They're Watching

"You mean if they're exacting revenge because of They're Watching?" Her face showed what she thought the likelihood of that was. It did seem a tough argument to make: that either an adjunct film teacher or his by-the-numbers script was important enough to capture the attention of the CIA. "I can pry into that for you, find out who their media contact is that deals with Hollywood. But if it is the CIA out to teach you a lesson, why would they be backing off?"

"What do you mean, backing off?"

"They showed you where all the surveillance devices were in your house and told you to remove them. If that's not letting you off the hook, I don't know what is." Her features had rearranged themselves to show impatience at my daftness.

I thought about what Ariana had said in the greenhouse, how everything so far had been merely the setup. "They're just getting ready for the next phase," I said. "Whatever's in that e-mail."

"So why would they give up the advantage of being able to monitor you?" She smoothed her red locks tight to her skull and flipped an elastic hair tie off her wrist and into place. With her hair back, she looked stunning and severe, a comic-book heroine trying to blend in as one of us. Her baggy black T-shirt undercut the effect, but not enough that a male student didn't slow his beat-to-crap Hyundai to gape at her. Of course she didn't notice; she was too focused on me. "They're indicating something else, I think. Establishing trust, even. It's a dialogue."

I thought about how the intruder had run from me, though he was big enough to have snapped me in two across a knee. The conflict hadn't turned physical, at least not yet, but we were adversaries, certainly. Weren't we?

"They didn't threaten you," she pressed. "Not explicitly."

"Just implicitly, about six different ways." I unlocked my car and threw my overstuffed briefcase into the passenger seat. "I gotta go. Don't mention this to anyone."

"Look"--she grabbed my arm--"I'm just saying, maybe you passed some test."

"How? What have I done that could constitute passing a test?"

"Say this is the CIA. Maybe they saw something in your script. Maybe they were impressed. And this is, I don't know . . . their way of recruiting you."

Even through the fear, I felt a flush of the old pride. "You think it was that good?"

"This is U.S. intelligence we're talking about," she said. "They don't exactly have high standards."

The idea took hold for a moment. Did I want to believe it because it was less threatening or because it was flattering? I shook off the thought. "Nothing about this feels like a game. They've invaded our lives. The surveillance guy who checked out our house said these are top-level--"

"Of course Surveillance Guy doom-and-gloomed you. You said he was a government dickhead. Or former government dickhead. It's their job to tell us how scary the world is. It's in their DNA or something."

"This situation? I don't need anyone to tell me it's scary." I ducked into the car. The gas gauge was broken from one of my morning slugfests, the dial stuck on full. A glance at the odometer showed 211 miles since my last fill-up; I'd have just enough gas to make it to Punch without having to stop.

I started to pull out, but Julianne tapped on the window until I rolled it down. She leaned over, her milk-pale skin almost translucent in the blinding Valley sunlight. "Like I said before. Maybe they're not after the usual."

I touched the gas, easing back, the tires crackling over dead leaves. "That's exactly what I'm worried about."

Even though I was running behind, I circled the parking garage again, making sure I wasn't being followed. I called Ariana's cell phone, and she picked up on the first ring.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I stayed home. Wanted to clean up a little. Not like I'd be able to concentrate on work anyway. Can you?"

"Home? Look--"

"I know. 'Be careful.' But it's not like they're planning on kicking down the door and shooting me, or they would've just done it already. This whole thing isn't exactly an efficient setup for that."

I stared at my real cell phone, turned off on the passenger seat. I wanted to give Ariana the number of the prepaid I was using, but her line wasn't secure, and now I was heading into the mouth of the parking structure. "Okay," I said. "Just--"

The reception cut out. Cursing, I zipped up three levels and slotted the Camry into an end space. I spotted Punch sitting on a flat bench near the elevator, reading a magazine. Hurrying over, I checked my shoes again, making sure my Kenneth Coles hadn't morphed into my GPS Nikes in the past thirty seconds.

I reached the bench and sat next to him, but facing the other direction. It was a good meet point--a lot of cars and foot traffic, plenty of ambient noise, a roof to protect us from Google Earth and its more ambitious brethren. But the question, put to me by the electronic voice, reverberated: Do you have any question as to our capability to reach into your life and touch you where we want? Was I foolish to be here? To be looking into this at all? But I had to. Blind submission was what they wanted, but it hardly guaranteed my safety, or Ariana's.

Punch kept his gaze on the magazine. "I was just calling to tell you I put out some feelers about Keith Conner and got back some really screwy signals."

"Like?"

"Like why the fuck am I asking around about Keith Conner and stop it. Look, this kind of search, it's improper and illegal. My cop contacts aren't allowed to just run people, especially not as favors for me. But the thing is, no one usually checks or notices. These improper searches got noticed, though. All of them. As in right fucking away. So my guys got chewed out, and I got burned. Someone's watching this shit, and it ain't some tea-sipping publicist for the studio. They're monitoring it from inside or above the department. Now, you want to tell me what the hell you got yourself into?"

I gave him more or less the version I'd laid out for Julianne. Punch's ruddy face got ruddier, accenting the broken capillaries across his meaty nose and cheeks. "Shit." He wiped his hands on his button-up. One shirttail was untucked. It was good he and Jerry never overlapped; he was Walter Matthau to Jerry's Jack Lemmon. "You're all over this. Investigating, figuring out the angles."

"It's like writing, I guess."

"Yeah, but you're good at this."

The elevator doors dinged open, and I felt a stab of apprehension. A mom emerged, tugging a squalling boy behind her. She scowled down at him. "That's why I told you to leave it in the car."

I waited for them to pass, then withdrew the mini-recorder from my pocket and handed it over. Punch took the unit from me, folded it into his Maxim, and clicked the button. That voice again: "So . . . are you ready to get started?"

"Electronic voice modulator," Punch said. "We see that shit all the time in crank calls."

"Any way to untangle it? Get a read on the voice, type of phone, anything?"

"No. I have a hotshot criminalist who wants in on a show I'm consulting for. To let him prove his worth, I let him play with some scrambled-voice threat to a producer, and he came up with jack shit." He tilted the magazine, letting the recorder plop back into my lap. "This whole thing is way too big for me and my IQ. Since your phone situation is compromised, don't call." He raised a sausage of a finger at me. "And don't send any e-mails either. Once you open that shit, even if you delete it, your hard drive holds the memory of it. Last thing I need is your Big Brothers tracking you right into my computer."

"So how do I contact you?"

"You don't. Too risky." He tugged at his jowls, taking in my expression. "You don't like it, put it in your fourth step and call your sponsor."

"I'm not in AA."

"Oh, right. That's supposed to be me." He stood, curling the magazine in a blocky fist, and offered a shrug before he walked off. "Good luck."

He meant it, but he also meant good-bye.

The lecture hall's emptiness seemed all the more glaring given the stadium seating. I stood in the doorway, peering in hopelessly. On the posted room schedule--3:00: PROFESSOR DAVIS, ELEMENTS OF SCREENWRITING. On the clock--3:47. My shirt and pants stuck to me; I'd sprinted from the parking lot to class. Dropping my briefcase, I sagged against the jamb to catch my breath.

As I retreated down the hall, I swore I was catching odd looks from students. The department assistant called out to me as I passed the main office. "Professor Davis? I have that student file you requested."

I'd all but forgotten about my underhanded request for Bugayong's file. Stepping inside, I noted the department chair chatting with a few professors at the mail cubbyholes. The assistant held the file across her desk and grinned pertly. Dr. Peterson paused from her conversation to regard me and the assistant, the proffered file floating between us.

I lowered my voice before I realized I had. "Thanks. But I got the matter straightened out." I nodded at Dr. Peterson a bit too solicitously and withdrew, leaving the folder in the assistant's hand. Moving back down the hall, I couldn't help but glance around nervously. A clique of students snickered at something as I passed.

I knocked on the door of the tiny room I shared in rotation with three other instructors so we'd have somewhere to hold office hours. But whoever had been there last had already cleared out. I shut the door behind me, thunked my briefcase down on its side, and sat at the narrow desk. There are few places as depressing as a shared office. Lipstick-stained coffee mug holding gnawed pencils. Several dated textbooks and a cheap wooden carving of the three wise monkeys on the otherwise empty bookshelf. A beige Dell from the turn of the century.

Poking a finger into the slit of my briefcase, I lifted it open. The sheaf of ungraded scripts stared back at me. I tugged them out, patted my pockets and behind my ears for a red pen, and finally located one in the bottom drawer, next to a partially eaten muffin. It would have to do. I got through a script and a half before I found myself drawing little circles across the page, like the ones that had marked off the surveillance devices on our floor plan.

The Dell took two solid minutes to fire up. Dial-up Internet took even longer. After chewing my cheek, stalling, I found myself on the Gmail page, typing in patrickdavis081075 and my mother's maiden name for the password. My finger rested on the mouse, but I hesitated before clicking. An e-mail, they claimed, would arrive at four on Sunday, the day after tomorrow. So what was I so damn scared of now?

Deep breath. I tapped the mouse. The little hourglass trickled and trickled.

There it was. An e-mail account. My e-mail account. Waiting for me. With an empty in-box.

At the rap on the door, I jumped, almost knocking the keyboard off the desk. I hastily logged out just before Dr. Peterson stepped into the room. "Patrick, I've heard that things have been a bit uneven with you lately."

"Uneven?" I nudged the mouse over and tapped to clear the browser's history.

"Late for one class, another you never showed up for. An altercation with a student in the hall."

"Huh?"

"Some kind of shouting match? Professor Shahnazari overheard you cursing at a student."

"Right, that was--"

She raised her voice, talking over me. "Then I find out you made a request to see a student file. Did anyone give you the impression that adjunct professors were entitled to review confidential student documents?"

"No. It was a bad judgment call."

"We agree there." Her lips, etched with small vertical wrinkles, compressed. "I hope you can pull it together here in short order. And in the meantime, you'd do well to remember, invasion of privacy is something we don't take lightly."

"No," I agreed, "nor do I."

Chapter 23

Cleaned up, the house looked almost worse. I glanced around at the glaring holes in the walls, the misaligned flaps of carpet, the bags of trash. It looked more like itself now, just a badly damaged version. My Nikes were set out by the closet door, as if Ariana wanted to keep an eye on them, and beside her on the couch sat her raincoat, positioned over the slashed cushions like an invisible friend.

She'd taken up her hair in a ponytail and was wearing my ripped Celtics T-shirt from the '08 championship season. In her hand a Burgundy wineglass filled, no doubt, with Chianti; she loved cheaper reds, but the bowl-like glass made her feel more like she was drinking. She rolled her eyes at me and, pinching the phone between jaw and shoulder, made a mouth-flapping gesture with her free hand. "If he hasn't returned your call, don't text-message. It'll just seem desperate." A pause. "I'm sure he got the voice mail, Janice. You just left it yesterday. Give the guy the weekend."

I paused, taking in the surreal scene. In light of the ripped-apart house, the bugged raincoat, and the date we had with the curb drain in a few hours, it seemed bizarrely domestic.

"Look, I gotta go. Patrick just walked in. . . . I know, I know. You'll be fine." She hung up, tossed the phone into the cushions, and said, loudly. "That'll teach you guys to listen in." A weary half smile. "They probably committed hara-kiri in their surveillance vans. Speaking of . . ." She reached into her purse, withdrew the cigarette-pack jammer, and clicked the black button to knock out any surveillance devices that might have regenerated since Jerry's visit.

"You didn't say anything to Janice?"

"Please. Our problems pale in comparison to hers. Besides, I'm not sure how to slip this into casual conversation."

"You did a great job," I said. "With the house."

She blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. "Still looks like a ten-car pileup."

I handed her one of the throwaway phones. "I programmed the number of mine in here. I don't want to not be able to talk to you when we're apart."

Her face changed. My words hung there, so I replayed them, heard what they meant to her, to us. A few days ago, we were barely speaking.

I sat beside her. She offered her glass, and I took a sip. "It's pleasant," she said. "Being nice to each other for a change."

"We should have solicited techno-stalkers months ago."

"I was sitting here looking at our house. All the crap in it. Dunn-Edwards Shaved Ice paint. Cavetto molding. That stupid chandelier I picked up in Cambria. And I thought a week ago this all looked perfect. And it felt like shit living here. At least it's honest now. This mess. This is where we are."

A prim distance between us, we stared at the spray of wires where the plasma used to hang, sharing a glass of wine and waiting for midnight.

The black duffel tugged at my shoulder, bulging with the gear inside. We stood at the curb, Ariana clutching her jacket closed against a biting wind. Given the comforting yellow glow spilling around our curtains and blinds, it was easy to forget how torn up our house was inside. Apart from the occasional porch light, the neighboring houses and apartments were dark, which, along with an odd lapse in traffic, made the crowded neighborhood seem abandoned.

"Three minutes." Shuddering, she looked up from her cell-phone clock to peer at the mouth of the curb drain. "Hope it's wide enough."

As I stepped toward the gap, dead leaves crumbled underfoot against the metal grate, brown flecks spinning down into darkness. A mossy smell rose with the warm air. I guided the end of the bulging duffel through the curb drain. A snug fit, but a fit.

Ariana checked the time again. "Not yet." She looked across at the apartment balconies, then down the slope of Roscomare Road, her eyes tearing from the cold. "Wonder where they're watching us from."

A silver Porsche flew by, the engine's roar shattering the calm. We both recoiled, Ariana raising her arms as if to shield herself from a hail of drive-by bullets, me stepping back, almost losing my footing on the curb. The driver, annoyed beneath his baseball cap, had scowled at our overreaction; he wasn't going that fast. My head buzzed from the shot of adrenaline and the burn-out blend of sleeplessness and caffeine. Ari and I took our positions again. Placing a foot on the end of the bag, I waited for her signal.

How much our lives had changed in four days.

Moths battered the flickering streetlight. Crickets sawed.

"Okay," she said. "Heave-ho."

I shoved. The bag bunched at its midsection, then popped through. We waited to hear it hit, but instead there was a muffled thump. A soft landing. I looked down between my shoes through the metal grate, my eyes straining to discern the shape in the darkness.

What came into focus first were the whites of the eyes.

My skin was tingling everywhere--the back of my neck, up my ribs, the inside of my mouth. I blinked and the eyes were gone, the duffel with them. Just a muted sound against the moist, buried concrete--the faint heartbeat of footsteps padding away beneath the street.

Wearing sweats and a T-shirt, I stepped out of the bathroom, drying my wet hair with a towel. When I pulled it off my head, I noticed Ariana in the doorway of our bedroom with her nighttime cup of chamomile and the cigarette-box jammer.

"Sorry," she said. "I don't like being downstairs alone right now."

Unspoken rules had evolved with astonishing rapidity. We'd stopped changing in front of each other. When she was in a room with the door closed, I knocked. When I showered, she kept out of the bedroom.

"Then you shouldn't be downstairs alone," I said.

We sidestepped each other, giving wide berth, changing positions. I didn't continue down the hall, and she didn't climb into bed. Instead she leaned against the bureau, still filmed with drywall dust. We studied each other, my hands folding the towel, unfolding it, folding it again.

I cleared my throat. "Do you want me to stay upstairs tonight?"

She said, "I do."

I stopped folding the towel.

Her hand circled. She was trying for casual, but her eyes hadn't gotten the memo. "Do you want to stay?"

I said, "I do."

She walked over, turned back the comforter on my side. I sat on the mattress. She went around and slid in. Her clothes were still on. I got in, also fully dressed. She reached over and turned off the light. We sat with our backs against the curved headboard. I couldn't remember even touching the new bed before now. It was as comfortable as it looked.

"Do you really?" she asked. "Watch me cry some mornings through the window?"

"Yes."

Even in the dark, we were looking straight ahead instead of at each other.

"Because you want to know what? That I'm still sorry?" Her voice was thin, vulnerable. "That I still care?"

We sat awhile longer. "I want to come in to hold you," I said. "But I can never find the nerve."

I sensed her face rotate, slowly, toward mine. "How 'bout now?" she asked.

I lifted my arm. She slid down beside me, put her cheek on my chest. I stroked her hair. She was warm, soft. I thought of Don's hands. His goatee. I felt a compulsion to pull away, but I didn't. I considered the distance between what I wanted to do and what I thought I should do. A collision of alternate selves, a crossroads to alternate futures. My wife had cheated on me. And now I was holding her. We were together, right now. I was afraid of what that would look like--not to others but to myself. In my quieter moments. Driving to work. Sipping coffee between classes. Watching a clever movie scene about extracurricular fucking, Ari stiffening beside me, our sudden chagrin in the dark of a theater. That stiletto jab of paradigms past, of how it was supposed to be.

"I think I want to have a baby," Ariana said.

My lips were suddenly dry. "I've heard you have to have sex for that."

"Not right now."

"I wasn't suggesting--"

"I mean, not a baby right now. Or even soon. But being threatened like this, I've been thinking about our life a lot. I'm sure you have, too. I've got stuff I like to do--the furniture, my plants. But I'm not gonna be content to turn into one of those women who drives her SUV up and down these hills, going to stupid appointments and Whole Foods. I mean, look at Martinique. That's where I'm headed."

"You're not--"

"I know, but you know what I mean." Her hand twitched, looking for something to do. "I want to have a baby, but at the same time I'm terrified that I want to have a baby for all the wrong reasons. Does any of this make sense?"

I made a soft noise of support. A flash of copper pipe gleamed where we'd torn through the drywall by the bathroom. Her head rose and fell with my breathing. We lay there awhile longer, as I worked my feelings into words.

"I don't want to keep doing what I've been doing," I said. "Or at least I don't want to feel the same way doing it."

"Yes. Exactly." She came up off my chest, excited. "So here we are. Now. Off balance from all this crap, but at least seeing clearly. Let's not upset that."

"What do you mean?"

"What if you don't check for that e-mail Sunday? What if we just stick our heads in the sand and pretend nothing's wrong?"

"And you think it'll go away?"

"Let's pretend it will. Let's pretend that everything's like it was before hidden cameras and Don Miller and screenplay deals. Just for tonight."

We lay together, fully dressed, in our bed. I held her until her breathing evened out, and then I lay there awake, listening to her sleep.

Chapter 24

Gmail's home page glowed back at me from my computer. The filled-in ID and password, my finger again poised above the mouse, Ariana over my shoulder, her breath scented of the strawberries she'd eaten in a cereal bowl with milk and sugar. The day, like yesterday, had passed in an excruciating crawl, Ariana and I on top of each other, slogging through mind-numbing work and household tasks, trying not to reference clocks and watches. The time in my menu bar showed 4:01 P.M.

As my finger lowered, Ariana said, "Wait." She pulled the mariposa--orange again--out from behind her ear and fiddled with it. "Listen, I know we were getting suspicious there for a while. Of each other. Now that we're getting clearer, I just wanted to ask you . . ."

"Go on."

"Is there something--anything--you want to tell me?"

"Like what?"

"Like what that e-mail's gonna hold?"

"As in me snorting blow off a stripper's thigh? No, there's nothing, Ari. I've been racking my brain, and I can't think of a single thing." I clicked "Log In" brusquely, in protest of her question. Then it hit me to ask, "Is there something you want to tell me?"

She leaned forward. "What if it's me and Don?"

As the page loaded, I sat with that one, the weight of it low in my stomach. That was all I needed--my wife's one-night mess sent right to my desktop. A high-water mark of invasiveness. The thought brought to mind a snatch of my conversation with Punch--how e-mails, even once they're deleted, leave an evidence trail in the hard drive.

With dread, I stared at the loading page. It hadn't occurred to me that once I opened that e-mail, I couldn't control what it carried with it. Into my computer.

Before I could do anything, there it was, a single e-mail staring out at us from my in-box. The sender line, blank. Subject line, blank. For now, the unopened e-mail still resided safely on the server, not yet called up on my computer. I moved the cursor all the way to the side of the screen, in case it decided to double-click the e-mail by itself.

They'd visited this computer already, printed out those JPEGs of our floor plans. I checked the history function of Explorer to see which Web sites had been recently visited. It listed none I didn't recognize.

