well try to perform brain surgery by intuition.

suicide bombers
suicide bombers. a desk.?? Ethan admitted. this garden room was small by the standards of the city morgue. The designer and the salespeople acted as if this were the usual drill.Two puffs.????That??s what I heard. but shoppers would turn away without further investigation and would seek out another lavatory. which readily condensed as a resin on the oils that formed latent prints. failed to present a clear reflection. So does my old man. Seven days a week. how to find a new source for cocaine. Toiling. Carpet roses. Fric said. Too clever to get caught holding.. referring to Blonde in the Pond. Stairs. Like I said. Ethan chafed to get into the apartment. virtually any of the twenty-five staff members might be a scheming homicidal nutjob cunningly concealed behind a smiley mask. There. he unlocked the door. however.

What I think is he works with stiffs.??The three-year-old Honda is registered to Rolf Herman Reynerd in West Hollywood.One of Corky??s colleagues at the university had accepted a grant to study the crystals for the Department of Defense. he nevertheless passed along these streets with complete anonymity. in wet gloom except for the lamps at the Manheim gate. During the events at Reynerd??s apartment house.[14] Rain had been falling heavily. nestled in the apple flesh. I crapped in my diaper.Never in his life had Ethan Truman experienced a dream of such clarity. but he always thought more with his little head than his big one.He opened the door.He prided himself on taking advantage of every opportunity to serve chaos. This air was cool.The IRS man had not recently dragged the gunman through a cruel audit or anything like that.In the witches?? cauldron of the sky.????You??re going to need a place to hide where no one can find you. Here.Whatever else he might be.Emergency-yellow.??Unlike his father??s golden locks. not infants. Besides.Nearing the fifth floor. ??Now you don??t sound cop honest. the eyes would not be his.

beloved. and woo again. pink. anger pinched his throat as tight as if he??d squeezed his sixteen-inch neck into a fifteen-inch collar. but only briefly. to report that he??d be out most of the day. the public had difficulty accepting him as any character type other than the one that had made him famous. he would have been surrounded by an entourage big enough to help him lift the stupid thing.White carpet as pristine as winter snow lay wall to wall. McBee??s apartment. but although meth ensured frenetically fast thinking. and he went directly to the door of 2B. Softer flesh would have crumbled even if the needle had been used with care and if each stitch had been gently cinched. No one on the staff. he seemed to have been typecast even in failure. as well as a fine piece of cutlery acquired at a kitchen shop catering to the crowd that tuned in regularly to the Food Network??and he watched the sinks fill rapidly with water. American troops fighting their way down from the hills. Ethan went inside.????Hey. dead or alive. He subsequently cooperated with authorities in the poisoner??s hometown to bring whatever criminal charges might be sustained in court.??They have real food or just interior decoration on a plate??? Hazard asked. His wheezing grew higher pitched.Besides. In the private world of Fric. not like an [115] old French dwarf.

I was born too late. Ethan could have driven a car through the hall without grazing a single antique.When Ethan got off at the seventh floor. he heard a crash in a far room of the apartment. but it won??t be good enough when the time comes.Beyond the hard-washed glass.Given time and distance from the event. onto a square of acid-free white paper. couldn??t think.[122] When security guards later reviewed the tapes. zooming in for an intimate appraisal. Rospo was Italian for ??toad. In a couple hours. In the central rotunda.Although he didn??t carry a badge. the flap and rustle of pigeons taking flight.?? said the stranger. bend him and fold him. The smell of illness. Fric on the mend. since the Ghost Dad??s most recent call.Jose Ramirez said. He sat in the Ford Expedition awhile. Then agony.????This was just lunch.?? Fric whispered.

????Whatever he means by it. He pushed that hand through his damp hair. Jose said.Twining through the branches.Corky??s death list contained more than one name. Fric became an object of envy and ridicule even among the children of other celebrities. The cream-colored stucco wasn??t pocked or cracked. some as destructive as runaway freight trains hurtling off the tracks.Fric had never known anyone quite like him.Now and then. and many small but welcome miseries.Ethan didn??t understand how he could have his own blood under his fingernails when he had not. where the sodden gray twilight slowly expired beyond the glass.Ethan??s palms were damp.??I know him to say hello in the hall. he was serenaded by an orchestrated version of an old Sheryl Crow tune with all the sex squeezed out of it and with a perkiness squeezed in.????One problem. six days a week. the trace of aftershave. talking about the film that he was shooting and about how much he looked forward to going home for the holidays.One of the shelves. either. He didn??t like Les any better.??It??s a cookie jar. chances were good that it would have been a cruiser belonging to the Bel Air Patrol. fell on the car.

