3.

Half of the large table in Ricky Estefan's s.p.a.cious kitchen was covered with a dropcloth on which were arranged the small-scale power tools he used to craft silver jewelry: a hand-held drill, engraving instrument, emery wheel, buffer, and less easily identifiable equipment. Bottles of fluids and cans of mysterious compounds were neatly arranged to one side, as were small paintbrushes, white cotton cloths, and steel-wool pads.

He had been at work on two pieces when Harry interrupted: a strikingly detailed scarab brooch and a ma.s.sive belt buckle covered with Indian symbols, maybe Navajo or Hopi. His second career. His forge and mold-making equipment were in the garage. But when he worked on the finishing details of his jewelry, he sometimes liked to sit by the kitchen window, where he could enjoy a view of his rose garden.

Outside, even in the "dreary gray deluge, the plentiful blooms were radiant-yellow and red and coral, some as big as grapefruits.

Harry sat at the uncluttered part of the table with his coffee, while Ricky shuffled to the other side and put his cup and saucer down among the cans, bottles, and tools. He lowered himself into his chair as stiffly as an octogenarian with severe arthritis.

Three years ago, Ricky Estefan had been a cop, one of the best, Harry's partner. He'd been a good-looking guy, too, with a full head of hair, not yellow-white as it was now, but thick and black. His life had changed when he had unwittingly walked into the middle of a robbery at a convenience store. The strung-out gunman had a crack habit for which he needed financing, and maybe he smelled cop the moment Ricky stepped through the door or maybe he was in the mood to waste anyone who even inadvertently delayed the transfer of the money from the cash register to his pockets. Whichever the case, he fired four times at Ricky, missing him once, hitting him once in the left thigh and twice in the abdomen.

"How's the jewelry business?" Harry asked.

"Pretty good. I sell everything I make, get more orders for custom belt buckles than I can fill." Ricky sipped his coffee and savored it before swallowing. Coffee was not on his approved diet. If he drank much, it played h.e.l.l with his stomach-or what was left of his stomach. Getting gutshot is easy; surviving is a b.i.t.c.h. He was lucky that the perp's weapon was only a .22 pistol, unlucky that it was fired at close range. For beginners, Ricky lost his spleen, part of his liver, and a small section of his large intestine. Although his surgeons took every precaution to keep the abdominal cavity clean, the slugs spread fecal matter, and Ricky quickly developed acute, diffuse, traumatic peritonitis. Barely survived it. Gas gangrene set in, antibiotics wouldn't stop it, and he underwent additional surgery in which he lost his gallbladder and a portion of his stomach. Then a blood infection. Temperature somewhere near that on the sunward surface of Mercury. Peritonitis again, too, and the removal of another piece of the colon. Through it all he had maintained an amazingly upbeat mood and, in the end, felt blessed that he had retained enough of his gastrointestinal system to be spared the indignity of having to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.

He had been off-duty when he'd walked into that store, armed but expecting no trouble. He had promised Anita, his wife, to pick up a quart of milk and tub of soft margarine on his way home from work.

The gunman had never come to trial. The distraction provided by Ricky had allowed the store owner-Mr. Wo Tai Han-to pick up a shotgun which he kept behind the counter. He'd taken off the back of the perp's head with a blast from that 12-gauge.

Of course, this being the last decade of the millennium, that had not been the end of it. The mother and father of the gunman sued Mr. Han for depriving them of the affection, companionship, and financial support of their deceased son, and never mind that a crack addict was incapable of providing any of those things.

Harry drank some coffee. It was good and strong. "You hear from Mr. Han lately?"

"Yeah. He's real confident about winning on appeal."

