BEYOND THE BEVELED GLASS, THE IRON-BLACK clouds that had masked the sky now hid themselves behind gray veils of trailing mist. The wind went elsewhere with its lamentations, and the sodden trees stood as still and solemn as witnesses to a funeral cortege.
The gray day drifted into the eye of the storm, and from each of his three study windows, Ethan observed the mourning weather while meditating on the meaning of the apple in the context of the five bizarre items that had preceded it. Nature peered back at him through a milky cataract and, in sympathy with his inner vision, remained clouded.
He supposed the shiny apple might represent fame and wealth, the enviable life of his employer. Then the doll’s eye might be a worm of sorts, a symbol of a particular corruption at the core of fame, and therefore an accusation, indictment, and condemnation of the Face.
For twelve years, the actor had been the biggest box-office draw in the world. Since his first hit, the celebrity-mad media referred to him as the Face.
This flattering sobriquet supposedly had arisen simultaneously from the pens of numerous entertainment reporters in a shared [9] swoon of admiration for his charismatic good looks. In truth, no doubt a clever and perpetually sleepless publicist had called in favors and paid out cold cash to engineer this spontaneous acclamation and then to sustain it for more than a decade.
In a black-and-white Hollywood so distant in time and quality that contemporary moviegoers had only a little more knowledge of it than they had of the Spanish-American War, a fine actress named Greta Garbo had in her day been known as the Face. That flattery had been the work of a studio flack, but Garbo had proved to be more than mere flackery.
For ten months, Ethan had been chief of security for Channing Manheim, the Face of the new millennium. As yet he hadn’t glimpsed even the suggestion of Garboesque depths. The face of the Face seemed to be nearly all there was of Channing.
Ethan didn’t despise the actor. The Face was affable, as relaxed as might be a genuine demigod living with the sureness that life and youth were for him eternal.
The star’s indifference to any circumstances other than his own arose neither from self-absorption nor from a willful lack of compassion. Intellectual limitations denied him an awareness that other people had more than a single script page of backstory, and that their character arcs were too complex to be portrayed in ninety-eight minutes.
His occasional cruelties were never conscious.
If he hadn’t been who he was, however, and if he hadn’t been so striking in appearance, nothing that Channing said or did would have left an impression. In a Hollywood deli that named sandwiches after stars, Clark Gable might have been roast beef and Liederkranz on rye with horseradish; Cary Grant might have been peppered chicken breast with Swiss cheese on whole wheat with mustard; and Channing Manheim would have been watercress on lightly buttered toast.
Ethan didn’t actively dislike his employer, and he didn’t need to like him in order to want to protect him and keep him alive.
[10] If the eye in the apple was a symbol of corruption, it might represent the star’s ego inside the beautiful fruit.
Perhaps the doll’s eye didn’t stand for corruption, but for the downside of fame. A celebrity of Channing’s magnitude enjoyed little privacy and was always under scrutiny. The eye in the apple might be symbolic of the stalker’s eye—always watching, judging.
Crap. Cheap analysis. For all his somber brooding, in weather conducive to contemplation and to dark speculation, Ethan’s every observation seemed obvious and useless.
He ruminated on the apple-damp words: THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION?
Stumped, he was grateful when the phone rang at a few minutes past ten o’clock, drawing him away from the windows and to the desk.
Laura Moonves, an old friend from the LAPD, had been tracking down a license-plate number for him. She worked out of the Detective Support Division. Only once before in the past year had he presumed upon their friendship in this way.
“Got your pervert,” Laura said.
“Suspected pervert,” he corrected.
“The three-year-old Honda is registered to Rolf Herman Reynerd in West Hollywood.” She spelled each name and gave him an address.
“What kind of parents Rolf a kid?”
Laura knew all about names. “It’s not so bad. Nicely masculine, in fact. In Old German, it means ‘famous wolf.’ Ethan, of course, means ‘permanent, assured.’ ”
Two years ago, they’d dated. For Laura, Ethan had been anything but permanent, assured. She’d have liked permanence, some assurance. He had been too wounded to provide what she wanted. Or too stupid.
“Looked him up for a rap sheet,” Laura said, “but he’s clean. DMV says ‘hair brown, eyes blue.’ Says ‘sex male.’ I like sex male. I don’t [11] get enough sex male. Height six-one, weight one-eighty. DOB—June sixth, nineteen seventy-two, which makes him thirty-one.”
