I could, I led with the club, holding it upright, a yuppie samurai sword. I inched around the cabinets, my view of the kitchen opening up.

Across the room the back door finished a slow opening arc, stopping halfway.

I bounded over to it. At the far edge of the lawn, a large man in a ski mask and black zip-up jacket stood perfectly still, facing the house, arms at his sides.

Waiting on me.

I froze, my heart lurching, my throat seizing up.

His gloved hands floated at his sides like a mime's. He seemed to register me not with his dark irises but with the suspended crescents of white that held them.

He turned and ran almost silently through the sumac. Enraged, terrified, I followed. In the sane quadrant of my brain, I noted his bulk and almost military efficiency. And his black boots, which I would've bet were size-eleven-and-a-half Danner Acadias. He bounded from an upended terra-cotta pot to the roof of the greenhouse shed as if off a trampoline bounce, then whistled over the fence. I hurled the club at him, but it hit the wood and rebounded back at me. I slammed into the fence and hoisted myself onto it, shoes scrabbling for purchase. Hanging, the slat edges digging into my gut, I looked up the street, but he'd vanished. Into a yard, a house, around the corner.

I dropped back down with a grunt, fighting to catch my breath. Had I surprised him by altering my schedule, skipping the movies? If so, he sure hadn't seemed concerned. Judging by his build and adroitness, he could have dismantled me. So hurting me wasn't his aim. At least not yet.

I trudged back inside, collapsed into a chair, and sat, breathing. Just breathing.

After a time I rose and checked the kitchen drawer. Both new tubular keys to the alarm were there. Nothing appeared to have been touched. At the base of the stairs, I stopped to stare at the alarm pad as if it had something to say. I continued up, checked our bedroom and then my office. The cover had been removed from the DVD spindle and set beside it. A count confirmed that one more disc was missing. I went back downstairs and into the living room. The intruder had pulled the tripod clear of the lady palm and tugged the curtain closed. My camcorder's digital memory had been erased. I walked numbly into the family room.

The DVD player tray was open, a silver disc resting inside.

I thumbed the tray closed and sank into the couch. The popping of the TV turning on struck me as unusually loud. I kept getting a blank screen, so I fussed with the buttons, clicking "input select," "TV/video," and the other usual suspects.

At last there I was. On the couch. Wearing my clothes. From today.

I stared, waiting. I chewed my lip. My on-screen self chewed my on-screen lip.

The blood in my veins turned to ice. I tried to swallow, found my throat stuck.

I raised a hand. My double raised a hand. I said, "Oh, Lord," and heard my voice come out of the surround sound. I took a deep, shaky breath. My double took a deep, shaky breath. He looked utterly dumbstruck, blanched, his face an ungodly shade of pale.

I got up and walked toward the TV, my image growing like Alice. I tugged the flat-screen off the wall and set it, trailing wires, on the floor. The same perspective of myself stared up at me. Shoving and pulling the tightly stacked equipment had no effect on the shooting angle either. Leaning into the top shelves, I ripped out a few plugs and snapped off the outlet covers. Nothing. I yanked out discs and books, used a paperweight to punch a hole in the drywall near a ding and the fireplace poker to pry around further. Finally I reached down and swung open the glass door of the cabinet protecting Ariana's teenage record collection. The TV image at my feet spun vertiginously.

I crouched. A tiny fish-eye lens clipped to the top of the glass. I rotated the door open, closed, the room swaying correspondingly on the TV. I unclipped the little lens. A wire trailed back, across the dusty cover of Dancing on the Ceiling. I tugged. It came, giving some resistance. At the end, hooked as neatly as a rainbow trout, was a cell phone. Some shitty prepay model that you'd buy off the rack at 7-Eleven. Clenched in my shaking hand, the crappy cell phone, of course, showed full reception. Unlike my three-hundred-dollar Sanyo.

I took a step back, and then another. Stunned, I mounted the stairs and retreated to our bathroom, the farthest point in the house from the fish-eye lens. I was acting automatically, like an animal, a zombie, and my actions made about as much sense. I turned on the shower, cranked it to red, and let steam fill the room. I wasn't sure if the sound of running water provided cover from whatever other bugs had infiltrated our house, but it always worked in movies and seemed like a good idea now.

In a flash of lucidity, I went over to my office, where I grabbed a digital mini-recorder to document any call that might come in. I trudged back and sat with one arm resting on the toilet, the fuzzy oval rug wrinkled up beneath my shoe, the cell phone precisely centered on the floor tile where I could keep an eye on it. One knee was raised. I wasn't cowering in a corner, but it might have looked that way to an impartial observer. The water drowned out my thoughts; the steam cleaned my lungs.

I don't know how long I'd been sitting there when the door banged open and Ariana came in. Her face was red, her hair frizzy; she clutched a butcher knife like a crazed soprano. At least she'd upgraded from the badminton racket. The knife clattered into the sink, and she sagged against the counter and pressed a hand to the slope of her bosom in what seemed a genetically conditioned response.

