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“We made good time,” Baxter said, as they pulled into the parking lot. The motel was a dump; if there was anything on the front façade that wasn’t peeling, Letty couldn’t see it. “Not quite dark.”
Letty: “Yeah. Let’s get a key. You can take thirteen minutes to clean up while I haul the drums inside. Then you can call Delores while I’m cleaning up, and we’ll go scout out Caltech and this Professor Harp guy.”
“Already? Tonight?”
“We’re in a hurry, remember?”
“Yeah.” He was suddenly glum again. “Shit just got real, huh?”
Four
Caltech was a bust.
They walked around the campus, which had tasteful landscaping surrounding boring stuccoed buildings—Baxter referred to it as “a symphony in beige”—and was oddly quiet for a university. There were few people on the interior sidewalks in the evening, or strolling between the buildings, although the buildings were still lit.
“Everybody’s studying?”
“More like watching porn,” Baxter said. “It’s the opiate of the coding class.”
The school was adjacent to a residential neighborhood of well-kept homes on its south and east sides, including the home of Professor Eugene Harp.
Harp lived off Arden Road, three blocks south of the campus. They cruised the curving street in the pickup. As they passed Harp’s house, Baxter said, “I’ll tell you what—if he bought half of thatplace for one-point-three, he got a crazy deal. Maybe he had something on her.”
Harp’s house was a sprawling stone-and-board two-story house of no particular architectural style—“California nice”—set above the street in a heavily treed landscape. They could see bright shimmering light coming from the backyard and could hear the thump of soft-rock music. A half-dozen cars were parked in a long circular driveway in front of the house.
“Nothing in the driveway but junk,” Baxter said, checking the collection of small Toyotas and Hondas.
As they lingeredon the street, a group of four young people, three men and a woman, strolled down the sloping street, up Harp’s driveway and around the side of the house to the back. As they walked, they passed a joint between them.
“Party,” Letty said.
Baxter: “I don’t like the way you said that.”
“Let’s get back to the motel,” Letty said. “I need to change into something more party-like.”
“I don’thaveanything party-like,” Baxter said.
“That’s okay,” Letty said. “You’re not invited.”
“Ah, man... this is...”
“C’mon, c’mon,” Letty said impatiently.
At the motel, Letty changed into a blue cotton sleeveless blouse that showed the tips of the raven’s wings on her back, a washed-out denim skirt that fell barely south of criminal and, at the waistband, freed the butterfly tattoo, and plastic flip-flops. Baxter looked at her, shook his head and said, “Not fair.”
She didn’t ask him what wasn’t fair because she had an idea what he meant, and instead asked, “Too much?”
“No. You could lose the bra, but that would be asking for trouble. I dunno. What do I know? The cane and the knee support makes you look weird, with the skirt, but hot-weird.”
“That’s good,” Letty said. “Hot-weird, I’ll take that.”
She was checking herself in a full-length mirror that was covered with coppery amoeba-shaped corrosion spots. As close as she could tell, through the spots, Baxter’s assessment was accurate; she’d keep the bra, which, in any case, wasn’t much sturdier than Kleenex.
“Please, please don’t do anything that will cause trouble,” Baxter said.
“I’m going to a party,” Letty said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Baxter had no more complaints. He dropped her a block from Harp’s house, said, “Be careful,” and drove away. Letty shoved her NSA phone into the denim skirt’s side pocket, adjusted the knee support, and limped around the house, leaning lightly on the blackthorn cane.
