"Maybe it is," I said. "Depends on the secrets. May I use your phone again?"
"Need you ask? But then, you were always polite. So few people are polite these days. Far be it from me to discourage it."
I dialed my number again. Still busy. Then I called Universal and got a security man with no public relations skills whatsoever. First he stonewalled me with a rigidity the Watergate crew would have envied. When I said I worked for Norman Stillman and that he could be back patrolling parking lots in Reseda tomorrow morning if he didn't tell me what I wanted to know, he paused and recalibrated his attitude. High Velocity had shut down, he told me grudgingly. Everybody was gone. Did I want to leave a message?
"No," I said, "I don't want to leave a fucking message." I hung up.
"That wasn't polite," Wyl said. "That wasn't polite at all."
I apologized and climbed into Alice. It was finally dark enough to take another look at the other half of Toby's alibi. For some reason there wasn't much traffic as I headed south toward Fountain, and it gave me too much time to think. Something's moving, I'd said to Nana, and it felt like it was moving too fast, like it was gaining on me from behind. I kept checking the rearview mirror, I didn't know for what, and almost rear-ended a car turning left off of Highland onto Fountain. Chastened, I followed it to 1424.
A streetlight, the only one on the block that worked, glared down at me as I sat at the curb. There had been plenty of light for the Peeper to see Toby and Saffron in the car when they let Amber out. I looked up at the window and didn't see him at his usual post. So he didn't watch all the time. So maybe he'd gone to the bathroom. Or, on the other hand, maybe he watched the centerfolds on his walls until he heard something.
The only thing to do with a theory is to test it. I got out and slammed the door. Still no one at the Peeper's window. Counting seconds in the classic "one thousand, two thousand" style, I headed up the walk, and when I got to five I looked up, and there he was. I waved up at him, but he was still watching my car.
And no wonder. The streetlight was about fifteen yards up the street. I was standing in almost complete darkness, cut off from its rays by the edge of the building. I shuffled my feet and cleared my throat, and he finally looked down toward me. I could see his face clearly. His window, the one nearest the street, was illuminated. The hard, dark edge of shadow made by the other wing of the V climbed the wall just to the left of his window.
He was looking into the light. I was in the dark. I had to wave again before he saw me. When he did, he let the curtain fall back into place. He hadn't lifted it again when I fired up Alice and pulled back into traffic.
At the first phone booth I saw, I called home again. Still busy. Ants were walking up and down my spine. I tried again, with the same result, and then started to try again. I dropped in my quarter and stood there, listening to the buzz of the dial tone. It reminded me of something, but I shouldered it away. Who could Nana be talking to? The dial tone buzzed in my ear again, steady and sure, and I barked my knuckles hanging up the phone. I knew what it reminded me of, and I ran toward Alice.
Hollywood isn't very big. I pulled up to the curb of Saffron's apartment house six minutes later and pulled a little flashlight from the glove compartment. No one was around, no peepers were at the windows, and the only things I heard were the hum of traffic and the thump of my heart, which seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my ears. I marched in time to the heartbeat all the way to the pool.
Nana had wanted to leave, wanted to see Saffron right away and get out of there. If she hadn't, maybe I'd have checked the pool. And maybe not. It seemed like weeks since I'd done anything right. I hoisted myself down the ladder at the shallow end and waded through the trash until I was beneath the diving board.
The flies were gone, until morning, and they'd taken their buzz with them. The beam of the flashlight played over the junk at the deep end. I could only use one hand to toss things aside because of the flashlight, but most of the stuff down there was large, cardboard cartons and pieces of what might once have been pool furniture. Within a minute I was looking at the bottom of the pool.
Except that I wasn't looking at the bottom. I was looking at a large, rust-colored stain that tapered off on the downhill slope toward the drain. The irrelevant fact that the drain still worked flashed across my mind. There must have been quite a lot of blood. How much did the human body hold? Six quarts? Eight? How much difference did it make if the body was a small one?
The math calmed me as I climbed back up the ladder. In the car, I made myself breathe slowly for two minutes and then headed up Highland toward the Ventura Freeway. Toby was with Dolly, I told myself. So was John. Why hadn't I told her where to take them for dinner? At least I'd know. Just before I got to the freeway I saw a coin phone in a minimall, one of the thousands that now scar Los Angeles, and shoved the same old quarter into the slot.
My number was busy. It couldn't be busy that long.
I got the operator on the line. After we'd negotiated the price for an emergency break-in and I'd fed the last of my remaining change into the phone, she left the line. When she came back she said triumphantly, "That phone is out of order."
"No way," I said.
"Then it's off the hook. You've overdeposited," she said. "I told you fifty cents. If you'll give me your full name and number, I'll see that it's credited to your account."
I left the receiver dangling and sprinted to Alice.
There wasn't much traffic at that hour, but there was too much. More than thirty minutes had passed before I turned off Topanga Canyon onto Old Topanga, swearing at Alice for not being a Porsche. Her springs creaked on the curves, and I nearly burned out the clutch going uphill on Topanga Skyline. I jumped out at the bottom of the driveway, left the door open, and went up as quietly as I could.
All the lights were on.
I circled the house before I went in, but the windows were too high for me to see anything. They'd always been too high. Why should tonight be different? I grabbed a shovel and headed up the little corridor that led to the front door.
It had been kicked in. It sagged from its hinges dispiritedly like a shot sentry. It had been broken in two places, both above and below the latch.
My foot hit something as I went in. It was an empty bottle of red wine. I watched it roll reproachfully away from me before I lifted my eyes.
Devastation.
The coffee table was overturned. The throw rug was crumpled against the far wall. The couch was halfway into the middle of the room, as if someone had tried to take cover behind it. The door to the sun deck hung open. It creaked as a breeze stirred it.
Hefting the shovel in both hands, blade forward, I went into the bedroom. Nobody. Nobody in the bathroom, just a tap dripping water. I shut it off and went out onto the sun deck.
The lights of Topanga stretched below me, each light representing a little room where people sat together, safe from the night. To my right and far away, a coyote howled at the moon. I knew there was no one in the room beneath my feet, but I went outside and down the hill to check anyway. I was right.
Back in the living room, I sat down on the floor and tossed the shovel halfway across the room. It landed with a thump and a clatter. A flash of bright blue near the overturned table caught my attention, and I crawled over on my hands and knees to look.
It was Hansel. His head had been torn off. There was more blood on the floor than Hansel's body could possibly have held. I put an exploratory finger into the nearest pool. It was thick and tacky.