I felt more protective of her in that moment than I could ever remember.

Her gaze took in my expression, the throwaway cell phone, the mini-recorder I'd left on the counter. "What . . . The TV . . . What . . . ?"

My voice sounded dry and cracked. "I came in on an intruder. Ski mask. He ran away. There's a bug in the house. A hidden camera. They've been recording us. Every fucking thing we've . . ."

She swallowed hard, her chest jerking, then crouched and picked up the phone.

"It was hidden," I said, "in the cabinet under the TV."

"Has it rung?"

"No."

Working her bottom lip with her teeth, she punched a few buttons. "No incoming. No outgoing. No saved numbers." She shook it, frustrated. "How . . . how'd he get in?"

"The back door, I think. He must've picked it. Or he has a key."

"And turned off the alarm?" The air was thick with steam, moving in wispy sheets. Condensation clung to her face, mimicking a good sweat. "The cops. They saw where we hide the alarm keys. They're the only ones who know besides us."

"That's what I thought. But then I realized. The house is bugged. So when you told me the new code, someone was--"

The cell phone shrilled. Ariana jerked back against the counter, dropping it. It bounced but did not break. It rang again, rattling against the tile. I reached across and turned off the water. The trill seemed amplified. As did the silence.

I pointed at the mini-recorder, and Ariana snatched it from the counter and tossed it to me. The phone rang again.

"Jesus, Patrick, get it, just get it."

Readying the recorder, I pressed the phone to my cheek. "Hello?"

A voice, electronically distorted, made the hair rise along my arms. "So . . ." it said, "are you ready to get started?"

Chapter 19

The next statement was just as chilling. "Turn off the tape recorder."

I obeyed and set it gently on the toilet seat, glancing apprehensively at the walls and ceiling. My voice was hoarse, shaky. "It's off."

"We know that you stopped by Bel Air Foods Tuesday morning to buy a bag of trail mix, a banana, and an iced tea. We know that you watch your wife cry most mornings through the kitchen window. We know you went to the West L.A. police station today at four thirty-seven, that you saw Detective Richards at her desk on the second floor, that you spoke to her for thirteen and a half minutes." Cold. Steady. Scrubbed of emotion. "Do you have any question as to the range of what we can find out about you or anyone else?"

"No."

"Do you have any question as to our capability to reach into your life and touch you where we want?"

The electronic filter made the voice flatter, the utter lack of modulation all the more unsettling. My mouth felt gummy. "No."

Ariana was leaning toward me, hands on her knees, her eyes wide and wild. I tilted the earpiece away from my face so she could hear better.

"Do not go to the police again. Do not talk to the police again." A pause. I rotated the mouthpiece up so the caller couldn't hear how hard my breath was coming. "Stand up. Leave the bathroom."

I exited, Ariana ahead of me walking backward, stumbling over books and strewn clothes. The bedroom air iced my face, a bracing contrast from the lingering steam of the shower.

"Go out into the hall. Watch your shin on the corner of the bed. Turn right, pass your office."

Ariana was now scurrying alongside me as I marched, my cheek sweating against the plastic.

"Is there anything I can do to make you stop?" I asked, but the voice forged ahead.

"Pass the M movie poster. Down the stairs. Pass the alarm pad. Hard left. Watch out for the table. Right. Left. Rotate. Another forty-five degrees."

I was standing with my back to the TV, facing my meager puddle of blankets.

"Open the couch that you've refused to fold out."

I flung the cushions aside, my heartbeat kettledrumming in my ears. What was inside? What had I been sleeping on top of?

The vinyl loop handle slipped from my hand, and Ariana stepped in to help pull. My other hand pressed the phone to my ear, a shock connection I couldn't break. We tugged and the contraption opened, an insect unfolding from its shell. Ari grabbed the metal brace, which creaked and thumped to the floor, the bottom third of the weary mattress still folded back.

Hiding something.

With a numb hand, I reached out and nudged the mattress, which flipped over. It landed flat, setting the crappy springs on twangy vibration and revealing a manila folder and a black wand, maybe four feet long, with a circular head like that of a metal detector.

"That folder contains a floor plan of your house. The red circles indicate where we have planted surveillance devices. The instrument beside the folder is a nonlinear junction detector. It will help you locate those devices and search for any others you believe we may not have indicated on the floor plan."

I didn't have to examine the folder itself to know it had been taken from my desk drawer upstairs. Inside, as promised, two printouts, one for each floor of the house--JPEGs from our contractor that I'd saved in my computer after we'd opened up the fifties bathrooms a few years ago. Down the center of each page ran a faded stripe from my mostly spent toner drum--they'd been printed in my office recently. But that's not what sent the wave of panic-nausea through my stomach.

