by Dean Koontz
“It’s a fine piece of work,” Roy said. “But it still doesn’t give us a good enough look at him to make an identification.”
“On the contrary, it tells us a lot about him,” Melissa said. “He’s between twenty-eight and thirty-two.”
“How do you figure?”
“Computer projection based on an analysis of lines radiating from the corner of his eye, percentage of gray in his hair, and the apparent degree of firmness of facial muscles and throat skin.”
“That’s projecting quite a lot from such few—”
“Not at all,” she interrupted. “The system makes analytic projections operating from a ten-megabyte database of biological information, and I’d pretty much bet the house on what it says.”
He was thrilled by the way her supple lips formed the words “ten-megabyte database of biological information.” Her mouth was better than her eyes. Perfect. He cleared his throat. “Well—”
“Brown hair, brown eyes.”
Roy frowned. “The hair, okay. But you can’t see his eyes here.”
Rising from her chair, Melissa took the photograph out of his hand and put it on the desk. With a pencil, she pointed to the beginning curve of the man’s eyeball as viewed from the side. “He’s not looking at the camera, so if you or I examined the photo under a microscope, we still wouldn’t be able to see enough of the iris to determine color. But even from an oblique perspective like this, the computer can detect a few pixels of color.”
“So he has brown eyes.”
“Dark brown.” She put down the pencil and stood with her left hand fisted on her hip, as delicate as a flower and as resolute as an army general. “Absolutely dark brown.”
Roy liked her unshakable self-confidence, the brisk certitude with which she spoke. And that mouth.
“Based on the computer’s analysis of his physical relationship to measurable objects in the photograph, he’s five feet eleven inches tall.” She clipped her words, so the facts came out of her with the staccato energy of bullets from a submachine gun. “He weighs one hundred and sixty-five, give or take five pounds. He’s Caucasian, clean-shaven, in good physical shape, recently had a haircut.”
“Anything else?”
From the file folder, Melissa removed another photograph. “This is him. From the front, straight on. His full face.”
Roy looked up from the new photo, surprised. “I didn’t know we got a shot like this.”
“We didn’t,” she said, studying the portrait with evident pride. “This isn’t an actual photograph. It’s a projection of what the guy ought to look like, based on what the computer can determine of his bone structure and fat-deposit patterns from the partial profile.”
“It can do that?”
“It’s a recent innovation in the program.”
“Reliable?”
“Considering the view the computer had to work with in this case,” she assured Roy, “there’s a ninety-four-percent probability that this face will precisely match the real face in any ninety of one hundred reference details.”
“I guess that’s better than a police artist’s sketch,” he said.
“Much better.” After a beat, she said, “Is something wrong?”
Roy realized that she had shifted her gaze from the computer portrait to him—and that he was staring at her mouth.
“Uh,” he said, looking down at the full portrait of the mystery man, “I was wondering…what’s this line across his right cheek?”
“A scar.”
“Really? You’re sure? From the ear to the point of the chin?”
“A major scar,” she said, opening a desk drawer. “Cicatricial welt—mostly smooth tissue, crimped here and there along the edges.”
Roy referred to the original profile shot and saw that a portion of the scar was there, although he had not correctly identified it. “I thought it was just a line of light between shadows, light from the streetlamp, falling across his cheek.”
“No.”
“It couldn’t be that?”
“No. A scar,” Melissa said firmly, and she took a Kleenex from a box in the open drawer.
“This is great. Makes for an easier ID. This guy seems to’ve had special-forces training, either military or paramilitary, and with a scar like this—it’s a good bet he was wounded while on duty. Badly wounded. Maybe badly enough that he was discharged or retired on psychological if not physical disability.”
“Police and military organizations keep records forever.”
“Exactly. We’ll have him in seventy-two hours. Hell, forty-eight.” Roy looked up from the portrait. “Thanks, Melissa.”
She was wiping her mouth with the Kleenex. She didn’t have to be concerned about smearing her lipstick, because she wasn’t wearing any. She didn’t need lipstick. It couldn’t improve her.
Roy was fascinated by the way in which her full and pliant lips compressed so tenderly under the soft Kleenex.
He realized that he was staring and that again she was aware of it. His gaze drifted up to her eyes.
Melissa blushed faintly, looked away from him, and threw the crumpled Kleenex in the waste can.
“May I keep this copy?” he asked, indicating the full-face computer-generated portrait.
Withdrawing a manila envelope from beneath the file folder on the desk, handing it to him, she said, “I’ve put five prints in here, plus two diskettes that contain the portrait.”
“Thanks, Melissa.”
“Sure.”
The warm pink blush was still on her cheeks.
Roy felt that he had penetrated her cool, businesslike veneer for the first time since he’d known her, and that he was in touch, however tenuously, with the inner Melissa, with the exquisitely sensuous self that she usually strove to conceal. He wondered if he should ask her for a date.
Turning his head, he looked through the glass walls at the workers in the computer lab, certain that they must be aware of the erotic tension in their boss’s office. All three seemed to be absorbed in their work.
When Roy turned to Melissa Wicklun again, prepared to ask her to dinner, she was surreptitiously wiping at one corner of her mouth with a fingertip. She tried to cover by spreading her hand across her mouth and faking a cough.
