GRIDIRON Philip Kerr

For Jane, as always, and for William Finlay

'Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?'

John Milton

'… that glass of ice water in the face, that bracing slap across the mouth, that reprimand for the fat on one's bourgeois soul, known as modern architecture.'

Tom Wolfe

Prologue

'We are in pursuit of a new idea, a new vernacular, something to stand alongside the space capsules, computers and throwaway packages of an atomic electronic age…'

Warren Chalk

The American glanced at the setting sun in the sky above the new Shenzen Football Stadium and prayed that the execution would be over by the time the denuded centre spot was in shadow. Anxious to be getting shots, he focused his camera on a group of self-important men, some of them dressed in Mao jackets, but others wearing plain dark suits, who were taking their seats a dozen or so rows away from him.

'Who are those guys?' he asked.

His fixer and translator stood on the toes of her high-heeled shoes and followed the line of his long lens across the heads of the crowd beneath them.

'I think, Party,' she said. 'But some businessmen also.'

'Are you sure we've got permission to do this?' he murmured.

'Yes, I'm sure,' said the girl. 'I bribed the head of PSB in Shenzen. They won't bother us today, Nick. You can believe it.'

PSB was the People's Republic of Communist China's Public Security Bureau.

'Baby, you're a star.'

The Chinese girl smiled and bowed her head.

By now the stadium was nearly full. The mood of the several thousand strong crowd was expectant but good humoured, as if it really expected to see a football match. At the arrival of the four condemned men, each of them held tightly by two PSB guards, there was an excited murmur. As was usual, the heads of those who were condemned to be shot had been shaved and their arms bound just above the elbows. The crimes they had committed were listed on cardboard placards that hung around their necks.

The four men were forced to kneel at the centre spot. The face of one man filled the viewfinder of the camera and the American was struck by its dull expression, as if its owner cared little whether he died or not. He guessed they had been drugged. He pressed the shutter button and moved on to the face of the next man. His expression was the same. As the PSB man aimed his AK47 assault rifle at the back of his first victim's head, the American checked the position of the shadow on the pitch. He tried not to smile but found that the urge was irresistible. These were going to be great photographs.

-###-

The Los Angeles Police Department had never cared much for public assemblies of the city's populations: Hispanics, Native Americans, Blacks, Okies, hippies, gays, students, and strikers had all felt the batons and stun guns of LA's finest on one occasion or another. But this was the first time that any of the twenty-five helmeted officers on duty outside the half-built office block on the building site that was to become the new Hope Street Piazza could remember the city's Chinese community gathering to voice its protest about something.

Not that Los Angeles had a very large concentration of Chinese when compared to San Francisco. Chinatown itself, in the city's North Broadway area, right on the doorstep of LA's Police Academy, was no more than twenty thousand people. Most of the city's fast-growing Chinese population lived in suburbs like Monterey Park and Alhambra. It was not a very large demonstration either: just a hundred or so students, protesting against the Yu Corporation and its apparent complicity in the repressive rule of the People's Republic of China. The Corporation's eponymous chairman and chief executive, Yue-Kong Yu, had recently been pictured in the pages of the Los Angeles Times, attending the execution of some dissident Chinese students in Shenzen. But because this was LA after all, and even small crowds could get quickly out of hand, an Aerospatiale helicopter from the LAPD air force kept a discreet electronic eye on the proceedings and provided regular digitized communication bulletins for the central dispatch computer that was located in a missile-proof bunker five floors beneath City Hall. The demonstrators were peaceful enough. Even when the motorcade of stretch limousines bearing Yue-Kong Yu and his entourage arrived at the site, they did little more than chant and jerk their placards up and down. Shielded by police and half a dozen private security men, Mr Yu moved smoothly up a flight of steps and through his new building's front door, a Neolithic stone dolmen brought from the British Isles, without even looking at the angry young men and women.

In the nearly finished atrium, Mr Yu turned and looked back at the door, obliquely positioned for better feng shui. He had bought the three ancient standing stones-one placed on top of the other two as a lintel-because of their similarity to the Yu Corporation logo, itself based on the Chinese character symbolizing good luck. He nodded appreciatively. He knew that his architect had not wanted the stones in such a modern building. But once Mr Yu made up his mind he was not easily dissuaded. For all the architect's opposition he had done well, Mr Yu thought. It was a most auspicious-looking doorway. And a fine-looking atrium. The best he had seen. Better than the Yoshimoto Building in Osaka. Better than the Shinn Nikko building in Tokyo. Better even than the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta.

When the last of his guests had followed Mr Yu inside, the sergeant in charge of policing the demonstration waved one of its number towards him, having decided that the young man's loudhailer marked him as the group's ringleader.

Cheng Peng Fei, a visa student in business administration at UCLA, stepped quickly forward. The only son of two Hong Kong lawyers, he was not the type to make a policemen tell him something twice. He had a flat, almost concave disc of a face.

'You're going to have to move your people over to the other side of the site,' drawled the police sergeant. 'Seems like they want to drop a tree branch from the top level, and we wouldn't want any of you getting injured, now would we?' The sergeant smiled. A Vietnam vet, he regarded all orientals with deep suspicion and hostility.

'Why?' said Cheng Peng Fei.

'Because I say so, that's why,' snapped the sergeant.

'No, I mean why do they want to throw a tree branch from the top?'

'What am I, a fuckin' anthropologist? How the hell should I know?

Just move it across the other side, mister, or I'll book you for obstruction.'

The topping-out ceremony was traditionally performed when the topmost stone was fixed to a building, an act signalled by a branch of evergreen being thrown to the ground and burnt, and a toast drunk to celebrate completion of the structural envelope. But as those who were waiting on the rooftop knew, the real topping-out ceremony had taken place some ten months before, when Mr Yu had been unable to attend. The envelope was already more than half-filled, but Mr Yu, making a rare visit to Los Angeles to sign a deal to supply the United States Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base with six Yu-5 Supercomputers (each one of them capable of performing 1012 operations a second), was keen to see how his new smart building was progressing. Mr Yu's son, Jardine, who was managing director of the Yu Corporation in America, had wanted to mark the occasion of his father's visit, and so a second topping-out ceremony was arranged, with a cosmetic 'last' roof slate placed on top of the twenty-five storey building by Arlene Sheridan, a Hollywood actress rather advanced in years whom the seventy-two-yearold CEO had long admired. The rooftop event was attended with an unusual degree of formality: a sit-down lunch of ripened fruit, Chinese hens stuffed with lucky red charms, a golden pig, and Tsingtao beer were provided for fifty guests, including a senator, a congressman, the deputy mayor of Los Angles, a federal judge, a USAF general, a studio head, representatives of the Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee, selected members of the press (with the notable exception of the Los Angeles Times), the architect, Ray Richardson, and the chief engineer, David Arnon. No workmen were actually invited, unless you counted Helen Hussey, the site agent, and Warren Aikman, the clerk of works. A Taoist priest had been flown in from Hong Kong at the request of Jenny Bao, the Yu Corporation's feng shui consultant in LA, who was also present. An urbane, effusive little man, Mr Yu greeted his guests with a lefthanded handshake, his right arm having been withered since birth. For those who were meeting him for the first time, it was hard to reconcile his vast wealth (Forbes magazine had estimated his personal fortune at $5 billion) with the knowledge that he was on excellent terms with the Communist leaders in Peking. But Mr Yu was nothing if not pragmatic. After the introductions, it fell to Ray Richardson to introduce the building and the ceremony. The fifty-five-year-old self-styled 'architechnologist' at the microphone would have passed for ten or fifteen years younger. He wore a cream linen suit, a soft blue shirt and a quiet tie with a hand-painted look, all of which might have marked him as a European, most probably an Italian. He was in fact Scottish, but with the kind of accent that demonstrated long exposure to the southern California sun. Those who knew Ray Richardson well said that the accent was the only thing about him that showed any evidence of warmth. He unfolded several typewritten sheets, smiled experimentally and, finding the noonday sun too strong for his cool grey eyes, produced a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-bans and drew up the shades on his tiny soul.

