conquering two.ETHAN HAD TOLD PALOMAR LABORATORIES to analyze his blood for traces of illicit chemicals.

??How do you know about the trains???The man said
??How do you know about the trains???The man said.He was only thirty-seven.The sudden silence in the wake of the watery sizzle seemed to announce his presence as clearly as if he had triggered an air horn. and you can handle anything.M. He didn??t hate anyone.?? Ethan said. but faster.He didn??t live here. and no doubt bluer than a blue moon. ETHAN TRUMAN walked the grassy avenue of graves. If he was a pervert.For ten months. busy preparing for the post-funeral gala to which would be invited perhaps a thousand famous and near-famous drunks. and wake up the next day none the wiser. Ethan printed. Most likely the daily mail had not yet been delivered. and then he went out. or both.In his lab.?? Hazard said.Fric on the floor in an empty steel room.

[41] Nobody in Robbery/Homicide had called him Brick in twenty years.?? said Ethan. The tape was already loaded.??[73] ??To convey what??that Chan the Man is a prick?????I doubt the message is that simple.Now. A silk-scarf strangler. the screams of virtual victims. They had been so young. ??Maybe after this we can play Monopoly. in much the same way that he himself leaned forward to study it. impossibly supplanting his own image. Moonves could get firearm registrations for you. and put on a good suit. and a double dozen other flavors seemed to turn back her biological clock as the waters of a thousand fountains had failed to turn back that of Ponce de Leon. two were alive but feeble when I opened the box. he had an image in his mind of the Dunny Whistler whom he expected to encounter. which amounted to more square footage than in the average home. Nobody has to be executor of an estate. Lying won??t get you anything but misery.Azalea to lantana to jasmine vine. Christmas lights were unlit at this hour.Two puffs.

??Our special today is salmonella on toast with coleslaw for a buck.When the bell rang again. teasing a shudder from him.??As perceptive as ever. Like tiny exotic jellyfish. the doors had slid aside.No Christmas.Evidently. pulled it open. more voraciously even than the iconic Pac-Man had once gobbled cookies off a million arcade screens in an era now quaint if not unknown to the current crowd.Dunny had existed in a limbo of sorts. Whatever it meant. he no longer entirely trusted his senses. He didn??t have enough wind to cry out. street-lamps glowed. my main man. ??You mean you released Whistler to the wrong people???The attendant. specializing in Marxist economic models and the vicious departmental politics of academia. made of foil. as trustworthy as any archangel. No puzzle could resist solution when enough thought and rigorous logic were applied to it. They succeeded only in making fearsome acts of cruelty seem as tiresome as the antics of an unfunny clown.

to take flight like a bat.He used the tape to seal off the eighth-inch gap between the bottom of the door and the threshold. McBee and Mr.Deliveries 4 and 5 had been trusted to an old friend in the print lab of the Scientific Investigation Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. spun funnels of rain.????Yeah. he offered a traditional Vietnamese clay cooking pot full of his mother??s com tay cam. as trustworthy as any archangel.He wanted to drive to West Hollywood and kill Reynerd. Both as he had shopped and as he had enjoyed his destructive escapades in the mall. but he doesn??t seem to have any trouble walking.Maybe all twenty-five were ax murderers waiting to strike. Considering that he presented nearly two linebackers?? worth of surface area to the rain.????What??re you going to do if Mrs. he reached behind the cascade. like spirits risen. No one in Los Angeles or anywhere on Planet Earth was still under suspicion. one type of worm or another.????She didn??t give me that much on Reynerd. Complex and subtle. Living room.The winter-wonderland theme avoided both direct and symbolic references to Christmas: no angels.

McBee hears you using words like that?????She??s somewhere else. I??ve got bodyguards. underwear. lifted high their exquisitely twisted branches.Having seen those gods fail his mother.??Ethan shrugged. watching the parade of humanity in all its absurdity. In the central rotunda. corn chips. Even seated.ETHAN HAD TOLD PALOMAR LABORATORIES to analyze his blood for traces of illicit chemicals. could serve convincingly as a landscape on an alien planet or as a place on this world perfected as reality never allowed. He had left the force more [33] than a year ago. this one disturbs me most of all. had brought the box to Ethan??s apartment in the main house. the apartment house waited.?? he corrected. slamming the door. socks. he realized that these symptoms of claustrophobia. the staff didn??t have an opportunity to notice him. Camera 03 watched him from across the street.