It was the dozen or so red circles pockmarking each sheet.

Placing the pages side by side, I tried to process the scope of the intrusion. All this time I'd thought my life had turned into Fatal Attraction. But I was really in Enemy of the State.

Ariana mopped hair off her forehead and let out something between a sigh and a groan. Slowly, I tilted my head and took in my disused proofreading marker, tucked into a year-end edition of Entertainment Weekly at the edge of the coffee table. With shaking hands I retrieved the pen and drew in the margin of the top page, the frayed felt tip tracing a matching, distinctive circle.

Ariana stepped back, her eyes darting around the walls, the furnishings. With a glance to the printout, she trudged over and stuck a finger into a tiny dent in the plaster just below a framed Ansel Adams she'd had since her dorm-room days. "It can't . . . They can't . . ."

The voice startled me out of my stunned reverie; I'd forgotten that the call was still live. "A Gmail account has been set up for you, patrickdavis081075"--my birthday. "Password is your mother's maiden name. The first e-mail will arrive Sunday at four P.M., telling you what's next."

The first e-mail? The phrase intensified my controlled panic into full-blown terror. I was a fish newly hooked, my journey only beginning. But I barely had time to shudder when the voice said, "Now walk outside. Alone."

Forcing my feet toward the door, I gestured for Ariana to stay put. She shook her head and trailed me, chewing at the side of a thumbnail. I stepped out onto the walk, Ariana waiting behind, shouldering against the jamb and tugging the door tight to her side so only the front sliver of her was exposed.

"End of the walk. You see the sewer grate? Just past the curb-painted house numbers?"

"Hang on." I stopped ten feet shy of the grate. "Okay," I lied, "I'm standing right on top of it."

"Lean over and look at the gap."

So they weren't watching all the time. The trick was to know when.

"Patrick. Patrick!"

With dread, I turned to see Don making his way over from his driveway, toting a box of office files. I muttered, "Wait a second," into the mouthpiece through clenched teeth. And then: "This really isn't the best time, Don."

"Oh, didn't see you were on the phone."

"Yes. I am." Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement at the front door, Ariana easing back and shutting it to barely a crack.

"Don't stall us."

Don was stammering at me, "Listen, I just . . . felt I should apologize for my role in . . . everything, and--"

"You don't need to. It's not between me and you." My face burned. "Listen, I'm on a critical call. I can't get into this right now."

"Get rid of him. Now."

"I'm trying," I muttered into the phone.

"Well, when, Patrick?" Don asked. "I mean, it's been six weeks. For better or worse, we are neighbors, and I've tried a number of times--"

"Don, I don't need to discuss this with you. I don't owe you anything. Now, get out of my face and let me finish this call."

He glared at me and took a few backward steps before turning for home.

"Okay," I said, "the curb drain . . ."

"Once you've removed the devices from the house, put them in your black duffel bag on the top shelf of your closet and drop them down there. All lenses, cables, even the nonlinear junction detector. At midnight tomorrow. Not a minute before. Not a minute after. Say it back to me."

"Midnight tomorrow, sharp. Everything down the grate. Sunday at four P.M., I get an e-mail."

Until then, live with dread about what that e-mail might hold.

"This is the last time you will hear my voice. Now set the phone on the ground, smash it with your foot, and kick it down the sewer grate. Oh--and, Patrick?"

"What?"

"This is nothing like what you imagine."

"What do I imagine?"

But I was talking to a dead line.

Chapter 20

After disposing of the phone, I returned inside. The front door swung open to greet me, and I grabbed Ariana by the wrist and pulled her into me. Our cheeks pressed together. Sweat. The smell of her conditioner. Her chest was heaving. I cupped a hand around her ear and whispered, as faintly as possible, "Let's get ourselves to the greenhouse."

The only place on the property with clear walls.

She nodded. We pulled apart. "I'm scared, Patrick," she said loudly.

"It's okay. I know what they want now. At least what they want me to do next." I gave her the broad strokes of the phone conversation.

"And what about after this, Patrick? These people are terrorizing us. We have to call the cops."

"We can't call the cops. They'll know. They know everything."

She stormed toward the family room, with me at her heels. "So keep giving in and giving in?"

"We don't have a choice."

"There are always choices."

"And you're an expert on sound decision making?"

She wheeled on me. "I'm not the one who sold out my life to get fired off a shitty movie."

I blinked, stunned. Holding her hand low by her stomach, she beckoned with her fingers: Come on.

I caught my breath again. "Right. You're much more grounded. It took what? One crank call to get you to step out on our marriage?"

"It took a lot more than that."

"Because I was supposed to read your mind to know about all the resentment you were silently storing up?"

"No. You were supposed to be present in this marriage. It takes two people to be able to communicate."