'YK, Senator Schwarz, Congressman Kelly, Mr Deputy Mayor, ladies and gentlemen: the history of architecture is not, as you might think, an aesthetic one, but a technical one.'

Mitchell Bryan, sitting with the rest of the design and construction team, groaned inwardly as he realized he would have to endure yet another of his senior partner's breast-beating speeches. He looked at David Arnon and flickered his eyelids meaningfully, having first checked that Richardson's Native American wife Joan could not observe this small act of resistance. Mitch need hardly have bothered. Joan was watching Richardson with the rapt, close attention normally reserved for a religious figure. David Arnon stifled a yawn and settled back in his chair, trying to imagine what Arlene Sheridan, seated on the next table, would look like without her clothes.

'The history of all hitherto existing architecture is the history of technological advance. For example: the Roman invention of cement made possible the construction of the dome of the Pantheon — the widest dome in the world until the nineteenth century. In Joseph Paxton's day, the new structural possibilities of iron, and advances in plate-glass manufacture, made it possible to build the Crystal Palace in London, in 1851. Thirty years later, Siemen's invention of the electric elevator enabled the construction of the first multi-storey structure in turn-of-the-century Chicago. Exactly a century after that, architecture was drawing on developments that had been made in the aeronautics industry: buildings that made the most of new materials to reduce their mass, like Norman Foster's Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

'Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you that the modern architectural scene presents us with the greatest adventure of all: architecture that uses the advanced technology of space exploration and the computer age. The building as a machine in which invisible micro- and nanotechnology have replaced industrial mechanical systems. A building that is more like a robot than a shelter. A structure with its own electronic nervous system that is every bit as responsive as the muscles flexing in the body of an Olympic athlete.

'No doubt there are some of you present here today who will have already heard of so-called smart or intelligent buildings. The concept of the intelligent building has been around for a while and yet there remains little consensus of what makes a building intelligent. For me the distinguishing feature of the truly integrated intelligent building is that all the computer systems within the building, including those associated with the building's operations and those related to the building user's business, are connected together to form a single network using a databus, a screened cable containing a twisted pair of conductors. Like those minibuses that travel in a loop around the downtown area. Using the data-bus a central computer sends signals to various electronic subsystems — security, data, energy — in the form of the time-multiplexed, high frequency, 24-volt digital data commands.

'So, for instance, the central computer will interrogate a variety of linear, point and volumetric sensors within the building, and watch out for a fire. Only if the computer is unable to extinguish the fire itself will it telephone the local fire department and request human assistance.'

For a moment Richardson looked away from his script as a sudden gust of wind carried the voice of Cheng Peng Fei up from the building site below:

'The Yu Corporation supports the fascist government of China!'

'You know,' Richardson grinned, 'just before I got here I was speaking to someone about this building. She asked me if we would demonstrate what it was capable of. I said no, we wouldn't.' He extended his hand towards the sound of the protesters. 'But hey, what do you know? I was wrong. There is a demonstration after all. The only shame is that I can't end this one at the touch of a button.'

Richardson's audience laughed politely.

'As it happens, the most important aspect of this building's intelligence can't be demonstrated so easily. Because what makes this building really smart is not its ability to anticipate the pattern of use so that energy can be expended with the utmost parsimony. Nor is it the computer-controlled base isolators that will enable the structure to withstand earthquakes measuring up to 8.5 on the Richter Scale.

'No, what makes this the smartest building in LA, possibly in the whole United States, ladies and gentlemen, is its inherent ability to cope with not just the demands of today's information technology, but tomorrow's as well.

'When many American companies are already struggling to remain competitive with Europe and the East Asian Pacific Rim countries, it's an uncomfortable fact that there are a great many office buildings in America, some of them built as recently as 1970, that are prematurely obsolete: the cost of bringing them up to date to meet the demand of IT exceeds the cost of tearing them down and starting again.

'I believe that this building represents a new generation of office accommodation, one that will provide our country with the only means of ensuring that we remain competitive tomorrow; the kind of building that will guarantee that this great country is best placed to take full advantage of what President Dole has called the Global Information Infrastructure. Because, make no mistake about this, this is the key to economic growth. Information Infrastructure will be to the US economy of the next ten years what transport infrastructure was to the economy of the mid-twentieth century. Which is why I believe that you will soon be seeing many more buildings like this one.

'Of course, only time will tell whether or not I am right and if the Yu Corporation will continue to be a completely satisfied occupant well into the next century. What is certain is that the world now faces the same kind of challenge that faced Chicago one hundred years ago, when the storage, merchandizing and managerial demands of the railway and steam-power trade required the utilization of the new office technology of telephones and typewriters, and a new kind of building to put them in as land prices soared. The Chicago frame building, or the skyscraper as we know it better today, produced a new kind of city. In the same way that between 1900 and 1920 Manhattan transformed itself into the landscape of mesas and ziggurats with which we are familiar today, I believe that we now stand on the threshold of an urban metamorphosis wherein our cities become intelligent participants in the whole global economic process.

'And so to this morning's topping-out ceremony. Traditionally we mark this occasion by throwing a branch of evergreen from the top storey. I'm often asked about the origins of this custom but the simple answer is that nobody really knows for sure what they are. I was once told by a professor of Ancient History that the ceremony probably dates from the time of the Egyptians, when human sacrifices were associated with the completion of a building; and the evergreen is a substitute for an era when the architect was rewarded for his services by being enclosed alive within the brickwork of his own building, or hurled from the top. I dare say there are some clients who still feel that way about their architects, but I think I am safe in saying that YK is not one of them.'

Richardson glanced in Mr Yu's direction and saw that the ageing billionaire was beaming politely.

'At least, I hope he isn't. Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, I had better just throw out the branch before he changes his mind.'

The audience laughed politely once more.

'And, by the way; I think it says a lot about Mr Yu's son Jardine that he was sufficiently concerned about the safety of those demonstrators down below that he asked for them to be moved away from the front of the building until this ceremony was concluded. Thank you very much.'

The guests laughed again and as Richardson was now advancing to the edge of the roof bearing the branch of evergreen, they started to applaud. Many of them followed him to watch as he threw the branch to the piazza three hundred and fifty feet below.

Mitch checked that Joan was among them and then, catching David Arnon's eye again, he pushed two fingers into his mouth, as if he was trying to make himself vomit.

David Arnon grinned and leaned towards him.

'You know, Mitch,' he said, 'as a Jew I hate to say this, but maybe those Egyptians weren't so bad after all.'

Book One

'Architecture is voodoo.'

Buckminstcr Fuller

The Richardsons left L'Orangerie, one of LA's most exclusive restaurants, in their chauffeur-driven, bullet-proof Bentley and turned west off La Cienaga on to Sunset.

'We'll be staying at the apartment tonight, Declan,' Ray Richardson told the driver. 'And I'll be in the studio all morning. I won't need you again until we drive to the airport at two.'

'Are you taking the Gulfstream, sir?' Declan's Irish accent was as thick as his neck, for he was also Richardson's bodyguard, as anyone seeing his Blackcat nightsight glasses, or the Ruger P90 automatic on the Bentley's front seat, might have guessed.

'No, I'm on a scheduled flight. To Berlin.'

'We'd better leave a little bit earlier than usual then, sir. The traffic was very bad on the San Diego Freeway today.'

'Thanks, Declan. Let's say one-thirty then.'

'Yes, sir.'

