L.A. Mental (20 page)

Fifty

E
xactly one week later, I was sitting in a rented Toyota Camry, parked a block away from Parallax Productions' West Hollywood offices—waiting for Cynthia Trask to leave work for the day. The late afternoon was sweltering, the air thick with smog, exhaust fumes, and heat swarming up from the pavement. By the time I'd been there half an hour, I was damp with greasy sweat.

I'd been covertly keeping tabs on Cynthia for the past several days, waiting for her like this in the afternoons and then following her for the next couple of hours; I'd rented the Camry because my beat-up Land Cruiser stuck out like a bolero tie at a black-tie dinner. It was silly to play amateur detective—like representing yourself in court and having a fool for a lawyer—but it was the only way I could think of to get some sense of whether my paranoia about her was justified.

So far, she seemed to be playing her role exactly according to Venner's script. She left the office every day around six or six thirty, with a sense of unbroken routine. She didn't show any furtiveness or extra strain, just her usual cool briskness. Her life outside her job seemed just as ordinary. She was still stringing Paul along—most evenings they met either for dinner or at her place—and he didn't seem to have a clue that anything had changed, or that one day soon she would simply be gone from his life.

Most important, nothing else had happened to suggest that the nanotechnology was in use again. As the days passed, I'd started telling myself that I'd exaggerated the
Nhang
encounter far out of proportion. They'd been feeling the strain on the set, and they were surly types anyway; I'd just had my own run-in with Sperry, plus the simmering tension with Lisa; and the two anger zones had intersected.

Still, I'd decided to stay with the surveillance awhile longer. If nothing else, it helped to take my mind off Lisa.

Cynthia came out of the building a little after 6:00 p.m. as usual. I waited until she left the parking lot and gave her another couple of blocks' head start, then pulled out behind her, grateful for the cool wash of the Camry's AC kicking in.

She was wearing a casual but expensive linen dress, and this being Friday, I expected that she'd meet Paul at one of the swank restaurants they favored, places like Cicada or the Tower. But that didn't seem to be the plan, and she didn't head toward her home in Coldwater Canyon, either. Instead, she drove west on Santa Monica to Highland, cut north to the Hollywood Freeway, and got off a few miles later on Barham, headed toward Burbank. Film business, I figured; a lot of studios and offices were located around there.

But long before she got to the central business district, still in the outlying no-man's-land of commercial strips and shopping malls shoehorned in side by side, she slowed and pulled into a parking lot—one of those older minimalls that were all over Southern California, respectably maintained but edging toward seedy and perpetually struggling to survive. This one housed a Ramada Inn and a couple of chain fast-food joints, kept alive by budget-conscious tourists visiting Universal Studios.

What kind of business did the elegant Ms. Trask have in a place like this?

I wheeled the Camry into an adjoining lot and found a spot with a clear view. She was just getting out of the Hummer, now wearing big round sunglasses and with a serape-type shawl thrown over her dress. She walked straight to the motel and disappeared into the lobby.

Business? Maybe. But this wasn't the kind of place that hosted conventions or rented out office space. It looked like business that was more personal in nature—a rendezvous with a lover.

In itself, that wasn't surprising except that she would lower her standards to a no-tell motel. But it had implications. If Venner's people knew this was going on, it must be part of their plans; it didn't seem likely that they'd allow her to just go sporting around. If not, it meant she did have considerable freedom beyond their watch, and there was no telling what she might be up to.

I didn't like either version. But oddly, it was almost a relief, a sense that maybe I wasn't just swatting at thin air. I settled down to wait, hoping that she and whoever she was meeting would come back out together and I'd get a look at him.

I'd expected her to be in there for a couple of hours. But either Cynthia was as efficient in romance as in other areas or I'd misjudged the situation completely. Only about forty-five minutes later, she came walking out of the lobby again. It was a precise reverse of the way she'd arrived; she walked straight to her vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot headed back the way she'd come in.

But she also was alone again, which left me with a snap choice to make—follow her or keep watch here? The motel was getting busy, with people checking in and wandering out for dinner or entertainment. Unless her partner was someone I already recognized, he'd just be one of the crowd; he could walk out and drive away without me ever knowing I'd seen him.

Still, this was the first promising avenue that had opened up. It was worth the chance.

Twenty minutes later, it paid—if
paid
was even close to the right word. A man came walking out with several other people, a guy so ordinary looking my glance almost dismissed him as just one of the group.

But then it hit, and I sat there feeling like I was glued in place, watching him drive away in a blue Ford Taurus as nondescript as himself.

Venner.

Fifty-One

A
n image flashed in my mind—the way Cynthia had stared at him defiantly when he'd taken the pendant from her neck, the night he and his team had raided the film set. Was she starting her seduction that soon?

I stayed right there, trying to get a calm grip on this. The first, really unsettling explanation that came was that the two of them had cut a private deal. Kelso's research was a gold mine that could make them both rich if sold to the right people, and Venner would know exactly who they were and how to approach them. Maybe she had even conned him into inhaling a dose of the nanos, and now
she
was controlling
him
.