Ethan had it all on a notepad. “Thanks, Laura. I owe you one.”
“So then tell me—how big’s his charlie?”
“Isn’t that in the DMV file?”
“I don’t mean Rolf’s charlie. I mean Manheim’s. Does it hang to his ankles or just to his knees?”
“I’ve never seen his charlie, but he doesn’t seem to have any trouble walking.”
“Cookie, maybe you can introduce us sometime.”
Ethan had never known why she called him Cookie. “The man would bore your ass off, Laura, and that’s the truth.”
“Pretty as he is, I wouldn’t need conversation. I’d just shove a rag in his mouth, tape his lips shut, and off we’d go to paradise.”
“Basically it’s my job to keep people like you away from him.”
“Truman derives from two Old English words,” she said. “It means ‘steadfast, loyal, trustworthy, constant.’ ”
“You can’t get a date with the Face by making me feel guilty. Besides, when wasn’t I loyal and trustworthy?”
“Cookie, two out of four doesn’t mean you deserve your name.”
“You were too good for me anyway, Laura. You’ve got more to give than a shlump like me can appreciate.”
“I’d like to see your old Ten Card,” she said, referring to his record of service on the force. “Must be more brown stars for ass kissing on that baby than any hundred other cards in the history of the job.”
“If you’re done dissing me, I’ve been wondering. ... Rolf. Famous wolf. Does that make sense? What’s a wolf have to do to get famous?”
“Kill a lot of sheep, I guess.”
 
By the time Ethan said good-bye to Laura, a thin rain had begun to fall again. Without the ardor of a wind, the droplets barely kissed the study windows.
[12] Using the remote control, he switched on the TV and then the VCR. The tape was already loaded. He’d watched it six times before.
Exterior security cameras throughout the estate numbered eighty-six. Every house door and window and all the approaches across the grounds were monitored.
Only the north wall of the estate abutted public property. This long rampart, including the gate, was under surveillance by cameras mounted in the trees on the land directly across the street, a parcel also owned by Channing Manheim.
Anyone reconnoitering the front-wall security, the operation of the gate, and the protocols of visitor identification would detect no cameras on the public side or in the estate trees that overhung the wall. They would assume that surveillance could be conducted solely from within the property.
Meanwhile, they would be watched by the cameras on the farther side of the narrow Bel Air byway, barely two lanes wide, which lacked sidewalks and streetlamps. A zoom shot would provide a clear ID to help ensure a conviction if the subject proceeded from reconnoitering to any act of criminal intent.
The cameras operated 24/7. From the security office in the groundskeeper’s building and from several points in the house, any videocàm in the system could be accessed if you knew the command.
Several televisions in the house and a bank of six in the security office could receive the video feed from any camera. One TV could display as many as four views simultaneously in quarter-screen format. Therefore, the security team was able to study images from as many as twenty-four cameras at any one time.
Mostly, the guards drank coffee and bullshitted each other. If an alarm was triggered, however, they could have an immediate, close look at whatever corner of the estate had been violated. Camera by camera, they would be able to track an intruder as he moved from one field of view into another.
From the security-office keyboard, a guard could direct the video [13] feed from any of the eighty-six sources to a VCR. The system included twelve VCRs capable of simultaneously recording forty-eight feeds in quarter-screen format.
Even if a guard were not paying attention, motion detectors associated with each camera would instigate automatic recording of that field of vision when any living thing larger than a dog passed through its area of responsibility.
At 3:32 A.M. the previous night, motion detectors related to Camera 01, which ceaselessly panned the western end of the north perimeter, picked up a three-year-old Honda. Instead of passing by as the infrequent other traffic had done throughout the night, the car pulled off the pavement and parked a hundred yards short of the entrance gate.
The previous five black boxes had come by Federal Express with fake return addresses. Here Ethan had been presented with the first opportunity to identify the sender.
Now, less than seven hours later, he stood in his study and watched the Honda in full-screen format. The narrow shoulder of the road prevented the driver from parking the car entirely out of the eastbound lane.
In daylight, the exclusive streets of Bel Air didn’t carry a heavy load of traffic. At that late hour, they were hardly traveled.
Nevertheless concerned about safety, the driver of the Honda didn’t kill his headlights when he parked. He left the engine running and switched on his emergency blinkers.
The camera, featuring advanced night-vision technology, provided a high-resolution picture in spite of the darkness and foul weather.
