I said nothing. I knew what Ken was telling me was true. I had seen it happen more than once.

I said, "What can I do?"

Ken laughed. "You could arrange one of your famous incidents of L.A. police brutality."

"That's not funny."

"Nobody at this paper would cover it, I can promise you that. You could fucking kill him. And if somebody made a home video? Hey, people here would pay to see it on video."

"Ken."

Ken sighed. "I can dream. Okay. There's one thing. Last year, after Wilhelm was involved in the, ah, change of management over in Calendar, I got an anonymous package in the mail. So did a few other people. Nobody did anything about it at the time. It's pretty dirty pool. You interested?"

"Yeah."

Ken took a small manila envelope from the inside pocket of his sport coat. It had one of those strings that you wrap back and forth to close it. Inside was a series of photos, printed in a strip. It showed Willy Wilhelm engaged in an intimate act with a dark-haired man. His head buried in his lap.

"You can't see the Weasel's face too well in all the angles," Ken said. "But it's him, all right. Action snap of the reporter entertaining his source. Having a drink with him, so to speak."

"Who is the guy?"

"It took us a while. His name is Barry Borman. He's the regional head of sales for Kaisei Electronics in southern California."

"What can I do with this?"

"Give me your card," Ken said. "I'll clip it to the envelope, and have it delivered to the Weasel."

I shook my head. "I don't think so."

"It'd sure make him think twice."

"No," I said. "It's not for me."

Ken shrugged. "Yeah. It might not work, anyway. Even if we squeeze the Weasel's nuts, the Japanese probably have other ways. I still haven't been able to find out how that story ran last night. All I hear is, 'Orders from the top, orders from the top.' Whatever that means. It could mean anything."

"Somebody must have written it."

"I tell you, I can't find out. But you know, the Japanese have a powerful influence at the paper. It's more than just the ads they take. It's more than their relentless PR machine drumming out of Washington, or the local lobbying and the campaign contributions to political figures and organizations. It's the sum of all those things and more. And it's starting to be insidious. I mean, you can be sitting around in a staff meeting discussing some article that we might run, and you suddenly realize, nobody wants to offend them. It isn't a question of whether a story is right or wrong, news or not news. And it isn't a one-to-one equation, like 'We can't say that or they'll pull their ads.' It's more subtle than that. