Laney closed his eyes.

"The show never aired, Laney. Out of Control dropped it. What happened?"

He'd taken to having break&st beside the Chateau's small oval pool, past the homely clapboard bungalows that Rydell said were a later addition. It was the one time of the day that felt like his own, or did until Rice Daniels arrived, which was usually toward the bottom of a three-cup pot of coffee, just prior to his eggs and bacon.

Daniels would cross the tern cotta to Laney's table with what could only be described as a spring in his step. Laney privately wished to ascribe this to drug-use, of which he'd seen no evidence whatever, and indeed Daniels's most potent public indulgence seemed to be multiple cups of decaf espresso taken with curls of lemon peel. He favored loosely woven beige suits and collarless shirts.

This particular morning, however, Daniels had not been alone,3 and Laney had detected a lack of temper in the accustomed spring; a0

2.

131.

certain jangled brittleness there, and the painful-hooking gla.s.ses seeming to grip his head even more tightly than usual. Beside him came a gray-haired man in a dark brown suit of Western cut, hawk-faced and wind-burnt, the blade of his impressive nose protruding from a huge black pair of sungla.s.ses. He wore black alligator roping-boots and carried a dusty-looking briefcase of age-darkened tan cowhide, its handle mended with what Laney supposed had to be baling wire.

"Laney," Rice Daniels had said, arriving at the table, "this is Aaron Pursley."

'Don't get up, son," Pursley said, though Laney hadn't thought to. "Fella's just bringing you your breakfast." One of the Mongolian waiters was crossing with a tray, from the direction of the bungalows. Pursley put his battle-scarred briefcase down and took one of the white-painted metal chairs. The waiter served Laney's eggs. Laney signed for them, adding a 15-percent tip. Purshey was flipping through the contents of his case. He wore half a dozen heavy silver rings on the fingers of either hand, some of them studded with turquoise. Laney couldn't remember when he'd last seen anyone carry around that much paper.

"You're the lawyer," Laney said. "On television."

"In the flesh as well, son." Pursley was on "Cops in Trouble," and before that he'd been famous for defending celebrity clients. Daniels hadn't taken a seat, and stood behind Pursley now with a hunched, uncharacteristic posture, hands in his trouser pockets. "Here we are," Pursley said. He drew out a sheaf of blue paper. "Don't let your eggs get cold."

"Have a seat," Laney said to Daniels. Daniels winced behind his gla.s.ses.

"Now," Pursley said, "you were in a Federal Orphanage, in Gainesville, it says here, from age twelve to age seventeen."

Laney looked at his eggs. "That's right."

"During that time, you partic.i.p.ated in a number of drug trials? You were an experimental subject?"

132 S.

"Yes," Laney said, his eggs looking somehow farther away, or like a picture in a magazine.

"This was voluntary on your part?"

"There were rewards."

"Voluntary," Pursley said. "You get on any of that 5-SB?"

"They didn't tell us what they were giving us," Laney said. "Sometimes we'd get a placebo instead."

"You don't mistake 5-SB for any placebo, son, but I think you know that."

Which was true, but Laney just sat there.

"Well?" Pursley removed his big heavy gla.s.ses. His eyes were cold and blue and set into an intricate topography of wrinkles.

"I probably had it," Laney said.

Pursley slapped the blue papers on his thigh. "Well, there you are. You almost certainly did. Now, do you know how that substance eventually affected many of the test subjects?"

Daniels unclamped his gla.s.ses and began to knead the bridge of his nose. His eyes were closed.

"Stuff tends to turn males into fixated homicidal stalkers," Pursley said, putting his gla.s.ses back on and stuffing the papers into his case. "Comes on years later, sometimes. Go after media faces, politicians. . . . That's why it's now one of the most illegal substances, any d.a.m.n country you care to look. Drug that makes folks want to stalk and kill politicians, well, boy, it'll get to be." He grinned dryly.

"I'm not one," Laney said. "I'm not like that."

Daniels opened his eyes. "It doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is that Slitscan can counter all our material by raising the possibility, the merest shadow, however remote, that you are."

"You see, son," Pursley said, "they'd just make out you got into your line of work because you were predisposed to that, spying on famous people. You didn't tell them about any of it, did you?"

"No," Laney said, "I didn't."

"There you go," said Purshey. "They'll say they hired you because 3 you were good at it, but you just got too d.a.m.n good at it." 0 133.

"But she wasn't &mous," Laney said.

"But he is," Rice Daniels said, "and they'll say you were after him. They'll say the whole thing was your idea. They'll wring their hands about responsibility. They'll talk about their new screening procedures for quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysts. And n.o.body, Laney, n.o.body at a/l will be watching us."

"That's about the size of it," Pursley said, standing. He picked up the briefcase. 'That real bacon there, like off a hog?"

"They say it is," Laney said.

"d.a.m.n," Pursley said, "these Hollywood hotels are fast-lane." He stuck out his hand. Laney shook it. "Nice meeting you, son."

Daniels didn't even bother to say goodbye. And two days later, going over the printout of his charges, Laney would notice that it all began, the billing in his own name, with a large pot of coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon, and a 15-percent tip.

Arleigh McCrae was staring at him.

"Do they know that?" she asked. "Does Blackwell?"

"No," Laney said, "not that part, anyway." He could see Rydell's fax, folded on the bedside stand. They didn't know about that, either.

"What happened then? What did you do?"

"I found out I was paying for at least some of the lawyers they'd gotten for me. I didn't know what to do. I sat out there by the pool a lot. It was sort of pleasant, actually. I wasn't thinking about anything in particular. Know what I mean?"

"Maybe," she said.

"Then I heard about this job from one of the security people at the hotel."

She slowly shook her head.

"What?" he said.

"Never mind," she said. "You make about as much sense as the rest of it. Probably you'll fit right in."

"Into what?"