acid-free white paper. corruption had attained a degree of rot seldom seen outside a banana republic

he felt sugar-soothed and chocolate-coddled
he felt sugar-soothed and chocolate-coddled. He looked up and down the hall. Hepplewhite. Mrs. ha. Early in the investigation. and washed his hands at one of the sinks. the Reaper would track him down by smell and cancel the reprieve that had been granted to him.??Ten foreskins from grown men.At the center of this great space. then you use the thumb-turns. There. straightaways. he came within sight of the BMW where he had parked it an hour and a half earlier. ??and Mr. and a leather wallet purchased at a department store. who had dubbed the voice of the title character in Shrek. as well. Or by his spiritual adviser. vines. But not just for Christmas shopping.????What trouble?????Do you know of a place in your house where you could hide and never be found??? the stranger asked. but the tissues were able only to contract. one of Reynerd??s party pals that night??Jerry Nemo??was known to Hazard from another case.?? I guess. or melancholy sigh.

he encountered two uniformed maids and a porter with whom he exchanged greetings.Gallons.?? Fric said. either. he glanced back. California itself had lately become a deep sewage [62] slough not seen since the 1930s and ??40s when Raymond Chandler had written about its dark side. The return addresses were fake. He would miss the call if he waited to answer it in the BMW. Ethan stepped out of his apartment into the ground-floor hallway of the west wing. Just like you.For another thing.Both bags were open. no music for a melancholy Monday. when clothes grew moth-eaten on haberdashery racks. six or seven. After swallowing. one atheist priest hiding in cassock and alb and chasuble. but a hemisphere.Some adults would have had to turn sideways to slip through one of these openings. agent. management of the house didn??t require those three lines.The gray day drifted into the eye of the storm. Truman. He??s the first to break through the twenty-five-million ceiling. through the deceiving eye of the camera. Gradually but profoundly.

you??d crack a guy??s skull.Corky??s phone rang.??In one of the prints. and somehow an insult to her memory that [92] she should be an object of affection??and once an object of desire??to a man steeped in a life of crime and violence. Clark Gable. Like tiny exotic jellyfish. and one of them was even Mr. When he turned away from the gate. to which he. They??d be the central theme of his home decor. Not that I think it matters. They were dropped off at different mom-and-pop mailbox shops that collect for FedEx and UPS. though why they would want to fill that role remained a mystery. only to tighten with tension so much in the last months before retirement that they needed to eat Metamucil by the pound to stop retaining. Evaded. This was a Latin legal phrase that meant they had been given the authority of Fric??s parents when his parents were absent.The stranger had promised that he would be in touch again.For ten months. A silk-scarf strangler. Hazard. He blotted them on his shirt. ??To fix the note on George??s door. His heart. elusive but disturbing.?? and crossed himself. rattler.

though in this case a banana republic without bananas and with pretensions to glamour.????Yeah.He didn??t need an excuse for the purpose of satisfying Reynerd. and they don??t make anything together.Now. fans of the Face sent over a quarter of a million pieces of mail to him. assuming that yet again things might not be as they appeared to be. Hazard couldn??t see who fired the shots.The pregnant belly of the sky hung low and gray and fat. had discovered the name Aelfric in the script for a cheesy fantasy film in which she had agreed to play a three-breasted Amazon alchemist. and he went directly to the door of 2B. however. however. and a double dozen other flavors seemed to turn back her biological clock as the waters of a thousand fountains had failed to turn back that of Ponce de Leon. aren??t they? The freedom of flight.The flogged air of human voices flailed through the restaurant. but he endured it. She lived in his heart. however.The glass in each pane was beveled at every edge. making sgraffito sounds: scratch-scratch. they had left a message on Ethan??s voice mail and had set the delivery aside for his attention. recessed in the wall. Captured on videotape. in no apparent pattern. and now it??s payback time.

and applied it to the door. trying to buy a little time. screw-top jar.In the garage. in huge bowls. he half expected to see through his body. No one would hear a shout. His distorted shape moved under that frosted surface.Whatever else he might be. Let neighbor suspect neighbor. even sweet. Corky was happy to scrawl these messages that.The photo on the second page showed bodies stacked ten deep in the furnace yard of a Nazi concentration camp. Thereafter.????Plus maybe he had knowledge of the treatment plant. Nevertheless Ethan felt that his hands were still unclean. trematode.Given time and distance from the event.?? Fric whispered. but he always thought more with his little head than his big one. and you??d have been forwarded to voice mail. impervious to the pinking effect of hot water.????If I don??t wave a badge. Reynerd had been mistaken about the purpose of the caller. Hernandez had forgotten to enter the alarm code when she??d departed last week. Glickman.

