‘You did fine,’ Hodges assures him.

‘What if she calls Canton, Silver, and Whoozis to check? And finds out they never heard of Martin Lounsbury?’

‘Her job is to pass messages on, not investigate them.’

‘What if the Peeples guy checks?’

Hodges doesn’t think he will. He thinks the name Helen Wilcox will stop him. When he talked to Peeples that day outside the Sugar Heights mansion, Hodges caught a strong vibe that Peeples’s relationship with Helen Wilcox was more than just platonic. Maybe a little more, maybe a lot. He thinks Peeples will give Martin Lounsbury what he wants so he’ll go away.

‘What do we do now?’ Jerome asks.

What they do is something Hodges spent at least half his career doing. ‘Wait.’

‘How long?’

‘Until Peeples or some other security grunt calls.’ Because right now Vigilant Guard Service is looking like his best lead. If it doesn’t pan out, they’ll have to go out to Sugar Heights and start interviewing neighbors. Not a prospect he relishes, given his current news-cycle celebrity.

In the meantime, he finds himself thinking again of Mr Bowfinger, and Mrs Melbourne, the slightly crackers woman who lives across the street from him. With her talk about mysterious black SUVs and her interest in flying saucers, Mrs Melbourne could have been a quirky supporting character in an old Alfred Hitchcock movie.

She thinks they walk among us, Bowfinger had said, giving his eyebrows a satirical wiggle, and why in God’s name should that keep bouncing around in Hodges’s head?

It’s ten of ten when Jerome’s cell rings. The little snatch of AC/DC’s ‘Hells Bells’ makes them both jump. Jerome grabs it.

‘It says CALL BLOCKED. What should I do, Bill?’

‘Take it. It’s him. And remember who you are.’

Jerome opens the line and says, ‘Hello, this is Martin Lounsbury.’ Listens. ‘Oh, hello, Mr Peeples. Thanks so much for getting back to me.’

Hodges scribbles a fresh note and pushes it across the table. Jerome scans it quickly.

‘Uh-huh … yes … Mrs Wilcox speaks very highly of you. Very highly, indeed. But my job has to do with the late Mrs Trelawney. We can’t finish clearing her estate until we can inventory her computer, and … yes, I know it’s been over six months. Terrible how slowly these things move, isn’t it? We had a client last year who actually had to apply for food stamps, even though he had a seventy-thousand-dollar bequest pending.’

Don’t over-butter the muffin, Jerome, Hodges thinks. His heart is hammering in his chest.

‘No, it’s nothing like that. I just need the name of the fellow who worked on it for her. The rest is up to my boss.’ Jerome listens, eyebrows pulling together. ‘You can’t? Oh, that’s a sha—’

But Peeples is talking again. The sweat on Jerome’s brow is no longer imaginary. He reaches across the table, grabs Hodges’s pen, and begins to scribble. While he writes, he keeps up a steady stream of uh-huhs and okays and I sees. Finally:

‘Hey, that’s great. Totally great. I’m sure Mr Schron can roll with this. You’ve been a big help, Mr Peeples. So I’ll just …’ He listens some more. ‘Yes, it’s a terrible thing. I believe Mr Schron is dealing with some … uh … some aspects of that even as we speak, but I really don’t know anythi … you did? Wow! Mr Peeples, you’ve been great. Yes, I’ll mention that. I certainly will. Thanks, Mr Peeples.’

He breaks the connection and puts the heels of his hands to his temples, as if to quell a headache.

‘Man, that was intense. He wanted to talk about what happened yesterday. And to say that I should tell Janey’s relatives that Vigilant stands ready to help in any way they can.’

‘That’s great, I’m sure he’ll get an attaboy in his file, but—’

‘He also said he talked to the guy whose car got blown up. He saw your picture on the news this morning.’

Hodges isn’t surprised and at this minute doesn’t care. ‘Did you get a name? Tell me you got a name.’

‘Not of the I-T guy, but I did get the name of the company he works for. It’s called Cyber Patrol. Peeples says they drive around in green VW Beetles. He says they’re in Sugar Heights all the time, and you can’t miss them. He’s seen a woman and a man driving them, both probably in their twenties. He called the woman “kinda dykey.”’

Hodges has never even considered the idea that Mr Mercedes might actually be Ms Mercedes. He supposes it’s technically possible, and it would make a neat solution for an Agatha Christie novel, but this is real life.

‘Did he say what the guy looked like?’

Jerome shakes his head.

‘Come on in my study. You can drive the computer while I co-pilot.’

In less than a minute they are looking at a rank of three green VW Beetles with CYBER PATROL printed on the sides. It’s not an independent company, but part of a chain called Discount Electronix with one big-box store in the city. It’s located in the Birch Hill Mall.

‘Man, I’ve shopped there,’ Jerome says. ‘I’ve shopped there lots of times. Bought video games, computer components, a bunch of chop-sockey DVDs on sale.’

Below the photo of the Beetles is a line reading MEET THE EXPERTS. Hodges reaches over Jerome’s shoulder and clicks on it. Three photos appear. One is of a narrow-faced girl with dirty-blond hair. Number two is a chubby guy wearing John Lennon specs and looking serious. Number three is a generically handsome fellow with neatly combed brown hair and a bland say-cheese smile. The names beneath are FREDDI LINKLATTER, ANTHONY FROBISHER, and BRADY HARTSFIELD.

‘What now?’ Jerome asks.

‘Now we take a ride. I just have to grab something first.’

Hodges goes into his bedroom and punches the combo of the small safe in the closet. Inside, along with a couple of insurance policies and a few other financial papers, is a rubber-banded stack of laminated cards like the one he currently carries in his wallet. City cops are issued new IDs every two years, and each time he got a new one, he stored the old one in here. The crucial difference is that none of the old ones have RETIRED stamped across them in red. He takes out the one that expired in December of 2008, removes his final ID from his wallet, and replaces it with the one from his safe. Of course flashing it is another crime – State Law 190.25, impersonating a police officer, a Class E felony punishable by a $25,000 fine, five years in jail, or both – but he’s far beyond worrying about such things.

He tucks his wallet away in his back pocket, starts to close the safe, then re-thinks. There’s something else in there he might want: a small flat leather case that looks like the sort of thing a frequent flier might keep his passport in. This was also his father’s.

Hodges slips it into his pocket with the Happy Slapper.

5

After cleansing the stubble on his skull and donning his new plain glass specs, Brady strolls down to the Motel 6 office and pays for another night. Then he returns to his room and unfolds the wheelchair he bought on Wednesday. It was pricey, but what the hell. Money is no longer an issue for him.

He puts the explosives-laden ASS PARKING cushion on the seat of the chair, then slits the lining of the pocket on the back and inserts several more blocks of his homemade plastic explosive. Each block has been fitted with a lead azide blasting plug. He gathers the connecting wires together with a metal clip. Their ends are stripped down to the bare copper, and this afternoon he’ll braid them into a single master wire.

The actual detonator will be Thing Two.

One by one, he tapes Baggies filled with ball bearings beneath the wheelchair’s seat, using crisscrossings of filament tape to hold them in place. When he’s done, he sits on the end of the bed, looking solemnly at his handiwork. He really has no idea if he’ll be able to get this rolling bomb into the Mingo Auditorium … but he had no idea if he’d be able to escape from City Center after the deed was done, either. That worked out; maybe this will, too. After all, this time he won’t have to escape, and that’s half the battle. Even if they get wise and try to grab him, the hallway will be crammed with concertgoers, and his score will be a lot higher than eight.