Parallelities (5 page)

“It’s fair.” Boles led him up the stairs and back through the eclectic but subdued den. The reporter breathed an inner sigh of relief when they reached the front door. Right up to the end, Boles had seemed stable enough—but you could never tell. Max had learned soon after starting out that it was important never to let your guard down in the presence of the truly wacky. “Although since I passed fifty, I tend to fall off the board a lot more.”

Max allowed the other man to open the door for him. Heading out and not wishing to leave his kindly host wholly downcast, he volunteered what he hoped would be construed as a mildly backhanded compliment. “At least you’re not doing cold fusion.”

It was Boles’s turn to laugh. “Not me. I’m into science, not fantasy.” He stared out into the gathering darkness. Cool coastal fog was starting to creep onshore. “Can I offer you something to eat? My fridge serves as sort of an unofficial annex for the Pacific Rim Deli down in Malibu. How about a corned beef or pastrami on rye? Or I could nuke some brisket?”

“No thanks. I’ve got work to do at home and I’ll heat something up there. Good luck proving your theories and finding your parallel worlds, Barry. Of all the, um, revolutionaries I’ve interviewed, you’re one of the few I’d actually like to see succeed. Better a para world than a para normal.”

“I expect that’s para for the course.” The inventor grinned as Max winced.

Half a story was better than none, he decided as he guided the Aurora down the winding access road toward the coast and the highway. It was too bad Boles was so damn normal. It muted Max’s enthusiasm for the ferociously caustic piece he had planned to write. As for the pictures he’d taken, including those of his host, the touch-up guys in the photo department could spice them up as required. Electronic image manipulation had been a tremendous boon to the likes of the
Investigator
, where any story, no matter how imaginative or outrageous, could now be supported by photographic “evidence.”

The gate guard did not look up from his TV as Max exited the walled compound and turned south onto the highway. It was a crisp, windless night, the fog was atmospheric rather than intrusive, and he was able to enjoy the drive down through Malibu and into the city. Once back up on the bluffs, he headed briefly south on Ocean until he could turn down Appian Way toward his building. The electric garage gate responded swiftly to his remote.

He was relieved to see that his parking space was empty.
Late-night visitors tended to appropriate unused stalls on the assumption that their owners were out for the evening, instead of parking in those spaces that had been reserved for them. He backed in effortlessly.

It had been a productive, if busy, day, and he was feeling very good about himself as he took the elevator to the top floor, exited, and strolled to the far end of the hall. His was the last apartment on the left, near the front of the building and facing the water. Fumbling in a pocket, he pulled out his key.

He did not need it. The door to his apartment was ever so slightly ajar. Muted light emerged from within.

It was too late for the manager to come calling, he thought furiously. Besides, the building’s manager, an affable guy named Tim, was not in the habit of paying uninvited visits to tenants’ apartments, much less hanging out in them for extended periods of time. The same held true for repairmen, and in any case, nothing in his place was broken. That left two possibilities; a thief, or one of the several women friends to whom he had extended the courtesy of a key. Living in a beachfront apartment in L.A. offered benefits beyond a view.

Who had his key, and who might have dropped in to surprise him? He struggled to remember. Leaving the door ajar might be a certain lady friend’s way of teasing him in, in which case the longer he stood there toying mentally with possibilities the longer he was putting off nascent pleasures. Leaning close to the crack, he listened intently. No banging or
bashing about piqued his interest, but neither did he hear the stereo softly pumping out Yanni or Barry White, either.

He considered alerting the manager or retreating to the garage to use the cellular phone in his car to call the police. If his visitor was feminine and less than immoderately dressed, however, the arrival of several cops clutching drawn pistols and nighttime attitudes was likely to dampen the mood some-what. Dare he risk that? It certainly seemed the most likely explanation. After all, his was a security building.

Putting on his best smile, he pushed the door aside and entered. At the same time, a figure emerged from his bedroom to greet him. It was clad entirely in black. Not black lace, but black sneakers, socks, jeans, and long-sleeved overshirt. In silhouette it did not in any way remotely resemble the feminine form, and it was carrying the twenty-inch Trinitron that under normal circumstances reposed sleekly atop the dresser by the foot of his bed.