With dismay, Roy realized that the woman had misinterpreted his salacious stare. Apparently she thought that his attention had been drawn to her mouth by a smear or crumb of food left over, perhaps, from a mid-morning doughnut.
She had been oblivious of his lust. If she was a lesbian, she must have assumed that Roy knew as much and would have no interest in her. If she wasn’t a lesbian, perhaps she simply couldn’t imagine being attracted—or being an object of desire—to a man with round cheeks, a soft chin, and ten extra pounds on his waist. He had met with that prejudice before: looksism. Many women, brainwashed by a consumer culture that sold the wrong values, were interested only in men like those who appeared in advertisements for Marlboro or Calvin Klein. They could not understand that a man with the merry face of a favorite uncle might be kinder, wiser, more compassionate, and a better lover than a hunk who spent too much time at the gym. How sad to think that Melissa might be that shallow. How very sad.
“Can I help you with anything else?” she asked.
“No, this is fine. This is a lot. We’ll nail him with this.”
She nodded.
“I have to get down to the print lab, see if they got anything off that flashlight or bathroom window.”
“Yes, of course,” she said awkwardly.
He indulged in one last look at her perfect mouth, sighed, and said, “See you later.”
After he had stepped out of her office, closed the door behind him, and crossed two-thirds of the long computer lab, he looked back, half hoping that she would be staring wistfully after him. Instead, she was sitting at her desk again, holding a compact in one hand, examining her mouth in that small mirror.
China Dream was a West Hollywood restaurant in a quai
nt three-story brick building, in an area of trendy shops. Spencer parked a block away, left Rocky in the truck again, and walked back.
The air was pleasantly warm. The breeze was refreshing. It was one of those days when the struggles of life seemed worth waging.
The restaurant was not yet open for lunch. Nevertheless, the door was unlocked, and he went inside.
The China Dream indulged in none of the decor common to many Chinese restaurants: no dragons or foo dogs, no brass ideograms on the walls. It was starkly modern, pearl gray and black, with white linen on the thirty to forty tables. The only Chinese art object was a life-size, carved-wood statue of a gentle-faced, robed woman holding what appeared to be an inverted bottle or a gourd; it was standing just inside the door.
Two Asian men in their twenties were arranging flatware and wineglasses. A third man, Asian but a decade older than his coworkers, was rapidly folding white cloth napkins into fanciful, peaked shapes. His hands were as dexterous as those of a magician. All three men wore black shoes, black slacks, white shirts, and black ties.
Smiling, the oldest approached Spencer. “Sorry, sir. We don’t open for lunch until eleven-thirty.”
He had a mellow voice and only a faint accent.
“I’m here to see Louis Lee, if I may,” Spencer said.
“Do you have an appointment, sir?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Can you please tell me what you wish to discuss with him?”
“A tenant who lives in one of his rental properties.”
The man nodded. “May I assume this would be Ms. Valerie Keene?”
The soft voice, smile, and unfailing politeness combined to project an image of humility, which was like a veil that made it more difficult to see, until now, that the napkin folder was also quite intelligent and observant.
“Yes,” Spencer said. “My name’s Spencer Grant. I’m a…I’m a friend of Valerie’s. I’m worried about her.”
From a pocket of his trousers, the man withdrew an object about the size—but less than the thickness—of a deck of cards. It was hinged at one end; unfolded, it proved to be the smallest cellular telephone that Spencer had ever seen.
Aware of Spencer’s interest, the man said, “Made in Korea.”
“Very James Bond.”
“Mr. Lee has just begun to import them.”
“I thought he was a restaurateur.”
“Yes, sir. But he is many things.” The napkin folder pushed a single button, waited while the seven-digit programmed number was transmitted, and then surprised Spencer again by speaking in neither English nor Chinese, but in French, to the person on the other end.
Collapsing the phone and tucking it into his pocket, the napkin folder said, “Mr. Lee will see you, sir. This way, please.”
Spencer followed him among the tables, to the right rear corner of the front room, through a swinging door with a round window in the center, into clouds of appetizing aromas: garlic, onions, ginger, hot peanut oil, mushroom soup, roasting duck, almond essence.
The immense and spotlessly clean kitchen was filled with ovens, cooktops, griddles, huge woks, deep fryers, warming tables, sinks, chopping blocks. Sparkling white ceramic tile and stainless steel dominated. At least a dozen chefs and cooks and assistants, dressed in white from head to foot, were busy at a variety of culinary tasks.
The operation was as organized and precise as the mechanism in an elaborate Swiss clock with twirling ballerina dolls, marching toy soldiers, prancing wooden horses. Reliably tick-tick-ticking along.
Spencer trailed his escort through another swinging door, into a corridor, past storage rooms and staff rest rooms, to an elevator. He expected to go up. In silence, they went down one floor. When the doors opened, the escort motioned for Spencer to exit first.
The basement was not dank and dreary. They were in a mahogany-paneled lounge with handsome teak chairs upholstered in teal fabric.
