CHAPTER 75
THE GENTLY CIRCULATING WATER IN THE POOL stirred the light that rose through it, causing shimmering auroras and shadows to quiver ceaselessly across the limestone walls and barrel-vaulted ceiling.
Fric brought a linen tablecloth to one of the poolside tables and arranged place settings of good china and silverware.
He almost added candles, but figured that two guys wouldn?t have dinner by candlelight. Maybe by the glow of a firepit or Polynesian party torches, maybe beside a campfire in a forest full of prowling wolves, but not by candlelight.
With a dimming switch, he adjusted the sconces on the limestone columns until they produced a soft golden glow.
In good weather, Fric enjoyed eating by the outdoor pool, when he was the sole member of the family in residence and when Ghost Dad?s girlfriends weren?t lying around in bikini bottoms, thickly slathered in number-fifty sunblock, like plucked ducks in a marinade.
The indoor pool didn?t measure up to the one outdoors: only eighty feet long and fifty-two feet wide, not quite large enough if you wanted to hold powerboat races. The room was warm in winter, however, and [489] a double shitload of palm trees in huge pots gave it a pleasant tropical feeling.
Three walls of the pool room featured big windows framing the parklike grounds. The windows in the third wall were shared with the conservatory, offering a view into its jungly realms.
A poolside dinner appealed to Fric because in the adjacent conservatory he had carefully prepared his deep and special secret place. Given the slightest reason to believe that Moloch was coming, he could bolt for cover and be out of sight as quick as a rabbit.
Weirdly, he suspected that Mr. Truman, too, expected Moloch. The voltage-flow-testing story was crap. Something must be up.
He hoped that Mr. Truman wouldn?t page him by intercom, as he had earlier paged him in the library. Not even under duress would Fric press the RESPOND button, because he was afraid that like *69, it might connect him with that place from which something had tried to squirm through the handset cord and into his ear.
Finishing the table preparation sooner than expected, he checked his wristwatch. Mr. Truman would not arrive with the food for perhaps ten minutes.
The rain-soaked, fog-swaddled grounds beyond the windows were revealed by many landscape lights, but the theme was enchantment and romance, which meant that shadows ruled. If Moloch had scaled the estate wall without being detected by the security system, he might be out there, shrouded in the murk, watching.
Fric considered hurrying to the kitchen under the pretense of lending a hand with dinner, but he didn?t want to appear to be needy, nerdy, geeky.
If he actually might run away and join the Marine Corps someday, instead of hiding out in Goose Crotch, Montana, he ought to start thinking like a Marine and behaving like one, sooner rather than later. A Marine wouldn?t be spooked by the darkness beyond a window. A Marine would sneer at that darkness and boldly piss on it. He?d open the window first, of course, so as not to mess up the glass.
[490] Fric wasn?t up to that level of Marine confidence just yet. Instead, he sat at the table, wishing the minutes would speed past.
He withdrew the photograph from a back pocket, unfolded it, and stared at the pretty lady with the special smile, distracting himself from the watching night. His make-believe mom.
As yet he had not done as Mysterious Caller had suggested, had not asked anyone if they knew who this woman might be.
For one thing, he hadn?t been able to concoct a convincing story to explain either the origin of her photo or why he was so interested in knowing her identity. He was a lousy liar.
Besides, the longer he didn?t ask anyone about her, the longer she would be his, and his alone. As soon as he found out who she was, she could no longer be his make-believe mom.
Something rapped against a window.
Fric sprang from the chair, dropping the photo.
The face at the window was hooded and hideous, but the hood was rain gear, and the face belonged to one of the security guards, Mr. Roma. Because he had a long upper lip and a small nose, Mr. Roma could pull his lip over his nose, and it would stay that way, so his face looked deformed and his teeth appeared to be huge. Held at his chin and aimed upward, the beam of a flashlight enhanced this effect.
?Ooga-ooga,? said Mr. Roma, because without the use of his upper lip, he couldn?t pronounce the b in booga.
When Fric went to the window, Mr. Roma allowed his face to pop back into shape. The guard said, ?How you doin?, Fric??
?I?m fine now,? Fric replied, raising his voice to be heard through the glass. ?For a second there, I thought you were Ming.?
?Ming?s in Florida with your dad.?
?He came back early,? Fric said. ?He?s out there walking in the rain somewhere.?
Mr. Roma?s smile froze.
?He wanted me to walk with him,? Fric said, ?so he could teach me all about how rain washes the planet?s spirit or something.?