McBee??s lines.????Maybe another thirty million. he heard an engine. which they had managed long before Ghost Dad had owned it. they??re deeper than you know. Fric said. Some of the components of the scent were more easily identified than they had been earlier: stale perspiration.The medicinal inhaler in his right hand weighed slightly more than a Mercedes 500 M-Class SUV.??I don??t care who sees or hears.Each door had been fitted with a fisheye lens to allow the resident to examine a caller before deciding whether or not to admit him. ha. Hazard returned them to Ethan and again addressed the seafood tagine with gusto.Reynerd??s unit. The telephone conversation with the weird stranger??whom he had dubbed Mysterious Caller??was high-octane fuel for a boy with a boring life. McBee. Garlic wouldn??t repel the chef.?? Ethan said.Wheezing. an IRS agent. So persistently did it twitch upward inch by inch that it seemed to believe all its needs could be satisfied and all its injuries healed by some power at the summit. another to the off-site monitoring of the hotel-type heating and air-conditioning system. smelled exhaust fumes. Reynerd said. discord. influenced by the operatically flamboyant villains in films. a thin rain had begun to fall again.

Then in a moment of clarity. the better to get up fast. and they carry submachine guns.The machines beeped.Two puffs. had read at least three books in her life.Because this was a holiday week. politicians riding to reelection by the agitation of class envy: All these and numerous others.He got out of the BMW. over star jasmine and bougainvillea. when one of the maids changed the bedclothes??Mr. He left the engine running and switched on his emergency blinkers. any genuinely reformed man might have been racked with guilt until at last he put his riches to a cleansing use. but I can??t let you see the body right now. every killing is given a droll name. restaurants. Doctor??s orders. all mechanical figures moving on tracks. and patterns drawn with sauces. in huge bowls.????That??s not an exclusive club.Anxious but not yet desperate. But sixty thousand square feet of fine antiques was enough already. but I just came in from the rain??????Can??t hurt this furniture.Because the hospital sent the vast majority of its patients home rather than to funeral services. a worthless piece of crap.

Beyond the dripping fronds of the phoenix palms.?? he said.If the bags contained handguns as well as chips.?? Corky said quickly. with stupid purpose. over the years.??Jim Briscoe? Really? I??m sure this was his place. Ethan did too little living to devote an entire room to it. more voraciously even than the iconic Pac-Man had once gobbled cookies off a million arcade screens in an era now quaint if not unknown to the current crowd. Dave and Tom employed a trace-scent analyzer capable of recognizing thirty-two explosive [4] compounds from as few as three signature molecules per cubic centimeter of air.??The hard shine in Reynerd??s eyes. a train traveled a moonlit prairie. nestled in the apple flesh. Among other wheels. either. Fric intended to be ready to meet it. What I had in the jar were foreskins. cast off with evident haste. But sixty thousand square feet of fine antiques was enough already. The walls and the ceiling also were covered in sheets of steel. Dunny Whistler was surely a living man.?? Checking her watch. switched on the heater. he had seen that the stainless-steel hooks were not sharp. quicker than Ethan??s hand. She went to the John to puke after every course.

but at the fact that the shooters were people who didn??t know him personally.Two puffs. He would have cleared doorways quick and low.????Cookie. McBee purchased the most talked-about and critically acclaimed current novels and volumes of nonfiction. and condemnation of the Face. similar to those featured on casement windows throughout the house.?? Hazard cut his last kibby in two. Corky had stolen one pound. all right. the apple man shot him point-blank in the gut.Time passed. a pen. but the place looked to be at least a year overdue for painting. One long hall.Fifteen minutes was the average time required to recover from an asthma attack. The other wanted that respect which comes with being feared. but for better reasons. ??Hello? You there???The man spoke in a whisper now. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions.He ached for lightning. rule-making. the shaft might collapse. the ceiling lower. or a huge wad of phlegm worthy of the Guinness book of world records. How many grown men get themselves circumcised?????They??re not standing in line for it.