The receptionist at the teak and polished-steel desk was a man: Asian, totally bald, six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a thick neck. He was typing furiously at a computer keyboard. When he turned from the keyboard and smiled, his gray suit jacket stretched tautly across a concealed handgun in a shoulder holster.
He said, “Good morning,” and Spencer replied in kind.
“Can we go in?” asked the napkin folder.
The bald man nodded. “Everything’s fine.”
As the escort led Spencer to an inner door, an electrically operated deadbolt clacked open, triggered by the receptionist.
Behind them, the bald man began to type again. His fingers raced across the keys. If he could use a gun as well as he could type, he would be a deadly adversary.
Beyond the lounge, they followed a white corridor with a gray vinyl-tile floor. It served windowless offices on both sides. Most of the doors were open, and Spencer saw men and women—many but not all of them Asian—working at desks, filing cabinets, and computers just like office workers in the real world.
The door at the end of the hall led into Louis Lee’s office, which was another surprise. Travertine floor. A beautiful Persian carpet: mostly grays, lavender, and greens. Tapestry-covered walls. Early-nineteenth-century French furniture, with elaborate marquetry and ormolu. Leather-bound books in cases with glass doors. The large room was warmly but not brightly lighted by Tiffany floor and table lamps, some with stained-glass and some with blown-glass shades, and Spencer was sure that none was a reproduction.
“Mr. Lee, this is Mr. Grant,” said the escort.
The man who came out from behind the ornate desk was five feet seven, slender, in his fifties. His thick jet-black hair had begun to turn gray at the temples. He wore black wingtips, dark blue trousers with suspenders, a white shirt, a bow tie with small red polka dots against a blue background, and horn-rimmed glasses.
“Welcome, Mr. Grant.” He had a musical accent as European as it was Chinese. His hand was small, but his grip was firm.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Spencer said, feeling as disoriented as he might have felt if he had followed Alice’s white rabbit into this windowless, Tiffany-illumined hole.
Lee’s eyes were anthracite black. They fixed Spencer with a stare that penetrated him almost as effectively as a scalpel.
The escort and erstwhile napkin folder stood to one side of the door, his hands clasped behind him. He had not grown, but he now seemed as much of a bodyguard as the huge, bald receptionist.
Louis Lee invited Spencer to one of a pair of armchairs that faced each other across a low table. A nearby Tiffany floor lamp cast blue, green, and scarlet light.
Lee took the chair opposite Spencer and sat very erect. With his spectacles, bow tie, and suspenders, and with the backdrop of books, he might have been a professor of literature in the study of his home, near the campus of Yale or another Ivy League university.
His manner was reserved but friendly. “So you are a friend of Ms. Keene’s? Perhaps you went to high school together? College?”
“No, sir. I haven’t known her that long. I met her where she works. I’m a recent…friend. But I do care about her and…well, I’m concerned that something’s happened to her.”
“What do you think might have happened to her?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure you’re aware of the SWAT-team raid on your house last night, the bungalow she was renting from you.”
Lee was silent for a moment. Then: “Yes, the authorities came to my own home last evening, after the raid, to ask about her.”
“Mr. Lee, these authorities…who were they?”
“Three men. They claimed to be with the FBI.”
“Claimed?”
“They showed me credentials, but they were lying.”
Frowning, Spencer said, “How can you be sure of that?”
“In my life, I’ve had considerable experience of deceit and treachery,” Lee said. He didn’t seem either angry or bitter. “I’ve developed a good nose for it.”
Spencer wondered if that was as much a warning as it was an explanation. Whichever the case, he knew that he was not in the presence of an ordinary businessman. “If they weren’t actually government agents—”
“Oh, I’m sure they were government agents. However, I believe the FBI credentials were simply a convenience.”
“Yes, but if they were with another bureau, why not flash their real ID?”
Lee shrugged. “Rogue agents, operating without the authority of their bureau, hoping to confiscate a cache of drug profits for their own benefit, would have reason to mislead with false ID.”
Spencer knew that such things had happened. “But I don’t…I can’t believe that Valerie is involved with drug peddling.”
“I’m sure she isn’t. If I’d thought so, I wouldn’t have rented to her. Those people are scum—corrupting children, ruining lives. Besides, although Ms. Keene paid her rent in cash, she wasn’t rolling in money. And she worked at a full-time job.”
“So if these weren’t, let’s say, rogue Drug Enforcement Administration operatives looking to line their own pockets with cocaine profits, and if they weren’t actually with the FBI—who were they?”
Louis Lee shifted slightly in his chair, still sitting erect but tilting his head in such a way that reflections of the stained glass Tiffany lamp painted both lenses of his spectacles and obscured his eyes. “Sometimes a government—or a bureau within a government—becomes frustrated when it has to play by the rules. With oceans of tax money washing around, with bookkeeping systems that would be laughable in any private enterprise, it’s easy for some government officials to fund covert organizations to achieve results that can’t be achieved through legal means.”
“Mr. Lee, do you read a lot of espionage novels?”
Louis Lee smiled thinly. “They’re not of interest to me.”
“Excuse me, sir, but this sounds a little paranoid.”
“It’s only experience speaking.”
“Then your life’s been even more interesting than I’d guess from appearances.”