“Aw, shit!” Catching sight of Max, the man promptly set the TV down gently on the nearby coffee table. “Look, don’t call the cops, man! I’m leaving quietly, see? I didn’t take nothing else and I ain’t taking nothing. Gimme a break, man! I’ve been hungry.”

“Hungry, my ass!” The outraged reporter was emboldened by the fact that the would-be burglar displayed nothing in the way of a weapon. The intruder was also several inches shorter than the outraged tenant and slim to the point of emaciation.

“Aw, shit!” exclaimed a new voice unexpectedly.

Turning, Max saw a second man standing in the doorway behind him. He was exactly the same height and weight as the burglar, wore exactly the same clothes, spoke with precisely the same intonation and phrasing …

He was, in point of fact, an uncannily exact duplicate of the equally stupefied burglar presently standing slack-jawed in the middle of Max’s den.

“W
ho the hell are you?” the newcomer inquired sharply the instant he caught sight of Max’s unwanted visitor.

“Screw you, Jack!” The would-be television hoister’s expression flattened like a punctured tire. “Son-of-a-bitch but you look a lot like me.”

Ignoring a stunned Max, the newcomer marched into the room. “A
lot
like me? Shit, you look
just
like me!”

“Just like who?” A third visitor made his presence known as he wandered in from the hallway. He wore black sneakers, black socks, black jeans, and a black long-sleeved pullover shirt. All three men shared the same attitude, not to mention the same eyes, the same disreputably acquired notch in their right ears, the same beer stain on the hem of their shirts, and the same edgy irritation. They clustered together in the middle
of the modest den alongside the coffee table and the nearly purloined Sony, and argued vociferously.

Max quietly closed the door, then turned and waved. “Hi. Remember me?”

Going silent simultaneously, they turned to look at him for the briefest of moments before returning to their arguing. This was complicated by the fact that they often had the same thought concurrently and attempted to give voice to it at exactly the same moment. The ensuing confusion created by identical-sounding overlapping voices only added to their exasperation.

I’m being burgled by triplets
, Max thought wildly.
Triplets who don’t seem to know each other.

“Hey,” declared the first intruder, “we can sort this out. After all, you guys sound like fellas I could get along with.” He gestured in Max’s direction. “But first we’ve got a job to do, and that doesn’t include letting Mr. Homeowner here run around loose.”

Max didn’t resist. There were three of them and they were all probably crazy to boot. He let them tie him to one of the kitchen chairs and watched while they sat calmly in his den and argued energetically. One of them had the nerve to go to the refrigerator and help himself to three of Max’s choicest cold brews. Their subsequent exclamations of delight indicated that, unsurprisingly, they all favored the same brand of beer. This mutual bonding gave him time to note that the similarities between the three extended far beyond the
superficial. Even their hand gestures were so similar as to be indistinguishable.

After some thirty minutes of increasingly jovial camaraderie, they rose and shook hands. The one who had been carrying the bedroom TV heaved it back up off the coffee table while his companions cleanly and efficiently disconnected his stereo and desk computer. In response to his frantic pleading they graciously left him his backup disks, whereupon after making a quick check of the hallway to insure that it was empty, they filed out the door and closed it behind them. His neighbors, he knew, would invariably tell the police they hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

His restraints were tight but not painfully so. In less than an hour he managed to twist and wriggle free. Though far too late to do any good, the police responded with admirable speed.

He sat morosely in his den while a middle-aged officer with short blond hair and the first stirrings of middle-aged paunch dispensed professional empathy, asked questions, and took notes. Her partner made the obligatory sweep of the apartment, looking for nonexistent fingerprints (true pros that they were, the three thieves had never removed their black gloves) and other information that would prove useful. Neither they nor Max held out much hope of seeing his property again, but they were at least sympathetic.

“I’m sorry we can’t be more encouraging, Mr. Parker, but I’ve learned it’s better to be straight with people than raise
false hopes. We do solve many of these household burglaries, but not as many as we’d like.” She put her pen and pad back in her shirt pocket.