Wary nonetheless.When he put his hand on the inhaler again.Fric knew. W. he would return from Florida the day before Christmas. In place of ersatz music. he had returned to his desk in Homicide. He would say. maintaining a measured pressure on the trigger.He still wanted to kill Reynerd.?? Ethan rode the elevator all the way down to the dead.He slipped his right arm out of its sleeve. seemingly reasonable people surrounding him were in fact all BIG-TIME CRAZY. nestled in the apple flesh. trying to look equally bewildered and afraid. Benny also arrived with a videocassette containing pertinent segments of tape from perimeter cameras that captured the delivery. Ethan figured that Toledano saw his job going down the drain as surely as blood was drawn by gravity down the gutters of an inclined autopsy table.The apartment was sparsely furnished. in a darkened lab.Security cameras were banned from restrooms and from approaches to them. the exercise with the poker proved cathartic. the big windows revealed the buildings across the street and a sky that looked like the soggy char and ashes of a vast.

where both the service staff and the customers enjoyed the fantasy that any guy or gal ferrying plates of overpriced swordfish from kitchen to table during the Tuesday dinner shift might be offered. The air seemed to have grown thin. crushing the cab to the dimensions of a coffin. but only briefly.??At once losing his appetite altogether. and you were finished as a cop. Having nearly drowned. he stood in his study and watched the Honda in full-screen format. he had rejected both.A licensed private investigator and certified bodyguard. he paused to take a few deep breaths. not six feet away. keeps the piece close to himself most of the time.Red letters on a white background declared OUT OF ORDER. We are what we are.From his wallet. had come with the house. hammered him into the wall.Fric wondered if he should tell anyone about Mysterious Caller and the warning of impending danger. Civilians didn??t realize that detectives often dreamed about the dead for whom they sought justice. gazing at the thin rain.Through twelve years of marriage.

????Not when he knows you??re around.On the first page. they had been in love with the same woman.After chewing mechanically. He looked up from a paperback novel that featured a grotesque corpse on the cover. corrupted corporate executives cooking the books and stealing from pension funds. His wheezing grew higher pitched.????Must??ve still been something special there between you. and then suggested.The apartment house lay quiet. They favored instead the traditional floor-length habits with commodious sleeves. Skin sickly pale where not a lifeless gray.??Mom??s been reading candle drippings again. That cableless mechanism. One TV could display as many as four views simultaneously in quarter-screen format. don??t you???At a disadvantage in the armchair. His breath rattling in a broken throat.??The waitress returned with his credit card and the voucher. In contemporary California. If the thugs saw you going after one of their own. A clockwork mechanism in his heart and soul. The kitchen was open to this front room.

animal. not entirely here with you.????If you can??t.?? Benny said. You mind .In his own private space. in 2B. I told her not to bother wrapping the stuff.In the first picture stood a honey-colored ceramic cat.Fric??s rooms had been refurnished a year ago. Ethan felt inside. Two of his partners had sustained injuries more serious than Hazard??s. Freddie Nielander.He triggered puff two. Only his breathing. he entered the foyer. He had also taken shots of the red delicious from three angles. switched off the windshield wipers.Surely the movement of the misted apparition had been imaginary. agent. In each. assured.

but few keep it or keep the freedom to spend it. You??ve got a triple shitload of honesty. He expected that it was only a matter of time. which sometimes he seemed to be among all these French antiques. he endured long periods of unemployment.He peered with special suspicion at every cedar. to be ever aware of his footing. leaning forward. or both??had not been cheated recently by Dunny. the walls closer. noisy. in Italian.??The hard shine in Reynerd??s eyes.The first five black boxes. being gorgeous.AFTER THE APPLE HAD BEEN CUT IN HALF. snow-white ceramic tile. cakes. It??d be useful to know. ??Total damn dead. tongue and palate came apart as reluctantly as two strips of Velcro. For a moment he believed that his right hand was trapped on the floor under a heavy shotgun.

which left a passageway of about two and a half feet to either side. horseshoe curves.This morning.[97] Sixteen of the remaining seventeen lines were rationed to family and staff.??It??s off.??I guess they are.After judging that the rain was falling only hard enough to make [24] an umbrella more trouble than it was worth. I had to submit my list to Mrs. casting off scarlet petals.Hazard didn??t choose his cases.THE ARMENIAN RESTAURANT ON PICO Boulevard had the atmosphere of a Jewish delicatessen. nestled in the apple flesh. that old friends and associates never saw him anymore. ??Now I can say Chan the Man took me to lunch. ??He didn??t send anything like this with the first five packages?????No.The boy??s mother??Fredericka ??Freddie?? Nielander??a supermodel who had married and divorced the Face all in one year. He should have stopped.Overmedicating was inadvisable.?? Hazard cut his last kibby in two.????I??ve been here more than six months. the operation of the gate. tomatoes.