It was past midnight but there were still lights burning in the architechnologist's studio. Declan switched the diode on his Blackcat lenses from red to green to cope with the change in light conditions. You never knew what might come out of left field in the darkness. Not unless you were wearing a pair of wide-angle Blackcats.

'It looks as if they're still working,' said Richardson's wife, Joan.

'They better be,' growled Richardson. 'There was plenty to do when I left. Every time I tell one of those krauts to do something I get a hundred different reasons why it can't be done.'

Designed by Richardson himself and built at a cost of $21 million, the triangular-shaped glass structure that housed his studio occupied a site amid giant billboards and sun-bleached Hollywood glitz, resembling the prow of an expensive and ultra-modern motor yacht. Pointing east towards Hollywood, with opaque glass panels screening the northern elevation from the road, the Richardson building did not conform to any coherently Angeleno architectural approach — always assuming that the eclecticism that characterized most of LA's buildings could be called a style at all. Like Richardson's other buildings in LA, it seemed almost out of place. More European than American. Or something that had just landed from another world.

The design and architectural critics said that Richardson belonged to a Rationalist tradition, and certainly his buildings had machine metaphors aplenty. There were even echoes of the Constructivist fantasies of architects like Gropius, Le Corbusier and Stirling. But at the same time his work went beyond the merely utilitarian. It declared its allegiance to high technology and can-do capitalism.

'Germans,' muttered Richardson and shook his head with contempt.

'Yes, dear,' cooed Joan. 'But as soon as we've opened the Berlin office we can get rid of them.'

The Bentley pulled off the main road and drove round the back of the building to the underground parking lot.

There were seven storeys, six of them above ground. The practice's offices and double-height studio occupied the lower part of the building, with twelve private apartments on levels three to seven. The magnificently appointed penthouse was where the Richardsons stayed when they were working late or starting early, which they often did. Ray Richardson was nothing if not single-minded about his profession. But otherwise they lived in their spectacular house in Rustic Canyon. Also designed by Richardson, this ten-bedroom house enjoyed the rare distinction of having been praised for its beauty and elegance by no less a savage critic of modern architecture than Tom Wolfe, in the pages of Vanity Fair, and was home to the couple's extensive collection of contemporary art.

'We'd better stick our heads round the door and see what's being done in my name,' said Richardson. 'Just in case there are any fuck-ups.'

The couple swept up the dramatic granite-clad staircase like royalty, acknowledging the armed security guards on duty with stiff nods of the head. They paused at the edge of the huge, luminous studio, almost as if they expected to be announced. With only a vase of irises on the receptionist's desk to relieve the monochrome of this modern Angeleno Bauhaus, the Richardsons were suddenly the most colourful thing in it. Ninety metres long, with seventeen twelve-metre work benches set at right angles to the southern-facing glass wall that commanded a panoramic view of the city, Richardson and Associates was one of the most modern architects' studios anywhere in the world. And one of the busiest, too. Even now there were architects, designers, engineers, model-makers, computer experts and their various support teams working late in open-plan harmony. Many of them had been there for thirty-six hours without a break, and those who were relative newcomers to the studio paid little attention to the arrival of the sleekly suited principal and his wife. But those who knew Ray Richardson better looked up from their computer screens and take-out pizzas and realized that harmony was about to turn into fundamental discord.

Joan Richardson glanced around and shook her head in admiration at the sterling service that was being given to her husband. In her adoring brown Navajo eyes it seemed only his due. She was used to putting her husband first.

'Just look at this, darling,' she gushed. 'The creative energy. It's simply breathtaking. Twelve-thirty and they're still working. There's so much going on, it's like a beehive.'

Joan took off her wrap and hung it over her arm. She was wearing a cream linen sarong-style skirt with a matching shirt and tabard, a multilayered outfit that did a great deal to disguise her large behind. Joan was a good-looking woman, with a face not unlike one of Gauguin's Tahitian lovelies, but she was also a large one.

'Fabulous. Just fabulous. It makes you feel so proud to be a part of all this… all this energy.'

Ray Richardson grunted. His eyes searched the hard-edged, black, white and grey surfaces of the studio for Allen Grabel, who was working on both of the largest and most prestigious projects currently occupying the firm. With the Yu Corporation building nearing completion, it was the Kunstzentrum that was immediately preoccupying the firm's senior designer, not least because his principal was about to fly to Germany to present the detailed drawings to the Berlin city authorities.

The Kunstzentrum was an arts centre, Berlin's response to the Paris Beaubourg, designed to revitalize the Alexanderplatz, a huge, wind-swept pedestrianized plaza which had once been one of the German capital's main shopping meccas.

The two projects kept Grabel so busy there were times when he had to stop and remind himself which one he was working on. Spending a minimum twelve hours a day in the office-often as many as sixteen — he had no private life to speak of. He knew he was not a bad-looking guy. He might have had a girlfriend if he could ever take the time to try and meet someone, but with no one at home he spent more and more time at the office. He was aware Richardson took advantage of this. He knew he should have gone on holiday after the major design work on the Yu Corporation building had been completed. On his salary he could have gone anywhere he wanted. He just never found the right window in his increasingly busy work schedule. Sometimes Grabel felt he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. At the very least he was drinking way too much.

Richardson found the tall, curly-haired New Yorker staring into the screen of his Intergraph terminal through a pair of glasses that were as grimy as his shirt-collar. He was re-shaping the curves and polylines of an architectural layout.

The Intergraph software system for computer-assisted design was the cornerstone of the Richardson practice, not just in Los Angeles but throughout the world. With offices in Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, New York and Toronto, as well as new ones planned for Berlin, Frankfurt, Dallas and Buenos Aires, Richardson was Intergraph's largest customer after NASA. The system, and others like it, had revolutionized architecture, providing 'drag and drop' handle-based editing that allowed a designer to quickly move, rotate, stretch and align any number of two- and three-dimensional entities.

Richardson removed his Armani jacket, moved a chair closer towards Grabel and sat down beside him. Wordlessly he tugged the colour AOsize plot across the desk and compared it with the 2-D image on the monitor while he ate the last slice of Grabel's takeout pizza. Already tired, Grabel's spirits sagged. Sometimes he looked at how CAD transformed an input pattern into a work of architecture and wondered if he might not as easily have created a piece of music. But such philosophical musing disappeared out of the window whenever Ray Richardson arrived on the scene; and whatever pleasure and satisfaction he took in his job seemed as ephemeral as one of his own computer drawings.

'I think we're just about there now, Ray,' he said wearily. But Richardson had already accessed the Smart Draw icon on the floating toolbar with a right-button mouse click that would allow him to judge the design for himself.

'You think?' Richardson smiled coldly. 'Jesus Christ, don't you know?'

He put his hand up in the air like a kid answering a question in class and shouted: 'Someone get me a cup of coffee.'

Grabel shrugged and sighed simultaneously, too tired to argue.

'Well, what's that supposed to mean? That shrug? Come on, Allen. What the fuck is going on here? And where the hell is Kris Parkes?'

Parkes was project manager on the Kunstzentrum project: although not the most senior member of the team, it was his job to run the regular in-house coordination meetings and to articulate what the project team was thinking.

Grabel told himself that right now the project team was probably thinking the same as he was: that they wished they were at home, watching TV in bed. Like Kris Parkes probably was.

'He went home,' said Grabel.

'The project manager went home?'

Richardson's coffee arrived, brought by Mary Sammis, one of the project model-makers. He tasted it, winced and handed it back.

'This is stewed,' he said.

'He was out on his feet,' Grabel explained. 'I told him to go home.'

'Get me another. And this time bring a saucer. When I ask for a cup of coffee I don't expect to have to ask for that as well.'

'Right away.'

Shaking his head, Richardson muttered, 'What kind of place is this anyway?' And then, remembering something, he called out: 'Oh, Mary?

