The town was a surprise. Instead of the usual California farrago of styles and build-to-suit outrages to the public sensibility, it seemed all of a piece, like something out of an old black-and-white movie. In fact, it all looked hauntingly familiar, the broad main drag lined with one-and two-story frame buildings that must have dated from the forties or earlier, the hardware store, the mom-and-pop shoes and clothes shops, Mexican restaurants, coffee shop, liquor store and cantina, and he couldn't help wondering how many period pieces had been filmed here. Teen movies, no doubt. Greasers in too-perfect '55 Fords and Chevys, cruising, heading for the hop. Dreary dramas about old people when they were young. World War II weepers where the crippled hero returns to receive a mixed message and the streets run ankle-deep with schmaltz. Of course, all this could be re-created today without ever having to leave Digital Dynasty, but still, it did Bridger good to see the real deal, the actual frame-and-stucco buildings of the actual town. They were rolling down the street, going so slowly they were practically parked, when he pointed to the scrawled sheet of directions in Dana's lap and asked, “What was that number again?”
She didn't respond, didn't glance down at his finger or up at his face. She seemed as entranced as he, her head lolling against the frame of the open window, legs crossed and one foot dangling as if it was barely attached, and that made him smile-here she was, relaxed for the first time in weeks, a little road trip, the prospect of Milos and an end to her troubles working on her like a massage. He had to point again before her eyes went to his lips. “One-three-three-seven,” she said, squinting through the windshield to track the numbers on the storefronts.
There was no shortage of parking-the town seemed almost deserted-and they emerged to eighty degrees and sun and a light breeze with a distant taste of the sea riding in on it. The trees bowed and waved. A pure deep chlorophyll-rich square of green crept back from the curb across the street and wrapped itself around some monument to war veterans or a mayor gone down to the exigencies of time. It was all very-what? Very calming. Ordinary. Real.
Milos' office was above a Korean grocery that stocked nothing but Mexican specialties and beer, and Milos himself answered their knock. He was younger than Radko, thinner, with sucked-in cheekbones and tight discolored lips, but he wore his hair the same way as his cousin, gel-slicked and glistening like the nose of something emerging from the sea, with an orchestrated dangle of individual strands in front. It took Bridger a minute, and then he understood: Elvis Presley in “Viva Las Vegas.”
“So, yes,” Milos said, in the same dense indefinable accent as Radko, waving them into the office, “you are looking for a thiff, I know, I know.”
He offered them seats-two straight-backed wooden chairs-and dropped into a swivel chair behind a desk that might once have been a library table, gouged and pitted and with nothing at all on the barren plane of its surface except for a single old-fashioned rotary phone. The rest of the decor ran to patterned wallpaper, a bookcase filled with what seemed to be birdwatchers' guides and a long unbroken line of phone books, two hundred or more, that climbed up the near wall like some sort of fortification. Dana perched briefly at the edge of her chair, but almost immediately she rose and began pacing, making liberal use of her hands as she spewed out the story, Bridger elucidating and interpreting whenever Milos' gaze seemed to grow distant. It took five minutes, no more, and then she ran out of words and sat heavily beside him. They both looked to Milos, whose face revealed nothing.
“All this I know,” he said, and held out his hands, palms up. “My cousin,” he added, in a long whistling sigh.
A protracted moment swelled and receded. It was oddly silent, as if the rest of the building were deserted, the grocery notwithstanding, and hot, too hot, the pair of windows behind Milos' desk painted shut and the fan in the corner switched off-or no longer functioning. Bridger exchanged a look with Dana-she was drained, her shoulders slumped, the drama over-and he wondered what they were even doing here. Milos, as Radko had confided, mainly worked divorces, peering through suburban windows, watching motels from across the street, and his office didn't exactly inspire confidence. He was definitely low-tech. And this thief, this man in the photo, this voice on the phone, was as high-tech as you could get.
Milos finally broke the silence. “A man such as this,” he intoned, pulling open the drawer of the desk and removing a smudged file folder, “he is not so smart as you think.” He took a moment, for dramatic emphasis, and slid the folder across the table to Dana.
Inside was the fax of a police report from the Stateline, Nevada, Police Department and there, leering at them, was the now-familiar face. The man's name was recorded as Frank Calabrese, born Peterskill, NY, 10/2/70, no address given-“Transient,” the report said, “Sex M, Race W, Age 33, Ht 6–0, Wt 180, Hair BRO, Eyes BRO, SS#? D/L 820 626 5757, State NY”-and he'd been arrested for forgery at a Good Guys store, where he'd attempted to acquire credit in another person's name-Justin Delhomme-and purchase a plasma TV worth $5,000. He was carrying a second driver's license, a California license, that showed him to be a.k.a. Dana Halter, of #31 Pacific View Court, San Roque.
Bridger could feel the excitement mounting in him-here he was, the son of a bitch, “nailed”-and he glanced up at Milos in gratitude and elation, and how could he ever have doubted him? “So his real name's what, Frank Calabrese?”
Milos tented his fingers and looked wistfully at Dana, whose head was bowed as she scanned the report, oblivious. “You are jumping,” he said, never taking his eyes from Dana. “Because this is not his name, why would it be?” He shrugged. “Just another alias.”
Sensing something in the air, Dana looked up.
“But he is not so smart, you know why?” Milos went on, pointing a finger at Dana. He let out a long breath. “Because he is in love with you.”
Dana looked to Bridger as if she hadn't read him right, then turned back to Milos. “Love?” she echoed.
“With “you”,” he repeated.
“You mean, he's in too deep-he's got too much invested in this scam or whatever it is to give it up, right?” Bridger offered.
“Who you are,” Milos said, everything freighted on his lips, “he is. You can catch him now.”
Almost involuntarily, Bridger murmured, “But how?”
The sun glazed the windows, a smear of something suspended there in a tracery of false illumination. Bridger smelled his own sweat, primordial fluid, a funk of it, and he could smell Dana too, prickling and acidic. He wanted a beer. He wanted the beach, the ocean, peace and union and love, and what he had instead was this overcooked room and Radko's cousin who was so cryptic he could have been writing fortune cookies in a factory in Chinatown. “How?” he repeated.
Milos pushed the hair out of his eyes, only to have it spring back again in a spray of glistening black vectors, and then he reached into the drawer a second time and shoved a piece of paper across the table to them. On it was written a postbox number in Mill Valley. “This,” he said, drawing it out, “is where bill goes. For cell phone. The address on this account is yours and landline number too, but bill goes here.” He was smiling now. “Very friendly man in Collections. I think you know him: Mr. Simmonds?” Another shrug. “It is a small thing.”