by Dean Koontz
She had been prepared to name the boy Frodo. Fortunately, or not, one month before Freddie’s due date, her best girlfriend, an actress, had discovered the name Aelfric in the script for a cheesy fantasy film in which she had agreed to play a three-breasted Amazon alchemist.
If Freddie’s friend had landed a supporting role in The Silence of the Lambs, Aelfric would probably now be Hannibal Manheim.
The boy preferred to be called Fric, and no one but his mother insisted on using his full name. Fortunately, or not, she wasn’t around much to torture him with it.
Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. Even the career of an aging supermodel could be demanding.
“Is there magic in what?” Ethan asked.
“That book you just put away.”
“Magic of a sort, but probably not the kind of magic you mean.”
“This one has a shitload of magic in it,” Fric said, displaying a paperback with dragons and wizards on the cover.
“Is that advisable language for a wise and clever person?” Ethan asked.
“Heck, all my old man’s friends in the biz talk worse stuff than shitload. So does my old man.”
“Not when he knows you’re around.”
Fric cocked his head. “Are you calling my dad a hypocrite?”
“If I ever call your dad such a thing, I’ll cut my tongue out.”
“The evil wizard in this book would use it in a potion. One of his most difficult tasks is to find the tongue of an honest man.”
“What makes you think I’m honest?”
“Get real. You’ve got a triple shitload of honesty.”
“What’re you going to do if Mrs. McBee hears you using words like that?”
“She’s somewhere else.”
“Oh, she is?” Ethan asked, suggesting that he knew something regarding Mrs. McBee’s current whereabouts that would make the boy wish he’d been more discreet.
Unable to repress a guilty expression, Fric sat up straight and surveyed the library.
The boy was small for his age, and thin. At times, glimpsed from a distance as he walked along one of the vast halls or across a room scaled for kings and their entourages, he seemed almost wispy.
“I think she has secret passages,” Fric whispered. “You know, pathways in the walls.”
“Mrs. McBee?”
The boy nodded. “We’ve lived here six years, but she’s been here forever.”
Mrs. McBee and Mr. McBee—both in their middle fifties—had been employed by the previous owner of the property and had stayed on at the request of the Face.
“It’s hard to picture Mrs. McBee skulking about in the walls,” said Ethan. “She’s not exactly a dastardly sort.”
“But if she was dastardly,” Fric said hopefully, “things would be more interesting around here.”
Unlike his father’s golden locks, which with a shake of the head always fell perfectly into place, Fric’s brown mop achieved perpetual disarray. Here was hair that foiled brushes and broke good combs.
Fric might grow into his looks and prove equal to his pedigree, but currently he appeared to be an average ten-year-old boy.
“Why aren’t you in class?” Ethan wondered.
“You an atheist or something? Don’t you know it’s the week before Christmas? Even home-schooled Hollywood brats get a break.”
A cadre of tutors visited five days a week. The private school that Fric attended for a while had not proved to be a suitable environment for him.
With the famous Channing Manheim for a father, with the famous and notorious Freddie Nielander for a mother, Fric became an object of envy and ridicule even among the children of other celebrities. Being the skinny son of a buffed star adored for heroic roles also made him a figure of fun to crueler kids. The severity of his asthma further argued for schooling at home, in a controlled environment.
“Have any idea what you’ll get Christmas morning?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah. I had to submit my list to Mrs. McBee by December fifth. I told her not to bother wrapping the stuff, but she will. She always does. She says it’s not Christmas morning without some mystery.”
“I’d have to agree with that.”
The boy shrugged, and slumped in his chair again.
Although the Face was currently on location for a film, he would return from Florida the day before Christmas.
“It’ll be good to have your dad home for the holidays. You guys have any special plans once he gets back?”
The boy shrugged again, attempting to convey lack of knowledge or indifference, but instead—and unwittingly—revealing a misery that made Ethan feel uncharacteristically helpless.