"Wait," Ariana asked. "Why aren't you opening the e-mail?"

I mimed someone listening, then gestured a question: Where's the jammer? In answer she tugged the fake pack of Marlboros from her pocket. She never let the thing out of her sight.

"I don't want to do this here," I said. "From my computer."

"Look," Ari said, still back a step, "if it is me and Don, we might as well face it together."

"No, I mean I shouldn't be retrieving data from them on my computer. Even if I erase it, the record of it stays in the hard drive somewhere. Or they could use an e-mail to piggyback in some virus that lets them read my computer remotely."

"Wouldn't they have just installed that when they were here?"

I was up now, whistling down the stairs, Ariana at my back. I said, "Jerry checked our computers for spyware, remember?"

Tugging on my shoes, I hurried for the garage. "Wait," she said. She pointed at my feet.

I looked down. I was wearing my bugged Nikes. Cursing, I kicked them off and stepped into my loafers. Given my white socks, not my best look, but I didn't want my stalkers to know I was heading to Kinko's.

Patrick Davis.

That's all the e-mail said, though my name had been turned into a hyperlink. Buried in a rented corner cubicle, I looked over my shoulder. The Kinko's guy was busy servicing a loud woman in louder clothing, and the other customers Xeroxed and stapled at the bank of copiers toward the front of the store.

Raising the hem of my shirt, I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Gritted my teeth. And clicked on my name.

A Web site popped up. As I took in the Internet address--a lengthy series of numbers, far too many to commit to memory--bold letters appeared: THIS WEB SITE WILL ERASE UPON COMPLETION OF ONE VIEWING. They faded into the black background, a ghostly effect.

Digital photos flashed one after another, like a PowerPoint presentation.

Ariana's greenhouse framed against our trees at night.

Then, inside, the shot bathed in a green, otherworldly glow.

The row of pots on the middle shelf of the east-facing wall. Her lavender mariposas, unpicked and unworn these past months.

A familiar hand in a familiar latex glove, lifting the end pot and saucer. Beneath them, on the soft wood, a purple jewel case.

That disc hadn't been there three nights earlier when Ariana and I had searched the greenhouse.

I was leaning forward at the monitor, my hands tensed like talons. The discs, the devices, the phone call--none of it had acclimated me to watching someone pry around in our possessions, in our lives. If anything, my reaction was worse, trauma compounding trauma, sandpaper on raw skin.

The photo disappeared, replaced by a written address: 2132 Aminta St., Van Nuys, CA 91406. Desperately, I looked for a pen and some scrap paper--none in my cubicle. I flew around the corner to the next desk, knocking over the plastic supply caddy and grabbing a pencil and Post-it from the spill. When I got back to my monitor, the typed address had been replaced by a Google Maps screen, the location marked smack in the shittiest part of Van Nuys. I managed to jot down the address, grabbing it from the location bubble, before that screen also blipped off.

The next featured four numbers, evenly spaced: 4 7 8 3.

I wrote those down as well, an instant before they were replaced by a shot of a dingy apartment door. Flaking paint, cracking seams, and two rusty numbers nailed where a peephole should be: 11. One of the nails had come loose, so the second 1 had sagged to a tilt.

And then, like a breath of icy air down my rigid spine, a message appeared, as bold as its type: GO ALONE.

The browser window closed on its own, quitting out of the program. When I reopened it, it had no records stored of recent Web sites visited.

There was no evidence, no artifact that said this was anything more than an evil dream. All I had were an address and four mystery numbers written in my own hand.

Chapter 25

"That's it?" Ariana asked.

On the couch next to me, she turned over the purple DVD case as if it had a Blockbuster write-up on the back. The cover still sported a spot of moisture from the plant saucer.

"We must've missed something," I said, already fussing over the remote. We stared again at the plasma, remounted somewhat crookedly on our wall.

The picture flickered back on. Grainy black and white--probably a security camera. A basement, expansive enough that it wasn't residential. A dangling bulb putting out a throw of weak light, a set of stairs catching the shadows. A generator, a water heater, several unlabeled cardboard boxes, and a spread of blank concrete floor. On the second-to-bottom stair, what appeared to be a mound of cigarettes. A bank of fuse boxes, just in view on the far wall. Superimposed on the screen, the date and a running time stamp: 11/3/05, 14:06:31 and counting.

The footage ended.

"I don't get it," Ariana said. "Is there some coded meaning that we're missing?"

We watched the DVD through again. And again.

She bounced off the couch, exasperated. "How the hell are we supposed to figure out what that is?"

She watched with dread as I plucked the Post-it from the coffee table. That Van Nuys address.

I ejected the DVD, nestled it in its case, and slid it into my back pocket. Sitting on the floor in the foyer, I laced up my Nikes. I needed to wear them sometimes to not give away that I'd discovered the tracking device embedded in the heel. Might as well do it now while I was following orders.

Ariana stopped me at the door to the garage. "Maybe you just shouldn't. You don't know what's behind that door, Patrick." Her voice trembled with intensity. "You don't know how to handle this kind of thing. Are you sure you want to go poking a stick into this?"

"Look, I'm not Jason Bourne, but I know a little."

"You know what they say about a little knowledge." She started to cross her arms but thought better of it. "They could just be hoping that you're dumb enough to show up. What can they do if you don't?"

"You want to find out?"

She didn't answer.

I stepped down into the garage. "We've got to figure out what this is. And who's doing it to us."

"Think, Patrick. Right now? This moment? Nothing's really happened to us yet. Our house is safe. You could just come back in here with me."

At the side of my car, I paused to look at her. For an instant I thought about going back inside, making a cup of tea, and grading student scripts. What could they do if they built a maze and no rat showed up? Was there more risk in scuttling along through their twists and turns or staying still and waiting for the walls to close in?

The keys poked the inside of my fist. "I'm sorry," I said. "I have to know."

She watched me from the doorway as I backed out. She was still standing there when the garage door shuddered down, wiping her from view.

Down in the bowl of the Valley, dusk seemed heavier, thickened with smog. Car fumes and sickly-sweet barbecue fragranced the still air. Crushed Michelob cans and fast-food wrappers lined the gutter. The apartment building was your typical Van Nuys disaster--crumbling stucco, deteriorating concrete walkways, a bent security gate. Air conditioners hung from windows, dripping condensation. The Vacancy sign flapping from the rain gutter was hardly enticing.

I'd been standing across the street for several minutes, steeling myself for whatever waited behind the door to Apartment 11 and hoping that the acid at the back of my throat would dissipate. What was I stalling for? If they were monitoring the tracking device in my Nikes, they already knew I'd shown up to the party.

The hum of an engine sent me, finally, into motion. A patrol car creeping up the block, each cop looking out his respective window, scanning the sidewalks and buildings. Turning away, I shouldered against a parked van and pretended to talk into my cell phone to bury my face. The sedan neared, tires crackling over asphalt, static-laced bursts from the scanner. I caught a glimpse of mirrored sunglasses, a muscular forearm resting on the open windowsill, and then the car coasted past aloofly. I exhaled the held breath burning my lungs. I felt like I was doing something illicit. Was I?

I jogged across the street and confronted the security gate. A waffled metal door, housed in a frame that blocked the entrance to the courtyard. To my left, a speaker unit with a keypad. The instructions for dialing up to the apartments were soggy from rainwater, illegible beneath the cracked casing. A directory, under intact cover, paired owner names with apartments, but 11 and a number of others were blank. The yellowed form looked as if it hadn't been updated in years. Shrugging, I tried to call up to number 11, but a disconnected signal bleated from the speaker.

I nodded to myself.

Then I dug the Post-it from my pocket and smoothed it next to the keypad. I punched in those four numbers I'd written beneath the address--4783--and thumbed the pound symbol. A grating buzz released the gate, and with a stab of exhilaration I walked through.

Maybe not Enemy of the State. Maybe I was living out The Game.

Apartment 11 was at the back of the courtyard on the second floor. My unease mounted as I ascended the stairs. Ariana was right--this was foolhardy. I could be strolling into my own murder.

The floating walkway serviced four apartments, each in worse shape than the last. I reached number 11. Those rusting numerals, loosely nailed to the door. No peephole. With its cracks and curling paint, the ancient door looked even worse than in the picture. The knob hung loose. A new dead bolt, the sole upgrade, had been installed high on the door, compensating for the old-fashioned keyhole assembly.

I took out the DVD in its purple case, regarded it, tapped it against my thigh. Sucked in a breath, blew it out hard. Then I pushed the doorbell. Broken. Given the condition of the complex, I wasn't surprised. I pressed my ear to the wood, dry paint poking the side of my face. More nothing.

I raised my hand but couldn't bring myself to knock. I don't know what stopped me. Dread, maybe. Or perhaps an early warning system, some heightened awareness my cells were registering even if my mind was not. I rethought my decision to wear the GPS Nikes. Did they rule out a retreat? I lowered my fist. Released a silent breath. Was that a muffled creak I heard from inside or merely the floor groaning beneath my own weight? Slowly, cautiously, I crouched to look through the old-fashioned assembly.

Filling the keyhole, squirming to take in my nearing face, was an eye peering back at me.

I yelped and leaped back as the door flew open, and then a stocky man in a tank top charged, shoving me into the railing.

"Who are you?" he yelled. "Why are you doing this to me?"

He pounced again, pushing me into the floor, as if unsure what to do with me. I flung him away and we squared off, but it quickly became clear neither of us wanted to fight.

His breathing was ragged, more agitated than angry. At five foot nine, he was a few inches shorter than me, but thicker. Massy arms bulged from his worn undershirt. His curly hair, mussed high and paired with a receding hairline, added a comedic note to his otherwise tough-guy appearance.

He pointed to the purple jewel case, lying cracked where I'd dropped it on his doorstep. "Why are you leaving those?"

My mouth goldfished. "I . . . I'm not. Someone's been delivering discs to my house. Surveillance footage of me. They got that DVD to me, along with your address."

Keeping his eyes on me, he picked up the case and flipped it open. Then he glanced down, quickly, at the disc. "These are the kind of DVDs you use, too?"

"No. Mine are different. . . ." It took me a moment to register the "too." I said slowly, "They send you footage, recorded onto your own discs."

"Yes. Through my mail slot. Under my windshield wiper. In my microwave." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then swiped his thumb twice across the inside of his wrist, his movements quick, jittery. "Little movies of me walking to the park. Shopping for groceries. That kind of shit."

"Did they call you? On a cell phone?"

"No. Never talked to anyone. But my service got shut off--bills. And I don't have a landline."

"Do you have the DVDs?"

The thumb moved across his wrist again, a nervous tic. "No. I threw them out. Why would I keep them?"

"How long have they been doing it?"

"Two months."

"Two months? Christ, it started five days ago for me, and I'm already . . ." Dread overtook me, and I paused to breathe.

"Why me?" He tapped his chest with a fist. "Why film me? Filling up my fucking truck with gas?"

"They got me taking a leak. Have you talked to the cops?"

"I don't like cops. Besides, what are they gonna say?"

"How were you contacted?" I asked.

"I wasn't. Just the discs showing up. I don't know why . . ."

"Why they're doing this to us."

His expression shifted. We were comrades all of a sudden, patients with the same affliction. "Why they chose us," he said.

I thought of that two-word directive at the end of the e-mail. GO ALONE, not COME ALONE. A mission, not a summons. We'd been put in touch to figure something out. Our gazes moved in concert to the DVD in his hands.

He rushed inside the apartment, me at his heels. The dense reek of mold overwhelmed me two steps in, less a smell than an impression on my pores. I blinked into the drawn-curtain dimness to see him fumbling the disc into a player beneath a hefty TV. Dirty clothes and grocery bags were strewn across the patchy carpet, as well as a few discs in purple cases marked with TV-show names. No chairs, no couches, no table by the run of counter that passed for a kitchenette. The only items that couldn't be swept up were a twin mattress thrown in the corner, topped with a twisted fuss of sheets, and the TV denting a metal trunk.

He shoved himself up and took a few steps back, standing shoulder to shoulder with me, facing the screen, his knee jackhammering.

The picture came up. Basement, stairs, concrete floor.

"It's nothing," I said. "It's--"

He let out a creaking gasp. He fell to his knees. Crawling forward, he paused the image and put his face right up against the screen, scrutinizing something in the bottom-right corner. Then he sat back on his heels and swayed a little. It wasn't until a gut-wrenching moan filled the room that I realized he was crying. He lowered his face to the dank carpet and sobbed. I stood a few feet behind him, mystified, completely at a loss.

He rocked and cried some more.

"Are you . . . ?" I asked. "Can I . . . ?"

Pulling himself to his feet, he fell into me, squeezing me hard. A tinge of soured sweat. "Thank you, thank you, God bless you."

I raised an arm awkwardly from my side as if to pat his back, but my hand just hovered there. "I don't know what I did. I don't know what that is."

"Please," he said, stepping away. He looked around, as if only now realizing he had nowhere for me to sit. "I'm sorry, I can't remember the last time I had someone . . ." He seemed disoriented.

"It's fine." I sat on the floor.

He followed suit. His hands moved in circular gestures, but he couldn't manage to speak. A square of yellow light from the window fell across him, filtered through thick, dusty curtains. A water stain in the far corner darkened the carpet, climbed the wall.

"I was a custodian," he finally said. "At a high school outside Pittsburgh. The water heater gave out, and we were tight, you know, budget cuts." His thumb skimmed across the inside of his wrist again, as if smoothing the skin. "A guy on the school board was in on some low-income housing deal, they were tearing down a complex, whatever. So he got a big water heater from there." He gestured at the screen, the water heater. "They delivered it for me to install. An older unit. I said I didn't like the looks of it. They told me it wasn't a beauty pageant, that it had been tested and met whatever qualifications. So I put it in. The thing is . . . the thing is, they'd prepped it for delivery. Drained it, I mean, and wired the pressure-relief valve so the leftover water wouldn't drip out during transport." He fell silent.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I drank back then. Not anymore. But I may have had a few nips that morning. The morning I installed it, I mean. Just to get going. Third of November."

I glanced over at the date stamp on the screen: 11/3/05. My skin, tingling with anticipation.

"Through that wall's a basement room. Shop class." He pointed, his hand shaking, and there on the inside of his wrist was a thin white ridge of scar tissue. His other hand lay in his lap, exposing a matching razor-blade remembrance. "When the wall blew apart, one kid got killed. Another got her face mostly burned off. That she lived . . . well, in some ways that's even worse." Again he thumbed the line of one of the scars, rocking a little. "During the investigation someone found the flask in my locker. There were liability issues, you know. And they said I forgot to remove the wire, so the pressure-relief valve couldn't open. Steam built up." His voice thickened. "They never found any part of the wire in the whaddayacallit."

I managed to say, "Debris."

"Right. No piece of anything big enough." He broke off. "I knew I never would've forgotten. But as the whole thing went on, the questions, I wasn't positive. Then I wasn't sure at all. I'd installed security cameras down there a few months before, and I asked to see footage, so I could know. I needed to know."

"Why have security footage in a basement?"

"Kids were sneaking down there smoking, having sex. They found a few condoms. So the principal pulled me aside at the beginning of the year, told me to put in a surveillance cam. I don't know who reviewed the tapes or anything, but kids got pulled out of class and spoken to, and then they stopped going down there. But when I asked about the footage after the explosion, all I got was, 'We would never spy on members of the student body.' I even went to the basement with the investigators, but the camera had been removed. So this footage, this footage"--he jabbed a finger at the TV--"never existed." His face broke, and he bowed his head but didn't make a noise. "A cop buddy of mine told me later that illegal monitoring like that's a real big deal. If they recorded students having sex, they could've been busted on kiddie-porn charges, even. So they hung me out. What they didn't take from me, I found a way to throw away myself."

I did my best to keep my eyes from those slash lines on his wrists. Instead I looked at my hands, scuffed up with scabs and scar tissue of my own. Regret, and the marks it leaves on us. There I was, punching a dashboard over a shitty run of luck and my wife's transgression. It seemed so insignificant compared to the dead kid and the faceless girl riding his conscience, driving him to the razor's edge.

"I been dead, mostly. Moving around in a haze, city to city. Can't hold down jobs too long. Can't look people in the eye. But look at that. Look at that." The paused screen again, the time stamp, that water heater--his eyes glistened taking it all in. "No wire on that water heater. No wire in the whole picture. It's the most beautiful goddamned thing I ever seen in my life." He shook his head, drew in a quavering breath, then refocused on me. "Listen, maybe we can figure out some overlap between us that explains why we were chosen."

"Some way to trace the puppet strings back to whoever's holding them."

"I'm a little . . . I'm not so good right now. A lot to take in, you know? Will you come back so we can do that? Coupla days, maybe?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Don't forget. I'd like to know. I'd like to thank them."

We found our feet and shuffled, dazed in the half-light, to the door. "They didn't . . ." I licked my dry lips. "They didn't give you anything for me." I couldn't bring myself to phrase it like a question.

"No," he said. "I'm sorry." His eyes moved across my face, seeming to read my disappointment. I could feel empathy coming off him in waves, how badly he wanted to reciprocate, to do for me something like what had been done for him. He offered his hand. "We never . . . I'm Doug Beeman."

"Patrick Davis."

We shook, and he clutched my forearm. "You changed my life. For the first time, I feel like . . ." He bobbed his head slightly. "You changed my life. I'm so appreciative you did this for me."

I thought of what the voice had told me: This is nothing like what you imagine. I'd taken it, wrongly, as a warning. I said quietly, "I didn't do anything."

"Yes," he said, stepping back and drawing the door closed. "You were the instrument."

Chapter 26

My head still thrumming from my encounter with Beeman, I stepped from the garage into our quiet downstairs. After dispatching with the shrieking alarm, I could hear the shower running on the second floor, the rush of the water pipes the sole sound of life. With the lights off down here, the house felt desolate.

I clicked on the kitchen overheads and noticed that the caller ID screen on the kitchen telephone showed a missed call. I checked the message, my back going rigid when I heard my lawyer's voice, asking me to call him. On a Sunday?

I reached him at the home number he'd left.

"Hello, Patrick. I got a call from opposing counsel today. The studio is hinting at a willingness to resolve all issues quickly and quietly if you'd agree that the entire matter be made confidential as a stipulation of the settlement. They indicated that the terms would be favorable to us, though they were unwilling, yet, to spell out the specifics. I was told we can expect paperwork early this week."

My mouth moved, but no sound was being produced.

"Did they mention why they had the sudden change of heart?" I asked after my tape-delay pause.

"They didn't. I agree--it seems odd in view of the signals they were sending. We'll wait and see what they spell out for us, but judging from the tenor of the conversation, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic."

I found myself checking the clock, a habit I'd grown accustomed to, given the heft of even a narrow slice of my attorney's billable hour.

As if reading my mind, he said, "You've been having a bit of trouble keeping my evergreen retainer . . . well, evergreen. After this push to untangle matters next week, would you like someone from Billing to call so you can work out a payment plan?"

I mumbled a half apology and an affirmative, then hung up. But even considering my sheepishness, the news--combined with the exhilaration from my experience with Beeman--left our house feeling a little less desolate.

It seemed a hell of a coincidence to get home from Beeman's to this good news. Were my omnipotent stalkers scripting this plot thread of my life, too? The whole intrigue with the DVDs seemed to be conducted on a tit-for-tat basis; I follow their instructions, and obstacles in my life fall away. Even the thought of that seven-figure lawsuit dissolving made me weak with relief. If they could do that, what else might they do for me?

The thrill, I realized, was the same one that came with the anticipation before a movie deal. All-play-and-less-work Hollywood, get rich in the snap of a studio head's fingers, take a shortcut to page one of Variety and a Bel Air mansion.

Heading upstairs to bring Ariana the news of the past few hours, I couldn't help but wonder if my life was, at long last, finally coming back together.

"This guy, Beeman, was being held hostage by this stuff." I put my hand on the small of Ariana's back, guiding her over the rush of rainwater in the gutter. We passed Bel Air Foods, strolling down the hill, the air dense with humidity, the rain so faint it only came visible passing through the streetlights' glow. Cars shot by, gleaming with beads of water. "And to walk in there, and just . . . just liberate him."