But that didn't necessarily follow. He could still be in control, like a high-level parole officer; they'd be in contact; a spectrally anonymous place like this would be ideal for a covert meeting. Even if they were having sex, it might be something that she offered or he demanded but that had no bearing on the agenda.

I don't know how long I sat there. I was about to start driving home when my cell phone chirped.

My heart started hammering all over again. It was Lisa.

“I've got some things to tell you, if you still want to hear them,” she said.

I closed my eyes. “You bet I do.”

I drove straight to her house. When she opened the door, the first thing she did was hold up her wrist to show that Kelso's bracelet was gone.

I took her hand and kissed the band of paler, untanned skin that the bracelet had covered. She put her arms around my neck and pressed her forehead against my chest.

“I'm done with Parallax,” she said.

Maybe the bracelet had figured into my falling for her to start with, but if so, it was like training wheels on a bike—no longer necessary. That thrill of being with her had taken on a life of its own.

Maybe the bracelet had been clouding her mind, too. As soon as she'd taken it off, she'd started to see how she had slipped imperceptibly under Kelso's influence.

“It was like his mark of ownership,” she said. “Every time it caught my eye, I thought of him. After a while, I just took it for granted that everything he said was
right
, and I went along with it.”

I only nodded—grateful that so far, at least, we seemed to be with each other again instead of against. We moved on into the house and settled down on the upstairs balcony, talking while the last of the evening light faded.

She told me everything she knew about Parallax. I had to shelve the Venner incident until later, and decide how much I could admit to Lisa in return.

Kelso and Cynthia worked as a highly skilled team, Lisa said, with him providing the charisma and her engineering their plans. They'd been building Parallax for years, concentrating on people with money and influence. The film crowd was largely a face, a cover; most of them were a sort of fringe element, with no real knowledge of the inner workings. But there was a very select group of others—including important public figures—who kept their affiliation secret.

The powerful draw of Parallax came partly from Kelso's psychological grip, partly from the pseudoscientific overlay that his message was rational and intellectual rather than cultlike—and largely because it promised a lot in terms of worldly fulfillment, and it delivered. On the surface, this was due to the members learning to control their personal energy and open channels that led to success.

In practice, it worked more like a Ponzi scheme. The people at the top were already very successful. Covert arrangements would be made for them to do favors for the others—financial help, career boosts—so it
seemed
like the channeling was effective.

The top initiates, in turn, were rewarded by Kelso's Übermensch promise—that they were on their way to becoming superior beings, not limited just to their personal destinies, but tapping into the forces that controlled the universe.

It all brought to mind the phone call from Drabyak several weeks ago—saying there'd been several instances of influential people suddenly and inexplicably having the same kind of meltdown as Nick.

Did that explain it? Were they Parallax members who had crossed Kelso in some way, and was he punishing them—or bullying them into compliance, just as he'd done with Nick and tried to do with me? Convincing them that they'd angered the Gatekeepers?

With Cynthia and Venner now planning to continue to run the network?

Lisa stood up and paced to the balcony railing, standing with her back to me.

“There was a lot of secrecy, especially at the high levels,” she said. “Always the sense of a big power game, and those people were the players. And if any of them wanted anything, Cynthia made sure they got it.” Lisa swung around to face me, folding her arms.

“Including me, a few times,” she said. “And you're right, that's what happened with you. How it started, anyway.” She gave the railing a fierce slap. “You talked about trust, Tom. Well, there's mine.”

She stalked into the house. After a few seconds I got up and followed her, which wasn't difficult, because she'd left a trail—sandals, dress, bra, and thong peeled off and tossed on the floor as she headed for the swimming pool. By now it was full night, the patio unlit, and she obviously wasn't worried about voyeurs this time.

When I caught up to her, she was standing at the pool edge with her toes curled over the rim.

And then she dove in. It was clumsy, almost a belly flop. But it was a
dive
, by this woman who not long ago would only ease into the water timidly and was afraid to go deeper than her waist.

She came up with her shining wet hair plastered close around her head and a pleased, radiant look, like a little girl who'd just learned how to do a cartwheel.

“I've been practicing,” she said.

It was really sweet, seeing her like that.

I crouched down beside the pool with my arms clasped around my knees.

“Lisa, I don't care about what happened or how. Only about what happens from here. If you want to keep going, I couldn't be happier. But if this is just fess up and good-bye, tell me now.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “I
have
been telling you, you dope. What do I have to do, take out an ad in
Variety
? I admit, a couple of years ago, I'd have thought you were boring. But now I know you only
pretend
to be boring. You're sneaky, Crandall.”

I exhaled quietly, breathing out my pent-up tension. Maybe it was still an act; maybe she knew a lot more than she was letting on, even about the nanotechnology; maybe she
had
been in on conning me every step of the way, and she still was. But I believed her, and I would for as long as I could.

“You just going to squat there like a big old frog, or you getting in?” Lisa demanded.

I got in.

She'd also been practicing her eggbeater kick, it turned out, and wanted to show that off, too. But after a minute or so her legs ended up slipping around my waist.

“That's kind of cheating,” I pointed out. “Not that I'm complaining.”

