"Wait!" Todd said, "They'd never be able to prove it was me."

"The point is: it is you, Todd. Whoever's put out the word about your being here is working in this building. They've probably got access to your records, your charts -- "

Todd felt a spasm of the same panic that had seized him when he'd first woken up. The horror of being trapped. This time he governed it, determined not to let Maxine see him losing control.

"So when are you getting me out of here?" he said.

"I've got a car coming at five tomorrow morning. I've told Burrows I want the security in this place tripled 'til you leave. We'll take you to the beach house in Malibu until we find somewhere more practical."

"I can't go home?" Todd said, knowing even as he floated the idea that it was out of the question. That would be the first place the journalists and the paparazzi would come looking for him.

"Maybe we should fly you out of state when you're feeling a little better. I'll call John; see if I can get him to fly you up to Montana."

"I don't want to go to Montana."

"You'd be a lot more secure up there than here. We could arrange for round-the-clock nursing -- "

"I said no. I don't want to be that far away from everything."

"All right, we'll find some place here in the city. What about your new lady-friend? Miss Bosch? She's going to be asking questions too. What do you want me to tell her?"

"She's gone. She's shooting something in the Cayman Islands."

"She was fired," Maxine said. "'Creative differences' apparently. The director wanted her to show her tits and she said no. Though God knows some of her runway work has left little to the imagination. I don't know why she's got coy all of a sudden. Anyway, she wants to talk to you. What do I say?"

"Anything you like."

"So you don't want her in on this?"

"Fuck no. I don't want anybody to know."

"Okay. It's going to be difficult, but okay. I've got to go. Do you want me to send a nurse in to give you something to help you sleep?"

"Yeah ... "

"We'll find a place for you, until you mend. I'll ask Jerry Brahms. He knows the city back to front. All we need's a little hideaway. It needn't be fancy."

"Just make sure he doesn't get wind of what's going on," Todd said. "Jerry talks."

"Give me a little credit," Maxine replied. "I'll see you tomorrow morning. You get some sleep. And don't worry, nobody's going to find out where you are or what's happened. I'll kill 'em first."

"Promise."

"With my bare hands."

So saying, she was out of the room, leaving Todd alone and in the dark.

Donnie was right, of course. This was undoubtedly the stupidest thing he had ever done. But there was no going back on it. Life, like a movie, only made sense running in one direction. What could he do but go with the flow, and hope to hell there was a happy ending waiting for him in the last reel?

A storm moved in off the Pacific in the middle of the night; the seventh storm of that winter, and the worst. Over the next forty-eight hours it would dump several inches of rain along the coast from Monterey to San Diego, creating a catalogue of minor disasters. Storm-drains overflowed and turned the streets of Santa Barbara into white-water rivers; two citizens and seven street-people were swept away and drowned. Power-lines were brought down by the furious winds, the most badly struck area being Orange County, where a number of communities remained without power for the next three days. Along the Pacific Coast Highway, where the wildfires of the previous autumn had stripped the hillsides of vegetation, the naked earth, no longer knitted together by roots, turned into mud and slid down onto the road. There were countless accidents; fourteen people perished, including a family of seven Mexicans, who'd only been in the promised land four hours, having skipped over the border illegally. All burned up together, trapped in their overturned truck. In the Pacific Palisades, the deluge carried away several million dollar homes; in Topanga Canyon, the same.

Of course all this made the business of getting Todd from the hospital to Maxine's beach-house both more lengthy and frustrating than it would have been otherwise, but it may have helped to keep the endeavor secret. Certainly there were no photographers at the hospital door when they left; nor anybody waiting for them in the vicinity of the beach-house. But that didn't mean they were out of danger. Calls to Maxine's offices inquiring about Todd's condition had multiplied exponentially, and they were now coming in from further afield -- several from Japan, where Gallows had just opened-as the rumors spread. One of the German reporters had even had the temerity to suggest that Todd was undergoing plastic surgery.

"I gave him hell. Fucking Kraut."

"Aren't you German on your mother's side?"

"He's still a fucking Kraut."

Todd was sitting in the back of Maxine's Mercedes, with Nurse Karyn -- who had been thoroughly investigated by Maxine and judged reliable -- at his side. The nurse was a woman of few words: but those she chose to utter usually carried some punch.

"I don't see why y'all give a damn. I mean, what does it matter if somebody gets wind of it? He just got a chemical peel and a few nips and tucks. What's the big deal?"

"It's not something Todd's fans need to know about," Maxine replied. "They've got a certain idea of who Todd is."

"So they'd think it wasn't too masculine?" Nurse Karyn said.

"Shall we just move on from this?" Maxine said, catching Nurse Karyn's gaze in the driving mirror, and shaking her head to indicate that the conversation -- or at least this portion of it -- was at an end. Todd, of course, saw none of this. He was still bandaged blind. "How are you doing, Todd?" Maxine said.

"Wondering how soon -- "

"Soon," Maxine said. "Soon. Oh, by the way, I had a word with Jerry Brahms, and told him exactly what we needed. Two hours later he came back to me, said he had the perfect house for you. I'm going to see it with him tomorrow"

"Did he tell you where it was?"

"Somewhere up in the hills. Apparently, it was a place he used to go and play when he was a kid. I guess this is in the forties. He says it's completely secluded. Nobody's going to come bothering you."

"He's full of shit. They have fucking bus tours up in the hills. Every other house has somebody famous living in it."

"That's what I told him. But he swore this house was ideal. Nobody even knows about the canyon it's in. That's what he said. So we'll see. If it isn't any good for you, I'll keep looking."

Later that afternoon, Burrows came out to the beach-house to change Todd's dressings. It was a surreal ritual for all concerned: Todd semi-recumbent on the deco sofa in the large window overlooking the beach, Maxine sitting at a distance, nursing an early vodka stinger, Burrows -- his confidence tentatively back in place after the prickly exchanges of the previous day -- chatting about the rain and the mud-slides while he delicately removed the bandages.

"Now the area around your eyes is going to be a little gummed up," he warned Todd, "so don't try and open your eyes until I've done some cleaning."

Todd said nothing. He was just listening to the boom of his heart in his head, and outside, the boom of the storm-stirred waves. They were out of step with one another.

"I wonder," Burrows said to Maxine, "if you'd mind closing the blinds a little way? I don't want it to be too bright in here when I uncover Todd's eyes."

Todd heard Maxine crossing to the window; then the mechanical hum of the electric blinds as they were lowered.

"I think that'll be far enough," Burrows said. A click, and the hum stopped. "Now, let's see how things look Hold very still, Todd, please."