He nodded listlessly. “I can imagine how many petty thefts you have to deal with every week,” he muttered.

She looked down at him. “I won’t lie and say they’re a priority, Mr. Parker. This is Los Angeles, after all. At least they didn’t get away with anything irreplaceable.” Recognition brightened her expression. “Parker, Parker. Maxwell Parker? Don’t you write for that newspaper, the
Investigator?”

He offered a wan smile. “That’s me.”

“I remember reading your story on the Mexican Bermuda Triangle and how it was all tied in with those descendants of the Aztecs who are still living up in the mountains. You’re a good writer.”

“Thank you. That story took a lot of research.” To be precise, ten minutes with a little-used library copy of DeSoto, he remembered.

“Yeah, I could tell. I read a lot, and you can always tell when a writer’s done their homework or not.” Frowning, she pulled the pad and pen back out and returned to her note-taking. “You’re sure these three guys all looked alike?”

“I told you.” He looked up tiredly from where he was seated. “They didn’t just look alike. They were triplets. For all I know, all their talk about not knowing each other was part of some demented routine they use to disorient their victims. Or amuse themselves. There are a lot of frustrated stand-up
comics in this town. Maybe these three hope that someday they’ll be robbing someone in the entertainment business who’ll hire them to appear at the Comedy Club.” He eyed the vacant shelving where his stereo had previously reposed. “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Instead of the Brothers Karamazov we’d have the Brothers Sutton.”

“The brothers who?” The cop gave him a blank look.

“Forget it.”

She scratched at the back of her blond crew cut and shrugged. “Triplets, huh? Well, that’ll save space on the duty board. One artist’s rendering will be enough.” She grinned and turned toward the bedroom as her partner emerged. “Find anything, Remar?”

“Cigarette butts.” The cop held out a palmful of crumbled debris. “Three of ’em. Same brand, all smoked down to the same length before being discarded.”

“Well, that’s it, then. We’ve got them now,” Max muttered.

“There’s no call for sarcasm, Mr. Parker.” The female and senior half of the investigating team eyed him disapprovingly. “Don’t knock the evidence before it’s processed. You never know what’s going to give the bad guys away. Neither do they, or they’d be more careful. The department recovers stolen property all the time. You might get lucky. Of course, you’ve used an electric engraving pen to mark all your valuables in an inconspicuous place with your driver’s license or Social Security number or some other easily recognizable code.”

“Uh, no,” he confessed, his self-righteous sardonic condemnation of metropolitan police procedures instantly deflated.

The officers exchanged a knowing glance. “Citizens always do all they can to make our jobs easier.”

“There were three of them!” Who was the victim here? he reminded himself. “Triplets! They ought to be easy to find.”

“Only if they hang out together when they’re not working.” She put away her notebook. “We’ll call you if we have any news or make any progress, Mr. Parker. Meanwhile, keep on writing. I’ll look forward to more of your articles. Oh, and I suggest you contact your insurance company if you haven’t already.”

With a tip of her hat she followed her partner out the door, thoughtfully closing it softly behind her. Max was once more alone in his apartment, sans stereo, Sony, and computer. The emptiness he felt was not internal.

Sitting and brooding would get him only an ulcer, and he did not need to add to the aggravation he received daily in the course of his work. Taking the departed cop’s sound advice, he called his insurance representative, explained what had happened, and detailed the thievery. The agent promised him a check to cover his losses within two days—minus his deductible, of course.

Muttering under his breath about the injustices life visited on the virtuous, he made ready for bed. It was the first time he had ever been burgled, and living in Los Angeles, he knew it
would likely not be the last. Not as long as he lived in a nice place at the beach.

The beach. Silent recitation of the very word seemed to soothe him. He had notes enough for two stories in the can, both safely stored in the laptop computer locked in his car. He’d work on them in the morning and take the afternoon off. The weather was predicted fine, the sand shouldn’t be crowded, and he would let the afternoon sun melt away his trauma. He went to bed feeling better than he had anticipated. What the hell, his deductible was reasonable and he’d been wanting to get a new stereo anyway.