How's the model coming along?'

'We're still working on it, Ray.'

He shook his head grimly. 'Don't let me down, love. I'm flying to Germany tomorrow afternoon.' He looked at his Breitling wrist-watch.

'In twelve hours, to be precise. That model has to be boxed and ready to go with all the customs paperwork. Understand?'

'You'll have it, Ray, I promise.'

'You don't have to make promises to me. It's not for me. This is not about me, Mary. If it was just me it would be different. But I happen to think that the very least we can do for a new office, with thirty people on board who are going to spend the next two years of their lives working on nothing but this project, is to show them a model of what it's going to look like. Wouldn't you agree, Mary?'

'Yes, sir, I would.'

'And don't call me sir, Mary. This isn't the army.'

Richardson picked up Grabel's telephone and punched out a number. Taking advantage of these few seconds of grace Mary walked quickly away.

'Ray, who are you calling?' said Grabel, giving a little twitch. His nervous tick only started when he was dog-tired, or needed a drink.

'Didn't you hear what I just said? I said it was me who told him to go home.'

'I heard you.'

'Ray?'

'Where's my bloody coffee?' Richardson shouted over his shoulder.

'You're not calling Parkes, are you?'

Richardson just looked at Grabel, his grey eyebrows raised with quiet contempt.

'You bastard,' he murmured, suddenly hating Richardson with an intensity he found alarming. 'I wish to God you were dead, you mother…'

'Kris? It's Ray. Did I wake you up? I did? That's too bad. Let me ask you something, Kris. Have you any idea what this building is going to be worth in fees to this firm? No, just answer the question. That's right, nearly $4 million. Four million dollars. Now, there are a lot of us in here working late on this one, Kris. Only you're not here and you're supposed to be the goddamn project manager. Well, don't you think that sets a bad example? You don't.' He listened for a moment and then started to shake his head. 'Well, frankly I don't care how long it is since you've been home. And I couldn't care less if your kids think you're just some guy their mother picked up in the supermarket. Your place is here, with your team. Are you going to drag your ass down here, or do I have to look for a new manager on this job? You are? Good.'

Richardson replaced the receiver and glanced around for his wife. She was stooped over a glass case near the stairs, examining a model of the Yu Corporation headquarters which, in real life, was now nearing completion on the Hope Street Piazza. 'I'm going to be a while here, honey,' he called. 'I'll see you upstairs, OK?'

'OK, dear.' Joan smiled and looked around the studio. 'Goodnight everybody,' she said and left.

There were a few people who smiled back. But most of them were too tired, even for polite smiles. Besides, they knew that Joan was every bit as monstrous as her husband. Worse. At least he was talented. One or two of the more senior designers still remembered the time when, in a fit of bad temper, she had thrown a fax machine through a plate-glass window.

Ray Richardson returned his attention to the monitor and, clicking the mouse again, changed the picture to a 3-D image. The drawing revealed a giant semi-circle about two hundred metres in diameter, gently disked like the city of Bath's Royal Crescent and surmounted by what resembled the wingspan of an enormous bird. There were some architectural critics, most of them in Europe, who had suggested that the wings were the wings of an eagle, and a Nazi eagle at that. For this reason they had already described Richardson's design as 'Post-Nazism'.

Richardson moved the mouse forward across its pad, bringing the 3-D image closer. Now it could be seen that the building was not one crescent but two, enclosing a curving colonnade separating shops and office buildings and the exhibition halls. These were the contract drawings, representing a statement of agreed information from the various consultants who would be involved in constructing the Kunstzentrum, and they were due to be passed on to the quantity surveyor when Richardson visited Berlin. Entering the colonnade, Richardson zoomed up to the ceiling and clicking the mouse twice, exploding a detailed diagram of one of the shape-memory steel tube supports for the photochromic glass panels.

'What's this?' he frowned. 'Look, Allen, you haven't done what I wanted. I thought I asked you to draw up both options.'

'But we agreed that this is the ideal option.'

'I wanted the other one, just in case.'

'Just in case of what? I don't understand. Either this is the best option or it's not.' Grabel started to twitch again.

'In case I change my mind, that's what.' Richardson performed a cruel but accurate imitation of Grabel's nervous twitch. Grabel took off his glasses, buried his unshaven face in his trembling hands and sighed deeply, stretching his cheeks towards his ears. For a moment he looked heavenwards, as if seeking guidance from the Almighty. When none arrived he stood up, shaking his head slowly and put on his jacket.

'God, I hate you sometimes,' he said. 'No, that's not true, I hate you all the time. You are a stray dog's rectal cancer, you know that? One day someone is going to do the world a big favour and murder you. I'd do it myself only I'm afraid of all the fan mail I might receive. You want it drawn? Then do it yourself, you selfish bastard. I've had it up to here with you."

'What did you say?'

'You heard me, asshole.' Grabel turned and started to walk towards the stairs.

'Where the hell are you going?'

'Home.'

Richardson stood up and nodded bitterly.

'You walk out now, you don't come back. D'you hear me?'

'I quit,' Grabel said, and kept on walking. 'I wouldn't come back here if you were dying of loneliness.'

Richardson exploded. 'You don't walk out on me,' he screamed.

'You're fired. I'm firing you, you piece of twitching shit. All these people are my witnessess. You hear me, Twitch? Your ass is fired!'

Without looking back Grabel held up a middle finger and disappeared down the stairs. Someone laughed and Richardson looked around angrily, his fists clenched, ready to fire anyone who stepped out of line.

'What's so goddamned funny?' he snarled. 'And where's my fucking coffee?'

-###-

Still seething, Grabel walked the short distance along the strip to the St James's Club Hotel where, as usual, he had a few drinks in the artdeco piano bar while he waited for a taxi. Vodka with Cointreau and cranberry juice. It was what he had been drinking six months earlier when the police had arrested him for driving under the influence. That and a couple of toots of cocaine. He had only taken the cocaine to help him make the drive home. He might not have been drunk at all if he hadn't been working so hard.

He felt better about walking out on his job than he had felt about losing his licence. If only Richardson had not called him Twitch. He knew it was what people sometimes called him, but no one had ever used it to his face before. Only Richardson was a big enough shit to have done that.

There was a cocktail waitress who worked in the hotel, a resting actress called Mary, who was sometimes friendly to him. It was as near as Allen Grabel got to having a social life.

'I just quit my job,' he told her proudly. 'Just told my partner to shove it.'

'Well,' she shrugged, 'good for you.'

'I've been meaning to do it for a long time, I guess. Never had the nerve before. I just told him to stick it. I guess it was either that or blow his friggin' brains out.'

'Something tells me you made the right choice,' she said.

'I dunno, y'know? Really I don't. But boy, was he mad.'

'Sounds like you made quite a performance out of it. The whole dramatic gesture.'

'And how. Boy, was he mad at me.'

'I wish I could quit my job,' she said wistfully.

'Hey, it'll happen for you, Mary. I know it will.'

He ordered another drink and found it disappeared even more quickly than the first. By the time Mary told him that his taxi had arrived he had drunk four or five, although he was so exhilarated by what had happened the alcohol hardly seemed to have affected him. He peeled a couple of bills off of his money clip and tipped the girl generously. There was no need, since he had been sitting at the bar, only he felt sorry for her. Not everyone could afford to quit their job, he told himself.

After he had gone Mary breathed a sigh of relief. He was not a bad person. But the twitch gave her the creeps. And she hated drunks. Even friendly ones.

Outside the front door Grabel ordered the cab driver to take him to Pasadena. They were only a few blocks away from downtown, heading south-east on the Hollywood Freeway, about to make the north turn towards Pasadena, when he suddenly remembered something.

'Shit,' he said loudly.

'Is there a problem?'

'Kind of, yeah. I left my door-key at the office.'

