Snark of subatomic particles-popped out of the void to explain why his feet remained anchored to the ground. And it didn’t.
Even during the brief interludes in which I pursued my own business, it took five times as long to do anything because I had to drag myself through all the double-backs, loop routes, feints, detours, and parking stalls that make up the vocabulary of checking for a tail. With my Thomas Brothers map book open in my lap, I turned into every dead end and cul-de-sac I passed, waited for three minutes-or, lately, two and a half-and then came back out again with my eye on that blemished and blistering rearview mirror. So I drove and fretted and fretted and drove again and consoled myself with the knowledge that at least no one else had been burned to death.
Wallowing through the slog of time, I knocked on more doors to apartments overlooking the various death scenes and got nothing. I’d talked to the homeless, to the extent that anyone can talk to the homeless. I’d distributed fifteen or sixteen of Annabelle Winston’s twenties, hoping for information, and purchased nothing more than fifteen or sixteen vicarious drinking binges. I’d talked to Eleanor and Hammond on the phone. More consolation: No one seemed to be following them, either.
By the third day, I was so desperate that I’d let Hammond and Schultz, who had been surgically attached to Hammond, talk me into setting up a phony meet. The idea was to pick someplace relatively conspicuous and let the cops station half a dozen watchers in the neighborhood, three on wheels, three on foot. The meet was set for 7:00 P.M., by which time some anonymous optimist in a uniform had decided that rush hour would have died down. With an unpleasant prickling on the back of my neck, I drove to the location-a motel in Santa Monica, nicely positioned at the end of a dead-end street off Ocean Boulevard-went to room 22, as directed, and knocked.
Willick opened the door. He opened it very wide, as though he wanted to ensure good sight lines from the street.
“I was hoping it would be you,” I said, fighting down a sudden desire to burst into tears. “This is very reassuring.”
Willick beamed. He was wearing the worst set of plainclothes I’d ever seen. His tie was skinnier than pasta, and it made his face seem even fatter. His sport coat was the precise shade of green that electric eels are supposed to assume just before they give you thirty volts. His jeans were pressed and fresh from the laundry, and they were so short that you could see the white socks above his big black cop shoes. “Nice disguise,” I said.
“The jacket’s my brother-in-law’s,” he said proudly.
“I didn’t know you had a brother-in-law on the force,” I said, waiting for him to close the damn door.
His smile slipped a little. “Whole family’s on the force,” he said.
I used my foot to close the door for him. “That explains a lot,” I said. “Have we got watchers?”
“They’re all over the place,” Willick said enthusiastically, turning to the window. “See? The guy fixing the Coke machine-”
I slapped his hand away from the blinds, and he yanked it back and flapped it in the air a few times to cool it, looking like a little kid who was deciding whether to cry.
“It’s not polite to point,” I said, smoothing the blinds down. “How long are we supposed to be here?”
“Until we get the all-clear,” Willick said. He blew on the back of his hand, caught me looking at him, and put the hand behind his back.
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“On this,” Willick said, hefting a ten-pound walkie-talkie in his other hand. It said PROPERTY LAPD on the side in enormous yellow stenciled letters. They looked bigger than skywriting. “It’s already on the right frequency.”
“Good, good,” I said, wondering if this were Hammond’s little joke. “Be terrible to be on the wrong one. You know, someone could be listening.”
“Oh, no,” he said, giving me the ultimate reassurance. “I set it myself.” I think I smiled at him. At any rate, I felt my cheeks creak.
“What about that?” I pointed to the phone, prominently positioned on the table between the beds. “See that?”
“Oh,” Willick said. He didn’t say it loudly.
“Might have been easier,” I said.
“Well,” Willick said. He lowered the hand with the walkie-talkie as though it were suddenly too heavy.
“Wouldn’t have required you to get up here carrying something that says LAPD on it, either.”
“I hid it under my coat,” Willick said. He showed me how he’d hidden it under his coat. Only the letters LAPD showed.
“You’re doing great,” I said.
The thing snapped, crackled, and popped. Willick almost dropped it trying to tug it free of his coat. He’d snagged it on the orange Paisley lining. I helped him get it clear and then took it away from him. He stretched out a white, margarine-coated hand and closed his fingers on air, a good fourteen inches from the walkie-talkie.
“Phoenix One to Phoenix Three,” said a gravelly voice.
“Al,” I said. “Al, this isn’t funny.”
“Wrong,” Hammond said. “It wouldn’t be funny if you weren’t clean. But you’re clean, so it’s hilarious.”
“How many cars?” Willick was watching with a wounded expression.
“We got three.”
“All plain?”
“What, are you kidding?” Hammond sounded aggrieved. “Sure, they’re plain.”
“Radios?”
“What do you think this is?”
“I think this is a Triple-E ticket for Disneyland, is what I think it is. Schultz has to be Phoenix Two, right?”
Hammond grunted electronically.
“I want the cars to do a circle. The whole block, then the block beyond. I want them to do it twice. I want the walkers to do the same. And Phoenix,” I said. “That’s clever. The bird that rises from its own ashes. What if he’s got a shortwave, Al?”
“He doesn’t know the frequency.”
“There’s a telephone in this very room,” I said. “Right here, not six feet from me. Don’t tell me about shortwaves, and don’t tell me about Phoenix. And don’t use this again. When the cars and the walkers have done a double circle, call me on the room phone. Have you got someone there who knows how to dial?”
“Don’t be silly,” Hammond said.
“Right,” I said. “Sorry. I forgot that Schultz was there.”
I turned off the walkie-talkie. Willick murmured in genteel protest. The whole family was on the force, I remembered. Just for insurance, I took the walkie-talkie into the bathroom and dropped it into the toilet.
“Settle down,” I said, as he fished it out. He looked at it, streaming water, with an expression of unadulterated terror on his face.
“I checked this out myself,” he said. “I signed my name. I’m responsible.”
The bathroom towels were white and fluffy, and I tossed him one. “So dry it,” I said. “And work on your heart rate. We’re here until the phone rings.”
The phone rang five minutes later. Willick was sulking on the other bed, and I beat him to it. “You’re clean,” Dr. Schultz announced smoothly.
“And you’re an idiot,” I said. “There are twenty things wrong with the way this was handled.”
“We were going for broke,” Schultz said, unruffled. “If he’d been behind you, we would have had him. If not, no harm done.”
“Thanks for the information. It would have been nice to have had it ahead of time.”
“We couldn’t be sure how you’d behave, could we?” Schultz was working on silky. What he didn’t say was, We decided to make you a target, see if we could draw the son of a bitch out.
“Is Al on the line?”
“He could be. Would you like him to be?”
“No,” I said in a tone of voice that sent Willick’s eye brows skyward with the force of the space shuttle. “I only asked because I wanted to propose to you.”
There was a little muffled urgency, and then Hammond said, “Yeah?”