?? he once said. where he had rooms on the third floor.The weather kept most people snug indoors. Not Fric. Maybe the next full moon would stir tides of madness in their heads. A significant number were rare. and you don??t realize what he??s doing. with no need of waiting-room comfort and dog-eared old magazines.This five-story Westwood condominium.Even as Ethan??s hand moved. no music for a melancholy Monday.Aside from Mr. ??Would you rather go Armenian?????Do I have a tongue? Armenian at one o??clock?????I??ll be the guy looks like an ex-cop trying to pass for smart. ??My bodyguards are former Delta Force commandos. scarab click. and to avoid meeting Hazard??s eyes.????I never claimed he was the king of comedy. amber. Rolf Reynerd lived in a spacious apartment in a handsome building. soap. in a moment of toxic psychosis.?? Reynerd assured him. But other boys did.[67] The blue crystals withered crops through a twelve-month growing cycle.The bathroom door stood ajar. the Tracys and Hepburns.

as though all its citizens had long ago gone horizontal in these silent grassy acres surrounding Ethan. he wanted to feel like a kid. He couldn??t see them. if indeed he??d left the hospital garden room under his own power. a maid collected the trash and provided fresh towels.He might have gagged on the faint metallic taste if his inflamed and swollen airways could have executed a gag. he could have driven into the closet. The ultimate extent of the water damage now lay in the hands of fate. He realized that he was retreating with suspicious haste. the waitress thanked him and glanced at Hazard. The glass in the driver??s door briefly clouded with ripples of dirty water.Later. The sleeves were so voluminous that he could withdraw his arms from them. he was too young a man to welcome death. committing hideous acts of bloody violence. he sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the handset from the telephone.?? He thinks somehow Manheim has done him wrong. Rolf thought he??d gotten a wrong number. Five bodyguards travel with him. even if it??s just one. Only once before in the past year had he presumed upon their friendship in this way.His occasional cruelties were never conscious.??On the wall opposite the door. before stepping out to meet the dreary day. thereabouts. and it was the nun chewin?? him out that gave it to him.

?? she said. The sheets appeared to be acrawl with transparent spiders. The back of the eye proved to be flat.He was a natural-born multitasker.[14] Rain had been falling heavily. a good chance it was someone romantically involved with her. which forwarded weekly batches of this correspondence to the publicity firm that responded to it in the star??s name. Ethan observed the mourning weather while meditating on the meaning of the apple in the context of the five bizarre items that had preceded it. the sole heir to her estate had been her only child. Ethan??s vague reflection in the misted glass had been dark because his clothes were dark.[67] The blue crystals withered crops through a twelve-month growing cycle. and ingenious taunts either to torment their victims beforehand or.????When would this have been??? he asked. At the landing. He fit the physical profile on Reynerd??s license.Welcome disorder and lovely decadence had deeply infected the world in recent years.The boy??s mother??Fredericka ??Freddie?? Nielander??a supermodel who had married and divorced the Face all in one year. the low gray ceiling appeared to press lower.Meanwhile. Most likely he was a pathetic pervert loser who got lucky with a phone number and would sooner or later start with the dirty talk. again at the funeral. the young couple rode farther up to higher misery. When it took her. and somehow an insult to her memory that [92] she should be an object of affection??and once an object of desire??to a man steeped in a life of crime and violence. he broke the guy??s arm. he entered the foyer.

hammered him into the wall.Some would take the stuff.?? Fric said hopefully. he fished tasty biscuits from an inner pocket. two Art Deco armchairs.To calm himself. Ethan stepped to the side of the cab.At 3:32 A. a shooting stance: Doing all that.One.Fric??s engine raced. He was disturbed now.Now. going off to find a notepad. concerned that he might wash his hands without surcease.[45] He was troubled by the disturbing notion that as long as even a few molecules of that stigmatic residue of his foretold death clung to his hands. which they had managed long before Ghost Dad had owned it.The only color in the room was provided by Reynerd??s blue eyes and by the bright designs that enlivened the two bags of potato chips that flanked him on the sofa.He pulled the chair from the knee space. ??Ouch.If the bags contained handguns as well as chips. and nobody knew it.. he caught more investigations involving perps who were trigger-happy wackos than he caught cases in which genteel elderly women served poisoned tea to their gentlemen friends. They succeeded only in making fearsome acts of cruelty seem as tiresome as the antics of an unfunny clown. McBee.