'Want to go back for it?'

'Pull off here, will you, while I try to figure out what to do?'

After such a dramatic exit he could hardly return. Ray Richardson would assume he was returning with his tail between his legs to ask for his job back. He would just love holding him up to ridicule. Maybe call him Twitch again. That would be too much to bear. The trouble with making a grand gesture was that it was easy to forget your props.

'So where's it to be, my friend?'

Grabel looked out of the window and found himself staring up at a familiar-looking silhouette. They were on Hope Street, approaching the piazza and the Yu Corporation building. Suddenly he knew exactly where he would spend the night.

'Here. Drop me here,' he said.

'You sure?' said the taxi driver. 'It's kind of rough around here at night, man.'

'Perfectly sure," said Grabel. He wondered why he had not thought of it before.

-###-

Mitchell Bryan was beginning to think that his wife, Alison, was actually getting worse. Over breakfast she had informed him, with an insane look in her eye, how she had read that there were certain South African tribes who believed that the product of a miscarriage could threaten or kill not just the father but the whole country, even the sky itself: it was enough to cause the burning winds to blow, to parch the country with heat and drive the rains away. Laconically, Mitch had replied, 'Well, I guess we got off lightly then,' and headed straight for the car, even though it was still only seven-thirty.

He did not think Alison had ever really recovered from losing their baby. She was more withdrawn than she had ever been before, neurotic even, and kept away from babies like other people avoided the South Central area of LA. There were times when Mitch could not help forcing the endoscope of his memory into the maw of their relationship and asking himself whether or not a child would have kept them together. Because twelve months almost to the day after Alison's miscarriage Mitch stopped making excuses for her eccentric behaviour and started an affair. He hated himself for doing it, knowing that Alison still needed a lot of care and understanding. At the same time he was aware that he no longer loved her quite enough to give it. He felt that what she possibly needed most was to see a psychiatrist.

Right now what Mitch needed was to be in bed with a woman called Jenny Bao, the project's feng shui consultant. Usually he drove straight to the office or the Yu Corporation building, but sometimes he found himself making an early-morning call on Jenny at her West Los Angeles home, from which she also ran her business. On this particular morning Mitch chose the now familiar route off the Santa Monica Freeway on to La Brea Avenue and, just a few blocks south of Wilshire Boulevard, entered the quiet, leafy neighbourhood made up of well-built Spanish and ranch-style houses where Jenny lived. He drew up outside a pleasant grey bungalow with a raised floor and veranda, and an immaculate lawn. Next door was a house with a For Sale board that advertised it as a 'Talking Home'.

Mitch turned the engine off and amused himself for a moment by listening to the ninety-second description of the property on the designated wavelength he could receive on his car radio via a computerized transmitter inside the house. He was surprised that they were asking so much, and that Jenny could have afforded such an expensive neighbourhood. There must be more money in feng shui than he had imagined.

Feng shui, the ancient Chinese art of 'wind and water' land magic, involved locating sites and building structures so that they harmonized with and benefited from the surrounding physical environment. The Chinese believed that this method of divination enabled them to attract desirable cosmological influences, ensuring that they would have good luck, good health, prosperity and a long life. No building on the East Asian Pacific Rim, however large or small, was ever planned or constructed without regard to feng shui precepts.

Mitch had had considerable experience of dealing with feng shui consultants, and not just the one he was sleeping with. When designing the Island Nirvana Hotel in Hong Kong, Ray Richardson had planned on cladding the building in a reflective glass exterior until his client's feng shui master had told him that glare was a source of sha qi, the harmful breath of the dragon. On another occasion the firm had been obliged to alter its award-winning design for the Sumida Television Company in Tokyo because the shape resembled the short-lived butterfly.

He got out of the car and went up the path. Jenny was still in her silk dressing-gown when she answered the door.

'Mitch, what a pleasant surprise,' she said and let him in. 'I was going to give you a call this morning.'

He was already slipping the gown off her shoulders and pushing her into the bedroom.

'Mmm,' she said. 'What did you have, steroids with your Cheerios this morning?'

Half Chinese, Jenny Bao reminded him of a big cat. Green eyes, high cheekbones, and a small delicate nose he had decided was probably cosmetic. She had a bow mouth that was more Odysseus than Cupid and it was set between the parentheses of two perfect laugh lines. She loved to laugh. She carried herself well too, with the long, leggy, self-conscious stroll of the cat-walk. She had not always looked so good. When Mitch had first met her she had been maybe ten or fifteen pounds overweight. He knew how much time she had needed to spend in her local gymnasium to be in such fabulous shape now.

Underneath the robe she was wearing a garter belt, stockings and panties.

'Did the dragon tell you I was coming?' he grinned, pointing at the antique feng shui compass that was mounted on the wall above the bed's headboard. The compass was a circular disc marked with about thirty or forty concentric circles of Chinese characters, and Mitch knew it was called a luopan, and that she used it to assess the good and bad qualities of the dragon in a building.

'Of course,' she said, lying back on the bed. 'The dragon tells me everything.'

His tremulous thumbs gathered the elastic waist of her panties and plucked them down over the twin golden domes of her behind and back up over the suspended sentences and Sobranie filter-tips of her stocking tops as, obligingly, she brought her knees up to her chest. She straightened her feet and the little stealth bomber of black lace and silk was his.

Quickly he threw off his own clothes and rolled on top of her. Detaching mind from over-eager gnomon and its exquisitely appointed, shadowy task, he began to make love to her.

When they had finished they lay under the sheet and watched TV. After a while Mitch glanced at the gold Rolex Submariner watch on his wrist.

'I ought to be going,' he said.

Jenny Bao pulled a face and kissed him.

'What were you going to call me about?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' she said, and told him why she had wanted to speak to him.

-###-

As soon as Mitch sat down at his desk in the studio he saw Tony Levine coming towards him and stifled a groan. Levine was too pushy for Mitch's taste. There was something hungry-looking about him, a generally wolfish effect that was enhanced by the gap teeth shown through his near-permanent smile, and eyebrows that were joined in the middle. Then there was his laugh. When Levine laughed you could hear it all over the building. It was almost as if he were trying to draw attention to himself, and that made Mitch feel uncomfortable. But there was no sign of a smile on Levine's face now.

'Allen Grabel resigned,' said Levine.

'What? You're kidding!'

'Last night.'

'Shit.'

'He was working late on this Kunstzentrum thing when Richardson showed up and started throwing his Limey weight around.'

'So what's new?'

'I mean, really tyrannical. Like he was ready to burn the place down. Like he was fucking Frank Lloyd Wright, y'know?'

Levine uttered a dumb-sounding guffaw and smoothed a small ponytail of dark hair. For Mitch the pony-tail was another reason to dislike him, not least because Levine insisted on calling his hair arrangement a chignon.

'Yeah, well, the ego's about the same size. He thinks he's a genius. That means he has an infinite capacity for making himself a pain in the ass.'

'So what do we do, Mitch? Get another designer on the job? I mean the job's nearly finished, right?'

Levine was the Yu project manager.

'I'd better give Allen a call,' said Mitch. 'There are a couple of problems I'll need his output on, and I'd like to keep Richardson away from what still needs to be done if it's at all possible.'

'Too late,' said Levine. 'He's already been through Grabel's diary. He's coming to this morning's project meeting.'

'Shit. I thought he was going to Germany.'

'After. What problems?'

'That's all we need. You know, Allen would just have sorted things out. But Richardson is bound to make an issue out of it.'

'Out of what? Will you please tell me what the problem is?'

'Feng shui.'

'That? Jesus, Mitch, I thought we sorted that fuckin' shit.'

'We did, but only on the drawings. Jenny Bao has been round the building and she's worried about a number of things. Mainly she's worried about the tree. The way it's planted.'