Fric had inherited luminous green eyes to match his mother’s. In the singular depths of those eyes, enough could be read about the boy’s loneliness to fill a library shelf or two.
“Well,” Ethan said, “maybe Christmas morning this year you’ll have a couple surprises.”
Sitting forward in his chair, eager for the sense of mystery that he had so recently dismissed as unimportant, Fric said, “What—you heard something?”
“If I heard something, which I’m not saying I did or didn’t, I couldn’t tell you what I heard, assuming I heard anything at all, and still keep the surprise a surprise, by which I don’t mean to imply that there is a surprise or that there isn’t one.”
The boy stared in silence for a moment. “Now you don’t sound cop honest, you sound like the head of a studio.”
“You know what heads of studios sound like, huh?”
“They come around here sometimes,” the boy said in a tone of worldly wisdom. “I recognize their rap.”
Ethan parked across the street from the apartment house in West Hollywood, switched off the windshield wipers, but left the engine running to power the heater. He sat in the Ford Expedition awhile, watching the place, deciding upon the best approach to Rolf Reynerd.
The Expedition was one of a collection of vehicles available for both job-related and personal use by the eight live-in members of the twenty-five-person estate staff. Among other wheels, a Mercedes ML500 SUV had been in the lower garage, but that might have drawn too much attention during a stakeout if the day required surveillance work.
The three-story apartment house appeared to be in good but not excellent repair. The cream-colored stucco wasn’t pocked or cracked, but the place looked to be at least a year overdue for painting. One of the address numbers above the front door hung askew.
Camellia bushes laden with heavy red blooms, a variety of ferns, and phoenix palms with enormous crowns provided the lushness of high-end landscaping; but everything had needed a trim months ago. The shaggy grass suggested that it was mown not weekly but twice a month.
The landlord shaved his costs, but the building nevertheless looked like a nice place to live.
No one rented here on a welfare check. Reynerd must have a job, but the fact that he’d been delivering death threats at three-thirty in the morning suggested that he didn’t have to get up early to go to work. He might be home now.
When Ethan tracked down his suspect’s place of employment and began to make inquiries about him with fellow workers and neighbors, Reynerd almost certainly would be alerted by someone. Thereafter, he would grow too wary to be approached directly.
Ethan preferred to start with the man himself and work outward from that initial contact.
He closed his eyes, tipped his head back against the headrest, and brooded about how to proceed.
The engine roar of an approaching car grew so loud that Ethan opened his eyes, half expecting to hear a sudden siren and to see a police chase in progress. Traveling far too fast for a residential street, a cherry-red Ferrari Testarossa exploded past, as though the driver were in fact hoping to run down a darting child or an old lady slowed by orthopedic shoes and a cane.
A tire-thrown plume spewed up from the puddled street, drenching the Expedition. The glass in th
e driver’s door briefly clouded with ripples of dirty water.
Across the street, the apartment house appeared to shimmer as if it were a place in a dream. Some aspect of that transient distortion seemed to trigger a vague memory of a long-forgotten nightmare, and the sight of the building in this warped condition caused the hairs to rise inexplicably on the back of Ethan’s neck.
Then the last gouts of the plume drained off the window. Falling rain quickly cleared the murky residue from the glass. The apartment house was nothing more than what it had been when he’d first seen it: a nice place to live.
After judging that the rain was falling only hard enough to make an umbrella more trouble than it was worth, he got out of the SUV and dashed across the street.
In southern California during the late autumn and early winter, Mother Nature suffered unpredictable mood swings. From one year to the next, and even from day to day in the same year, the week before Christmas could vary from balmy to bone-chilling. This air was cool, the rain colder than the air, and the sky as dead gray as it might have been in any truly wintry clime much farther north.
The main door of the building featured no buzz-through security lock. The neighborhood remained safe enough that apartment lobbies did not absolutely require fortification.