Frames. either. one armchair.He found a spoon and an open half-gallon container of ice cream in [111] the sink. a distant rumble like the marching feet of legions gone to war in some far. Fric nevertheless stayed on the line. Corky walked a charming residential neighborhood in Studio City. Truman. robot children threatening one another with plastic snowballs. Secrets. he gave the harried attendant a card with the same information.Nemo was no longer under suspicion. Laura. marked for death only because he was a witness. As it should be. and the uncountable other mysterious agencies and forces that she had to marshal in order to produce an unforgettable evening.Peanut-butter-and-cracker sandwiches.Beyond lay a wide hall that served the back of both penthouse units. He??s either high wired or a natural-born headcase. however. the brittle music of shattering glass.In his own private space. Instead of a vinyl-tile floor as in the reception area.[102] Just in case this guy with no name happened to be the one from whom he might need to hide.More efficient than any machine.??Maybe you could check him out.

Doctor??s instruction.[29] PLEASE CALL ME. and obviously proud about having kept all his hair. Dunny had phoned to say that over those thirty-six months. His instincts remained sharp.Mr. he would return from Florida the day before Christmas.If his acting had been this dreadful when he??d appeared on those soap operas. unharmed. Let??s just call him the Beast in Yellow. ??You know. tighter. Ceaseless barrages of raindrops shattered against the blacktop with force. Like tiny exotic jellyfish.Fric??s engine raced. ??Somebody told me they saw in the news your boss got twenty-seven million bucks for his last two movies. Respect for the loved and lost was usually paid on sunny days. What??s the case?????Twenty-two-year-old blond cutie strangled. which ceaselessly panned the western end of the north perimeter. He??s the first to break through the twenty-five-million ceiling.The only color in the room was provided by Reynerd??s blue eyes and by the bright designs that enlivened the two bags of potato chips that flanked him on the sofa. and especially the hard shine in his eyes suggested that he might be on methamphetamine.Ethan??s Uncle Joe??who??d served as a surrogate dad when Ethan??s real father had been too drunk to handle the job??had been a truck driver for a regional bakery. boom of three rapid reports. his mother had been a university professor of economics.Fric had expected to hear his father??s voice.

I explode off the screen. Either word could be spelled ninety times. Hazard could spin a hundred stories convincing enough to persuade the party boy to open the door and answer questions. Likewise. ??Not since once fifteen years ago. Two dry towels still hung on the rack. in Italian. Levy. one personal and one business.A significant percentage of the politicians here operated like thugs. It was missing. ??The medical examiner??s office will want him for an autopsy. Right on schedule. Like I said. the household chef. ??It means ??steadfast. He never failed to be prepared for adventure. their deeper allegiance seemed to be to Palazzo Rospo. In the central rotunda.For decades. The animals would die far faster than the plants.Receiving no response to his knock.Targeted in an elevator. aren??t they? The freedom of flight.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. then another two flights to the garage.

and they??d been as close as brothers. McBee??s current whereabouts that would make the boy wish he??d been more discreet. then he might be a sincere friend. No one??s safe. Sowing disorder. He looked up from a paperback novel that featured a grotesque corpse on the cover. they would be watched by the cameras on the farther side of the narrow Bel Air byway.C. so he didn??t need to apply additional tape. That position came with lots of perks.Walk-in was a seriously inadequate description. he gripped the door with his left and. retaining only the skin of the melody to wrap a different and less tasty variety of sausage.[97] Sixteen of the remaining seventeen lines were rationed to family and staff.????Birds are all about being free. the eyes would not be his.[56] Logic didn??t offer immediate answers. only silence rewarded his keen attention. pretending to be looking for the nonexistent Jim Briscoe.??It??s off. McBee would within minutes dispatch one of the six maids under her command to Ethan??s [16] apartment. Anybody with that many kills isn??t the kind to taunt his victims first with freaky gifts in-black boxes.????What about two-word combinations?????The first one is wee woo. He liked all that stuff.?? I guess.[10] If the eye in the apple was a symbol of corruption.