For a moment, Camera 01 continued panning away from the Honda—then halted its programmed sweep and returned to the car. Dave Ladman had been on a routine foot patrol of the estate grounds at that time. Tom Mack, manning the security office, had recognized the presence of a suspicious vehicle and had overridden O1’s automatic function.
[14] Rain had been falling heavily. Ceaseless barrages of raindrops shattered against the blacktop with force, creating such a froth and dancing spray that the street appeared to be aboil.
The driver’s door opened, and Camera 01 zoomed in for a close-up as a tall, solidly built man got out of the car. He wore a black waterproof windbreaker. His face was hidden in the shadow of a hood.
Unless Rolf Reynerd had loaned his car to a friend, this was the famous wolf. He fit the physical profile on Reynerd’s license.
He closed the driver’s door, opened the rear door, and took a large white ball from the backseat. This appeared to be the garbage bag containing the gift of the sutured apple.
Reynerd closed the door and started toward the front of the car, toward the driveway gate a hundred yards away. Abruptly he halted and turned to peer along the dark rain-swept lane, poised for flight.
Perhaps he thought that he’d heard an approaching engine above the rushing rustle of the rain racing down through the trees. The security tape provided no sound.
At that lonely hour, if another vehicle had arrived on the scene, chances were good that it would have been a cruiser belonging to the Bel Air Patrol, the private-security force that assisted in the policing of this extremely wealthy community.
When neither a cruiser nor a less-official vehicle appeared, the hooded man regained his confidence. He hurried eastward to the gate.
Camera 02 followed him as he stepped beyond the panning arc of Camera 01. As he neared the gate, Camera 03 watched him from across the street, zooming in for an intimate appraisal.
Immediately upon arrival at the entrance gate, Reynerd threw the white bag toward the top of that bronze barrier. Failing to clear the highest scrollwork, the package bounced back at him.
On his second attempt, he succeeded. When he turned away from the gate, his hood slipped half off, and Camera 03 captured a clear image of his face in the glow of the flanking gate lamps.
[15] He had the chiseled features needed to be a successful waiter in the trendiest of L.A. restaurants, where both the service staff and the customers enjoyed the fantasy that any guy or gal ferrying plates of overpriced swordfish from kitchen to table during the Tuesday dinner shift might be offered, on Wednesday, a coveted role in Tom Cruise’s next hundred-fifty-million-dollar picture.
Turning from the gate, having delivered the apple, Rolf Reynerd was grinning.
Perhaps if Ethan hadn’t known the meaning of the man’s first name, the grin wouldn’t have seemed wolfish. Then he might have been reminded instead of a crocodile or a hyena.
In any case, this was not the merry expression of a prankster. Captured on videotape, this curve of lips and bared teeth suggested a lunatic glee that required a full moon and medication.
Splashing through black puddles filigreed with silver by the headlights, Reynerd returned to the car.
As the Honda pulled off the shoulder and onto the eastbound lane once more, Camera 01 executed a swivel and zoom, then Camera 02. Both delivered readable shots of the rear license plate.
Dwindling into the night, the car conjured briefly lingering ghosts from its tailpipe.
Then the narrow street lay deserted, in wet gloom except for the lamps at the Manheim gate. Black rain, as if from a dissolving night sky, poured down, poured down, driving the darkness of the universe into the universally coveted Bel Air real estate.
 
Before leaving his quarters in the west wing, Ethan called the housekeeper, Mrs. McBee, to report that he’d be out most of the day.
More efficient than any machine, more dependable than the laws of physics, as trustworthy as any archangel, Mrs. McBee would within minutes dispatch one of the six maids under her command to Ethan’s [16] apartment. Seven days a week, a maid collected the trash and provided fresh towels. Twice weekly, his rooms were dusted, vacuumed, and left immaculate. Windows were washed twice a month.
There were advantages to living in a mansion attended by a staff of twenty-five.
As the chief of security overseeing both the Face’s personal protection and the safeguarding of the estate, Ethan enjoyed many benefits, including free meals prepared by either Mr. Hachette, the household chef, or by Mr. Baptiste, the household cook. Mr. Baptiste lacked his boss’s training in the finest culinary schools; but no one with taste buds ever complained about any dish he put on the table.
Meals could be taken in the large and comfortably furnished dayroom, where the staff not only ate but also did their household planning, spent their coffee breaks, and strategized all arrangements for the elaborate parties often held when the Face was in residence. Chef or cook would also prepare a plate of sandwiches or any other requested treat that Ethan might want to take back to his quarters.