Awhile later, lying in bed with her curled up beside me, I was sipping a drink and feeling like a new man when she nudged my shoulder with her chin.

“I just remembered something else I wanted to tell you,” she murmured.

I braced myself, abruptly afraid that this new revelation would, after all, bring my momentary contentment crashing down.

“One time—this was a year or so ago—I heard Gunnar and Cynthia talking when they didn't think anyone else was around,” she said. “But they weren't speaking English. And it seemed, like—
natural
to them, like what they'd fall into when they were alone.”

I was relieved, but here was a new puzzle. It made sense that Kelso would lapse into Swedish with another native speaker. But Cynthia seemed as American as apple pie, or more accurately, devil's food cake.

“Could you tell what it was?” I said.

“Not for sure—I don't know other languages. But actors are sponges. We pick up words, accents, just the general way things sound.

“What it sounded like to me was Russian.”

Fifty-Two

M
y cell phone rang at precisely six the next morning. I longed to ignore it, but a call that early would be important, especially lately, and even if it wasn't I didn't want the damned noise bothering Lisa on one of her rare chances to sleep in. I stumbled out of bed to her living room, where I'd left the phone, just managing to grab it before the voice mail kicked in.

“Tom, I'm sorry to bother you so early,” my mother said. Her voice was shaky with strain. “I made myself wait until now—I've been up most of the night.”

“It's fine, Mom—what's going on?” I tried to hide my alarm.

“Erica had a driving incident last night. Not a wreck, and she wasn't hurt—she's upstairs asleep now. But it scared her badly, and—and things just seem to be falling apart. I'm not feeling well, either. It would help if you were here.”

“I'll come over right now. Easy on the coffee, and a Valium wouldn't hurt.”

“No—no pills.”

What? Audrey had never abused drugs, but she sure wasn't shy about sedatives when her nerves were on edge.

“Do
you
need to see a doctor?” I said.

“We'll talk about it when you get here.”

“I'm on my way.”

Lisa had stirred at the phone's ring but drifted back off to sleep again. I stifled my urge for a kiss and scribbled a note, then got my clothes mostly on and eased out the front door, tucking in my shirt as I strode to my rented car. I opened the door and started to swing in behind the wheel.

Then sprang violently back away, as spooked as if I'd seen a rattlesnake.

An open newspaper was lying on the front seat, neatly spread out for me to see. I had not left it there, or left a window open. The car had been locked up tight, and it had an antitheft system—not to mention that this was a high-end gated community patrolled by security guards.

I leaned down cautiously to look at the paper. It was the early edition of this morning's
L.A. Times
, folded open, to the lead briefs of national news. My gaze stopped at a prominent subhead, right at the top of the page.

Stanford Physicist Blaustein Dead at 96

I straightened up again and stood there looking around helplessly, then forced myself to scan the article. Hans had gone into a coma two nights ago; he'd been alone at the time, and the speculation was that he'd fallen down and injured his head. Late last evening, he'd passed away.

Fallen down, hell. The paper hadn't been put here to tell me that.

He'd been murdered, by someone skilled enough to disguise it.

Who would have reason to kill the gentle old genius?

Venner. Cynthia. The two of them working together. Hans was a threat because he knew about Kelso's use of the nanos.

My skin was crawling with rage, fear, and guilt. If he hadn't died
because
of me, it wouldn't have happened
except
for me.

Ugly as that was, there was also a clear message attached—it could have been me instead, done as easily as they'd put the newspaper in this car. I was a child, playing a fool's game. They knew I'd been following Cynthia, knew I was driving the rental, knew where I was and when.

I tossed the newspaper into the car's trunk, got in, and started grimly negotiating my way toward my mother's house in Pasadena. There was no straight shot from Hollywood Hills, just a hectic network of boulevards and freeway interchanges, with traffic brutal even at six thirty on a Saturday morning.

Along with all the other stuff seething around in my head, a thread kept running around like a song you can't get rid of—that Lisa had overheard Kelso and Cynthia speaking a language she thought was Russian.

There was no mystery about why Kelso would be fluent in it; as Hans had pointed out, Sweden was practically next door, and he'd probably worked with Russian scientists.

But Cynthia? It was possible that she'd learned it in school, or by traveling or working there, and spoke it with Kelso to keep in practice.

But it seemed far more likely that she would lapse into it naturally because it was her native tongue—which turned up the scenario another big notch. She'd have been born when the Soviet Union was still firmly under Communist control and the Cold War was raging. For her to seem so utterly American, without a trace of accent, almost had to mean that she'd been trained intensively, probably from a very young age. Her identity was obviously solid enough for her to hobnob with powerful people, including in government circles—which almost had to mean that it had been very carefully established.

Those things taken together almost had to add up to espionage.

I'd read a history of modern Russia a few years back, and I remembered that the KGB trained female agents known as “swallows,” taking them very young from their homes or orphanages and immersing them in the world of international intrigue. Often—and especially with those of beauty and ability—the object was to plant them in foreign nations as moles, where they might make their way to high circles of government, finance and industry, intelligence—and scientific research.