2

The directions led him back to Hollywood Boulevard and then uphill from there along Canyon Drive through a residential district. The houses abruptly vanished as he passed between two stone columns. A sign announced Griffith Park.

The park road—Jack recognized it from dozens of films—snaked into the hills through acres of mostly scrub brush that looked sere and seared, past a picnic area and a caged kiddie playground. It ended at a small parking lot with an odd sign: CAMP HOLLYWOOD LAND, whatever that meant. His was the only car about. He got out and checked his reflection in the window glass: His T-shirt hung long and loose, leaving no hint of the pistol in his pocket.

He heard an engine roar down the road and soon a motorcycle cruised into the lot. Goren was the only rider this time. Jack watched him as he secured his bike. He wore a tight T, tucked in. It showed off his muscles but also left no place to hide a weapon. Jack saw the square of his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans, but no other bulges where there shouldn’t be. He wore sneakers—no place to hide a weapon there. Jack allowed himself to relax . . . but just a little.

Goren stepped up to him but didn’t offer to shake hands.

“I’ll need to get paid in advance.”

“Sure thing.” Jack pulled out his wallet and extracted a pair of hundreds. “Here you go.”

Goren stuffed them into a pocket and said, “We walk from here.”

Jack gestured to the empty parking lot. “Why so deserted?”

“It’s an unstaffed park, but tourists will be straggling in soon. Too bad a film isn’t in production. Then the joint would be jumping.”

Not too bad for Jack. He didn’t know what it would take to get Goren to open up about what happened down there in the bowels of Ground Zero.

He followed him across a small concrete bridge where they skirted a red-striped car gate and stepped onto an uphill dirt path. Jack noticed fresh tire tracks.

“Somebody’s been driving along here.”

“Looks like it, but you need a permit. I don’t want to get hassled.”

And Jack knew why. But then, he didn’t want to be hassled for pretty much the same reason.

Goren waved ahead along the incline. “Earth vs. the Spider had a few scenes right along here.” He pointed left to a break in the rocks. “Recognize that?”

Jack stared a moment, then saw Kevin McCarthy, in full- blown panic mode, scramble into view and run toward him.

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Goren gave him an appraising look. “You do know your stuff.”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

He looked puzzled. “Do I?”

A couple of bends in the road, then over a low rise where Goren stopped and gestured.

“We’re here.”

It all looked smaller than he’d expected, but he immediately recognized the dark maw in the rocks he’d seen so many times on reruns.

“The Bat Cave!”

“Except it’s not a cave. Take a look.”

Jack stepped closer and saw daylight on the other side.

“A tunnel.”

“Yep. The Bronson Caves are really a tunnel. It was dug through for Douglas Fairbanks’s Robin Hood. It’s got three exits into the quarry on the other side. Let’s see if you can recognize the one where Ro-Man set up his bubble machine.”

Robot Monster . . . one of the worst, cheapest-looking, most laughable sci-fi films ever made, yet Jack felt a tingle of anticipation as they entered the cave-tunnel. Dark inside, almost black, maybe fifteen feet wide, and no more than a dozen feet high. He felt as if he’d stepped into The Brain from Planet Arous or Attack of the Crab Monsters.

Okay, rein in the geek. That’s not why we’re here.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t soak up some of this film history. He couldn’t help it, he was psyched.

The shaft ran straight through the mini-mountain, maybe a hundred fifty feet from end to end. As they walked, Jack kept Goren on his left and stayed half a pace behind, keeping an eye on him.

About three quarters of the way through, side shafts to the left and right came into view. The openings were too small to walk through upright so he and Goren continued along the main shaft into the quarry beyond. As they stepped out into the light, Goren pointed to the left.

“Take a look.”

As Jack turned, Goren grabbed his right wrist in an iron grip. Before Jack could react he heard a woman’s voice behind him.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot you dead.”

Jack half turned to see Alice pointing a small, nickel-plated semi-auto his way. Looked like a .38. She’d been hiding behind an outcrop along the edge of the mouth. He noticed her hand shaking, but also saw murder in her eyes.

Jerk. He’d known Goren was suspicious of him, but never dreamed he’d involve his daughter like this. The co-conspirator theory was looking better and better.

Best course: Play dumb.

“What’s this? You’re mugging me? I don’t have much left after that two hundred I gave—”

“Drop it,” Goren said, tightening his grip. Jack could have broken it, but not a good idea with a pistol pointed at him. “We know you followed Alice from Newark.”

They did?

“What makes you think that?”

“You looked familiar last night,” he said, “but I couldn’t place you. Then I remembered seeing you at the airport. You passed within ten feet of us. When I asked Alice if you’d been on her plane, she remembered you.”

Well, damn. He tried so hard to be easy to forget. But with a hyperaware fugitive, expecting trouble from all quarters, the rules changed.

Time for a change of tactics.

He heaved a sigh of resignation. “Okay. You got me. But you don’t need the hardware. I’m not a cop.”

“I never thought you were.”

“Then who—?”

“You killed my mother!”

The words came at screech pitch, forced through Alice’s clenched teeth. She looked bug-eyed scary, ready to pull that trigger, like she knew of nothing else in the world she wanted to do more.

And at this range, she couldn’t miss.

So much for the theory that she was in on her mother’s death. But if she didn’t blame her father for it, then who—?

Later for that. Had to keep her calm.

“I killed your mother?” He pointed to Goren. “He killed your mother.”