Of course, he could prepare meals in his apartment kitchen if he preferred. Mrs. McBee kept his fridge and pantry stocked according to shopping lists he presented to her, at no expense to him.
Except for Monday and Thursday, when one of the maids changed the bedclothes—Mr. Manheim’s linens were cycled daily when he was in residence—Ethan had to make his own bed each morning.
Life was hard.
Now, after shrugging into a soft leather jacket, Ethan stepped out of his apartment into the ground-floor hallway of the west wing. He left his door unlocked as he would have done if he’d owned the entire house.
He took with him a file that he’d made on the black-box case, an umbrella, and a leather-bound copy of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. He had finished reading the novel the previous evening and intended to return it to the library.
[17] More than twelve feet wide, paved with limestone tiles featured through most of the main floor of the house, this hall was graced by softly colored contemporary Persian carpets. High-quality French antiques—all from the Empire period, and including the late-Empire style called Biedermeier—furnished the long space: chairs, chests, a desk, a sideboard.
Even with furniture to both sides, Ethan could have driven a car through the hall without grazing a single antique.
He might have enjoyed driving a car through the hall if he would not have had to explain himself to Mrs. McBee afterward.
During the invigorating hike to the library, he encountered two uniformed maids and a porter with whom he exchanged greetings. Because he occupied what Mrs. McBee defined as an executive position on the staff, he referred to these fellow workers by their first names, but they called him Mr. Truman.
Prior to each new employee’s first day on the job, Mrs. McBee provided a ring-bound notebook titled Standards and Practices, which she herself had composed and assembled. Woe be to the benighted soul who did not memorize its contents and perform always according to its directions.
The library floor was walnut, stained a dark warm reddish-brown. Here the Persian carpets were antiques that appreciated in value far faster than the blue-chip stocks of the country’s finest companies.
Club chairs in comfortable seating arrangements alternated with mazes of mahogany shelves that held over thirty-six thousand volumes. Some of the books were shelved on a second level served by a six-foot-wide catwalk that could be reached by an open staircase with an elaborate gilded-iron railing.
If you didn’t look up at the ceiling to help you define the true size of the enormous chamber, you might succumb to the illusion that it went on forever. Maybe it did. Anything seemed possible here.
The center of the ceiling featured a stained-glass dome thirty-two [18] feet in diameter. The deep colors of the glass—crimson, emerald, burnt yellow, sapphire—so completely filtered natural light even on a bright day that the books were at no risk of sustaining sun damage.
Ethan’s Uncle Joe—who’d served as a surrogate dad when Ethan’s real father had been too drunk to handle the job—had been a truck driver for a regional bakery. He’d delivered breads and pastries to supermarkets and restaurants, six days a week, eight hours a day. Most of the time, Joe had held down a second job as a night janitor, three days a week.
In his best five years put together, Uncle Joe hadn’t made enough to equal the cost of this stained-glass dome.
When he’d first begun to earn a policeman’s pay, Ethan had felt rich. Compared to Joe, he had been raking in big dough.
His total income from sixteen years with the LAPD wouldn’t have paid the cost of this one room.
“Should’ve been a movie star,” he said as he entered the library to return Lord Jim to the shelf from which he’d gotten it.
Every volume in the collection had been arranged in alphabetical order, by author. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions. A significant number were rare, and valuable.
The Face had read none of them.
More than two-thirds of the collection had come with the house. At her employer’s instructions, once each month, Mrs. McBee purchased the most talked-about and critically acclaimed current novels and volumes of nonfiction, which were at once catalogued and added to the library.
These new books were acquired for the sole purpose of display. They impressed houseguests, dinner guests, and other visitors with the breadth of Channing Manheim’s intellectual interests.
When asked for his opinion of any book, the Face elicited the visitor’s judgment first, then agreed with it in such a charming fashion that he seemed both erudite and every bit a kindred spirit.
As Ethan slid Lord Jim onto a shelf between two other Conrad titles, a small reedy voice behind him said, “Is there magic in it?”
[19] Turning, he discovered ten-year-old Aelfric Manheim all but swallowed alive by one of the larger armchairs.
According to Laura Moonves, Aelfric (pronounced elf-rick) was an Old English word meaning “elf-ruled” or “ruled by elves,” which had first been used to describe wise and clever actions, but had in time come to refer to those who acted wisely and cleverly.
