the same car all the time. Suppose he'd been hired by the church. He could take a different car every time out. He'd parked it nose-on to a loading zone, where he could pull out quickly. And sure as hell, he did.
So I drove east all the way to LaBrea, catching sight of him pretty often, then south, and pulled into a parking lot at a Denny's. I went inside, and walked right through the kitchen and out the service entrance, with the chief cook yelling at me. Then I slipped around the side of the building and peered over the shrubbery. I could see the DKW in a bank lot across the street, where the driver could watch for me driving out.
I waited till the light at the intersection turned red, stopping the traffic flow, then I trotted out and across the street, hand inside my jacket on the butt of my Walther 7.65mm.
The DKW backed, U-turned, and burned rubber out another entrance. There was no question at all about it now; I'd had a tail. And he knew that I knew. I watched his disappearance with a big rock in my stomach.
8
Winifred Sproule
My wife is self-employed, a professional psychic with a reputation that lets her charge fairly big fees. Psychics have been big in L.A. since the plagues at the turn of the century, and the business is growing. Anyway, while Tuuli isn't awfully busy, she makes a good income. Generally she arranges things so she can sleep late—commonly till nine. By which time I've been at the office for an hour, which means I either fix my own breakfast or eat out. Most often I eat at Morey's Deli, down the block from the office. It's not that I don't like to prepare meals; I just don't like to eat by myself. Besides, there's less traffic earlier.
But on the day of my appointment with Winifred Sproule, I ate at home. I was trying to make up for all the fat, chocolate-frosted doughnuts I'd eaten at Molly Cadigan's the day before, so what it came down to was low-fat cottage cheese, Rye Krisps with nothing on them, and slices of raw turnip (try raw turnips; they're mildly sweet), all washed down with a big glass of Altadena Dairy's real churned buttermilk.
I can enjoy a meal like that without getting carried away. Probably because it's not sweet and not salty. Some foods send me into a feeding frenzy. Chocolate! God!
The only thing wrong with breakfast that day was, I had the TV on to the morning news. Which featured a trashing. Trashers had damn near destroyed a senior citizens' center in Burbank the night before. After disabling the alarm system, which had taken some know-how, they'd poisoned the shrubbery and lawn, slashed and hacked the furniture, knocked holes in the drywall, spray-painted obscenities . . . and waited till they were ready to leave to break the windows; the noise would bring the beat cops.
The police estimated the trashers must have carried out the whole thing in under ten minutes. As if they'd drilled it. Something like that always rouses a terrible urge to homicide in me. Which scares me, because I almost always carry a gun. I imagine myself shooting half a dozen of them, gut-shooting them, then going around kicking the wounded, busting ribs and stuff like that. Bad stuff. It makes me remember . . .
So I turned off the TV and did the drill my therapist gave me after mom and dad were killed, to settle me down. It usually only takes a minute or two. Then I went down to the parking level, got in my car and left.
The Hypernumbers Institute is in Bel Air, of all places, on a little goat-trail street called Chikaree Lane that snakes along the top of a ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains. I went the back way, via Mulholland Drive and Beverly Glen. I hadn't realized the neighborhood was a security neighborhood, but Dr. Sproule had let the gate guards know I was coming, so my Prudential ID got me through.
The institute sprawls along the upper slope, with a great view across Stone Canyon to the west. A rambling, two-story building with cedar siding, it could easily pass for some holo star's western-style mansion. Tall Mexican pines shade it, while rhododendrons stand guard. The receptionist called and told Sproule I was there, then gave me directions to her office. Somehow I'd expected to see students trooping through the halls or standing around drinking coffee, chatting. Instead it was quiet. The few people I saw looked as if they had things to do.
Winifred Sproule's office was on the second floor. Most of her west wall consisted of sliding doors, one-way Klearglass that opened onto a balcony with view. They were open when I walked in, open to birdtalk and a warm April breeze. Sproule had gotten up when I entered. I'd visualized her pretty well—blond, slim but well-built, and all-round good looking. Also elegant, in spite of, or maybe because of, the short, slit, Singapore skirt. The kind of elegance you see in old 2-D movies with European leading ladies. Dietrich. Garbo. She could easily have passed for the proverbial thirty-nine, but I judged she'd be in her late forties. That seemed like a minimum, if she'd been a high-ranking Noetie while Leif Haller was still alive and publicly active.
'I'm Martti Seppanen,' I said.
She gestured. 'Have a seat, Mr. Seppanen.' She sat down herself. Elegantly. There was no desk between us; it faced a side wall. She was only about five feet from me, close enough to make me edgy at first. The office wasn't that small, and I was strongly aware of her crossed legs, which were elegant too.
'You said you're investigating the disappearance of Ray Christman. For whom, may I ask?'
'A private individual.'
'I see.' She lit a cigarette, the smoke wisping upward into an air cleaner. Even so, I got a whiff. It wasn't tobacco or weed. Maybe one of the herbals you can buy, supposed to be relatively harmless. I didn't know much about the different brands. I'd still been a kid when the government made it illegal to advertise them. This one had an apricot-colored filter tip.
'How can I help you?' she asked.
'I've heard you were once on the Gnosties' board of directors. And on the Noetie board of directors before that. Is that true?'
'They're both true, but neither was a position of any influence. That's one respect, one of several, in which Ray was like Haller at that time. Both kept the power—all the real power—in their own hands. A directorship wasn't even an honor, really, though they treated it as one. We rarely even had meetings. All they wanted a board of directors for was a list of names to put on legal papers and letterhead. Names with a Ph.D., MD, or DD appended, or some such. I had a doctorate in math.'
I revised my estimate of her age up another notch—not easy to do, considering her looks. Or maybe she'd been a child prodigy. 'But I suppose you're knowledgeable about them,' I said.
She shrugged. 'About current situations, no. If you're interested in organization and philosophy, yes. History definitely.' Even her raised eyebrow was elegant. 'Ask your questions and we'll see.'
I'd been reviewing what to ask the evening before, and on the way over. Basically I was groping, fishing for leads and trying to evaluate the too numerous possibilities. What I could most hope to get from her were insights into the church and the Noeties, and possibly more contacts. I still couldn't discard the possibility that the Noeties
