no longer cool appraising, but gleaming with excitement.
“I must have specimen.”
“Well, I intended to leave it with you for examination Clint said.
“But as to whether you can have permanent possession-”
“Yes. Permanent.”
“That’s up to my boss and the client. Meanwhile we need to know what it
is, where it comes from, everything you can tell us about it.”
With exaggerated care, as if handling the finest crystal instead of
ordinary glass, Manfred put the jar on the blotter.
make a complete photographic and videotape record of specimen from every
angle and in extreme close-up. Then be necessary to dissect it, though
that’ll be done with utmost care, I assure you.”
“Whatever.”
“Mr. Karaghiosis, you seem terribly blase about this.
you fully understand what I’ve said? This would appear to be an
entirely new species, which would be extraordinary.
cause how could any such species, producing individual this size, be
overlooked for so long? This is going to be big in the world of
entomology, Mr. Karaghiosis, very big indeed. Clint looked at the bug
in the bottle.
He said, “Yeah, I figured.”
FROM THE hospital, Bobby and Julie drove a company Toyota into the
county’s western flatlands to Garden Grove, looking for 884 Serape Way,
the address on the driver’s license that Frank held in the name of
George Farris.
Julie peered through the rain-dappled side windows and forward between
the thumping windshield wipers, checking house numbers.
The street was lined with bright sodium-vapor lamps and thirty-year-old,
single-story homes. They had been built in two basic, boxy models, but
an illusion of individuality was provided by a variety of trim. This
one was stucco with brick accents. That one was stucco with
cedar-shingle panels-or Bouquet Canyon stone or desert bark or volcanic
rock.
California was not all Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Newport Beach, not
all mansions and seaside villas, which was the television image.
Economies of home design had made the California dream accessible to the
waves of immigrants that for decades had flooded in from back east, and
now from farther shores-as was evident from Vietnamese- and Korean
language bumper stickers on some cars parked along Serape.
“Next block,” Julie said.
“My side.”
Some people said such neighborhoods were a blot on the land, but to
Bobby they were the essence of democracy. He had been raised on a
street like Serape Way, north in Anaheim instead of Garden Grove, and it
had never seemed ugly. He remembered playing with other kids on long
summer evenings, when the sun set with orange and crimson flares, and
the feathery silhouettes of the backlit palms were as black as ink
drawings against the sky; at twilight the air sometimes smelled of star
jasmine and echoed with the cry of a lingering sea gull far to the west.
He remembered what it meant to be a kid with a bicycle in California-the
vistas for exploration, the great possibilities for adventure; every
street of stucco homes, seeing for the first time and from the seat of a
Schwinn, had seem exotic.
Two coral trees dominated the yard at 884 Serape. The white blooms of
the azalea bushes were softly radiant in the bleak night.
Tinted by the sodium-vapor streetlamps, the falling raid looked like
molten gold. But as Bobby hurried along the wall way behind Julie, the
rain was almost as cold as sleet on his face and hands. He was wearing
a warmly lined, nylon jacket with a hood, but he shivered.
Julie rang the doorbell. The porch light came on, and Bob sensed
someone looking them over through the fisheye lens in the front door. He
pushed back his hood and smiled.
The door opened on a security chain, and an Asian man peered out. He
was in his forties, short, slender, with black hair fading to gray at
the temples.
“Yes?”
Julie showed him her private investigator’s license and explained that
they were looking for someone named George Farris.
“Police?” The man frowned.
“Nothing wrong, no need police.”
“No, see, we’re private investigators,” Bobby explained.
The man’s eyes narrowed. He looked as if he would close the door in
their faces, but abruptly he brightened, smile