“He did not!”

“That’s what everybody thinks.”

“But you know better!”

Who did she think he was?

“Look, I’m not here about any of that. I simply want to ask your father some questions.”

“Bullshit!” That screech again. She inched the pistol forward. “She was burned alive and now you’re here to finish the job!”

The new angle on the pistol allowed Jack a look at its safety . . . she had it in the on position.

Sweet.

“Easy, Alice, easy,” Goren said. He faced Jack. “We don’t want to hurt you—”

“I do!”

He ignored his daughter and spoke in a rush. “Look, we could kill you here and now and get away with it, but I’m sure you’ve reported back already, and they’ll only send someone else. All I want is to live in peace. You can go back and tell them I won’t say anything. I haven’t breathed a word in all these years and I’m not about to change now. I’ve proven I can keep silent. Please, there must be a way we can work this out.”

“Don’t beg, Dad.”

Baffled, Jack said, “Who do you people think I am?”

A hint of uncertainty crept into Goren’s tone. “You . . . or someone connected to you . . . you tried to kill me and my wife.”

That could simply be the story he concocted to square himself with his daughter. But he seemed to believe it himself.

Jack looked around. “Did they ever film The Twilight Zone here? Because I feel like I just stepped into it.” He faced Goren. “I’m not who you think I am. Let go of my arm. She’s got the drop on me. Let’s discuss this like civilized people.”

“Civilized?” she screeched.

Goren hesitated, then released him.

“Dad, no!”

Jack had had enough. He took a quick step toward Alice, saw her finger pull against the trigger, but it wouldn’t move. He snatched the pistol away and pushed her into her father.

“You forgot the safety.”

He made a show of flicking the lever as he trained it on them.

Goren pushed her behind him. His mouth worked but no words would come. If this were one of the movies they tended to film here, he’d be saying, It’s me you want! Kill me if you must, but let my daughter go!

Or something like that.

Jack popped the magazine from the grip, ejected the chambered shell, then tossed the pistol to Goren. He caught it and gave Jack a baffled look.

“I don’t . . .”

“Like I said: I have no idea who you think I am, but I had nothing to do with anything that happened to you in the past. I heard your name for the first time yesterday. I just want to ask you some questions.”

“Oh, God!” Alice said through the fingers pressed against her mouth. “If the safety had been off, I could have killed you.”

Jack smiled. “Trust me, lady. If the safety had been off, I wouldn’t have made that move.”

“How did you know to follow Alice?”

He looked at her. “If you’ve got something to hide on your computer, Wi-Fi is not a good choice. An investigator tapped into your e-mails.”

“Investigator?” Goren said. “Who’s investigating Alice?”

“Someone unconnected to whatever you saw down there or what happened after. Someone with questions about nine/eleven. I’m here to find the answer to one of them.”

“Are you with the government?”

“Not likely. But let me get this straight: You didn’t torch your house and you’ve been on the run from somebody other than the police?”

He nodded. “Don’t ask me who because I don’t know.”

If Goren was telling the truth—and Jack believed he was—then Weezy was right: Something more than Islamic fanaticism hid behind the fall of the Towers.

Conspiracies everywhere.

“Maybe I can find out—if you tell me what you saw. Nothing you say will be recorded anywhere. Only one other person besides myself will know, and we won’t be talking.”

“But what value—?”

“It may furnish a missing piece to the puzzle, it may be useless. The fact that someone tried to kill you tells me it’s important. So what do you say?”

Goren hesitated.

“You never know,” Jack added. “We might bring down whoever torched your place. Give you a chance to get right with the law.”

Though Jack doubted very much that would happen, it wasn’t impossible.

Goren finally nodded. “All right. Maybe somebody should know. But I gotta warn you: Some of what I’m going to say will be hard to swallow. You may think I’m crazy.”

“Don’t count on it.”

He turned to his daughter. “Wait for me down at the parking lot, Alice.”

“I want to hear this too.”

He shook his head. “It’s better if you don’t. I wasn’t supposed to see what I saw, and someone tried to kill me because I did. You’re safer not knowing. Go. Wait by the cycle.”

She hesitated, then started to walk off. Jack didn’t like the thought of her hanging out alone down there. He pulled out his keys.

“Here.” He tossed them to her. “Sit in my car.”

She made a two-handed catch and stared at him with a confused expression. He understood. She’d tried to shoot him a moment ago, now he was offering his car.

“Yeah,” he said. “Ain’t life screwy?”

She entered the tunnel with a couple of backward glances. When she was out of sight, Goren pointed to the far side of the quarry.

“Let’s talk over there.”

They found a couple of neighboring boulders and seated themselves. High on a hillside far off to his right, he could see the famous Hollywood sign. And directly before him, a familiar cave mouth.

“Ro-Man’s spot! And the place where the Blood Beast hid!”

“Yes-yes.” Goren looked annoyed. “Christ, I thought you wanted to know what happened in the wreckage.”

“I do. It’s just—”

“Well then, let’s get to it. I want this over and done with so I can get back to Alice.”

Jack sighed. So much film history . . . he’d have to let it go for now.

“Okay. I know the basics. You were part of a team of four—”

“Right. Alfieri, Lukach, and Ratner. Good guys, all of them.”

“And I know that Lukach called up and said you heard voices. ‘Experts’ later wrote that off as some acoustical trick, but I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me different.”

His expression was grim as he nodded. “Oh, yeah. Ohhhhh, yeah.”