'So . . . what? We just move?'
'Depends. Do you guys run from your problems?'
Ariana's eyes ticked over to me. If he hadn't been busy packing up, Jerry would have noticed how much was riding on the look between us. 'No,' I said to her. 'We don't.'
The phone rang.
Ariana scrambled to her feet. 'No one calls us this time of morning. What if it's the cops?'
I glanced at my watch, barely registering that I was already a half hour late to start my commute. I said to Jerry, 'Are the phones tapped?'
Another ring. The cordless was stuffed somewhere under the picture frames and cushions we'd stacked on the love seat.
Jerry snapped the catches on his toolbox and stood to go. 'Only amateurs would tap you at a junction box and show draw on the line. They use electronic intercept these days. Undetectable.'
I started digging through the stuff on the love seat, sourcing the ring. Squirming a hand between two cushions, I pulled out the phone. RESTRICTED CALLER. My thumb hovered over the 'talk' button. 'She's right. No one calls this early. It could be important.'
Jerry shook his head. 'I wouldn't risk it.'
Another ring.
'Shit,' I said. 'Shit.' I turned it on, listened a moment to the crackle of static. 'Hello?'
Punch's hoarse voice said, 'Patrick, man--'
I said, 'I know, Chad. It's a bad time right now, though, a lot going on. I told you I'd have the papers graded by Friday.'
More crackle while Punch contemplated my calling him 'Chad.' Finally he picked up the ruse. 'Okay, it'd really make my life easier if they were done earlier.'
'I'll see what I can do.' I hung up. Exhaled. Jerry was already at the door. I said, 'Hey, wait. Thank you for this. If we didn't have your help, I honestly don't know what we'd do.'
Ariana said, 'You have no idea--'
Jerry looked right at me, ignoring her. 'This better not come back on me with the studio.'
'It won't,' I said.
Ariana added, 'Not from us.'
He shifted his weight, those toolboxes straining at the handles. 'I'm done. Get it?'
He was the first one through all this who'd been able to offer real insight. The only person I knew who had remotely relevant expertise. I wanted to beg. I wanted to plead. I wanted to bar the door and get him to promise he'd be on the other end of an untapped line when things got worse. Instead I just looked at the torn-up carpet.
'Yeah,' I said. 'I got it.' It took some effort, but I lifted my gaze to meet his. 'Thank you, Jerry.'
He nodded and walked out.
Chapter 22
The throwaway cell phone looked an awful lot like the one I'd stomped to pieces and kicked down the gutter. Twenty-five dollars prepaid, AT&T, domestic only. I pulled it from the rack and rushed to the checkout counter.
Bill gave me the big grin. 'How's Ariana?'
'Good.' I eyed the old-fashioned clock above the stacked bags of charcoal at the front of the store. I'd double-parked by the electronic doors, and a petite blonde in a Hummer was laying on the horn. 'Good, thanks.'
'Would you like a bag?'
I found my gaze lingering on the other customers, the cheap security cameras pointing at the registers, the parked cars. 'What? No, no, that's okay.'
He dragged the phone across the bar-code scanner. I looked at the product ID that popped up on his little screen, then turned my head to peer through the automatic doors and all the way up the street. The gray shingles of our roof peeked into view above the Millers' cypress. My eyes jerked back to that product ID, lit up in dot-matrix green. The nearest throwaway cell phone to our house. So therefore the one I'd be most likely to buy? And the one they'd be most likely to monitor.
Because they thought of everything.
Bill had said something.
'Sorry?'
His smile lost a bit of its luster. 'I said, I'd bet you guys are excited for that movie to come out.'
The blonde honked again, and I hurried toward the door, spinning to face Bill apologetically. 'Yeah. Listen, I don't think I need that phone after all.'
I lurched off the jammed 101, dodging cars at the exit and running Reseda north toward campus. The brown bag sliding around the passenger seat held four prepaid phones I'd grabbed at a gas station on Ventura. Punch's voice--for once not slurred--came at me through a fifth. 'Next time you give me a fake name, it better not be Chad. I mean, Chad?'
'What do you want to be called?'
'Dimitri.'
'Naturally.'
'Why the nifty spy talk?' Punch asked.
'I'm under crazy surveillance.'
'How crazy?'
'Cold War shit.'
A silence.
He said, 'Then we should do this in person.'
'It may not be safe for you to be around me.'
'I'm beginning to figure that out. But I'm a big boy. Can you get here now?'
'I'm already late for morning classes.' I veered around a kid in a Beemer who flipped me off with both hands. Probably one of my students. 'I'll see if I can duck out early for lunch, maybe. Any chance you can make it to this side of the hill?'
'Sure. Lemme just suspend what little of a life I have left to sit in hideous traffic so I can service your in- deep-shit ass.'
'Fair enough. Then where do you want me to be?'
'I'll tell you what. I'll get to Santa Monica for you. It'll be my pro bono effort for the year. Parking structure at the end of the Promenade. Third level. Two o'clock. I would say come alone, but I figure you know that. Make sure you're not being tailed. And don't call me again from whatever phone you're using now.'
'Aren't you the guy who told me not to worry about all this? Something about beakless woodpeckers?'
'That was before.'
'Thanks for the reassurance.'
But he'd already hung up.
The students--those who had waited for me--were restless, and rightly so. Bumbling into class at the half- hour mark, I was unprepared and exhausted, too distracted to think on my feet. Paeng Bugayong sat in the back, slumped over his writing tablet, his face sunk into his crossed arms so all I could make out was a band of face and a thatch of straight black bangs almost touching the tops of his eyes. A shy, harmless kid. I felt foolish--and guilty--for ever suspecting him. By the time I let the students out for lunch, they were more than ready to disappear.
In the crowded hall, Julianne materialized at my elbow. 'You're not heading to the lounge?' she asked.
'No. I have to run.'
'Walk you to your car?' She shouldered through a pack of students to keep pace. 'Come on, I'm jonesing for the next episode. Plus, you owe me big time for covering your classes yesterday afternoon.'
'I knew that would cost me more than a Starbucks.' We pattered down the stairs. It took most of the way to my car to bring her up to speed. I left out Jerry's name and where he worked but gave her a rough overview of everything else. 'You're a journalist,' I said. 'Where the hell does someone start looking into the CIA?'
'You mean if they're exacting revenge because of They're Watching?' Her face showed what she thought the
