“Is excellent?”

“He's still living, but no longer in Beirut. He was working for the Mossad, and they've moved him for safekeeping. Ben, there's no way for you to find him. Stay in the present, stay with me, my friend.

“I'm telling you about this forger because he works for me. I keep food on his table. I keep his secrets. And he has given me Marco and Charlie and Henri and many others. I can become someone else when I walk out of this room.”

Hours whipped by.

I turned on more lights and came back to my seat, so absorbed by Henri's story that I'd forgotten to be afraid.

Henri told me about surviving a brutal imprisonment in Iraq and how he'd determined that he would no longer be constrained by laws or by morality.

“And so, what is my life like now, Ben? I indulge myself in every pleasure, many you can't imagine. And to do that, I need lots of money. That's where the Peepers come in. It's where you come in, too.”

Henri's semiautomatic was keeping me in my seat, but I was so gripped by his story that I almost forgot about the gun. “Who are the Peepers?” I asked him.

“Not now,” he said. “I'll tell you next time. After you come back from New York.”

“What are you going to do, muscle me onto a plane? Good luck getting a gun on board.”

Henri pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket, slid it across the table. I picked it up, opened the flap, and took out the packet of pictures.

My mouth went dry. They were high-quality snapshots of Amanda, recent ones. She was Rollerblading only a block from her apartment, wearing the white tank top and pink shorts she'd had on when I met her for breakfast yesterday morning.

I was in one of the shots, too.

“Keep those, Ben. I think they're pretty nice. Point is, I can get to Amanda anytime, so don't even think about going to the police. That's just a way of committing suicide and getting Amanda killed, too. Understand?”

I felt a chill shoot from the back of my neck all the way down my spine. A death threat with a smile. The guy had just threatened to kill Amanda and made it sound like an invitation to have lunch.

“Wait a minute,” I said. I put the pictures down, shoved my hands out, as if pushing Henri and his gun and his damned life story far, far away. “I'm wrong for this. You need a biographer, someone who's done this kind of book before and would see it as a dream job.”

“Ben. It is a dream job, and you're my writer. So turn me down if you want, but I'll have to exercise the termination clause for my own protection. See what I mean?

“Or, you could look at the upside,” Henri said, affable now, selling me on the silver lining while pointing a 9-millimeter at my chest.

“We're going to be partners. This book is going to be big. What did you say a little while ago about blockbusters? Yeah, well that's what we're looking at with my story.”

“Even if I wanted to, I can't. Look, Henri, I'm just a writer. I don't have the power you think. Shit, man, you have no idea what you're asking.”

Henri smiled as he said, “I brought you something you can use as a sales tool. About ninety seconds of inspiration.”

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gizmo hanging from a cord around his neck. It was a flash drive, a small media card used to save and transfer data.

“If a picture's worth a thousand words, I'm guessing this is worth, I don't know, eighty thousand words and several million dollars. Think about it, Ben. You could become rich and famous? or? you could die. I like clear choices, don't you?”

Henri slapped his knees, stood, asked me to walk him to the door and then to put my face against the wall.

I did it – and when I woke up sometime later, I was lying on the cold cement floor. I had a painful lump at the back of my head and a blinding headache.

Son of a bitch pistol-whipped me before he took off.

I pulled myself to my feet, bumped against walls all the way to the bedroom, yanked open the drawer to my night-stand. My heart was clanging in my chest like a fire alarm until my fingers curled around the butt of my gun. I stuck the Beretta into my waistband and went for the phone.

Mandy answered on the third ring.

“Don't open your door for anyone,” I said, still panting, perspiring heavily. Had this really happened? Had Henri just threatened to kill me and Mandy if I didn't write his book?

“Ben?”

“Don't answer the door for a neighbor or a Girl Scout or the cable guy, or anyone, okay, Mandy? Don't open it for the police.”

“Ben, you're scaring me to death! Seriously, honey. What's going on?”

“I'll tell you when I see you. I'm leaving now.”

I staggered back to the living room, pocketed the items Henri had left behind, and headed out the door, still seeing Henri's face and hearing his threat.

That's just a way of? getting Amanda killed? I'll have to exercise the termination clause? Understand?

I think I did.

Traction Avenue was dark now, but alive with honking horns, tourists buying goods from racks, gathering around a one-man band on the sidewalk.

I got into my ancient Beemer, headed for the 10 Freeway, worried about Amanda as I drove. Where was Henri now?

Henri was good-looking enough to pass as a solid citizen, his features bland enough to take on any kind of disguise. I imagined him as Charlie Rollins, saw a camera in his hand, taking pictures of me and Amanda.

His camera could just as easily have been a gun.

I thought about the people who'd been murdered in Hawaii. Kim, Rosa, Julia, my friends Levon and Barbara, all tortured and so skillfully dispatched. Not a fingerprint or a trace had been left behind for the cops.

This wasn't the work of a beginner.

How many other people had Henri killed?

The freeway tailed off onto 4th and Main. I turned onto Pico, passed the diners and car repair shops, the two-level crappy apartments, the big clown on Main and Rose – and I was in a different world, Venice Beach, both a playground for the young and carefree and a refuge for the homeless.

It took me another few minutes to circle around Speedway until I found a spot a block from Amanda's place, a former one-family home now split into three apartments.

I walked up the street listening for the approach of a car or the sound of Italian loafers slapping the pavement.

Maybe Henri was watching me now, disguised as a vagrant, or maybe he was that bearded guy parking his car. I walked past Amanda's house, looked up to the third floor, saw the light on in her kitchen.

I walked another block before doubling back. I rang the doorbell, muttered, “Please, Mandy, please,” until I heard her voice behind the door.

“What's the password?”

“ 'Cheese sandwich.' Let me in.”