The freeway was busy, but not unusually so, and before long they were coasting Sunset heading into Brentwood.
Flat-roofed, all white stucco, plate-glass, and sharp angles, Stuart’s house was a modernist monstrosity, at least to Sarah’s taste. Though she would never tell him so, she thought it looked like a dental clinic.
On a slight incline, the house was reached by a semicircular driveway that turned off a residential street, ran past the front door, then rejoined the road again.
Zak’s gray Toyota was already in the carport just off the driveway. The motion-detecting lights came on as Stuart pulled to a halt outside the front door. Inside the house, some of the lamps were lit, all synchronized by a complicated system of timers to make it always seem as if there were someone at home.
Sarah turned her back on Stuart to get out of the car and immediately became aware of a sudden flurry of activity behind her. The next thing she knew, Stuart had slumped back in over the front seat, groaning.
She was on her feet by the passenger door, which she hadn’t closed behind her yet, and now she saw the figure standing back in the shadows near the trunk of the car, simply beckoning for her to come, crooking his finger.
She screamed for Zak, but nobody came.
She jumped back in the car as quickly as she could, pulled Stuart all the way in and locked the doors. When she looked through the back window, the figure was still there, all in black, standing completely motionless, as if rooted to the spot, waiting for her to get her purse or something.
Sarah could feel her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst. Christ, how she wished that she could drive. She had to do something; she couldn’t just fall apart. Stuart was groaning beside her clutching his stomach, maybe dying, and she was sitting there like a fool waiting for the cavalry to come.
There was no cavalry. Where the hell was Zak?
And still the dark figure stood there behind the car, watching. All she could make out was that he was medium height, fairly muscular, and blond-haired. Christ, she thought, could it even be Zak?
The car doors were locked; the phone didn’t work; the key was still in the ignition. There was only one thing she could do.
Turning sideways, she dragged Stuart over toward the passenger side. It took all her strength, but there was a lot of room to maneuver inside the Caddy, and she finally did it. When Stuart was half on the passenger seat and half on the floor, she climbed over the back and into the driver’s seat.
Her hand slipped on the leather and when she saw the whole seat was glossy and slippery with blood, she almost lost control.
She pounded the wheel and screamed, shutting her eyes and praying all the horror would go away and she would wake up to the sun on the Pacific. But Stuart was groaning on the floor, curled in the fetal position. She had to do something now.
Then Sarah looked out of the window to the passenger side and saw the face of her tormentor staring back at her. She couldn’t make out his features clearly because they were superimposed on her own reflection in the glass, but she could have sworn he was smiling at her. He looked pleased with himself.
He tapped on the window.
Sarah took a deep breath and turned the key in the ignition.
35
Arvo waited for the stoplight at Broadway and Columbus, breathing out plumes of fog and holding his jacket collar closed around his throat to keep out the chill.
There was an Italian restaurant near here, he remembered, where he had dined with Nyreen on their one and only weekend in San Francisco last March. What a weekend it had been: glorious sunshine, walking, eating, shopping, making love, a ferry ride to Sausalito and deli sandwiches and wine on the beach looking back over at the San Francisco skyline.
No, he mustn’t get caught up in those memories again. While cops can enjoy beauty as much as the next person, given the right circumstances, the job often alters their perceptions, and they don’t always see things the same way other people do.
Cop vision, Arvo had often thought, compares more to those heat-sensitive photographs that describe the world in reds and greens and oranges, the way he remembered seeing the city spread out on the monitor during a night ride in one of the LAPD helicopters. In vivid, shifting primary colors, they see the dark side, the predators and prey, losers, grifters, the starving and the desperate, the con men, the lost souls and the psychos.
Finally, Arvo was able to cross. He started down Columbus, passed the City Lights Bookstore and found Vesuvio’s, directly across the garbage-strewn Jack Kerouac Alley.
Inside was almost as colorful as the mosaic-like stained-glass and tile exterior, with local artworks on the walls, along with a framed set of W. C. Fields playing cards, each with a photo and a legendary saying from the old curmudgeon himself. The place was crowded and noisy, but at some of the tables, people were ignoring the clamor all around them and sitting hunched forward, hands over their ears, concentrating on chess games. Around the top was a gallery with more tables looking down on the bar’s main floor. Dress styles and ages varied, Arvo noticed, but there was a general air of youth and artiness.
The small area behind the bar was cluttered, too, and most of the stools were taken. A small canvas screen hung high on the wall above the ranged bottles, and a slide show of old Victorian nudes and music-hall personalities flickered over its surface.
When he had got his glass of Anchor Steam beer, Arvo asked the woman behind the bar if she had ever heard of Mitch Cameron, and gave as good a description as he had. She said he sounded vaguely familiar but it would be better to ask Cal over there, because Cal had been around forever and knew everyone.
Cal was a modern beatnik of about fifty, with a beard and wispy gray hair poking out of a black beret cocked at a rakish angle. He was sitting at the bar reading a book of poetry written in lower-case letters with lines of wildly differing lengths. Beside it was a notebook and a chewed yellow HB pencil stub.
When Arvo tapped him on the shoulder, he turned his head slowly. His eyes were as gray as his beard and attempted — but didn’t quite manage, in Arvo’s estimation — a look of infinite wisdom and compassion.
“I’m looking for someone who knows a guy called Mitch Cameron,” Arvo said, without introducing himself as a cop. “The bartender said you know everyone.”
Cal smiled. “Guess that’s true. Mitch Cameron, you say?” His face darkened a little. “Sure, I know him. He hasn’t been around here for a year or more.”
“Any idea where he might be?”
“No. And I can’t say I care, either. I didn’t really know him well. What happened was, one day he showed me his poems and asked me what I thought.”
“What did you think?”
“They rhymed, for Chrissake!”
“What did you tell him?”
“That they were full of clichés and pious platitudes masquerading as philosophy, and that he should send them to those greeting-card people. What’s their name? Hallmark?”
“How did he respond?”
“Punched me in the face, picked up his folder and walked away. Why are you asking? You a cop or something?”
“Uh-huh,” said Arvo.
“I knew it. I can spot cops a mile away, man.”
Good for you, Arvo thought. “Some people say he’s a scary character.”