I blew out a breath, which steamed and dissipated. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so alive. Instead of The Game, it seemed I'd found myself inside Pay It Forward.

"I mean, if this is the first e-mail," I said, "what the hell is the next one gonna be?"

Ariana stuffed her hands in the pockets of her parka; she refused to wear the coat with the bug stitched into the lining. "Aren't you cold?"

"What? No."

"Why would CIA agents care about helping a guy like Doug Beeman?" she asked.

"I can't think of any reason they would."

"Which means it's probably not them. Which is good." A frown. "Or bad." She chewed her worn thumbnail. "So, seeing as how these guys were stalking you before, what's with the new charity angle?"

"I have a theory."

"I feared as much."

She tugged me off course, and we splashed through a puddle together. Ahead, crowding its too-small lot, loomed the McMansion she and I liked to marvel at, with its solemn portico and gables and Tudorbethan mock battlements. Beyond the stucco facade, cheap vinyl siding composed the non-street-facing walls. Neighborhood rumor had it that the hodgepodge construction was built by a film distributor, and the design gave every indication it was a Hollywood-inspired fantasy. Thrown up like a peacock's tail, part enticement, part aggression. All that money, and still not enough. Cheaper the farther you wade in. I recalled the first time I walked behind a set on the lot at Summit, how those great Norman Rockwell exteriors gave way to scaffolding and two-by-fours, and how it felt like catching Santa Claus, beardless and undershirted, in the department-store locker room.

Ariana said flatly, "They need more pillars," and I laughed. Across the way, the Myerses sat in the warm glow of a dated chandelier, talking over glasses of wine. Bernie raised a hand in greeting, and we waved back. It had been months since Ariana and I had gone for an evening stroll, and I realized how much I missed it. Out in the open, breathing crisp air--for once not on top of each other, smothered by our disappointments or pinned down by a hidden lens. And later we were going to pick up an order of pho from our favorite Vietnamese place and we were going to sit on the couch and eat and talk, the coming evening as familiar and safe as an old sweatshirt.

I reached for her hand.

It seemed a little unnatural, but we both held on. "Your theory . . ." she prompted.

"I think the assault on us, our house, was to show me what they were capable of. How else would I believe that they could know all this? I mean, about some water heater that blew up in Pittsburgh and a hidden security tape?"

"And it also ensured you'd do what they wanted."

"That, too. It was a setup so I'd be forced to be their errand boy. I mean, if someone just contacted me randomly, said, 'Take this package to an apartment in a shady part of town'?"

"But why do they need you?" Ari asked. "Why didn't they just send him the DVD anonymously, say, in a Netflix envelope?"

"Clearly they didn't need me."

"So then the question is . . . ?" Her hand spun in the air.

"Why did they choose me?"

One of her eyebrows lifted. "You're special." She said it flatly, but I knew it was a question. A challenge.

"No, not special," I said. "But maybe at the end of this . . ." I paused, not wanting to admit it, but she nodded me on. "Maybe I'll get a DVD that absolves me."

"Of what?"

"I don't know. But maybe I'll get something that does for me what that recording did for Doug Beeman. Jars me out of my--"

I caught myself.

"Like footage that shows Keith Conner banging his own damn chin?" she said. "Maybe they got that to the studio and that's why the studio's pushing for a quick confidential agreement?"

"The thought certainly occurred to me. And maybe they have something else that could help us, too."

"Like what?"

"I don't know." I realized that I sounded excited, and I made an effort to tone down my demeanor.

"Look, whatever this is, someone wants to fit you into their agenda," she said.

"Or someone wants to make use of me to help other people."

Her hand stiffened in mine. We walked a few more steps, and then I let go. "What?" I said. "How do you know that's not it?"

Ariana said, "Because it's what you want to believe."

My laugh had a bitter edge. "What I want is to get back at the assholes who invaded our lives. But right now playing along on the surface is the only way I can get more information. And the more we know, the closer we'll be to finding out what the hell is going on."

"Don't you teach about hubris?"

"I teach that a character has to impact the plot. He has to determine his own destiny. He can't merely react to external forces."

"So it's all about out-tricking the tricksters?" She gave me that same skeptical stare. "Tonight wasn't something more to you?"

The old frustration pricked my cheeks. "Of course it was. It's the first meaningful thing I've done in I don't know how long."

"It's not meaningful. For Doug Beeman it is, but for you it's fake. You didn't do anything but add water and stir."

"I sure as hell impacted his life."

"But you didn't earn it," she said.

"So what? No matter how I got manipulated there and no matter how fucking scary it was going in, freeing him from his guilt--how is that not a good thing? And if the studio caught a signal that they should back off me, that's positive, too. Why are you being so cynical?"

"Because, Patrick, one of us has to be. I mean, the way you're throwing yourself into this. You've been blocked at the keyboard for what? Half a year? And losing your interest for months before that. And now you're approaching this . . . adventure like it's your chance to write again."

I said swiftly, angrily, "You can't compare writing to this."

"You think this is better than writing?"

"No," I said, "I mean the opposite."

"You didn't see your face when you said it."

I kept my mouth shut. Despite how horrible the past week had been, was some small part of me relieved that these guys had given me something to do? Beeman's focus on me had been as absolute as that of the men behind the DVDs. When was the last time I'd been at the center of anyone's attention?

The elementary-school teacher from the cul-de-sac sauntered by with her down vest and twin rottweilers, and we had to pause to smile and exchange pleasantries. A young couple across the street were in their family room, hanging a hefty painting. The husband bending under the frame, his pregnant wife, one hand pressed to the small of her back, directing him with her other. A little more to the left. Left. Now right.

I used to have that life. And it was enough for me, until my script sold, until Keith Conner and Don Miller strolled into the picture and hit me smack in the blind spot. I couldn't find my way back, and every time I thought I glimpsed the route, I got derailed. What I had was more than anyone could ask for, but I couldn't figure out how to inhabit it again.

The high from Beeman's place deserted me, leaving me drained. The redemption I'd witnessed literally before my eyes had been so intense that everything else seemed bleached by the afterglow. I visualized the crappy shared office at Northridge, the unpaid legal bills and Ari crying on the arm of the couch, the braying neighbors, my unfinished scripts, the staff room with the broken coffeemaker, how-are-you chat with Bill the checkout grocer. It all seemed to pale in comparison with the dreams I'd grown up dreaming, lying on my back on the Little League grass, the New England air biting my cheeks, letting me know, minute to minute, that I was alive. Aliens and cowboys. Astronauts and outfielders. Hell, maybe I'd be a screenwriter one day, get my movie poster on the side of a bus.

I thought about what Ari had told me about the world closing in on her in a hurry, about how her life didn't have a lot of what she hoped it would. The term "soul mates" got thrown around at our wedding, and here we'd found ourselves, for better or for worse, aligned in perspective even when we weren't. My visit to Doug Beeman had cut through all that stagnation, right to the pulsing heart of what mattered. I didn't want to have to defend how it had made me feel.

The rotties were straining on their leashes, so we said goodbye to our neighbor, who gave us a wink and a smile. "Happy Valentine's Day, you two."

We'd both forgotten. As she and the dogs padded away, our frozen grins faded and we regarded each other, wary under the strain of where we'd left off. Our breath was visible, mingling.

"I guess . . ." It was going to be hard to say. "I guess I can't remember the last time I felt significant."

"If it's meaning you're looking for, don't you think you'd do better to find that in your own life?" Her tone wasn't judgmental or harsh; it was the hurt in it that made me drop my gaze.

"I didn't choose this," I said.

"Neither of us did. And we're not gonna get out of it if we don't keep our heads clear and our eyes open."

Worms lay helpless and limp, pale squiggles on the wet pavement. We circled back toward home, leaning into the incline, our heads down. By the time we passed Don and Martinique's, we were a full stride apart.

The bags, lettered in Vietnamese, sat on my passenger seat, emitting the rich scent of ginger and cardamom. The heat of the food fogged the windshield, and I had to crack a window to let in the night air. Though Ariana and I had been polite back at the house, our squabble had taken some of the shine off our newfound rapport, and I'd offered to pick up the food myself as an olive branch.

At the stoplight the click-click-click of my turn signal seemed to echo my mounting restlessness. I glanced across three lanes and up the street in the opposite direction of where I was headed. Glossed with rain, the Kinko's sign peeked out from behind a church billboard. A half block away. In fact, it was along the other route I occasionally took home, so it wouldn't even qualify as a detour. I was wearing boots rather than my Nikes, so my stalkers didn't necessarily know where I was right now. My eyes ticked to my rearview, then back up the street. The Roman lettering of the billboard proclaimed EVERY MAN'S WORK SHALL BE MADE MANIFEST, a riff from Corinthians that I took as a sign.

The weather had kept a lot of thin-blooded Angelenos off the streets, so I reversed about ten yards, pulled across the empty lanes, and turned right. I couldn't help but wonder at myself--had this been my real motive in offering to come down the hill alone? Tapping the steering wheel, I pounded out my growing agitation. Slowing as I passed the strip mall, I peered at the dark interior with a blend of relief and disappointment. Closed. That was that.

The windshield wipers worked double-time, trying to clear my view. I was a few blocks from home when, seized by an impulse, I U-turned back down the hill and trolled Ventura, wired with agitation. Finally I found a late-night Internet cafe.

A few minutes later, snugged to a rented computer amid the sharp scent of coffee and the banter of two MySpacers comparing piercings, I logged in to the Gmail account. As the page loaded, I had to concentrate to slow down my breathing.

Nothing from them, just a pop-up window for Viagra on the cheap and uppercase spam from Barrister Felix Mgbada, urgently requesting my help in setting straight his wealthy relative's affairs in Nigeria. I blew out a breath and cocked back in the rickety chair. I was just about to shut down the computer when another e-mail chimed into the in-box. No subject. They knew I was logged in.

My palms were slick. I clicked on the e-mail. A single word.

Tomorrow.

Chapter 27

Awakened by the sound of the running shower, I took a moment to get my bearings. Upstairs. In our bed. Ariana getting ready.

New e-mail coming. Today.

I hadn't done laundry all week, so the only suitable clean thing on a hanger was a trendy, faded salmon button-up that I'd bought overpriced at a Melrose boutique for some screening my agent had invited me to the week after she'd sold my script. Back then I was neither that cool nor did I have the money to afford it. And now I was less cool and more broke, so I would've felt sheepish wearing it if my apprehension about the coming e-mail hadn't drowned out competing emotions.

In my office, nauseous with stress, I booted up and logged in. Even if I wasn't going to open an e-mail from my computer, I could at least see if there was anything waiting in my in-box. But there wasn't. I hit "refresh" to check for new mail. And then again. I jotted down a few sentences for my morning lecture before my attention pulled back to the screen. Still nothing.

The shower stopped, and I felt a flare of unease. Hoping the student scripts might be more distracting, I pulled one from the growing stack. I read through it, retaining next to nothing. I tried the next one, too, but just couldn't find it interesting. Worse, I couldn't see the point of it anymore. Words on a page. How was I supposed to find interest in a fabricated plot when a real-life one was a single e-mail away?

My hand reached for the mouse. Came back to my pad. Went to the mouse again. Refresh. Nothing new. Tapping my pen against the notepad, I refocused on my lecture, trying yet again to care about character arcs.

Ariana poked her head into my office. "Bathroom's all yours."

I quickly closed out of my browser screen. "Great. Thanks."

"Want to have breakfast with me? I mean, we are sleeping in the same room now, so I figure we're at least intimate enough to try sharing a Pop-Tart."

I smiled. "I'm ready. I'll be right down."

"Whatcha doing?"

I glanced at the mostly blank notepad. "Just finishing up some work."

"Are you having an affair?" Navigating the hall, Julianne placed a hand on the neck of a student and steered him out of our way.

I was slightly winded, having just run upstairs from the computer lab, where I'd logged in to my Gmail account so I could watch my empty in-box for the fifteen minutes before class. I could feel the blood in my cheeks. "No," I said. "Why?"

She tilted her head back, appraising me. "You're positively glowing."

"A lot of excitement lately."

I started to peel off, but Julianne pulled me aside, out of the Monday crush, and lowered her voice. "I looked into that media contact. Even found a few producers who've gone through the process with her."

It took me a moment to figure out who she was talking about: the person at the CIA who read movie scripts to see which were worthy of agency cooperation. "Right," I said. "Thanks for doing that, but--"

"Not all the producers got their scripts approved, but to a one they vouched for her. I got her on the phone, said I was doing an article on the approval process--blah, blah, blah. Mentioned your script, and she had less than no reaction. She said it didn't circulate past her staff. She also said--like most scripts she assesses--it didn't paint a picture of the Agency that made them want to help with the movie. But there was no fire to it. So my guess? Unless she's Oscar-worthy, no one at the CIA gives a shit about They're Watching any more than you'd expect them to. I doubt they're behind whatever you're dealing with."

"Yeah." I pictured Doug Beeman on that dank carpet, face to the screen, sobbing with relief. "I think I figured that out already."

She glanced at the clock, swore under her breath, and began to backpedal up the hall. "So I guess that leaves you wide open again."

SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP.

The message, standing out against the black of the screen, made my gut twist. The tiny office in the department felt even more cramped than usual. The air gusting from the vent overhead smelled like freezer-burned ice cubes, and the scent of stale coffee lingered from whoever had taken office hours here last period.

As the bold letters faded away on-screen, I checked my Canon camcorder, which I had pointed at the old Dell monitor. No green dot--the damn thing wasn't recording.

I knocked the camera with the heel of my hand, but already the slideshow had moved on.

A photo of a well-kept prefab house, taken at night, stars in the windows from the camera's flash. Just visible inside, the silhouette of a woman sitting on a couch and watching TV, her curly hair piled high. Two chairs pinned down the little strip of grass in the front, and a lawn gnome kept mischievous lookout.

My eyes jumped frantically from my camcorder to the monitor and back again. After testing the Canon this morning, I'd left it briefly unattended at a few points--in the car when I stopped to get coffee, in the faculty lounge when I'd gone down to the computer lab. They must have disabled the recording function. To stop me from doing this.

Dropping the camera on the desk, I searched out a pencil, finding a broken one in the coffee mug. My other hand rooted in my briefcase, yanking free the notepad and spilling scripts onto the floor. All the while I kept one eye on the monitor, fearful of missing something. Cracked pencil poised over pad, waiting to write. That hazy outline of the woman on the couch. She? Who the hell was she?

A new picture showed our house from the front. Standard shot, like a Realtor's photo.

A knocking on the office door.

"Just a minute!" I shouted, a bit too loudly.

"Patrick? This isn't your slot. My office hours started five minutes ago."

The next photo showed the fake rock by the driveway, where we used to hide the spare house key, a flash illuminating the night scene.

My heartbeat pounded. "Right, sorry about that. I'll clear out in a minute."

And now a car key laid on the grass of our front lawn beside the fake rock. The plug on the rock had been pulled out and the key angled toward the hole. I squinted at the plastic key head, made out the Honda insignia.

Her voice, more polite to mask the rising tenseness: "I'd appreciate it. You know our time in there is limited as is."

I did. But I had only a ten-minute window between afternoon lectures, not time enough to leave the floor to hit the computer lab, and my colleague hadn't shown up for her office hours. Or so I'd thought.

The next shot showed my Red Sox cap lying on our bed, as stark as Exhibit A in a crime-scene photo. The air-conditioning froze the sweat on the back of my neck. In the picture, our bedroom walls weren't torn up, so it had been taken before Thursday night. I dug in my pocket for my cell phone and thumbed it on, the spinning Sanyo graphics taking their time.

"I'm just packing up. Gimme a sec." Navigating its menu, I held the phone up next to the monitor so I could take in the cell-phone screen and computer monitor at a glance. Furiously punching at the tiny buttons, I finally called up the camera function on the phone and hit "record."

On the computer a QuickTime video lurched into action. A driver's view through a windshield, the lens carefully positioned so not a sliver of dashboard or hood crept into the frame. The rumble of an engine. A low view--a car, not a truck or SUV, leaving a familiar parking area. Northridge Faculty Lot B2. The footage played on fast-forward, the car zipping through streetlights, turning corners, other vehicles speeding by.

My eyes jerked back and forth from the real screen to the view of it through my cell phone's camera, as I made sure the Sanyo was picking up the footage.

A frustrated thump at the door--a little more than a knock this time. I could hear her keys jangling in her fist. "Patrick, this is getting a bit rude. Don't you have class now anyway?"

"Yes. Sorry. Literally give me two minutes."

My phone beeped twice, and the camera shut off--the memory was limited, so it recorded only in ten-second chunks.

About two blocks from campus, the driver pulled in to a dead-end alley between a Chinese restaurant and a video store. Parked tight in front of a Dumpster, facing away, was an old Honda Civic. The screen went black, and when it came back on, the driver was no longer in his car--he'd edited out his exit from the vehicle so I wouldn't catch even a glimpse of the door.

A handheld approach to the Honda, the screen tilting back and forth. Not wanting to take my eyes from the monitor, I struggled with my phone, punching buttons by feel and memory, trying to call up another ten-second recording session. A quick glance over showed me to have succeeded in getting myself into a cell-phone game of Tetris.

With frustration, I dropped the phone into my lap. The rapping on the door intensified.

The view pushed in tight on the Honda. Closer. When I realized what it was zooming in on, a chill spread through my insides.

The trunk lock.

A wave of light-headedness, static specking my vision.

Another set of messages appeared and faded. Forgetting to breathe, I read them numbly.

6PM. NO SOONER. NO LATER.

GO ALONE.

TELL NO ONE.

FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS.

OR SHE DIES.

The screen went blank. The browser quit of its own volition. Sagging back in the chair, I stared vacantly at the sad little office. Out in the hall, high heels clicked angrily away, and then only my ragged breathing remained to interrupt the silence.

Chapter 28

"I know some of you are starting to feel impatient. I will get to your scripts this week."

"That's what you said last week," someone called out from the back of the lecture hall.

I riffled my pad, staring at my notes. Aside from the three sentences I'd jotted down this morning, the page was empty. I kept picturing those ghost letters, rising and fading against the black screen: FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS. OR SHE DIES.

Did I know the woman on the couch? Or was she merely a stranger I was supposed to help, like Doug Beeman? Was she locked in the trunk of that Honda? Alive? And if so, if they wanted me to help her, why did I have to wait until six o'clock? Dread had returned, blacker and more certain than before, wiping out any foolish excitement that might have tinged my encounter with Beeman. Their runaway plot had veered across the line, finally, into life-or-death terrain.

The clock in the back of the lecture hall showed 4:17. Class let out in thirteen minutes--I'd have just enough time to race home, grab the key and my Red Sox hat, and get back to that alley. Though dozens of countermeasures ran through my head, I couldn't seriously consider them. My choices would determine whether that woman survived.

One of the students cleared her throat. Loudly.

"Okay," I said, regrouping. "So dialogue . . . dialogue should be succinct and . . . uh, compelling. . . ." I was just considering how poorly I was exemplifying this principle when I scanned the class and caught sight of Diondre in the back. I detected a hint of disappointment in his face. I forced my head into the lecture again, trying to hold it together, and had just started to get my focus when I heard the classroom door open and close.

Sally stood to the side, her back to the wall, her holstered sidearm poking conspicuously from the bottom of her rumpled coat. I did a double take, but she offered only an amiable smile. I'd lost the cadence of my thoughts again. The mostly blank page offered no help. I checked the clock. An hour and thirty-five minutes to showtime.

"You know what?" I said to the class. "Why don't we call it early today?"

I grabbed my notes and started for the door. As I approached, Sally took in my faded salmon button-up. "Nice shirt," she said. "They make it for men?"

Valentine lingered beyond the door. I couldn't wait for the last of the students to shuffle out, so I pulled him and Sally aside in the hall. "What's wrong?"

"Somewhere we can talk?" she asked.

"I don't have my office right now. Maybe the faculty lounge."

"Coupla teachers," Valentine said. Something hummed in his shirt pocket, and he pulled out a Palm Treo and silenced it.