Dripping, he entered a small space, less a lobby than a foyer, with a Mexican-tile floor. An elevator and a set of stairs served the upper stories.
The foyer air curdled with the lingering meaty scent of Canadian bacon, cooked hours ago, and the musty smell of stale pot smoke. Weed had a singular aroma. Someone had stood here this morning, finishing a joint, before stepping out to meet the dreary day.
From the bank of mailboxes, Ethan counted four apartments on the ground floor, six on the second, and six on the third. Reynerd lived in the middle of the building, in 2B.
Only the last names of the current tenants were printed on the mailboxes. Ethan needed more information than these stick-on labels provided.
An open communal receptacle, recessed in the wall, had been provided for magazines and other publications on those occasions when the volume of other mail didn’t permit the postman to put all items in the boxes.
Two magazines lay in the tray. Both were for George Keesner in Apartment 2E.
Ethan rapped a knuckle against the aluminum doors on several of the mailboxes for the apartments in which he had no interest. The hollow sound suggested they were empty. Most likely the daily mail had not yet been delivered.
When he rapped on Keesner’s box, it sounded as though it was packed full of mail. Evidently the man had been away from home for at least a couple days.
Ethan climbed the stairs to the second floor. One long hall, three doors on each side. At 2E, he rang the bell and waited.
Reynerd’s unit, 2B, lay directly across from 2E.
When no one answered the bell at Keesner’s apartment, Ethan rang it again, twice. After a pause, he knocked loudly.
Each door had been fitted with a fisheye lens to allow the resident to examine a caller before deciding whether or not to admit him. Perhaps from across the hall, Reynerd was watching the back of Ethan’s head right now.
Receiving no response to his knock, Ethan turned away from Keesner’s door and made a show of frustration. He wiped his rain-wet face with one hand. He pushed that hand through his damp hair. He shook his head. He looked up and down the hall.
When Ethan rang the bell at 2B, the apple man answered almost at once, without the protection of a security chain.
Although an unmistakable match for the image captured by the security camera, he proved to be more handsome than he’d been in the rain the previous night. He resembled Ben Affleck, the actor.
In addition to the Affleck aspect, however, he had a welcome-to-the-Bates-Motel edge to him that any fan of Anthony Perkins would have recognized. The tightness at the corners of his mouth, the rapid pulse visible in his right temple, and especially the hard shine in his eyes suggested that he might be on methamphetamine, not fully amped but clipping along at high altitude.
“Sir,” Ethan said even as the door was still opening, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m sort of desperate to get in touch with George Keesner over there in 2E. Do you know George?”
Reynerd shook his head. He had a bull’s neck. Lots of time spent on weight machines at the gym.
“I know him to say hello in the hall,” Reynerd said, “and how’s the weather. That’s all.”
If that was true, Ethan felt secure enough to say, “I’m his brother. Name’s Ricky Keesner.”
That scam ought to work as long as Keesner was somewhere between twenty and fifty years old.
“Our Uncle Harry’s on his deathbed in the ICU,” Ethan lied. “Not going to hold on much longer. Since yesterday morning, I been calling George at every number I’ve got for him. He doesn’t get back to me. Doesn’t answer the door now.”
“I think he’s away,” said Reynerd.
“Away? He didn’t say anything about it to me. You know where he might’ve gone?”
Reynerd shook his head. “He was going out with a little suitcase the night before last, as I was coming in.”
“He tell you when he’d be back?”
“We just said how it looked like rain coming, and then he went out,” Reynerd replied.
“Man, he’s so close to Uncle Harry—we both are—he’s going to be upset he didn’t get a chance to say good-bye. Maybe I could leave him a note, so he sees it first thing he gets back.”
Reynerd just stared at Ethan. An artery began throbbing in his neck. His speed-cycled brain was racing, but although meth ensured frenetically fast thinking, it didn’t assist clear thinking.
“The thing is,” Ethan said, “I don’t have any paper. Or a pen, for that matter.”
