It gets worse. People are curious, so they hire me. But once I give them a first bunch of stuff it begins to chew them up. Cheating wives, dishonest parents... there's many good reasons to hire an investigator.

But finish it now, I'm telling you. Unless it's absolutely imperative, or doing it'll save someone's life, stop now. Pay me, walk out the door, and forget it. That may sound strange coming from me, but I tell ya, I've seen so much pain in this job... I don't get a charge out of seeing people dissolve. I lose some customers, but there's never any lack of them in this business."

"You're probably right."

"I know I am. In fact I'm so right, I'll bet I know exactly what you're thinking this minute. You're thinking: He's right and I will stopafter I ask him to look into only one more thing. But that's the killer.

The 'one more thing' usually ends up breaking your soul. What a client usually has now is their first whiff of smoke. It makes them suspicious, if not downright paranoid. 'What do you mean, you saw my wife leaving Bill's Bar? She doesn't drink!' Things like that. So please listen to me, take your suspicion and try to work through it. Go back to your life as it was and leave this alone"

I don't know where it came from, but I was instantly furious with this man. Where did he get off condescending to me, saying in so many words he knew what was best and I should go home like a good little fella...

"Thank you for the advice, Mr. Goff. But I'll make my own decisions. If I do choose to pursue this, and it's too difficult for you to handle"

"One more piece of 'advice,' Mr. Fischer. Don't be an a.s.shole when someone who knows what they're talking about gives you a worthwhile tip. Number oneI know how to 'handle' this. I'm only telling you I've seen a thousand people walk right off the gangplank with information they asked me to gather. Number twoI don't care what it does to you. I don't care if it makes you happy or sad or shocked. I'm the librarian, remember. I only bring the books. You read them and most of the time they do change your life. Guaranteed. I'm only saying: be careful with these books because too often"

"I get your point."

Pursing his lips, he crooked his head a few inches to the side. "Maybe you do."

I have a very good memory. Often too good. People talk so much that sooner or later something's not true. They have good reasons: they want to impress, or be loved or funny. You are not expected to remember their exaggerations, the small lies, the big ones added to the recipe of a terrific story that needed that tasty distortion to make it sound perfect in the telling. But I do remember. Naturally with LilyI was more aware than ever. Two days before my meeting with Goff, she said something in pa.s.sing that stopped me then, but made me go forward now.

I'd bought a new shirt and showed it to her. Seeing it was made by a company named Winsted, she gave a small start.

"Winsted! How strange. That's the name of the town where Rick died."

The first time she told the story of Rick Aaron, she said he'd died in Windsor, Connecticut. Now it was Winsted.

I casually asked again, "Where?"

She pointed to the shirt label and looked at me. "Winsted. Why?"

"I used to know a guy from Wallingford. Is that near?"

"Pretty near. Did he go to Choate?"

"Choate. Right!"

If she hadn't known about Wallingford or Connecticut geography, it wouldn't have struck me so hard. If she hadn't said her husband died here one time, and there the next. But she did, so I did too.

"Yes, you're right, there is one more thing. I'd like you to find out everything you can about a man named Rick Aaron. He went to Kenyon College and died in either Windsor or Winsted, Connecticut."

My detective wrote this down on a pad. "Windsor or 'Winsted ?"

"I'm not sure. Check both."

He called back three days later. No Rick or Ric or Rich or Ricky or Richard Aaron ever attended Kenyon College. No one by that name had ever died in Windsor, Windsor Locks, Windham, Winchester, or Winsted, Connecticut.

So I told my own lie. After a long telephone conversation with my brother, I told Lily he was coming to New York. I wanted to take a break and fly there to be with him. Maybe we'd go see my parents too. That'd be a nice surprise for them, eh?