"You went in there?" I glanced around nervously. Dr. Peterson was passing through the intersecting hall at that moment, of course, discussing something with a student. "It really looks bad for me to be questioned by cops at work right now."

"We're not questioning you," Sally said. "Just wanted to check in. And here we thought you'd be flattered by all this attention."

Peterson didn't slow down or stop talking, but her eyes tracked us until she passed out of view. My watch read 4:28. I needed the key before I could get to whatever--or whoever--was locked in the trunk of that Honda. If I didn't get moving, soon, I wouldn't make it there by 6:00.

My shirt felt damp. I resisted the urge to run my sleeve across my forehead. "Okay," I said. "Thank you. Thank you for checking in."

Sally said, "We didn't make a scene in the faculty room. Though I must say, one of your colleagues was rather solicitous."

"Julianne."

"Yes. Attractive woman."

Valentine sucked his teeth. "She's straight, Richards."

"Thanks for pointing that out. I won't abscond with her to Vermont now." Sally hitched her belt, rattling the gear. "When you comment that Jessica Biel is hot, do I point out that she doesn't go for aging black guys with jelly-doughnut guts?"

Valentine scowled. "I have a jelly-doughnut gut?"

"Wait five years." She took in his expression of strained amusement. "That's right. And there's more where that came from."

I snuck another peek at my watch, and when I looked up, Sally was studying me with those flat eyes. "Late for something?"

"No." I felt like vomiting. "No."

"Yeah," Valentine said. "We got it the first time."

"Went to your house this morning," Sally said. "All the curtains are drawn. Your wife barely opened the door enough to poke her head through. Like there's something in there she didn't want us to see. Is there something in there you don't want us to see?"

Only torn-up walls, peeled-back carpet, dismantled outlets--the kind of mess a paranoid schizophrenic with a toolbox might make if left unattended. "No," I said. "We're just a little sensitive to being watched right now. You can hardly blame her. Why were you at the house?"

"Your neighbor called."

"Don Miller?"

"The very one. He said you were acting weird."

"That's a news flash?"

"A lot of banging from your house. The closed blinds. And maybe you shoved something down into the sewer a couple nights ago."

"Like a body?" I said.

She waited patiently as I did my best to feign amusement, then said, "I came by to make sure I didn't mislead you in our last conversation. 'Look around' means look around. It doesn't mean go Falcon and the Snowman and get your ass shot off."

My half grin felt frozen on my face. TELL NO ONE, they'd warned, OR SHE DIES. But for a moment I almost caved. Spilled about the e-mail and the key and the Honda's trunk. Wouldn't the police have a better chance at saving that woman than I would? All I had to do was open my mouth and make the right words. But before I could, a cell phone bleated out the Barney theme song.

Sally sighed, her considerable weight settling. "The kid likes it. One in an avalanche of humiliating parental concessions." She stepped away to take the call.

Valentine pouched his lips, looked down the hall with unfocused eyes. He took a step closer, like he shouldn't be telling me something but wanted to anyway. "Listen, man. One thing I learned in my time on the force is, shit leads to more shit. I can't tell you how many guys we've put away for taking one wrong step at a time." He smoothed his mustache, and in his brown eyes I saw the weariness of experience, the wisdom he'd rather not have accrued.

Sally doubled back briskly. "We got a 211 in Westwood. We gotta move." She turned her focus to me. "If you're into something, we can help, now. If you keep us out, when things go south, we won't be able to help. Because by then you'll be part of the problem. Now: Is there anything you want to tell us?"

My mouth had gone dry. I took a breath. I said, "No."

"Let's go." Sally jerked her head at Valentine, and they hurried up the hall. She paused to look back at me. "Be careful," she said, "wherever you're rushing off to."

Chapter 29

Through the strobe flicker of passing vehicles, I could make out the Honda in the alley across the street. I'd rushed home to retrieve the key and my Red Sox hat, and made it back with two minutes to spare. The whole ride I talked myself into and out of detouring to a police station, but the image of that woman sitting on her couch kept my foot on the gas and my hands steady on the wheel. She was no more than a hazy silhouette in a photo that I'd barely glimpsed, but the thought of her vanishing, of feeling terror or pain because of a gamble I took, was unbearable.

Now that I was here, confronting that locked trunk, my convictions seemed less clear. Removing the paper from my pocket, I unfolded it and read my scrawled handwriting. I received an anonymous e-mail telling me to come to this car, or a woman would die. The key to this car was hidden in a fake rock in my front yard. I don't know what's in the trunk. I don't know where this will lead. If something bad happens, please contact Detective Sally Richards of the West L.A. station.

Of course, if I did get caught in some transgression, any idiot would still think I was guilty and that I'd just written the note for insurance. But it was better than nothing.

Two minutes left. My spine felt stuck to the seat. The digital clock--one of the few things on the dashboard I hadn't smashed--stared back at me unwaveringly. The final minute seemed to last forever, and yet I felt I had no time left at all. They'd made me responsible. If she died, it would be as though I'd murdered her myself. But was it worth potentially risking my life for a woman I didn't even know?

FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS. OR SHE DIES.

The clock ticked to the hour.

I got out, my breath echoing in my hollow chest. I jogged across the street, paused at the mouth of the alley to collect myself. But there wouldn't be time for that.

I reached the Civic. Relatively clean, specked with dirt, moderate wear on the tires--it was ordinary in every way. Except it had no license plates. I pressed my ear to the trunk but could hear nothing inside.

There was no one deeper in the alley or at my back, closing in on me. Just the whir of passing traffic, oblivious people on their oblivious way. I fought the key into the lock. The pop of the release vibrated up my arm. I took a deep breath, then let go, stepping back quickly as the trunk yawned open.

A duffel bag. My duffel bag, the same one I'd kicked into the sewer. It was stuffed full, blocky imprints shoving out its sides.

I leaned over, hands on my knees, and finally exhaled. The zipper came reluctantly, and after a nerve-grinding pause I threw it open.

Dumbfounded, I stared down, breathing the rich scent of money. Stack after stack of ten-dollar bills. And lying on top of them a map with a route traced in familiar red marker.

In person, $27,242 seems like a lot more than it is. When it's composed of ten-dollar bills banded in packs of fifty, it seems like half a million. Pulled over in my car in the far reaches of a nearby grocery-store parking lot, duffel in my lap, I'd counted. The bundles kept coming and coming, uniform save the one made up of disparate bills. If the movies weren't lying, tens were untraceable, or at least harder to trace than hundreds or twenties. The ramifications of that were almost as troubling as the rest of it.

The Honda had proven as inscrutable as the altered voice on the phone. No registration or anything else in the glove box, nothing hidden under the floor mats--even the skinny Vehicle Identification Number plate had been unscrewed from the dash.

I couldn't stop staring at the map. The red line started at the freeway entrance nearest the alley, snaked east along the 10 for a good hundred and fifty miles, and finally dead-ended in Indio, a broke desert town east of Palm Springs. A small square of paper with an address--produced, no doubt, by my printer--was taped beside the terminus. Beneath it was typed 9:30 p.m. If I didn't hit traffic, I'd get there by then. That was the point--just enough time to react.

A truck throttled by in the parking lot, and I quickly zipped the bag back up. For a moment I sat with my hands on the steering wheel. Then I called Ariana from my crappy prepaid phone. The matching one I'd gotten her went straight to automated voice mail, so I dialed her office line. It was likely monitored, but I had no other way to get hold of her.

"I'm not going to be home," I said carefully. "Until late."

"Oh?" she said. I could hear the whine of the lathe in the background. Someone shouted something at her, and she answered tersely, "Gimme a sec here." Then back to me: "What's this about?"

Had she forgotten that we could speak openly only on the prepaid phones?

I said, "I just . . . have to take care of some stuff."

"Just when we're getting on track, it's back to this? Another double feature after work? Anything to avoid being home?"

Was she acting right now because we weren't on a secure line? And if so, how could I signal that there actually was a problem?

"It's not like that," I said lamely.

"Have a nice night, Patrick." She hung up. Hard.

I stared at the phone, unsure what to do next.

A few seconds later, it vibrated in my hand, and I clicked on. I could tell from the scratchy connection that she'd called back from the Batphone. "Hi, babe," she said.

I exhaled with relief, reminding myself that I should never underestimate my wife's acuity.

"What's up?" she asked.

I told her.

"Jesus," she said. "This could be anything. Ransom money. A laundering operation. A drug deal. For all you know, you could be delivering payment to a hit man for your own murder."

"I need to be driving"--I checked the clock--"five minutes ago. There's no time."

Someone shouted in the background, and then I heard her footsteps and it got a little quieter. "What are you gonna do?"

I lowered the visor, looked at that picture of us from the college formal. The color in our smooth cheeks. All the time in the world in front of us. Nothing to worry about but morning classes and whether we had enough money for import beer. "If something happened to that woman because I didn't go, I don't think I could live with myself."

"I know," she said quietly. Her voice wavered, only a beat, but I caught it. The screech of machinery filled the pause. "Look, I . . ."

I reached up to the photograph, touched her smiling face. "I know," I said. "Me, too."

Halfway there, on a stretch of highway, I almost ran out of gas. On occasion I still forgot that the damn fuel gauge was broken on full, but the odometer caught my eye, telling me the tank was due, and I eked it out to the next exit. My mouth had cottoned up, so I ran into the mart to buy a pack of gum. Outside again, pumping gas, I stared at my reflection in the side mirror. It stared back skeptically, figuring me for a fool.

The housing tracts in Indio felt like Legoland--all the same pieces configured differently. Five or six house designs, alternating minutely in color or size, the streets and cul-de-sacs laid down along the same few templates. I got lost, and then lost from where I was lost, driving through the oppressive repetition, concern rising to panic once the clock passed 9:15. I prayed that my Nikes with the embedded tracking device were alerting them that I was almost there.

Finally, through a miracle, I reached the proper housing loop, prefabs thrown around a dirt circle of road. At the end, angled off by itself in a manner to suggest privacy or loneliness, was the house from the photo.

I parked a good ways up the road and climbed out, the duffel bag straining at my shoulder, BoSox cap sitting protectively low over my eyes. It was 9:28, and my breath was coming hard. I'd forgotten how damn cold the desert got in winter. Cold enough to freeze the sweat across your back.

Crunching over dead leaves, I approached. I couldn't see the interior through the drawn blinds, but a bluish flicker from the TV played along the seams. Despite the time, the other houses were as still as midnight, their windows black. An early-to-bed community of workers getting in their sleep before the early desert sun.

I didn't have time to detour to peer in the window or inspect the area. Whatever was waiting for me in there--a bound woman, a crew of cigar-chomping kidnappers, a DVD holding another mystifying piece of the puzzle--I would meet it. Before I could lose my nerve, I stepped up on the two wooden stairs, pulled back the screen door, and knocked softly.

Rustling inside. The shuffle of footsteps. The door creaked open.

The woman. I recognized her from the heap of curly dark hair, shot through with gray. She was foreign. I wasn't sure how I knew, but something in her features and manner spoke of Eastern Europe. Her eyelids were pouched, flecked with skin tags, and rimmed red with exhaustion or crying. She seemed to personify a type--the doleful eyes, the homely features, the nose crooked just so. An inch or two over five feet. Her irises were striking, crystal blue and nearly translucent. She looked to be sixty, but I guessed she was younger and just worn down.

She said, "You're here," in a thick accent I couldn't place.

"You're okay," I stammered.

We looked at each other. I swung the duffel down off my shoulder, held it by my side. The small living room behind her seemed to be empty. She said, "Come in."

I stepped into the house.

"Please," she said. "Shoes off." Her accent turned "off" into "uff."

I complied, setting my Nikes on a hand towel laid to the side of the door. The humble place had been maintained with a lot of pride. A wicker bookshelf held dustless porcelain cats and snow globes from various American cities. The counters in the little kitchen area gleamed. Through an open door to a tiny bathroom, I saw a candle flickering in a wall sconce. Even the couch looked brand new. Oddly, a plate holding three or four banana peels sat on a side table, the bottom ones brown.

She gestured, and I sat on the couch. After setting a bowl of cashews and a dish of tangerines on the coffee table in front of me, she took up on an armchair, displacing her knitting. We stared at each other awkwardly.

"I receive e-mail," she said. "I was told man would come with Red Sock hat. That I must see him." For some reason she was speaking in a hushed voice, which I inadvertently mimicked.

"Did you get any DVDs?"

"DVD?" She frowned. "Like movie? No. I don't understand. Why do you come?"

I glanced around, bracing myself for a bomb, a violent son, a SWAT-team entry. On the microwave, three more bunches of bananas. To the right of the cashews, a school photo of a young girl, maybe six, with a bright, forced smile. Frizzy brown hair, both front teeth missing, dressed in a smock checked like an Italian tablecloth. One pigtail had slid lower than the other, and a purple spot stained the front of the smock; whoever had dressed her up so carefully for picture day would not be pleased. Something in that grin--the eagerness to participate, to please--made her seem so damn vulnerable. Stuck to the frame was a Chiquita sticker--what was with the bananas? I forced my eyes back to the woman. She wore a plain gold wedding band, but somehow I knew that her husband had died. Her sadness was palpable, as was her kindness, conveyed in the small smile she'd shown me when she'd set down the bowl of nuts. I would have done anything to avoid upsetting her.

"I was told that you could be in danger," I said.

She gasped, hand to her chunky necklace. "Danger? Someone threaten me?"

"I . . . I think so. I was told to come see you. Or you'd die."

"But who would want to kill me?" It came out "keel me." "Are you come to harm me?"

"No, I--no. No, I wouldn't hurt you at all."

Though she was distressed, still she kept her voice quiet. "I am Hungarian grandmother. I am waitress at crappy diner. Who do I threaten? What do I do to hurt anyone?"

I leaned forward as if to rise, practically crouching over the cushions. What was I going to do? Enfold her in a comforting hug? "I'm sorry to upset you. I . . . look, I'm here, and we'll figure this out together and fix it, whatever it is. I came to help."

She balled a Kleenex and pressed it to her trembling lips. "To help what?"

"I don't know. I was just told . . ." I struggled to figure out the connection, the angle in, the nudge of the dial that would bring the picture into focus. "My name's Patrick Davis. I'm a teacher. What's your name, ma'am?"

"Elisabeta."

"Are you . . ." Grasping at straws, I pointed at the picture. "Is that your daughter?"

"Granddaughter." She couldn't say it without a smile lightening her face. But quickly the haggardness returned. "My son, he is in the prison ten year for he sell the"--she acted out shooting up in her arm, making a pccht-pccht sound as if she were shooing a cat. A shiny manicure made her nails surprisingly beautiful--that quiet dignity showing through again, a pride that felt oddly like humility. "His wife, she go back to Debrecen." She waved a hand at the photograph. "So I get her. My little jewel."

I got it finally, the hushed voice. "She's sleeping."

"Yes."

"Why . . . ?" I asked, looking around. "Why are there so many bananas?"

"She is not well. She take many pill, one type so she can urinate off extra fluid. Low potassium, they say from this. So the banana--it is game we play. If she get her potassium from banana, one less pill to take." She shook a frail fist. " 'We beat it for one pill today.' "

My pulse quickened. SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP. But how?

"What happened to her?" I asked.

"She have the surgery back when she is three. Last month I notice her shoes no fit again. The swelling . . ." Her hand circled. "I do not want to believe. Then she have the breathing"--she mimed shortness of breath--"again on the playground. And yes, it is the heart valve again. She needs new. But it is hundred of thousand of dollar. I cannot afford. I am waitress. I already spend second mortgage on this house for first surgery. It will give out. This valve"--she spit out the word. "Tomorrow or next week or next month, it will give out."

The duffel sat a few inches to my side, nudged up against my shoe. What good was twenty-seven grand in the face of that kind of money?

My amped-up drive here had left me more emotional than usual; seesawing between dread and relief, fear and concern, I could hardly find my bearings. The girl peered up at me from the picture, and I recognized now that she had her grandmother's curly hair. The desperate conversations they must have had right here in this room. How do you explain to a six-year-old that her heart might give out? I swallowed, felt the tightness in my throat. "I can't imagine."

"Except I see in your face," she said, "that you can." She plucked at the loose skin of her neck. "A friend of mine back home"--a wave to cross the Atlantic--"lost his wife to Lou Gehrig. A cousin of my cousin lost her daughter and two grandson in plane crash five year back. On anniversary this year, my cousin ask her, 'How do you handle this?' And she say, 'Everyone has a story.' And it is true. Before we go, everyone has sad story to tell. But this child, this child . . ." She rose abruptly, crossed to one of the closed doors at the end of the room, and set her hand on the knob. "You come see this beautiful child. I will wake her. You come see and tell me how I am to explain her this is her story."

"No, please. Please don't disturb her. Let her sleep."

Elisabeta came back and sank into her armchair. "And now someone want to kill me. And for what? Who will take care of her? She will be left alone to die."

"Don't you have . . . is there health insurance?"

"We are nearing lifetime maximum, they call it. I meet with--what do they call it?--finance committee at hospital. They are willing to make charitable donation for operating room, surgery. But even between their generosity and what is left on insurance, I am still left with more than I can . . ." She shook her head. "What do I do?"

My voice shook with excitement. "How much is left?"

"More than you can imagine."

I leaned forward, put my hand on the table, upsetting the bowl of nuts. "How much exactly?"

She got up and went into the kitchen. A drawer opened, jangling with flatware. Then another. She thumbed through a sheaf of menus and flyers, finally returning with a paper. She fluffed it out like a royal decree. "Twenty-seven thousand two hundred forty-two dollar." Her mouth tugged down in the beginning of a sob, but she caught it, transformed her expression to contempt for the figure.

"No one's threatening you. I misunderstood." My throat closed, and I had to stop talking. A sheen rose in my eyes. I lowered my head, said a silent prayer of gratitude. I walked over to her and set the duffel on the floor at her feet.

She stared at me, shocked.

I said, "This is for you."

I stepped into my Nikes and left, careful to ease the screen door shut so as not to wake the girl.

Chapter 30

I was up again, pacing around Ariana, who listened, glazed, from the patio chair. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her sweatshirt pulled over them, the parka flaring out to either side. It wasn't raining, but moisture flecked the air. Two in the morning and counting, and my heart rate showed no signs of slowing down. "The fear, then the relief--even fucking gratitude. And then it starts all over again. It's like a drug. I can't take it. I don't care that it worked out this time--"

"We don't even know that," Ariana said.

"What do you mean?"

"Delivering cash to a woman in Indio? What if it was a scam?"

"How? It wasn't our money. I was just playing Santa Claus."

"I'm not saying you were the target." She watched her words sink in. "What happens if someone shows up at that woman's door and asks a favor of her? A favor to be repaid?"

"I'm the one who gave her the money."

"But it wasn't your money. She doesn't owe you."

Nausea crept into my stomach, an ice-water trickle. I sank slowly into the chair opposite Ari. I could tell from her face that she felt bad. Her hand rooted in her purse and produced a roll of Tums. That purse was like the stomach of Jaws--she was always pulling out a pair of sunglasses, a new shade of lipstick, a waffle iron.

Chewing a tablet, Ariana double-checked the cigarette-box jammer and pushed forward--"If there are no strings attached to that cash, why wouldn't they just give it to her themselves? For all you know, that money puts her in danger."

"I think she'd take that risk," I said quietly. "So her granddaughter wouldn't die."

"But she didn't get to make that decision."

"Because I made it for her." I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, my groan turning to something like a growl. "But what the hell was I supposed to do? Go to the cops? Thinking it might kill that woman?"

"Not then. But now. Why not now?"

"They'll find out. Given what these guys have shown us so far, do we really want to see how they retaliate when they're pissed off? Plus, are you forgetting that a seven-figure lawsuit might be hanging in the balance, pending my cooperation?"

"So you keep doing this?" she asked. "Following orders blindly from an all-powerful boss you don't even know? Waiting around like some clown in a Beckett play? For how long?"

"Until we get the settlement agreement from the studio. Until I figure out an angle into this. Into them."

