Whispers

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are

either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously,

and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirety coincidental.

This Berkley book contains the complete

text of the original hardcover edition.

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from new film.

WHISPERS

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with

G. P. Putnam's Sons

PRINTING HISTORY

G. P. Putnam's Sons edition / June 1980

Berkley edition / April 1981

All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 1980 by Dean R. Koontz

Back cover photograph copyright (c) Jerry Bauer

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in any form without permission.

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ISBN: 0-425-18109-X

BERKLEY(R)

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55 54 53 52 51

This book is dedicated to

Rio and Battista Locatelli,

two very nice people who

deserve the very best.

PART ONE

The Living and The Dead

The forces that affect our lives, the influences that

mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a

distant room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended

only with difficulty.

--Charles Dickens

One

TUESDAY AT DAWN, Los Angeles trembled. Windows rattled in their frames. Patio wind chimes tinkled merrily even though there was no wind. In some houses, dishes fell off shelves.

At the start of the morning rush hour, KFWB, all-news radio, used the earthquake as its lead story. The tremor had registered 4.8 on the Richter Scale. By the end of the rush hour, KFWB demoted the story to third place behind a report of terrorist bombings in Rome and an account of a five-car accident on the Santa Monica Freeway. After all, no buildings had fallen. By noon, only a handful of Angelenos (mostly those who had moved west within the past year) found the event worthy of even a minute's conversation over lunch.

***

The man in the smoke-gray Dodge van didn't even feel the earth move. He was at the northwest edge of the city, driving south on the San Diego Freeway, when the quake struck. Because it is difficult to feel any but the strongest tremors while in a moving vehicle, he wasn't aware of the shaking until he stopped for breakfast at a diner and heard one of the other customers talking about it.

He knew at once that the earthquake was a sign meant just for him. It had been sent either to assure him that his mission in Los Angeles would be a success--or to warn him that he would fail. But which message was he supposed to perceive in this sign?

He brooded over that question while he ate. He was a big strong man--six-foot-four, two hundred and thirty pounds, all muscle--and he took more than an hour and a half to finish his meal. He started with two eggs, bacon, cottage fries, toast and a glass of milk. He chewed slowly, methodically, his eyes focused on his food as if he were entranced by it. When he finished his first plateful, he asked for a tall stack of pancakes and more milk. After the pancakes, he ate a cheese omelet with three pieces of Canadian bacon on the side, another serving of toast, and orange juice.

By the time he ordered the third breakfast, he was the chief topic of conversation in the kitchen. His waitress was a giggly redhead named Helen, but each of the other waitresses found an excuse to pass by his table and get a better look at him. He was aware of their interest, but he didn't care.

When he finally asked Helen for the check, she said, "You must be a lumberjack or something."

He looked up at her and smiled woodenly. Although this was the first time he had been in the diner, although he had met Helen only ninety minutes ago, he knew exactly what she was going to say. He had heard it all a hundred times before.

She giggled self-consciously, but her blue eyes fixed unwaveringly on his. "I mean, you eat enough for three men."

"I guess I do."

She stood beside the booth, one hip against the edge of the table, leaning slightly forward, not-so-subtly letting him know that she might be available. "But with all that food ... you don't have an ounce of fat on you."

Still smiling, he wondered what she'd be like in bed. He pictured himself taking hold of her, thrusting into her--and then he pictured his hands around her throat, squeezing, squeezing, until her face slowly turned purple and her eyes bulged out of their sockets.

She stared at him speculatively, as if wondering whether he satisfied all of his appetites with such single-minded devotion as he had shown toward the food. "Must get a lot of exercise."

"I lift weights," he said.

"Like Arnold Schwarzenegger."

"Yeah."

She had a graceful, delicate neck. He knew he could break it as if it were a dry twig, and the thought of doing that made him feel warm and happy.

"You sure do have a set of big arms," she said, softly, appreciatively. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and she touched his bare forearm with one finger. "I guess, with all that pumping iron, no matter how much you eat, it just turns into more muscle."

"Well, that's the idea," he said. "But I also have one of those metabolisms."

"Huh?"

"I burn up a lot of calories in nervous energy."

"You? Nervous?"

"Jumpy as a Siamese cat."

"I don't believe it. I bet there's nothing in the world could make you nervous," she said.

She was a good-looking woman, about thirty years old, ten years younger than he was, and he figured he could have her if he wanted her. She would need a little wooing, but not much, just enough so she could convince herself that he had swept her off her feet, playing Rhett to her Scarlett, and had tumbled her into bed against her will. Of course, if he made love to her, he would have to kill her afterward. He'd have to put a knife through her pretty breasts or cut her throat, and he really didn't want to do that. She wasn't worth the bother or the risk. She simply wasn't his type, he didn't kill redheads.

He left her a good tip, paid his check at the cash register by the door, and got out of there. After the air conditioned restaurant, the September heat was like a pillow jammed against his face. As he walked toward the Dodge van, he knew that Helen was watching him, but he didn't look back.

From the diner he drove to a shopping center and parked in a corner of the large lot, in the shade of a date palm, as far from the stores as he could get. He climbed between the bucket seats, into the back of the van, pulled down a bamboo shade that separated the driver's compartment from the cargo area, and stretched out on a thick but tattered mattress that was too short for him. He had been driving all night without rest, all the way from St. Helena in the wine country. Now, with a big breakfast in his belly, he was drowsy.

Four hours later, he woke from a bad dream. He was sweating, shuddering, burning up and freezing at the same time, clutching the mattress with one hand and punching the empty air with the other. He was trying to scream, but his voice was stuck far down in his throat; he made a dry, gasping sound.

At first, he didn't know where he was. The rear of the van was saved from utter darkness only by three thin strips of pale light that came through narrow slits in the bamboo blind. The air was warm and stale. He sat up, felt the metal wall with one hand, squinted at what little there was to see, and gradually oriented himself. When at last he realized he was in the van, he relaxed and sank back onto the mattress again.

He tried to remember what the nightmare had been about, but he could not. That wasn't unusual. Nearly every night of his life, he suffered through horrible dreams from which he woke in terror, mouth dry, heart pounding; but he never could recall what had frightened him.

Although he knew where he was now, the darkness made him uneasy. He kept hearing stealthy movement in the shadows, soft scurrying sounds that put the hair up on the back of his neck even though he knew he was imagining them. He raised the bamboo shade and sat blinking for a minute until his eyes adjusted to the light.

He picked up a bundle of chamois-textured clothes that lay on the floor beside the mattress. The bundle was tied up with dark brown cord. He loosened the knot and unrolled the soft clothes, four of them, each rolled around the other. Wrapped in the center were two big knives. They were very sharp. He had spent a lot of time carefully honing the gracefully tapered blades. When he took one of them in his hand, it felt strange and wonderful, as if it were a sorcerer's knife, infused with magic energy that it was now transmitting to him.

The afternoon sun had slipped past the shadow of the palm tree in which he had parked the Dodge. Now the light streamed through the windshield, over his shoulder, and struck the icelike steel; the razor-edge glinted coldly.

As he stared at the blade, his thin lips slowly formed a smile. In spite of the nightmare, the sleep had done him a lot of good. He felt refreshed and confident. He was absolutely certain that the morning's earthquake had been a sign that everything would go well for him in Los Angeles. He would find the woman. He would get his hands on her. Today. Or Wednesday at the latest. As he thought about her smooth, warm body and the flawless texture of her skin, his smile swelled into a grin.

***

Tuesday afternoon, Hilary Thomas went shopping in Beverly Hills. When she came home early that evening, she parked her coffee-brown Mercedes in the circular driveway, near the front door. Now that fashion designers had decided women finally would be allowed to look feminine again, Hiliary had bought all the clothes she hadn't been able to find during the dress-like-an-army-sergeant fever that had seized everyone in the fashion industry for at least the past five years. She needed to make three trips to unload the trunk of the car.

As she was picking up the last of the parcels, she suddenly had the feeling that she was being watched. She turned from the car and looked toward the street. The low westering sun slanted between the big houses and through the feathery palm fronds, streaking everything with gold. Two children were playing on a lawn, half a block away, and a floppy-eared cocker spaniel was padding happily along the sidewalk. Other than that, the neighborhood was silent and almost preternaturally still. Two cars and a gray Dodge van were parked on the other side of the street, but as far as she could see, there wasn't anyone in them.

Sometimes you act like a silly fool, she told herself. Who would be watching?

But after she carried the last of the packages inside, she came out to park the car in the garage, and again she had the unshakable feeling that she was being observed.

***

Later, near midnight, as Hilary was sitting in bed reading, she thought she heard noises downstairs. She put the book aside and listened.

Rattling sounds. In the kitchen. Near the back door. Directly under her bedroom.

She got out of bed and put on a robe. It was a deep blue silk wrapper she had bought just that afternoon.

A loaded .32 automatic lay in the top drawer of the nightstand. She hesitated, listened to the rattling sounds for a moment, then decided to take the gun with her.

She felt slightly foolish. What she heard was probably just settling noises, the natural sounds a house makes from time to time. On the other hand, she had lived here for six months and had not heard anything like it until now.

She stopped at the head of the stairs and peered down into the darkness and said, "Who's there?"

No answer.

Holding the gun in her right hand and in front of her, she went downstairs and across the living room, breathing fast and shallow, unable to stop her gun hand from shaking just a bit. She switched on every lamp that she passed. As she approached the back of the house, she still could hear the strange noises, but when she stepped into the kitchen and hit the lights, there was only silence.

The kitchen looked as it should. Dark pegged pine floor. Dark pine cabinets with glossy white ceramic fixtures. White tile counters, clean and uncluttered. Shining copper pots and utensils hanging from the high white ceiling. There was no intruder and no sign that there had been one before she arrived.

She stood just inside the doorway and waited for the noise to begin again.

Nothing. Just the soft hum of the refrigerator.

Finally she walked around the gleaming central utility island and tried the back door. It was locked.

She turned on the yard lights and rolled up the shade that covered the window above the sink. Outside, off to the right, the forty-foot-long swimming pool shimmered prettily. The huge shadowy rose garden lay to the left, a dozen bright blossoms glowing like bursts of phosphorescent gas in the dark green foliage. Everything out there was silent and motionless.

What I heard was the house settling, she thought. Jeez. I'm getting to be a regular spooky old maid.

She made a sandwich and took it upstairs with a cold bottle of beer. She left all the lights burning on the first floor, which she felt would discourage any prowler--if there actually was someone lurking about the property.

Later, she felt foolish for leaving the house so brightly lit. She knew exactly what was wrong with her. Her jumpiness was a symptom of the I-don't-deserve-all-this-happiness disease, a mental disorder with which she was intimately acquainted. She had come from nowhere, from nothing, and now she had everything. Subconsciously, she was afraid that God would take notice of her and decide that she didn't deserve what she'd been given. Then the hammer would fall. Everything she had accumulated would be smashed and swept away: the house, the car, the bank accounts.... Her new life seemed like a fantasy, a marvelous fairytale, too good to be true, certainly too good to last.

No. Dammit, no! She had to stop belittling herself and pretending that her accomplishments were only the result of good fortune. Luck had nothing to do with it. Born into a house of despair, nurtured not with milk and kindness but with uncertainty and fear, unloved by her father and merely tolerated by her mother, raised in a home where self-pity and bitterness had driven out all hope, she had of course grown up without a sense of real worth. For years she had struggled with an inferiority complex. But that was behind her now. She had been through therapy. She understood herself. She didn't dare let those old doubts rise again within her. The house and car and money would not be taken away; she did deserve them. She worked hard, and she had talent. Nobody had given her a job simply because she was a relative or friend; when she'd come to Los Angeles, she hadn't known anyone. No one had heaped money in her lap just because she was pretty. Drawn by the wealth of the entertainment industry and by the promise of fame, herds of beautiful women arrived every day in L.A. and were usually treated worse than cattle. She had made it to the top for one reason: she was a good writer, a superb craftsman, an imaginative and energetic artist who knew how to create the motion pictures that a lot of people would pay money to see. She earned every dime she was paid, and the gods had no reason to be vindictive.

"So relax," she said aloud.

No one had tried to get in the kitchen door. That was just her imagination.

She finished the sandwich and beer, then went downstairs and turned out the lights.

She slept soundly.

***

The next day was one of the best days of her life. It was also one of the worst.

Wednesday began well. The sky was cloudless. The air was sweet and clear. The morning light had that peculiar quality found only in Southern California and only on certain days. It was crystalline light, hard yet warm, like the sunbeams in a cubist painting, and it gave you the feeling that at any moment the air would part like a stage curtain to reveal a world beyond the one in which we live.

Hilary Thomas spent the morning in her garden. The walled half-acre behind the two-story neo-Spanish house was adorned with two dozen species of roses--beds and trellises and hedges of roses. There were the Frau Karl Druschki Rose, the Madame Pierre Oger Rose, the rosa muscosa, the Souvenir de la Malmaison Rose, and a wide variety of modern hybrids. The garden blazed with white roses and red roses, orange and yellow and pink and purple and even green roses. Some blooms were the size of saucers, and others were small enough to pass through a wedding ring. The velvety green lawn was speckled with windblown petals of every hue.

Most mornings, Hilary worked with the plants for two or three hours. No matter how agitated she was upon entering the garden, she was always completely relaxed and at peace when she left.

She easily could have afforded a gardener. She still received quarterly payments from her first hit film, Arizona Shifty Pete, which had been released more than two years ago and which had been an enormous success. The new movie, Cold Heart, in the theaters less than two months, was doing even better than Pete. Her twelve-room house in Westwood, on the fringes of Bel Air and Beverly Hills, had cost a great deal, yet six months ago she had paid cash for the place. In show business circles, she was called a "hot property." That was exactly how she felt, too. Hot. Burning. Ablaze with plans and possibilities. It was a glorious feeling. She was a damned successful screenwriter, a hot property indeed, and she could hire a platoon of gardeners if she wanted them.

She tended to the flowers and the trees herself because the garden was a special place for her, almost sacred. It was the symbol of her escape.

