Einstein discovered there were Mickey Mouse picture books for children and
comic books, and the dog was as jubilant about that discovery as Nora was about
the resolution of the charges against Arthur Streck. His fascination with Mickey
and Donald Duck and the rest of the Disney gang remained a mystery, but it was
undeniable. Einstein couldn’t stop wagging his tail, and he slobbered all over
Travis in gratitude.
Everything would have been rosy if, in the middle of the night, Einstein had
stopped going through the house from window to window, looking out at the
darkness with obvious fear.
3
By Thursday morning, July 15, almost six weeks after the murders at Bordeaux
Ridge, two months after the dog and The Outsider had escaped from Banodyne,
Lemuel Johnson sat alone in his office on an upper floor of the federal building
in Santa Ana, the county seat of Orange County. He stared out the window at the
pollutant-rich haze that was trapped under an inversion layer, blanketing the
western half of the county and adding to the misery of hundred-degree heat. The
bile-yellow day matched his sour mood.
His duties were not limited to the search for the lab escapees, but that case
constantly worried him when he was doing other work. He was unable to put the
Banodyne affair out of mind even to sleep, and lately he was averaging only four
or five hours of rest a night. He could not tolerate failure.
No, in truth, his attitude was much stronger than that: he was obsessed with
avoiding failure. His father, having started life dirt-poor and having built a
successful business, had inculcated in Lem an almost religious belief in the
need to achieve, to succeed, and to fulfill all of one’s goals. No matter how
much success you had, his dad often said, life could pull the rug right out from
under you if you weren’t diligent. “It’s even worse for a black man, Lem. With a
black man, success is like a tightrope over the Grand Canyon. He’s up there real
high, and it’s sweet, but when he makes a mistake, when he fails, it’s a
mile-long drop into an abyss. An abyss. Because failure means being poor. And in
a lot of people’s eyes, even in this enlightened age, a poor miserable failed
black man is no man at all, he’s just a nigger.” That Was the only time his
father ever used the hated word. Lem had grown up With the conviction that any
success he achieved was merely a precarious toehold on the cliff of life, that
he was always in danger of being blown off that cliff by the winds of adversity,
and that he dared not relent in his determination to cling fast and to climb to
a wider, safer ledge.
He wasn’t sleeping well, and his appetite was no good. When he did eat, the meal
was inevitably followed by severe acid indigestion. His bridge game had gone to
hell because he could not concentrate on the cards; at their
weekly get-togethers with Walt and Audrey Gaines, the Johnsons were taking a
beating.
He knew why he was obsessed with closing every case successfully, but that
knowledge was of no help in modifying his obsession.
We are what we are, he thought, and maybe the only time we can change what we
are is when life throws us such a surprise that it’s like hitting a plate-glass
window with a baseball bat, shattering the grip of the past.
So he stared out at the blazing July day and brooded, worried.
Back in May, he had surmised that the retriever might have been picked up by
someone and given a home. It was, after all, a handsome animal, and if it
revealed even a small fraction of its intelligence to anyone, its appeal would
be irresistible; it would find sanctuary. Therefore, Lem figured locating the
dog would be harder than tracking down The Outsider. A week to locate The
Outsider, he had thought, and perhaps a month to lay hands on the retriever.
He had issued bulletins to every animal pound and veterinarian in California,
Nevada, and Arizona, urgently requesting assistance in locating the golden