Aelfric.
The boy’s mother—Fredericka “Freddie” Nielander—a supermodel who had married and divorced the Face all in one year, had read at least three books in her life. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact she had read them repeatedly.
She had been prepared to name the boy Frodo. Fortunately, or not, one month before Freddie’s due date, her best girlfriend, an actress, had discovered the name Aelfric in the script for a cheesy fantasy film in which she had agreed to play a three-breasted Amazon alchemist.
If Freddie’s friend had landed a supporting role in The Silence of the Lambs, Aelfric would probably now be Hannibal Manheim.
The boy preferred to be called Fric, and no one but his mother insisted on using his full name. Fortunately, or not, she wasn’t around much to torture him with it.
Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. Even the career of an aging supermodel could be demanding.
“Is there magic in what?” Ethan asked.
“That book you just put away.”
“Magic of a sort, but probably not the kind of magic you mean.”
“This one has a shitload of magic in it,” Fric said, displaying a paperback with dragons and wizards on the cover.
“Is that advisable language for a wise and clever person?” Ethan asked.
“Heck, all my old man’s friends in the biz talk worse stuff than shitload. So does my old man.”
“Not when he knows you’re around.”
[20] Fric cocked his head. “Are you calling my dad a hypocrite?”
“If I ever call your dad such a thing, I’ll cut my tongue out.”
“The evil wizard in this book would use it in a potion. One of his most difficult tasks is to find the tongue of an honest man.”
“What makes you think I’m honest?”
“Get real. You’ve got a triple shitload of honesty.”
“What’re you going to do if Mrs. McBee hears you using words like that?”
“She’s somewhere else.”
“Oh, she is?” Ethan asked, suggesting that he knew something regarding Mrs. McBee’s current whereabouts that would make the boy wish he’d been more discreet.
Unable to repress a guilty expression, Fric sat up straight and surveyed the library.
The boy was small for his age, and thin. At times, glimpsed from a distance as he walked along one of the vast halls or across a room scaled for kings and their entourages, he seemed almost wispy.
“I think she has secret passages,” Fric whispered. “You know, pathways in the walls.”
“Mrs. McBee?”
The boy nodded. “We’ve lived here six years, but she’s been here forever.”
Mrs. McBee and Mr. McBee—both in their middle fifties—had been employed by the previous owner of the property and had stayed on at the request of the Face.
“It’s hard to picture Mrs. McBee skulking about in the walls,” said Ethan. “She’s not exactly a dastardly sort.”
“But if she was dastardly,” Fric said hopefully, “things would be more interesting around here.”
Unlike his father’s golden locks, which with a shake of the head always fell perfectly into place, Fric’s brown mop achieved perpetual disarray. Here was hair that foiled brushes and broke good combs.
[21] Fric might grow into his looks and prove equal to his pedigree, but currently he appeared to be an average ten-year-old boy.
“Why aren’t you in class?” Ethan wondered.
“You an atheist or something? Don’t you know it’s the week before Christmas? Even home-schooled Hollywood brats get a break.”
A cadre of tutors visited five days a week. The private school that Fric attended for a while had not proved to be a suitable environment for him.
With the famous Channing Manheim for a father, with the famous and notorious Freddie Nielander for a mother, Fric became an object of envy and ridicule even among the children of other celebrities. Being the skinny son of a buffed star adored for heroic roles also made him a figure of fun to crueler kids. The severity of his asthma further argued for schooling at home, in a controlled environment.
“Have any idea what you’ll get Christmas morning?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah. I had to submit my list to Mrs. McBee by December fifth. I told her not to bother wrapping the stuff, but she will. She always does. She says it’s not Christmas morning without some mystery.”
“I’d have to agree with that.”
The boy shrugged, and slumped in his chair again.
Although the Face was currently on location for a film, he would return from Florida the day before Christmas.
“It’ll be good to have your dad home for the holidays. You guys have any special plans once he gets back?”
The boy shrugged again, attempting to convey lack of knowledge or indifference, but instead—and unwittingly—revealing a misery that made Ethan feel uncharacteristically helpless.
Fric had inherited luminous green eyes to match his mother’s. In the singular depths of those eyes, enough could be read about the boy’s loneliness to fill a library shelf or two.
“Well,” Ethan said, “maybe Christmas morning this year you’ll have a couple surprises.”