"Nine days!" I shouted, so loud I caught us both off guard. Ariana started, took a half step away. Bitterness rode the back of my tongue. I couldn't stop myself. "I was gone nine days. That's less than two weeks. You couldn't wait nine fucking days to talk to me?"

"Nine days?" The color had returned to her face. "You'd been gone a year. You disappeared the minute an agent returned your phone call."

Her eyes welled. She turned and banged through the rear door. I shoved the heel of my hand across my cheek. I lowered my head, exhaled, counted silently backward from ten.

Then I followed.

When I pushed through the rasping door into the heat of the greenhouse, we grabbed for each other. She hugged me around my neck, squeezing hard enough to hurt, her forehead mashed to my jaw, my face bent toward hers, mossy humidity coating our lungs. We let go of each other a bit awkwardly, and then Ariana rotated a finger around the small enclosure. Lifting pots, crawling under shelves, running hands along posts, we searched. The translucent siding made the job easier. We finished and faced each other across the narrow aluminum staging table.

Our exchange inside, for the cameras and in spite of them, our clumsy embrace, the intruder's even stare, the feeling of horror when I'd discovered the first hidden device, the casually marked floor plans showing dozens more--the pressure from it all exploded in this first moment of relative privacy. I hammered a fist into the staging table, denting the aluminum, splitting the scabs on my knuckles. Two terra-cotta pots toppled off and shattered. "These assholes moved in to our house. Our bedroom. I've been sleeping on top of equipment they planted. What the fuck do they want from us?" I stared at the shards, waiting for the rage to recede. Nice work, Patrick. Sound strategy, responding to a grand master with a temper tantrum.

"They heard everything," Ariana was saying. "All the arguments. The petty stuff. What I told you Tuesday night over the dining table. Everything. Jesus, Patrick. Jesus. There's not an inch of our lives that's been just ours."

I drew in a deep breath. "We need to figure a way to get out of this."

Her lips were trembling. "What is 'this'?"

"It's got nothing to do with an affair. Or a student. Or a pissed-off movie star. Whoever these guys are, they're experts."

"In what?"

"This."

Silence, broken by the gentle whir of the shutter fan. I wiped the back of my hand across my shirt, leaving a streak of crimson. Ariana looked at the lifted scabs and said, "Oh. Oh. That's how you . . ." She took a deep breath, nodded. "What else do I need to be clued in on here?"

I told her about everything from Jerry to Keith, Sally Richards and the boot print, and how I'd lied and told the caller I was standing on top of the sewer grate and he hadn't known the difference.

"So they're not watching everything all the time," she said.

"Right. We just don't know where the dead spots are. But they seem to be backing off the surveillance. Why else would they give us the location of the bugs in the house?"

"To set up something else." She took a deep breath, shook her hands as if drying them. "What the hell's gonna be in that e-mail, Patrick?"

My stomach roiled. My lips felt dry, cracked. "I don't have a clue."

"What can we do? There's gotta be something we can do." She looked helplessly through the green siding at our house. Here we were, huddled, displaced. "If they know specifics about your trip to the police station, they probably have someone inside. Is Richards involved with this?" She'd dropped her voice instinctively to a whisper.

"It's not her," I said. Ariana regarded me skeptically, so I added, "I just know. Plus, why would she have told me about the boot print, which implicates the cops?"

"Okay. But even if it's not her, we can't go to her again or they'll find out."

"I doubt she can help us anyway. Whatever this is, it's well above the pay grade of a divisional detective."

"Fine. So let's go above her pay grade. How about the higher LAPD divisions?"

"No good. The make of boot could've been SWAT issue, so we can't trust downtown either."

"Then we need to get help from the FBI or whoever."

"These guys'll find out."

"Do we care if they do find out?" Ari asked. "I mean, what are they threatening us with?"

"I guess that would be another surprise," I said. "When it comes."

She shivered. "Should we risk it? To get help?"

"I think we should see what these guys want first. Or else it'll just be another futile conversation with cops or agents or whoever. We've already seen how that goes."

"Are you sure you don't want to go along with their directions just because you're scared of how they'll retaliate if you don't?" she asked.

"Of course I'm scared," I said. "I'm willing to believe they can do anything."

"That's the point," she said angrily. "That's what they've been trying to teach us. We don't know people big enough to help us. So what do we do?"

"First let's get the bugs out of the walls. At least the ones they're admitting are there. And let's do it quickly."

"Why quickly?"

"Because at midnight tomorrow, all the evidence goes down the sewer grate."

My arms cramped from holding the wand. Slowly, laboriously, I swept the circular head over the south wall of the living room. Though we'd checked every square inch of every surface, and though false positives abounded, the marked-up floor plan hadn't left out any bugs. At least any I could detect using the instrument they'd provided. Despite the endlessly swirling dust, we'd closed all the curtains and blinds, making the rooms as claustrophobic as the tiny greenhouse.