Harry shook his head. "Never can tell what a jury will do these days." Ricky smiled tightly. "Yeah. I figure I'm lucky I didn't get sued, too." He hadn't been lucky in much else. At the time of the shooting, he and Anita had been married only eight months. She stayed with him another year, until he was on his feet, but when she realized he was going to be an old man for the rest of his days, she called it quits. She was twenty-six. She had a life to live. Besides, these days, the clause of the matrimony vows that mentioned "in sickness and in health, till death do us part" was widely regarded as not binding until the end of a lengthy trial period of, say, a decade, sort of like not being vested in a pension plan until you had worked with the company for five years. For the past two years, Ricky had been alone. It must be Kenny G Day. Another of his tunes was on the radio. This one was less melodic than the first. It made Harry edgy. Maybe any song would have made him edgy just then.

"What's wrong?" Ricky asked.

"How'd you know something's wrong?"

"You'd never in a million years go visiting friends for no reason during work hours. You always give the taxpayer his money's worth."

"Am I really that rigid?"

"Do you really need to ask?"

"I must've been a pain in the a.s.s to work with."

"Sometimes." Ricky smiled.

Harry told him about James Ordegard and the death among the mannequins.

Ricky listened. He spoke hardly at all, but when he did have something to say, it was always the right thing. He knew how to be a friend.

When Harry stopped and stared for a long while at the roses in the rain, apparently finished, Ricky said, "That's not everything."

"No," Harry admitted. He fetched the coffee pot, refreshed their cups, sat down again. "There was this hobo."

Ricky listened to that part of it as soberly as he had listened to the rest. He did not seem incredulous. No slightest doubt was visible in his eyes or att.i.tude. After he had heard it all, he said, "So what do you make of it?"

"Could've been seeing things, hallucinating."

"Could you? You?" You?"

"But for G.o.d's sake, Ricky, how could it have been real?"

"Is the hobo really weirder than the perp in the restaurant?"

The kitchen was warm, but Harry was chilled. He folded both hands around the hot coffee cup.

"Yeah. He's weirder. Not by much, maybe, but worse. The thing is ... you think maybe I should request psychiatric leave, take a couple of weeks for counseling?"

"Since when did you start believing those brainflushers know what they're doing?"

"I don't. But I wouldn't be happy about some other cop walking around with a loaded gun, hallucinating."

"You're no danger to anyone but yourself, Harry. You're going to worry yourself to death sooner or later. Look, as for this guy with red eyes-everybody has something happen to him sometime in his life that he can't explain, a brush with the unknown."

"Not me," Harry said firmly, shaking his head.

"Even you. Now if this guy starts driving up in a whirlwind every hour on the hour, asking if he could have a date, wants to tongue-kiss you-then maybe you have a problem." Armies of rain marched across the bungalow roof.

"I'm a tightly wound customer," Harry said. "I realize it."

"Exactly. You're tight. Not a loose bolt in you, my man."

He and Ricky watched the rain for a couple of minutes, saying nothing.

Finally Ricky put on a pair of protective goggles and picked up the silver belt buckle. He switched on the hand-held buffer, which was about the size of an electric toothbrush and not loud enough to hinder conversation, and began cleaning tarnish and minute silver shavings out of one of the etched designs.

After a while Harry sighed. "Thanks, Ricky."

"Sure."

Harry took his cup and saucer to the sink, rinsed them off, and put them in the dishwasher. On the radio, Harry Connick, Jr., was singing about love.

Over the sink was another window. The hard rain was beating the h.e.l.l out of the roses. Bright petals, like confetti, were scattered across the soaked lawn.

When Harry returned to the table, Ricky turned off the buffer and started to get up. Harry said, "It's okay, I'll let myself out."

Ricky nodded. He looked so frail.

"See you soon."

"Won't be too long till the season starts," Ricky said.

"Let's take in an Angels game opening week."

"I'd like that," Ricky said.

They both enjoyed baseball. There was a comforting logic in the structure and progression of every game. It was an antidote for daily life.

On the front porch, Harry slipped into his shoes again and tied the laces, while the lizard that he had frightened upon arrival-or one just like it-watched him from the arm of the nearest chair. Slightly iridescent green and purple scales glimmered dully along each serpentine curve of its body, as if a handful of semiprecious stones had been discarded there on the white wood. He smiled at the tiny dragon.