She had been raised in a decaying apartment building in one of Chicago's worst neighborhoods. Even now, even here, even in the middle of her fragrant rose garden, she could close her eyes and see every detail of that long-ago place. In the foyer, the mailboxes had been smashed open by thieves looking for welfare checks. The hallways were narrow and poorly lit. The rooms were tiny, dreary, the furniture tattered and worn. In the small kitchen, the ancient gas range had seemed about to spring a leak and explode; Hilary had lived for years in fear of the stove's irregular, spurting blue flames. The refrigerator was yellow with age; it wheezed and rattled, and its warm motor attracted what her father called "the local wildlife." As she stood now in her lovely garden, Hilary clearly remembered the wildlife with which she'd spent her childhood, and she shuddered. Although she and her mother had kept the four rooms spotlessly clean, and although they had used great quantities of insecticide, they had never been able to get rid of the cockroaches because the damned things came through the thin walls from the other apartments where people were not so clean.

Her most vivid childhood memory was of the view from the single window in her cramped bedroom. She had spent many lonely hours there, hiding while her father and mother argued. The bedroom had been a haven from those terrible bouts of cursing and screaming, and from the sullen silences when her parents weren't speaking to each other. The view from the window wasn't inspiring: nothing more than the soot-streaked brick wall on the far side of the four-foot-wide serviceway that led between the tenements. The window would not open; it was painted shut. She'd been able to see a thin sliver of sky, but only when she'd pressed her face against the glass and peered straight up the narrow shaft.

Desperate to escape from the shabby world in which she lived, young Hilary learned to use her imagination to see through the brick wall. She would set her mind adrift, and suddenly she would be looking out upon rolling hills, or sometimes the vast Pacific Ocean, or great mountain ranges. Most of the time, it was a garden that she conjured up, an enchanted place, serene, with neatly trimmed shrubs and high trellises twined about with thorny rose vines. In this fantasy there was a great deal of pretty wrought-iron lawn furniture that had been painted white. Gaily striped umbrellas cast pools of cool shadow in the coppery sunlight. Women in lovely long dresses and men in summer suits sipped iced drinks and chatted amiably.

And now I'm living in that dream, she thought. That make-believe place is real, and I own it.

Maintaining the roses and the other plants--palms and ferns and jade shrubs and a dozen other things--was not a chore. It was a joy. Every minute she worked among the flowers, she was aware of how far she had come.

At noon, she put away her gardening tools and showered. She stood for a long while in the steaming water, as if it were sluicing away more than dirt and sweat, as if it were washing off ugly memories as well. In that depressing Chicago apartment, in the minuscule bathroom, where all the faucets had dripped and where all the drains had backed up at least once a month, there never had been enough hot water.

She ate a light lunch on the glassed-in patio that overlooked the roses. While she nibbled at cheese and slices of an apple, she read the trade papers of the entertainment industry--Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety--which had come in the morning mail. Her name appeared in Hank Grant's column in the Reporter, in a list of movie and television people whose birthday it was. For a woman just turned twenty-nine, she had come a long, long way indeed.

Today, the chief executives at Warner Brothers were discussing The Hour of the Wolf, her latest screenplay. They would decide either to buy or reject by the close of the business day. She was tense, anxious for the telephone to ring, yet dreading it because it might bring disappointing news. This project was more important to her than anything else she'd ever done.

She had written the script without the security of a signed contract, strictly on speculation, and she had made up her mind to sell it only if she was signed to direct and was guaranteed final cut. Already, Warners had hinted at a record offer for the screenplay if she would reconsider her conditions of sale. She knew she was demanding a lot; however, because of her success as a screenwriter, her demands were not entirely unreasonable. Warners reluctantly would agree to let her direct the picture; she would bet anything on that. But the sticking point would be the final cut. That honor, the power to decide exactly what would appear on the screen, the ultimate authority over every shot and every frame and every nuance of the film, usually was bestowed upon directors who had proven themselves on a number of money-making movies; it was seldom granted to a fledgling director, especially not to a fledgling female director. Her insistence on total creative control might queer the deal.

Hoping to take her mind off the pending decision from Warner Brothers, Hilary spent Wednesday afternoon working in her studio, which overlooked the pool. Her desk was large, heavy, custom-made oak, with a dozen drawers and two dozen cubbyholes. Several pieces of Lallique crystal stood on the desk, refracting the soft glow from the two brass piano lamps. She struggled through the second draft of an article she was writing for Film Comment, but her thoughts constantly wandered to The Hour of the Wolf.

The telephone rang at four o'clock, and she jerked in surprise even though she'd been waiting all afternoon for that sound. It was Wally Topelis.

"It's your agent, kid. We have to talk."

"Isn't that what we're doing now?"

"I mean face to face."

"Oh," she said glumly. "Then it's bad news."

"Did I say it was?"

"If it was good," Hilary said, "you'd just give it to me on the phone. Face to face means you want to let me down easy."

"You're a classic pessimist, kid."

"Face to face means you want to hold my hand and talk me out of suicide."

"It's a damned good thing this melodramatic streak of yours never shows up in your writing."

"If Warners said no, just tell me."

"They haven't decided yet, my lamb."

"I can take it."

"Will you listen to me? The deal hasn't fallen through. I'm still scheming, and I want to discuss my next move with you. That's all. Nothing more sinister than that. Can you meet me in half an hour?"

"Where?"

"I'm at the Beverly Hills Hotel."

"The Polo Lounge?"

"Naturally."

***

As Hilary turned off Sunset Boulevard, she thought the Beverly Hills Hotel looked unreal, like a mirage shimmering in the heat. The rambling building that thrust out of stately palms and lush greenery, a fairytale vision. As always, the pink stucco did not look as garish as she remembered it. The walls seemed translucent, appeared almost to shine with a soft inner light. In its own way, the hotel was rather elegant--more than a bit decadent, but unquestionably elegant nonetheless. At the main entrance, uniformed valets were parking and delivering cars: two Rolls-Royces, three Mercedes, one Stuts, and a red Maserati.

A long way from the poor side of Chicago, she thought happily.

When she stepped into the Polo Lounge, she saw half a dozen movie actors and actresses, famous faces, as well as two powerful studio executives, but none of them was sitting at table number three. That was generally considered to be the most desirable spot in the room, for it faced the entrance and was the best place to see and be seen. Wally Topelis was at table three because he was one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood and because he charmed the maitre d' just as he charmed everyone who met him. He was a small lean man in his fifties, very well dressed. His white hair was thick and lustrous. He also had a neat white mustache. He looked quite distinguished, exactly the kind of man you expected to see at table number three. He was talking on a telephone that had been plugged in just for him. When he saw Hilary approaching, he hastily concluded his conversation, put the receiver down, and stood.

"Hilary, you're lovely--as usual."

"And you're the center of attention--as usual."

He grinned. His voice was soft, conspiratorial. "I imagine everyone's staring at us."

"I imagine."

"Surreptitiously."

"Oh, of course," she said.

"Because they wouldn't want us to know they're looking," he said happily.

As they sat down, she said, "And we dare not look to see if they're looking."

"Oh, heavens no!" His blue eyes were bright were merriment.

"We wouldn't want them to think we care."

"God forbid."

"That would be gauche."

"Trés gauche." He laughed.

Hilary sighed. "I've never understood why one table should be so much more important than another."

"Well, I can sit and make fun of it, but I understand," Wally said. "In spite of everything Marx and Lenin believed, the human animal thrives on the class system--so long as that system is based primarily on money and achievement, not on pedigree. We establish and nurture class systems everywhere, even in restaurants."

"I think I've just stumbled into one of those famous Topelis tirades."

A waiter arrived with a shiny silver ice bucket on a tripod. He put it down beside their table, smiled and left. Apparently, Wally had taken the liberty of ordering for both of them before she arrived. But he didn't take this opportunity to tell her what they were having.

"Not a tirade," he said. "Just an observation. People need class systems."

"I'll bite. Why?"

"For one thing, people must have aspirations, desires beyond the basic needs of food and shelter, obsessive wants that will drive them to accomplish things. If there's a best neighborhood, a man will hold down two jobs to raise money for a house there. If one car is better than another, a man--or a woman, for that matter; this certainly isn't a sexist issue--will work harder to be able to afford it. And if there's a best table in the Polo Lounge, everyone who comes here will want to be rich enough or famous enough--or even infamous enough--to be seated there. This almost manic desire for status generates wealth, contributes to the gross national product, and creates jobs. After all, if Henry Ford hadn't wanted to move up in life, he'd never have built the company that now employs tens of thousands. The class system is one of the engines that drive the wheels of commerce; it keeps our standard of living high. The class system gives people goals--and it provides the maitre d' with a satisfying sense of power and importance that makes an otherwise intolerable job seem desirable."

Hilary shook her head. "Nevertheless, being seated at the best table doesn't mean I'm automatically a better person than the guy who gets second-best. It's no accomplishment in itself."

"It's a symbol of accomplishment, of position," Wally said.

"I still can't see the sense of it."

"It's just an elaborate game."

"Which you certainly know how to play."

He was delighted. "Don't I though?"

"I'll never learn the rules."

"You should, my lamb. It's more than a bit silly, but it helps business. No one likes to work with a loser. But everyone playing the game wants to deal with the kind of person who can get the best table at the Polo Lounge."

Wally Topelis was the only man she knew who could call a woman "my lamb" and sound neither patronizing nor smarmy Although he was a small man, about the right size to be a professional jockey, he somehow made her think of Cary Grant in movies like To Catch a Thief. He had Grant's style: excellent manners observed without flourish; balletic grace in every movement, even in casual gestures; quiet charm; a subtle look of amusement, as if he found life to be a gentle joke.

Their captain arrived, and Wally called him Eugene and inquired about his children. Eugene seemed to regard Wally with affection, and Hilary realized that getting the best table in the Polo Lounge might also have something to do with treating the staff as friends rather than servants.

Eugene was carrying champagne, and after a couple of minutes of small talk, he held the bottle for Wally's inspection. Hilary glimpsed the label. "Dom Perignon?"

"You deserve the best, my lamb."

Eugene removed the foil from the neck of the bottle and began to untwist the wire that caged the cork.

Hilary frowned at Wally. "You must really have bad news for me."

"What makes you say that?"

"A hundred-dollar bottle of champagne...." Hilary looked at him thoughtfully. "It's supposed to soothe my hurt feelings, cauterize my wounds."

The cork popped. Eugene did his job well; very little of the precious liquid foamed out of the bottle.

"You're such a pessimist," Wally said.

"A realist," she said.

"Most people would have said, 'Ah, champagne. What are we celebrating?' But not Hilary Thomas."

Eugene poured a sample of Dom Perignon. Wally tasted it and nodded approval.

"Are we celebrating?" Hilary asked. The possibility really had not occurred to her, and she suddenly felt weak as she considered it.

"In fact, we are," Wally said.

Eugene slowly filled both glasses and slowly screwed the bottle into the shaved ice in the silver bucket. Clearly, he wanted to stick around long enough to hear what they were celebrating.

It was also obvious that Wally wanted the captain to hear the news and spread it. Grinning like Cary Grant, he leaned toward Hilary and said, "We've got the deal with Warner Brothers."

She stared, blinked, opened her mouth to speak, didn't know what to say. Finally: "We don't."

"We do."

"We can't."

"We can."

"Nothing's that easy."

"I tell you, we've got it."

"They won't let me direct."

"Oh, yes."

"They won't give me final cut."

"Yes, they will."

"My God."

She was stunned. Felt numb.

Eugene offered his congratulations and slipped away.

Wally laughed, shook his head. "You know, you could have played that a lot better for Eugene's benefit. Pretty soon, people are going to see us celebrating, and they'll ask Eugene what it's about, and he'll tell them. Let the world think you always knew you'd get exactly what you wanted. Never show doubt or fear when you're swimming with sharks."

"You're not kidding about this? We've actually got what we wanted?"

Raising his glass, Wally said, "A toast. To my sweetest client, with the hope she'll eventually learn there are some clouds with silver linings and that a lot of apples don't have worms in them."

They clinked glasses.

She said, "The studio must have added a lot of tough conditions to the deal. A bottom of the barrel budget. Salary at scale. No participation in the gross rentals. Stuff like that."

"Stop looking for rusty nails in your soup," he said exasperatedly.

"I'm not eating soup."

"Don't get cute."

"I'm drinking champagne."

"You know what I mean."

She stared at the bubbles bursting in her glass of Dom Perignon.

She felt as if hundreds of bubbles were rising within her, too, chains of tiny, bright bubbles of joy: but a part of her acted like a cork to contain the effervescent emotion, to keep it securely under pressure, bottled up, safely contained. She was afraid of being too happy. She didn't want to tempt fate.

"I just don't get it," Wally said. "You look as if the deal fell through. You did hear me all right, didn't you?"

She smiled. "I'm sorry. It's just that ... when I was a little girl, I learned to expect the worst every day. That way, I was never disappointed. It's the best outlook you can have when you live with a couple of bitter, violent alcoholics."

His eyes were kind.

"Your parents are gone," he said, quietly, tenderly. "Dead. Both of them. They can't touch you, Hilary. They can't hurt you ever again."

"I've spent most of the past twelve years trying to convince myself of that."

"Ever consider analysis?"

"I went through two years of it."

"Didn't help?"

"Not much."

"Maybe a different doctor--"

"Wouldn't matter," Hilary said. "There's a flaw in Freudian theory. Psychiatrists believe that as soon as you fully remember and understand the childhood traumas that made you into a neurotic adult, you can change. They think finding the key is the hard part, and that once you have it you can open the door in a minute. But it's not that easy."

"You have to want to change," he said.

"It's not that easy, either."

He turned his champagne glass around and around in his small well-manicured hands. "Well, if you need someone to talk to now and then, I'm always available."

"I've already burdened you with too much of it over the years."

"Nonsense. You've told me very little. Just the bare bones."

"Boring stuff," she said.

"Far from it, I assure you. The story of a family coming apart at the seams, alcoholism, madness, murder, and suicide, an innocent child caught in the middle.... As a screenwriter, you should know that's the kind of material that never bores."

She smiled thinly. "I just feel I've got to work it out on my own."

"Usually it helps to talk about--"

"Except that I've already talked about it to an analyst, and I've talked about it to you, and that's only done me a little bit of good."

"But talking has helped."