On the armchair in the corner sat our laundry basket, filled to the brim with a jumble of cables, mini-lenses, transmitters, mounting plates, assorted sleeves, and a catch box for various optical fibers we'd dug out from behind our air-conditioning fan outside. Upstairs looked like a crack house--furniture slashed and upended, walls torn apart, paintings, mirrors, and books strewn on the floor. Pots and pans littered the kitchen, the cabinets stood ajar in the family room, and the contents of the drawers and medicine cabinet had been emptied into the powder-room sink. For hours we'd worked in dread-filled silence.

Dust and bits of plaster flecked the sweat on my arms. When I scanned down the inner doorframe, the green light glowed right on cue. Pulling the printout from my pocket, I checked the location against the final red circle, stepped down from the chair, and tapped the spot. Wearily, Ariana trudged forward and punched a hammer through the drywall.

I stepped over a nail-studded length of molding, set the wand down on a flap of turned-back carpet, and stretched my aching arms. Beside the torn carpet, I'd rested the photographs I'd found inside cabinets and drawers, the remaining pictures Ariana had printed up and playfully hidden six months back. Together they formed a visual CliffsNotes of our relationship. Smoking together outside a Bruins basketball game. Our first meal in the house, some moving boxes shoved together to form a makeshift table for take-out Vietnamese. Me grinning, holding up a check from Summit Pictures, the first dime I'd made as a writer. In the background the lopsided cake Ariana had baked for the occasion. The maudlin, tender things we did to celebrate ourselves, back before we discovered we could look foolish in front of each other. I stared at that cake, the candles still smoking. Whatever wish I'd made had been the wrong one. It was hard to believe, in light of the calamity of the past few days, that we'd actually thought we had problems before all this.

A length of runner cable wrapped around her fist, Ariana stepped back, fighting it from the hole like a fishing line. The embedded wire came lurchingly, carving a trench across the wall, past our framed wedding picture, which slipped from its nail to the floor, a crack forking the glass through our grinning faces. The crumbling channel zigged north through the ceiling, the cable eventually tearing free from the fan. She staggered a bit when the wire gave, standing stooped and openhanded for a breathless moment. Then she lowered her face into an upturned palm and finally broke the dour silence with a sob.

Chapter 21

"No one I like would call me at this hour."

"Jerry, listen, it's Patrick."

"As I said . . ."

I hunched against the pay phone outside Bel Air Foods, casting a glance over my shoulder at the empty street. The tinge of morning light stole some of the glow from the streetlamps. "This thing's taken a turn, Jerry. Our whole house was bugged."

"Ever think about adjusting your meds?"

"Can you--please, please--give us some guidance here?"

"Why the fuck are you calling me? You fishing for a restraining order, Davis? I told you the studio has zero interest in--"

"This has got nothing to do with the studio."

That stopped him. "Why not?"

"I'm telling you, come look at this stuff. You won't believe what we pulled out of the walls--lenses and shit that I didn't know existed. There was not a trace of the insertion. They must've run the wires behind the drywall arthroscopically or something. They hid a pinhole camera inside the speaker grille of my alarm clock, another one in the vent of a smoke detector."

He whistled, and then I heard him breathing. "Pinhole cameras?"

"That's the least of it. Listen, the house is supposedly clean now. But I don't trust it. I want it checked. They called, said I can't contact the cops."

"You must be in dire straits if you're calling me."

"I really am, Jerry." I could almost hear him thinking about that one. I prodded a little: "You've done surveillance, right?"

"Of course--you think Summit hired me for my temperament? I was an intercept analyst in the Corps. That's all anyone does anymore in Hollywood. Wiretapping. They barely even make movies these days."

"Look, I gather this is really advanced stuff. Do you have any contacts who can do it? Someone more current?"

"Fuck you 'more current,' you reverse-psychology prick. I'll admit--you've piqued my interest. I mean, if this stuff is what you described, I should take a look. Never hurts to see what new gadgets are in play."

"So you'll come?"

"If"--a pause--"you promise you'll never try to come near the lot again."

I blew out a deep breath of relief, leaned my forehead against the wall. "I promise. But listen, they might be watching the house."

"You tore your place apart, yeah? So how 'bout an early-morning visit from your contractor?"

An hour later the doorbell rang. I glanced past Jerry, dressed convincingly in jeans and a ripped long-sleeved T-shirt, to the white van at the curb. Magnetic signs on the door and side proclaimed SENDLENSKI B ROS. C ONTRACTORS. He hefted one of two giant toolboxes at me and barreled by, introducing himself brusquely to Ariana. Unsnapping the catches, he pulled out a remote, aimed it through the closed door, and clicked a button.

"Wideband high-power jammer in the van. Your cell phones, wireless Internet, any surveillance devices--they're all squelched."

I said, "Sendlenski Brothers?"

