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IF you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
—Merchant of Venice,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
WOODCREST APARTMENTS,
SOUTH MARKET PARK
12:00 P.M. PDT
THE TELEVISION FOR MONITORING the apartments’ security cameras was a black-and-white 13-inch Zenith probably manufactured when Reagan was president and though the picture wasn’t great, it was good enough for Carmella and Elmond’s purpose.
On the screen was Norcestor, a wide, steep street. It was night, but given a combination of streetlights, the apartment’s own floodlights and the fact, as the maintenance man explained, “high-speed videotape picks up things better in the dark, so we can even watch the kids around here when they’ve busted out the floods and think they’re getting away with something the eye won’t see,” given all that, the picture was surprisingly bright. Now, on the screen, they watch what happened last night at, according to the tape, 2:51 A.M.. Down the street a bit and on the other side, a city transit bus stops. Pulling away, it reveals a figure trudging up the hill that, growing closer, resolves into Miss Fellatia D. Jones, plastic shopping back in hand and head down, a tired woman returning home late. Pausing, she looks down the street and then up, before stepping off the curb. She’s not walking quickly and has reached only the halfway mark when she is picked up by lights growing quickly in brightness. Miss Jones begins to jog and then run as the car appears onscreen, a dark Hummer that barely weaves to miss as she jumps out of the way and lands awkwardly on her knee. The vehicle, speed undiminished, hurtles along and into the night.
Miss Jones was writhing on the ground and holding her knee as Carmella said, “Rewind it and run it at quarter-speed.”
Again they watch Miss Jones crossing the street as she’s lit by the car’s headlights. As the vehicle weaves, a face appears in the passengers’ window, a white man with white hair—
“Stop it,” Elmond said.
On the monitor, the white man glanced at Miss Jones, but then immediately seemed to say something as his hand rose to point straight ahead.
Elmond said. “What kind of license plate is that?”
The maintenance man hit a button on the remote and the picture enlarged. “Look like government plates to me.”
Carmella wrote down the numbers, guessing at a couple due to the film’s grainy quality. “Back it up a couple minutes, would you?”
A half dozen or so cars whisked by in that time period, but it was the one at 11:51 caught Carmella’s eye. The car’s color was impossible to tell in the black-and-white film, but not the make. “What model Mustang was Ducroix driving again?”
“‘65. Just like that one.”
Carmella said, “Back up the picture a tiny bit so we can make out the passenger.”
The picture edged back frame by frame until they could just make out a face. Then the maintenance man zoomed in.
Elmond said, “Who’s she?”
Studying the face and the dark hair, Carmella shook her head. “I don’t know, but she looks foreign somehow. Maybe European?” Carmella looked to the maintenance man. “Sir? We’re gonna need to take this tape.”
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