"I've got as much out of it as I can. What I've got to do now is talk to myself about it. I've got to confront the past alone, without relying on your support or a doctor's, which is something I've never been able to do." Her long dark hair had fallen over one eye; she pushed it out of her face and tucked it behind her ears. "Sooner or later, I'll get my head on straight. It's only a matter of time."

Do I really believe that? she wondered.

Wally stared at her for a moment, then said, "Well, I suppose you know best. At least, in the meantime, drink up." He raised his champagne glass. "Be cheerful and full of laughter so all these important people watching us will envy you and want to work with you."

She wanted to lean back and drink lots of icy Dom Perignon and let happiness consume her, but she could not totally relax. She was always sharply aware of that spectral darkness at the edges of things, that crouching nightmare waiting to spring and devour her. Earl and Emma, her parents, had jammed her into a tiny box of fear, had slammed the heavy lid and locked it; and since then she had looked out at the world from the dark confines of that box. Earl and Emma had instilled in her a quiet but ever-present and unshakable paranoia that stained everything good, everything that should be right and bright and joyful.

In that instant, her hatred of her mother and father was as hard, cold, and immense as it had ever been. The busy years and the many miles that separated her from those hellish days in Chicago suddenly ceased to act as insulation from the pain.

"What's wrong?" Wally asked.

"Nothing. I'm okay."

"You're so pale."

With an effort, she pushed down the memories, forced the past back where it belonged. She put one hand on Wally's cheek, kissed him. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I can be a real pain in the ass. I haven't even thanked you. I'm happy with the deal, Wally. I really am. It's wonderful! You're the best damned agent in the business."

"You're right," he said. "I am. But this time I didn't have to do a lot of selling. They liked the script so much they were willing to give us almost anything just to be sure they'd get the project. It wasn't luck. And it wasn't just having a smart agent. I want you to understand that. Face it, kid, you deserve success. Your work is about the best thing being written for the screen these days. You can go on living in the shadow of your parents, go on expecting the worst, as you always do, but from here on out it's going to be nothing but the best for you. My advice is, get used to it."

She desperately wanted to believe him and surrender to optimism, but black weeds of doubt still sprouted from the seeds of Chicago. She saw those familiar lurking monsters at the fuzzy edges of the paradise he described. She was a true believer in Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.

Nevertheless, she found Wally's earnestness so appealing, his tone so nearly convincing, that she reached down into her bubbling cauldron of confused emotions and found a genuine radiant smile for him.

"That's it," he said, pleased. "That's better. You have a beautiful smile."

"I'll try to use it more often."

"I'll keep making the kind of deals that'll force you to use it more often."

They drank champagne and discussed The Hour of the Wolf and made plans and laughed more than she could remember having laughed in years. Gradually her mood lightened. A macho movie star--icy eyes, tight thin lips, muscles, a swagger in his walk when he was on screen; warm, quick to laugh, somewhat shy in real life--whose last picture had made fifty million dollars, was the first to stop by to say hello and inquire about the celebration. The sartorially impeccable studio executive with the lizard eyes tried subtly, then blatantly, to learn the plot of Wolf, hoping it would lend itself to a quick cheap television movie-of-the-week rip-off. Pretty soon, half the room was table-hopping, stopping by to congratulate Hilary and Wally, flitting away to confer with one another about her success, each of them wondering if there was any percentage in it for him. After all, Wolf would need a producer, stars, someone to write the musical score.... Therefore, at the best table in the room, there was a great deal of back-patting and cheek-kissing and hand-holding.

Hilary knew that most of the glittery denizens of the Polo Lounge weren't actually as mercenary as they sometimes appeared to be. Many of them had begun at the bottom, hungry, poor, as she had been herself. Although their fortunes were now made and safely invested, they couldn't stop hustling; they'd been at it so long that they didn't know how to live any other way.

The public image of Hollywood life had very little to do with the facts. Secretaries, shopkeepers, clerks, taxi drivers, mechanics, housewives, waitresses, people all over the country, in everyday jobs of all kinds came home weary from work and sat in front of the television and dreamed about life among the stars. In the vast collective mind that brooded and murmured from Hawaii to Maine and from Florida to Alaska, Hollywood was a sparkling blend of wild parties, fast women, easy money, too much whiskey, too much cocaine, lazy sunny days, drinks by the pool, vacation in Acapulco and Palm Springs, sex in the back seat of a fur-lined Rolls-Royce. A fantasy. An illusion. She supposed that a society long abused by corrupt and incompetent leaders, a society standing upon pilings that had been rotted by inflation and excess taxation, a society existing in the cold shadow of sudden nuclear annihilation, needed its illusions if it were to survive. In truth, people in the movie and television industries worked harder than almost anyone else, even though the product of their labor was not always, perhaps not even often, worth the effort. The star of a successful television series worked from dawn till nightfall, often fourteen or sixteen hours a day. Of course, the rewards were enormous. But in reality, the parties were not so wild, the women no faster than women in Philadelphia or Hackensack or Tampa, the days sunny but seldom lazy, and the sex exactly the same as it was for secretaries in Boston and shopkeepers in Pittsburgh.

Wally had to leave at a quarter past six in order to keep a seven o'clock engagement, and a couple of the table-hoppers in the Polo Lounge asked Hilary to have dinner with them. She declined, pleading a prior commitment.

Outside the hotel, the autumn evening was still bright. A few high clouds tracked across the technicolor sky. The sunlight was the color of platinum-blonde hair, and the air was surprisingly fresh for mid-week Los Angeles. Two young couples laughed and chattered noisily as they climbed out of a blue Cadillac, and farther away, on Sunset Boulevard, tires hummed and engines roared and horns blared as the last of the rush hour crowd tried to get home alive.

As Hilary and Wally waited for their cars to be brought around by the smiling valets, he said, "Are you really having dinner with someone?"

"Yeah. Me, myself, and I"

"Look, you can come along with me."

"The uninvited guest."

"I just invited you."

"I don't want to spoil your plans."

"Nonsense. You'd be a delightful addition."

"Anyway, I'm not dressed for dinner."

"You look fine."

"I vant to be alone," she said.

"You do a terrible Garbo. Come to dinner with me. Please. It's just an informal evening at The Palm with a client and his wife. An up and coming young television writer. Nice people."

"I'll be okay, Wally. Really."

"A beautiful woman like you, on a night like this, with so much to celebrate--there ought to be candlelight, soft music, good wine, a special someone to share it with."

She grinned. "Wally, you're a closet romantic."

"I'm serious," he said.

She put one hand on his arm. "It's sweet of you to be concerned about me, Wally. But I'm perfectly all right. I'm happy when I'm alone. I'm very good company for myself. There'll be plenty of time for a meaningful relationship with a man and skiing weekends in Aspen and chatty evenings at The Palm after The Hour of the Wolf is finished and in the theaters."

Wally Topelis frowned. "If you don't learn how to relax, you won't survive for very long in a high-pressure business like this. In a couple of years, you'll be as limp as a rag doll, tattered, frayed, worn out. Believe me, kid, when the physical energy is all burnt up, you'll suddenly discover that the mental energy, the creative juice, has also evaporated with it."

"This project is a watershed for me," she said. "After it, my life won't be the same."

"Agreed. But--"

"I've worked hard, damned hard, single-mindedly, toward this chance. I'll admit it: I've been obsessed with my work. But once I've made a reputation as a good writer and a good director, I'll feel secure. I'll finally be able to cast out the demons--my parents, Chicago, all those bad memories. I'll be able to relax and lead a more normal life. But I can't rest yet. If I slack off now, I'll fail. Or at least I think I will, and that's the same thing."

He sighed. "Okay. But we would have had a lot of fun at The Palm."

A valet arrived with her car.

She hugged Wally. "I'll probably call you tomorrow, just to be sure that this Warner Brothers thing wasn't all a dream."

"Contracts will take a few weeks," he told her. "But I don't anticipate any serious problems. We'll have the deal memo sometime next week, and then you can set up a meeting at the studio."

She blew him a kiss, hurried to the car, tipped the valet, and drove away.

She headed into the hills, past the million-dollar houses, past lawns greener than money, turning left, then right, at random, going nowhere in particular, just driving for relaxation, one of the few escapes she allowed herself. Most of the streets were shrouded in purple shadows cast by canopies of green branches; night was stealing across the pavement even though daylight still existed above the interlaced palms, oaks, maples, cedars, cypresses, jacarandas, and pines. She switched on the headlights and explored some of the winding canyon roads until, gradually, her frustration began to seep away.

Later, when night had fallen above the trees as well as below them, she stopped at a Mexican restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard. Rough beige plaster walls. Photographs of Mexican bandits. The rich odors of hot sauce, taco seasoning, and corn meal tortillas. Waitresses in scoop-necked peasant blouses and many-pleated red skirts. South-of-the-border Muzak. Hilary ate cheese enchiladas, rice, refried beans. The food tasted every bit as good as it would have tasted if it had been served by candlelight, with string music in the background, and with someone special seated beside her.

I'll have to remember to tell Wally that, she thought as she washed down the last of the enchiladas with a swallow of Dos Equis, a dark Mexican beer.

But when she considered it for a moment, she could almost hear his reply: My lamb, that is nothing but blatant psychological rationalization. It's true that loneliness doesn't change the taste of food, the quality of candlelight, the sound of music--but that doesn't mean that loneliness is desirable or good or healthy." He simply wouldn't be able to resist launching into one of his fatherly lectures about life; and listening to that would not be made any easier by the fact that whatever he had to say would make sense.

You better not mention it, she told herself. You are never going to get one up on Wally Topelis.

In her car again, she buckled her seatbelt, brought the big engine to life, snapped on the radio, and sat for a while, staring at the flow of traffic on La Cienega. Today was her birthday. Twenty-ninth birthday. And in spite of the fact that it had been noted in Hank Grant's Hollywood Reporter column, she seemed to be the only one in the world who cared. Well, that was okay. She was a loner. Always had been a loner. Hadn't she told Wally that she was perfectly happy with only her own company?

The cars flashed past in an endless stream, filled with people who were going places, doing things--usually in pairs.

She didn't want to start for home yet, but there was nowhere else to go.

***

The house was dark.

The lawn looked more blue than green in the glow of the mercury-vapor streetlamp.

Hilary parked the car in the garage and walked to the front door. Her heels made an unnaturally loud tock-tock-tock sound on the stone footpath.

The night was mild. The heat of the vanished sun still rose from the earth, and the cooling sea wind that washed the basin city in all seasons had not yet brought the usual autumn chill to the air; later, toward midnight, it would be coat weather.

Crickets chirruped in the hedges.

She let herself into the house, found the entranceway light, closed and locked the door. She switched on the living room lights as well and was a few steps from the foyer when she heard movement behind her and turned.

A man came out of the foyer closet, knocking a coat off a hanger as he shouldered out of that confining space, throwing the door back against the wall with a loud bang! He was about forty years old, a tall man wearing dark slacks and a tight yellow pullover sweater--and leather gloves. He had the kind of big, hard muscles that could be gotten only from years of weightlifting; even his wrists, between the cuffs of the sweater and the gloves, were thick and sinewy. He stopped ten feet from her and grinned broadly, nodded, licked his thin lips.

She wasn't quite sure how to respond to his sudden appearance. He wasn't an ordinary intruder, not a total stranger, not some punk kid or some shabby degenerate with a drug-blur in his eyes. Although he didn't belong here, she knew him, and he was just about the last man she would expect to encounter in a situation of this sort. Seeing gentle little Wally Topelis come out of that closet was the only thing that could have shocked her more than this. She was less frightened than confused. She had met him three weeks ago, while doing research for a screenplay set in the wine country of Northern California, a project meant to take her mind off Wally's marketing of The Hour of the Wolf, which she had finished about that time. He was an important and successful man up there in the Napa Valley. But that didn't explain what the hell he was doing in her house, hiding in her closet.

"Mr. Frye," she said uneasily.

"Hello, Hilary." He had a deep, somewhat gravelly voice which seemed reassuring and fatherly when she had taken an extensive private tour of his winery near St. Helena, but which now sounded coarse, mean, threatening.

She cleared her throat nervously. "What are you doing here?"

"Come to see you."

"Why?"

"Just had to see you again."

"About what?"

He was still grinning. He had a tense, predatory look. His was the smile of the wolf just before it closed hungry jaws on the cornered rabbit.

"How did you get in?" she demanded.

"Pretty."

"What?"

"So pretty."

"Stop it."

"Been looking for one like you."

"You're scaring me."

"You're a real pretty one."

He took a step toward her.

She knew then, beyond doubt, what he wanted. But it was crazy, unthinkable. Why would a wealthy man of his high social position travel hundreds of miles to risk his fortune, reputation, and freedom for one brief violent moment of forced sex?

He took another step.

She backed away from him.

Rape. It made no sense. Unless.... If he intended to kill her afterwards, he would not be taking much of a risk at all. He was wearing gloves. He would leave no prints, no clues. And no one would believe that a prominent and highly-respected vintner from St. Helena would drive all the way to Los Angeles to rape and murder. Even if some would believe it, they'd have no reason to think of him in the first place. The homicide investigation would never move in his direction.

He kept coming. Slowly. Relentlessly. Heavy steps. Enjoying the suspense. Grinning more than ever as he saw comprehension enter her eyes.

She backed past the huge stone fireplace, briefly considered grabbing one of the heavy brass implements on the hearth, but realized that she would not be quick enough to defend herself with it. He was a powerful, athletic man in excellent physical condition; he would be all over her before she could seize the poker and swing it at his damned thick skull.

He flexed his big hands. The knuckles strained at the snug-fitting leather.

She backed past a grouping of furniture--two chairs, a coffee table, a long sofa. She started moving toward her right, trying to put the sofa between her and Frye.

"Such pretty hair," he said.

A part of her wondered if she were losing her mind. This could not be the Bruno Frye she had met in St. Helena. There had been not even the slightest hint of the madness that now contorted his broad, sweat-greased face. His eyes were blue-gray chips of ice, and the frigid passion that shone in them was surely too monstrous to have been concealed when she last saw him.

