by Dean Koontz
The headline was too bold, too black, too incredible to miss: FBI ENTERS MANHEIM KIDNAPPING.
A chill shuttled and wove in Fric.
A sudden brine moistened his palms, as if he had dipped his hands into a supernatural sea, and his fingers stuck to the paper.
He checked the date of the issue. December 24. The day after tomorrow.
On the front page, under the frightening headline, were two photographs: a publicity shot of Ghost Dad, and the front gate of the estate.
Reluctant to read the report for fear that reading it would make it come true, Fric glanced at the bottom of the column and saw that the story continued on Chapter 1. He turned to Chapter 1 in search of the picture most important to him.
And there he was.
Under his photo were these words: Aelfric Manheim, 10, missing since Tuesday night.
As he stared in shock at the photo, his black-and-white image morphed into that of the mirror man, Mysterious Caller, his guardian angel: the cold face, the pale gray eyes.
Fric tried to throw the Times down, but was unable to let go of it, not because his hands were moist with fear but because the newspaper seemed to have acquired a static charge, and clung to him.
In the picture, Mysterious Caller became animated, as if this were not a newspaper photo but a miniature TV screen, and he spoke warningly from the Los Angeles Times: “Moloch is coming.”
Then with no recollection of having taken a step, Fric found that he had crossed the rose room to the door.
He gasped for breath, though not because of his asthma. His heart boomed louder than the thunder that earlier had knocked through the sky.
The Times lay on the floor by the overturned hamper.
As Fric watched, the newspaper exploded off the Persian carpet as if caught in a wild wind, although not so much as a faint draft could be felt. The several sections of the Times unfolded, blossomed; in seconds, they rumpled and swirled and noisily assembled themselves into a tall human figure, as if an invisible man had been standing there all the time and as if the blown newsprint had adhered to his heretofore unseen form.
This did not have the aura of a guardian angel, though surely it was. This felt…menacing.
The paper man turned from Fric and flung himself at the bay windows. When the crackling newsprint hit the glass, it ceased to be paper anymore, became a shadow, a flowing darkness, that swarmed through the beveled panes in the very way that it had pulsed through the ornaments on the Christmas tree the previous night.
The phantom faded, vanished, as though it had traveled by glass into the rain, and then had ridden on the rain to some place far away and unthinkable.
Fric was alone once more. Or seemed to be.
CHAPTER 65
DR. JONATHAN SPETZ-MOGG LIVED IN A PRICEY Westwood neighborhood, in a fine Nantucket-style house with cedar-shingle siding so silvered by time that not even the rain could darken it, which suggested that the silvering might be an applied patina.
Spetz-Mogg’s British accent was eccentric enough to be captivating, inconsistent enough to have been acquired during a long visit to those shores rather than by birth and upbringing.
The professor welcomed Ethan and Hazard into his home, but less graciously than obsequiously. He answered their questions not in a spirit of thoughtful cooperation, but in a nervous, wordy gush.
He wore a roomy FUBU shirt and baggy low-rider pants with snap pockets on the legs, looking as ridiculous as any white man trying to dress like a homey from the hood, twice as ridiculous because he was forty-eight. Every time he crossed his legs, which he did frequently, the baggy pants rustled loudly enough to interrupt conversation.
Perhaps he affected sunglasses indoors more often than not. He wore them on this occasion.
Spetz-Mogg removed the shades and put them on again nearly as often as he recrossed his legs, though these two nervous tells were not synchronized. He seemed unable to decide whether he had a better chance of surviving interrogation by presenting an open and guileless image or by hiding behind tinted lenses.
Although the professor clearly believed that every cop was a brutal fascist, he’d never be one to climb a barricade to shout the accusation. He wasn’t incensed that two agents of the repressive police state were in his home; he was simply, quietly terrified.
In answer to every question, he vomited up a mess of information with the hope that garrulous responses would wash Ethan and Hazard out of his door before they produced brass knuckles and truncheons.