What I had in the jar were foreskins. I??ve been wondering. and Ethan said. Or by his personal hair stylist. six or seven. or a huge wad of phlegm worthy of the Guinness book of world records.To calm himself. The florist had wrapped them in a cone of stiff cellophane that partly protected the blooms from the pelting rain. in fact. the edible goodie would not be at once [38] destroyed but would be passed along to Ethan for a closer look. Ethan called the housekeeper.Besides providing superb protection in even a hard-driving rain.M. ??Turns out they??d done it twice before. with a button loop.Corky was a revolutionary. I crapped in my diaper.??That scam ought to work as long as Keesner was somewhere between twenty and fifty years old. Oh. he unlocked the door.??I really hate to bother you??????No bother.?? he??d once said to Ethan. ??Well. eliciting from her a flush of erotic interest and a nervous laugh.They were her former friends because Mina Reynerd had died four months ago. with a Mexican-tile floor.

Means if the picture is a big hit. I remember hearing about that.. he could almost believe that the hospital did not occupy only Los Angeles real estate.????Oh. Camera 01 executed a swivel and zoom. They succeeded only in making fearsome acts of cruelty seem as tiresome as the antics of an unfunny clown.Now on the bathroom floor lay two rumpled.??It??s a memoir. The arcade was on this top level.Freddie Nielander. Camera 01 continued panning away from the Honda??then halted its programmed sweep and returned to the car. Ethan started the engine. within easy reach. stirred in the cloistered branches when he passed near enough to worry them.????Hell. robot children threatening one another with plastic snowballs. he would follow his scheme faithfully. last year he gets himself thrown out of a car at like ninety miles an hour. the mall management worried that ??Hark the Herald Angels Sing?? or even ??Jingle Bell Rock?? would deeply offend [120] those shoppers who were of non-Christian faiths. Rain hissed.While Ethan fished a credit card from his wallet.One nightstand lamp had been left on.He didn??t live here. This wasn??t good. When they rang with his personal tone.

those who were recently resurrected enjoyed chocolate caramel swirl.More efficient than any machine. Hernandez had forgotten to enter the alarm code when she??d departed last week. got off. Unobserved.In a sense.?? Hazard acknowledged. Hazard settled in an armchair. a pervert???Fric had heard about perverts. I wouldn??t need conversation. the halves had been sewn together with coarse black thread.Mr. only to tighten with tension so much in the last months before retirement that they needed to eat Metamucil by the pound to stop retaining. The deep colors of the glass??crimson. The Twilight Zone Dictionary turned its own pages in the library of his mind. switched on the light. Of all the roses that Hannah loved and grew. as though all its citizens had long ago gone horizontal in these silent grassy acres surrounding Ethan. ululated.Given time and distance from the event. these are the worst because they??re higher in oil. A dice-rattle of rain drew Ethan??s attention to the window. He never would. was loath to admit. Fric left the dirty Nazis to their evil schemes.BEYOND THE RESTAURANT WINDOW.

How many movies does the man do a year?????Never fewer than two.????How much you pay for a pair of socks these days???Ethan said. not loafers. Tom Mack.?? Ethan said.Corky had begun to think that in the case of his mother??s unique metabolism. young Fric. Hazard said. He pushed that hand through his damp hair.????In the color era.Instead.In addition. eleven weeks ago. all-seeing. Corky??s capers in the men??s room might have seemed at best to be childish larks.????This guy thinks I??m Batman.Anyway.On his second attempt. influenced by the operatically flamboyant villains in films. and to this one Toledano proceeded with a stupefied expression. throttling him. were too quiet for his taste.After finishing the coffee. had been each other??s best friends from the age of five until they were twenty. the Formica surface of the dinette table appeared to be black.The stall was unoccupied.

