retaliate if you don't?' she asked.
'Of course I'm scared,' I said. 'I'm willing to believe they can do anything.'
'That's the point,' she said angrily. 'That's what they've been trying to teach us. We don't know people big enough to help us. So what do we do?'
'First let's get the bugs out of the walls. At least the ones they're admitting are there. And let's do it quickly.'
'Why quickly?'
'Because at midnight tomorrow, all the evidence goes down the sewer grate.'
My arms cramped from holding the wand. Slowly, laboriously, I swept the circular head over the south wall of the living room. Though we'd checked every square inch of every surface, and though false positives abounded, the marked-up floor plan hadn't left out any bugs. At least any I could detect using the instrument they'd provided. Despite the endlessly swirling dust, we'd closed all the curtains and blinds, making the rooms as claustrophobic as the tiny greenhouse.
On the armchair in the corner sat our laundry basket, filled to the brim with a jumble of cables, mini-lenses, transmitters, mounting plates, assorted sleeves, and a catch box for various optical fibers we'd dug out from behind our air-conditioning fan outside. Upstairs looked like a crack house--furniture slashed and upended, walls torn apart, paintings, mirrors, and books strewn on the floor. Pots and pans littered the kitchen, the cabinets stood ajar in the family room, and the contents of the drawers and medicine cabinet had been emptied into the powder-room sink. For hours we'd worked in dread-filled silence.
Dust and bits of plaster flecked the sweat on my arms. When I scanned down the inner doorframe, the green light glowed right on cue. Pulling the printout from my pocket, I checked the location against the final red circle, stepped down from the chair, and tapped the spot. Wearily, Ariana trudged forward and punched a hammer through the drywall.
I stepped over a nail-studded length of molding, set the wand down on a flap of turned-back carpet, and stretched my aching arms. Beside the torn carpet, I'd rested the photographs I'd found inside cabinets and drawers, the remaining pictures Ariana had printed up and playfully hidden six months back. Together they formed a visual CliffsNotes of our relationship. Smoking together outside a Bruins basketball game. Our first meal in the house, some moving boxes shoved together to form a makeshift table for take-out Vietnamese. Me grinning, holding up a check from Summit Pictures, the first dime I'd made as a writer. In the background the lopsided cake Ariana had baked for the occasion. The maudlin, tender things we did to celebrate ourselves, back before we discovered we could look foolish in front of each other. I stared at that cake, the candles still smoking. Whatever wish I'd made had been the wrong one. It was hard to believe, in light of the calamity of the past few days, that we'd actually thought we had problems before all this.
A length of runner cable wrapped around her fist, Ariana stepped back, fighting it from the hole like a fishing line. The embedded wire came lurchingly, carving a trench across the wall, past our framed wedding picture, which slipped from its nail to the floor, a crack forking the glass through our grinning faces. The crumbling channel zigged north through the ceiling, the cable eventually tearing free from the fan. She staggered a bit when the wire gave, standing stooped and openhanded for a breathless moment. Then she lowered her face into an upturned palm and finally broke the dour silence with a sob.
Chapter 21
'No one I like would call me at this hour.'
'Jerry, listen, it's Patrick.'
'As I said . . .'
I hunched against the pay phone outside Bel Air Foods, casting a glance over my shoulder at the empty street. The tinge of morning light stole some of the glow from the streetlamps. 'This thing's taken a turn, Jerry. Our whole house was bugged.'
'Ever think about adjusting your meds?'
'Can you--please, please--give us some guidance here?'
'Why the fuck are you calling me? You fishing for a restraining order, Davis? I told you the studio has zero interest in--'
'This has got nothing to do with the studio.'
That stopped him. 'Why not?'
'I'm telling you, come look at this stuff. You won't believe what we pulled out of the walls--lenses and shit that I didn't know existed. There was not a trace of the insertion. They must've run the wires behind the drywall arthroscopically or something. They hid a pinhole camera inside the speaker grille of my alarm clock, another one in the vent of a smoke detector.'
He whistled, and then I heard him breathing. 'Pinhole cameras?'
'That's the least of it. Listen, the house is supposedly clean now. But I don't trust it. I want it checked. They called, said I can't contact the cops.'
'You must be in dire straits if you're calling me.'
'I really am, Jerry.' I could almost hear him thinking about that one. I prodded a little: 'You've done surveillance, right?'
'Of course--you think Summit hired me for my temperament? I was an intercept analyst in the Corps. That's all anyone does anymore in Hollywood. Wiretapping. They barely even make movies these days.'
'Look, I gather this is really advanced stuff. Do you have any contacts who can do it? Someone more current?'
'Fuck you 'more current,' you reverse-psychology prick. I'll admit--you've piqued my interest. I mean, if this stuff is what you described, I should take a look. Never hurts to see what new gadgets are in play.'
'So you'll come?'
'If'--a pause--'you promise you'll never try to come near the lot again.'
I blew out a deep breath of relief, leaned my forehead against the wall. 'I promise. But listen, they might be watching the house.'
'You tore your place apart, yeah? So how 'bout an early-morning visit from your contractor?'
An hour later the doorbell rang. I glanced past Jerry, dressed convincingly in jeans and a ripped long-sleeved T-shirt, to the white van at the curb. Magnetic signs on the door and side proclaimed SENDLENSKI B ROS. C ONTRACTORS. He hefted one of two giant toolboxes at me and barreled by, introducing himself brusquely to Ariana. Unsnapping the catches, he pulled out a remote, aimed it through the closed door, and clicked a button.
'Wideband high-power jammer in the van. Your cell phones, wireless Internet, any surveillance devices-- they're all squelched.'
I said, 'Sendlenski Brothers?'
'Who couldn't believe a name like that?' He tugged out a directional antenna and hooked it to what looked like a laptop with a shoe box-thick base. An electronic waterfall traversed the screen, a red stripe running down the center. 'First things first. Let's see if there are any other devices still operating. You'll need to go about your business and stay out of my way. Now, listen, I have to turn off the jammer to pick up any signals. It's a good idea anyways, because that thing takes out a four-block radius, so your neighbors are already dialing tech support.' He fished an iPod nano, which he wore on a lanyard, from beneath his collar. A small contraption--a mini-speaker?-- plugged the headphone jack. 'Most high-end devices will only operate if there's noise to record. That's how they save juice. So guys started playing Van Halen when they swept rooms. Then the devices were upgraded to only transmit speaking tones. So . . .' Raising a finger to his lips, he aimed and clicked the remote again, turning off the jammer, then thumbed the iPod dial. A voice issued forth: 'Philosophy in the Boudoir, by the Marquis de Sade.'
Ariana caught my eye and mouthed, Marquis de Sade? Really?
While Jerry busied himself in the foyer, I settled on the couch and flipped through Entertainment Weekly but found myself rereading the same paragraph. In the kitchen Ariana emptied all the mugs out of the cabinet and then replaced them in what looked like the same order. She tore the lid from a box of mac & cheese and let the noodles patter on the countertop. No device hidden inside like a Cracker Jack prize. She lined up slices of bread by the sink. Crimp-searched the dry cleaning. Plucked a barrette from her hair and studied it. Her anxiety was infectious; I found myself eyeing our banal household clutter over the top of the magazine, wondering at each item's Trojan-horse potential. A ninja blowgun hidden in the potted philodendron?