This was not the professor for whom they were searching. Spetz-Mogg might encourage others to commit crimes in the name of one ideal or another, but he was too gutless to do so himself.
Besides, he didn’t have time for crime. He had written ten works of nonfiction and eight novels. In addition to teaching his classes, he organized conferences, workshops, and seminars. He wrote plays.
In Ethan’s experience, industrious people, regardless of the quality of what their labor produced, rarely committed violent crimes. Only in movies did successful businessmen routinely indulge in murder and mayhem in addition to corporate responsibilities.
Criminals were likely to be failures in the workplace or just lazy. Or their material possessions had come through inheritance or by other easy means. Idleness gave them time to scheme.
Dr. Spetz-Mogg had no memory of Rolf Reynerd. On average, three hundred struggling actors attended one of his weekend conferences. Not many of them left a lasting impression.
When Ethan and Hazard rose to leave without suggesting that they torture the professor with electric wires to his genitals, Spetz-Mogg accompanied them to the door with visible relief. When he closed the door behind them, he no doubt bolted for the bathroom, his pretense of British equanimity belied by shuddering bowels.
In the Expedition, Hazard said, “I should have punched the son of a bitch on general principles.”
“You’re getting cranky in midcareer,” Ethan said.
“What was that accent?”
“Adam Sandler playing James Bond.”
“Yeah. With a twist of Schwarzenegger.”
From Spetz-Mogg’s house in Westwood, they wasted far too much time tracking down Dr. Gerald Fitzmartin, who had organized the screenwriting conference attended by Reynerd.
According to the university at which he taught, Fitzmartin was home for the holidays, not traveling. When Hazard called, all he got was an answering machine.
Fitzmartin lived in Pacific Palisades. They traveled surface streets, which seemed less well suited for SUVs than for gondolas.
No one answered the bell at the Fitzmartin place. Maybe he was Christmas shopping. Maybe he was too busy to come to the door because he was wrapping a hate gift in a black box for Channing Manheim.
The neighbor told a different story: Fitzmartin had been rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday morning. He wasn’t sure why.
When Hazard called Cedars-Sinai, he found that patient privacy was more important to the hospital than were police relations.
Under a sky as bruised as the battered body of a boxer, Ethan drove back toward the city. The wind fought with trees, and sometimes trees lost, dropping branches into the streets, hampering traffic.
The traffic matched the turbulence of the heavens. At one intersection, car had punched car, and both had gone down for the count. Five blocks farther, a truck had broadsided a paneled van.
He drove with caution that grew into an inhibiting wariness. He couldn’t help thinking that if he had been run down and killed in traffic once, he might die again on another street. This time, maybe he would not get up again from death.
En route, Hazard worked the phone, tracking down the name of the professor, at yet another institution, who had organized the one-day seminar on publicity and self-promotion.
Taking neither hand off the wheel, Ethan glanced at his watch. The day was draining away faster than rain into storm culverts.
He had to be back at Palazzo Rospo before 5:
00. Fric could not be left alone in the great house, especially not on this strange day.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was on Beverly Boulevard in a part of Los Angeles that wanted to be Beverly Hills. They arrived at 2:18.
They located Dr. Gerald Fitzmartin in the ICU, but they weren’t permitted to see him. In the waiting room, the professor’s son was pleased to have a distraction, though he couldn’t imagine why police officers would want to talk to his father.
Professor Fitzmartin was sixty-eight years old. After a life of honest living, older men rarely turned to crime in their retirement. It interfered with gardening and with passing kidney stones.
Besides, just this morning, Fitzmartin had undergone quadruple heart-bypass surgery. If he was Rolf Reynerd’s conspirator, he would not be killing movie stars in the immediate future.
Ethan checked his watch. 2:34. Tick, tick, tick.
CHAPTER 66
MICK SACHATONE, THE ANARCHIST MULTIMILLIONAIRE, didn’t live in a glitzy neighborhood of multimillionaires because he never wanted to have to explain the origins of his wealth to the tax authorities. When you make it in cash, you live without flash.