[491] The frozen smile cracked, crumbled. Mr. Roma lowered the light from his face and turned his back to Fric, sweeping the night with the beam.
?You?ll probably run into him,? Fric said.
Realizing that the flashlight pinpointed his position, Mr. Roma switched it off. ?See you, Fric,? he said, and dashed away into the foggy gloom.
Although Fric was a lousy liar and had not sounded convincing even to himself, Mr. Roma didn?t dare call his bluff if there was a one in a thousand chance that Ming, in a talkative mood and in full guru mode, might be in the vicinity.
CHAPTER 76
IN THE CAR, OUT OF THE RAIN, SHIVERING IN the warm blast from the heater, still sought by the dead Hector X, Hazard listened to the ring, ring, ring until he wanted to roll down the window and throw the cell phone into the street.
The ringing stopped just as he noticed activity at the Laputa residence. A man came out of the house, paused to lock the front door, and descended the porch steps.
Even in the rain and steadily clotting fog, Hazard recognized the guy who had earlier entered the house by way of the garage. All but certainly, this was Vladimir Laputa.
At the junction of private walkway and public sidewalk, Laputa turned right and retraced the route by which he had arrived. He still swaggered, but he didn?t seem to be either talking to himself or singing.
He had changed into an entirely black outfit that appeared to be weatherproof, as if he would soon be driving north to Mammoth or to some other ski resort in the Sierras.
Like a premonition of snow, white masses of fog drifted around him, nearly obscuring him, before he turned right at the corner and moved out of sight.
[493] Having already released the hand brake and put the car in gear, Hazard switched on the headlights and drove to the corner, where traffic splashed past on the cross street. He looked to the right and saw Laputa walking northward. When the professor was almost out of sight, Hazard turned the corner and followed him.
Whenever he drew within half a block of Laputa, he pulled to the curb and waited, letting his quarry proceed toward the limits of fog-diminished visibility. Then he drove after him again.
In these fits and starts, Hazard tracked the professor two and a half blocks. There, never having glanced back, Laputa got into a black Land Rover.
Remaining too far behind to read the license plate, letting other traffic intervene from time to time to mask his continuous presence, Hazard shadowed the Land Rover along a direct route to the Beverly Center, at Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega. Although somewhat oddly dressed for a trip to the mall, Laputa apparently intended to go shopping.
Conducting on-the-roll surveillance in a parking garage was a lot trickier than doing the same thing on public streets. Hazard followed the Land Rover up ramp after ramp, floor by floor, past ranks of parked vehicles, until Laputa found an empty space.
Near the end of that aisle, a slot waited for Hazard?s sedan. He parked, switched off the engine, got out, and watched his man over the roofs of the parked cars.
He expected the professor to follow the signs to the nearest mall entrance. Instead, Laputa returned on foot to the ramp up which he had just driven.
Although other shoppers were walking through the garage, and although numerous vehicles roamed in search of parking spaces and exit routes, Hazard hung back from his quarry as far as he dared. He worried that the professor would spot him, and would know him at once for what he was.
Laputa descended one long ramp, then another. Two floors below [494] the level on which he?d left the Land Rover, he walked up to a parked Acura coupe, which chirruped as he unlocked the doors with a remote.
Frozen by surprise, Hazard halted as the professor got into the driver?s seat.
The guy had not come here to go shopping. He was picking up new wheels.
The Land Rover or the Acura almost certainly was a Kleenex car, meant to be used in the commission of a crime, and then tossed away. Maybe both vehicles were Kleenex.
Hazard considered making an arrest on the basis of suspicious behavior.
No. He couldn?t risk it. Not with a respectable university professor. Not with Blonde in the Pond about to break wide open and a powerful city councilman about to become his mortal enemy. He was already the subject of an OIS investigation for shooting Hector X. In these circumstances, every mistake he made would be woven into the rope with which they would hang him.
He had no legitimate reason to be following Laputa. The murder of Mina Reynerd wasn?t his case. All day he had been using his city-paid time and his police authority to help a friend in a personal matter. He had put his pecker in a vise and had tightened the handle himself; now he couldn?t make a sudden move against the professor without big-time grief.
In the Acura, unaware that he was under surveillance, Laputa pulled shut the driver?s door. He started the engine. He seemed to be fiddling with the radio.
Hazard sprinted back the way that he?d come, up two ramps, to the department sedan.
By the time he drove pell-mell down to the garage exit, hoping to fall in behind the Acura, Laputa had gone.