He felt back in balance again, calm.

As he came off the last step onto the sidewalk and into the rain, Harry looked toward the car and saw someone sitting in the front pa.s.senger seat. A shadowy, hulking figure. Wild hair and a tangled beard. The intruder was facing away from Harry, but then he turned his head. Even through the rain-spotted side window and from a distance of thirty feet, the hobo was instantly recognizable. Harry swung back toward the house, intending to shout for Ricky Estefan, but changed his mind when he recalled how suddenly the vagrant had vanished before.

He looked at the car, expecting to discover that the apparition had evaporated. But the intruder was still there.

In his bulky black raincoat, the man seemed too large for the sedan, as if he were not in a real car but in one of those scaled-down versions in a b.u.mper-car pavilion at a carnival. Harry moved quickly along the front walk, slopping through gray puddles. Drawing nearer the street, he saw the well-remembered scars on the maniacal face-and the red eyes. As he reached the car, Harry said, "What're you doing in there?" Even through the closed window, the hobo's reply was clearly audible: "Ticktock, ticktock, ticktock. . ."

"Get out of there," Harry ordered.

"Ticktock . . . ticktock. ..."

An indefinable but unnerving quality of the derelict's grin made Harry hesitate.

". . . ticktock . . ."

Harry drew his revolver, held it with the muzzle skyward. He put his left hand on the door handle.

". . . ticktock . . ."

Those liquid red eyes daunted Harry. They looked like blood blisters that might burst and stream down the grizzled face. The sight of them, so inhuman, was enervating.

Before his courage could drain away, he jerked open the door.

He was almost knocked over by a blast of cold wind, and staggered backward two steps. It came out of the sedan as if an arctic gale had been stored up in there, stung his eyes and drew forth tears. The wind pa.s.sed in a couple of seconds. Beyond the open car door, the front pa.s.senger seat was empty.

Harry could see enough of the sedan interior to know for certain that the vagrant was not in there anywhere. Nevertheless, he circled the vehicle, looking through all of the windows. He stopped at the back of the car, fished his keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the trunk, covering it with his revolver as the lid swung up. Nothing: spare tire, jack, lug wrench, and tool pouch.

Surveying the quiet residential neighborhood, Harry slowly became aware of the rain again, of which he'd been briefly oblivious. A vertical river poured out of the sky. He was soaked to the skin. He slammed the trunk lid, and then the front pa.s.senger door. He went around to the driver's side and got in behind the steering wheel. His clothes made wet squishing noises as he sat down. Earlier, on the street in downtown Laguna Beach, the hobo had reeked of body odor and had expelled searingly bad breath. But there was no lingering stink of him in the car. Harry locked the doors. Then he returned his revolver to the shoulder holster under his sodden sportcoat.

He was shivering.

Driving away from Enrique Estefan's bungalow, Harry switched on the heater, turned it up high. Water seeped out of his soaked hair and trickled down the nape of his neck. His shoes were swelling and tightening around his feet.

He remembered the softly radiant red eyes staring at him through the car window, the oozing sores in the scarred and filthy face, the crescent of broken yellow teeth-and abruptly he was able to identify the unnerving quality in the hobo's grin which had halted him as he had first been about to yank open the door. Gibbering lunacy was not what made the strange derelict so threatening. It was not the grin of a madman. It was the grin of a predator, cruising shark, stalking panther, wolf prowling by moonlight, something far more formidable and deadly than a mere deranged vagrant. All the way back to Special Projects in Laguna Niguel, the scenery and the streets were familiar, nothing mysterious about the other motorists that he pa.s.sed, nothing otherworldly about the play of headlights in the nickel-bright rain or the metallic clicking that the cold droplets made against the skin of the sedan, nothing eerie about the silhouettes of palm trees against the iron sky. Yet he was overcome by a feeling of the uncanny, and he struggled to avoid the conclusion that he had brushed up against something . . . supernatural.

Ticktock, ticktock . . .