"Who couldn't believe a name like that?" He tugged out a directional antenna and hooked it to what looked like a laptop with a shoe box-thick base. An electronic waterfall traversed the screen, a red stripe running down the center. "First things first. Let's see if there are any other devices still operating. You'll need to go about your business and stay out of my way. Now, listen, I have to turn off the jammer to pick up any signals. It's a good idea anyways, because that thing takes out a four-block radius, so your neighbors are already dialing tech support." He fished an iPod nano, which he wore on a lanyard, from beneath his collar. A small contraption--a mini-speaker?--plugged the headphone jack. "Most high-end devices will only operate if there's noise to record. That's how they save juice. So guys started playing Van Halen when they swept rooms. Then the devices were upgraded to only transmit speaking tones. So . . ." Raising a finger to his lips, he aimed and clicked the remote again, turning off the jammer, then thumbed the iPod dial. A voice issued forth: "Philosophy in the Boudoir, by the Marquis de Sade."

Ariana caught my eye and mouthed, Marquis de Sade? Really?

While Jerry busied himself in the foyer, I settled on the couch and flipped through Entertainment Weekly but found myself rereading the same paragraph. In the kitchen Ariana emptied all the mugs out of the cabinet and then replaced them in what looked like the same order. She tore the lid from a box of mac & cheese and let the noodles patter on the countertop. No device hidden inside like a Cracker Jack prize. She lined up slices of bread by the sink. Crimp-searched the dry cleaning. Plucked a barrette from her hair and studied it. Her anxiety was infectious; I found myself eyeing our banal household clutter over the top of the magazine, wondering at each item's Trojan-horse potential. A ninja blowgun hidden in the potted philodendron?

Jerry made his way meticulously from room to room, the silence broken only by the drone of the audiobook from his iPod. De Sade's characters had plied an exhausting variety of orifices by the time Jerry whistled us over to the living-room coat closet, where he sat before a different, but equally bulky, laptop. My Nikes were set on the floor near the turned-back flap of carpet, Ariana's favorite raincoat spread out beside them.

He pointed at them. "I got something here. Embedded in the heel. See those hairline incisions? And stitched into the coat lining. Here."

From around his neck, the iPod cheerily proclaimed, "I'm going to shoot the burning jism to my entrails' end."

"So they're listening?" I asked. "Right now?"

"No." A glance to the laptop screen, a confusion of charts and amplitude waves. "These things are sending extremely short messages, once every five minutes. A low-power quick signal, hard to detect. Clearly not audio or visual."

"Shake it roughly! It's one of the finest pleasures you can imagine."

"Tracking devices," I said.

"Precisely. They're sending out position reports every so often, just like your cell phone does. In fact, the signal analyzer says it's transmitting over the data side of the T-Mobile network. Like a text message."

"That's the coat I wear the most," Ariana said. "They've been paying attention. Can you remove the tracker?"

Jerry said, "I wouldn't."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because," I said, "this is the first thing we know that they don't know we know."

She frowned at her jacket, as if mad that it had betrayed her. "Can you find out where the signal's sending to?"

"No," Jerry said. "I can grab the device's cellular ID number, but once it hits the destination gateway, it's gone."

"Raise your ass just a wee bit higher, my lover!"

I asked, "Would you mind turning that off?"

"Or up?" Ariana said.

"Sorry, old habit." Jerry clicked off the iPod. "They're less suspicious if they think they're eavesdropping on embarrassing stuff. Plus, it's a tedious job. You get bored. So, you know, stimulating material."

"Hey," I said, "it beats Tolstoy. Now, what do you mean you can't source the signal?"

"The destination gateway is connected to an Internet router, so from there it goes off into the soup--onion-routes and zips through an anonymous proxy in Azerbaijan or whatever. But that's the least of your problems." He tugged the laundry basket over and dug a hand into the tangle of gear, producing an envelope-thin component. "This uses the emissions of sensors from your burglar alarm and wireless router and such to power itself. No heat signature, no batteries to refresh."

"You're gonna have to dumb this down for me."

"This is not the cheap Sharper Image shit you get from Taiwan. This is the kind of no-serial-number, top-drawer gear that comes out of Haifa." He dropped the emitter into the basket again. "I did some joint training in Bucharest back in the day, when the Russians were particularly attentive. We found stuff like this in our hotel-room walls." He grimaced. "You pissed off the wrong folks, Patrick."

Her back to the wall, Ariana slid slowly to the floor.

"Could it . . ." My throat was too dry to speak, so I swallowed and started over. "Could it be the cops?"

"This kind of gear wasn't paid for by a municipal purse. This is next-level shit."

"Agency stuff."

Jerry touched a finger to the tip of his nose.

"But the detectives lifted a boot print from the front yard," I said. "A cop make--Danner Acadia?"