She said it sure would. When are you going? Day after tomorrow. So soon? Then I guess we'd better make up for the time we're going to lose. She slid into my arms, looking, smelling, feeling lovelier than ever. I realized, though, after she grunted the second or third time that it wasn't her l.u.s.t for me but that I was hugging her too tightly. Holding on for dear life, squeezing as hard as I could in hopes I'd find a real Lily in there somewhere behind or beneath skin and bones. A real Lily with a real child and true history of her own. How can you trust someone's love when you can't trust them? I remembered Mary's story about the people who thought they owned a dog but it turned out to be a giant rat. Her other story too, the one about the naked woman tied to the bed while her husband lay on the floor in his Batman suit.

Dogs that are rats, love so complicated one needs bondage and Batman to make it work. Perhaps without knowing it, Mary was telling me at the beginning of my relationship with the Aarons the same thing as the detective: Stop now. Stop before you realize what you've brought home, before you start making the ridiculous or terrible changes necessary to fit this situation into your life.

"I particularly like the comment one critic made about Beethoven: 'We feel he knew what can be known.' Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone said that about us?"

"f.u.c.k you, Herb!" Reaching forward, I snapped off the car radio with a vicious flick. Fall in love and everyone everywhere, everything, every other word's suddenly "love." Lose someone and the same applies. Since leaving California, I'd been hearing nothing but references to full knowledge, insight, clarity, understanding. Even an introduction to a Beethoven symphony on the radio reminded me of my feared task. On the plane, a terminally obnoxious woman behind me with a voice like a musical handsaw spoke for five loud hours about a woman named Cullen James whose autobiography had changed this woman's life. According to the acolyte, Cullen had somehow left her body and traveled to another land where (as usual) she went through all sorts of hairraising adventures. But by golly she persevered, learned THE TRUTH, and returned home a Whole Person. I'd seen this book in stores but one glance at the summary on the dust jacket made me put it down fast. Beethoven is one thing. It seems possible that viatheir gifts, geniuses might be able to find their way through life's maze. However, deranged housewives, aging movie stars, or Retro 1960s gurus who announce unashamedly they hear G.o.d or tenthousandyearold warriors telling them the secrets of the universe... give me pause. I know if G.o.d contacted me , I'd at least be a bit humble. The way these nuttos describe it, they're all on a firstname basis with Him. Besides, little daily truths are hard enough to bear. Told THE TRUTH by one who knows would, if we survived, surely scorch us inside and out like a blown fuse. It did me.

Driving down the New Jersey Turnpike toward Somerset, I tried to imagine the worstcase scenarios so that I'd be at least partially prepared for whatever guillotine blade was about to drop across my life. I had called the Meiers from L.A. and made an appointment, ostensibly to look at their dogs. I talked to Gregory, who had a pleasant but nondescript voice. In the background was the sweet static of yipping puppies.

I got off at the New Brunswick exit and followed his directions to their farm. What was I expecting? Probably something small and lovely, like a spread in House & Garden or Casa Vogue .

You knowone black Bauhaus chair to a room, exquisitely rustic beams and bra.s.s hinges, a swimming pool in back. Or nothing. A house for two broken people who were limping through the rest of their lives, having given up on the idea of anything beyond breathing and a sufficient roof overhead.

What greeted me was far worse.

As I drove down a long and remote country road, the flat, singlestory houses leading to the Meiers' address all ran together in my mind's eye. The kinds of places and surrounding human geography one would expect out in the middle of a seminowhere. Rusted mailboxes, cars up on blocks in the yard, women staring suspiciously at you as they hung droopylooking laundry on gray lines.

Whoa! I did an exaggerated double take when I saw the house. I also said, "What the h.e.l.lll!"

because it was so strangelooking and so utterly, utterly out of place there. The colors struck me firstbloodred, black, and anthraciteblue stone. Then you saw, realized, the dazzling everywhichway angles at which they were set. Metal piping slithered up and along the sides of the structure like stripes of silvery toothpaste. What was this thing? Who would build such an interesting provocation in the middle of that undeserving countryside?

As I closed in on it, my next thought was it's a downed UFO! They always fall in distant cornfields where only indifferent cows or farmers look on. I'd recently read a columnist in the L.A. Times who'd specifically addressed that question. If there are creatures from other planets snooping around Earth, how come they never land in New York or Moscow, where both the leaders and the action are? Why are they always sited outside places like North Platte, Nebraska? After a gander at this steelandstone whatever thirty yards ahead, I thought maybe I'm about to have a close encounter.