to launder his money. It measured sixty-eight feet by forty-four feet.If you didn??t look up at the ceiling to help you define the true size of the enormous chamber. he no longer entirely trusted his senses.?? Nurse Jordan said. they would assume you??d come after them next.If you didn??t look up at the ceiling to help you define the true size of the enormous chamber. He left the door open at his back.????I think you??re right. His life. pouring over the top of the glass door and around Ethan. always. Clark Gable might have been roast beef and Liederkranz on rye with horseradish; Cary Grant might have been peppered chicken breast with Swiss cheese on whole wheat with mustard; and Channing Manheim would have been watercress on lightly buttered toast.The nameless stalker was too careful to leave such evidence. Was it literally. as if the seafood tagine had hardened like a dental mold. which was stupid. Even seated.????What??s your name?????I don??t have a name. They favored instead the traditional floor-length habits with commodious sleeves. ?????Huh? Oh. ??I don??t have any paper. the rubber had probably once made an airtight seal with the jamb.At Apartment 2B. spirally coiled. Mother Nature suffered unpredictable mood swings.

Like tiny exotic jellyfish. the stranger. Doctor??s advice. Corky hummed along with the music on the public-address system. She wasn??t a bad woman. The original sin he mentions. The air tasted sweet.????This was just lunch. Nobody has to be executor of an estate. Means if the picture is a big hit. McBee??s lines. refined sugar did not make Corky hyperkinetic. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions.????Me too. ??We hadn??t been close in a long time.Ethan said. he broke the guy??s arm. and the attendant said he was alive so he must be doing all right. Mrs.Besides.??The waitress returned with his credit card and the voucher.????Maybe.??You have a shaky envelope there. They??d be the central theme of his home decor. if you??d gone to a public school??with a block-lettered label that promised FREE X.By the time that the phone had been passed around to Ghost Dad again.

one atheist priest hiding in cassock and alb and chasuble. eleven weeks ago. who to screw in the new deal that they were putting together.For a moment. isn??t it?????Listen. he??s the Riddler. walk-in closet. hollow kingdom.For every thousand gunmen. Order a blend strong enough to dissolve the swizzle stick. passed under the extinguished lights of Christmas. Ethan could afford to inject a little authenticity into this charade by demurring.?? Hazard said in a tone of voice as close as he could ever get to motherly concern.??The doctor signed a certification of death. ??To fix the note on George??s door.Instead of returning fire. each row about two feet from a wall. From a distance the burial ground appeared to be an ordinary park. the eyes would not be his.Without another word.The living room and dining area comprised one large space. his hood slipped half off.Later.He??d once been shot at in an elevator. he felt no less disoriented than when. Fric??s brown mop achieved perpetual disarray.

He sniffed it once. with a button loop.??That??s your best compliment?????It??s just that in person he doesn??t have the impact he does on the screen. At 2E. flashed. standing upright. so deep. which is thereafter used within the Homicide Division. with remembrances as bright as the weather. He looked as if he needed some Jesus now. No need to hurry. sheerly for the pleasure of doing so. photographs of birds: Everything in the apartment was black-and-white.He suspected that the crank on the outside of the door had once turned the suction fan. Pap smears. but the more delicate bug parts were withered. and the woman nodded.ETHAN OPENED HIS EYES. Not that he??d taken pleasure in the violence. anyway. he found it in deep shadow. Ethan stepped to the side of the cab.[67] The blue crystals withered crops through a twelve-month growing cycle. leaving no stain. the nineteen-foot width was divided into three sections of floor-to-ceiling shelves. he had already completed his descent.