"And in the meantime? These aren't your lives to tamper with."

"It's not that easy, Ari."

"There are probably thousands of kids in this country with that girl's heart condition," she said. "Millions of people with millions of problems. What makes her life any different from anyone else's?"

"Because I can save hers." I could feel the knots up the back of my neck. Ari lifted her eyebrows, and I held up my hands, half in apology, half to slow myself. "I know it sounds like this is some kind of God complex--"

"Not even, Patrick. It's a God complex by proxy."

"But these people are hostages, even if they don't know it. That girl was entrusted to me, like Beeman. She's been made my problem, my responsibility. When I've been given a bag of money to save her life, how can I not leave it for her?"

"You don't show up to begin with, that's how. What's that line from WarGames?"

I cast out a sullen sigh. " 'The only winning move is not to play.' "

She nodded solemnly. "Look, we both agree we need to break through on this thing. And to do that, you can play your game all you want. Just don't play theirs."

I stared over the sagging fence at Don and Martinique's dark bedroom window, the curtain at rest. A bedroom like ours, a house like ours. Our quiet little neighborhood, all of us with a story to tell. And yet the scale of what I was confronting, the danger, had gone suddenly out of whack. How had I come unhinged from this ordinary life?

"You're right." I lifted my hands, let them slap to my thighs. "As long as I keep taking the bait, they have me trapped. I'll stop. No more checking e-mail. No more following their instructions. Whatever that brings on, it brings on."

"I'll be here for it." She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "It's the only good choice left. You have to call their bluff."

She rose and headed inside, her head bowed.

I sat for a few moments with the crickets, looking out to where the yard lost itself in darkness. I mumbled to the shadows, "What if they're not bluffing?"

I lay beside my wife in the quiet dark of the bedroom. She'd fallen asleep maybe an hour ago, leaving me to study the ceiling. Finally I got up, went into my office, and unplugged my cell phone from its charger. On the built-in camera, I watched the ten seconds I'd managed to capture of the QuickTime video from them.

View through a windshield. Car driving. The recording stopped well before the alley and the Honda.

I downloaded the clip into my computer and enlarged it to fill the screen. A passing semi with daytime running lights swept through the field of vision, playing tricks with the light across the windshield. A dab of silver at the bottom of the glass caught my eye. I backed up the recording, froze the image. Not much more than a smudge at the base of the windshield. Leaning forward, I squinted at the finger-long reflection thrown up from the top of the dash.

The metal plate stamped with the Vehicle Identification Number.

It was blurred and faint, but perhaps the clarity could be brought up with the right tools. My first concrete lead. I ran a thumb across the tiny image, savoring it.

My cell phone emitted an Asian chime. Slowly, I turned and regarded it lying there next to the keyboard. Picked it up. A text-message alert, sender unknown.

A cold sweat crept over my body. My thumb moved before I could stop it.

E-MAIL TOMORROW, 7PM.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

THIS TIME IT'S SOMEONE YOU KNOW.

Chapter 31

I sat in my car in the parking lot, watching students drift in to class. The phone rang and rang, and finally he picked up. "Hallo."

"Dad?"

"Stop the presses." And then, shouting over the receiver to my mom: "It's Patrick. Patrick!" Then back: "Your mother's in the car." My dad, from Lynn, Massachusetts, had the harsh Boston accent I'd never acquired growing up in watered-down Newton. Mothah's in the cah. "Still goin' through it with Ari?"

"Yeah, but we're figuring it out." Hearing his voice made me realize how much I missed them, how sad it was that it took this for me to pick up the phone. "I'm sorry I haven't been great at keeping in touch these past couple months."

"That's okay, Paddy. You've had a rough go. You get a real job yet?"

"Yeah. Teaching again. No more writing."

"Listen, your mother and I were just heading into town. Everything okay?"

"I just wanted to know how you both are. Healthwise or whatever else. If there's anything you need, I mean, I can hop on a plane, no matter what I'm in the middle of."

"What'd you join one of those cults out there?"

"I'm just saying. I hope you know that."

"Everything's fine here. We got a ways to go, you know."

"I know, Pa."

"We're not in the grave yet."

"I didn't mean--"

Car honking in the background.

"Listen, your mother just discovered the horn. Do me a favor, Patrick. Call her this week. You don't just have to call when you're feeling okay. We're your parents."

He signed off, and I sat there a moment, reliving the chill that had passed through me when the threatening text message had chimed into existence on my cell phone last night. Not surprisingly, it had vanished into thin air within seconds of my reading it. All this autodeleting left me wondering if I was making up this whole intrigue myself. But the knot in my throat said it was far too real.

A passing student waved, and it took effort to lift my hand and wave back. My car might as well have been a submarine for how detached I felt from the world beyond the glass.

THIS TIME IT'S SOMEONE YOU KNOW.

I clicked through the saved numbers in my cell phone. All those names, more bases than I could cover even if I knew what to ask. Not to mention all the names not in there. It could be anyone from Julianne to Punch to Bill at Bel Air Foods. Someone I'd graded, someone I'd roomed with in college, someone who'd loaned me a cup of sugar. Someone I loved.

I flipped the phone shut and set it on the cracked dash. "The only way to beat them," I told it, "is not to play."

I found Marcello alone in the editing bay, fussing over the digital sound console. On the attached computer monitor, a guy in a Speedo was paused midbounce at the end of a diving board. When Marcello released the diver with a click of the mouse, the bwang of the board was out of sync.

"Take a look at something for me?" I asked.

He froze the diver as he hit the water, and leaned over my cell phone. I played the ten-second clip.

"Cinema verite," Marcello said when it was done. "I think the car is a metaphor for the journey of life."

"I can't pause it on the cell, but look right here." I played the clip over again. "There's a little reflection on the windshield when the truck passes. You see it? I think it's the VIN. Is there some way to download it into Final Cut Pro and bring up the resolution?"

"Could take some time. The focus part, I mean." A note of annoyance. "Patrick, what is all this?" He crossed his arms impatiently as I figured out how to phrase what I wanted to say.

"They're sending me glimpses into people's lives. Their problems."

"Like what they were doing to you?"

"Yes. Sort of. It's complicated."

He was scowling.

I said, "What?"

"There's no damn privacy anymore. It's like we all got used to it. Or we gave it away, bit by bit. Wiretapping laws. Citizen enemy combatants. Homeland Security looking up your nose. Not to mention all this reality shit. Girls Gone Wild. Crying politicians on YouTube. Spouses trash-talking on Dr. Phil. You can't even die in war anymore without every schmuck with a flat-screen watching the infrared footage. There's no . . ." His jaw shifted; his lips twitched, searching out some suitable term. ". . . propriety." He heaved out an agitated breath. "You used to have to be famous to be famous. But now? It's all real. It's all fake. What's the goddamned fascination with monitoring everything, putting an eye up to every peephole?"

"I guess . . ." I stopped, studied my loafers.

"Yeah?"

"I guess people want the comfort of knowing that things can be bad everywhere. That it's not just them. That no one's got the magic answers."

His empathetic gaze made me feel naked. "When I was growing up, I thought the movies were magic. And then I got around them." He gave a wistful chuckle, his hand rasping over his beard. "Guys in rooms. Guys on sets. Guys at computer monitors. That's it. There's a loss there. I suppose everyone feels it. When you catch up to whatever you're chasing and get a close-up, warts and all. Then what do you do?" He made a popping sound with his lips, turned back to the console brusquely, and resumed adjusting the mix on the student film. The footage reversed, the diver unsplashing from the pool, the water vacuuming itself back into a flat sheet. How easily all that chaos was undone.

"Marcello." My voice was a bit hoarse. "This has turned into a lot more than voyeurism."

"I know." He didn't look over. "Gimme the phone. I'm done ranting."

I set it down next to him on the desk. "You sure?"

"I think so. I was gonna throw in something about Britney Spears and her lack of underwear, but I sort of lost the thread."

A few students started to trickle in, and I had to whisper. "No one can know you're doing this. It could put you at risk. You okay with that?"

He waved me off. "Don't you have a class you're late for?"

Though no light shone in Doug Beeman's apartment, I knocked again on the peeling front door. And again there was no response. No eye hiding behind that old-fashioned keyhole this time, only blackness. Resting my forehead against the jamb, I stood helplessly, the neighborhood sounds and smells washing over me. The pump of a tricked-out car stereo. The scent of spicy cooking, maybe Indian. A static-fuzzed Lakers game coming through economy walls.

I was impatient for answers. Absent those, I was desperate for contact, eager to mull over the bits and pieces of what had happened, to rub them to a high polish. On my way to Doug Beeman's, I'd detoured by the alley near campus and had not been surprised to find the Honda Civic gone. Once I'd cleared the cash from the trunk, they'd cleared the car from the alley. And now silence at Beeman's door, darkness at the curtains. As I turned away, I realized just how much that concerned me.

Ariana's words were there like an echo in my head, warning of all the consequences I hadn't considered. I wished I'd found something here to assuage her concerns. I'd come back tomorrow first thing to make sure Beeman was all right; I'd already decided to go to Indio after morning classes to check on Elisabeta.

I turned away from the door. The complex--and the surrounding streets--was alive with life and movement, music and engines, the crack of beer cans opening, the giggle of children, a woman yelling into a telephone. So many people. How many were on the verge of catastrophe? An aneurysm, a lurking blood clot, a heart valve a beat away from giving out? How many of these apartments had a gas leak, a compromised roof, lethal mold growing beneath the drywall?

Which name in my address book faced a similar deadline?

At the intersection my discomfort revved into high gear. Knee bouncing, fingernails strumming, squirming in my seat like a kid before recess. The clock on my dashboard read 6:53 P.M. Seven minutes until their next e-mail hit my in-box. It occurred to me yet again that though it was Tuesday and the workday over, I had yet to hear from my lawyer with the studio's terms for the legal resolution. Were they waiting to see if I played good little soldier? I was still a rat in their box--push the lever, get a pellet.

The red light was taking forever. I rolled down my window, tapped my foot, hummed along to the Top 40 tune I was pretending to listen to. But no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, it remained at the edge of my peripheral vision, rising into view from behind the church billboard. Finally I looked over at that Kinko's sign, beckoning like neon to a drunk. In the foreground rose that redoubtable lettering--WITHOUT WOOD, A FIRE GOES OUT--and for the first time in a long time, I felt like the universe was talking to me, even if it was telling me something I didn't want to hear. It was easy enough to heed the Word; I was in the left-turn lane, Kinko's was across three lanes of traffic and up the street the opposite way. Not a temptation at all.

The only way to beat them is not to play.

Forcing my gaze ahead, waiting for the light, I listened to the click-click-click of my turn signal.

Hotel Angeleno, a cylindrical white rise a stone's throw off the 405 where Brentwood meets Bel Air. The crisp photo, perfectly framing the seventeen stories, looked like an advertising shot. The place was a Holiday Inn that had gotten a face lift a few years back, but it didn't take much to qualify as a landmark in Los Angeles.

Hunched over a computer in my corner cubicle at Kinko's, I took in the image, holding my cell-phone camera at the ready. My thumb pressed "record," and the Sanyo camera whirred into action. I'd acquainted my thumb with the cell-phone buttons so I could record however long, back-to-back in ten-second chunks, without moving my eyes from the monitor.

The picture on-screen faded, replaced by a close-up of a hotel-room number: 1407.

Next was a service door, sturdy and metal, the edge of a Dumpster peeking into view. The parking-lot lines and concrete exterior showed it still to be the hotel.

The next slide put a charge into my chest: my silver key chain, placed on our kitchen counter. A daytime shot, but there was no way to tell when it had been taken.

The close-up photo that followed showed one key angled free and clear of the others. Sturdy, brass. Not one of my own.

Numbly, I reached into my pocket. Lifted my key chain, flat on my palm, up before my eyes. There it was like a Christmas present, hidden in the jumble. A new key. Riding along with me all this time.

The PowerPoint presentation had moved on. Inside my Camry now, the angle from the passenger seat; the photographer must have been sitting. My glove box had been laid open and a hotel key card set on top of my tin of Altoids.

A message appeared and faded: 2AM. TONIGHT. COME ALONE. DO NOT GET SPOTTED.

Followed by another: YOU NEED TO SEE HIM.

Him. Him?

My Sanyo stopped recording a moment before the top browser window closed, leaving me to stare at the e-mail with the hyperlink they'd sent to my Gmail account. My fingers ached from being clenched around the phone. I released my fist and watched the pink creep slowly back into my skin.

I clicked "reply" on the e-mail, and to my surprise an address appeared. A long string of seemingly random numbers, ending with gmail.com.

The digital clock on the desktop said I was late for dinner, a walk with Ariana, my life. I thought of my briefcase, bulging with unread student scripts. Our walls, torn down in spots to the studs and pipes. The house I had to get in order, with all that implied. I owed the people in my life more than this. Except the one whose neck was on the line.

I typed, I won't do this anymore. Not without knowing who you are and why you're doing this to me, and sent it off before the second thoughts gnashing at my heels could overtake me.

I sat and stared at the screen, wondering what the hell I had just done.

A comic pop sounded from the computer speakers, breaking through my black thoughts. An instant message had flashed up on the screen in its cheery little AOL cartoon bubble.

TONIGHT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING.

I hadn't even logged in to an IM program, but there it was.

Grinding my teeth, I stared at the smug little sentence. I was sick of being manipulated, toyed with, led down the gallows path one blindfolded step at a time. Something inside me had shifted, whether because of Ari's persistent reasoning or the ominous silence I'd just encountered at Beeman's front door. But my resolve had been chipped away, one assumption at a time, leaving me far from convinced that the course I'd been taking was the right one.

Breathing hard, summoning courage, I stared at the screen.

My fingers hammered the keyboard, asking the question I was afraid to know the answer to: What if I say no?

I rocked back in the chair. Across the store, the cash register jangled and copy machines whirred and clicked like futuristic life-forms. The air conditioner blew cool air down my collar.

Another popping sound, another message. This time it could just as easily have been my own thought bubble; the words seemed to look right through the windows of my eyes and read my mind.

THEN YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.

Chapter 32

Midnight.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

Ariana asleep beside me, I lay and watched the clock. She'd taken an Ambien to help her doze off, but I was fairly certain that no sleeping pill would get me down tonight. Whatever this thing was, I had it by the tail or it had me by the neck. When I didn't show up, would they come after me, renewed? If they didn't, could I stand never knowing? Could I go back to student papers and faculty-room joking and neighborhood walks? I would have to. As Ari had said, I was tampering with other people's lives. And if I kept following instructions, when would it end? By no-showing, I was taking my fate into my own hands. And if they reacted with wrath, I would be ready for them. If the lawsuit returned, I was no worse off than I'd been two days ago. In the quiet dark, I began listing the precautions I'd start taking at first light.

12:27 A.M.12:28 A.M.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

TONIGHT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING. Who was waiting in Room 1407? A face from the past, a wronged friend, a man in a dark suit, legs crossed, silenced pistol in his lap? Or a stranger with a gift, nothing more to me than I was to Doug Beeman? How long would the person wait before figuring out that I wasn't coming through that door?

12:48 A.M.12:49 A.M.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

I pictured Doug Beeman on his knees, his face up against the TV, how he'd sat back on his heels and swayed and how I hadn't known he'd been weeping until I heard the sobs choke out of him. The school photo on Elisabeta's table, the missing-teeth grin. Those heaps of banana peels. The despair, thick as a scent in that cramped living room. The duffel of cash that I prayed would lift that despair as the DVD had lifted Beeman's, that might just buy a wink of light at the end of the tunnel.

1:06 A.M.1:07 A.M.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

Snippets of text floated in the darkness. SOMEONE YOU KNOW. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH. What was I going to do? Lie here miserably unasleep until I was awakened by a ringing phone? Or would the death notice come later? A day, a week, three months. Could I live like that, waiting, knowing I could have prevented whatever was coming?

1:17 A.M.1:18 A.M.

The only way to beat them is not to play.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

1:23 A.M.

I kissed Ari on the sleep-warm neck. Regarded her sleeping face. Lips fat and luscious, popped open just slightly, giving off the faintest whistle.

Whispered, "I'm sorry."

Slid from bed, guilty, miserable, and racked with fear.

It wasn't that I had to go.

It was that I couldn't not.

Having parked at the curb up Sepulveda beyond eyeshot of the valets, having retrieved the key card from my glove box and snugged it in my back pocket, having pocketed my Sanyo and the prepaid cell phone to cover any recording or calling contingency, having waited for a break in traffic and threaded through the rear parking lot in my jeans and black T-shirt, I stood at the base of Hotel Angeleno, key in hand, confronting the service door from the photo.

Crinkling in my pocket was the note I'd jotted hastily under the dome light of my car: I received an anonymous message telling me to come to Room 1407, and that it was a matter of life and death. I don't know who's in the room. I don't know where this will lead. If something bad happens, please contact Detective Sally Richards of the West L.A. station.

Past the concrete freeway wall to my left, invisible cars swooped by, rushing smooth and soporific, an endless wave. The cylindrical building loomed overhead, a cool green glow uplighting the penthouse soffit.

A car approached from the curving drive, a valet closing my brief time window, but before the headlights swept into view, I zippered the key into the lock and twisted. A satisfying clunk. I slipped inside, breathed the heated air, and tried to shake the tingling from my fingertips.

Immediately I heard a squeak of a wheel, but before I could move, a worker turned the corner, pushing a room-service cart. In the frozen instant before our eyes met, I put a hand up on the door nearest me and noted with great relief that it led to the stairwell. Hoping he wouldn't catch a glimpse of my face, I swiveled quickly and stepped through.

"Excuse me, sir--?" The closing door severed his voice.

I huffed my way up, the tapping of my Nikes coming back at me off the hard walls. The fourteenth floor was blissfully quiet. Ariana would've liked the L.A.-hip deco--sleek, slate, stone, earth. Dark wood trimmings, amber glows from wall sconces, silent carpet underfoot. A clock showed 1:58. Passing the elevator, I felt a jolt of panic as a woman dressed for the gym stepped from her room, but, busy on her cell phone, she didn't bother with eye contact.

The key card ready at my side like a stiletto, I counted down the room numbers. Reaching 1407, I jammed it home. The little sensor gave me a green light, and I turned the hefty handle and shoved the door open a few inches.

Darkness.

A few inches more. A bottleneck hall by the front bathroom, only a sliver of bedroom visible from the doorway. The curtains had been thrown back, floor-to-ceiling glass doors letting out onto a cramped balcony.

"Hello?" My voice, strained and thick, was completely foreign to me.

Barely cutting the black of the room, the glow of the distant city lay in faded puddles on the floor. The hum of freeway traffic blended with the rush of blood in my ears as I inched forward. The door shut itself firmly behind me, cutting what little light the hall had afforded.

Somehow I sensed an emptiness in the room. Was I supposed to wait for someone here? Would it be another phone call leading to another wild-goose chase?

A faded smell--sweet, spicy, a trace of ash. My body tense, I stepped even with the threshold to the main room. The comforter had been dimpled where someone had sat on it. And lying next to the indentation, a slender object, about four feet long.

Scanning the room, I took an exploratory half step forward and picked up the object by the rubber grip. The metal head swung up on the graphite shaft, glinting in the city lights. A golf driver. My golf driver. The one I'd hurled after the intruder as he'd hopped our rear fence. The etching on the face of the head was dark with something, probably dirt; I had left it out there in the leaves, after all. But the stuff didn't act like dirt.

It was sliding slowly down the titanium face.

I dropped the driver abruptly on the bed. That smell in the air resolved, the faintest whiff of smoke. Clove cigarettes.

YOU NEED TO SEE HIM.

My chest heaving, I took another half step to my side to steady myself, and my foot struck something with a bit of give.

It was attached to a dark mass sprawled to my left beside the bed. I sucked in a breath, amplified to a screech inside my head, and blinked down through the darkness at the body splayed grotesquely on its back, the death curl of the white hands, the dent at the forehead, the black tendrils of blood worming into the hair, the ear, pooling in the eye socket. The famous brow. Those perfect white teeth. And my nemesis, that well-defined jaw.