Many of the city’s residents kept an earthquake emergency kit handy in their homes. Drinking water, food bars, medical supplies, and so on. Max maintained an equally compact beach emergency kit: suntan lotion, towel, Walkman, and so on. Thus equipped, he exited the building the following afternoon, crossed Ocean Avenue, hotfooted it across the already baking asphalt parking lot, and trudged past the steel swings and monkey bars until he found a spot where the sand began to slope toward the water.

The ostinato pounding of the surf was already relaxing him as he spread out his towel, pinned one corner down with the compact chilled cooler, adjusted his shades, and took a seat. By the time he started slathering on the tanning lotion he was feeling no pain. He’d spent the morning polishing the story on
Mrs. Collins’s medium and the conversation the two of them (leaving himself out of the equation) had had with her recently deceased offspring. Tonight or tomorrow he would bestow equal treatment on the amiably mad Barrington Boles and his colorful if impotent parallel-world machine. Two substantial stories in twice as many days would net him a nice paycheck in addition to Kryzewski’s grudging compliments.

Meanwhile he could spend the rest of a truly fine day lying back and watching the gulls, pelicans, joggers, and surfers. The rewards of the righteous, he told himself without a hint of false modesty.

When the bounty presented itself, or rather herself, he knew for a certainty that God was Just.

She was not simply pretty. Los Angeles was overrun with pretty girls. No, the visitant was drop-dead gorgeous, a fully-matured member of the migratory species instantly identifiable to those who did their socio-scientific homework as
Starletus californicus.
As matters developed, it was not his irresistible good looks that had drawn her to him, nor his instant recognizability within his singular profession, but something much more prosaic.

“It sure is hot today,” she said musically, her words drifting down between her ample breasts. “I saw your cooler. Is there any chance I could have a sip? Just water would be fine.”

Pushing his shades rakishly up onto his forehead, he smiled up at her. “Sorry. Can’t help you there.”

“Oh.” Her expression fell and she started to turn away. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No, no.” He sat up so fast he nearly lost the shades. “I mean there’s no water.” He fumbled with the cooler’s latch. “What would you like: RC, Sprite, or beer?”

She knelt down next to his beach towel, an altogether enchanting series of movements that he perceived as one. “An RC would be great.”

He handed her the chilled can, wishing he had an insulating jacket, and ice, and a glass. Not to mention champagne. “My name’s Max. Max Parker.” He gestured toward the parking lot and the street beyond. “I live here. My apartment’s right across the street.”

“Hi—I’m Sherri.” She followed the gesture. “You live right here? At the beach? Cool!”

If he had scripted the encounter himself it could not have been going any better. “Yeah, I’ve been here for a couple of years now. I’m a reporter.”

“Really? Television?” Bright blue Midwestern eyes sparkled.

“No. Newspaper.” He sipped his own soda.

“Oh.” Her disappointment was as palpable as her pout was lubricious.

“Nationally distributed,” he added hopefully.

The addendum still did not carry the cachet of television, but some of the initial sparkle returned to the visitant’s eyes.

“You ever do any stories on the entertainment business, Max?”

“All the time,” he replied offhandedly, as if Hollywood were his daily beat.

Her full interest returned. “That’s great! You know, I’m an actress, like my sisters. We’re from—well, you wouldn’t recognize the name of the town, but it’s west of Omaha. Would you like to meet them?”

Before he even had time to consider a reply, she was standing and waving, shouting up the beach. He looked in the direction she was facing, but the sun was in his eyes and he was loath to pull down the shades lest it minimize his view of even the tiniest part of her perfect figure.

Several shapes rose from the distant sand and came running, laughing and chattering as they approached, a tripartite cornucopia of irrepressible young feminine beauty. Like the redoubtable Sherri, two were blondes. The third was a redhead. The sisterly similarity was immediately noticeable. Remarkable, even.

Now where, he thought, had he recently encountered a similar situation?

While part of him was becoming distinctly warmer, and not from the broiling rays of the Southern California sun, the rest of him was growing cold. The internal conflict left him feeling distinctly uncomfortable.