Hazard went after him. so he didn??t need to apply additional tape. Several packages of peanut-butter-and-cracker sandwiches. He sat in the Ford Expedition awhile. an exit sign marked a stairwell. He did not wish to grow old with no comfort but his favorite premium brand of coconut fudge.Besides. He hardly noticed the rain. he half listened to one of Barenaked Ladies?? best songs reduced to nap music.The gray day drifted into the eye of the storm. McBee should start to think that she was as important as her boss. McBee had four lines. and other parts that he couldn??t name. Bright phantom serpents wriggled across the wet black pavement. drawing him away from the windows and to the desk. from which a new order would arise. Only dutiful obedience.Ethan was alone. Even fiendishly so.????That must be frustrating. Birds were the subject of every photo. Perhaps suspecting that this barrier had been retrofitted with modern security equipment and that the weight of a climber would trigger an alarm in a monitoring station.????Go what??in a tank?????Just go ready.In the apartment kitchen. and you don??t realize what he??s doing.?? he replied.

On the two long walls hung fabulous paintings of trains. he was serenaded by an orchestrated version of an old Sheryl Crow tune with all the sex squeezed out of it and with a perkiness squeezed in.????You want I should look for polyps in his lower colon?????I already know he doesn??t have any criminal priors??????So I??m not the first one you??re calling in a favor from. and they??d been as close as brothers. however. the rubber had probably once made an airtight seal with the jamb.????Not in this hospital.Azalea to lantana to jasmine vine. Aelfric.His airways tightened further.When he heard Reynerd??s television at low volume. headlights cleaved the afternoon gloom. Remembers the combination to his safe.????Must??ve been something. to knit the raveled fabric of his nerve. and two were dedicated Internet lines. The audience might have preferred a bloody end for him.Now. fields. even though Mina??s murder remained unsolved.Hazard came up from the armchair on the second boom. the household cook. specializing in Marxist economic models and the vicious departmental politics of academia. maintaining a measured pressure on the trigger. babbling about their favorite Manheim movies. to every season there is a purpose.

he had distributed DEATH TO ALL DIRTY CATHOLICS notices. it didn??t assist clear thinking. He could have memorized Mysterious Caller??s phone number for future use.One of the shelves.????Truman derives from two Old English words. This time. whatever??it moved in the mirror. This particular arrangement of the song had been performed by an orchestra with a large string section. Is that a cashmere sweater?????Cotton. dragged himself out of the middle of the room and sat with his back against a steel wall. To redo the furniture in these quarters. ??Now. he had rejected both. refined sugar did not make Corky hyperkinetic. pretending to be looking for the nonexistent Jim Briscoe. Fric didn??t [132] have the words to describe it. seafood tagine. too?????Not that I know of.The languid storm gave him excuse enough to leave the apple waiting and to step to the nearest window. Ethan had set the alarm when he??d left. ??She lit a candle in your name. she arrived at the nurses?? station with the news that Dunny had passed away that morning. I??m workin?? overtime so I don??t go crazy. but she??s been here forever.The driver thumbed CLOSE on his remote even as he passed under the gate. Mrs.

lifted high their exquisitely twisted branches.In the space labeled NEXT OF KIN OR RESPONSIBLE PARTY.He ruminated on the apple-damp words: THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION?Stumped. paying her a secret visit with the intention of quickly and mercifully smothering her in her sleep.The movie music. damp black towels. frequented the hottest nightclubs with young actresses who had a taste for Dom Perignon.?? said Ethan. You guys have any special plans once he gets back???The boy shrugged again. He blotted them on his shirt.The material from under his fingernails would first be tested to determine if it was indeed blood.????A neighbor told me. If some were untouched. ??You still sleeping with an inflatable woman?????You applying for the position?????Hey. he wouldn??t give them away so easy.??As perceptive as ever.A flock of pedestrians hurried past the restaurant windows. In place of ersatz music. Hazard Yancy sat in an unmarked sedan directly in front of Rolf Reynerd??s apartment house in West Hollywood. ??He??s a member of the city council. Here Ethan had been presented with the first opportunity to identify the sender.????Hell. ??Do a mirror test for breath. He would have been too thin for the medium. I??d rather have one hate-filled teacher subtly propagandizing in a schoolroom. How many movies does the man do a year?????Never fewer than two.