Better to wave the flag of one's stupidity than try hiding it. What I was seeing was one of the early versions of the now renowned Brendan House.

Anwen Meier studied architecture in college and spent summers working in the offices of Harry Radcliffe, the famous architect. Although she didn't continue her studies after graduation, the subject remained a hobby. She was content to marry Gregory and set up house. After the child was kidnapped, her husband broke down, and she had her car "accident," she decided the only thing in the world that would save them would be to start life over again doing only the things that truly mattered to them. Her father had died and left her a small inheritance. Along with that they sold everything they could, including the stocks and bonds Gregory had been buying since he was fifteen years old. In the end they had a little under seventy thousand dollars. Anwen wisely decided to split it in halfthirtyfive thousand would go to the continued search for their son, the rest toward their new life in New Jersey.

She loved architecture, Gregory loved dogs. In their early thirties they did what most people feel they can do only after they retirelive the life they want. Dessert at the end of the meal. In the case of the Meiers, it was not dessert. It was the only nourishment either of them could digest. They would buy something simple and st.u.r.dy way out in farm country where land was cheap. Over the years she would make it theirs. He would raise his beloved French bulldogs. If they were clever and hardworking they would make it. Neither used the word "luck" anymore. Luck is the poor man's G.o.d. Both stopped believing in Him the day their child disappeared.It gives me such pain to write this.

I pulled up in front of their remarkable home three thousand days after they lost the boy. I needed to look some more and collect my thoughts before ringing their bell. What would I say? Could I pull off looking them over, asking certain questions that had nothing to do with dogs, and still get away without their becoming suspicious? Do you people know a Lily Aaron? Do you know why she would know you?

Have you ever been to Los Angeles or Cleveland or Gambier, Ohio? How about a man named Rick Aaron? Although I have a strong hunch he doesn't exist "Hi! Are you Mr. Datlow?"

Unaccustomed to my madeup name, I still turned so quickly in the seat it must have looked odd.

I'd been staring blindly at the road while thinking and hadn't heard her come up from behind, although the driveway was gravel and her boots made loud crunches when she walked, as I heard later following her back to the house.

Whether it was the years of suffering, a hard and active life lived outside much of the time, or simply premature aging, Anwen's face was beauty ruined. Deep sunken eyes and too thin all over; her cheekbones were as prominent as ledges. Still there was so much loveliness left in the face that you wished her head was a balloon you could pump more air in. Fill it up and shape it back out to what it must have once been.

"We've been waiting for you. Gregory's back in the barn. Come on, we'll go find him. Or would you rather have a cup of tea first?"

"Some tea would be great." I thought it better to talk to her alone first, rather than take them both on at once.

"Fine, let's go in the house. Do you mind if I ask how you heard about us? Did you see the ad in Dog World ?"

I got out of the car and stood near. She was taller than I'd first thought. Five eight or nine, some of it from the boots she wore, most her natural height.

"Yes, I saw the ad, but I also heard about you from Raymond Gill."

"Gill? I'm afraid I don't know the name."

Neither did I, having made it up a second before. "He's a wellknown breeder in the West."

She smiled, and oh man, the beauty she once was was very plain to see.

"People know of us out there? That's rea.s.suring. Greg will be so glad to hear it."

I followed her across the driveway to a thick wooden door which had a great number of different patterns running across it like an intricate parquet floor.

"That's quite a door. It's quite a house !"

She turned and smiled again. "Yes, you either love it or hate it. No one's ever wishywashy when it comes to our house. What do you think?"

"Too early to tell. First I thought it was a s.p.a.cecraft from another planet, but now I'm getting used to it. Is it kooky inside too?"

"Not as much. But it ain't downtoearth either! Come in, see for yourself."

We were in the living room when she mentioned the boy for the first time. Until then, her voice and persona had been that of a friendly tour guide. She was clearly used to showing either bewildered or astonished people around her house and had thus created an appropriate self for the role. The room was crowned by a giant cathedral ceiling, parts of whichlike patchwork panelswere stainedgla.s.s windows through which different colors of light streamed down and carpeted the floor.