clogging drain grills.[107] Fear knocked on his heart. which ceaselessly panned the western end of the north perimeter. in a good neighborhood.Courses in criminal psychology. But why in a cookie jar?????You could also spell wow. or pretend to be. Ethan nonetheless retained a cop??s intuition. Hazard said.????All right.No traffic moved on the narrow winding road that served the cemetery.????It is true. Mina.??Cold air.Although he didn??t carry a badge.When a total stranger could work up sufficient hatred to attempt to poison the Face. however. displaying a paperback with dragons and wizards on the cover.????He also owns a TV-production company with three shows currently on major networks. upon the cobbled walkway.??I??m such a good detective. peering through the gate into the gray storm light. half-bear. was more important than heeding intuition. and they would explode simultaneously. he offered a traditional Vietnamese clay cooking pot full of his mother??s com tay cam.

You??ve got more to give than a shlump like me can appreciate.When no one answered the bell at Keesner??s apartment. was a large air-intake vent. Hazard would have to [139] refer the situation outside the Homicide Division for investigation. and you could either walk around it or.?? Ethan said. within easy reach. Of the forty parking stalls. Hazard had gone in under the pistol. Reynerd continued: ??They say you can??t ever eat just one potato chip. Legs pumping. click-click-click.??Hazard paused to fork up some seafood tagine.Hot air exploding out. the outcome for Hazard would have been much bleaker than what happened. however. Especially not Mr. ??Maybe he wasn??t dead.?? he said.On each envelope.[95] Like who built the first elevator.Now on the bathroom floor lay two rumpled.Hazard had not forgotten Ethan??s enigmatic but intense warning about snack-food containers. chuckled. however. his condition mysterious and his purpose unknowable.

where his private rooms were located. sounded now like the barely throttled rage of a mob. managerial-class at best. failed to present a clear reflection. In another. and they would be sweet to Fric. rattler.Perhaps if Ethan hadn??t known the meaning of the man??s first name. but they looked like they??d been dead for a while. or that a detective could occasionally become so attached to a victim that the loss felt personal. the boxes and their contents continued to appear clean. A pot with a lid. close look at whatever corner of the estate had been violated. in much the same way that he himself leaned forward to study it. Didn??t talk for twelve years. When the elevator doors opened. gave them bags of burgers.Just as Ethan decided to risk being rude and to enter without an invitation. too much experience of extreme violence had made him vulnerable.For one thing. a giggly young actress with no serious credits but with a little industry buzz??what they used to call a starlet??might answer Ghost Dad??s phone. licking his lips. the machinery more suspect. the unwanted visitor had approached the gate on foot. the more their diets sweetened to include ice cream by the quart. They needed to believe this in order to have purpose and meaning in their lives.

For about forty minutes.??The three-year-old Honda is registered to Rolf Herman Reynerd in West Hollywood.??You??ve hardly touched your salmon. the unwanted visitor had approached the gate on foot.Receiving no response to his knock. deep and weatherproof.When neither a cruiser nor a less-official vehicle appeared. eight days ago.Being an economist.Given time and distance from the event. Not Fric. an owl stared wide-eyed. A black woman with a drill sergeant??s purposeful carriage and the soft smoky voice of a chanteuse.[46] When Ethan arrived at Room 742. or architect. In their industrial division. leaving the pistol in the holster. the eyes would not be his.The train room was in the higher of two basements. dead or alive. He liked all that stuff. clouds billowing from their smokestacks. lakes.GUN READY. ??Seems like I have a visitor. no matter what we might wish to be.

During the five weeks since his most recent crisis.The door featured a rubber gasket. ??but he??s clean. supposing that he would be required to hide out longer than a few hours. you can??t. photographs of birds: Everything in the apartment was black-and-white. He pulls in a few million a year from Japan. Their work was helpful. his eyes weren??t entirely familiar to him. he encountered two uniformed maids and a porter with whom he exchanged greetings. Fric returned to the phone and terminated the call. dripping midday. Fric flung himself up from the basement. Blood could be easily washed off the shiny vinyl surface.Beyond the boundaries of the cemetery.The camera. but neither had died or been crippled. Poverty and the chaos of living under the rule of a selfish drunk had given birth in Ethan to a respect for self-discipline. in sympathy with his inner vision. he caught more investigations involving perps who were trigger-happy wackos than he caught cases in which genteel elderly women served poisoned tea to their gentlemen friends. I??m more of a lot of things than some people. Already the Mercedes had turned out of sight into the street above. From a distance.Studying the photo of the jar full of foreskins. his condition mysterious and his purpose unknowable. McBee???The boy nodded.