[22] Sitting forward in his chair, eager for the sense of mystery that he had so recently dismissed as unimportant, Fric said, “What—you heard something?”
“If I heard something, which I’m not saying I did or didn’t, I couldn’t tell you what I heard, assuming I heard anything at all, and still keep the surprise a surprise, by which I don’t mean to imply that there is a surprise or that there isn’t one.”
The boy stared in silence for a moment. “Now you don’t sound cop honest, you sound like the head of a studio.”
“You know what heads of studios sound like, huh?”
“They come around here sometimes,” the boy said in a tone of worldly wisdom. “I recognize their rap.”
 
Ethan parked across the street from the apartment house in West Hollywood, switched off the windshield wipers, but left the engine running to power the heater. He sat in the Ford Expedition awhile, watching the place, deciding upon the best approach to Rolf Reynerd.
The Expedition was one of a collection of vehicles available for both job-related and personal use by the eight live-in members of the twenty-five-person estate staff. Among other wheels, a Mercedes ML500 SUV had been in the lower garage, but that might have drawn too much attention during a stakeout if the day required surveillance work.
The three-story apartment house appeared to be in good but not excellent repair. The cream-colored stucco wasn’t pocked or cracked, but the place looked to be at least a year overdue for painting. One of the address numbers above the front door hung askew.
Camellia bushes laden with heavy red blooms, a variety of ferns, and phoenix palms with enormous crowns provided the lushness of high-end landscaping; but everything had needed a trim months ago. The shaggy grass suggested that it was mown not weekly but twice a month.
[23] The landlord shaved his costs, but the building nevertheless looked like a nice place to live.
No one rented here on a welfare check. Reynerd must have a job, but the fact that he’d been delivering death threats at three-thirty in the morning suggested that he didn’t have to get up early to go to work. He might be home now.
When Ethan tracked down his suspect’s place of employment and began to make inquiries about him with fellow workers and neighbors, Reynerd almost certainly would be alerted by someone. Thereafter, he would grow too wary to be approached directly.
Ethan preferred to start with the man himself and work outward from that initial contact.
He closed his eyes, tipped his head back against the headrest, and brooded about how to proceed.
The engine roar of an approaching car grew so loud that Ethan opened his eyes, half expecting to hear a sudden siren and to see a police chase in progress. Traveling far too fast for a residential street, a cherry-red Ferrari Testarossa exploded past, as though the driver were in fact hoping to run down a darting child or an old lady slowed by orthopedic shoes and a cane.
A tire-thrown plume spewed up from the puddled street, drenching the Expedition. The glass in the driver’s door briefly clouded with ripples of dirty water.
Across the street, the apartment house appeared to shimmer as if it were a place in a dream. Some aspect of that transient distortion seemed to trigger a vague memory of a long-forgotten nightmare, and the sight of the building in this warped condition caused the hairs to rise inexplicably on the back of Ethan’s neck.
Then the last gouts of the plume drained off the window. Falling rain quickly cleared the murky residue from the glass. The apartment house was nothing more than what it had been when he’d first seen it: a nice place to live.
After judging that the rain was falling only hard enough to make [24] an umbrella more trouble than it was worth, he got out of the SUV and dashed across the street.
In southern California during the late autumn and early winter, Mother Nature suffered unpredictable mood swings. From one year to the next, and even from day to day in the same year, the week before Christmas could vary from balmy to bone-chilling. This air was cool, the rain colder than the air, and the sky as dead gray as it might have been in any truly wintry clime much farther north.
The main door of the building featured no buzz-through security lock. The neighborhood remained safe enough that apartment lobbies did not absolutely require fortification.
Dripping, he entered a small space, less a lobby than a foyer, with a Mexican-tile floor. An elevator and a set of stairs served the upper stories.
The foyer air curdled with the lingering meaty scent of Canadian bacon, cooked hours ago, and the musty smell of stale pot smoke. Weed had a singular aroma. Someone had stood here this morning, finishing a joint, before stepping out to meet the dreary day.
From the bank of mailboxes, Ethan counted four apartments on the ground floor, six on the second, and six on the third. Reynerd lived in the middle of the building, in 2B.
Only the last names of the current tenants were printed on the mailboxes. Ethan needed more information than these stick-on labels provided.
An open communal receptacle, recessed in the wall, had been provided for magazines and other publications on those occasions when the volume of other mail didn’t permit the postman to put all items in the boxes.