His brow furrowed. "Danners aren't cop boots. A detective might think that, see it on a few SWAT wannabes wearing them to show off. But no, Danners are mostly used by Spec Ops guys. Or field agents."

"Oh," I said. "Swell."

"Why the hell would an agency or some kind of spy want to mess with us?" Ariana said. "We don't have much money. We're not influential. We've got nothing to do with politics."

Jerry started packing away his gear, neatly and lovingly. "There is your movie."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"It pissed off a lot of folks. We had some back-and-forth with D.C. The CIA agents are hardly painted like American heroes."

"What? The CIA actually read the script?"

"Sure. We wanted official cooperation, the hardware, use of the seal, locations, all that. It can save millions. But it's just like dealing with the Pentagon--if it's a friendly script, they'll loan you a Black Hawk, open up facilities. But they won't give you shit for Full Metal Jacket. And let's face it, They're Watching puts the fuck on the Agency. Makes them look like the KGB or something."

"Oh, come on," I said. "That was just stupid movie fun. It didn't mean anything."

"Maybe it did to them. One man's fun is another man's jihad."

"It's a popcorn thriller, not some groundbreaking commentary. And I'm just the writer, not a powerful studio head or something." I was sputtering. "Besides, the government's always corrupt in movies."

"Maybe they're sick of it."

"You really think it would provoke this?" I fanned a hand at the torn-up walls, ending with Ariana sitting on the floor, her face drawn and bloodless.

"You got a better explanation?"

Ariana broke the silence. "If it's some agency, we've got to go to the cops for help."

"Because they've shown such an inclination to believe us," I said.

"Look," Jerry said, "these guys have already demonstrated that they can monitor what goes on inside a police station. I mean, they didn't just know that you went to the West L.A. station; they knew which desk you went to. On the second floor."

Ariana asked, sharply, "How do you know that?"

I said, "I told him. On the phone."

We all regarded one another warily.

Ari said, "Sorry."

Jerry's face was tight. "As I was saying, you still can't rule out that they have a guy inside LAPD. Even if they don't, they've tapped into the internal surveillance cameras or something. They're watching you and the police, and they know how. You really want them finding out that you're starting a counteroffensive because you trotted back into a cop shop? You could be giving up what little you do know, your plans, your strategy."

Ariana coughed out a laugh. "Strategy?"

All business now, Jerry checked his watch, then continued guiding his equipment back into the pristine foam-lined toolboxes. "The rest of the house is clean. Neither of your computers is sporting spyware or anything, but watch what you print. Printers, copiers, fax machines--everything's got a hard drive now, and people can get at 'em and know what you've been up to. Your cars are good, but check them now and again for a slap-and-track. Take this--it's a minijammer, knocks out any recording devices in a twenty-foot radius. They advertise fifty, but don't push your luck." He handed me a pack of Marlboro Lights and flipped up the lid to show the black button protruding through the fake cigarettes. "Use it to be safe when you talk in the house, in case they come back and install something else when you're gone. If neither of you smokes, stick it in a purse or a pocket--don't leave it lying around. Oh, and you might want to shit-can your cell phones. Or at least turn them off when you don't want your location known. Cell phones function more or less the same as the transmitters hidden in your shoes and jacket. If you need to use yours, turn it on, make a quick call, then shut it off. It takes a while to zero in on the location, so calls a few minutes long are more or less safe."

Ariana's elbows were locked, resting on her knees. Motionless. She said, "I'm assuming there's no point in changing the alarm or locks."

Even his smirk was exacting, as if he'd programmed it for precisely such occasions. "You can't afford technology that would keep these guys out."

"So . . . what? We just move?"

"Depends. Do you guys run from your problems?"

Ariana's eyes ticked over to me. If he hadn't been busy packing up, Jerry would have noticed how much was riding on the look between us. "No," I said to her. "We don't."

The phone rang.

Ariana scrambled to her feet. "No one calls us this time of morning. What if it's the cops?"

I glanced at my watch, barely registering that I was already a half hour late to start my commute. I said to Jerry, "Are the phones tapped?"

Another ring. The cordless was stuffed somewhere under the picture frames and cushions we'd stacked on the love seat.

Jerry snapped the catches on his toolbox and stood to go. "Only amateurs would tap you at a junction box and show draw on the line. They use electronic intercept these days. Undetectable."

I started digging through the stuff on the love seat, sourcing the ring. Squirming a hand between two cushions, I pulled out the phone. RESTRICTED CALLER. My thumb hovered over the "talk" button. "She's right. No one calls this early. It could be important."

Jerry shook his head. "I wouldn't risk it."

Another ring.

"Shit," I said. "Shit." I turned it on, listened a moment to the crackle of static. "Hello?"

Punch's hoarse voice said, "Patrick, man--"

I said, "I know, Chad. It's a bad time right now, though, a lot going on. I told you I'd have the papers graded by Friday."