'That fuckin' tree's been a headache right from the beginning.'

'You're not wrong there, Tony. She's also worried about the fourth floor.'

'What's the hell's wrong with it?'

'Apparently it's unlucky.'

'What?' Levine guffawed again. 'Why the fourth floor and not the thirteenth?'

'Because it's not thirteen that's unlucky for the Chinese, it's the number four. The word for four is also the word for death, she tells me.'

'My birthday comes on the 4th of August,' said Levine. 'Too bad for me, eh?' He cackled loudly. This Kung Fu shit is just too fuckin' much.'

Levine emitted an even louder bray of laughter.

Mitch shrugged. 'Well, I say give the client what he wants, Tony. The client wants space acupuncture, he gets space acupuncture. That way we get to present our bill as soon as possible.'

'I thought the client was in with the Commies. Aren't the Commies atheists and down on all that superstitious nonsense about spirits and good luck?'

'That reminds me,' said Mitch. 'Something else we have to discuss this morning. Remember those demonstrators? The ones who turned up when we had that cosmetic topping-out ceremony? Well, they're back.'

-###-

There were four teams working on the Yu Corporation project — designers, structural engineers, mechanical engineers and the building management systems (BMS) engineers — and it was Mitch's job to make sure that they all built the same building. Frequently a firm of architects was only responsible for the design of the building and relied on outside engineers as consultants. But being such a huge practice, employing some four hundred people, Richardsons had its own in-house mechanical and BMS engineers. An experienced architect himself, it was down to Mitch as technical coordinator to translate the designer's lofty ideas into practical instructions and to make sure that when changes were made everyone was aware of their impact.

Mitch located Allen Grabel's telephone number on his computer card file, but when he called him up he got the answering machine.

'Allen? This is Mitch, calling you at ten o'clock. I just heard about what happened last night, and well — I want to find out if you really meant it. And even if you did mean it, I wanted to see if you could be persuaded to change your mind. We can't afford to lose someone with your talent. I know Richardson can be an asshole. But he's still a pretty talented guy and sometimes talent can be difficult to be around. So, er… maybe you could give me a call when you receive this message.'

Mitch glanced at his watch. There was just enough time to familiarize himself with what the computer held on file about feng shui in the hope that he might find a solution to the problem Jenny Bao had thrown at him; and seeing Kay Killen walking along the studio gallery he waved to her. As drawings manager Kay's function revolved around the computer and the Intergraph design system, which made her the guardian of the database for the whole job and indispensable to Mitch for any number of reasons.

'Kay,' he said, 'could I have your help for a minute, please?'

-###-

'So what's the problem this time?' grumbled Richardson when Mitch brought up the subjects of Jenny Bao's concern at the project meeting.

'You know, I sometimes think these Kung Fu assholes dream these fucking things up to justify their fees.'

'Well, that sounds a familiar story,' murmured Marty Birnbaum, the management partner, adjusting his bow-tie with fastidious care. For Mitch, whose father, a journalist on a small town newspaper, had worn a bow-tie all his life, bow-ties were the meretricious accoutrements of all frauds and liars, and it was yet another reason to dislike the overweight and, he thought, supercilious Birnbaum.

They were all seated around Richardson's democratically round white wood table: Mitchell Bryan; Ray Richardson; Joan Richardson; Tony Levine; Marty Birnbaum; Willis Ellery, the mechanical engineer; Aidan Kenny, the BMS engineer; David Arnon, from Elmo Sergo Ltd, the structural engineers; Helen Hussey, the site agent; and Kay Killen. Mitch sat next to Kay, whose long legs were pointed towards him.

'It's the tree,' explained Mitch. 'Or, rather, where it's planted.'

Everyone groaned.

'Jesus Christ, Mitch,' said David Arnon, 'this may be the smartest building I've ever built, but it's also the dumbest fucking client. He employs one of the world's leading architects and then gets his fucking Chinese witch doctor to scrutinize just about everything he does.'

Mitch did not protest. He knew that Ray Richardson already had his suspicions about him and Jenny, and he had no wish to draw attention to himself by defending her.

'Has this stupid bitch any idea of what it took to get the tree through the roof of that building? It's not exactly the kind of thing you can just pick up and move somewhere else.'

'Take it easy, David,' said Mitch. 'We have to work with this stupid bitch as you call her.'

Arnon slapped his thigh and stood up. Mitch knew that he did it to create an effect, because at six foot five Arnon was the tallest, and possibly the most handsome, man in the room. He was a long wiry streak of a man, with narrow, impossibly horizontal shoulders that seemed to have been tied on to his tent-pole of a body, and a box-shaped head with a closely cut tan-coloured beard. He looked like a former basketball player, which was exactly what he was. Arnon had played Guard as a junior for Duke University, and had been Atlantic Coast player of the year as a senior, until a knee injury had forced him to quit the game for good.

'Take it easy?' said Arnon. 'You're not the one… Whose shitty idea was it to stick a lousy tree that size in there anyway?'

'Actually, it was my shitty idea,' said Joan Richardson.

Arnon shrugged an apology in her direction and sat down again. Mitch smiled to himself, half-enjoying the effect his announcement had produced. He could easily understand David Arnon's concern. It was not every day that a client wanted you to plant a three-hundred-foothigh dicotyledon from the Brazilian rain forest in the middle of his new building's atrium. Arnon had needed the biggest crane in California to lower the outsized evergreen, apparently a South American record, through the roof of the building, a task that had brought the Hollywood Freeway to a halt and closed Hope Street for a whole weekend.

'Relax, will you?' said Mitch. 'She's talking about the way it's planted, not where.'

'That makes a difference?' said Arnon.

'Jenny Bao — '

'Bow wow wow,' growled Arnon. 'Fucking dog woman.'

'- told me that it was bad feng shui to plant a large tree on an island in a pond, since the tree in the rectangular pond becomes a Chinese character meaning confinement and trouble.' He handed round some photocopies of a drawing which Jenny had made of the Chinese kun character.

Richardson regarded the sign with contempt.

'You know,' he said, 'I seem to remember her telling me about how it was good practice to make a rectangular pond because it resembles some other character meaning a mouth and symbolizing — what was it now? — oh yes, people and prosperity. Kay, I want you to look that up in the computer call report. Maybe we can screw this bitch for good.'

Mitch shook his head.

'You're talking about the kou character. But with the mu sign for a tree in the middle, the kou sign becomes a kun. You see what I mean? Jenny was kind of adamant about that, Ray. She won't sign off the feng shui certificate until we've changed it.'

'Change it? How?' said Levine.

'Well, I've had some thoughts on this,' said Mitch. 'We could build another pond, a round pond, inside the square one. That way the circle represents heaven and the square earth.'

'I don't believe we're having this conversation,' said Richardson. 'The smartest building in LA and we're talking voodoo stuff. Next thing we know we're going to have to sacrifice a cockerel and pour its blood on the front door.'

He sighed and ran a hand through his closely cropped grey hair.

'I'm sorry, Mitch. What the hell, I think your idea sounds like a good one.'

'Actually, I already put the idea to her and she seems to quite like it.'

'Well done, pal,' said Richardson. 'Get it drawn up, will you? You hear that everyone? Mitch is the kind of guy we want round here. He gets things done. Next item.'

'We're not finished here yet, I'm afraid,' said Mitch. 'Jenny Bao also has a problem with the fourth floor. Four is the Chinese word for death. Something like that, anyway.'

'Maybe she's right,' said Richardson. 'Because four is the number of bullets I'm going to fire into that bitch's fucking head. Then I'm going to tear off each of her limbs and stick them up her four inch — '

'Fucking A,' whooped Aidan Kenny. Levine guffawed loudly.