He laundered enough income to justify a spacious four-bedroom, two-story house of no architectural distinction in a clean and pleasant upper-middle-class neighborhood in Sherman Oaks.
Only a handful of Mick’s most trusted customers of long standing knew his address. Mostly he transacted business on public beaches and in public parks, coffee shops, and churches.
Without stopping at the garage in Santa Monica to change from his Robin Goodfellow costume into his regular-guy clothes and yellow slicker, Corky went directly from Jack Trotter’s funky digs in Malibu to Sherman Oaks. Thanks to Queeg von Hindenburg, collector of broken porcelains, Corky’s schedule was screwed up. He had much yet to do on this most important but fast-vanishing day of his life.
He parked in the driveway and ran a few quick steps through the rain to the cover of the front porch.
Mick’s voice came from an intercom speaker beside the bell push, “Be right there,” and Mick Sachatone himself came to the door with unusual alacrity. Sometimes, you had to wait here on the porch two or three minutes, or longer, between when Mick spoke to you via the intercom and when he greeted you in person, so routinely preoccupied was he with work or with other interests.
As usual when at home, Mick was barefoot and dressed in pajamas. Today the jammies were red, decorated with images of the cartoon character Bart Simpson. Mick bought some peejays off the rack but had others custom tailored.
Even before Mick had achieved puberty, he had been enchanted by the story of Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy. Hef had discovered a way to grow up, be a success, and yet remain a big child, indulging any whim or desire to whatever degree he wished, making of his life one long party, living more days than not in pajamas.
Mick, who worked mostly at home, owned more than 150 pairs of peejays. He slept in the nude but sported pajamas during the day.
He considered himself an acolyte of Hef. A mini-Hef. Mick was forty-two going on thirteen.
“Hey, Cork, super-hip threads,” Mick declared when he opened the door and saw Corky dressed as Robin Goodfellow.
This might have sounded like mockery to a stranger; but Mick’s friends knew that he had long ago stopped picking up new slang in an effort to be more in the Hef groove.
“Sorry I’m late,” Corky said, stepping inside.
“No sweat, my man. I’d run this pad clockless if I could.”
The living room contained as little furniture as necessary. The plush sofa, plump armchairs, footstools, coffee table, end tables, and lamps had been bought as a set at a warehouse outlet. The quality was good; but everything had been chosen for comfort, not for looks.
Mick had no pretensions. In spite of his wealth, he remained a man of simple if sometimes obsessive needs.
The primary decor statement in Casa Sachatone had nothing to do with furniture or art. Except for a suite of work rooms that Mick had added to the original structure, all but two walls in the house were lined with shelves on which were stored a collection of thousands of pornographic videotapes and DVDs. Shelves had even been added to the stairwell and hallway walls.
Mick preferred videotapes to DVDs because the cassettes came in boxes with wide, colorful spines that blazed with obscene titles and sometimes with hard-core photographs. The effect was of one continuous erotic mosaic that flowed from end to end and top to bottom of the residence, achieving almost psychedelic impact.
Only the work wing, this living room, and the master bedroom contained any furniture. Other chambers, including the dining room, were not merely lined with videocassettes but were filled with aisles of shelves, as in a library.
Mick ate all his meals either at his computer or in bed: lots of microwave dinners, as well as home-delivery pizza and Chinese.
Of the two walls not fitted with floor-to-ceiling shelves, one was here in the living room. This space had been reserved for four big top-of-the-line plasma-screen TVs and associated equipment. The other such wall was in the bedroom.
A pair of plasma screens hung side by side, and a second pair hung side by side above the first. A DVD player and a videocassette machine served each screen; that equipment, plus eight speakers and associated amplifiers were racked in low cabinets under the screens.
Mick could run four movies simultaneously and switch, as whim struck him, from one soundtrack to the other. Or he could—and often did—play all four soundtracks simultaneously.