More crackle while Punch contemplated my calling him "Chad." Finally he picked up the ruse. "Okay, it'd really make my life easier if they were done earlier."

"I'll see what I can do." I hung up. Exhaled. Jerry was already at the door. I said, "Hey, wait. Thank you for this. If we didn't have your help, I honestly don't know what we'd do."

Ariana said, "You have no idea--"

Jerry looked right at me, ignoring her. "This better not come back on me with the studio."

"It won't," I said.

Ariana added, "Not from us."

He shifted his weight, those toolboxes straining at the handles. "I'm done. Get it?"

He was the first one through all this who'd been able to offer real insight. The only person I knew who had remotely relevant expertise. I wanted to beg. I wanted to plead. I wanted to bar the door and get him to promise he'd be on the other end of an untapped line when things got worse. Instead I just looked at the torn-up carpet.

"Yeah," I said. "I got it." It took some effort, but I lifted my gaze to meet his. "Thank you, Jerry."

He nodded and walked out.

Chapter 22

The throwaway cell phone looked an awful lot like the one I'd stomped to pieces and kicked down the gutter. Twenty-five dollars prepaid, AT&T, domestic only. I pulled it from the rack and rushed to the checkout counter.

Bill gave me the big grin. "How's Ariana?"

"Good." I eyed the old-fashioned clock above the stacked bags of charcoal at the front of the store. I'd double-parked by the electronic doors, and a petite blonde in a Hummer was laying on the horn. "Good, thanks."

"Would you like a bag?"

I found my gaze lingering on the other customers, the cheap security cameras pointing at the registers, the parked cars. "What? No, no, that's okay."

He dragged the phone across the bar-code scanner. I looked at the product ID that popped up on his little screen, then turned my head to peer through the automatic doors and all the way up the street. The gray shingles of our roof peeked into view above the Millers' cypress. My eyes jerked back to that product ID, lit up in dot-matrix green. The nearest throwaway cell phone to our house. So therefore the one I'd be most likely to buy? And the one they'd be most likely to monitor.

Because they thought of everything.

Bill had said something.

"Sorry?"

His smile lost a bit of its luster. "I said, I'd bet you guys are excited for that movie to come out."

The blonde honked again, and I hurried toward the door, spinning to face Bill apologetically. "Yeah. Listen, I don't think I need that phone after all."

I lurched off the jammed 101, dodging cars at the exit and running Reseda north toward campus. The brown bag sliding around the passenger seat held four prepaid phones I'd grabbed at a gas station on Ventura. Punch's voice--for once not slurred--came at me through a fifth. "Next time you give me a fake name, it better not be Chad. I mean, Chad?"

"What do you want to be called?"

"Dimitri."

"Naturally."

"Why the nifty spy talk?" Punch asked.

"I'm under crazy surveillance."

"How crazy?"

"Cold War shit."

A silence.

He said, "Then we should do this in person."

"It may not be safe for you to be around me."

"I'm beginning to figure that out. But I'm a big boy. Can you get here now?"

"I'm already late for morning classes." I veered around a kid in a Beemer who flipped me off with both hands. Probably one of my students. "I'll see if I can duck out early for lunch, maybe. Any chance you can make it to this side of the hill?"

"Sure. Lemme just suspend what little of a life I have left to sit in hideous traffic so I can service your in-deep-shit ass."

"Fair enough. Then where do you want me to be?"

"I'll tell you what. I'll get to Santa Monica for you. It'll be my pro bono effort for the year. Parking structure at the end of the Promenade. Third level. Two o'clock. I would say come alone, but I figure you know that. Make sure you're not being tailed. And don't call me again from whatever phone you're using now."

"Aren't you the guy who told me not to worry about all this? Something about beakless woodpeckers?"

"That was before."

"Thanks for the reassurance."

But he'd already hung up.

The students--those who had waited for me--were restless, and rightly so. Bumbling into class at the half-hour mark, I was unprepared and exhausted, too distracted to think on my feet. Paeng Bugayong sat in the back, slumped over his writing tablet, his face sunk into his crossed arms so all I could make out was a band of face and a thatch of straight black bangs almost touching the tops of his eyes. A shy, harmless kid. I felt foolish--and guilty--for ever suspecting him. By the time I let the students out for lunch, they were more than ready to disappear.

In the crowded hall, Julianne materialized at my elbow. "You're not heading to the lounge?" she asked.

"No. I have to run."

"Walk you to your car?" She shouldered through a pack of students to keep pace. "Come on, I'm jonesing for the next episode. Plus, you owe me big time for covering your classes yesterday afternoon."

"I knew that would cost me more than a Starbucks." We pattered down the stairs. It took most of the way to my car to bring her up to speed. I left out Jerry's name and where he worked but gave her a rough overview of everything else. "You're a journalist," I said. "Where the hell does someone start looking into the CIA?"