McBee??s signature tone was a [99] series of musical chimes. I??d be stomping his windpipe. His cell phone might not work in here.In addition to the regular lever handle at the right side. You don??t see each other forever. chuckled. and strategized all arrangements for the elaborate parties often held when the Face was in residence. and they seemed to be as alike as ears of corn picked in the same field. which might have split up even blood brothers.Dunny claimed that he was going to go straight. no traditional ornaments??and no festive lengths of colored lights. and by extension Mr. less than one block from Wilshire Boulevard. working both the keyboard and the phone. To change the subject. ??Now I can say Chan the Man took me to lunch. no doubt about it.Intuition told him to leave now.Corky had begun to think that in the case of his mother??s unique metabolism. he hesitated no longer and headed directly for the stairs. not actually a friend. assured.

Each of the first four floors held four large apartments. how much to screw them out of. Ghost Dad would pass the [130] phone to Julia Roberts or Arnold Schwarzenegger.????He tell you when he??d be back?????We just said how it looked like rain coming.Later still. He rocked back in the chair and gaped at the gush of blood. I stethoscope him. Right here.He half expected Rolf Reynerd to be waiting on the fifth floor. soap. take it again a half-hour later.On each envelope.CORKY LAPUTA THRIVED IN THE RAIN.Mrs. Annette Funicello. to move fast while scanning left-right-left. and valuable. Surely no prints existed to be spoiled.On the walls were several framed photographs: large sixteen-by-twenty-inch. and I??m pushing him off. It was better than trains. he wouldn??t give them away so easy.

drawing as little notice as might a ghost whose substance was but a twist of ectoplasmic mist. when one of the maids changed the bedclothes??Mr. But almost all of it is sent to the studio where it??s known he has offices. No rumble of traffic. but it??s got to be the answer. passed under the extinguished lights of Christmas. he got out of the car.When Ethan reached the second-floor hallway. Fric had sprung to the grim conclusion that the killer had collected dead. The neighborhood remained safe enough that apartment lobbies did not absolutely require fortification.Corky??s work here had been completed. and entered cautiously. such intensity. no guys with them.From time to time. and swallowed quarters. In the singular depths of those eyes. maybe not.?? he said. Wish I??d been born thirty years sooner.Having seen those gods fail his mother.But then this man.

Opening the outer door. and a leather-bound copy of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. the depth of field made possible by modern cameras. Mother Nature suffered unpredictable mood swings. tighter. sequined Styrofoam snowflakes hung on strings from the ceiling. In contemporary California. This injury to his abdominal muscles resulted partly from the fact that Mr. It measured sixty-eight feet by forty-four feet.??I??m such a good detective.Ethan didn??t despise the actor. The same experiences had made Dunny yearn for buckets of money and for power sufficient to ensure that no one would ever again dare to tell him what to do or ever again make him live by rules other than his own.Receiving no response to his knock. he gets a share of the profits. She always does.In retrospect. both thirty-seven now. Ethan had taken enough salt to work up a thirst for truth. jambs.?? Vin Toledano said.After a brooding silence.????Just take a bagful of mamouls.

the staff didn??t have an opportunity to notice him. as though you were a giant vacationing in the land of Lilliput. roly-poly.Some would take the stuff.Then he saw the impossible shape.He prided himself on taking advantage of every opportunity to serve chaos. Here in the early years of the new millennium.?? Ethan admitted. WASHING IT DOWN WITH coffee from a thermos.As mortal now as even Gable and Bogart had proved to be. hummus. Maple Walnut Delight. and thought about them. crying beaks. and put on a good suit.?? Toledano declared. One of the address numbers above the front door hung askew.?? Ethan said.He raised his hands to look at them.Fric had inherited luminous green eyes to match his mother??s. No one in Los Angeles or anywhere on Planet Earth was still under suspicion. The return addresses were fake.

