I ran straight toward him then darted left at the last moment. He swung the knife in an arc but I was already behind him. Back to the wall I kicked, getting the flat of my foot on his hip. He fell sprawling and the knife clattered across the floor. As soon as he was down, I lunged through the door, slammed it closed behind me, and bounded up the stairs. Back in the kitchen, I closed the door to the basement too and latched it. I could hear him lumbering up the stairs. I hurried through the house. A dull pounding came from the kitchen. On the front steps I found the guy running the estate sale again, staring off into the distance, cigarette smoke hanging around him in a gray cloud.
“What’s that noise?” he asked as I passed him.
I shrugged, giving him my best expression of deep imbecility, and kept going, heading for my rental car. He watched me go, head tilted to one side in confusion. I got behind the wheel, started the engine, then waved to him as I began to pull away. Through the windshield I saw his mouth move, mumbling some profanity as he ground out his cigarette in the gravel and turned, heading back into the house to find the source of the pounding. I was glad I wouldn’t be around when he released Dworkin from the basement.
Chapter 10
Breaking and Entering in Hammersmith
June 31-July 1: Philadelphia, London
Back in Philadelphia, I stopped for a drink in the hotel bar and considered the encounter. Dworkin was as obsessed with Lovecraftian nonsense as Ashna had thought—so obsessed he had gone over the edge. Mental illness was no joke. I couldn’t blame him for something he couldn’t control. I felt bad for him but also relieved to have gotten away as easily as I did. Beyond his problem with reality, Dworkin also clearly had a big problem with Jewish people and probably most other people whose ancestors came from places other than northern Europe. That had been obvious. Equally obvious was the very high likelihood that Dworkin was not the thief who had stolen Wolhardt’s notes.
The more I considered it, the more I thought the person who broke into my place was probably the same person who broke into Wolhardt’s. A similar signature tied the incidents together—the rented van, the lack of worry about their actions being discovered. As a cat burglar, I had always prided myself on my deeds not being discovered for at least several hours but hopefully for days or even months after I had left the scene. I sometimes left carefully crafted fakes in place of the pieces I stole. I always picked locks if possible. I never set off an alarm if I could disable it. In contrast, the thief who had hit Wolhardt and me was clearly not trying to hide his tracks. He left obvious evidence of his break-ins. That didn’t rule him out but I could not imagine clumsy Dworkin as the intruder who had climbed to the top of my building and drilled the lock on my roof door to gain entrance. I also couldn’t imagine him willingly going to L.A. given his clearly stated dread and disgust. It had to be somebody else. Maybe the fourth person from the online forum. What was he after from my place though? And how did he even know I was involved?
I decided to get in touch with Ashna, fill her in, and see if she had anything new for me. I dialed her number using an encrypted voice calling app she had commanded me to download and waited for one ring, two. She picked up in the middle of the third.
“What the fuck, man? You know I hate talking on the phone.” Her voice sounded tinny with a hint of robotic echo chamber.
“Sorry. Easier to talk than text or email.”
“Fine. What’s up? Did you meet Dworkin?”
“You could say that. Although I think his idea of who he is and what is going on around him is not constrained by what we would call reality.”
“Got it. Bat shit.”
“Let’s keep it clinical and say psychosis. Not funny. He took a swing at me with a box cutter. He thought I was the swarthy emissary of some chthonic or maybe Semitic demons.”
“Box cutter?”
“Yes. Luckily he’s kind of clumsy. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’s not the one. He definitely wants to solve the coded message in the variations if it even exists. He thinks it’s some kind of magical spell or incantation that will wake up an ancient, evil power. His spiel didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Interesting. Okay. Well, glad you didn’t get cut, man. I like you despite the fact that you place actual phone calls to me sometimes. I have some news for you too. I figured out the identity of music nerd number three.”
“Cool. What’s the story?”
“Well, I wasn’t having any luck breaking into the email account. It’s one of those Gmail accounts where the address is really anonymous. Just random numbers and letters. No clues pointing to a real identity. And he has two factor authentication set up. But, I remembered what you said about the rental vans. So, I anonymously registered a domain that looks a lot like the real SFPD domain, set up an email server for it, and sent an email to the rental company saying a white van without plates but with their logo on it had been used as a getaway vehicle in a crime on such and such date and time. I told them