Two magazines lay in the tray. Both were for George Keesner in Apartment 2E.
Ethan rapped a knuckle against the aluminum doors on several of the mailboxes for the apartments in which he had no interest. The [25] hollow sound suggested they were empty. Most likely the daily mail had not yet been delivered.
When he rapped on Keesner’s box, it sounded as though it was packed full of mail. Evidently the man had been away from home for at least a couple days.
Ethan climbed the stairs to the second floor. One long hall, three doors on each side. At 2E, he rang the bell and waited.
Reynerd’s unit, 2B, lay directly across from 2E.
When no one answered the bell at Keesner’s apartment, Ethan rang it again, twice. After a pause, he knocked loudly.
Each door had been fitted with a fisheye lens to allow the resident to examine a caller before deciding whether or not to admit him. Perhaps from across the hall, Reynerd was watching the back of Ethan’s head right now.
Receiving no response to his knock, Ethan turned away from Keesner’s door and made a show of frustration. He wiped his rain-wet face with one hand. He pushed that hand through his damp hair. He shook his head. He looked up and down the hall.
When Ethan rang the bell at 2B, the apple man answered almost at once, without the protection of a security chain.
Although an unmistakable match for the image captured by the security camera, he proved to be more handsome than he’d been in the rain the previous night. He resembled Ben Affleck, the actor.
In addition to the Affleck aspect, however, he had a welcome-to-the-Bates-Motel edge to him that any fan of Anthony Perkins would have recognized. The tightness at the corners of his mouth, the rapid pulse visible in his right temple, and especially the hard shine in his eyes suggested that he might be on methamphetamine, not fully amped but clipping along at high altitude.
“Sir,” Ethan said even as the door was still opening, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m sort of desperate to get in touch with George Keesner over there in 2E. Do you know George?”
[26] Reynerd shook his head. He had a bull’s neck. Lots of time spent on weight machines at the gym.
“I know him to say hello in the hall,” Reynerd said, “and how’s the weather. That’s all.”
If that was true, Ethan felt secure enough to say, “I’m his brother. Name’s Ricky Keesner.”
That scam ought to work as long as Keesner was somewhere between twenty and fifty years old.
“Our Uncle Harry’s on his deathbed in the ICU,” Ethan lied. “Not going to hold on much longer. Since yesterday morning, I been calling George at every number I’ve got for him. He doesn’t get back to me. Doesn’t answer the door now.”
“I think he’s away,” said Reynerd.
“Away? He didn’t say anything about it to me. You know where he might’ve gone?”
Reynerd shook his head. “He was going out with a little suitcase the night before last, as I was coming in.”
“He tell you when he’d be back?”
“We just said how it looked like rain coming, and then he went out,” Reynerd replied.
“Man, he’s so close to Uncle Harry—we both are—he’s going to be upset he didn’t get a chance to say good-bye. Maybe I could leave him a note, so he sees it first thing he gets back.”
Reynerd just stared at Ethan. An artery began throbbing in his neck. His speed-cycled brain was racing, but although meth ensured frenetically fast thinking, it didn’t assist clear thinking.
“The thing is,” Ethan said, “I don’t have any paper. Or a pen, for that matter.”
“Oh. Sure, I got those,” said Reynerd.
“I really hate to bother you—”
“No bother,” Reynerd assured him, turning away from the open door, going off to find a notepad, a pen.
Left at the threshold, Ethan chafed to get into the apartment. He [27] wanted a better look at Reynerd’s nest than he could obtain from the doorway.
Just as Ethan decided to risk being rude and to enter without an invitation, Reynerd halted, turned, and said, “Come on in. Sit down.”
Now that the invitation had been extended, Ethan could afford to inject a little authenticity into this charade by demurring. “Thanks, but I just came in from the rain—”
“Can’t hurt this furniture,” Reynerd assured him.
Leaving the door open behind himself, Ethan went inside.
The living room and dining area comprised one large space. The kitchen was open to this front room, but separated from it by a bar with two stools.
Reynerd proceeded into the kitchen, to a counter under a wall phone, while Ethan perched on the edge of an armchair in the living room.
The apartment was sparsely furnished. One sofa, one armchair, a coffee table, and a television set. The dining area contained a small table and two chairs.
On the television, the MGM lion roared. The sound was low, the roar soft.
On the walls were several framed photographs: large sixteen-by-twenty-inch, black-and-white art prints. Birds were the subject of every photo.