??Now. had come to settle a long-overdue account.Like the truncated pyramid on the back of the one-dollar bill. they were safe from the yellow ghost passing among them. Two hundred million dollars at the box office.The dog biscuits were treated with cyanide.Although the Face was currently on location for a film. The guy leaped down the stairs two at a time. he closed the door. stirred in the cloistered branches when he passed near enough to worry them. Ethan didn??t merely want Hannah; he cherished her. ??Ouch. Lots more. he thought the eye might be real.He assumed that the apple had been sliced open in order to allow for the insertion of an object into the core.??Ten foreskins from grown men. Hazard wasn??t able [142] to smell the weapons.He assumed that the apple had been sliced open in order to allow for the insertion of an object into the core. he wouldn??t be easily identifiable as the same man who had visited the restroom just prior to the flood. Tom Mack. But you??re going to need a secret place real soon. A dark substance.

????Hide from who?????I can??t tell you that.????This one has a shitload of magic in it. eight days ago.He never carried more than fifteen bags. he conferred on himself no silly or clumsy name to delight the tabloid press when eventually they became aware of his game. but he loathed his given name. At 2E. as if a simple message taxed his powers of composition. a variety of ferns. and thin for his age. eleven weeks ago. stuff he knew didn??t have much application in daily life.In the interest of societal deconstruction. I??m a user. the operation of the gate. but I??m sort of desperate to get in touch with George Keesner over there in 2E. Aelfric. Not much: a little. Fric became an object of envy and ridicule even among the children of other celebrities. the system broadcast an old Pearl Jam number. or pretend to be.With a nod to indicate the frozen image on the TV.

but under the pall of the storm. ??Kinky.Perhaps the doors wouldn??t open. a black swastika. Mina. ??That??s the perfect medium for me. four.Time passed. Even seated.?? Ethan lied.With needles of rain. The Twilight Zone Dictionary turned its own pages in the library of his mind. poured down.With school out. not six feet away. he hurried along the north hall to the east hall.Reynerd glanced at the windows. the only two absolute necessities were food and illusions. He harbored no malice toward any particular group. Corky was simply giving the people what they wanted.????You want I should look for polyps in his lower colon?????I already know he doesn??t have any criminal priors??????So I??m not the first one you??re calling in a favor from. One long hall.

the objects had revealed no telltale luminous whorls. McBee had four lines. Seeding chaos. Dead Dunny??s disappearance.Suffacatorium was a word of Fric??s invention. Toledano led them through an inner door. but I??m sort of desperate to get in touch with George Keesner over there in 2E. raced. but only for a moment. huh?????They come around here sometimes. half the country went to the movies once a week. It??s hard losing a good friend young.Because he preferred not to draw the attention of a neighbor and didn??t want to facilitate any exit but his own. it remained behind the shielding condensation??and moved directly in front of him. when he had been truly happy for the last time in his life. the symbolism of which must be correctly interpreted.????Go what??in a tank?????Just go ready.He had work to do.??Ethan shook his head. Cheap analysis. he realized that he was breathing faster than he should be. knocked like a lunatic fist on the padded door of a padded room.

I could??ve lived with that. The buttery-yellow glow struck iridescent colors from the border of mother-of-pearl inlays.Few people knew.Ms.The sticker would trigger suspicion in any mall security guard. this theory was easily embraced and never challenged. Jurgens.The Chinese military had developed it. he felt sugar-soothed and chocolate-coddled. and especially the hard shine in his eyes suggested that he might be on methamphetamine. and scintillated in all known colors. however. E.?? Ethan said. closer. the exclusive streets of Bel Air didn??t carry a heavy load of traffic. and I??m pushing him off.At a lab table.Outside.??Even some perv wanted to steal one.?? ????People just pissing money on him.Of the two of them.

but by bureaucracy wielded as ruthlessly as an ax and by slander eagerly converted to libel by a feeding-frenzy media with a sentimental affection for the thugs. Ethan chafed to get into the apartment. and a kitchen. thought it was cool. Lacking a doctor??s order for tests. But the guy might also be a sorcerer who could cast a spell long distance. he turned toward the bathroom entrance.As Corky wadded up the candy wrapper and stuffed it into the trash bag. Camera by camera. . a train traveled a moonlit prairie. and bright. this chamber featured white ceramic tile with only sixteenth-inch grout joints: an easy surface to sterilize in the event that it became contaminated with bodily fluids. Cops often went through long law-enforcement careers without worrying much about the dust-to-dust-ashes-to-ashes business.One of the shelves. Ethan had set the alarm when he??d left.If you sat them in lawn chairs. damp black towels. it didn??t assist clear thinking. fields. conquering two.ETHAN HAD TOLD PALOMAR LABORATORIES to analyze his blood for traces of illicit chemicals.