“Joe Carpenter.”
“Who’re you waiting for?”
“I don’t know her name.”
“What do you call her?”
“Demi.”
“Walk a block and a half south. Turn right at the corner and keep going until you come to a bookstore. It’s still open. Go in, find the biography section.”
The caller hung up.
After all, there wasn’t going to be a pleasant get-acquainted chat over coffee.
According to the business hours posted on the glass door, the bookstore closed on Sundays at six o’clock. It was a quarter past six. Through the big display windows, Joe saw that the fluorescent panels toward the front of the store were dark; only a few at the back were lighted, but when he tried the door, it was unlocked.
Inside, a single clerk waited at the cashiers’ counter. He was black, in his late thirties, as small and wiry as a jockey, with a moustache and goatee. Behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes were as large as those of a persistent interrogator in a dream of inquisition.
“Biographies?” Joe asked.
Coming out from behind the counter, the clerk pointed to the right rear corner of the store, where light glowed beyond ranks of shadowed shelves.
As he headed deeper into the maze of books, Joe heard the front door being locked behind him.
In the biography aisle, another black man was waiting. He was a huge slab of ebony—and appeared capable of being an irresistible force or an immovable object, whichever was required. His face was as placid as that of Buddha, but his eyes were like Kansas windows with views of tornadoes.
He said, “Assume the position.”
At once Joe knew he was dealing with a cop or former cop.
Obediently, he faced a wall of books, spread his legs wide, leaned forward with both hands against the shelves, and stared at the spines of the volumes in front of him. One in particular caught his attention: a massive biography of Henry James, the writer.
Henry James.
For some reason even that name seemed significant. Everything seemed significant, but nothing was. Least of all, the name of a long-dead writer.
The cop frisked him quickly and professionally, searching for a weapon or a transmitter. When he found neither, he said, “Show me some ID.”
Joe turned away from the shelves and fished his driver’s license from his wallet.
The cop compared the photo on the license with Joe’s face, read his vital statistics and compared them to the reality, then returned the card. “See the cashier.”
“What?”
“The guy when you came in.”
The wiry man with the goatee was waiting by the front door. He unlocked it as Joe approached. “You still have the phone?”
Joe offered it to him.
“No, hold on to it,” the cashier said. “There’s a black Mustang parked at the curb. Drive it down to Wilshire and turn west. You’ll be contacted.”
As the cashier opened the door and held it, Joe stared at the car and said, “Whose is it?”
From behind the bottle-thick lenses, the magnified eyes studied him as though he were a bacterium at the lower end of a microscope. “What’s it matter whose?”
“Doesn’t, I guess.”
Joe went outside and got into the Mustang. The keys were in the ignition.
At Wilshire Boulevard, he turned west. The car was almost as old as the Suburu that he had gotten from Gem Fittich. The engine sounded better, however, the interior was cleaner, and instead of pine-scented disinfectant masking the stink of stale cigarette smoke, the air held a faint tang of menthol after-shave.
Shortly after he drove through the underpass at the San Diego Freeway, the cellular phone rang. “Yeah?”
The man who had sent him to the bookstore now said, “You’re going all the way to the ocean in Santa Monica. When you get there, I’ll ring you with more directions.”
“All right.”
“Don’t stop anywhere along the way. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll know if you do.”
They were somewhere in the traffic around him, in front or behind—or both. He didn’t bother to look for them.
The caller said, “Don’t try to use your phone to call anyone. We’ll know that too.”