Then she saw the knife, and the sight of it was like a blast of furnace heat that turned her doubts to steam and blew them away. He meant to kill her. The knife was fixed to his belt, over his right hip. It was in an open sheath, and he could free it simply by popping the metal snap on a single narrow leather strap. In one second, the blade could be slipped from the holder and wrapped tightly in his fist; in two seconds, it could be jammed deep into her soft belly, slicing through warm meat and jelly organs, letting loose the precious store of blood.

"I've wanted you since I first saw you," Frye said. "Just wanted to get at you."

Time seemed to stop for her.

"You're going to be a good little piece," he said. "Real good."

Abruptly, the world was a slow-motion movie. Each second seemed like a minute. She watched him approach as if he were a creature in a nightmare, as if the atmosphere had suddenly become as thick as syrup.

The instant that she spotted the knife, Hilary froze. She stopped backing away from him, even though he continued to approach. A knife will do that. It chokes you up, freezes your heart, brings ah uncontrollable tremor to your guts. Surprisingly few people have the stomach to use a knife against another living thing. More than any other weapon, it makes you aware of the delicacy of flesh, the terrible fragility of human life; in the damage that he wreaks, the attacker can see all too clearly the nature of his own mortality. A gun, a draught of poison, a firebomb, a blunt instrument, a strangler's piece of rope--all can be used relatively cleanly, most of them at a distance. But the man with a knife must be prepared to get dirty, and he must get in close, so close that he can feel the heat escaping from the wounds as he makes them. It takes a special courage, or insanity, to slash at another person and not be repelled by the warm blood spurting over your hand.

Frye was upon her. He placed one large hand on her breasts, rubbed and squeezed them roughly through the silky fabric of her dress.

That rude contact snapped her out of the trance into which she'd fallen. She knocked his hand away, twisted out of his grasp, and ran behind the couch.

His laugh was hearty, disconcertingly pleasant, but his hard eyes glinted with a macabre amusement. It was a demon joke, the mad humor of hell. He wanted her to fight back, for he enjoyed the chase.

"Get out!" she said. "Get out!"

"Don't want to get out," Frye said, smiling, shaking his head. "I want to get in. Oh yeah. That's it. I want to get in you, little lady. I want to rip that dress off your back, get you naked, and get right up in there. All the way up, all the way inside where it's warm and wet and dark and soft."

For a moment, the fear that made her legs rubbery and turned her insides to water was supplanted by more powerful emotions: hate, anger, fury. Hers was not the reasoned anger of a woman toward an arrogant man's usurpation of her dignity and rights; not an intellectual anger based on the social and biological injustices of the situation; it was more fundamental than that. He had entered her private space uninvited, had pushed his way into her modern cave, and she was possessed by a primitive rage that blurred her vision and made her heart race. She bared her teeth at him, growled in the back of her throat; she was reduced to an almost unconscious animal response as she faced him and looked for a way out of the trap.

A low, narrow, glass-topped display table stood flush against the back of the sofa. Two eighteen-inch-high pieces of fine porcelain statuary rested upon it. She grabbed one of the statues and hurled it at Frye.

He ducked with a primitive, instinctual quickness of his own. The porcelain struck the stone fireplace and exploded like a bomb. Dozens of chunks and hundreds of chips of it rained down on the hearth and on the surrounding carpet.

"Try again," he said, mocking her.

She picked up the other porcelain, hesitated. She watched him through narrowed eyes, weighed the statue in her hand, then faked a pitch.

He was deceived by the feint. He dipped down and to one side to avoid the missile.

With a small cry of triumph, she threw the statue for real. He was too surprised to duck again, and the porcelain caught him on the side of the head. It was a glancing blow, less devastating than she'd hoped, but he staggered back a step or two. He didn't go down. He wasn't seriously injured. He wasn't even bleeding. But he was hurt, and the pain transformed him. He was no longer in a perversely playful mood. The crooked smile disappeared. His mouth was set in a straight, grim line, lips tightly compressed. His face was red. Fury wound him up as if he were a watch spring; under the strain, the muscles in his massive neck popped up, taut, impressive. He crouched slightly, ready to charge.

Hilary expected him to come around the couch, and she intended to circle it, staying away from him, keeping the couch between them until she could reach something else worth throwing. But when he moved at last, he didn't stalk her as she'd anticipated. Instead, he rushed straight at her without finesse, as if he were a bull in a blind rage. He bent in front of the couch, gripped it with both hands, tilted it up, and in one smooth movement pushed it over backwards as if it weighed only a few pounds. She jumped out of the way as the big piece of furniture crashed down where she'd been standing. Even as the sofa fell, Frye vaulted over it. He reached for her, and he would have had her if he hadn't stumbled and gone down on one knee.

Her anger gave way to fear again, and she ran. She headed toward the foyer and the front door, but she knew she would not have time to throw off both bolt locks and get out of the house before he got hold of her. He was too damned close, no more than two or three steps away. She darted to the right and dashed up the winding stairs, two at a time.

She was breathing hard, but over her own gasping she heard him coming. His footfalls were thunderous. He was cursing her.

The gun. In the nightstand. If she could get to her bedroom far enough ahead of him to slam and lock the door, that ought to hold him for a few seconds, at least, certainly long enough for her to get the pistol.

At the top of the stairs, as she came into the second-floor hallway, when she was certain she had put another few feet between them, he caught her right shoulder and yanked her back against him. She screamed, but she didn't try to pull away, as he evidently expected her to do. Instead, the instant he grabbed her, she turned on him. She pushed into him before he could get a restraining arm around her, pressed so tight against him that she could feel his erection, and she drove one knee hard into his crotch. He reacted as if he'd been hit by lightning. The red flush of anger went out of his face, and his skin flashed bone-white, all in a fraction of a second. He lost his grip on her and staggered back and slipped on the edge of the first step and windmilled his arms and toppled over, cried out, threw himself to one side, clutched the bannister and was lucky enough to arrest his fall.

Apparently, he hadn't had much experience with women who fought back effectively. She had tricked him twice. He thought he was on the trail of a nice, fluffy, harmless bunny, timid prey that could be subdued easily and used and then broken with a flick of the wrist. But she turned and showed long fangs and claws to him, and she was exhilarated by his shocked expression.

She had hoped he would tumble all the way to the bottom of the staircase, breaking his neck as he went. Even now, she thought the blow to his privates would take him out of action at least a minute or two, long enough for her to get the upper hand. She was shocked when, after only the briefest pause, before she could even turn and run, he shoved away from the bannister and, wincing with pain, struggled up toward her.

"Bitch," he said between clenched teeth, barely able to get his breath.

"No," she said. "No. Stay back."

She felt like a character in one of those old horror movies that Hammer Films used to do so well. She was in a battle with a vampire or a zombie, repeatedly astonished and disheartened by the beast's supernatural reserves of strength and endurance.

"Bitch."

She ran down the shadow-draped hallway, into the master bedroom. She slammed the door, fumbled for the lock button in the dark, finally hit the light switch, engaged the lock.

There was a strange and frightening noise in the room. It was a loud hoarse sound filled with terror. She looked around wildly for the source of it before she realized that she was listening to her own ragged and uncontrollable sobbing.

She was dangerously close to panic, but she knew she must control herself if she wanted to live.

Suddenly, Frye tried the locked door behind her, then threw his weight against it. The barrier held. But it would not hold much longer, certainly not long enough for her to call the police and wait for help.

Her heart was beating furiously, and she was shaking as if she were standing naked on a vast field of ice; but she was determined not to be incapacitated by fear. She hurried across the big room, around the bed, toward the far nightstand. On the way, she passed a full-length wall mirror that seemed to throw back to her the image of a total stranger, an owl-eyed and harried woman with a face as pale as the painted visage of a mime.

Frye kicked the door. It shook violently in the frame but didn't let go.

The .32 automatic was on top of three pairs of folded pajamas in the nightstand drawer. The loaded magazine lay beside it. She picked up the gun and, with jittery hands that nearly failed her, rammed the magazine into the butt. She faced the doorway.

Frye kicked the lock again. The hardware was flimsy. It was the kind of interior lock primarily meant to keep children and nosey house guests out of a room. It was useless against an intruder like Bruno Frye. On the third kick, the workings burst from the mounting, and the door clattered open.

Panting, sweating, he looked more than ever like a mad bull as he lumbered out of the dark hall and crossed the threshold. His broad shoulders were hunched, and his hands were fisted at his sides. He wanted to lower his head and charge, smash and destroy everything that stood in his way. Blood lust shone in his eyes as clearly as his reflection glowered back at him from the wall mirror beside Hilary. He wanted to smash his way through the china shop and stomp on the proprietor.

Hilary pointed the pistol at him, holding it firmly with both hands.

He kept coming.

"I'll shoot! I will! I swear to God I will!" she said frantically.

Frye stopped, blinked at her, saw the gun for the first time.

"Out," she said.

He didn't move.

"Get the hell out of here!"

Incredibly, he took one more step toward her. It was no longer the smug, calculating, game-playing rapist she had faced downstairs. Something had happened to him; deep inside, relay switches had clicked into place, setting up new patterns in his mind, new wants and needs and hungers that were more disgusting and perverted than any he had revealed thus far. He was no longer even half rational. His demeanor was that of a lunatic. His eyes flashed, not icy as they had been, but watery and hot, fevered. Sweat streamed down his face. His lips worked ceaselessly, even though he was not speaking; they writhed and twisted, pulled back over his teeth, then pushed out in a childish pout, formed a sneer, then a weird little smile, then a fierce scowl, then an expression for which there was no name. He was no longer driven by lust or the desire to utterly dominate her. The secret motor that drove him now was darker in design than the one that had powered him just a few minutes ago, and she had the terrible crazy feeling that it would somehow provide him with enough energy to shield him from harm, to let him advance untouched through a hail of bullets.

He took the large knife from the sheath on his right hip and thrust it in front of him.

"Back off," she said desperately.

"Bitch."

"I mean it."

He started toward her again.

"For God's sake," she said, "be serious. That knife's no good against a gun."

He was twelve or fifteen feet from the other side of the bed.

"I'll blow your goddamned head off."

Frye waved the knife at her, drew small rapid circles in the air with the point of the blade, as if it were a talisman and he were chasing off evil spirits that stood between him and Hilary.

And he took another step.

She lined up the forward sight with the center of his abdomen, so that no matter how high the recoil kicked her hands and no matter whether the gun pulled to the left or the right, she would hit something vital. She squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.

Please, God!

He took two steps.

She stared at the pistol, stunned. She had forgotten to throw off the safety catches.

He was maybe eight feet from the other side of the bed. Maybe only six.

Swearing at herself, she thumbed the two tiny levers on the side of the pistol, and a pair of red dots appeared on the black metal. She aimed and pulled the trigger a second time.

Nothing.

Jesus! What? It can't be jammed!

Frye was so completely disassociated from reality, so thoroughly possessed by his madness, that he did not realize immediately that she was having problems with the weapon. When he finally saw what was happening, he moved in fast, while the advantage was his. He reached the bed, scrambled onto it, stood up, started straight across the mattress like a man walking a bridge of barrels, swaying on the springy surface.

She had forgotten to jack a bullet into the chamber. She did that and retreated two steps until she backed into the wall. She squeezed off a shot without taking aim, fired up at him as he loomed directly over her like a demon leaping out of a crack in hell.

The sound of the shot filled the room. It slapped off the walls and reverberated in the windows.

She saw the knife shatter, saw the fragments arc out of Frye's right hand. The sharp steel flew up and back, sparkling for a moment in the shaft of light that escaped through the open top of the bedside lamp.

Frye howled as the knife spun away from him. He fell backwards and rolled off the far side of the bed. But he was up as soon as he went down, cradling his right hand in his left.

Hilary didn't think she had hit him. There wasn't any blood. The bullet must have struck the knife, breaking it and tearing it out of his grasp. The shock would have stung his fingers worse than the crack of a whip.

Frye wailed in pain, screamed in rage. It was a wild sound, a jackal's bark, but it was definitely not the cry of an animal with its tail between its legs. He still intended to come after her.

She fired again, and he went down again. This time he stayed down.

With a little whimper of relief, Hilary sagged wearily against the wall, but she did not take her eyes off the place where he had gone down and where he now lay out of sight beyond the bed.

No sound.

No movement.

She was uneasy about not being able to see him. Head cocked, listening intently, she moved cautiously to the foot of the bed, out into the room, then around to the left until she spotted him.

He was belly-down on the chocolate-brown Edward Fields carpet. His right arm was tucked under him. His left arm was flung straight out in front, the hand curled slightly, the still fingers pointing back toward the top of his head. His face was turned away from her. Because the carpet was so dark and plush and eye-dazzlingly textured, she had some difficulty telling from a distance if there was any blood soaked into it. Quite clearly, there was not an enormous sticky pool like the one she had expected to find. If the shot had hit him in the chest, the blood might be trapped under him. The bullet might even have taken him squarely in the forehead. bringing instant death and abrupt cessation of heartbeat; in which case, there would be only a few drops of blood.

She watched him for a minute, two minutes. She could not detect any movement, not even the subtle rise and fall of his breathing.

Dead?

Slowly, timidly, she approached him.

"Mr. Frye?"

She didn't intend to get too close. She wasn't going to endanger herself, but she wanted a better look at him. She kept the gun trained on him, ready to put another round into him if he moved.

"Mr. Frye?"

No response.

Funny that she should keep calling him "Mr. Frye." After what had happened tonight, after what he had tried to do to her, she was still being formal and polite. Maybe because he was dead. In death, the very worst man in town is accorded hushed respect even by those who know that he was a liar and a scoundrel all his life. Because every one of us must die, belittling a dead man is in a way like belittling ourselves. Besides, if you speak badly about the dead, you somehow feel that you are mocking that great and final mystery--and perhaps inviting the gods to punish you for your effrontery.

Hilary waited and watched as another minute dragged past.

"You know what, Mr. Frye? I think I won't take any chances with you. I think I'll just put another bullet in you right now. Yeah. Fire a round right in the back of your head."

