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Baxter shook his head, but kept his mouth shut.
When Letty told Baxterto put Benjamin Able’s address in his phone navigation app, he frowned. “We’re going to West Hollywood tonight? Now?”
“Why not? I thought you criminal hackers stayed up all nighthacking. Big Gulps and bags of Cheetos and weed-smoking hippie chicks with thick glasses, D-cups, crossed eyes, and overbites.”
“More movie bullshit,” Baxter said, as he started the truck. “But then... I almost forgot: this isn’t real life. I’m in a bad movie. I’m not even the hero. I’m fuckin’ Wile E. Coyote.”
On the wayacross town, Letty called the phone number of Craig Sovern. It rang seven times, then went to a recording, which informed her that his voicemail was full. She hung up.
Baxter asked, tentatively, “Do you ever think of yourself as a criminal?”
“What? No. Sometimes... in my kind of job... you might have to do something that’s technically illegal,” Letty said. “Always for a good cause.”
“Like beating the shit out of a harmless computer professor?”
“Think about Harp and the two women we know about—I wouldn’t say he’s harmless.”
“Not everyone would agree,” Baxter said.
“I’m not everyone. I make up my own mind and go with it.”
“I looked you up, you know? When your name was first mentioned, before the NSA changed everything in your file,” Baxter said. “You’ve killed five people. Your father has killed even more. Some people might argue that you’re a family of psychopaths...”
Long silence, then:
“I have this theory that everyone is a little mentally ill,” Letty said. “No such thing as perfectlynormal. You’ve got all these branches extending out of some kind of theoretical normalcy. You’ve got the schizophrenic branch, the paranoid branch, thepsychopathic branch, the sociopathic branch, the manic-depressive branch, the clinically depressive branch, the OCD branch, and so on. Nobody is dead center. Everybody is out on one of those branches. Or more than one. If you’re too far out, you’re nuts. If you’re just a little way out, you’re fine, but you have a tendency.”
“Where are you?”
“A little paranoid, maybe a little manic, a little sociopathic...”
“I’m purely paranoid, right?” Baxter asked.
“I don’t think you’re paranoid at all, Rod. You gotta face it, peopleareout to get you,” Letty said. “Not just Ordinary People. Your own bosses forced you to do something you didn’t want to do and that could get you hurt, maybe even killed. Harp tried to turn you over to the FBI and send you to prison. Nope, you’re not paranoid. You’re wary.”
“Maybe I’m normal.”
“Mmm... no. Given the fact that you’re grossly overweight, you swill coffee and Coke like it’s about to be banned, I’d say you’re depressive, maybe with clinical episodes, and trying to self-medicate,” Letty said. “And possibly, a bit obsessive-compulsive.”
Another long silence. Then, “Yeah. You could be right.”
Benjamin Able livedin a long, low, rectangular building in West Hollywood, a relic of the post–World War II construction boom—flaking brown stucco under a flat roof, a line of four evenly spaced windows between two standard entry doors, with a double garage door at one end. “Not a house. Didn’t start that way, anyhow. Looks like it was a shop of some kind,” Baxter said.
“There’s a light in the back,” Letty said. “Let’s walk around there and look in a window.”
“Why don’tyougo look in a window. I’ll sit here with the engine running.”
Letty thought about it for a second, then said, “Right. I’ll call you if I get in.”
Letty got out of the truck with her cane, walked up to one of the entry doors on the building, tugged on it. It was locked, but an outside light came on, apparently linked to a motion sensor. When nobody came to the door, she walked around the side of the building to a narrow backyard, which was surrounded on three sides by a chain-link fence and on the fourth by the building. She let herself through an unlocked gate and walked along the back of the house to a lighted window.
She wasn’t tall enough to see in. There was enough ambient light in the yard to see a pile of brush on one side, with several small stumps sitting upright beside it. She walked over, picked up a stump, leaned it against the house, climbed on it, and looked in the window.
Inside, a man was playing an electric guitar while watching a Bob Dylan video on YouTube. He was burly, but not like Baxter—more muscle, little fat. Letty rapped on the window. The man stopped playing, looked around, puzzled. Letty could see that he had a modest black beard, a shock of black hair, and round wire-rimmed glasses. She rapped harder.
He put the guitar on a stand and looked around again. Letty rapped once more, and he looked at the window, stood up, and walked over to it. Letty said, loudly, “Open the window.”
He did, sliding it sideways. “Go away. You’re not getting a nickel.”
