a genie who could be prodded into action only by repeating the magic formula three times. I wrote it down out of habit.
Below Ed Pfester’s number, this is what I had on my pad:
Older brother: Albuquerque, NM
A cry in the dark: Boise, ID
Country mouse: Kearney, NE
Me: young: Wheeling, WV
New life: Fresno, CA
Mature Daddy: Decatur, IL
Near Chicago, I thought. And then I thought, So what?
Come and Get: Colorado Springs, CO
New and: Provo, Utah
An atlas of sorts, an atlas of real or feigned small-town desperation. I was very happy I wasn’t a closeted gay in Provo, Utah, or anyplace else where the cops all went to church. Or, for that matter, in Ike Spurrier’s territory.
Now what? Write eight letters? I knew the profile that might bring the Farm Boy through the mirror, carpet cutter in hand: older, prosperous, avuncular, roots in a smaller town. But the Farm Boy, according to Schultz’s printouts, planned his joyrides in pairs, two to a city. Keeping his travel expenses down, maybe. It seemed likely that he had both victims identified, had his correspondence or whatever it was well in progress by the time he packed his innocent expression and picked up his boarding pass.
How did he swing it once he got to his destination? Did he work them one at a time or simultaneously? Christy had said no one had been sleeping at Max’s house, so he obviously slept elsewhere. In a hotel? At the home of the man in line to become Finger Number Two?
The penciled numbers on the margin of the page: 237/10/23/6:2. Ten twenty-three was probably October 23, two days before Max was killed. What was 6:2? A Bible verse? What other numerical format demanded a colon? Time, stupid. 6:2. Max being cryptic. 6:20. That left me 237 on October 23 at 6:20, either a.m. or p.m. Two thirty- seven could have been an address, a hotel room, an office suite, a gym locker, a self-storage compartment, a numerical code of some kind. I was willing to bet it was a flight number.
Approximately ninety airlines fly into, and out of, Los Angeles International Airport, a total of more than eighteen hundred flights a day. The Official Airlines Guide lists all of them by city of origin, arranged alphabetically by destination and chronologically from earliest arrival to latest. It’s a peculiarly infuriating publication, printed in a type that gets smaller every year, and I buy a new one every three months, on the off chance that I’ll be presented with a reason to squint at it.
The twenty-third was a Sunday, so I could eliminate all the 6:20 flights numbered 237 with the notation “X7,” meaning except Sunday. That would have been helpful if there had been any. There weren’t. A beer and a half later, with my eyes watering, I’d learned that there weren’t any flights from anywhere that had landed at LAX at 6:20 a.m. or p.m. on Sunday the twenty-third. Two veritable holes in the schedule of one of the world’s busiest airports.
So maybe it was an address, after all. Or someone’s waist size for that matter. Maybe Max had been murdered by someone with a 237-inch waist.
The phone rang, and I was exasperated enough to pick it up.
“Boy,” said Ed Pfester, “am I happy to get you.”
I wasn’t happy. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Really, really late,” Ed Pfester said cheerfully. “Did I explain that I’m on deadline?”
“Over and over again.”
“And that I’m doing a piece for-”
“ Back Fence,” I said. “And I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You don’t?” He seemed unable to believe it.
“I don’t like Back Fence,” I said. “It’s written for people who put most of their mental effort into growing their fingernails.”
“That’s pretty strong,” he said. “But, listen, this is important to me. It’s sort of my big break.”
“I don’t really-”
“Oh, come on. Please? I only need a couple of minutes. Help the kid out.”
Burbank, I suddenly thought. I may have slapped my forehead.
“Ed,” I said, “I’ll give you ten minutes. Call me back in five.”
“Promise?”
“Just dial the number.” I hung up and went back to the small print.
One plane into Burbank Airport at 6:20 P.M. on Sunday the twenty-third. Western Air from Denver’s Stapleton Airport. Flight 237.
Not good. Stapleton is a hub, a stop-off point for half the air travelers in America. If you’re coming to L.A. and you don’t have a direct flight, chances are pretty good you’re going to hike through Stapleton to change planes. Still, it eliminated Fresno, and probably Wheeling. A Wheeling-based one-stop was much more likely to touch down at O’Hare in Chicago.
That left six, down from forty-three. It cheered me enough to make me pick up the phone and dial.
“Scribbling Ed Pfester.” God, he was happy.
“Ed,” I said, “have you ever thought about changing your name?”
“Every day of my life,” he said. “But it’d break my mother’s heart.”
“Something like Brick or Dirk,” I said, with Ferris Hanks’s stable of names in mind. “It’d get rid of the assonance, at least.”
“Brick?” he said. “Brick Pfester?”
“You’d probably want to do something about the Pfester, too.”
“I’ll think about it. Does this count toward my ten minutes?”
“No, this is on me. How’d you get my name?”
“One of the other people I talked to. Are you going to let me get away with that?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Well, it was a sheriff’s deputy. I’m going to be in big trouble if I use his name.”
“Not Spurrier.”
“Not. Is that good enough?”
The kid was hopeless. “I guess it’ll have to be. What do you want to know?”
“Can I say you’re investigating Mr. Hawke’s death?”
“You can if you want to get sued.”
“Boy,” he said admiringly, “you don’t have a problem with confrontation, do you? That’s something I have to work on.”
“Just practice,” I said. There was something familiar about his voice.
“How well did you know him?”
“I met him once, for about an hour.”
“That’s all?” His dismay was palpable.
“That’s it.”
“And what did you think of him?”
What had I thought of Max? “He was courtly. Sort of remote, but not in an unfriendly way. Intuitive.”
“Wait,” he said. “I’m writing.” I hung on for a moment. “Would you describe him as an inspiration to everyone who came into contact with him?”
“No.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, how about someone who could teach us all something about life?”
“Where do you get this stuff? Norman Vincent Peale? Reader’s Digest?”
“Not good, huh?” He didn’t seem the least bit bothered. “How about in your own words?”
“Actually, I thought he was a little cracked.”