TONIGHT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING.

Horror knotted at the back of my throat, blocking off air, making my gorge lurch. I knew even before I heard the pounding footsteps coming up the hall. Stepping away from the bed to the middle of the room, facing that glorious smog-diffused cityscape, I tugged the woefully inadequate insurance note from my pocket and put my arms up over my head a split second before the door smashed in and the powerful beams of police flashlights hit me.

Chapter 33

I didn't kill him. I didn't kill him. It sounded like my voice, saying it over and over, but I wasn't sure whether it was in my head or coming out of my mouth until one of the cops said, "Yeah, we got that part."

Patrolmen, huddled in twos and threes, alternately fielded phone calls and mumbled into their radios. They peered at me not with animosity but with a sort of bemused wonder, awed by the scope of what they'd stumbled into. I heard them from the end of a tunnel, their words strained through the humming in my ears. I'd gone into shock, I think, but I'd thought that when you were in shock you weren't supposed to be so fucking terrified.

I'd been frisked roughly and moved to a room up the hall, a match of 1407. They'd seized my note asking them to contact Sally Richards, though I didn't know whether they had tried to reach her. Hotel Angeleno fell within her and Valentine's jurisdiction, so that gave me my only glimmer of hope.

I sat on the corner of the bed. Looking down, I realized I wasn't wearing handcuffs, though I had a vague memory of being cuffed at some point earlier when they'd wiped my hands with a forensic swab. It seemed they weren't sure what to do with me yet.

One of the female cops asked, "Want us to call your wife?"

"No. Yes. No." I pictured Ari waking up, finding me gone. It would take her about two seconds to put together that I'd gone to the hotel, though I'd promised her I wouldn't. "Yes. Tell her I'm okay. Not injured or dead, I mean." That drew some odd looks. "They led me here. They put a bug on me. Give me a pen. Here. Here. I'll show you."

One of the cops withdrew a pen from his breast pocket, clicked it, and handed it to me. Another said, "Watch him."

Using the tip of the pen, I dug into the heel of my Nike, right where the thin incisions were. The pen bowed and almost snapped, but I managed to fight out a chunk of rubber. "They bugged me. Right here. They were keeping track of--" I bent the sole back, digging my fingers into the gash.

Nothing inside the tiny cavity.

My breath left. I wilted.

One of the cops snickered. The others looked like they felt sorry for me. My shoe slipped from my hands, hit the floor. My sock had a hole at the toe. My voice, little more than a whisper: "Never mind." With a shaking hand, I raised the pen. I couldn't even look up, but I felt the cop take it back.

There was a brisk knock at the door, and then Sally entered, Valentine at her heels. She frowned at me brusquely, then asked the nearest cop, "Look at that color. He gonna pass out? You sure? Good. Leave us alone." A low murmur from the cop, and then Sally snorted and said, "Yeah, I think we can handle him."

Her wry tone--something familiar, at last--brought me back a step from the edge. The cops shuffled out, and Valentine took a post by the slider to block me in case I decided to go for the balcony. Sally dragged a chair over from the sturdy hotel desk, flipped it around with a twist of her thick wrist, and sat facing me.

"You were found with an unauthorized hotel security key in a room that isn't yours over the dead body of your declared enemy and plaintiff with a murder weapon containing your prints. What do you have to say?"

The room smelled of dust and Windex. Just beyond my right foot was the space corresponding to where Keith Conner's body lay, stiffening, four or five rooms up the hall. My throat was so dry I wasn't sure I'd be able to speak. "I'm an idiot?"

A curt nod. "That's a start." She checked her watch. "We have about twenty minutes before RHD rolls in and takes over--"

"What? How the hell am I supposed to trust Robbery-Homicide?"

"That's not exactly your--"

"If they take over, I'm finished. They've got me from every angle here. No one else will believe anything I say." I'd come off the bed, and she gestured sternly for me to sit back down. I said, "Why can't you keep the case?"

Her thin eyebrows lifted a few millimeters. "Do you have any idea what this thing looks like? The press has already caught wind of Keith Conner's demise, and comparisons are being drawn to River Phoenix and--I shit you not--James Dean. The DA called me twice on my drive over here. That's the DA herself. This is a dead movie star. Valentine and I haven't worked a movie-star murder since . . . well, that'd be, uh, never. You bet your ass this thing is going upstairs, and upstairs from there. So if you have something you want us to hear, you'd better talk fast."

I did. Though my thoughts were scattered and my voice quavered, I forced myself to pull it together and lay out for them everything that had transpired. Valentine stayed with his arms crossed, expressionless, the only sounds the occasional thwick of him sucking his teeth, Sally's pen scratching at her pad, and helicopters chopping the night sky, circling like hawks, their beams livening the curtains at intervals.

Sally looked at me blankly once I'd finished. "You're serious."

It didn't seem like a question, but I said, "If I could make something like that up, I'd still be a screenwriter."

She said, "The cops were tipped by an anonymous call, made from a courtesy hotel phone. A man claimed to have spied someone matching your description forcing Keith Conner into Room 1407."

"That's the killer. For a frame-up to work, he had to plan the time of death for right before I got there. Keith had just been killed when I--"

She held up her hand. Stop. I waited, desperate and hopeful, trying to read her face. She looked back, mad at herself, or maybe me.

"You have to believe me," I said. "Because no one else will."

She chewed her cheek for what seemed a very long time. "With innocent suspects, the more you sweat 'em, the angrier they get. It's a great rule. Half the time."

A chill moved through me. Had I been angry? Angry enough?

"The other half?" I asked.

"They don't get angrier."

Valentine said, "That is a problem."

"Isn't it?" Sally cracked her knuckles by squeezing her fist, as close to worked up as I'd seen her. "I don't like generalizations. I put stock in global warming and the Second Amendment. I think war is sometimes the answer. I believe in Yoda, Gandalf, and Jesus. I like veal and porn--not in that order and not together. It's a complicated damn world, and I think this thing stinks to high heaven. So I'm gonna do something alarming. I'm gonna take you seriously."

I blew out a shaky breath.

She pointed a finger at my chest. "But for us to be able to have a chance to help you, here's what you have to say--"

The door banged open, and a tall, lean man in a suit ambled in.

Sally kept her eyes locked on mine, even as she said, "You're five minutes early."

"Kent Gable, RHD."

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

"My partner's up the hall in 1407," Gable said. "Thanks for holding down the fort. We got it from here."

Sally kept staring at me expectantly. A loaded look, as if it could convey what she'd been about to tell me. Valentine's gaze was on me, too. My brain lurched through possibilities.

"We set up a cordon outside, but the area's thick with media." Gable swiped a hand across his clean-shaven jaw and finally looked at me directly. "Why isn't this man in cuffs?"

I placed my hands on my knees. "I'll cooperate fully with Detective Richards and Detective Valentine. But only with them. Anyone else, I'll lawyer up." I didn't sound confident, not at all, but it was the best guess I could muster about the move Sally needed me to make.

Valentine's nostrils quivered ever so slightly, and Sally exhaled with quiet relief, a vein standing out in her forehead. She blinked once, long, then turned to face Gable, who was staring at me, slack-jawed. "We've had some interaction with the suspect over the past week," she said. "He had a note requesting us should he wind up in troub--"

Gable said crisply, "I know about the note, sweetheart--"

Valentine made a pained face.

"--but I don't think that means the suspect writes his own ticket."

A standoff. All of us staring at one another, the three of them standing, me seated on the bed like a schoolboy watching grown-ups argue. Totally at their mercy.

Valentine cleared his throat. His mustache twitched. "You know whose ass is on the line with this one? Even more than ours? The DA's. You might know from the newspapers that her office's performance on celebrity trials hasn't exactly been stellar, not even with you boys taking point on those investigations. Now, if we have the key suspect in the Keith Conner murder talking, my guess is the DA's gonna want that suspect to keep talking instead of getting busy building a legal dream team."

The Barney theme song chimed out. Sally palmed her cell phone. "Speak of the devil." She offered Gable a sugary smile. "Excuse me a minute, dear heart." She walked past him and out the door, and he followed, a fresh urgency in his step.

Valentine walked over and crouched before me, his mouth set in a sour curl. Behind him, early-morning light seeped around the curtain, edging his notchless rise of hair with copper. "I worked a lot of years with a lot of cops. And lemme tell you, that woman has the best gut instinct on the force. Don't underestimate her. Her and I, we play this front. That I don't like her, I'm a bigot, whatever. Works well for us, gives us some angles. But lemme tell you: That's out the window now, along with everything else. I know how you feel right now. The fear. I can see it in your eyes, smell it out your pores. But you still can't know, not yet, how bad this is. Sally and I, we don't have to play no good-cop/bad-cop. If we get a chance, you tell us everything you know and we will do what we can to save your life. That's the only play here. The only play. You got it?"

I said, "I got it."

The door handle jangled, and Valentine and I looked tensely to see which detective would reenter.

Sally leaned in, one hand riding the lever. "Better get the handcuffs on. We need 'em for the cameras."

Light-headed, I stood. Static dotted my vision, then cleared. Valentine cinched metal around my wrists and steered me forward. My feet felt dead, like blocks of wood.

Sally took a deep breath, and I could see, beneath her unflappable facade, that she was rattled. As I approached, those flat eyes appraised me. "Ready for your close-up, Mr. DeMille?"

Chapter 34

"Let's start putting this thing together," Sally said.

After being assailed by news crews and camera flashes, I'd had the relative calm of the sedan ride to try to settle down and focus. The helicopters tracked us, compounding my headache until the bullet-proof door of the station sucked closed behind us, silencing the thumping. I never thought I'd be relieved to be taken into custody. I was now backstage in a tiny office overlooking the interrogation room, on the cop side of the two-way mirror. It was private, unoccupied, and--aside from the various recording decks and closed-circuit units--as sparse as my shared Northridge office. Swivel chair, cup of coffee, TV on a mount--a casual, just-friends approach to keep the information flowing. The view into the interrogation room with its foreboding wooden chair, sporting rings for handcuffs, was a reminder of where I would wind up the minute I stopped being useful.

Pay It Forward was a distant memory; I'd wound up playing the wrong role in Body Heat.

Sally clicked on a digital camera and swung it from its usual angle through the two-way so it pointed at the three of us, sitting like colleagues spitballing a case.

I was still winded from being hustled upstairs, past the too-long stares of the other cops. "Has someone reached Ari?"

"We believe so," Valentine said.

"Where is she? What'd they tell her? Is she all right?"

"I don't know," Sally said, "and you have other concerns at the moment."

"I need to know that my wife is--"

"You don't have that luxury," she said sharply. "The captain of Robbery-Homicide is bending the chief's ear as we speak, and unless we find a crack in this case and turn it into a fissure, Detective Sweetheart will be back to arrest your skinny ass and throw it in Men's Central. So fucking focus."

Valentine caught me numbly staring at the news crawl beneath the live helicopter footage of Hotel Angeleno, and he reached up and slapped the muted TV, which clicked over to a soap. "Where were you at nine P.M. on February fifteenth?" he asked.

I closed my eyes, fought for clarity. Monday, two days ago . . . "Driving out to Indio to meet Elisabeta. Why?"

"Do you have anyone who can corroborate that?"

"Of course not. They told me not to . . ." Dread formed a lump in my throat to match the one in my gut. "Why? What happened?"

"We responded to a vandalism report at Keith Conner's house. Someone spray-painted 'LIAR' across his fence, then scaled the gates and left a dead rat on the windshield of one of his cars. A security camera picked up some footage of the intruder on the grounds, in the shadows. The guy was about your build, but his face was obscured because he was wearing--"

I said quietly, "A Red Sox cap."

"Right. It's not our jurisdiction, but we got pulled in because--"

"Conner assumed it was me. Of course. I'd gone to see him a few days before."

"Not a friendly visit, we heard." Valentine flipped through his notepad. "Left a bad taste in Conner's mouth. He filed a complaint the morning before the break-in at his house."

"So he and I did exactly the dance they hoped we would. Me charging over there, him documenting my erratic, aggressive behavior."

"Yeah, and his counsel advised him to start a paper trail."

"That's why you came to see me at work. To follow up on the complaint."

Sally said, "Given your and Conner's grudge, we had to do some prying, see if you were keeping both oars in the water. At first we considered that Conner had invented your visit just to smear you, but then we found a paparazzi guy who confirmed you were there. Pictures, even."

Joe Vente.

"And afterward we spoke to the head of security at Summit, your boy Jerry Donovan, who told us how you were trying to get Keith Conner's address. The bartender at the Formosa has you drinking the brown stuff at breakfast time."

"Great," I said. "Unstable, drinking, obsessive." I drew in a breath. "Here's what's gonna come out next. The murder weapon? It belongs to me. It'll be the same club I threw at the intruder in my backyard. Also, I've been having problems at school--missing classes, conflicts with students. I have a paranoid view of government agents, as evidenced by my screenplay. I even tore my house apart in a delusional fit, looking for imaginary planted bugs."

"Your wife can confirm that they were there," Sally said. "The bugs."

"Right," I said, "an unbiased witness."

"After we filled Jerry Donovan in about the break-in at Conner's, he told us about the surveillance equipment he inspected at your place and about the transmitters he found in some of your clothes. So there's one independent confirmation."

Jerry must've really thought I'd posed a threat to Conner if he'd come clean about his clandestine visit to our house. I said, "But for all he knows, I could've planted all that stuff myself as part of some elaborate cover story."

"Okay . . ." Sally's cheeks were flushed. "If you clubbed Keith Conner to death, why was there no spatter on your hands or clothes?"

"That's angle-dependent, and two out of four expert witnesses will get the math right. Or wrong. Plus, did the crime-scene guys check the U-pipe under the hotel-room sink?"

Sally and Valentine looked at each other. "Yes," she said slowly. "Traces of blood."

"Which will prove to be Keith's. Which shows I washed off what spatter there was after killing him."

"Which side are you arguing here?" Valentine asked.

"I'm arguing the facts. I've got no copies of the discs or e-mails, and the Web sites have vanished, leaving me with only ten-second cell-phone-recorded bursts of secondary footage I could've generated myself. Then I steal out of bed late at night, having lied to my wife, to break in to Hotel Angeleno. I even ducked past a staff member, making sure to look conspicuously furtive."

"You build a convincing case," Valentine said.

"I'm the perfect fall guy. Angry, discontented. All they had to do was push the blinking buttons and I charged right down that road."

A news flash cut in over the soap opera, a picture of Keith Conner with the dates bookending his life, then footage of me being led from the hotel, anguish written across my gray features, my teeth bared like a chimpanzee simulating a human grin. I didn't remember anything of that walk but flashbulbs and photographers shouting my name to draw my focus. My name, my face, out over the morning airwaves. The East Coast was already reading about the whole sordid affair. My parents, over their Maxwell House. I was now one of those creepy, unhinged assassins, men with vacant stares and odd fixations and grievances lovingly nursed to bloody fruition. It hit me powerfully, devastatingly, that nothing in my life could ever get back to normal again.

But Valentine gave me scant room for self-pity. "Since you have all the answers, why don't you tell us why anyone would bother to frame you."

"This isn't about me. It was about killing Keith."

"Or having you go down," Valentine said.

"There are easier ways to take down someone like me than killing a movie star."

"Yes," Sally said, "but maybe none this nasty."

Valentine said to me, "Explain."

My head was lowered, but I could feel them studying me. Through the muddle of my terror, I'd forced myself to work out at least this. "They wanted Conner dead, so they looked around for someone with a good motive. They didn't have to look far. He and I had a well-publicized dispute, not to mention the outstanding lawsuit and battery charge."

Anyway, I figured the lawsuit was still outstanding; to my knowledge, my attorney had never received the settlement offer from the studio. Had a resolution ever been close, or was that just another way I'd been strung along? Was the legal back-and-forth even related to all this? Given the barrel I was currently staring down, I didn't want to sidetrack Sally and Valentine for something so vague, at least unless my lawyer could wrangle some concrete information out of the studio.

Valentine broke me from my thoughts. "If this whole thing wasn't about you, why go to these lengths? Why have you jump through all these hoops?"

"Think about it," I said. "Does any case anywhere in the world get the kind of attention that a Hollywood murder trial does? Every footprint, every timeline, every scrap of expert testimony is laid bare for public consumption. And with a star as the victim? This is going to be the most closely scrutinized case since the one that invented the genre. Every base has to be covered. Even then you guys usually can't get a conviction."

"So you're saying they needed more than a fall guy," Sally said. "They needed a fall guy they could operate, who they could steer into the ideal frame-up." She chewed the cap of her pen. "Robbery-Homicide's been known to get tunnel vision when they lock on to a suspect. The guys framing you knew if they could make the case look like an open-and-shut, that would prevent a thorough investigation."

I said, "So the question is, what would a thorough investigation lead to?"

"Someone else with motive. Who else has motive to kill Keith Conner?"

"Movie critics," Valentine said. He weathered Sally's look. "What's it always come down to? Money. Sex. Revenge." A nod in my direction. "Your spat with him involved all three."

That tripped a memory. I snapped my fingers, excited. "That paparazzi guy, Vente, told me that Keith got some club girl pregnant and that there's a pending paternity suit. If Keith winds up dead, his money might go to that woman and the baby."

Sally flipped the page in her notebook, kept scribbling.

"A guy like Keith," Valentine said, "there's gotta be more stuff like that."

"Yes," I said. "Plenty. Someone's got to look into his business dealings, if he owed the wrong people money, fucked the wrong wife, whatever. Whoever did this is still out there. You have to make sure the DA doesn't treat this as a closed case. You've got to help me."

Sally and Valentine just looked at me, their faces tense and, I feared, helpless.

A door slammed somewhere in the building. A muffled shout grew louder--"I know he's here"--and then Ariana lunged into the interrogation room through the looking glass, flinging her arm as if she'd just twisted free of someone's grasp. "Where is he? Where?"

Two beat cops followed her in, the scene unfolding as if the two-way mirror were a big-screen TV. Ari's sudden appearance in this context was disorienting; the whole thing felt somehow removed in time and space, a vision of Christmas present.

Her face was flushed, her fists clenched. She got the table between her and the cops, and they squared off over the surface. "I want to see him. I want to see that he's okay."

Reality slammed me, and I heard myself shouting, "Ari! Ari! I'm right here."

Soundproofed.

I scrambled to my feet, but Sally placed a surprisingly powerful hand on my shoulder. "No," she said. "Not until we get separate statements."

We stood there an instant, watching my wife despair, me and two cops. I grabbed for the intercom. "I'm not gonna let her--"

Valentine had my arm twisted back across itself so hard I let out a grunt. "We haven't filed on you yet, but if you push it, we will. You want to keep chatting or take out a third mortgage to cover a bail bond?" He set me firmly back into my chair. "You will listen to what you're told."

Inside the interrogation room, Ariana's shoulders curled forward and then she shuddered, and I realized she was on the verge of weeping. The resolve had drained out of her. One of the cops circled the table and took her by the arm. "Ma'am, you'll come with me now."

The other cop was casting nervous glances at the mirror, at us. Ari, of course, picked up on it immediately. "Patrick? He's there? He's back there?"

She moved toward the mirror, the cop letting her arm slide through his grasp. "Patrick, why are you back there? Are you okay?"

She leaned forward, putting her face to the two-way, trying to peer through. She was looking right at us.

Sally made a noise in her throat, and Valentine said, "Christ."

I pressed my hand to the glass, touching Ariana, the outline of her palm. There was nothing else I could do.

The cop took her again by the arm, and she let him lead her out.

My face burned, and I bit down on my lip and willed my breath to freeze in my chest. All the time we'd wasted on our petty problems, and here I was, reduced to observing my wife through an interrogation mirror, she unable to see me, I unable to talk to her. The symbolism, oppressive enough for a student script. My voice came gruff and uneven. "You've got to keep me out of jail."

Sally said, "Then you'd better give us something."

"I don't have anything. They have me dead in the water."

"We've got no time for you to feel sorry for yourself. The men behind that size-eleven-and-a-half Danner boot bet on you being nothing more than a second-rate screenwriter. You lapped up what they laid down. If you want to save yourself, you're gonna have to come up with your own material."