Of course, she wasn't able to do that. She wasn't violent by nature. She had fired the gun on a shooting range once, shortly after she bought it, but she had never killed a living thing larger than the cockroaches in that Chicago apartment. She had found the will to shoot at Bruno Frye only because he had been an immediate threat and she had been pumped full of adrenalin. Hysteria and a primitive survival instinct had made her briefly capable of violence. But now that Frye was on the floor, quiet and motionless, no more menacing than a pile of dirty rags, she could not easily bring herself to pull the trigger. She couldn't just stand there and watch as she blew the brains out of a corpse. Even the thought of it turned her stomach. But the threat of doing it was a good test of his condition. If he was faking, the possibility of her shooting pointblank at his skull ought to make him give up his act.

"Right in the head, you bastard," she said, and she fired a round into the ceiling.

He didn't flinch.

She sighed and lowered the pistol.

Dead. He was dead.

She had killed a man.

Dreading the coming ordeal with police and reporters, she edged around the outstretched arm and headed for the hall door.

Suddenly, he was not dead any more.

Suddenly, he was very much alive and moving.

He anticipated her. He'd known exactly how she was trying to trick him. He'd seen through the ruse, and he'd had nerves of steel. He hadn't even flinched!

Now he used the arm under him to push up and forward, striking at Hilary as if he were a snake, and with his left hand he seized her ankle and brought her down, screaming and flailing, and they rolled over, a tangle of arms and legs, then over again, and his teeth were at her throat, and he was snarling like a dog, and she had the crazy fear that he was going to bite her and tear open her jugular vein and suck out all of her blood, but then she got a hand between them, got her palm under his chin and levered his head away from her neck as they rolled one last time, and then they came up against the wall with jarring impact and stopped, dizzy, gasping, and he was like a great beast on her, so rough, so heavy, crushing her, leering down at her, his hideous cold eyes so frighteningly close and deep and empty, his breath foul with onions and stale beer, and he had one hand under her dress, shredding her pantyhose, trying to get his big blunt fingers under her panties and gain a grip on her sex, not a lover's grip but a fighter's grip, and the thought of the damage he might do to her softest tissues made her gag with horror, and she knew it was even possible to kill a woman that way, to reach up inside and claw and rip and pull, so she tried frantically to scratch his cobalt eyes and blind him, but he swiftly drew his head back, out of range, and then they both abruptly froze, for they realized simultaneously that she had not dropped the pistol when he had pulled her down onto the floor. It was wedged between them, the muzzle pressed firmly into his crotch--and although her finger was on the trigger guard instead of the trigger itself, she was able to slip it back a notch and put it in the proper place even as she became aware of the situation.

His heavy hand was still on her pubis. An obscene thing. A leathery, demonic, disgusting hand. She could feel the heat of it even through the glove he was wearing. He was no longer clawing at her panties. Trembling. His big hand was trembling.

The bastard's scared.

His eyes seemed to be fastened to hers by an invisible thread, a strong thread that would not break easily. Neither of them could look away.

"If you make one wrong move," she said weakly, "I'll blow your balls off."

He blinked.

"Understand?" she asked, unable to put any force in her voice. She was wheezing and breathless with exertion and, mostly, with fear.

He licked his lips.

Blinked slowly.

Like a goddamned lizard.

"Do you understand?" she demanded, putting bite into it this time.

"Yeah."

"You can't fool me again."

"Whatever you say."

His voice was deep and gruff, as before, and it did not waver. There wasn't anything in his voice or eyes or face to betray his hard-muscled tough guy image. But his gloved hand continued to spasm nervously on the sensitive juncture of her thighs.

"Okay," she said. "What I want you to do is move very slowly. Very, very slowly. When I give the word, we're going to roll over very slowly, until you're on the bottom and I'm on the top."

Without being the least amused, she was aware that what she had said bore a grotesque resemblance to an eager lover's suggestion in the middle of the sex act.

"When I tell you to, and not a second before I tell you to. you'll roll to your right," she said.

"Okay."

"And I'll move with you."

"Sure."

"Nice and easy."

"Sure."

"And I'll keep the gun where it is."

His eyes were still hard and cold, but the insanity and the rage had gone out of them. The thought of having his sex organs shot off had snapped him back into the real world--at least temporarily.

She poked the barrel of the gun hard against his privates, and he grimaced with pain.

"Now roll over easy," she said.

He did exactly what she had instructed him to do, moved onto his side with exaggerated care, then onto his back, never taking his eyes from hers. He slipped his hand out from under her dress as they reversed positions, but he didn't attempt to take the pistol from her.

She clung to him with her left hand, the gun clenched in her right, and she went over with him, keeping the muzzle firmly in his crotch. Finally she was atop him, one arm trapped between them, the .32 automatic still strategically placed.

Her right hand was beginning to go numb because of the awkward position, but also because she was squeezing the pistol with all of her might and was afraid to hold it any less surely. Her grip was so fierce that her fingers and the muscles up the length of her arm ached with the effort. She was worried that somehow he would sense the growing weakness in her hand--or that she would actually let go of the gun against her will as her fingers lost all feeling.

"Okay," she said. "I'm going to slide off you. I'm going to keep the gun where it is, and I'm going to slip off beside you. Don't move. Don't even blink."

He stared at her.

"You got that?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Keeping the .32 on his scrotum, she disengaged herself from him as if she were rising from a bed of nitroglycerin. Her abdominal muscles were painfully tight with tension. Her mouth was dry and sour. Their noisy breathing seemed to fill the bedroom like rushing wind, yet her hearing was so acute that she could detect the soft ticking of her Cartier watch. She slid to one side, got up on her knees, hesitated, finally pushed all the way to her feet and shuffled quickly out of his reach before he could trip her again.

He sat up.

"No!" she said.

"What?"

"Lie down."

"I'm not coming after you."

"Lie down."

"Just relax."

"Dammit, lie down!"

He would not obey her. He just sat there. "So what happens next?"

Waving the pistol at him, she said, "I told you to lie down. Flat on your back. Do it. Now."

He twisted his lips into one of those ugly smiles that he did so well. "And I asked you what happens next."

He was trying to regain control of the situation, and she did not like that. On the other hand, did it really matter whether he was sitting or lying down? Even sitting up, he could not get to his feet and cross the space between them faster than she could put a couple of bullets into him.

"Okay," she said reluctantly. "Sit up if you insist. But you make one move toward me, and I'll empty the gun on you. I'll spread your guts all over the room. I swear to Christ I will."

He grinned and nodded.

Shivering, she said, "Now, I'm going to the bed. I'll sit down there and phone the police."

She moved sideways and backwards, crablike, one small step at a time, until she got to the bed. The telephone was on the nightstand. The moment she sat down and lifted the receiver, Frye disobeyed her. He stood up.

"Hey."

She dropped the receiver and clutched the pistol with both hands, trying to keep it steady.

He held his hands out placatingly, palms toward her. "Wait. Just wait a second. I'm not going to touch you."

"Sit down."

"I'm not coming anywhere near you."

"Sit down right now."

"I'm going to walk out of here," Frye said.

"Like hell you are."

"Out of this room and out of this house."

"No."

"You won't try to shoot me if I just leave."

"Try me and you'll be sorry."

"You won't," he said confidently. "You aren't the type to pull the trigger unless you don't have any other choice. You couldn't kill me in cold blood. You couldn't shoot me in the back. Not in a million years. Not you. You don't have that kind of strength. You're weak. Just too damned weak." He gave her that ghastly grin again, that wide death's head smile, and he took one step toward the door. "You can call the cops when I'm gone." Another step. "It would be different if I was a stranger. Then I might have a chance to get away scot-free. But after all, you can tell them who I am." Another step. "See, you've already won, and I've lost. All I'm doing is buying a little time. A very little bit of time."

She knew he was right about her. She could kill him if he attacked, but she was not capable of shooting him while he retreated.

Sensing her unspoken acknowledgment of the truth in what he had said, Frye turned his back on her. His smug self-confidence infuriated her, but she could not pull the trigger. He had been sidling carefully toward the exit. Now, he strode boldly out of the room, not bothering to glance back. He disappeared through the broken door, and his footsteps echoed along the hallway.

When Hilary heard him thumping down the stairs, she realized that he might not leave the house. Unobserved, he could slip into one of the downstairs rooms and hide in a closet, wait patiently until the police had come and gone, then slither out of his hole and strike her by surprise. She hurried to the head of the stairs and got there just in time to see him turn right, into the foyer. A moment later, she heard him rattling the locks; then he went out and threw the door shut behind him with a loud wham!

She was three-quarters of the way down the stairs when she realized he might have faked his departure. He might have slammed the door without leaving. He might be waiting for her in the foyer.

Hilary was carrying the pistol at her side, the muzzle directed safely at the floor, but she raised it in dread anticipation. She descended the stairs, and on the bottom step she paused for a long while, listening. At last, she eased forward until she could see into the foyer. It was empty. The closet door stood open. Frye wasn't in there either. He was really gone.

She closed the closet door.

She went to the front door and double-locked it.

Weaving slightly, she walked across the living room, in the study. The room smelled of lemon-scented furniture polish; the two women from the cleaning agency had been in yesterday. Hilary switched on the light and drifted to the big desk. She put the gun in the center of the blotter.

Red and white roses filled the vase on the window table. They added a sweet contrasting fragrance to the lemon air.

She sat down at the desk and pulled the telephone in front of her. She looked up the number for the police.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, her vision blurred with hot tears. She tried to hold them back. She was Hilary Thomas, and Hilary Thomas did not cry. Not ever. Hilary Thomas was tough. Hilary Thomas could take all the crap the world wanted to throw at her and keep on taking it and never break down. Hilary Thomas could handle herself perfectly well, thank you. Even though she squeezed her eyes shut, the flood would not be contained. Fat tears tracked down her cheeks and settled saltily in the corners of her mouth, then dribbled over her chin. At first she wept in eerie silence, emitting not even the shallowest whimper. But after a minute or so, she began to twitch and shiver, and her voice was shaken loose. In the back of her throat, she made a wet choking sound which swiftly grew into a sharp little cry of despair. She broke. She let out a terrible quaverous wail and hugged herself. She sobbed and sputtered and gasped for breath. She pulled Kleenex from a decorator dispenser on one corner of the desk, blew her nose, got hold of herself--then shuddered and began to sob again.

She was not crying because he had hurt her. He hadn't caused her any lasting or unbearable pain--at least not physically. She was weeping because, in some way she found difficult to define, he had violated her. She boiled with outrage and shame. Although he had not raped her, although he had not even managed to tear off her clothes, he had demolished her crystal bubble of privacy, a barrier that she had constructed with great care and upon which she had placed a great value. He had smashed into her snug world and had pawed everything in it with his dirty hands.

Tonight, at the best table in the Polo Lounge, Wally Topelis had begun to convince her that she could let down her guard at least a fraction of an inch. For the first time in her twenty-nine years, she seriously had considered the possibility of living much less defensively than she had been accustomed to living. With all the good news and Wally's urging, she had been willing to look at the idea of a life with less fear, and she had been attracted to it. A life with more friends. More relaxation. More fun. It was a shining dream, this new life, not easily attained but worth the struggle to achieve it. But Bruno Frye had taken that fragile dream by the throat and had throttled it. He had reminded her that the world was a dangerous place, a shadowy cellar with nightmare creatures crouching in the dark corners. Just as she was struggling out of her pit, before she had a chance to enjoy the world above ground, he kicked her in the face and sent her tumbling back where she came from, down into doubt and fear and suspicion, down into the awful safety of loneliness.

She wept because she felt violated. And because she was humiliated. And because he had taken her hope and stomped on it the way a schoolyard bully crushes the favorite toy of a weaker child.

Two

PATTERNS.

They fascinated Anthony Clemenza.

At sundown, before Hilary Thomas had even gone home, while she was still driving through the hills and canyons for relaxation, Anthony Clemenza and his partner, Lieutenant Frank Howard, were questioning a bartender in Santa Monica. Beyond the enormous windows in the room's west wall, the sinking sun created constantly changing purple and orange and silver-fleck patterns on the darkening sea.

The place was a singles' bar called Paradise, meeting ground for the chronically lonely and terminally horny of both sexes in an age when all the traditional meeting grounds--church suppers, neighborhood dances, community picnics, social clubs--had been leveled with real (and sociological) bulldozers, the ground where they once stood now covered with highrise offices, towering cement and glass condominiums, pizza parlors, and five-story parking garages. The singles' bar was where space-age boy met space-age girl, where the macho stud connected with the nymphomaniac, where the shy little secretary from Chatsworth met the socially inept computer programmer from Burbank, and, where, sometimes, the rapist met the rapee.

To Anthony Clemenza's eye, the people in Paradise made patterns that identified the place. The most beautiful women and the handsomest men sat very erect on barstools and at minuscule cocktail tables, legs crossed in geometric perfection, elbows bent just so, posing to display the clean lines of their faces and their strong limbs; they made elegantly angular patterns as they watched and courted one another. Those who were less physically attractive than the crème de la crème, but who were nonetheless undeniably appealing and desirable, tended to sit and stand with less than ideal posture, choosing to make up in attitude and image what they lacked in form. Their posture made a statement: I am at ease here, relaxed, unimpressed with those gorgeous straight-backed girls and guys, confident, my own person. This group slouched and slumped gracefully, using the eye-pleasing rounded lines of a body at rest to conceal slight imperfections of bone and muscle. The third and largest group of people in the bar was composed of the plain ones, neither pretty nor ugly, who made jagged anxious patterns as they huddled in corners and darted from table to table to exchange gaping smiles and nervous gossip, worried that no one would love them.

The overall pattern of Paradise is sadness, Tony Clemenza thought. Dark strips of unfulfilled need. A checkered field of loneliness. Quiet desperation in a colorful herringbone.

But he and Frank Howard were not there to study the patterns in the sunset and the customers. What they were there to do was get a lead on Bobby "Angel" Valdez.

Last April, Bobby Valdez had been released from prison after serving seven years and a few months of a fifteen-year sentence for rape and manslaughter. It looked like letting him go had been a big mistake.