barely two lanes wide. and nobody knew it. He hardly noticed the rain. A significant number were rare. in a controlled environment. McBee kept his fridge and pantry stocked according to shopping lists he presented to her. alert.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.He could get air in more easily than he could get it out.The stranger had promised that he would be in touch again. Slacks. if nobody could get in here to take him. He had intended to check the mirror once more. Reynerd had been mistaken about the purpose of the caller. But you??re going to need a secret place real soon.Their sources of inspiration.Ethan realized that he was searching face to face for one face in particular. the Ethan who would have known the joy of her company for decades yet to come.?? the stranger said.????A neighbor told me. Fric didn??t [132] have the words to describe it. Birds were the subject of every photo. and their contents had been examined for fingerprints.??[60] ??Zen state?????Yeah.????It was filled with Scrabble tiles. Even fiendishly so.

??In the envelope were high-resolution computer printouts of six digital photographs taken in Ethan??s study. This creak. and the happy cook. A zoom shot would provide a clear ID to help ensure a conviction if the subject proceeded from reconnoitering to any act of criminal intent. looking down at the bags of potato chips. In black-and-white film.?? Toledano declared. ??She won??t take yes for an answer. but not clearly enough to make an identification.Besides.Are there no other planets in the solar system.For an ugly instant. Stein. He didn??t have enough wind to cry out. all-seeing.He peered with special suspicion at every cedar. which was under constant security surveillance. only leaves. leaving a glimmering smear of water.Two magazines lay in the tray. he encountered two uniformed maids and a porter with whom he exchanged greetings. McBee was an all-knowing. Like I said. and Ethan said. In two weeks. half the country went to the movies once a week.

??Sorry to have bothered you.Azalea to lantana to jasmine vine.[124] According to the Bible.?? Ethan. he had carried it to the security office in the groundskeeper??s building at the back of the estate. Glickman. One had chosen to seek respect through accomplishment.He couldn??t breathe. who came to the estate two days every month to clean and maintain the large collection of contemporary and antique electric trains. They needed to believe this in order to have purpose and meaning in their lives. Cheap analysis. his mother surely had understood. philosophers. reached for his bolstered pistol on the third. a Mercedes ML500 SUV had been in the lower garage. Means if the picture is a big hit. as if some farmer grew them out in Iowa and shipped them to Hollywood in railroad cars. a giggly young actress with no serious credits but with a little industry buzz??what they used to call a starlet??might answer Ghost Dad??s phone.????I??m wearing Rockports.?? Ethan said. The eye in the apple might be symbolic of the stalker??s eye??always watching.When steel sagged. stained. no one in the film business read books. So you haven??t gone entirely soft in your expensive leather jackets and your Gucci loafers. rain chased rain along the street.

toward the driveway gate a hundred yards away. street-lamps glowed. and empty hours to fill. he would discover the key that unlocked the mystery and allowed understanding. Now he figured he could do nothing better for Hazard than distract him from this suicidal mission to nail a city councilman for murder.When his intentions were at last known and the threats could be better understood in light of whatever actions he took. half undress him??then push him out for fun. except for whatever models were currently in use. but nothing was highlighted. a character named Toad lived in a grand house named Toad Hall. blissful vacuousness of it all.In addition to the regular lever handle at the right side. ??So you said you??ve got one foot on some snot-wad??s neck. and they??d been as close as brothers. however. crushing the cab to the dimensions of a coffin.Others were certain that Rospo had been either the maiden name of the original owner??s beloved mother or the name of a snow sled that he had ridden with great delight in childhood.The variety of apple. obscuring the tires and lending an aura of supernatural mission to the vehicles that plied the currents of Pico Boulevard. cow carcasses hanging from ceiling hooks. she wasn??t around much to torture him with it. plotting Reynerd??s demise. though in this case a banana republic without bananas and with pretensions to glamour. From one year to the next. it didn??t assist clear thinking. He might as well try to perform brain surgery by intuition.