“Oh. Sure, I got those,” said Reynerd.
“I really hate to bother you—”
“No bother,” Reynerd assured him, turning away from the open door, going off to find a notepad, a pen.
Left at the threshold, Ethan chafed to get into the apartment. He wanted a better look at Reynerd’s nest than he could obtain from the doorway.
Just as Ethan decided to risk being rude and to enter without an invitation, Reynerd halted, turned, and said, “Come on in. Sit down.”
Now that the invitation had been extended, Ethan could afford to inject a little authenticity into this charade by demurring. “Thanks, but I just came in from the rain—”
“Can’t hurt this furniture,” Reynerd assured him.
Leaving the door open behind himself, Ethan went inside.
The living room and dining area comprised one large space. The kitchen was open to this front room, but separated from it by a bar with two stools.
Reynerd proceeded into the kitchen, to a counter under a wall phone, while Ethan perched on the edge of an armchair in the living room.
The apartment was sparsely furnished. One sofa, one armchair, a coffee table, and a television set. The dining area contained a small table and two chairs.
On the television, the MGM lion roared. The sound was low, the roar soft.
On the walls were several framed photographs: large sixteen-by-twenty-inch, black-and-white art prints. Birds were the subject of every photo.
Reynerd returned with a notepad and a pencil. “This do?”
“Perfect,” Ethan said, accepting the items.
Reynerd had a dispenser of Scotch tape, as well. “To fix the note on George’s door.” He put the tape on the coffee table.
“Thanks,” Ethan said. “I like the photographs.”
“Birds are all about being free,” Reynerd said.
“I guess they are, aren’t they? The freedom of flight. You take the photos?”
“No. I just collect.”
In one of the prints, a flock of pigeons erupted in a swirl of feathered frenzy from a cobblestone plaza in front of a backdrop of old European buildings. In another, geese flew in formation across a somber
sky.
Indicating the black-and-white movie on the TV, Reynerd said, “I was just getting some snacks for the show. You mind…?”
“Huh? Oh, sure, I’m sorry, forget about me. I’ll jot this down and be gone.”
In one of the pictures, the birds had flown directly at the photographer. The shot presented a close-up montage of overlapping wings, crying beaks, and beady black eyes.
“Potato chips are gonna kill me one day,” Reynerd said as he returned to the kitchen.
“With me it’s ice cream. More of it in my arteries than blood.”
Ethan printed DEAR GEORGE in block letters, then paused as if in thought, and looked around the room.
From the kitchen, Reynerd continued: “They say you can’t ever eat just one potato chip, but I can’t ever eat just one bag.”
Two crows perched on an iron fence. A strop of sunlight laid a sharp edge on their beaks.
White carpet as pristine as winter snow lay wall to wall. The furniture had been upholstered in a black fabric. From a distance, the Formica surface of the dinette table appeared to be black.
Everything in the apartment was black-and-white.
Ethan printed UNCLE HARRY IS DYING and then paused again, as if a simple message taxed his powers of composition.
The movie music, though soft, had a melodramatic flair. A crime picture from the thirties or forties.
Reynerd continued to rummage in kitchen cabinets.
Here, two doves appeared to clash in midflight. There, an owl stared wide-eyed, as if shocked by what it saw.
Outside, wind had returned to the day. A dice-rattle of rain drew Ethan’s attention to the window.
From the kitchen came the distinctive rustle of a foil potato-chip bag.
PLEASE CALL ME, Ethan printed.
Returning to the living room, Reynerd said, “If you’ve got to eat chips, these are the worst because they’re higher in oil.”
Ethan looked up and saw a bag of Hawaiian-style chips. Reynerd had inserted his right hand into the open bag.
The way that the bag gloved the apple man’s hand struck Ethan as wrong. The guy might have been reaching in for some chips, of course; but an oddness of attitude, a tenseness in him, suggested otherwise.