Leaving by the back of the house meant I had to pass the parlor, where Hutch brooded about the wife and son he’d never had and about how lonely and vulnerable he was after losing them.
I did not mind if he called me an ungrateful little shit again; that was merely rehearsal for a possible visit from a representative of the horde. The quick shower, the change of clothes, and the chat in the kitchen with Hutch had cost me twenty minutes, however, and I was anxious to locate Annamaria.
“Odd,” he said as I tried to move past the open parlor doors with the stealth of a Special Forces op in camouflage and sound-suppressing footgear.
“Oh, hi.”
Roosting in his armchair with a chenille throw across his lap, as if keeping eggs warm in a bird’s nest, he said, “In the kitchen a little while ago, when we were talking about what a useful bit of wardrobe a cardigan can be …”
“A tattered cardigan,” I qualified.
“This may seem a peculiar question. …”
“Not to me, sir. Nothing seems peculiar to me anymore.”
“Were you wearing pants?”
“Pants?”
“Later, I had the strangest impression that you hadn’t been wearing any pants.”
“Well, sir, I never wear pants.”
“Of course you wear pants. You’re wearing them now.”
“No, these are jeans. I only have jeans—and one pair of chinos. I don’t consider them pants. Pants are dressier.”
“You were wearing jeans in the kitchen?”
As I stood in the parlor doorway, holding a bag of ice to the lump on the side of my head, I said, “Well, I wasn’t wearing chinos, sir.”
“How very peculiar.”
“That I wasn’t wearing chinos?”
“No. That I can’t remember them.”
“If I wasn’t wearing chinos, you wouldn’t remember them.”
He thought about what I had said. “That’s true enough.”
“Just enough, sir,” I agreed, and changed the subject. “I’m going to leave you a note about the dinner casserole.”
Putting aside the novel he had been reading, he said, “Aren’t you cooking dinner?”
“I’ve already made it. Chicken enchiladas in tomatillo sauce.”
“I love your tomatillo enchiladas.”
“And a rice and green-bean salad.”
“Does the rice have green sauce, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, good. Do I heat them in the microwave?”
“That’s right. I’ll leave a note about time and power.”
“Could you put Post-its on the dishes?”
“Take the Post-its off before you put the dishes in the oven.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t make that mistake. Again. Going out?”
“Just for a little while.”
“You aren’t leaving for good, are you?”
“No, sir. And I didn’t steal Corrina’s jewelry, either.”
“I was a diamond merchant once,” Hutch said. “My wife conspired to have me killed.”
“Not Corrina.”
“Barbara Stanwyck. She was having an affair with Bogart, and they were going to run off to Rio with the diamonds. But, of course, something went very wrong for them.”
“Was it a tsunami?”
“You have a sly sense of humor, son.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“No, no. I like it. I believe my career would have been much bigger if I’d been able to get roles in a few comedies. I can be quite funny in my own way.”
“I’m well aware.”
“Barbara Stanwyck was consumed by flesh-eating bacteria, and Bogart was hit by an asteroid.”
“I’ll bet the audience didn’t see that coming.”
Picking up the book again, Hutch said, “Do you enjoy the fog so much that you want to take a second walk in it, or is there something else I should know?”
“There’s nothing else you should know, sir.”
“Then I will wait for the doorbell and denounce you as a fiend to anyone who asks.”
“Thank you.”
In the kitchen, I emptied the ice-filled OneZip bag into the sink and tossed it in the trash.
The lump on my head remained the size of half a plum, but it no longer throbbed.
On two yellow Post-its, with a blue pen, I wrote directions for heating the enchiladas and the rice salad. With a red pen, I printed REMOVE THIS TAG BEFORE PUTTING IN OVEN.
Standing at the kitchen island, I went through the contents of the wallet that I had taken off Flashlight Guy.
In his California driver’s-license photo, I recognized the man I had left lying on the beach, although he only slightly resembled something conjured out of a witch’s cauldron. His name was Samuel Oliver Whittle. Thirty years old, he had an address in Magic Beach.
In his Nevada driver’s-license photo, he smiled broadly at the camera, which was a mistake. His smile transformed his face, and not in a good way. He looked like a lunatic villain from a Batman movie.
Nevada, where he had an address in Las Vegas, knew him as Samuel Owen Bittel. In Vegas, he was two years older than he claimed to be in his California incarnation, but perhaps a Las Vegas lifestyle aged a person prematurely.
He had no credit cards. This made him suspicious in a country that not only looked to the future but lived on the earnings from it.
The wallet contained no insurance card, no Social Security card, nor any of the other ID you might have expected.
An employee-identification card revealed that he worked for the Magic Beach Harbor Department.
Suddenly a theme had developed. Perhaps the hulk with the chin beard had not taken the inflatable dinghy without permission; maybe he had the authority to use it because he, too, worked for the harbor department, which also had responsibility