Eight years ago, Bobby had raped as few as three and as many as sixteen Los Angeles women. The police could prove three; they suspected the others. One night, Bobby accosted a woman in a parking lot, forced her into his car at gunpoint, drove her to a little-traveled dirt connecting road high in the Hollywood Hills, tore off her clothes, raped her repeatedly, then pushed her out of the car and drove off. He had been parked on the verge of the lane, and the narrow shoulder had opened on a long nasty drop. The woman, thrust naked from the car, lost her balance and went over the edge. She landed on a broken-down fence. Splintery wooden fence posts. With rusted wire. Barbed wire. The wire lacerated her badly, and a jagged four-inch-wide section of weathered pine railing slammed through her belly and out her back, impaling her. Incredibly, while submitting to Bobby in the car, she had put her hand upon a flimsy copy of a Union 76 credit card purchase slip, had realized what it was, and had held on to it all the way down to the fence, all the way down into death. Furthermore, police learned that the deceased wore only one kind of panties, a gift from her boyfriend. Every pair she owned bore this embroidered legend on the silky crotch: HARRY'S PROPERTY. A pair of those panties, torn and soiled, were found in a collection of underthings in Bobby's apartment. Those and the scrap of paper in the victim's hand led to the suspect's arrest.

Unfortunately for the people of California, circumstances conspired to get Bobby off lightly. The arresting officers made a minor procedural error when they took him into custody, just the sort of thing to stir some judges to passionate rhetoric about constitutional guarantees. The district attorney at that time, a man named Kooperhausen, had been busy responding to charges of political corruption in his own office. Aware that the improper handling of the accused at the time of arrest might have jeopardized the state's case, preoccupied with saving his own ass from the muckrakers, the D.A. had been receptive to the defense attorney's offer to plead Bobby guilty to three counts of rape and one of manslaughter in return for the dropping of all other and more serious charges. Most homicide detectives, like Tony Clemenza, felt that Kooperhausen should have tried to get convictions for second-degree murder, kidnapping, assault, rape, and sodomy. The evidence was overwhelmingly in favor of the state's position. The deck was stacked against Bobby--and then fate dealt him an unexpected ace.

Today, Bobby was a free man.

But maybe not for long, Tony thought.

In May, one month after his release from prison, Bobby "Angel" Valdez failed to keep an appointment with his parole officer. He moved out of his apartment without filing the required change of address form with the proper authorities. He vanished.

In June, he started raping again. Just as easy as that. As casually as some men start smoking again after shaking the habit for a few years. Like renewed interest in an old hobby. He molested two women in June. Two in July. Three in August. Two more in the first ten days of September. After eighty-eight months behind bars, Bobby had a craving for woman-flesh, an insatiable need.

The police were convinced that those nine crimes--and perhaps a few others that had gone unreported--were the work of one man, and they were equally certain the man was Bobby Valdez. For one thing each of victims had been approached in the same way. A man walked up to her as she got out of her car alone, at night, in a parking lot. He put a gun in her ribs or back or belly, and he said, "I'm a fun guy. Come to the party with me, and you won't get hurt. Turn me down, and I'll blow you away right now. Play along, and you've got no worries. I'm really a fun guy." He said pretty much the same thing every time, and the victims remembered it because the "fun guy" part sounded so weird, especially when spoken in Bobby's soft, high-pitched, almost girlish voice. It was identical to the approach Bobby had used more than eight years ago, during his first career as a rapist.

In addition to that, the nine victims gave strikingly similar descriptions of the man who had abused them. Slender. Five-foot-ten. A hundred and forty pounds. Dusky complexion. Dimpled chin. Brown hair and eyes. The girlish voice. Some of Bobby's friends called him "Angel" because of his sweet voice and because he had a cute baby face. Bobby was thirty years old, but he looked sixteen. Each of the nine victims had seen her assailant's face, and each had said he looked like a kid, but handled himself like a tough, cruel, clever, and sick man.

The chief bartender in Paradise left the business to his two subordinates and examined the three glossy mug shots of Bobby Valdez that Frank Howard had put on the bar. His name was Otto. He was a good-looking man, darkly tanned and bearded. He wore white slacks and a blue body shirt with the top three buttons undone. His brown chest was matted with crisp golden hairs. He wore a shark's tooth on a gold chain around his neck. He looked up at Frank, frowned. "I didn't know L.A. police had jurisdiction in Santa Monica."

"We're here by sufferance of the Santa Monica P.D.," Tony said.

"Huh?"

"Santa Monica police are cooperating with us in this investigation," Frank said impatiently. "Now, did you ever see the guy?"

"Yeah, sure. He's been in a couple of times," Otto said.

"When?" Frank asked.

"Oh ... a month ago. Maybe longer."

"Not recently?"

The band, just returned from a twenty-minute break, struck up a Billy Joel song.

Otto raised his voice above the music. "Haven't seen him for at least a month. The reason I remember is because he didn't look old enough to be served. I asked to see some ID, and he got mad as hell about that. Caused a scene."

"What kind of scene?" Frank asked.

"Demanded to see the manager."

"That's all?" Tony asked.

"Called me names." Otto looked grim. "Nobody calls me names like that."

Tony cupped one hand around his ear to funnel in the bartender's voice and block some of the music. He liked most Billy Joel tunes, but not when they were played by a band that thought enthusiasm and amplification could compensate for poor musicianship.

"So he called you names," Frank said. "Then what?"

"Then he apologized."

"Just like that? He demands to see the manager, calls you names, then right away apologizes?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I asked him to," Otto said.

Frank leaned farther over the bar as the music swelled into a deafening chorus. "He apologized just because you asked him to?"

"Well ... first, he wanted to fight."

"Did you fight him?" Tony shouted.

"Nah. If even the biggest and meanest son of a bitch in the place gets rowdy, I don't ever have to touch him to quiet him down."

"You must have a hell of a lot of charm," Frank yelled.

The band finished the chorus, and the roar descended from a decibel level high enough to make your eyeballs bleed. The vocalist did a bad imitation of Billy Joel on a verse played no louder than a thunderstorm.

A stunning green-eyed blonde was sitting at the bar next to Tony. She had been listening to the conversation. She said, "Go on, Otto. Show them your trick."

"You're a magician?" Tony asked Otto. "What do you do--make unruly customers disappear?"

"He scares them," the blonde said. "It's neat. Go on, Otto. Show them your stuff."

Otto shrugged and reached under the bar and took a tall beer glass from a rack. He held it up so they could look at it, as if they had never seen a beer glass before. Then he bit off a piece of it. He clamped his teeth on the rim and snapped a chunk out of it, turned, spat the sharp fragment into a garbage can behind him.

The band exploded through the last chorus of the song and gifted the audience with merciful silence.

In the sudden quiet between the last note and the burst of scattered applause, Tony heard the beer glass crack as Otto took another bite out of it.

"Jesus," Frank said.

The blonde giggled.

Otto chomped on the glass and spat out a mouthful and chomped some more until he had reduced it to an inch-thick base too heavy to succumb to human teeth and jaws. He threw the remaining hunk in the can and smiled. "I chew up the glass right in front of the guy who's making trouble. Then I look mean as a snake, and I tell him to settle down. I tell him that if he doesn't settle down I'll bite his goddamned nose off."

Frank Howard gaped at him, amazed. "Have you ever done it?"

"What? Bitten off someone's nose? Nah. Just the threat's enough to make them behave."

"You get many hard cases here?" Frank asked.

"Nah. This is a class place. We have trouble maybe once a week. No more than that."

"How do you do that trick?" Tony asked.

"Biting the glass? There's a little secret to it. But it's not really hard to learn."

The band broke into Bob Seeger's Still the Same as if they were a bunch of juvenile delinquents breaking into a nice house with the intention of trashing it.

"Ever cut yourself?" Tony shouted to Otto.

"Every once in a while. Not often. And I've never cut my tongue. The sign of someone who can do the stunt well is the condition of his tongue," Otto said. "My tongue has never been cut."

"But you have injured yourself."

"Sure. My lips a few times. Not often."

"But that only makes the trick more effective," the blonde said. "You should see him when he cuts himself. Otto stands there in front of the jerk who's been causing all the trouble, and he just pretends like he doesn't know he's hurt himself. He lets the blood run." Her green eyes shone with delight and with a hard little spark of animal passion that made Tony squirm uneasily on his barstool. "He stands there with bloody teeth and with the blood oozing down into his beard, and he warns the guy to stop making a ruckus. You wouldn't believe how fast they settle down."

"I believe," Tony said. He felt queasy.

Frank Howard shook his head and said, "Well...."

"Yeah," Tony said, unable to find words of his own.

Frank said, "Okay ... let's get back to Bobby Valdez." He tapped the mug shots that were lying on the bar.

"Oh. Well, like I told you, he hasn't been in for at least a month."

"That night, after he got angry with you, after you settled him down with the glass trick, did he stick around for a drink?"

"I served him a couple."

"So you saw his ID."

"Yeah."

"What was it--driver's license?"

"Yeah. He was thirty, for God's sake. He looked like he was in maybe eleventh grade, a high school junior, maybe at most a senior, but he was thirty."

Frank said, "Do you remember what the name was on the driver's license?"

Otto fingered his shark's tooth necklace. "Name? You already know his name."

"What I'm wondering," Frank said, "is whether or not he showed you a phony driver's license."

"His picture was on it," Otto said.

"That doesn't mean it was genuine."

"But you can't change pictures on a California license. Doesn't the card self-destruct or something if you mess around with it?"

"I'm saying the whole card might be a fake."

"Forged credentials," Otto said, intrigued. "Forged credentials...." Clearly, he had watched a couple of hundred old espionage movies on television. "What is this, some sort of spy thing?"

"I think we've gotten turned around here," Frank said impatiently.

"Huh?"

"We're supposed to be the ones asking questions," Frank said. "You just answer them. Understand?"

The bartender was one of those people who reacted quickly, strongly, and negatively to a pushy cop. His dark face closed up. His eyes went blank.

Aware that they were about to lose Otto while he still might have something important to tell them, Tony put a hand on Frank's shoulder, squeezed gently. "You don't want him to start munching on a glass, do you?"

"I'd like to see it again," the blonde said, grinning.

"You'd rather do it your way?" Frank asked Tony.

"Sure."

"Go ahead."

Tony smiled at Otto. "Look, you're curious, and so are we. Doesn't hurt a thing if we satisfy your curiosity, so long as you satisfy ours."

Otto opened up again. "That's the way I see it, too."

"Okay," Tony said.

"Okay. So what's this Bobby Valdez done that makes you want him so bad?"

"Parole violations," Tony said.

"And assault," Frank said grudgingly.

"And rape," Tony said.

"Hey," Otto said, "didn't you guys say you were with the homicide squad?"

The band finished Still the Same with a clatter-bang-boom of sound not unlike the derailment of a speeding freight train. Then there were a few minutes of peace while the lead singer made unamusing small talk with the ringside customers who sat in clouds of smoke that, Tony felt sure, had come partly from cigarettes and partly from burning eardrums. The musicians pretended to tune their instruments.

"When Bobby Valdez comes across an uncooperative woman," Tony explained to Otto, "he pistol-whips her a little to make her more eager to please. Five days ago, he went after victim number ten, and she resisted, and he hit her on the head so hard and so often that she died in the hospital twelve hours later. Which brought the homicide squad into it."

"What I don't understand," the blonde said, "is why any guy would take it by force when there's girls willing to give it away." She winked at Tony, but he didn't wink back.

"Before the woman died," Frank said, "she gave us a description that fit Bobby like a custom-made glove. So if you know anything about the slimy little bastard, we've got to hear it."

Otto hadn't spent all his time watching spy movies. He had seen his share of police shows, too. He said, "So now you want him for murder-one."

"Murder-one," Tony said. "Precisely."

"How'd you know to ask me about him?"

"He accosted seven of those ten women in singles' bar parking lots--"

"None of them in our lot," Otto interrupted defensively. "Our lot is very well lighted."

"That's true," Tony said. "But we've been going to singles' bars all over the city, talking to bartenders and regular customers, showing them those mug shots, trying to get a line on Bobby Valdez. A couple of people at a place in Century City told us they thought they'd seen him here, but they couldn't be sure."

"He was here all right," Otto said.

Now that Otto's feathers had been smoothed, Frank took over the questioning again. "So he caused a commotion, and you did your beer glass trick, and he showed you his ID."

"Yeah."

"So what was the name on the ID?"

Otto frowned. "I'm not sure."

"Was it Robert Valdez?"

"I don't think so."

"Try to remember."

"It was a Chicano name."

"Valdez is a Chicano name."

"This was more Chicano than that."

"What do you mean?"

"Well... longer... with a couple Zs in it."

"Zs?"

"And Qs. You know the kind of name I mean. Something like Velazquez."

"Was it Velazquez?"

"Nah. But like that."

"Began with a V?"

"I couldn't say for sure. I'm just talking about the sound of it."

"What about the first name?"

"I think I remember that."

"And?"

"Jaun."

"J-U-A-N?"

"Yeah. Very Chicano."

"You notice an address on his ID?"

"I wasn't looking for that."

"He mention where he lived?"

"We weren't exactly chummy."

"He say anything at all about himself?"

"He just drank quietly and left."

"And never came back?"

"That's right."

"You're positive?"

"He's never been back on my shift, anyway."

"You got a good memory."

"Only for the troublemakers and the pretty ones."

"We'd like to show those mug shots to some of your customers," Frank said.

"Sure. Go ahead."

The blonde sitting next to Tony Clemenza said, "Can I get a closer look at them? Maybe I was in here when he was. Maybe I even talked to him."

Tony picked up the photographs and swiveled on his barstool.

She swung toward him as he swung toward her, and she pressed her pretty knees against his. When she took the pictures from him, her fingers lingered for a moment on his. She was a great believer in eye contact. She seemed to be trying to stare right through his brain and out the back of his skull.

"I'm Judy. What's your name?"

"Tony Clemenza."

"I knew you were Italian. I could tell by your dark soulful eyes."

"They give me away every time."

"And that thick black hair. So curly."

"And the spaghetti sauce stains on my shirt?"

She looked at his shirt.

"There aren't really any stains," he said.

She frowned.

"Just kidding. A little joke," he said.

"Oh."

"Do you recognize Bobby Valdez?"

She finally looked at the mug shot. "Nope. I must not have been here the night he came in. But he's not all that bad, is he? Kind of cute."

"Baby face."

"It would be like going to bed with my kid brother," she said. "Kinky." She grinned.

He took the pictures from her.