He thought about the rest of what the hobo had said after appearing out of the whirlwind: You'll You'll be dead by dawn. be dead by dawn.

He glanced at his watch. The crystal was still filmed with rainwater, the face distorted, but he could read the time: twenty-eight minutes past three.

When was sunrise? Six o'clock? Six-thirty? Thereabouts, somewhere between. At most, fifteen hours away.

The metronomic thump of the windshield wipers began to sound like the ominous cadence of funeral drums.

This was ridiculous. The derelict couldn't have followed him all the way to Enrique's house from Laguna Beach-which meant the hobo was not real, merely imagined, and therefore posed no threat.

He was not relieved. If the hobo was imaginary, Harry was in no danger of dying by dawn. But as far as he could see, that left a single alternative explanation, and not one that was rea.s.suring: he must be having a nervous breakdown.

4.

Harry's side of the office was comforting. The blotter and pen set were perfectly squared with each other and precisely aligned with the edges of the desk. The bra.s.s clock showed the same time as did his wrist.w.a.tch. The leaves of the potted palm, Chinese evergreens, and pothos were all clean and glossy.

The blue screen of the computer monitor was soothing, as well, and all the Special Projects forms were installed as macros, so he could complete them and print them without resorting to a typewriter. Uneven s.p.a.cing inevitably resulted when one attempted to fill in the blanks on forms with that antiquated technology.

He was an excellent typist, and he could compose case narrative in his head almost as fast as he could type. Anyone was capable of filling in blank s.p.a.ces or making Xs in boxes, but not everyone was skilled at the part of the job he liked to call the "essay test." His case narratives were written in language both more vivid and succinct than that of any other detective he had ever known. As his fingers flew across the keyboard, crisp sentences formed on the screen, and Harry Lyon was more at peace with the world than he had been at any time since he had sat at his breakfast table that morning, eating English m.u.f.fins with lemon marmalade and enjoying the view of the meticulously trimmed condominium greenbelt. When James Ordegard's killing spree was summarized in spare prose stripped of value-weighted verbs and adjectives, the episode didn't seem half as bizarre as when Harry actually had been a part of it. He hammered out the words, and the words soothed.

He was even feeling sufficiently relaxed to allow himself to get more casual in the office than was his habit. He unb.u.t.toned the collar of his shirt and slightly loosened the knot of his tie. He took a break from the paperwork only to walk down the hall to the vending-machine room to get a cup of coffee. His clothes were still damp in spots and hopelessly wrinkled, but the frost in his marrow had melted.

On his way back to the office with the coffee, he saw the hobo. The hulking vagrant was at the far end of the hall, crossing the intersection, pa.s.sing left to right in another corridor. Facing forward, never looking toward Harry, the guy moved purposefully, as if in the building on other business. In a few long strides he was through the intersection and out of sight. As Harry hurried along the hall to see where the man had gone, trying not to spill the coffee, he told himself that it hadn't been the same person. There had been a vague resemblance, that was all; imagination and frayed nerves had done the rest.

His denials were without conviction. The figure at the end of the corridor had been the same height as his nemesis, with those bearish shoulders, that barrel chest, the same filthy mane of hair and tangled beard. The long black raincoat had spread around him like a robe, and he'd had that leonine self-possession, as if he were some mad prophet mystically transported from the days of the Old Testament and dropped into modern times.

Harry braked at the end of the hallway by sliding into the intersection, wincing as hot coffee slopped out of the cup and stung his hand. He looked right, where the vagrant had been headed. The only people in that corridor were Bob Wong and Louis Yancy, loan-outs from the Orange County Sheriff's Department, who were consulting over a manila file folder.

Harry said, "Where'd he go?"

They blinked at him, and Bob Wong said, "Who?"

"The hairball in the black raincoat, the hobo."

The two men were puzzled.

Yancy said, "Hobo?"

"Well, if you didn't see him, you had to smell smell him." him."

"Just now?" Wong asked.

"Yeah. Two seconds ago."