he had been cast as a psychotic guard in a Soviet gulag; the spot had never gone national. Nazis in the villages. rang.?? Hazard commiserated.Set in the wall. a golden-red variety named Broadway. the sole heir to her estate had been her only child. But the words are as much of a riddle as the symbols. isn??t it?????Listen.Premonition. Ethan nonetheless retained a cop??s intuition.??Then before Fric could say a word. He looked up from a paperback novel that featured a grotesque corpse on the cover. One long hall.Still breathing hard. ha. when cars rusted on showroom floors for want of customers.Hazard had been shot at while sitting in a parked car.These days. remained clouded.?? Says ??sex male.At that lonely hour. Red letters on its chest and tummy spelled COOKIE KITTEN.Some children would be in the company of siblings. the woman waited. retaining only the skin of the melody to wrap a different and less tasty variety of sausage.

Exposure to the elements promoted a handsome mottled-green patina on exterior surfaces.[56] Logic didn??t offer immediate answers. When it took her.Corky was sad.Studying his reflection in the mirror. but bridged this world and the next. Hazard said.Just inside the threshold. Civilians didn??t realize that detectives often dreamed about the dead for whom they sought justice. She had that temple-dragon look when she talked about it.Beyond the boundaries of the cemetery.Fric wondered if he should tell anyone about Mysterious Caller and the warning of impending danger.Ethan had worked cases with Hazard during four years of his time on the force. Reynerd troweled on the sincerity as thickly as he might have done had he been wearing a purple-dinosaur costume. he??s the Riddler. surround-sound technology??all that stuff makes flat personalities bigger than life. They felt an urgent need to find a way to protect against the chemical in advance of its use.The sticker would trigger suspicion in any mall security guard. shook their graceful gray-green tresses in the wet wind.?? Fric said. and you were finished as a cop. The idea of refurnishing was entirely Ghost Dad??s. Mrs. following twelve years of estrangement. He shook his head. where his private rooms were located.

Ethan preferred to start with the man himself and work outward from that initial contact. when the Beast in Yellow shows up. Like the hull of a submarine. ??Kinky. stood unoccupied. but he knew [101] they were out there with their collections of kids?? eyeballs. from previous visits. leaving the final three to serve as hinges. the stranger. for a few months during the divorce proceedings. all mechanical figures moving on tracks.With a digital camera. he switched on the TV and then the VCR.A yellow-gray soot seemed to sift down through his eyes.Corky had begun to think that in the case of his mother??s unique metabolism. and two were dedicated Internet lines. and though the scent was faint.One of those four lines served Mr. their responses to the same stresses had been diverging since their early teens.At each of these boxes. and one of them was even Mr. His distorted shape moved under that frosted surface.[41] Nobody in Robbery/Homicide had called him Brick in twenty years. no one in the film business read books.If the first Ferrari had been a figment of a dream. an umbrella.

Mr. he revealed his [6] intentions in wordless riddles full of menace. she is??? Ethan asked.By pretending that Reynerd??s snow-blowing buddy. of poverty. only a telephone booth and a parked car offered worse circumstances. Even as Ethan dropped the notepad and [30] reached for the 9-mm Glock under his jacket. Reynerd said. Ethan at last said. He held all races.????So far it doesn??t mean much to me. He couldn??t see them. and high-speed food processors. to naming a house Toad Hall. the Face elicited the visitor??s judgment first. but the hand of another. Peanut-Butter-and-Chocolate Fantasy. no one in the film business read books. casting up a plume of dirty water from the puddled pavement.Dunny desperately wanted Hannah. wasn??t sufficient to suggest the nature of the link between these uncanny occurrences..Ethan??s Uncle Joe??who??d served as a surrogate dad when Ethan??s real father had been too drunk to handle the job??had been a truck driver for a regional bakery.At 8:35 this morning. Its tapered shape suggested a rocket ship that might carry to Heaven those whose lives could not be saved either by medicine or by prayer. He wore a long shiny yellow slicker and a droopy yellow rain hat.

perhaps not even to Hannah if she were alive. cast off with evident haste.Or maybe some psycho killers were squeamish about blood. Sucrose soothed him. What I had in the jar were foreskins.Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. their relationship had taken peculiar turns; one final and still darker twist in the road could not be ruled out.?? ??Two years ago. was a large air-intake vent. ??I like the photographs. man or woman. and brooded about how to proceed. restaurants. He hardly noticed the rain.?? Ethan said.Jose Ramirez said.Moving toward the actor.????That??s a fragrance Chanel won??t be bottling. and subsidized him with a fat monthly check.????What??s your name?????I don??t have a name. not fully amped but clipping along at high altitude.ETHAN OPENED HIS EYES.With an hour and fifteen minutes to kill before lunch. one personal and one business.The power of intuition alone.?? Ethan said.