"Amazing. I don't know what to say about your house, Mrs. Meier."

"Anwen."

"Anwen. One minute it's enthralling. The next, or the next room we go into, I think I've had too much to drink. This room is extraordinary. The way you've combined the stone and metal and wood, the windows up there... It is an UFO. Otherworldly!"

"But the other rooms? Where you felt drunk?"

I shrugged. "You can't win 'em all."

"I'm glad you're honest. I'll tell you why it's like this. My husband and I have a little boy. He waskidnapped nine years ago. Until we find him, this house will be both Brendan and everything we want to give him in his life with us."

There was no remorse or selfpity or stoicism in the way she said it. These were the facts of her life.

She was telling them to me but asking for nothing.

"I'm very sorry. And you have no other children?"

"No. Neither of us can conceive of another child until Brendan comes home. So my husband raises dogs and I work on the house. One day our son will come back and we'll have lots to show him."

Right there, at the end of her sentence in those last four or five words, I heard the smallest hitch of pain in her voice.

"When we bought the place it was only an ugly old chicken farm. My original idea was to create something Brendan would like. Childlike but not childish, you know? A place with moods and colors and tantrums."

"Tantrums. That's a lovely idea."

She surveyed the room with hands on hips. "Yes, but it changed after we'd taken away most of what was originally here. First I wanted it to be for him. Then I realized until he came home it had to be for us too. So I made more changes. More and more and more. I was studying to be an architect before we got married, just so you don't think I'm completely nuts!"

She told a little of their history, leaving out the parts about her husband's breakdown and her car crash. The way her version went, they'd lost the child, changed jobs a few times, finally got a strong urge to return to their home state and live life the way they wanted. I asked no questions. Her lies were gentle things; lies to a stranger who needn't know more about their ongoing pain. I don't think she wanted my pity so much as my understanding of why their house was so different. It was both her child and her art, for the time being. Like some kind of impossible and heartbreaking golem, she was trying to bring it to life with her care, love, and imagination. When the boy returned she would direct it back to him. Until then, all of the energy and emotion she had for her child would go into trying to make this inanimate thing animate.

Every room of their house was a different world. They had cut through some of the walls and ceilings so as to build bridges linking one to the next like surreal dream sequences. One bedroom was only crooked objects at c.o.c.keyed angles. Pictures in freeform frames and the only mirror were all mounted on the ceiling. A hole had literally been punched through the wall at foot level and filled with gla.s.s. It took a moment to realize it was a window. Another, called the Fall Room, contained only soft objects in two colors.

There are eccentrics who build houses out of CocaCola bottles or Wyoming license plates.

Architects who design churches to look like melting candles or airports like manta rays. But the most singular and frankly exhausting thing about the Meier house was the raw obsession at work. Anwen said nothing about it, but it was plain she knew that if her mind sat down for a time to rest, it would realize the deadly hopeless truth of her situation and destroy her. So she never really sat down. She planned and built and tinkered with the only link she felt she still had to her lost child.

A little black dog waddled into the room and over to my leg. I bent over and petted it.

"That's Henry Hank. My husband names all the puppies after old boxers. We know the customers change the names when they get them home, so Greg gets a kick out of having a whole stable of fighters around him for a few weeks."

Another one came in and was introduced as Gil Diaz.

"h.e.l.lo!"

At first I thought her husband looked fine. Much more robust and healthy than Anwen. Very tan and filled out. Those were the impressions that crossed my mind when I stood up to meet him. As we were moving toward each other, one of the dogs started barking and Gregory looked down to see what the hubbub was. Seeing him up close, I realized his skin was tanned the unnatural brownorange that come from tans in a bottle. When I was a boy and that junk had just been developed, a guy in town bought some ManTan and slathered himself with it. For weeks he looked like he was wearing a kind of dreadful burntsiena lipstick, badly layered, all over his unfortunate body. I suppose they have improvedthe product since then, but not much, by the looks of Gregory Meier.