"That's a very nice suit you're wearing," she said.

"Thank you."

"It's cut really nice."

"Thank you."

This was not just a liberated woman exercising her right to be the sexual aggressor. He liked liberated women. This one was something else. Something weird. The whips and chains type. Or worse. She made him feel like a tasty little morsel, a very edible canapé, the last tiny piece of toast and caviar on a silver tray.

"You sure don't see many suits in a place like this," she said.

"I guess not."

"Body shirts, jeans, leather jackets, the Hollywood look--that's what you see in a place like this."

He cleared his throat. "Well," he said uneasily, "I want to thank you for helping us as much as you could."

She said, "I like men who dress well."

Their eyes locked again, and he saw that flicker of ravenous hunger and animal greed. He had the feeling that if he let her lead him into her apartment, the door would close behind him like a set of jaws. She'd be all over him in an instant, pushing and pulling and whirling him around as if she were a wave of digestive juices, breaking him down and sucking the nutrients out of him, using him until he fragmented and dissolved and simply ceased to exist except as a part of her.

"Got to go to work," he said, sliding off the barstool. "See you around."

"I hope so."

For fifteen minutes, Tony and Frank showed the mug shots of Bobby Valdez to the customers in Paradise. As they moved from table to table, the band played Rolling Stones and Elton John and Bee Gees material at a volume that set up sympathetic vibrations in Tony's teeth. It was a waste of time. No one in Paradise remembered the killer with the baby face.

On the way out, Tony stopped at the long oak bar where Otto was mixing strawberry Margaritas. "Tell me something," he shouted above the music.

"Anything," Otto yelled.

"Don't people come to these places to meet each other?"

"Making connections. That's what it's all about."

"Then why the hell do so many singles' bars have bands like that one?"

"What's wrong with the band?"

"A lot of things. But mostly it's too damned loud."

"So?"

"So how can anyone possibly strike up an interesting conversation?"

"Interesting conversation?" Otto said. "Hey man, they don't come here for interesting conversation. They come to meet each other, check each other out, see who they want to go to bed with."

"But no conversation?"

"Look at them. Just look around at them. What would they talk about? If we didn't play music loud and fairly steady, they'd get nervous."

"All those maddeningly quiet spaces to fill."

"How right you are. They'd go somewhere else."

"Where the music was louder and they only needed body language."

Otto shrugged. "It's a sign of the times."

"Maybe I should have lived in another time," Tony said.

Outside, the night was mild, but he knew it would get colder. A thin mist was coming off the sea, not genuine fog yet, but a sort of damp greasy breath that hung in the air and made halos around all the lights.

Frank was waiting behind the wheel of the unmarked police sedan. Tony climbed in on the passenger's side and buckled his seatbelt.

They had one more lead to check out before they quit for the day. Earlier, a couple of people at that Century City singles' bar had said they'd also seen Bobby Valdez at a joint called The Big Quake on Sunset Boulevard, over in Hollywood.

Traffic was moderate to heavy heading toward the heart of the city. Sometimes Frank got impatient and darted from lane to lane, weaving in and out with toots of the horn and little squeals of the brakes, trying to get ahead a few car lengths, but not tonight. Tonight, he was going with the flow.

Tony wondered if Frank Howard had been discussing philosophy with Otto.

After a while, Frank said, "You could have had her."

"Who?"

"That blonde. That Judy."

"I was on duty, Frank."

"You could have set something up for later. She was panting for you."

"Not my type."

"She was gorgeous."

"She was a killer."

"She was what?"

"She'd have eaten me up alive."

Frank considered that for about two seconds, then said, "Bullshit. I'd take a crack at her if I had the chance."

"You know where she's at."

"Maybe I'll mosey back there later, when we're done."

"You do that," Tony said. "Then I'll come visit you in the rest home when she's finished with you."

"Hell, what's the matter with you? She wasn't that special. That kind of stuff can be handled easy."

"Maybe that's why I didn't want it."

"Send that one by me again."

Tony Clemenza was tired. He wiped his face with his hands as if weariness was a mask that he could pull off and discard. "She was too well-handled, too well-used."

"Since when did you become a Puritan?"

"I'm not," Tony said, "Or ... yeah ... okay, maybe I am. Just a little. Just a thin streak of Puritanism in there somewhere. God knows, I've had more than a few of what they now call 'meaningful relationships.' I'm far from pure. But I just can't see myself on the make in a place like Paradise, cruising, calling all the women 'foxes,' looking for fresh meat. For one thing, I couldn't keep a straight face making the kind of chatter that fills in between the band's numbers. Can you hear me making that scene? 'Hi, I'm Tony. What's your name? What's your sign? Are you into numerology? Have you taken est training? Do you believe in the incredible totality of cosmic energy? Do you believe in destiny as an arm of some all-encompassing cosmic consciousness? Do you think we were destined to meet? Do you think we could get rid of all the bad karma we've generated individually by creating a good energy gestalt together? Want to fuck?'"

"Except for the part about fucking," Frank said, "I didn't understand a thing you said."

"Neither did I. That's what I mean. In a place like Paradise, it's all plastic chatter, glossy surface jive talk formulated to slide everyone into bed with as little friction as possible. In Paradise, you don't ask a woman anything really important. You don't ask about her feelings, her emotions, her talents, her fears, hopes, wants, needs, dreams. So what happens is you end up going to bed with a stranger. Worse than that, you find yourself making love to a fox, to a paper cut-out from a men's magazine, an image instead of a woman, a piece of meat instead of a person, which means you aren't making love at all. The act becomes just the satisfying of a bodily urge, no different than scratching an itch or having a good bowel movement. If a man reduces sex to that, then he might as well stay home alone and use his hand."

Frank braked for a red light and said. "Your hand can't give you a blow job."

"Jesus, Frank, sometimes you can be crude as hell."

"Just being practical."

"What I'm trying to say is that, for me at least, the dance isn't worth the effort if you don't know your partner. I'm not one of those people who'd go to a disco just to revel in my own fancy choreography. I've got to know what the lady's steps are, how she wants to move and why, what she feels and thinks. Sex is just so damned much better if she means something to you, if she's an individual, a quirky person all her own, not just a smooth sleek body that's rounded in all the right places, but a unique personality, a character with chips and dents and marks of experience."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," Frank said as he drove away from the traffic signal. "It's that old bromide about sex being cheap and unfulfilling if love isn't mixed up with it somehow."

"I'm not talking about undying love," Tony said. "I'm not talking about unbreakable vows of fidelity until the end of time. You can love someone for a little while, in little ways. You can go on loving her even after the physical part of the relationship is over. I'm friends with old lovers because we didn't look at each other as new notches on the gun: we had something in common even after we stopped sharing a bed. Look, before I'm going to go for a tumble in the sack, before I'm going to get bare-assed and vulnerable with a woman, I want to know I can trust her: I want to feel she's special in some way, dear to me, a person worth knowing, worth revealing myself to, worth being a part of for a while."

"Garbage," Frank said scornfully.

"It's the way I feel."

"Let me give you a warning."

"Go ahead."

"The best advice you'll ever get."

"I'm listening."

"If you think there's really something called love, if you honest-to-God believe there's actually a thing called love that's as strong and real as hate or fear, then all you're doing is setting yourself up for a lot of pain. It's a lie. A big lie. Love is something writers invented to sell books."

"You don't really mean that."

"The hell I don't." Frank glanced away from the road for a moment, looked at Tony with pity. "You're how old--thirty-three?"

"Almost thirty-five," Tony said as Frank looked back at the street and pulled around a slow-moving truck that was loaded down with scrap metal.

"Well, I'm ten years older than you," Frank said. "So listen to the wisdom of age. Sooner or later, you're going to think you're in true love with some fluff, and while you're bending over to kiss her pretty feet she's going to kick the shit out of you. Sure as hell, she'll break your heart if you let her know you have one. Affection? Sure. That's okay. And lust. Lust is the word, my friend. Lust is what it's really all about. But not love. What you've got to do is forget all this love crap. Enjoy yourself. Get all the ass you can while you're young. Fuck 'em and run. You can't get hurt that way. If you keep daydreaming about love, you'll only go on making a complete goddamned fool out of yourself, over and over and over again, until they finally stick you in the ground."

"That's too cynical for me."

Frank shrugged.

Six months ago, he had gone through a bitter divorce. He was still sour from the experience.

"And you're not really that cynical, either," Tony said. "I don't think you really believe what you said."

Frank didn't say anything.

"You're a sensitive man," Tony said.

Frank shrugged again.

For a minute or two, Tony tried to revive the dead conversation, but Frank had said everything he intended to say about the subject. He settled into his usual sphinxlike silence. It was surprising that he had said all he said, for Frank was not much of a talker. In fact, when Tony thought about it, the brief discussion just concluded seemed to have been the longest they'd ever had.

Tony had been partners with Frank Howard for more than three months. He still was not sure if the pairing was going to work out.

They were so different from each other in so many ways. Tony was a talker. Frank usually did little more than grunt in response. Tony had a wide variety of interests other than his job: films, books, food, the theater, music, art, skiing, running. So far as he could tell, Frank didn't care a great deal about anything except his work. Tony believed that a detective had many tools with which to extract information from a witness, including kindness, gentleness, wit, sympathy, empathy, attentiveness, charm, persistence, cleverness--and of course, intimidation and the rare use of mild force. Frank felt he could get along fine with just persistence, cleverness, intimidation, and a bit more force than the department thought acceptable; he had no use whatsoever for the other approaches on Tony's list. As a result, at least twice a week, Tony had to restrain him subtly but firmly. Frank was subject to eye-bulging, blood-boiling rages when too many things went wrong in one day. Tony, on the other hand, was nearly always calm. Frank was five-nine, stocky, solid as a blockhouse. Tony was six-one, lean, rangy, rugged looking. Frank was blond and blue-eyed. Tony was dark. Frank was a brooding pessimist. Tony was an optimist. Sometimes it seemed they were such totally opposite types that the partnership never could be successful.

Yet they were alike in some respects. For one thing, neither of them was an eight-hour-a-day cop. More often than not, they worked an extra two hours, sometimes three, without pay, and neither of them complained about it. Toward the end of a case, when evidence and leads developed faster and faster, they would work on their days off if they thought it necessary. No one asked them to do overtime. No one ordered it. The choice was entirely theirs.

Tony was willing to give more than a fair share of himself to the department because he was ambitious. He did not intend to remain a detective-lieutenant for the rest of his life. He wanted to work his way up at least to captain, perhaps higher than that, perhaps all the way to the top, right into the chief's office, where the pay and retirement benefits were a hell of a lot better than what he would get if he stayed where he was. He had been raised in a large Italian family in which parsimony had been a religion as important as Roman Catholicism. His father, Carlo, was an immigrant who worked as a tailor. The old man had labored hard and long to keep his children housed, clothed, and fed, but quite often he had come perilously close to destitution and bankruptcy. There had been much sickness in the Clemenza family, and the unexpected hospital and pharmacy bills had eaten up a frighteningly high percentage of what the old man earned. While Tony was still a child, even before he was old enough to understand about money and household budgets, before he knew anything about the debilitating fear of poverty with which his father lived, he sat through hundreds, maybe thousands, of short but strongly worded lectures on fiscal responsibility. Carlo instructed him almost daily in the importance of hard work, financial shrewdness, ambition, and job security. His father should have worked for the CIA in the brainwashing department. Tony had been so totally indoctrinated, so completely infused with his father's fears and principles, that even at the age of thirty-five, with an excellent bank account and a steady job, he felt uneasy if he was away from work more than two or three days. As often as not, when he took a long vacation, it turned into an ordeal instead of a pleasure. He put in a lot of overtime every week because he was Carlo Clemenza's son, and Carlo Clemenza's son could not possibly have done otherwise.

Frank Howard had other reasons for giving a big piece of himself to the department. He did not appear to be any more ambitious than the next guy, and he did not seem unduly worried about money. As far as Tony could tell, Frank put in the extra hours because he really lived only when he was on the job. Being a homicide detective was the only role he knew how to play, the one thing that gave him a sense of purpose and worth.

Tony looked away from the red taillights of the cars in front of them and studied his partner's face. Frank wasn't aware of Tony's scrutiny. His attention was focused on his driving; he peered intently at the quicksilver flow of traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. The green glow from the dashboard dials and gauges highlighted his bold features. He was not handsome in the classic sense, but he was good-looking in his own way. Broad brow. Deeply-set blue eyes. The nose a bit large and sharp. The mouth well-formed but most often set in a grim scowl that flexed the strong jawline. The face unquestionably contained power and appeal--and more than a hint of unyielding single-mindedness. It was not difficult to picture Frank going home and sitting down and, every night without fail, dropping into a trance that lasted from quitting time until eight the next morning.

In addition to their willingness to work extended hours, Tony and Frank had a few other things in common. Although many plainclothes detectives had tossed out the old dress code and now reported for duty in everything from jeans to leisure suits, Tony and Frank still believed in wearing traditional suits and ties. They thought of themselves as professionals, doing a job that required special skills and education, a job as vital and demanding as that of any trial attorney or teacher or social worker--more demanding, in fact--and jeans simply did not contribute to a professional image. Neither of them smoked. Neither of them drank on the job. And neither of them attempted to foist his paperwork on the other.

So maybe it'll work out between us, Tony thought. Maybe in time I can quietly convince him to use more charm and less force with witnesses. Maybe I can get him interested in films and food, if not in books and art and theater. The reason I'm having so much trouble adjusting to him is that my expectations are far too high. But Jesus, if only he'd talk a little more instead of sitting there like a lump!

For the rest of his career as a homicide detective, Tony would expect a great deal of anyone who rode with him because, for five years, until last May 7, he had worked with a nearly perfect partner, Michael Savatino. He and Michael were both from Italian families; they shared certain ethnic memories, pains, and pleasures. More important than that, they employed similar methods in their police work, and they enjoyed many of the same extracurricular activities. Michael was an avid reader, a film buff, and an excellent cook. Their days had been punctuated by fascinating conversations.

