“What kind of car does he drive?” said Milo. “What kind of shampoo does he use?”
“Mercedes station wagon, one year old. I'll try to find out about the shampoo. And if he uses cream rinse.”
Milo laughed.
Sharavi said, “The Mercedes is registered in Connecticut. Sanger's got a home in Darien and an apartment on East Sixty-ninth Street. He's forty-one years old, married, has two children, a boy and a girl, no record of criminal activity.”
“So Sanger's being watched.”
“For a while. I also looked up Zena Lambert, the bookstore clerk. No criminal record for her, either. She's twenty-eight years old, lives on Rondo Vista Street in Silverlake. The bookstore's nearby. She has a MasterCard but rarely uses it. Last year, she earned eighteen thousand dollars.”
He smiled. “I'll check into her hair-care, as well.”
“You surveilling her, too?” said Milo.
“Not without your agreement.”
“How long are you planning to surveil Sanger?”
“Long as necessary. In view of his belief that retarded people are- what was the phrase, Dr. Delaware-”
“Meat without mentation,” I said.
“- meat without mentation, it seems a good idea, maybe he'll do something that tells us more about the group. On both coasts.”
“Speaking of coasts, any chance of accessing his travel records?” said Milo. “Corporate lawyers fly back and forth all the time, nice cover.”
“Good idea,” said Sharavi. “I'll do it tomorrow, when offices open in New York. In view of Myers's murder, I did call all the major hotels here in L.A., just to check if Sanger's registered and he's not. But he could be traveling under a different name.”
“Thanks for all the work.”
Sharavi shrugged. “What next?”
“I've got an appointment to meet with Mrs. Grosperrin tomorrow morning, see if I can learn more about Myers, why he was lured, as opposed to some other student.”
“For one, he was black,” I said. “Every single victim- except Ponsico- was non-Anglo.”
“A racist eugenicist,” said Sharavi.
“The two have generally gone together. A look at the books Spasm sells might give us some information. Something tells me the place doesn't specialize in children's literature. When do I go?”
Sharavi's eyebrows rose.
Milo told him, “He wants to play Superspy. I blame you.”
“Are you thinking of going as yourself, Doctor?”
“I wasn't planning to show ID.”
“Then maybe you should take alternative ID.” Sharavi turned to Milo. “It's the kind of thing I could be helpful with.”
“Undercover hoo-hah?” said Milo.
“For his protection. If he's up for a bit of role-playing.”
Talking about me in the third person.
Sharavi gave me an appraising look. “You've already made progress on a beard.”
38
At that point, something in the room changed.
Milo and Sharavi found several points of agreement:
Undercover work was serious business- temporary dissociation, Sharavi called it.
“We're talking a visit to a bookstore,” I said.
“A visit that could lead to something, Doctor. You need to be extremely careful from the start.”
“Meaning?”
“Go as someone else, get comfortable being someone else.”
“Fine.”
“And,” said Milo, “you need Robin's okay on this.”
“Don't you think this is a little-”
“No, Alex, I don't. What will probably happen is you'll go there, look at some weird books, come home. Even if you do hook up with Meta, it could dead-end, maybe they're just weenies. But Daniel and I both know police work's ninety-nine percent boredom, one percent panic at the unexpected. We are dealing with a person who stabbed a blind man in the back.”
He asked Sharavi, “How long would it take you to get him false papers?”
“Half a day,” said the Israeli, “for driver's license, credit cards, social security. I can also get him clothes, if that's necessary, and a car.”
“The address on the ID,” said Milo. “Bogus or real?”
“Real is better- I know of a place in the Valley that's available right now, but I may also be able to find one in the city.”
“Just cover or actual use?”
“In the event of a prolonged role-play, he could use it.”
Milo turned to me. “What if you need to move for a while, Alex? Are you ready for that?”
Hard voice. I knew what he was thinking. The last time I'd relocated, the move had been coerced. Running from the psychopath who'd burned my house down.
“I assume we're not talking long-term.”
“Probably days, not weeks,” said Milo. “But what about patients?”
“No active ones,” I said. Since Helena Dahl had dropped out. I thought of her brother, another high-IQ suicide…
“What about old patients in crisis?”
“I can always check in with my service. Most of what I've got is paperwork- reports due.”
“Good,” said Sharavi. “So far, your lifestyle seems to fit this nicely.”
Milo frowned.
They both gave me more rules:
In order to avoid accidental slipups, I needed to use a false name similar to my real one and a personal history that grew out of my own.
“A psychologist, but not one in active practice,” said Milo. “Nothing traceable.”
“How about someone who attended psychology graduate school but dropped out before finishing?” I said. “ABD. All but dissertation.”
“Dropped out for what reason?”
“Personality conflicts,” I said. “He was too smart for them, so they messed him up during his dissertation. My instinct is that's a Meta-compatible profile.”
“Why?”
“Because people who spend lots of time talking and thinking about how smart they are generally don't accomplish much.”
Milo considered that and nodded.
“So far so good?” he asked Sharavi.
“Yes, but you should start thinking in terms of you, Doctor, not he.”
“Okay,” I said. “They messed me up because I threatened them. My research threatened them. The genetics of IQ, politically incorrect-”
“No,” said Milo. “Too close- too cute.”
“I agree,” said Sharavi. “These people may not be as smart as they think they are but they aren't stupid. You can't come in there agreeing with them too strongly.”
“Exactly,” said Milo. “Way I see it, you need to show casual curiosity but not jump on their bandwagon. If it goes that far.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling vaguely foolish. “I'm essentially an antisocial guy, don't trust groups, so I'm not itching to join any new ones… My research was on- how about sex-role stereotypes and child-rearing patterns? I did some work on that in grad school, then I switched to hospital work and never published, so there's no connection in writing.”
Sharavi wrote something down.
“Fine,” said Milo. “Go on.”
“I ran out of money, the department wouldn't support me because I refused to play the game and-”
“What game?” said Sharavi.
“Interdepartmental politics. That's also something I can talk about with authority.”
“When did all this happen?” said Milo.
“Ten years ago?”
“What school?”
“How about an unaccredited program- one that's gone out of business? During the eighties there were plenty of them.”