Valentine: "Is there anyone besides your wife who can corroborate that they--whoever they are--exist?"

I tapped my head with the flat of my hand, prodding myself. "Elisabeta got an e-mail claiming that someone wearing a Red Sox hat would pay her a visit, but an e-mail's pretty thin. Wait, though. Doug Beeman. They recorded him also. He got DVDs, too."

"It could be argued that you recorded him."

"He'd been getting them for months. We could compare our schedules to prove I couldn't have made them. Plus, he still has the footage from that high-school basement."

"Give us an address."

I jotted it down.

"Your job is to get your head clear, go over the last nine days inch by inch, and think of anything else we can use. And you'd better do it fast." Sally ripped the address off the pad. "In the meantime we'll see Beeman."

"He'll confirm my story."

"You'd better hope so," Valentine said, and they walked out.

I sat for a long while, shuddering, gazing at the oblivious rectangle of the muted TV up on the mount. Color and movement. Shapes. The soap gave way to a commercial about a new razor with five blades, which to my dulled brain seemed like four too many. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to relive everything that had happened, starting with my stepping out onto the porch in my boxers that cold Tuesday morning, but my thoughts kept crashing off course. Prison. My marriage. What was left of my reputation.

I crossed to the door. A uniformed cop slumped against the wall just outside, flipping through a magazine. Not surprising. His eyes flicked up and held on me. I took a step out into the hall. He came off the wall. I retreated a step. He leaned back against the wall.

I said, "Okay," closed the door, and returned feebly to my chair.

Elisabeta was on the television.

Yes, that was her, sitting on a white couch, legs crossed, curtains billowing behind her.

For a moment my brain couldn't catch up to what I was seeing. Had reporters somehow uncovered her link to me? Already?

But no, there was advertising script across the screen. I stood, took a few halting steps forward, and went on tiptoe to raise the volume.

Elisabeta was saying, "--high-fiber drink mix that keeps me regular and decreases the risk of heart disease."

No accent. It was startling, bewildering, as if I'd tuned in to an interview to find Antonio Banderas speaking in a Jamaican patois.

Now she was walking over a grassy rise, a canary yellow sweater draped across her shoulders, smiling. A purring voice-over said, "Fiberestore. For a healthy digestive system. And a healthy life."

A smiling close-up. That face, the slightly crooked nose, those Everywoman features--if she could benefit from increased fiber in-take, so could you.

My lungs burned; I'd forgotten to breathe.

Elisabeta. In a TV commercial. Sounding as if she hailed from Columbus, Ohio.

An actress. Hired to play a part.

Which meant that Doug Beeman, my last good hope, was probably no longer my last good hope. I pictured Sally and Valentine, speeding toward that apartment this very minute. A fool's errand.

Dazed, I backed away from the screen and sat, nicking the edge of the seat and landing on the floor, the chair toppling over behind me. Still, I couldn't tear my eyes from the TV, though it had long returned to the soap opera.

The door opened briskly, and Kent Gable entered with a small entourage of suited men. Slacks, holsters bulging beneath jackets, badges gleaming on belts. Robbery-Homicide Division, right down to the assured lockstep of the loafers. Gable cocked his head to look down at me. Beneath my hands, the cheap floor tiles were as cool as death, as cool as the chill that had crawled into my bones.

"Sorry, Davis," he said. "Honeymoon's over."

Chapter 35

"Why . . . ?" I cleared my throat and tried again. "Why'd the DA have a change of heart?"

Pulling onto the freeway, Gable threw a folder over the seat back in answer.

It struck me in the chest. Since my wrists were cuffed, I had to move my hands together to flip through the pages. They looked like printed e-mails.

His partner, a wide Hispanic guy who hadn't offered a name, said, "We went to search your place--looks like you already tossed it for us." He didn't bother to turn around. The skin on the back of his head was visible through his shaved hair. "And after, after we paid a visit to your work. That shared little office with the Dell computer? What did you think, that we wouldn't check all your computers?"

The top e-mail, sent from peepstracker8@hotmail.com to my work e-mail address, read, Received your inquiry. This what your looking for? Let us know if theres other informations you require. The printed attachment showed a blueprint of what looked to be a mansion. I checked the time stamp--dated six months ago.

Dread turned my voice hoarse. "What's this, now?"

"Keep reading," Gable said. "It gets better."

A reply e-mail, ostensibly from me: Can you follow people, get schedule information?

I glanced back at the blueprint. The mansion looked familiar, all right. Clear down to the Olympic pool and eight-car garage.

Flipping forward again: We dont do that. Documents only. Sorry buddy. Leave cash at drop point.

The next several e-mails were thwarted attempts, apparently by me, to secure an unmarked handgun from various not-quite-unsavory-enough sources. The final page was an online booking for Hotel Angeleno that I'd evidently made under a fake name.

Gable's eyes watched me steadily from the rearview. I was frozen with disbelief. My mouth was open, wavering but not forming words. Sally and Valentine, the only ones who believed me, were off running down a dead lead. And now there was even more to deny, the evidence so overwhelming. The first thought to cut through the panic haze was that maybe I had lost it. Was this what it felt like inside a psychotic break?

Cars zipped by on either side of us, people coming back from their lunch breaks. A petite brunette smoked and chatted on her cell phone, one pedicured foot up on the dash next to the wheel. Mexicans sold flowers at the off-ramp. Lou Reed's colored girls doo-doo-doo-doo-dooed from someone's radio.

"You really think that deleting something off your computer gets rid of it for good?" Gable's partner snickered. "That shit's never gone. Our guy had it pulled off there in minutes."

I said slowly, "But my computer at home was clean?"

"So far." Gable's eyebrows drew together. "What's that get you? We have you dead on the Dell."

I shook my head, looked out the window again, the sun warming my face. I was cold and hungry and more scared than I thought it was possible to get. But they'd just shown me the first chink in the armor, giving me a new kind of resolve. If I were to have a prayer at staying out of jail, I had to retrace every minute of the past nine days and find any other chinks. As quickly as they stitched together the case against me, I had to unravel it. And I had to do it in the twenty minutes before we hit downtown and I vanished into Men's Central.

A tattooed giant in an orange jumpsuit, his cuffs cinched to a belly chain, all but blotted out the end of the corridor. He had a guard on either side of him, and I wondered if there was enough room for us to pass. Gable tightened his grip on my forearm and kept me moving forward. As we neared, the prisoner made a head lunge at me, and I stumbled back. I could hear the echo of his chuckles even after we'd turned the corner.

We passed into the booking area--a few desks, the mug-shot camera and backdrop, metal benches bolted to the concrete floor. A bunch of bored deputies ate Taco Bell over paperwork. A tiny TV showed that picture of me in a blazer that my agent had insisted I take for the trade announcement after the script sale. I looked like any other asshole readying himself for a golden ascent.

A jowly deputy looked up. "The Keith Conner guy. Can we get those fingerprints?"

"Mine are in the system already," I said.

"Good. Then they'll match nicely. It's procedure."

My heart still hadn't slowed from the scare in the corridor. I nodded, and he printed me expertly while Gable and his partner bullshitted with the others about some of Keith's cop movies and where they missed the mark. The deputy's thick hands manipulated my fingers this way and that. He didn't talk to me. He didn't make eye contact. I might as well have been inanimate. My few possessions were in a plastic tub, but at least I was still in my own clothes. Right now, still having my own clothes seemed like the greatest comfort imaginable.

When he was done, I said, "I'd like to make a phone call." Blank stares. "I get one call, right?"

The deputy pointed to a pay phone mounted on the wall.

I said, "I'm calling my attorney. Can I have a private line, please?"

Gable's partner said, "Want us to send for a psychic, too, so you can commune with Johnnie Cochran?"

Through scattered laughter Gable led me around the corner into an interview room split by a Plexiglas shield with a pass-through box for documents. No lawyer beyond the window, of course, just an old-fashioned black phone on my side of the pitted wooden ledge.

"You have a criminal attorney lined up already?" Gable said. "How 'bout that. You planned ahead."

"No, I'm calling my civil lawyer for a referral. But our conversation's still privileged."

"You have five minutes." He left me alone.

His footsteps ticked away, and then conversation resumed down the hall.

I picked up the phone, punched "0." When the jail operator picked up, I asked to be transferred to the West L.A. station. After a few seconds, the station desk officer picked up.

"Hello, this is Patrick Davis. I need to speak to Detective Sally Richards immediately. Any way you can put me through to her cell phone?"

"I--Huh? Wait a minute, Patrick Davis Patrick Davis? Didn't we just have you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Where you callin' from, son?"

"Men's Central."

"I see. Hold yourself. I'll see what I can do."

I waited through the static-cracked silence. Not all the ink had wiped off, navy blue filming the swirls of my fingertips. I touched the Plexi, leaving faint streaks.

Sally answered, "Patrick?"

"Yes, I--"

"We're off the case. I can't talk to you, not like this. You know the pay phones there are monitored."

"I told them I was calling my lawyer so they'd put me on a line in the interview room. So we're good."

"Oh." A note of surprise.

"Are you at Beeman's?"

"No, we left. No one was home. We'll go back in a few--"

"Forget it. Listen--Elisabeta? She's an actress. She's in a Fiberestore commercial, the older woman sitting on a white couch. Find her. She was a hire, so you can bet Beeman was, too."

"Wait a minute. They hired actors--"

"To manipulate me. Yes. I don't have much time, so I'm gonna talk fast. Gable pulled some incriminating documents off my computer at work."

"I heard about them," Sally said.

"I think they were installed like a virus when I opened the e-mails."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I was careful not to open any of their e-mails at home, and according to Gable the forensics guys didn't get anything off my own computer."

"Which is where the guys framing you would most logically want to have the stuff found."

"Right. They knew when I logged in to retrieve e-mails, but I don't think they knew where I was logging in from."

"Okay . . . so?"

"I also opened e-mails at Kinko's and an Internet cafe"--I gave her both locations--"so will you check those and see if any documents about Conner were installed on the computers I used there?"

"What would that give us?"

"Some of those fabricated documents--the e-mails--are time-stamped and backdated. If any like them were installed on those computers, they're gonna show times and dates when I wasn't there renting computer time."

Sally sounded excited, or at least her version of it. "Kinko's and Internet joints keep time logs for usage. Even have sign-in codes to track users. You pay with a credit card?"

"Yes."

"Better still."

I could hear her pen scribbling. She said, "Even if this does pan out, I'll need anything else you got to reapproach the DA."

"I went through everything, inch by inch, like you said, and came up with another piece you can use. The night of February fifteenth. Nine P.M.?"

"When Keith's house was vandalized. Yes."

"I was driving out to Elisabeta's. Indio. They sent me that far to make sure I was well out of the picture. But my gas gauge is broken."

"And?"

"It looks like I have a full tank, even when I don't. They probably checked it to make sure I wouldn't have to stop for gas, so no one could alibi me."

"But you did. Stop for gas."

"Yes. Check my credit-card records to find which gas station I used."

"You could've sent someone else to gas up there with your card. Not all stations have security cameras outside at the pumps."

"I went into the mart to buy a pack of gum. They always have surveillance inside. I bet you'll be able to pull footage of me there at about the same time that someone else in a Red Sox hat was leaving a dead rat on Keith's windshield. That gives you a second suspect and supports me on the frame argument. Might even be enough to keep me out of jail while they shore up probable cause."

"Maybe you're not just a second-rate screenwriter."

"Yeah, I'm a second-rate suspect, too." A banging on the metal door. I lowered my voice. "He's coming back in, so one more thing. They didn't book me. I don't think I've actually been arrested."

Gable shoved the door open. "Chat time's over, Davis. Time to move."

Sally said, "What do you mean? They printed you and read you your rights?"

I eyed Gable. "Just the former."

A brief silence. "So they probably asked if they could print you, making it consensual even though you thought you didn't have a choice."

"Exactly."

"You can be held for questioning--for a reasonable time--without being arrested."

Gable said, "Did I just talk to you?"

"Yes," I said to him, "I'm wrapping it up."

"If they haven't booked you yet," Sally said, "then the DA's skittish about charging you."

I asked, "Why?"

"It's a weird fucking case, to say the least, and she has--had--me and Valentine pressing an alternate scenario. Her office can't afford another embarrassment, which means moving slow and right. You can be charged whenever--she's not gonna want to jump in on day one unless she's positive everything is lined out and she's got the case together. They waited a year to charge Robert Blake, and look how that turned out."

"Get off the phone," Gable said.

I fisted the receiver. "But the latest stuff--"

"I know," Sally said. "I'm not gonna lie to you. The e-mails, fabricated or not, are damning. The DA's deciding whether to charge you right now, and her moving the case to Robbery-Homicide is a pretty good indication of which way she's leaning."

Gable blew out a sigh and started toward me.

I said, "Listen, Frank, I gotta go. Can you--"

"Call the DA with the new leads you gave me? If they yield, yes. Evidence like that could be the deciding factor--push her to play it conservatively and hold off on the arrest."

I thought of the hulking inmate in the hall, how he'd lunged at me. If things went badly, by tonight I'd be sharing a cage with men like him. "How long will it take you?"

"Give us two hours, then force their hand."

I did my best to keep desperation from my voice. "How am I even supposed to know how to . . . ?"

Sally said, "They'll have to formally charge you or let you go."

I said, "But I don't want to push it if--" Gable was staring at me, so I stopped.

"It's your only play," she said. "Two hours. By then either we'll have gotten something to the DA or your leads are a bust."

Gable reached for the phone impatiently, but I turned away. My hand was squeezing the receiver so tightly that my fingers ached. "How will I know which?"

"You won't."

Gable put his thumb down on the telephone base, severing the connection.

An hour and fifty-seven minutes in the hard wooden chair of the interrogation room left me sore, my lower back cramped. Working in shifts, Gable and his partner had hammered me on every aspect of my life, and I'd answered honestly and consistently, all the while tamping down my panic and racking my brain for how to play it when the time came. Up until now, Gable had been careful to phrase everything as a question--"Step into this room for me?" As long as I complied, there was no need to arrest me, and I didn't let on that I was aware of my options. Until now.

Gable paced in front of me, his watch flashing again into view. I'd bought Sally and Valentine their two hours to look for conflicting evidence and talk to the DA. It was time to force the issue and see whether I wound up free or in a cell.

"Am I under arrest?"

Gable stopped. Grimaced. Then, carefully: "I never said that."

"Pretty heavily implied."

"At the crime scene, you said you were willing to go with Detectives Richards and Valentine to cooperate. You gave your full consent to go to the station with them. All we did was transfer you. We asked you to come with us. We asked if we could print you. We asked if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions."

"So," I said, "I'm free to go?"

"Not quite. We're allowed to hold you for--"

"A reasonable time to question me. Right. I've been in custody now for about sixteen hours. You detain me much longer without charges, that might piss off a jury if we get there."

"When we get there."

"You're out of reasons to prolong my detention. I've answered all your questions. You've had time to search my house and my office, so it's not like you need to hold me to prevent me from destroying evidence. You know where to find me if you decide to take me back into custody. I'm not a flight risk. My face is on every news channel, so even if I wasn't in dire financial straits, I couldn't exactly throw on a pair of Groucho glasses and hop a flight to Rio."

Gable had stopped pacing, his surprise giving way to irritation.

I continued, "So please tell the DA I'm done cooperating. She needs to pull the trigger and arrest me now--or let me try to get back to my life."

Gable crouched so his head was lower than mine. He worked his lip. "You've known. You've been planning this. The whole time." He glared at me with equal parts hatred and amusement. "That was your lawyer on the phone, was it?"

I didn't answer.

"Good lawyer," he said.

"The best."

"I need to make a phone call of my own. I'll be back to you shortly with an answer. One way or another."

The door closed, leaving me with the throbbing in my back and my doleful reflection in the two-way mirror. To say I looked like hell would be an understatement. My face was pale and puffy, dark crescents holding up my eyes. My hair was thoroughly mussed; I'd been tugging at it anxiously. My joints ached. Leaning over, I ground the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.

I might never go home again.

Did California have lethal injection or the electric chair?

How the hell did I wind up here?

A creak to my right and Gable loomed in the doorway. Desperate, I tried to read his face. It was tight and filled with disdain.

He turned, walking off, flinging the door open in a burst of temper. It smashed against the outside wall and wobbled back, giving off a tuning-fork vibration.

I sat in my chair, watching that door wobble. I rose. I walked out. Gable was nowhere to be seen. The plastic tub holding my possessions had been placed on the floor outside the jamb, the throwaway cell phone right there on top, for anyone to see. I looked for my Sanyo before remembering that Sally had taken it to review the bits of recorded footage. My knees cracked as I crouched to pick up the tub. The elevators were in view at the end of the hall. My breath echoing in my skull, I walked toward them, braced for someone to seize me, condemn me--the inverse of a last-minute pardon.

But I got there. Once the doors slid closed behind me, I leaned weakly against the elevator wall, plastic tub under my arm. The ride down to the main floor took an eternity. When the doors opened, no one was there waiting to grab me. I trudged across the lobby, through the solid front doors, and out into the dusk. A polluted breeze blew up from the street, but the air felt as fresh as spring in my lungs. I dumped the disposable cell in the trash.

I had some trouble keeping my balance down the wide steps. I walked over to the street and sat heavily on the curb, my feet in the gutter, buses and cars blowing by. A brittle leaf fluttered against the asphalt like a dying bird. I watched it, then watched it some more.

"Get up." There she was above me, backlit. I was surprised and also somehow not. "We've got work to do." Sally offered a hand, and after a moment I took it. I got halfway to my feet when my knees went out, and I lowered myself back onto the curb.

"I think I need a minute," I said.

Chapter 36

"Two things did it," Sally told me as we barreled along the 101. "The gas station had digital security footage of you at the counter, which the clerk e-mailed right over. That alibied you for the break-in at Conner's and got a second suspect into the mix. Enough to give the DA pause."

Valentine was still off trying to run down Elisabeta, so I rode in the front of the sedan, which made me feel vaguely human again. I dialed Ariana for the fifth time, but all her numbers remained busy. Sally had given me my Sanyo cell phone back, after declaring the recorded clips on it useless. When I'd turned it on, it had been jammed with excited condolences from virtually everyone who had the number, too many to listen to right now, given my state of mind.

"And," Sally continued, "the computer you rented at Kinko's--a Compaq. It had a bunch of time-stamped documents implanted in various places, showing the planning of the crime, your obsession with Conner, stuff going back a year. Beyond the question of why you would leave that stuff on a rented computer, it's impossible that you created those documents."

"Because the time stamps didn't match the dates I rented the computer?"

"Even better." She let slip a pleased smile. "The serial number on the Compaq shows it to have shipped as part of a bulk buy on December fifteenth. Which means the computer didn't yet exist when you were supposedly generating incriminating documents on it. Looks like you outthought them on one front--they were counting on you to check your e-mail at home or at the office."

"Me: one. Bad guys: ninety-seven."

"Hey," she said, "it's a start."

I resumed calling our house, Ariana's cell phone, her work. Busy or off the hook. Full mailbox. No answer.

A blinking icon on my cell phone caught my eye. A text message. Another threatening communication? Nervously, I thumbed it onto the screen, relaxing when I saw that it was from Marcello: I FIGURE U MIGHT NEED THIS RITE ABOUT NOW. The accompanying photograph was a freeze-frame from the footage I'd recorded onto my phone. It showed the windshield reflection of the Vehicle Identification Number, blown up and clarified. Closing my eyes, I gave private thanks for Marcello's postproduction skills.

Sally said, "What?"

I held out the phone so she could see the image. "This is the VIN of the car from the second e-mail. Where the guy filmed through the windshield to show me the route to that Honda in the alley."

She unclipped the radio and called in the VIN, asking the desk officer to look into it. She gave a few uh-huhs, then an "Oh, really?" When she signed off, she said, "That club girl? She had a miscarriage. So the paternity suit's a dead end. At least that paternity suit. As for the VIN, that should be easy. We'll get word back on the car soon."