He shook hands oddly tooa much too big and powerful burst when we first touched and squeezed, then nothing. His hand went completely flaccid. I remembered he had had a breakdown. The longer I watched him, the more signs of his fragility and eccentricity were evident. In the end I had the feeling they might have "retired" to the country from their previous life because the pressure had been too much for this man, and would be for a long time.

"Darling, he says a famous breeder in the West recommended us. A man named Raymond Gill?"

"Raymond! Sure, I know Raymond. Nice man. What does he raise again?"

"Pugs."

"Pugs, that's right. Nice man."

He cleared his throat much too often. He paid such dramatic, overly close attention to what others said, even when it was trivial lighterthanair chitchat, that it was disconcerting. He tried so hard and that's what made it so f.u.c.king sad. He wanted you to think you were a very important person to him, despite having met only minutes before. He wasn't a sycophant or a gladhander either. He probably did like me, because I was nice and pleasant while there, but the pathos was in his rictus smile, a handshake that died after too much first squeeze, the scaryadoring way he looked at his wife. By comparison, she was the strongest person on earth.

The most embarra.s.sing moment came in the middle of a discussion about the merits of the French bulldog over other breeds. Gregory broke off what he was saying and grinned. "Do you know what H.

L. Mencken called Calvin Coolidge? 'A dreadful little cad.' The tongue should never show in these dogs, as I'm sure you know."

The change from dogs to Mencken to dog tongues came so fast it took several seconds to register.

I'm sure I overreacted, because when I turned to Anwen, she was frowning and puckering her lips at me as if to say, "Sssh! Don't show him you heard." This wild skid from one side of his mind to another happened again twice while Gregory spoke but I pretended not to notice.

So what was worse, his brittleness? The way the Meiers lavished their ghostly love on each other and those gargoyle dogs? Or simply the power of their house? The house/monument/golem they'd needed and built to replace their lost child.

It was quiet torture remaining there that long, sad afternoon. I needed more than anything to get away and think. To sit in a bar or a hotel room, a corner anywhere alone where I could talk to myself about what to do next.

I was ninetyfive percent certain Lincoln Aaron was their son. But there remained things to do to make sure. I did them in New York by contacting yet another detective agency and having them check out Lily's "parents," Joe and Frances Margolin, in Cleveland. No one by either name had lived in that city for thirty years. The same was true about a child named Lincoln Aaron, purportedly born in Cleveland eight or nine or ten years before. No hospital or governmental bureau there had any record.

Why am I getting ahead of myself here and telling the most important part of the story before it happened? Because I already knew the truth that day sitting in the Meiers' living room. Sitting on a soft couch with a cup of aromatic tea, I knew the woman I loved more than any person on earth was a criminal and a monster. Kidnapping is monstrous. Like murder and rape, it undermines the only real givens we have in life: my life, my s.e.xuality, the issue of my blood are my own.

Lincoln once made up a story about crows with blue eyes. It wasn't good or interesting, but his image of those inky birds with azure eyes haunted me long after. Crows are smart, sneaks, loudmouths. I like them very much for what they are. If I saw one sitting on a branch smoking a cigar I'd laugh and think yes, that's right. But blue eyes belong to babies, angels, Swedes; put them in a crow and the funny goes away. The imp becomes perverse. Several phone calls away from knowing my love was a nightmare, I couldn't rid my mind of the boy's image. A crow with blue eyes. His mother, my friend and love, the very worst kind of human being. Crows with blue eyes. Lily Aaron, kidnapper.

When the visit was over, after I'd seen the house and all the dogs and we'd talked until the three of us were in a lateafternoon stupor of too much information and too many words, they walked me to my rental car. I thanked them for their time. To get out of having to buy a dog, I told them what I reallywanted was a gray one, which they didn't have. One of their females was due to give birth in a few weeks and I'd call to find out if a gray was among the litter. When Anwen asked for my address and telephone number in Portland (where I supposedly lived), I made them up.

As I was turning the key in the ignition, Gregory touched my arm and asked me to wait a second.