'Couldn't you just leave a space where the fourth floor used to be?' smiled Helen Hussey. 'You know, miss it out altogether. Just let the fifth floor float on top of the third?'

'Do you have a solution, Mitch?' asked Joan.

'I'm afraid not this time.'

'How about this?' said Aidan Kenny. 'The fourth floor is where we have the computer suite. That's the main computer room, the electronicmail centre, the document image processing room, the tape-drive room, the multimedia library with a secure store, and the control bridge as well as the various service corridors. So why don't we just call it something like the data centre? Then it goes like this: Second Floor, Third Floor, Data Centre, Fifth Floor, Ladies' Underwear, Soft Furnishings…'

'That's not a bad idea, Aid,' said Richardson. 'What do you think, Mitch? Will Mme Blavatsky buy it?'

'I think so.'

'Willis? You're making a face. Do you have an objection?'

As the project's mechanical engineer it was Willis Ellery's job to plan the Yu Corporation building's complex system of piping, cables, elevator shafts and ductwork. He was a thick-set man, with white-blond hair and a moustache stained fawn at the edge of his upper lip from the many cigars he smoked outside the office. He cleared his throat and gave a little nod of the head, as if trying to butt his way into the conversation. Despite his obvious-looking strength he was the mildest mannered of men.

'Well, yes, I think maybe I do. What are we going to do about the elevators?' he said. 'The indicator panels in the cars all have number fours.'

Richardson shrugged impatiently.

'Get on to Otis, Willis, get them to make you some new ones. It ought to be easy enough to make an indicator panel with a letter D instead of a four.' He pointed to Kay Killen, who was call-reporting the meeting on her laptop. 'Make sure you memo all this to the client, Kay. The cost of making all these voodoo changes is going to be down to him, not us.'

'Er… well… might take a little time to organize that,' said Ellery. Richardson looked at Aidan Kenny with what passed for a twinkle in his eye.

'Aid? You're the one who has to spend most of his life on the fourth floor at the Yu Corp. What do you think? Are you willing to take the risk?

Do you feel lucky, punk?'

'I'm Irish, not Chinese,' laughed Kenny. 'Four's never been a problem for me. My dad used to say that the fortunate possessor of a four-leaf clover would have good luck in gambling, and that witchcraft would have no power over him.'

'All the same,' said Mitch, 'perhaps it would be better if you didn't mention it to Cheech and Chong.'

'Who the hell are they?' said Richardson.

'Bob Beech and Hideki Yojo,' Kenny explained. 'From the Yu Corporation. They've been installing their supercomputer and helping me to set up the building management systems. Actually they're my chaperones. They're there to make sure I don't screw around with their hardware.'

'Do you think their being there might count as a completion offering beneficial occupation?' joked David Arnon, knowing that under the existing articles of agreement, this would have allowed his company, Elmo Sergo, to quit the site.

Mitch smiled, knowing how badly Arnon wanted to finish the job and, more particularly, to get away from Ray Richardson.

'That reminds me, Mitch,' said Richardson. 'Have you put a date in my diary for the practical completion inspection yet?'

This was the stage in the completion of a building contract when the architect accepted the building as complete and ready for occupation.

'Not yet, Ray, no. We're still running checks on services and equipment prior to obtaining the temporary certificate of occupation.'

'Don't leave it too long. You know how my diary fills up.'

'Hey, I forgot to mention it,' said Kenny, 'but, talking about dates and diaries, today is Big Bang. Our computer links up with the computers at every one of our projects in America.'

'Aidan's quite correct to remind us,' said Ray Richardson. 'Our Big Bang's important. Soon most of our site inspections will be done on closed-circuit TV via the computer modem. That should save a lot of you bastards from having to get your $300 shoes dirty.'

'We may even have that available to us for the next project meeting,' said Kenny. 'Most of the BMS is already working.'

'Good work, Aid.'

'What about security?' inquired Tony Levine. 'Mitch says that some of those demonstrators came back.'

'How come?' asked Richardson. 'It's six months since they were last there.'

'There's not half as many as last time. Only a handful,' said Mitch.

'Students mostly. My guess is it's because the semester at UCLA just ended.'

'You know, if it becomes a problem, Mitch, you should give Morgan Phillips a ring at City Hall. Get him to do something about it. He owes me one.'

Mitch shrugged. 'I don't think it's going to be a problem,' he said.

'We've got security men to handle things. Not to mention the computer.'

'If you say so. OK, everyone,' said Richardson, 'that's it.' The meeting was over.

'Hey, Mitch,' said Kenny. 'You going downtown?'

'Any minute now.'

'Give me a lift to the Gridiron, will you? My car's in the repair shop.'

Mitch winced and glanced at Ray Richardson. It had been the LA Times's architecture critic, Sam Hall Kaplan, who had first dubbed the Yu Corporation building 'the Gridiron', because of the resemblance between its framework of parallel cross-braces and supports and an American football field. Mitch knew the nickname irritated Richardson.

'Aidan Kenny,' said Richardson sharply, 'I do not want to hear anyone calling the Yu Corporation building the Gridiron. It is the Yu building, or the Yu Corporation building, or even Number One Hope Street Piazza, and that is all. No one here should denigrate a Richardson building in such a way. Is that clear?'

Aware that it was no longer just Aidan Kenny who was listening, Ray Richardson raised his voice. 'That goes for everyone. Nobody refers to the Yu building as the Gridiron. This practice has won ninety-eight awards for outstanding architectural design and we're proud of our buildings. I may base my style of architecture in technology — I don't see how you can avoid that. But you can take it for granted that I believe the buildings are also beautiful. Beauty and technology are not as incompatible as some people would like us to believe. And anyone who thinks differently has no right to be working here. Don't mistake me on this. I'll fire anyone I hear using the word Gridiron. And the same applies to nicknames anyone might have for the Kunstzentrum in Berlin, the Yoyogi Park building in Tokyo, the Bunshaft Museum in Houston, the Thatcher building in London, or any other fucking building that we have anything to do with. I hope I've made myself clear.'

-###-

Aidan Kenny was still commenting on this reprimand as Mitch drove them east along Santa Monica Boulevard. Mitch was pleased to see that he had not taken it to heart. Kenny even seemed to regard the experience as amusing.

'The Yoyogi Park building,' he said. 'What do they call that one, then?

Sorry, how do they denigrate that one? Hell of a word that — denigrate. I had to look it up. It means bad-mouth.'

'There was a piece about it in Architectural Digest,' Mitch explained.

' The Japan Times commissioned a Gallup poll about what people in Tokyo thought about it. Apparently they call it the ski jump.'

'The ski jump.' Kenny chuckled. 'I like that. It is kind of like a ski jump, isn't it? Ouch. I bet he loved that. And the Bunshaft?'

'That's a new one on me. Maybe he's seen something I haven't.'

'What gets up that sonofabitch? Maybe it's Joan. Maybe she straps one on and shoves it up his ass. She's man enough: that's what I call an Iron Lady. She could play defence for the Steelers.'

'Richardson's not the worst architect in LA, I'll say that for him. Not by a long way. Morphosis would win that prize, with Frank Gehry a close second. Ray may behave like a paranoid schizophrenic but at least his buildings don't look that way. Do you think some of those guys think that there's some kind of redemption in making buildings look as ugly as possible?'

'Hey, come on, Mitch,' chuckled Kenny. 'You know that "ugly" is not a word that has any meaning in architecture. There's avant-garde, there's very avant-garde and there's security-guard. You want your building to look fashionable these days, you make it look like a fucking state penitentiary.'

'That's good coming from the man who drives a Cadillac Protector.'

'You know how many Protectors were sold in LA last year? Eighty thousand. Mark my words, in a couple of years we'll all be driving them. You included. Joan Richardson drives one.'