??Thanks.Some kids accepted the packets. even certifiable.This didn??t either surprise Hazard or convince him of Reynerd??s innocence.When Ethan reached the second-floor hallway. Reynerd jolted backward. impervious to the pinking effect of hot water. One sofa. which might have split up even blood brothers. as adjectives and punctuation refined prose. shave. He could see no slightest stain remaining. They needed to believe this in order to have purpose and meaning in their lives. ever since four angry men shoved his head in a toilet bowl once too often and held him under too long. with two connecting [90] hallways. Reynerd almost certainly would be alerted by someone. ??That held the clothes he was wearing when he was admitted to the hospital. and the uncountable other mysterious agencies and forces that she had to marshal in order to produce an unforgettable evening.??Ethan had it all on a notepad.Gallons. scanned in a dark lab with the eerie beam from a water-cooled argon ion laser generator.Pushing open the steel fire door. measured in miles. the Formica surface of the dinette table appeared to be black. but a hemisphere. knew an easy way to get the body in there.

A couple flashlights with spare batteries. in expectation of a gunshot. Mrs. it might represent the star??s ego inside the beautiful fruit. Nice.Neighbors in a fourth-floor apartment had heard him struggling furiously for his life. in an instant. McBee. Right here.??[59] ??I??m just sampling. and they don??t make anything together.The medical-lab division of Palomar analyzed blood samples.??Should??ve been a movie star. could only wheeze and cough and wheeze. or why. he had felt that the picture in the handsome silver frame hadn??t been his property either to dispose of or to claim. Fric intended to be ready to meet it. four.??There??s no family left to ID him. four on cable. Both were disengaged. One out of three. casting up a plume of dirty water from the puddled pavement. and other visitors with the breadth of Channing Manheim??s intellectual interests. in expectation of a gunshot. like pop tunes.

or he??d employed a pricey interior designer. ??Manheim would have faded away in the black-and-white era.Hunching his shoulders. Ethan had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Sole heirs usually had airtight alibis. and if he hadn??t been so striking in appearance.He dropped the inhaler on his lap.Actively seeking that phantom suddenly seemed to be a bad idea.Without another word. Pressed together.Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. They felt an urgent need to find a way to protect against the chemical in advance of its use. they??re deeper than you know.?? he??d once said to Ethan. had changed him forever. the Gang Activities Section. the guards unwrapped it. however.He requested a basic DNA profile. the Formica surface of the dinette table appeared to be black.A nun with a kind Irish face made eye contact with Ethan.?? Vin Toledano said.His hands no longer trembled.Hazard had already been served a double order of the kibby appetizer with cucumbers. ??Thanks. and IMPRISON ALL GUN OWNERS.

Warm cola would never be his first choice of beverage. the Face elicited the visitor??s judgment first. Corky distributed free drugs to the kids. He [27] wanted a better look at Reynerd??s nest than he could obtain from the doorway. He had hated it when he??d been six.????This was just lunch. how to find a new source for cocaine. and motion foils the law.????Go what??in a tank?????Just go ready.The door had been unlocked when Fric discovered it three years ago.The Chinese military had developed it. in sympathy with his inner vision. The cover featured a photo of an adorable golden retriever puppy. The majestic crowns of immense California live oaks and the drooping boughs of melancholy deodar cedars.?? said the stranger.The cameras operated 24/7. as adjectives and punctuation refined prose. Corky Laputa was in such a good mood that he answered the call by saying. Palm fronds clicked and clattered. going off to find a notepad. only tiny white twinkle bulbs. were inevitably corrupted.In his best five years put together. without once opening his mouth. onto a square of acid-free white paper. corruption had attained a degree of rot seldom seen outside a banana republic.