Usually when you stepped into the Sachatone living room, you were greeted by a rude symphony of sighs, grunts, groans, squeals, squeaks, hisses, and cries of pleasure, by whispered and growled obscenities, and by a rhythmic rush of heavy breathing in one degree of urgency or another. With eyes closed, you could almost believe that you were in a riotously inhabited jungle, albeit a jungle in which all the tropical species were simultaneously copulating.
This afternoon, sound accompanied none of the four porn films. Mick had muted all of them.
“Janelle was so special,” Mick said tenderly, nodding toward the video wall, referring to his lost girlfriend. “One cool swingin’ chick.”
Although his Bart Simpson pajamas might seem frivolous, Mick dwelt in a somber memorial mood. All four screens featured classics from Janelle’s extensive filmog-raphy.
Pointing to the upper-right-hand screen in the four-screen stack, Mick said, “That thing she’s doing right there, no one—no one—ever did that in film before or since.”
“I doubt anyone else could,” Corky said, because the eye-popping trick in which Janelle was vigorously engaged involved her legendary flexibility, for which perhaps she alone among all humanity carried the necessary gene.
Referring to his gal’s costars in the upper-right-hand video, Mick said, “Those four guys love her. See that? Every one of those guys just loves her. Men loved Janelle. She was truly groovy.”
Mick’s voice swelled with wistful longing. In spite of all his Hefnerian hipness, he had a sentimental streak.
“I just got back from Trotter’s in Malibu,” Corky revealed.
“You kill the son of a bitch yet?”
“Not yet. You know I need him for a while.”
“Oh, look at that.”
“She’s really something.”
“You’d think that would hurt.”
“Maybe it did,” Corky said.
“Janelle said no, it was fun.”
“She do a lot of stretching exercises?”
“Her work was stretching exercises. You will kill him?”
“Promised you, didn’t I?”
“I expected to grow old with her,” Mick said.
“Really?”
“Well, older, anyway.”
“I shot up his current collection of porcelains.”
“Expensive?”
“Lladro.”
“Will you torture him before you kill him?”
&n
bsp; “Sure.”
“You’re a good friend, Cork. You’re a pal.”
“Well, we go back a long way.”
“More than twenty years,” Mick said.
“The world was a worse place then,” Corky said, meaning from an anarchist’s point of view.
“A lot has fallen apart in our time,” Mick agreed. “But not as fast as we dreamed it would when we were crazy kids.”
They smiled at each other.
Had they been different men, they might have hugged.
Instead, Mick said, “I’m ready to execute the Manheim package,” and led Corky to the back of the house, into his work rooms.
Instead of video porn, the walls here were lined with computers, a compact printing press, lamination machines, a laser holography imprinter, and other high-tech equipment necessary for the production of the finest quality forged documents.
At his central work station, Mick had already positioned two chairs before the computer screen. He settled in the one directly in front of the keyboard.
Corky took off his leather jacket, hung it on the back of the second chair, and sat down.
Eyeing the holstered Glock, Mick said, “Is that the rod you’ll use to waste Trotter?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I have it after?”
“The gun?”
“I’ll be discreet,” Mick promised. “I’ll never use it. And I’ll drill out the barrel so it can’t be matched to any of the rounds you kill him with. I don’t want it for a gun, see, it’ll just be like a sacred object to me. Part of my private memorial wall to Janelle, on the shelves where I keep all her films.”
“All right,” Corky said. “It’s yours when I’ve done him.”
“You’re a champ, Cork.” Indicating the computer and the data on it, the keeper of Janelle’s flame said, “This was a nut-buster job.”
As a hacker of exceptional achievement, Mick customarily implied or boldly stated that for him, self-named Ultimate Master of Digital Data and Ruler of the Virtual Universe, all came as easily as bees to a flower; therefore, this admission that the Manheim job had taxed his talents must mean that it had been a formidable task, indeed.