'Why doesn't Ray? There are lots more people who want him dead, surely.'

'You don't think his Bentley isn't armour-plated?' Kenny shook his head. 'You can't sell a car like that in LA without armour. But frankly I prefer the Protector. It has a back-up engine, in case the first one breaks down. Not even a Bentley has that.'

'So why aren't you driving it? You've only just took delivery.'

'Nothing serious. It's just the on-board computer.'

'What's the matter with it?'

'I don't know. My eight-year-old, Michael, keeps screwing with it. He thinks it controls the car's weapons system or something, and zaps the other cars with it.'

'If only,' said Mitch, braking hard to avoid colliding with the wayward tan Ford in front, 'it were that easy.' He gritted his teeth angrily, checked the mirror and then pulled out to overtake.

'Try not to make eye contact with him, Mitch,' said Kenny nervously.

'Just in case, y'know… Have you got a gun in this car?' He opened the glove compartment.

'If a Protector had a weapons system, I'd get one today.'

'Yeah, wouldn't that be good?'

Mitch pulled in front of the tan Ford and glanced over at his passenger. 'Relax, will you? There's no gun in there. I don't have one.'

'No gun? What are you, some kind of pacifist?'

Aidan Kenny was a heavy, couch-potato type with wire-frame glasses and a wide, viscid mouth that could accommodate a whole cheeseburger. There was something about him that reminded Mitch of a minor Renaissance princeling: the eyes were small and set too close together; the nose was long and fat, adding an impression of sensuality and selfindulgence; and the chin, while not of Habsburg proportions, was prognathously stubborn and covered with a fair, boyish sort of beard that looked as if it had been grown to give the impression of maturity. His skin was as soft and white as a roll of toilet paper, as might have been expected with someone who spent most of his waking hours serving a computer terminal.

They turned south on to Hollywood Freeway.

'That's why I'm giving in and letting him have some computer games,' said Kenny. 'You know, the interactive stuff on CD-ROM.'

'Who?'

'My son. Then maybe he'll stop screwing around with the car's computer.'

'He must be the only kid in LA who doesn't already play those games.'

'Yeah, well, that's because I know how addictive they can be. I'm still attending CGA. Computer Games Anonymous.'

Mitch sneaked another sideways look at his colleague. It was easy enough to imagine him playing some fantasy game into the small hours of the morning. Not that there was anything weak-minded about Aidan Kenny. Before setting up a BMS company that Richardson had eventually bought for several milion dollars, Aidan Kenny had worked with the Stanford artificial intelligence group. That was another thing you had to hand to Ray Richardson: he hired only the best to work for him. Even if he didn't know how to hang on to them.

'Matter of fact, Mitch, he's coming in today. We're going to go to a store and he's going to pick all the games he wants.'

'Who, Michael?'

'It's his birthday. Margaret's dropping him off at the Gridiron. Whoops. The Yu building. Gee, I hope your car isn't bugged. Do you think anyone will mind Michael being there this afternoon? We're going to see the Clippers this evening and I don't want to have to go home first.'

Mitch was thinking about Allen Grabel. His attache case had still been under his desk when they left the office. And there had still been the answering machine when Mitch had phoned again. He mentioned it to Kenny.

'Do you think something could have happened to him?' he said.

'Like what?'

'I dunno. You're the one with the imagination and the Cadillac Protector. I mean, it was kind of late when he left the office last night.'

'Probably went somewhere and got himself stewed,' said Kenny. 'Allen likes a drink. Two or three if he can get away with it.'

'Yeah, maybe you're right.'

They came off the Freeway at Temple Street and approached the familiar downtown skyline, dominated by I. M. Pei's orthogonal seventythree-storey Library Tower. Mitch reflected that LA's tallest buildings (most of them banks and shopping plazas) resembled the banal, blocksquare construction he had built in the days when eight-year-olds played with simple sets of Lego bricks. Turning south on to Hope Street, he felt a surge of pride as he caught sight of the Yu building and, leaning forward in his seat, stole a quick glance up at the familiar curtain wall recessed behind the characteristic gridiron of lateral megatrusses and ivory white piers: it was not so much a frame as a three-hundred-foot ladder from which the twenty-five floors were suspended.

Despite Richardson's sensitivity about the nickname, Mitch found there was nothing inherently offensive in it. Indeed, he half suspected that there would come a time when, like the owners of New York's famous Flatiron building, the Yu Corporation would yield to popular insistence and make the nickname official. They could call it what they liked, he reflected: compared with the sullenly competent Miesian glass boxes that surrounded it, the Gridiron was, in Mitch's opinion, the most stunning piece of new architecture anywhere in America. There was nothing to touch the glistening, silver-white transparent machine that was Ray Richardson's Gridiron building. Its visible absence of colour was the most concrete of all colours and, in Mitch's eyes, the building seemed to possess the white light of a revealed truth.

Mitch slowed the car to turn down the drive that led around the side of the finished piazza to the underground car park. As he did so he felt something strike his passenger door.

'Jesus,' exclaimed Kenny and sank into his seat below the window.

'What the hell was that?'

'One of those Chinese kids threw something.'

Mitch did not stop. Like everyone else in LA he stopped for nothing except traffic lights and the LAPD. He waited until they were safe behind the rolling aluminium garage door before inspecting his car for damage. There was no dent. Not even a scratch. Just the hand-sized splatter of a piece of rotten fruit. Mitch found a tissue in the glove box, wiped the mess away and then sniffed it.

'Smells like a rotten orange,' he said. 'It could have been worse. It could have been a rock or something.'

'Next time it might be worse. It's like I told you, Mitch, drive the Cadillac Protector,' said Kenny, and shrugged. He added, quoting the now infamous television commercial in which a nerdy-looking white man drove the car through a tough black neighbourhood, 'It's the car that gives you back the freedom of the city.'

'What's got into those kids? They've never thrown anything before. Isn't there supposed to be a cop out there making sure this kind of thing doesn't happen?'

Kenny shook his head. 'Who knows? Maybe the cop did it himself. Jesus, these days I'm more afraid of the LAPD than I am of the bad guys. Did you see that blind man on the TV? The one who got shot for waving his white stick at a patrolman?'

'I guess we'd better mention it to Sam,' said Mitch. 'See what he says.'

They walked through a door to the elevators, where a car was waiting to take them up into the main building. It had been automatically dispatched to the basement car park when the two men had given their voice identification phrases outside the garage.

'Which level, please?'

Kenny leaned towards the microphone on the wall. 'Where is Sam Gleig now, Abraham?'

'Abraham?' Mitch raised his eyebrows at Kenny, who shrugged back.

'Didn't I tell you? We decided to give the A-life a name.'

'Sam Gleig is on the atrium floor,' said the computer.

'Take us there, please, Abraham.' He grinned at Mitch. 'Besides, it's a hell of a lot better than what Cheech and Chong used to call the YU-5 configuration. The Mathematical Analyser Numerator Integrator and Computer. M-A-N-I-A-C? Get it?'

The doors closed.

'Abraham. I guess it's OK,' said Mitch. 'You know, every time I hear its voice I wonder where I've heard it before.'

'It's Alec Guinness,' said Kenny. 'You know, the old English guy who was in Star Wars. We had him in the studio for a whole weekend so that we could digitize his voice. Of course Abraham can sample damn near any sound he wants, but for sustained speech you need to have an actor to give you a proper linguistic base. We researched Guinness against a dozen other actors' voices, including Glenn Close, James Earl Jones, Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood.'

'Clint Eastwood?' Mitch sounded surprised. 'In an elevator?'

'Yeah, but Guinness came out the best. People thought he sounded very reassuring. The English accent, I suppose. Not that we're restricted to English, though. There are eighty-six languages spoken in LA and Abraham is programmed to understand and respond to them all.' ...