neighborhoods in fog bound Laguna, he parked on a dark side street and
exchanged the Chevy’s plates for those on an Oldsmobile. With luck, the
owner of the Olds wouldn’t notice the new plates for a couple of days,
maybe even a day or longer; until he reported the switch, the Chevy
wouldn’t match anything on a police hot sheet and he would, therefore be
relatively safe to drive. In any case, Frank intended to get rid of the
car by tomorrow night and either boost a new one or use some of the cash
in the flight bag to buy legal wheels. Though he was exhausted, he
didn’t think it wise to check into a motel. Four-thirty in the morning
was a damned hour for anyone to be wanting a room. Furthermore, he was
unshaven, and his thick hair was matted and oily, and his jeans and
checkered blue flannel shirt were dirty and filthy from his recent
adventures. The last thing he wanted to do was call attention to
himself, so he decided to catch a couple hours of sleep in the car.
He drove farther south, into Laguna Niguel, where he parked on a quiet
residential street, under the immense bow of a date palm. He stretched
out on the back seat, as foully as possible without benefit of
sufficient legroom or pillow and closed his eyes.
For the moment he was not afraid of his unknown pursuers because he felt
that the man was no longer nearby. Temporarily, at least, he had given
his enemy the shake, and had no desire to lie awake in fear of a hostile
face suddenly appearing at the window. He was also able to put out of
his mind all questions about his identity and the money in the flight
bag; he was so tired-and his thought processes were so fuzzy-that any
attempt to puzzle out solutions to those mysteries would be fruitless.
He was kept awake, however, by the memory of how strange the events in
Anaheim had been, a few hours ago. The foreboding gusts of wind. The
eerie flowerlike music. Imploding windows, exploding tires, failed
brakes, failed steering…
Who had come into that apartment behind the blue light?
Was “who” the right word… or would it be more accurate to ask what
had been searching for him?
During his urgent flight from Anaheim to Laguna, he’d not had the
leisure to reflect upon those bizarre incidents, but now he could not
turn his mind from them. He sensed that he had survived an encounter
with something unnatural. Worse, he sensed that he knew what it was-and
that his amnesia was self-induced by a deep desire to forget.
After a while, even the memory of those preternatural events wasn’t
enough to keep him awake. The last thing that crossed his waking mind,
as he slipped off on a tide of sleep, was that four-word phrase that had
come to him when he had first awakened in the deserted alleyway:
Fireflies in a windstorm….
BY THE time they had cooperated with the police at the scene, made
arrangements for their disabled vehicle and talked with the three
corporate officers who showed at Decodyne, Bobby and Julie did not get
home until shortly before dawn. They were dropped at their door by a
police cruiser, and Bobby was glad to see the place.
They lived on the east side of Orange, in a three-bedroom
sort-of-ersatz-Spanish tract house, which they had bought new two years
ago, largely for its investment potential. Even though the relative
youth of the neighborhood was apparent the landscaping: and None of the
shrubbery had reached full size the trees were still too immature to
loom higher than the gutters on the houses.
Bobby unlocked the door. Julie went in, and he followed The sound of
their footsteps on the parquet floor of the foyer echoing hollowly off
the bare walls of the adjacent and utter empty living room, was proof
that they were not committed to the house for the long term. To save
money toward the fulfillment of The Dream, they had left the living
room, dining room, and two bedrooms unfurnished. They installed carpet
and cheaper draperies. Not a penny had been spent on other