The Shadow Hunter

paradise. But to Hickle it was the Elysian Fields. It was where the prom queen and her consort would retire to act out their dreamlike lives.
    She wanted to keep him talking about Malibu, but there was no way to do it without being recklessly obvious. Instead she said blandly, “People have problems everywhere, even in nice neighborhoods.”
    “Ordinary people. You know that writer who said the rich are different? He was right, except it’s not just the rich. It’s the killer elite. They have it all, and the rest of us…”
    The second carrot stick snapped in Hickle’s hands.
    “Yes?” Abby asked.
    “We get the table scraps. If we’re lucky.”
    Abby tried to defuse his anger with a shrug. “I’ll bet hardly any of these people here are rich or famous.”
    “Not yet. They’re young. Give them time. Where will they be ten years from now?” His voice sank to a hush. “And where will I be?”
    “I don’t know, Raymond,” she answered, her voice as low as his. “Where do you think?”
    “I think…” Eyes downcast, he studied the table for a long moment. Then he looked up, meeting her gaze. “Actually, I expect to be quite famous.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yeah. Everybody’s going to know my name.”
    “You writing the great American novel or something?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “So how’s it going to happen?”
    “It’s…a secret.”
    “What good is a secret if you won’t tell anybody? Give me a hint.”
    “I can’t. Really.”
    “Pretend I’m not just Abby, I’m Dear Abby. People tell her everything. They tell her way more than she probably wants to know.” Hickle smiled but shook his head. She wanted to press further, but instinctively she knew he wouldn’t be moved. “Well, okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, I hope it works out for you.”
    “Oh, it will. I’m very sure of that.”
    So there it was. She had the answer to one of her two remaining questions.
    Did he believe he could successfully carry out an attack? Yes. He believed.

18
    It was a crisis, as usual.
    Every day at KPTI-TV’s news division was an exercise in controlled hysteria. News people were adrenaline addicts; chaos was their normal operating environment; pandemonium was simply their way of getting things done.
    This evening’s red alert was occasioned by the rare birth of twin African elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo. News of the elephant calves’ arrival came over the wire at 5:15 P.M. A news conference at the zoo was scheduled for six o’clock.
    The sensible thing would have been to hold the elephant story until the middle of the newscast, but there was no chance of that. The elephant twins had to lead the show. They bumped a high-speed police pursuit in Pomona to second place, bumped the hospitalization of a soap opera actress to third, and bumped Channel Eight’s exclusive interview with the mayor to fourth. Political stories were never a high priority in LA.
    The live remote truck arrived at the zoo only minutes before the start of the 6 P.M. newscast. There was trouble establishing a microwave link. But when the show’s opening theme music faded out and Kris Barwood announced the blessed event, the live feedfrom the news conference streamed in, and the transition to Ed O’Hern live at the scene miraculously went without a hitch. The crew even got video of the newborns taking a few wobbly steps, while “Baby Elephant Walk” played coyly in the background.
    “What a mess,” Amanda Gilbert said when she left the newscast’s postmortem at seven thirty. “Why couldn’t little Dumbo and Dumber get born at a more convenient time?”
    Her voice was loud enough for Kris to hear on the other side of the newsroom. She caught up with Amanda as the younger woman was heading for the exit, a briefcase in one hand and a thick sheaf of papers in the other. “I believe their names are Willy and Wally,” Kris said.
    “Whatever. They’re cute, and they’ve got big ears and a certain Disneyesque appeal. Don’t pester me with details.”
    “Anyway, you did a nice job pulling it all together.”
    Amanda shrugged. “It was touch and go for a few minutes, but hey, we got what we wanted. Smiling zoo officials, couple good bites, nice wrap-up from Ed. Only thing missing was a bunch of freckle-faced school kids toting Babar books.”
    Amanda Gilbert, executive producer of the six o’clock edition of KPTI’s
Real News
, was thirty years old and talked very fast. She was high-strung and achingly thin and