After my meeting with Caruthers, I went home to change out of the hospital-gift shop T-shirt. Then I headed over to the First Union Bank of Los Angeles, on Montana Avenue between a handmade-soap store and a juice place with little doormats of wheatgrass in the window.
I waited until I was in line to pull the brass key from my sneaker, and I hid it in my fist until I reached the teller's window. The security cameras were making me sweat. The emergency exit was just past the loan desk-if I hopped the rope, I could be in the alley in a few seconds. My paranoia had returned, so forcefully it seemed impossible there'd ever been the quiet life I'd been torn out of last night.
"My stepdad just died, and my mom found this key among his possessions. How can we figure out which bank it belongs to?"
The bank teller looked at me over her glasses, then took Charlie's key and examined it in the flat of her palm.
"Doesn't look like a safe-deposit key to me." She took my disappointment for greed. "Oh, honey, even if it was, I doubt the box would be filled with something your mom would want. You'd be amazed the things people keep locked up. Most of them sentimental."
"Why don't you think it's a bank key?"
She tilted it. "Well, at least ours don't have as many grooves. They're flatter, with square teeth and a cloverleaf head. Plus, this one says it belongs to the U.S. government, but we're privately owned. Banks generally are." She handed it back. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, and I'm sorry to hear about your father. I just lost my mom, so I know how hard it can be sorting through the possessions, trying to figure out how to do right by a loved one."
Her gentle smile made me feel like a heel. I thanked her and left.
The locksmith a few blocks down didn't even give me the chance to lie to him. He was a burly man with a bottlebrush mustache and an indistinct accent. "I not can copy for you. Our blanks not are thick enough, bro." He rolled the r in "bro," infusing it with an / sound.
"I don't actually need it copied."
"Unlawful-to-duplicate key require seven-pin key blank. Illegal to have seven-pin key blank, bro." A massive eyebrow contorted suspiciously, pinching his right eye. His name tag, which read ASK ME, MY NAME is: RAz!, didn't match his apparent gravity. "You are cop?"
"No, I'm not a cop."
"You not can lie about, you know."
"I know."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm a cop."
Raz eyed me, then smirked. "Listen, bro. Perhaps I get seven-pin key blank from Canada? Perhaps I copy, but it will cost extra, eh? The risk for illegal."
"I actually don't need it copied. I was hoping you could just tell me what kind of key it is."
He sighed, indignant, then knocked the key against the countertop. "It is good key, pure brass, not cheap alloy."
"I just found it. It was my stepfather's. What do you think it goes to?"
He screwed up his mouth, his mustache arching like a displeased caterpillar. "I have to guess, I say post-office box."
"Thank you."
"You want to copy, you come back here."
I shook his warm, oversize hand and came away with his business card. I said, "I promise, bro."
Crime-scene tape had been strung across the smashed-through garage door of the run-down little house in Culver City, and bullet holes pockmarked the soft wood of the facade. I'd parked a few blocks away and come over on foot, feeling safely anonymous in the thickening dusk.
I kept to the far side of the street and walked past the house, keeping my head down and my pace swift. In the footage I'd watched on the hospital room's TV, the reporter had positioned herself by the front walk where the yellow tape had come unmoored and was fluttering provocatively.
I went around the block and came back, pausing behind an empty van. The parked vehicles appeared to be empty, and I spotted no one lingering or watching the house. I wasn't surprised that the media had decamped after shooting their soft leads last night. But no ongoing surveillance from the cops? That pretty much confirmed that the terrorist story sold to the press was the flimsy cover I'd suspected it to be.
I remembered a lesson I'd learned in another life on the bleached-white tundra. Liffman's Rules: When you don't know what to do, wait longer.
It was a fairly busy street, so I walked to the corner gas station, drank a cup of dense coffee, and returned to see if anything had changed. As I turned the corner, a police car appeared, slowed a bit in front of the house, and continued on its way. They were making a cursory show of keeping an eye on the place, at least, but it still hardly felt like a terrorist watch. I wondered who made those decisions and at what level.
