Jonathan Kellerman - Time Bomb

“Thank you, Babbi.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Have I? Does your question have anything to do with Sophie?”

I hedged, repeated the open investigation line, thanked him for his time, and hung up. Tried Milo again beth at the station and at home. At the former, the desk officer’s boredom had progressed to torpor. Answering machine at the latter. I told it what I’d learned. Then I tried the network again.

“Mr. Crevolin’s in a meeting.”

“When will he be free?”

“I can’t say, sir.”

“I called yesterday. Dr. Alex Delaware? Regarding Ike Novato?”

“I’m sure he got your message, sir.”

“Then how about we try to get his attention with a new message.”

“I don’t really-”

“Tell him Bear Lodge claimed nine victims, not ten .”

“Barry Lodge?”

“Bear, as in the animal. Lodge as in Henry Cab- as in hunting lodge. Bear Lodge- it’s a place. It claimed nine victims. Not ten.”

“One second,” she said. “I’m still writing.”

“You can also tell him that apathy claimed the tenth. Just a few months ago. Apathy and indifference.”

“Apathy and indifference,” she said. “Is this some kind of concept for a script? ’Cause if it is, I know for a fact the season’s completely programmed and it’s really not worth pitching anything until they clear the board for the next sweeps.”

“Not a concept,” I said. “A true story. And it would never play on prime time.”

She called me back an hour later to say “He’ll see you at four,” unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.

At five to four, I walked across a network parking lot crammed with German and Swedish cars. I was wearing a tan gabardine suit and carrying my briefcase. A roving security guard in his seventies took down my name and directed me to a flight of metal stairs that led up to the second floor of the bulky deco building. On the way, I passed a canopied waiting area filled with hundreds of people lined up for tickets to the latest late-night talk show. A few of them rotated their heads to inspect me, decided I was nobody to be concerned with, and turned their attention elsewhere.

At the top of the stairs were double plate-glass doors. The reception area was big as a barn: thirty feet high, walls bare except for a giant reproduction of the network logo on the south side and, just below it, a door marked PRIVATE. The floor was travertine tile, over which a surprisingly shabby maroon area rug had been laid. In the precise center of the rug was a rectangular glass coffee table. Hard black leather sling chairs ran along both sides. On the far side of the room a young black security guard sat behind a white counter. To his left a white Actionvision monitor played some sort of game show. The sound was off.

I gave him my name. He opened a ledger, ran his finger down a page, turned to the next page, did more finger-walking, stopped, made a call on a white phone, listened, and said, “Uh-huh. Okay, yeah.” To me: “Be a couple of minutes. Whyncha have a seat.”

I tried to get comfortable in the sling chair. The glass table was empty- no magazines, not even an ashtray.

I said, “Nothing to read. That supposed to be a philosophical statement?”

The guard looked over as if noticing that for the first time, chuckled, and returned his attention to the monitor. A hefty woman in a print dress was bouncing up and down, embracing a male host who was trying hard to maintain a blow-dried smile. As the woman continued to hug him, the smile finally faded. The host tried to get loose. She held tight. Colored lights flashed in the background.

The guard saw me looking. “They turn off the sound. Don’t ask me why- I just started. That’s some kind of new show- Fair Fight , I think it is. Still trying to figure out exactly what it’s all about. What I think it is, is that you got to insult your friends, give away their secrets, in order to answer questions and win the big money.”

The host finally pried himself free of the hefty woman. She started bouncing again. The name tag on her bosom fluttered. Despite her bulk, she was firm as a canned ham. The host smiled again and pointed and said something. In the background a beauty-contest runner-up in a black mini-dress spun something that resembled a bingo bin. The camera closed in on numbers incandescing along a giant roulette wheel rimmed with flashing light bulbs.

The guard studied the screen, squinting. “Tough to know what they’re saying,” he said. “I figure a couple of more weeks on the job and I’ll be able to read lips.”

I settled back and closed my eyes. At four-ten the PRIVATE door opened and a young woman with strawberry-blond hair stepped out. She wore a sequined red T-shirt over black jeans and had a reluctant, tired smile.

“Dr. Delaware? Terry can see you now.” She gave the door a shove and walked through, leaving me to catch it. Treating walking as if it were an athletic event, she took me past a half-empty secretarial area to a short, bright hallway marked by six or seven doors. The third door was open. She said, “Here,” waited until I went in, and left.

No one was in the office. It was a medium-sized room with an eastern view of more parking lot, tar-paper rooftops, intestinal twists of hammered metal ductwork, and the smog-softened contours of central L.A. The walls were gray grass cloth; the carpeting, tight-nap industrial tinted the dull aqua of a poorly serviced swimming pool. Floating in the center was a clear-plastic desk with matching chair. Perpendicular to the desk was an anorexic couch upholstered in slate-blue tweed. Facing the desk were two blue chairs with chrome legs. Warm and comfy as an operating room.

Three of the gray walls were unadorned. The one behind the desk was filled with color animation celluloids. Cinderella. Pinocchio. Fantasia. Given what Judy had told me, I hadn’t expected political posters, but Disney took me by surprise. My gaze lingered on Snow White about to accept a poisoned apple from a gleeful crone.

A man came in, cupping his hand to his mouth and coughing. Forty or close to it, short, with a pallid, soft-featured face under a salt-and-pepper new-wave crew cut stiff with butch wax. One of the faces that had been in the group photo, younger, thinner, long hair. Second row, right, I thought. Shadowed by Norman Green’s towering height.

He stared at me. There were sooty bags under his eyes. A gold stud sparkled in his left ear. He wore a baggy black bomber jacket over a gray silk T-shirt, gray sharkskin trousers with pegged cuffs, black high-top Reeboks.

He sat down. The height of the apple in the Snow White cel was such that it appeared to sit atop his head.

William Tell in Melrose Avenue duds.

He said, “Terry Crevolin.” Incongruous bass voice.

“Alex Delaware.”

“So I’ve been told. Sit.”

As I did, he got up and locked the door. Two silk T-shirts exactly like the one he was wearing hung on dry-cleaner’s hangers from a hook on the back.

He returned to the desk, sifted through papers for a few moments, then said, “Yeah, you look like a doctor. What kind of doctor are you?”

“Psychologist.”

“Psychologist. But you know about what plays in prime time.”

I said, “I know Bear Lodge sure wouldn’t. Too long ago and times have changed. No one cares much about a hunch of radical freaks blowing themselves up.”

One of his eyes twitched. He looked at my briefcase.

We had ourselves a little staring contest. He was pretty good at it- plenty of practice, no doubt, with desperate writers pitching concepts. But I’d sat through tens of thousands of hours of therapy. On the doctor’s side of the couch. Waited out every evasion known to mankind…