Last February, Michael and his wife, Paula, had gone to Las Vegas for a weekend. They saw two shows. They ate dinner twice at Battista's Hole in the Wall, the best restaurant in town. They filled out a dozen Keno cards and won nothing. They played two-dollar blackjack and lost sixty bucks. And one hour before their scheduled departure, Paula put a silver dollar in a slot machine that promised a progressive jackpot, pulled the handle, and won slightly more than two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

Police work never had been Michael's first choice for a career. But like Tony, he was a seeker of security. He attended the police academy and climbed relatively quickly from uniformed patrolman to detective because public service offered at least moderate financial security. In March, however, Michael gave the department a sixty-day notice, and in May he quit. All of his adult life, he had wanted to own a restaurant. Five weeks ago, he opened Savatino's, a small but authentic Italian ristorante on Santa Monica Boulevard, not far from the Century City complex.

A dream come true.

How likely is it that I could make my dream come true the same way? Tony wondered as he studied the night city through which they moved. How likely is it that I could go to Vegas, win two hundred thousand bucks, quit the police force, and take a shot at making it as an artist?

He did not have to ask the question aloud. He didn't need Frank Howard's opinion. He knew the answer. How likely was it? Not very damned likely. About as likely as suddenly learning he was the long-lost son of a rich Arabian prince.

As Michael Savatino had always dreamed of being a restaurateur, so Tony Clemenza dreamed of earning his living as an artist. He had talent. He produced fine pieces in a variety of media: pen and ink, watercolor, oil. He was not merely technically skilled; he had a sharp and unique creative imagination as well. Perhaps if he had been born into a middle-class family with at least modest financial resources, he would have gone to a good school, would have received the proper training from the best professors, would have honed his God-given abilities, and would have become tremendously successful. Instead, he had educated himself with hundreds of art books and through thousands of hours of painstaking drawing practice and experimentation with materials. And he suffered from that pernicious lack of self-confidence so common to those who are self-taught in any field. Although he had entered four art shows and had twice won top prize in his division, he never seriously considered quitting his job and plunging into the creative life. That was nothing more than a pleasant fantasy, a bright daydream. No son of Carlo Clemenza would ever forsake a weekly paycheck for the dread uncertainties of self-employment, unless he had first banked a windfall from Las Vegas.

He was jealous of Michael Savatino's good fortune. Of course, they were still close friends, and he was genuinely happy for Michael. Delighted. Really. But also jealous. He was human, after all, and in the back of his mind, the same petty question kept blinking off and on, off and on, like a neon sign: Why couldn't it have been me?

Slamming on the brakes, jolting Tony out of his reverie, Frank blew the horn at a Corvette that cut him off in traffic. "Asshole!"

"Easy, Frank."

"Sometimes I wish I was back in uniform again, handing out citations."

"That's the last thing you wish."

"I'd nail his ass."

"Except maybe he'd turn out to be out of his skull on drugs or maybe just plain crazy. When you work the traffic detail too long, you tend to forget the world's full of nuts. You fall into a habit, a routine, and you get careless. So maybe you'd stop him and walk up to his door with your ticket book in hand, and he'd greet you with a gun. Maybe he'd blow your head off. No. I'm thankful traffic detail's behind me forever. At least when you're on a homicide assignment, you know the kind of people you're going to have to deal with. You never forget there's going to be someone with a gun or a knife or a piece of lead pipe up ahead somewhere. You're a lot less likely to walk into a nasty little surprise when you're working homicide."

Frank refused to be drawn into another discussion. He kept his eyes on the road, grumbled sullenly, wordlessly, and settled back into silence.

Tony sighed. He stared at the passing scenery with an artist's eye for unexpected detail and previously unnoticed beauty.

Patterns.

Every scene--every seascape, every landscape, every street, every building, every room in every building, every person, every thing--had its own special patterns. If you could perceive the patterns in a scene, you could then look beyond the patterns to the underlying structure that supported them. If you could see and grasp the method by which a surface harmony had been achieved, you eventually could understand the deepest meaning and mechanisms of any subject and then make a good painting of it. If you picked up your brushes and approached the canvas without first performing that analysis, you might wind up with a pretty picture, but you would not produce a work of art.

Patterns.

As Frank Howard drove east on Wilshire, on the way to the Hollywood singles' bar called The Big Quake, Tony searched for patterns in the city and the night. At first, coming in from Santa Monica, there were the sharp low lines of the sea-facing houses and the shadowy outlines of tall feathery palms--patterns of serenity and civility and more than a little money. As they entered Westwood, the dominant pattern was rectilinear: clusters of office highrises, oblong patches of light radiating from scattered windows in the mostly dark faces of the buildings. These neatly ordered rectangular shapes formed the patterns of modern thought and corporate power, patterns of even greater wealth than had been evident in Santa Monica's seaside homes. From Westwood they went to Beverly Hills, an insulated pocket within the greater fabric of the metropolis, a place through which the Los Angeles police could pass but in which they had no authority. In Beverly Hills, the patterns were soft and lush and flowing in a graceful continuum of big houses, parks, greenery, exclusive shops, and more ultra-expensive automobiles than you could find anywhere else on earth. From Wilshire Boulevard to Santa Monica Boulevard to Doheny, the pattern was one of ever-increasing wealth.

They turned north on Doheny, crawled up the steep hills, and swung right onto Sunset Boulevard, heading for the heart of Hollywood. For a couple of blocks, the famous street delivered a little bit on the promise of its name and legend. On the right stood Scandia, one of the best and most elegant restaurants in town, and one of the half dozen best in the entire country. Glittering discos. A nightclub specializing in magic. Another spot owned and operated by a stage hypnotist. Comedy clubs. Rock and roll clubs. Huge flashy billboards advertising current films and currently popular recording stars. Lights, lights and more lights. Initially, the boulevard supported the university studies and government reports that claimed Los Angeles and its suburbs formed the richest metropolitan area in the nation, perhaps the richest in the world. But after a while, as Frank continued to drive eastward, the blush of glamor faded. Even L.A. suffered from senescence. The pattern became marginally but unmistakably cancerous. In the healthy flesh of the city, a few malignant growths swelled here and there: cheap bars, a striptease club, a shuttered service station, brassy massage parlors, an adult book store, a few buildings desperately in need of renovation, more of them block by block. The disease was not terminal in this neighborhood, as it was in others nearby, but every day it gobbled up a few more bites of healthy tissue. Frank and Tony did not have to descend into the scabrous heart of the tumor, for The Big Quake was still on the edge of the blight. The bar appeared suddenly in a blaze of red and blue lights on the righthand side of the street.

Inside, the place resembled Paradise, except that the decor relied more heavily on colored lights and chrome and mirrors than it did in the Santa Monica bar. The customers were somewhat more consciously stylish, more aggressively au courant, and generally a shade better looking than the crowd in Paradise. But to Tony the patterns appeared to be the same as they were in Santa Monica. Patterns of need, longing, and loneliness. Desperate, carnivorous patterns.

The bartender wasn't able to help them, and the only customer who had anything for them was a tall brunette with violet eyes. She was sure they would find Bobby at Janus, a discotheque in Westwood. She had seen him there the previous two nights.

Outside, in the parking lot, bathed in alternating flashes of red and blue light, Frank said, "One thing just leads to another."

"As usual."

"It's getting late."

"Yeah."

"You want to try Janus now or leave it for tomorrow?"

"Now," Tony said.

"Good."

They turned around and traveled west on Sunset, out of the area that showed signs of urban cancer, into the glitter of the Strip, then into greenery and wealth again, past the Beverly Hills Hotel, past mansions and endless marching rows of gigantic palm trees.

As he often did when he suspected Tony might attempt to strike up another conversation, Frank switched on the police band radio and listened to Communications calling black-and-whites in the division that provided protection for Westwood, toward which they were heading. Nothing much was happening on that frequency. A family dispute. A fender-bender at the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Wilshire. A suspicious man in a parked car on a quiet residential street off Hilgarde had attracted attention and needed checking out.

In most of the city's other sixteen police divisions, the night was far less safe and peaceful than it was in privileged Westwood. In the Seventy-seventh, Newton, and Southwest divisions, which served the black community south of the Santa Monica Freeway, none of the mid-watch patrol officers would be bored; in their bailiwicks the night was jumping. On the east side of town, in the Mexican-American neighborhoods, the gangs would continue to give a bad name to the vast majority of law-abiding Chicano citizens. By the time the mid-watch went off duty at three o'clock--three hours after the morning watch came on line--there would be several ugly incidents of gang violence on the east side, a few punks stabbing other punks, maybe a shooting and a death or two as the macho maniacs tried to prove their manhood in the wearisome, stupid, but timeless blood ceremonies they had been performing with Latin passion for generations. To the northwest, on the far side of the hills, the affluent valley kids were drinking too damned much whiskey, smoking too much pot, snorting too much cocaine--and subsequently ramming their cars and vans and motorcycles into one another at ghastly speeds and with tiresome regularity.

As Frank drove past the entrance to Bel Air Estates and started up a hill toward the UCLA campus, the Westwood scene suddenly got lively. Communications put out a woman-in-trouble call. Information was sketchy. Apparently, it was an attempted rape and assault with a deadly weapon. It was not clear if the assailant was still on the premises. Shots had been fired, but Communications had been unable to ascertain from the complainant whether the gun belonged to her or the assailant. Likewise, they didn't know if anyone was hurt.

"Have to go in blind," Tony said.

"That address is just a couple of blocks from here," Frank said.

"We could be there in a minute."

"Probably a lot faster than the patrol car."

"Want to assist?"

"Sure."

"I'll call in and tell them."

Tony picked up the microphone as Frank hung a hard left at the first intersection. A block later they turned left again, and Frank accelerated as much as he dared along the narrow, tree-flanked street.

Tony's heart accelerated with the car. He felt an old excitement, a cold hard knot of fear in his guts.

He remembered Parker Hitchison, a particularly quirky, morose, and humorless partner he had endured for a short while during his second year as a patrol officer, long before he won his detective's badge. Every time they answered a call, every damned time, whether it was a Code Three emergency or just a frightened cat stuck in a tree, Parker Hitchison sighed mournfully and said, "Now, we die." It was weird and decidedly unsettling. Over and over again on every shift, night after night, with sincere and unflagging pessimism, he said it--"Now, we die"--until Tony was almost crazy.

Hitchison's funereal voice and those three somber words still haunted him in moments like this.

Now we die?

Frank wheeled around another corner, nearly clipping a black BMW that was parked too close to the intersection. The tires squealed, and the sedan shimmied, and Frank said, "That address ought to be right around here somewhere."

Tony squinted at the shadowy houses that were only partly illuminated by the streetlamps. "There it is, I think," he said, pointing.

It was a large neo-Spanish house set well back from the street on a spacious lot. Red tile roof. Cream-colored stucco. Leaded windows. Two big wrought-iron carriage lamps, one on each side of the front door.

Frank parked in the circular driveway.

They got out of the unmarked sedan.

Tony reached under his jacket and slipped the service revolver out of his shoulder holster.

***

After Hilary had finished crying at her desk in the study, she had decided, in a daze, to go upstairs and make herself presentable before she reported the assault to the police. Her hair had been in complete disarray, her dress torn, her pantyhose shredded and hanging from her legs in ludicrous loops and tangles. She didn't know how quickly the reporters would arrive once the word had gotten out on the police radio, but she had no doubt that they would show up sooner or later. She was something of a public figure, having written two hit films and having received an Academy Award nomination two years ago for her Arizona Shifty Pete screenplay. She treasured her privacy and preferred to avoid the press if at all possible, but she knew that she would have little choice but to make a statement and answer a few questions about what had happened to her this night. It was the wrong kind of publicity. It was embarrassing. Being the victim in a case like this was always humiliating. Although it should make her an object of sympathy and concern, it actually would make her look like a fool, a patsy just waiting to be pushed around. She had successfully defended herself against Frye, but that would not matter to the sensation seekers. In the unfriendly glare of the television lights and in the flat gray newspaper photos, she would look weak. The merciless American public would wonder why she had let Frye into her house. They would speculate that she had been raped and that her story of fending him off was just a coverup. Some of them would be certain that she had invited him in and had asked to be raped. Most of the sympathy she received would be shot through with morbid curiosity. The only thing she could control was her appearance when the newsmen arrived. She simply could not allow herself to be photographed in the pitiable, dissheveled state in which Bruno Frye had left her.

As she washed her face and combed her hair and changed into a silk robe that belted at the waist, she was not aware that these actions would damage her credibility with the police, later. She didn't realize that, in making herself presentable, she was actually setting herself up as a target for at least one policeman's suspicion and scorn, as well as for charges of being a liar.

Although she thought she was in command of herself, Hilary got the shakes again as she finished changing clothes. Her legs turned to jelly, and she was forced to lean against the closet door for a minute.

Nightmarish images crowded her mind, vivid flashes of unsummoned memories. At first, she saw Frye coming at her with a knife, grinning like a death's head, but then he changed, melted into another shape, another identity, and he became her father, Earl Thomas, and then it was Earl who was coming at her, drunk and angry, cursing, taking swipes at her with his big hard hands. She shook her head and drew deep breaths and, with an effort, banished the vision.

But she could not stop shaking.

She imagined that she heard strange noises in another room of the house. A part of her knew that she was merely imagining it, but another part was sure that she could hear Frye returning for her.

By the time she ran to the phone and dialed the police, she was in no condition to give the calm and reasoned report she had planned. The events of the past hour had affected her far more profoundly than she had thought at first, and recovering from the shock might take days, even weeks.

After she hung up the receiver, she felt better, just knowing help was on the way. As she went downstairs, she said aloud, "Stay calm. Just stay calm. You're Hilary Thomas. You're tough. Tough as nails. You aren't scared. Not ever. Everything will be okay." It was the same litany that she had repeated as a child so many nights in that Chicago apartment. By the time she reached the first door, she had begun to get a grip on herself.

She was standing in the foyer, staring out the narrow leaded window beside the door, when a car stopped in the driveway. Two men got out of it. Although they had not come with sirens blaring and red lights flashing, she knew they were the police, and she unlocked the door, opened it.

The first man onto the front stoop was powerfully built, blond, blue-eyed, and had the hard no-nonsense voice of a cop. He had a gun in his right hand. "Police. Who're you?"

"Thomas," she said. "Hilary Thomas. I'm the one who called."

"This your house?"