Reynerd returned with a notepad and a pencil. “This do?”
“Perfect,” Ethan said, accepting the items.
Reynerd had a dispenser of Scotch tape, as well. “To fix the note on George’s door.” He put the tape on the coffee table.
“Thanks,” Ethan said. “I like the photographs.”
“Birds are all about being free,” Reynerd said.
“I guess they are, aren’t they? The freedom of flight. You take the photos?”
“No. I just collect.”
In one of the prints, a flock of pigeons erupted in a swirl of feathered [28] frenzy from a cobblestone plaza in front of a backdrop of old European buildings. In another, geese flew in formation across a somber sky.
Indicating the black-and-white movie on the TV, Reynerd said, “I was just getting some snacks for the show. You mind ... ?”
“Huh? Oh, sure, I’m sorry, forget about me. I’ll jot this down and be gone.”
In one of the pictures, the birds had flown directly at the photographer. The shot presented a close-up montage of overlapping wings, crying beaks, and beady black eyes.
“Potato chips are gonna kill me one day,” Reynerd said as he returned to the kitchen.
“With me it’s ice cream. More of it in my arteries than blood.”
Ethan printed DEAR GEORGE in block letters, then paused as if in thought, and looked around the room.
From the kitchen, Reynerd continued: “They say you can’t ever eat just one potato chip, but I can’t ever eat just one bag.”
Two crows perched on an iron fence. A strop of sunlight laid a sharp edge on their beaks.
White carpet as pristine as winter snow lay wall to wall. The furniture had been upholstered in a black fabric. From a distance, the Formica surface of the dinette table appeared to be black.
Everything in the apartment was black-and-white.
Ethan printed UNCLE HARRY IS DYING and then paused again, as if a simple message taxed his powers of composition.
The movie music, though soft, had a melodramatic flair. A crime picture from the thirties or forties.
Reynerd continued to rummage in kitchen cabinets.
Here, two doves appeared to clash in midflight. There, an owl stared wide-eyed, as if shocked by what it saw.
Outside, wind had returned to the day. A dice-rattle of rain drew Ethan’s attention to the window.
From the kitchen came the distinctive rustle of a foil potato-chip bag.
[29] PLEASE CALL ME, Ethan printed.
Returning to the living room, Reynerd said, “If you’ve got to eat chips, these are the worst because they’re higher in oil.”
Ethan looked up and saw a bag of Hawaiian-style chips. Reynerd had inserted his right hand into the open bag.
The way that the bag gloved the apple man’s hand struck Ethan as wrong. The guy might have been reaching in for some chips, of course; but an oddness of attitude, a tenseness in him, suggested otherwise.
Stopping beside the sofa, not six feet away, Reynerd said, “You work for the Face, don’t you?”
At a disadvantage in the armchair, Ethan pretended confusion. “For who?”
When the hand came out of the bag, it held a gun.
A licensed private investigator and certified bodyguard, Ethan had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Except in the company of Channing Manheim, when he armed himself as a matter of routine, he seldom bothered to strap on his piece.
Reynerd’s weapon was a 9-mm pistol.
This morning, disturbed by the eye in the apple and by the wolfish grin that this man had revealed on the security tape, Ethan had put on his shoulder holster. He hadn’t expected to need a gun, not really, and in fact he’d felt a little silly for packing it without greater provocation. Now he thanked God that he was armed.
“I don’t understand,” he said, trying to look equally bewildered and afraid.
“I’ve seen your picture,” Reynerd told him.
Ethan glanced toward the open door, the hallway beyond.
“I don’t care who sees or hears,” Reynerd told him. “It’s all over anyhow, isn’t it?”
“Listen, if my brother George did something to piss you off,” Ethan said, trying to buy a little time.
Reynerd wasn’t selling. Even as Ethan dropped the notepad and [30] reached for the 9-mm Glock under his jacket, the apple man shot him point-blank in the gut.
For a moment, Ethan felt no pain, but only for a moment. He rocked back in the chair and gaped at the gush of blood. Then agony.
He heard the first shot, but he didn’t hear the second. The slug hammered him dead-center in the chest.
Everything in the black-and-white apartment went black.
Ethan knew the birds still gathered on the walls, watching him die. He could feel the tension of their wings frozen in flight.
He heard a dicelike rattle again. Not rain against the window this time. His breath rattling in a broken throat.
No Christmas.