out of heaven by his own mother. Now that he’s killing both women and men,” he said, “I think we were right before. I think this is sexual, and sexual means Mommy.” He gave all of us the dubious benefit of the amber smile. “So why did he guide you to the apartment?”
“Because he’s playing with me,” I said slowly, feeling the atmosphere of the room gather around me and weigh me down. “Because he knows he can jerk me around. I think the real question is what he wants me to do about it.”
“You’ve got his name,” Schultz said. “That means that DMV could give us the plate on that Mazda.”
“You can get it,” I said. “Give it to the cops, I don’t care. If they get him, great, but they won’t. I’m betting that he’s finished with the Mazda, too. Let me know if they find it, but I think he’s finished with it, just as he is with the apartment. Hell, put the cops on the name change, too, if you think it’ll help. Just keep them away from me. I’ve got to figure out whether to do what he wants me to do.”
“Maybe he’s not finished,” Schultz said.
“Back off, Doctor,” Annabelle Winston said. “You just heard Simeon say that the puzzle was complete.”
“That puzzle,” Schultz said. “That apartment. How do we know he doesn’t have another puzzle, and another apartment? Maybe he’s got another mission, too.”
We all listened to the words hitting the carpet.
“And what does he want you to do?” Schultz said. “Put yourself in his place.”
“I don’t know. To make him famous, I guess.”
Schultz nodded and lighted another Dunhill. “And what doesn’t he want you to do?” Schultz asked around a cumulus cloud of smoke.
“I don’t know that either.” I closed my eyes so tightly that I could see little red dots, blood vessels rupturing in the retina. “To get closer, I guess. He figures he can control how close I get.”
“Right,” Schultz said. “And how do you get closer?”
I was all grit, a cement mixer filled with dry sand and gravel. “Mommy, I suppose,” I said. “But that means he’s going to come for me.”
Annabelle Winston started to say something and thought better of it.
“Right,” Schultz said again. “You get to Mommy, he’s going to come for you. But he’s only going to come for you if you’re clear of the cops.” He sighed. “No publicity on the apartment.” He rubbed his face. “So what you do, you reverse field. Stop doing what he wants. Do what he doesn’t want. I’ll keep the cops away from you, and you go talk to Mommy, if you can find her. Are you ready for that?”
I nodded. It was easier than talking. I wasn’t certain I could make my jaws work. I’d just discovered that it was possible to feel sad, weary, and panicked simultaneously.
“He’s not bait,” Annabelle Winston said.
“Oh, yes, he is,” Schultz replied complacently. “And he knew that a long time ago, and so did you. We can’t find the Incinerator’s hole, so we have to bring him out of it. It’s like killing a gopher.”
I could hear Annabelle Winston swallow all the way across the room.
“And you know how to find her,” Schultz said.
“Sure,” I said, feeling like an emotional lottery. “Get me the address on the name change.”
For two more days, I stayed away from home, ricocheting around Los Angeles and threatening the drivers and pedestrians of Los Angeles by driving with one, and sometimes two, eyes on the rearview mirror, twelve to sixteen hours a day. Schultz was as good as his word, or if he wasn’t, I didn’t find out about it. I slept, when I slept at all, in hotels with multiple stories and internal elevators, safe from outside eyes, dozing no more than two or three hours before checking out and hitting the freeways again. I did the whole internal loop: Ventura Freeway to Hollywood Freeway to San Bernardino Freeway, cutting through surface streets in the Chinese enclave of Monterey Park before picking up yet another freeway. As far as I could tell he wasn’t behind me. But, of course, there was the dance card. I hadn’t thought he was behind me then, either.
I’d never felt so disconnected in my life. No one I loved-or even particularly liked-was available. Eleanor was in a hotel somewhere, and even if she wanted to see me, I was afraid to see her. She might be with Burt, and Wilton Hoxley might be with me. Friends like Wyatt and Annie Wilmington were too dear to take a chance on hauling Hoxley along in my wake. Even worse, most of them had children. Little fatty children. One night I had a dream in which a child exploded in flame.
Hammond hated my guts. No one can hate you like an old friend.
From time to time, in various hotel rooms, I checked in with my answering machine before I collapsed, fully clothed, onto the bed. I slept lightly and badly, chased by dreams, and the hotel operator always awakened me after the requisite two or three hours, and I threw cold water into my face and hit the freeways again.
No one got burned. No lunatics in rubber trench coats stalked any of L.A.‘s burgeoning skid rows.
There were, according to Billy Pinnace, who had been deputized by me to check my mailbox when he was absolutely sure no strangers were around, no letters.
Hermione had finally remembered her last name and been sent home to crawl the pubs, so another promise had been kept. The newspapers said that the heroine had traveled first class. The image of Norman signing the check had given me a brief moment of pleasure. Nothing more about Hermione.
Nothing in the papers about Mrs. Gottfried.
There was, in all, enough nothing to satisfy an atheist.
The police did, however, find the Mazda, gutted by fire about three blocks from Normal Street. He’d had the nerve to come back after the fire and hang a blond fright wig over the remnants of the rearview mirror. Well, I didn’t have any doubts about his nerve.
I was stretched to the point of transparency, beginning to be grateful when I saw only double, when I called the answering machine from some hotel or another in the middle of the night and got Schultz’s voice reciting an address.
“It’s 13156 Via del Valle,” he’d said before hanging up.
The hotel’s electric clock, thoughtfully bolted to the table in case the weary traveler tried to pack it by mistake, said 5:20 A.M. The weary traveler slept for two rotten hours before performing his habitual ablutions- two handfuls of cold water, thrown directly into the eyes-and hitting the road.
Via del Valle, according to my Thomas map book, was a short, coiled rattlesnake of a street that had been brutally cut into one of the very small hills that comprised the exclusive San Fernando Valley enclave called Hidden Hills. Low ranch-style houses sat defiantly in the chaparral, daring the god of fire to drop by.
Number 13156 was the paragon of the street, a fact easily deduced from its position: It was the highest, the largest, the house most vulnerable to fire. There was a buzz-box at the bottom of the driveway with a button, a microphone, and a square numeric keypad on its face, and unless you knew the numerical code, an acceptable answer given to the buzz-box was the only way to prompt the electrical impulse that would open the iron gates. The gates wouldn’t have slowed a fire down much. It was already 92 degrees.
“Yeah?” growled a male voice. He sounded as if he’d just gotten up, and since it was only nine o’clock and since it was that neighborhood, maybe he had.
“Wilton Hoxley,” I said.
“Wilton? Punch up the goddamn code.” The voice was like a cigar’s garage.
“This isn’t Wilton,” I said. “I’m here to talk about Wilton.”
“So talk,” said the buzz-box.
“Face-to-face,” I said.
“Eat it,” said the buzz-box. It fell silent.
I pushed the button again. When it beeped in response, I said, “Listen, it’s me. Or the cops.”
“Well, shit,” said the cigar’s garage. “Goddamn Wilton, anyway. Come on up.” The gates opened. “Drive in,” the voice said.
I’d been trained into obedience, and I drove in.
16