"Thank you," I said. "For taking me seriously. All of it. I know you're out on a limb."

The tires thrummed over the freeway exit. "Let's be clear about something. I like you, Patrick. But we're not friends. Someone got murdered. He may have been an asshole, but he was killed in my jurisdiction, and that angers me. Deeply. I want to know who killed him and why--even if it's you--and there is no condition more motivating to me than curiosity. Plus, call me old-fashioned, but the thought of an innocent person behind bars makes me chafe. Justice, truth, and all that crap. So I appreciate your thanks, but you should know I didn't do any of it for you."

We drove in silence. I looked out my window for a time before trying Ariana again. And again. The home phone was still busy--had she taken it off the hook? Between attempts my cell rang. I checked caller ID eagerly, but it was the Northridge film department. Probably not calling to offer me a raise. Frustrated, I threw my phone onto the dash. It rattled against the windshield. I took a few deep breaths, staring at my lap. At first I hadn't noticed we'd stopped moving.

We were parked outside a familiar run-down Van Nuys apartment complex. Sally climbed out, but I just sat there, taking in the bent security gate and the courtyard beyond. VACANCY, written on rusted metal, swaying from the gutter. A PARTMENTS FOR R ENT.

All the signs had been there, and yet I'd read none of them.

Sally knocked the hood impatiently, and I climbed out, regarding the building with awe. It was familiar, and yet altered in my mind, given what had transpired. The directory box, with its blank renter spot for Apartment 11. I thought about how I'd tried to call up to the apartment anyway, but the line had been out of service. How pleased I'd been with myself when I'd figured out to punch in the entry code. So pleased I hadn't lingered on the fact that I was heading to an apartment with no renter and a disconnected call-up line.

We stopped before the locked front gate. Sally waited expectantly until I realized why. Reaching out a trembling finger, I pressed the four numbers. The gate buzzed, and Sally tugged it open, giving me an after-you wave.

Up the stairs, down the floating hall to Beeman's apartment. That old-fashioned keyhole where I'd seen Beeman's eye peering out at me.

"I reached the manager by phone," Sally said. "He claims the place hasn't been rented in months. Water damage--I guess the owner's waiting to pay for mold remediation. The manager's not on site to let us in. And I can't get a warrant. It's not my case, you know. Shame." Sally put her hands on the railing, looked out across the courtyard below, humming to herself. Something classical. I watched the back of her head.

Then I turned and kicked in the door.

The brittle wood gave easily. Stooped, I stood in the doorway. Empty. No mattress, no dirty clothes, no big-screen TV partnered with a convenient DVD player. Just the moist reek of mold, dust motes swirling in a shaft of light, that water stain bleeding through the wall.

It felt like entering a dream world. I paused a few steps in.

There he'd sat, back on his heels before the TV, swaying, clutching himself.

An actor.

That beaten-down humility I'd identified with so strongly. A man I'd taken for vulnerable, frustrated, damaged.

Paid to play me for a fool.

He'd embodied my hopes and fears. He'd known how desperate I'd been to redeem him, to redeem myself. Even in light of everything else, that betrayal was blinding, humiliating.

Sally was saying something. I blinked hard, my ears ringing, an echo chamber of my thoughts. "What?"

"I said, we find Doug Beeman, we clear you."

An electronic chirp issued somewhere in the apartment, and Sally's hand went to her hip. We looked at each other. Sally tilted her head toward the bathroom. We inched over, our steps silent on the worn-through carpet. The door gave silently to the pressure of her knuckles.

The bathroom was empty, but behind the toilet bowl, to the side, visible only once we'd inched past the chipped counter, was a cell phone. It had probably fallen from a pants pocket onto the wraparound shag rug as someone sat.

Another chirp.

As Sally exhaled, I crouched and flipped it open. The screen saver featured a Sin City shot of Jessica Alba and the owner's name, keyed in purple: MIKEY PERALTA. Doug Beeman's real name, on the cell phone he'd claimed not to have?

Clicking the speaker button, I hit "play."

"Message from"--and then a prerecorded wheezy voice with a strong New York accent--"Roman LaRusso." Then, "Mikey, it's Roman. The deodorant people rang me in a panic when you missed your call time this morning. I figured you were just hungover, but then I heard you might have been in an accident? Are you all right? Can you make it to the set tomorrow? Call me. C'mon, I'm worried."

Twenty minutes later we were at Valley Presbyterian Hospital, standing over Mikey Peralta's body, the cardiac monitor going strong, peaks and gullies to shame a tech stock. One of his eyelids was closed, smooth as ivory, the other at half mast, revealing the wine-red sclera beneath. His forehead was dented on the right side, a bloodless divot the size of a fist. The teal hospital gown stretched across the compact rise of his chest, and his arms lay limp, his hands curled unnaturally inward. Dark puffy hair, blown back from that receding hairline, framed his chalky face against the pillow.

Brain-dead.

The ICU nurse was talking to Sally behind me. "--filed an accident report. Hit-and-run, yeah. I guess no one saw anything, and he was pretty much gorked on arrival."

I was still struggling to overcome my shock. As Sally had stepped in and out, taking phone calls and gathering information, I'd stared blankly at the supine body. It was impossible not to think of him as Doug Beeman.

Stepping forward, I lifted his hand. Dead weight. Turned it over. The insides of his wrists were perfectly smooth. The razor-blade scars had been nothing more than makeup and special effects.

I set his arm gently back in place. The smell of whiskey tinged the air around him.

Valentine arrived, and he and Sally conferred in hushed voices. "RHD ain't gonna like him here one bit."

"Look, we've got bigger concerns," Sally said. "Obviously they're snipping off the loose ends here, covering their tracks. Once they know Patrick's out--"

"Come on. They're not gonna want to Jack Ruby him. That'll only make it obvious there is a frame and open up more--"

I turned, and they went silent. "Elisabeta's next," I said. "Did you find her?"

Valentine said, "I couldn't run her down. The Fiberestore commercial's two years old. The name on the contract says Deborah B. Vance, but the Social doesn't line up and there are no last-knowns. Actresses are a pain in the ass. They reinvent themselves every five minutes, always working under different names, moving, ducking taxes. Their credit history's a mess, so their financials look like spaghetti. I called SAG and AFTRA, but they've got no one paying union dues under that name. I could keep digging, but"--a pointed look at Sally--"this isn't our case, and you can bet RHD is already all over every move we--"

From outside we heard, "Officer, you can't just keep piling into the patient's room--" and then a booming voice, "It's not 'Officer.' It's 'Captain.' "

Valentine looked at Sally, mouthed, Fuck.

The door opened, and the captain entered with his assistant. The captain's eyes, the same coffee color as his skin, swept the room. Of middling height, his bulk softened with middle age, he would have been unimpressive if not for the sense of authority emanating from him like a radioactive glow. A vein throbbed in his neck, but aside from that, his rage seemed to be restrained. "You brought the lead suspect along to investigate the death of a person of interest in his own case?" He forked two fingers at me. "For all you know, he was the hit-and-run driver."

"That's not possible, sir."

"No? And why is that, Detective Richards?"

"Because I've been with him since the time of his release."

"You picked him up downtown?" Each syllable enunciated.

Peralta's monitor kept emitting those soothing beeps.

"I did, Captain."

A deep breath, nostrils flaring. "A word, Detectives." The stare hitched on me a moment, the first direct acknowledgment of my presence. "You, wait in the hall."

We all snapped to. As I parked myself in a reception chair, Sally and Valentine followed the captain into an empty patient room, the assistant standing post outside, expressionless. The door clicked neatly, and then there was an absolute silence. No baritone thundering, no foghorn blare of displeasure, just a chilling graveyard quiet.

My phone hummed, and, praying it was Ari, I scrambled for it. But the number on the caller ID screen was my parents'. I took a hard breath, returned the phone to my pocket. Not the best time for explanations.

The captain exited, his assistant falling into step beside him, and they breezed by me, nearly stepping on my shoes. Valentine came out a moment later, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He paused before me but kept his gaze straight ahead. "Four boys, Davis. That's a lotta bills. The case is with RHD and only with RHD. I'm sorry, man, but I'm not gonna fall on my sword for you."

I pointed at Mikey Peralta's room. "They killed him."

"That boy's got two DUIs on record. So a car accident? Not exactly a shocker."

"They knew that. That's why they chose him."

"That, too, huh?" He smoothed his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. "This thing is too big for you. The cops, the conspirators, the press--everyone is watching you. If you get in a speck of trouble--and I do mean a speck--you're fucked. And we won't be able to help you. My advice is you go home, get quiet, and let this thing shake itself out."

He kept on to the elevators. I studied the tips of my shoes, all too aware of Sally's presence behind the shut door across the way. My sole remaining ally? I almost didn't want to go in and find out.

But I did. No one had bothered to turn on the overheads, but an X-ray light box cast a pale glow. Sally was sitting on a gurney, her broad shoulders bowed. The creases of her shirt at the stomach were dark. "I'm done," she said.

Dread filled me. "As in fired?"

She waved me off. "Please. I'm a broad detective and a dyke, so I can't be fired. Single mother, too. Shit, talk about job security." Her voice held no hint of levity. "But I'm off this case. As in I will need to keep my captain advised of my location at all times." She wiped her mouth. "The VIN number you gave me traced to a Hertz rental. The credit card securing the vehicle was paid by a limited-liability company called Ridgeline, Inc. The desk officer glanced into the company, said it's like a Russian nesting doll. A shell within a shell within a shell. There might've been another shell in there--I kinda lost track when my cell phone cut out."

"Why are you handing this off to me? What am I supposed to--?"

But she continued, undeterred. "Unless that body one room over is the biggest coincidence since Martha Stewart's stock trade, these guys are covering their tracks. They probably want you living, since a dead fall guy makes everyone cry conspiracy, which--" She flared her hands. "But clearly you're in their crosshairs, and they're waiting and watching."

"Can I get protection?"

"Protection? Patrick, you're the lead suspect."

"You and Valentine are the only cops who believe me. And he's walking. There could be a leak somewhere else in the department--in RHD, even. I've got no one else who can help me. No one else I can trust. Don't hang me out."

"I don't have a choice." Her head was tilted, the bulge of her cheek blotched with red. She'd stiffened her hand to punctuate the point, and it floated, four fingers aimed at nothing. Steady beeping from the next room was audible, and I realized with a chill that it was the cardiac monitor hooked up to Mikey Peralta.

"Will you . . . ?" I needed another moment to find my composure. My voice, after her outburst, sounded faint. "Will you hand off the conflicting evidence to Robbery-Homicide?"

"Of course I will. But, Patrick, every case has edges that won't align, and given the preponderance of evidence, they're eager to move in one direction and entrench. If they're batting .900 against you, that's about .400 better than they usually get."

"But there's hard evidence--"

"All evidence is not created equal." She was growing angry again. "And you have to understand: Pieces of evidence are building blocks, nothing more. The same ones can be shoved together to form different arguments. Counterarguments. The gas station's security tape gets you off the hook for the Conner break-in, but you might have hired someone else to do it to give you the alibi. You see? There are sides. The lines have been drawn. It's not corrupt. It's not political. It's not an agenda. It's how the system works. That's why it's a system."

My voice rose, matching hers. "So all Robbery-Homicide's gonna do is sit back and piece together what they already have?"

She looked at me like I was an idiot. "Of course not. They're gonna be working day and night to shore up the case against you so they can come arrest you. For good this time."

"What . . . what do I do, then? Go home and wait to get arrested?"

Her hands lifted from her knees, then fell. "I wouldn't."

The hospital air tasted bitter, medicinal, or maybe it was just me. Sally slid off the gurney, headed past me.

I said, "I have to find my wife. Can I get a ride to my car?"

She paused with her back to me, her large shoulders shifting. "Not from me."

The door closed behind her. The perpetual beep of the monitor came through the wall. I stayed in the semidarkness, listening to a dead man's heart beat.

Chapter 37

Seeing my dinged-up Camry from the backseat of the cab, I breathed a sigh of relief. Since I hadn't been formally arrested, my car hadn't been impounded. Media stragglers hung on outside Hotel Angeleno, but fortunately I'd parked up the street last night, which was now beyond the fray.

As I pulled the remaining bills from my repossessed wallet, the well-mannered Punjabi taxi driver pointed and asked, in beautiful English, "Did you hear what happened here last night?"

I nodded and slid out, ducking quickly into my car, anonymous in the thickening dusk. I kept the radio off. My hands, bloodless against the steering wheel, looked skeletal. The streets were dark and wet. Bugs pinged around streetlight orbs. Coming up the hill, I heard the thrumming of helicopters, the bass track of Los Angeles. My Sanyo was at my ear, and my father was saying, "Give the word, we'll be on a plane."

"I didn't do this, Dad." My mouth was dry. "I need you to know that."

"Of course we know that."

"I told him not to go to that city."

"Ma, not now," I said, though she was in the background, crying, and couldn't hear me.

"Didn't I tell him?"

"Right," my dad answered her, "because you foresaw this."

I came around the bend and saw the news choppers circling, bright beams laid down on our front yard. I was shocked. Though I'd registered the noise, I hadn't put together that our house was the draw. I was now the sordid news beat, the pinned frog under laboratory lights. Cars and vans lined both curbs, and news crews swarmed along the sidewalks. A guy in a baseball cap was peeking into our mailbox. Ari's white pickup was slant-parked five feet from the curb, as if abandoned for a flood or an alien invasion.

I'd dropped the phone but could still make out my mom's tinny voice: "Whatever you need, Patrick. Whatever you need."

I hit the brakes to reverse out of there, but it was too late. They rushed me, and I caught a full frontal view of the floodwater that had forced Ari to ditch her truck. Bulbs popping, knuckles tapping, voices shouting. I nosed the car toward the driveway, nudging aside hips and legs, before the need to flee overtook me and I gave up.

Grabbing my cell, I shoved my door out into hands and elbows. A camera cracked against the window. I stood, but the swell pushed me back into the car--Give him space give him space!--and then I rose again, pressing forward. Lenses and foundation-tan faces and bundled microphones slanted in on me. What are you feeling right Does your wife know Is it true that Keith Tell us in your own words Are you--

They moved as a floating mass around me, tripping over the curb, banging into each other. When I stepped onto our property it was like crossing a magic line. Most of them stayed back, straining against an invisible fence, though a few followed me. I was too shell-shocked to protest. The helicopter spotlight glowed around me, blazing white, though I was certainly imagining the heat. Churning air blew specks of dirt into my eyes. Our porch was scattered with yellow DHL boxes, SAME DAY SERVICE written in screaming red across the sides. As I fumbled out my keys, a few names jumped out at me from the airbills-- Larry King Live, 20/20, Barbara Walters.

I jabbed the key at the lock, but then the door gave way on its own, Ariana shouting, "I told you, off the porch or I'll call the cops aga--"

She froze, and we stared at each other across the threshold, dumbstruck, her strained face flickering beneath a cascade of camera flashes that matched the crescendo of my heartbeat. How 'bout a homecoming hug Are you upset with your Can we get a moment between What you must be feeling--

Ari grabbed my hand and tugged me inside, and the door flew shut, and I was home.

She said, "Dead bolt," and I complied. She wouldn't let go of my hand. We walked together to the couch and sat next to each other, almost calmly. On the muted plasma, Fox News showed the angle from the sky, the angle I'd just been on the receiving end of. I watched myself, a puzzled dot emerging from the crush of the crowd and working its way clumsily up the front walk.

The doorbell chimed, and Ariana's sweaty hand tightened around mine. The home phone rang. Then Ari's cell phone. Then mine. The home phone. The home phone. Someone knocked politely on the front door. Ari's cell phone. Mine again.

The cushions had been tugged off the couch or clumsily replaced, no doubt by the cops when they'd searched the house. Papers and bills lay scattered on the carpet. The kitchen cupboards stood open, the drawers pulled out and upended. She'd been through hell, and it was my fault.

By my shoe was one of the many bills from my lawyer, reviewed and tossed aside by the cops. I'd require a criminal attorney now on top of that, which meant, barring a miracle, we'd have to sell the house.

What had I done to us?

Ariana said, "I woke up. And you were gone."

"I didn't want you to be scared."

"How'd that work out?"

"Not good."

She started to say something, then swore sharply, rooted through her purse, turned on the jammer, and threw it on the cushion between us. It sat there, silent and innocuous-looking, withstanding her glare. She took a moment to steady her breathing. "The bed was still warm. And I had to sit with it. Knowing you'd gone to the hotel."

"I couldn't resist," I said. "I had to go."

"I knew in my gut it was bad. I thought you'd get killed. I almost called the cops. But then they called me. I thought--" She shoved a fist against her mouth until her ragged breathing evened out. "Well, let's just say I'd never have thought that hearing you got arrested would be a relief."

The phones bleated out their reveille again, and when the home line paused to catch its breath, Ari rose and swatted the receiver off the wall mount. She came back and took up my hand again, and we sat, staring ahead at nothing. "They went through everything. My fucking Tampax carton. They emptied the trash. I came into the bedroom, a cop was reading my journal. He didn't apologize. He just turned the page."

My mouth was dry. I said, "You knew. And I didn't listen."

"There's plenty I haven't listened to."

I looked down at the legal bill at the tip of my sneaker, my face hot, burning. "What I've done to us . . . if I could take it back--"

"I forgive you."

"You shouldn't."

"But I do."

I blinked, felt wet on my cheeks. "Just like that?"

Her grip was so firm that my fingers hurt. The helicopters beat at the night air overhead. She said, "It's gotta start somewhere."

Every action seemed freighted with considerations. Changing channels on the TV. Walking past a gap in the curtains. Deleting cell-phone messages. My Sanyo, at capacity, held twenty-seven. Julianne, supportive. A neighbor, crying. A friend from high school, his excitement hidden beneath a veneer of concern. My civil attorney, confirming that he'd never received the studio's settlement offer and now, understandably, could get not a peep out of them; there did remain, however, the issue of his depleted retainer. My department chair, Dr. Peterson, bemoaning "a full day of missed lectures. I understand there are extenuating circumstances, but unfortunately we still have students we are responsible for. I need to see you. I'll expect you tomorrow morning at ten."

Her brusque hang-up punctuated my dismay. I'd be there, even if it killed me. Especially in the midst of everything I was up against, I had a desperate need to hold on to something normal. All I had was an adjunct faculty position, but I realized now what that job meant to me. It's what had gotten me up all those mornings when I'd wanted to curl up in defeat, and I owed it back more than I'd yet repaid. Plus, it was grounding. A desk and a function. The last piece of my identity as I used to know it. If I lost that now, who would I be?

I turned off my cell phone and set it on my desk in the place my computer used to occupy before the cops had seized it. The media had thinned out a bit once the photographers grabbed the homecoming shots and the reporters did their stand-up reports, but quite a few unmarked vans remained, idling hopefully at the curbs, and the news copters maintained their tireless loops. The clock showed 3:11 A.M. I was a kind of exhausted I hadn't known was possible.

I'd used Ariana's laptop earlier to look up Ridgeline, Inc., and had found nothing worthwhile. Shell within a shell. Rolling up the window shade, I stared across the rooftops, wondered who was staring back at me. Who the hell had done this to me? Were they out there gloating? Were they planning their next move or just waiting for LAPD to swing back and roll me up?

I walked down the hall. Ariana was lying under the covers, balled in the fetal position, the fake Marlboros on the nightstand. Someone was shouting outside, and a dog barked, but then it was quiet except for the white noise of the helicopters.

"When I tried to write," I said, "my characters were always levelheaded. They thought on their feet. Grace under pressure. It's such bullshit. It's not like that at all. I was so fucking scared."

She said, "You did okay. You got yourself out."

"For now." I got into bed--our new bed--and stroked her head. "I mean, murder? Prison? We live in a death-penalty state. Jesus, the fact that's even relevant . . ."

"If we sit in this, we won't make it. It's too bleak. So let's make each other a promise. The last time we were up against it, after Don, the movie, we shut down. We drifted." Her dark eyes shone. "Whatever happens now, we stay in it together. And we fight like hell. If we go down, we go down swinging."