Rathbone tapped the ash of his smoke in the air, then sat on the wall by the chaise longue and looked at her. “We need to keep our voices down,” he said. “Half of what they’ve added to the house runs on batteries.”
Lena understood and stepped closer.
“You moved your brother’s stuff upstairs,” he said.
“A while ago.”
“The upstairs is clean, Lena. The bedroom. The bath. There’s nothing there. You can talk all you want with the door closed and they’ll never hear you.”
“Thanks for doing this, Bobby. What about downstairs?”
He took another drag on his smoke. “They may not be pros, but they’re using good equipment. All high-frequency stuff. Everything well over the FM band. The only loser is the one in your telephone. If you made your own sweep, that’s the one you’d find.”
“I already did,” she whispered. “That’s why I called.”
“I’m glad you did because they’ve made some additions. Your phone’s plugged into an outlet over the counter, and you’ve got a three-way adapter feeding the lamp and your cell charger. There’s a bug in the outlet, Lena. And there’s another one in the three-way adapter. Both are good enough to cover anything anyone says in the kitchen or living room. Even out here if the slider was open.”
Lena slipped her hands inside her jacket pockets, feeling the bite in the moist night air. Perhaps because of the late hour, perhaps because of the way she had spent her day, her emotions remained in check. It was enough to know what Klinger had actually done. Enough to have someone she trusted like Rathbone gather the information for her. The why would come later.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“I’m good,” she said. “Keep going.”
“They covered the other side of the living room the same way. Your audio gear and computer are plugged into a surge protector.”
“There’s a bug inside.”
He nodded. “And in the outlet as well. The same thing’s going on in your bedroom. There’s an outlet behind the dresser and another one by your bed where the clock radio’s plugged in.”
“So, I should assume they can hear everything.”
“It’s not an assumption, Lena. It’s as true as a straight line. They can hear everything you say or do on the first floor. A pin could drop and they’d know which side of the room it fell on.”
“What about the bathroom?”
He paused a moment and gave her a look. “You saw the camera. It’s a TVC–X9 with a transmitter onboard. Full color. The signal’s strong enough to cut through ceilings and walls up to five hundred feet. Fifteen hundred if they had a clear shot. It’s the only camera in the house. And it’s working on a private frequency. That’s why I called whoever did this a rat. The camera’s not there for business. It’s there because one of your friends is a perv. Probably watching on his laptop while he beats the fuck off.”
It hung there. An image of Klinger watching her and beating off.
When she turned away from the house, the image finally began to dissipate. The city below Hollywood Hills was still cloaked in darkness. She could see the headlights and brake lights congealing into rivers and streams and flowing all the way to the horizon. All the way into the black.
“Why are they doing this to you?” Rathbone whispered.
She glanced back at her friend and caught the worry in his eyes. The questions were all there. She just didn’t have the answers yet.
23
Nathan G. Cava pulled in behind the Ford Explorer at the red light on Beverly Glen. Fontaine had just made a left on Wilshire Boulevard, stranding his bodyguards at the corner. Cava could see the Beverly Hills doctor looking back at his escorts like he didn’t know what the fuck to do. After shouting something through the glass no one could hear, Fontaine gave up with an angry shrug and continued down the street toward his office alone.
Either the two parties had never discussed how to stay together through an intersection, or the doctor was a complete doofus. Cava suspected both possibilities were true.
The light changed. Cava followed the Explorer onto Wilshire, found the right lane, and let the SUV speed ahead. All he really wanted out of the early morning trip was confirmation that the doctor was going to work. Confirmation that his i-Mansion on South Mapleton Drive would be empty for a few hours. He could do this and keep his distance.
Besides, he was still dealing with his anger. New waves of worry and self-doubt.
Yesterday had been a bad day on almost every front. The garage in Hollywood had been found. Not that it mattered much-he hadn’t left anything important behind. But the cops had talked to those poor old people he rented it from and worked up a sketch of his face. He had seen it on the news. Although the artist got his nose wrong-his eyes looked too narrow and he rarely walked around with a scowl-the overall likeness appeared too close for comfort. Anyone with a decent imagination might put it together and say bingo.
But even that wasn’t really the issue.
In the end everything came back to the girl. The pretty one with the brown eyes who had smiled at him last Wednesday night. Part one of his three-part Hollywood deal. Finding his operating room-what they were calling the crime scene on TV-had kicked off a new round of stories. More questions about the victim and who she really was. Cava watched interview after interview with her neighbors. Then a fresh batch with waitresses and bartenders at restaurants in Venice where Jennifer McBride was known as a regular. Every interview went exactly the same way, and none of them added up.
It didn’t sound like the girl had been killed for the greater good. Nor was her death being seen as a contribution to a better world, as he had been told it would. Instead, it was beginning to smell like personal gain. Like the players were playing with the facts and maybe even playing with him.
Cava tried to let it go, but couldn’t.
After watching two local news broadcasts back to back, he’d worked himself into a frenzy-bought his ticket on the guilt train-and required medication in order to chill. The last thing he remembered was popping a sleeping pill and getting in bed. But when he woke up at 3:00 a.m., he found himself sitting behind the wheel in a long-term parking lot at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. He was dressed in his pajamas and had apparently eaten an entire box of Lucky Charms, waking up only after he had opened the toy at the bottom of the box.
A shiny red Hummer. .
Cava cringed as he played back the night in his head. He didn’t eat sugared foods, and had no idea how he acquired the cereal or drove to the airport. All he knew was that the experience, detailed on the label of his prescription as a possible side effect, had fucking become true. And nothing about it did much for his confidence. Not even the toy he won in the box of cereal.
He felt his body shiver with anxiety and tried to focus on the traffic. The here and now.
He could see Fontaine’s Mercedes rolling down the ramp beneath his building into the parking garage-the men in the SUV passing their client and continuing east toward Hollywood. Cava followed the Explorer for two more blocks, guessing that the bodyguards wouldn’t be back until lunch or even late this afternoon. When he spotted the pharmacy up ahead, he watched the Explorer disappear in traffic and found a place to park.
Before his meltdown last night, Cava had written two new prescriptions for himself and called them in. He had seen the ads on TV five or six times during the news broadcast. As a result, he felt certain that he was suffering from restless leg syndrome and an untimely bout with chronic dry eyes. The more he thought it over, the more aware he became of his symptoms. If he hadn’t been lucky enough to see the ads, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed the discomfort. He could have easily been plagued with both conditions for months or years, perhaps the rest of his life. Thank God for TV.