At 4:00 p.m., Daniel phoned.
“I'd like to show you the cover apartment on Genesee. You may never actually have to use it, but this way you'll be accustomed to it.”
“I'll meet you there. What's the address?”
“I'm near your house,” he said. “If you don't mind, I'll come by and take you.”
He was there ten minutes later and he gave me a brown paper Ralph's Market bag. Inside was a change of clothes: lightweight black cotton pants, black cotton mock turtleneck washed nearly gray, baggy gray herringbone sportcoat with the label of Dillard's department store in St. Louis on the inside breast pocket, rubber-soled black shoes from Bullock's, L.A.
“Costume rehearsal?” I said.
“Something like that.”
“No underwear?”
“Underwear is underwear.”
“True. I don't see Andrew going for flaming red silk.”
I inspected the jacket. The wool emitted a weak scent of insipid cologne.
“The St. Louis touch is nice,” I said, “but Andrew's lived in L.A. for several years.”
“I don't see him as someone who likes to shop,” he said. “His mother sent it to him.”
“Good old Mom.” I put the clothes on. The sportcoat was a little baggy but not a bad fit.
The mirror showed me a nicely shabby getup that would play well in lots of L.A. settings. The beard helped, too. It had grown into the itch stage, thick and coarse and straight with more gray hairs than I'd expected. From my cheekbones to my Adam's apple I was covered, the lower half of my face effectively obscured.
We drove down the glen in the gray Toyota. Just past the Beverly Hills line, he said, “Try these,” and gave me a pair of eyeglasses. Tiny, round lenses, gray-tinted, in bronze frames.
I slipped them on. No prescription.
“I like the effect,” he said, “but I'd remove them from time to time. Your eyes are good for the part- nice and red. Have you been sleeping well?”
“Yes,” I lied.
“Well,” he said, “you look world-weary, anyway.”
“Method acting.”
“Andrew's an insomniac?”
“Andrew's not a happy man.”
The Genesee building was a two-story stucco quadriplex nearly the exact gray of the Toyota, between Beverly and Rosewood. Flat roof, barred windows, all the charm of a storage depot. The front door was locked.
“The small round key,” he said.
I turned the latch and we entered a central corridor carpeted in cheap maroon felt. Boiled-onion smell. Stairs at the back, four-slot brass mailbox just inside the door.
The paper DESMOND label was on Unit 2. Brown paper, water-stained. My neighbors were Weinstein and Paglia and Levine.
Two was the ground floor, right-hand unit. A pair of nail-holes pierced the doorpost like the fang-holes of a big- jawed snake. Between them was a three-inch column one shade paler than the surrounding woodwork.
“Andrew removed the mezuzah?” I said.
“He's not Jewish.”
“Still, to go to the trouble-”
“Apparently, he's not a man of much faith, Alex. The square key opens both locks.”
Two good dead bolts, each shiny, with the crisp feel of new fixtures.
The apartment was dim and stuffy, more of that same weak cologne overlaid with must and mothballs.
Bare wood floors in need of varnish, some of the boards bowing. Off-white walls, off-white polyester drapes over the small protected windows, each with borders of little turquoise yarn-balls. Thrift-shop furniture in hues of ash and earth and not much of it.
A living room with one wall of plywood shelving crowded with books and a Taiwanese stereo system. The kitchen looked greasy but felt clean. Down a skinny dark hall were a cracked-tile bathroom, mattress-on-the-floor bedroom, and a rear door out to the tiny yard with a sagging clothesline and three-car garage.
It reminded me of something. Nolan Dahl's place.
Lonely bachelor living. The places it could lead…
“What do you think?” said Daniel.
I looked around. Everything was worn and stained and nicked in all the right places. No one would suspect it was a set.
Who lived here the rest of the year?
“Perfect,” I said, and he led me back to the back door and out into the yard. Half dry grass, half bird-specked cement.
“An alley runs behind the property,” he said. “The garage can be entered from both sides.” From his pocket he removed a remote control and pushed the button. The central garage door opened. Inside was a Karmann Ghia painted legal-paper yellow.
Back in the house, he gave me the remote and we returned to the living room, where he stood back, inviting me to inspect. I checked out the stereo and the books. The music was a mixture of LPs, tapes, and CDs. Small collection, maybe fifty selections in all: Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Bach, Cat Stevens, the Lovin' Spoonful, Hendrix, the Doors, the Beatles'
The books were on psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, a smattering of other subjects, some with USED stickers, many bearing the conspicuous irrelevance of assigned texts. At the bottom was fiction: Hemingway, Faulkner, Kerouac, Burroughs, Camus, Sartre, Beckett. Piles of old psych journals and magazines
Except for that, it could have been my library from college, though my apartment on Overland had been half the size of this place, a stuffy cell neighboring an auto-repair shop. I'd struggled each month to make the ninety-dollar rent; no trust fund…
I pulled out an abnormal-psych text. Foxed pages gave off the vomitous odor old books sometimes acquire. Inside was the inked stamp of the student bookstore at the University of Missouri, Columbus. Sold and resold twice. Pages full of yellow underlining.
A newer-looking tome that I recognized as the major grad-school work on the same topic came from the Technical Bookstore on Westwood Boulevard in L.A. Purchase date ten years ago.
Meticulous.
“I guess you have the original receipts, too.”
“I didn't see Andrew as someone who'd save receipts.”
“Unsentimental?”
He sat down on a sagging couch and dust puffed.
“Lucky I'm not allergic,” I said.
“Yes. I should have asked.”
“Can't think of everything.”
“Is there anything you'd change, Alex?”
“Not so far. Where are the bugs?”
He crossed his legs and managed to get his bad hand on his knee, where it rested like a lumpy gray toad.
“In the phone,” he said, “in a bedroom lamp, and here.” He hooked a thumb toward the front windowsill. I saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“How many phones?” I said.
“Two, here and in the bedroom.”
“Both tapped?”
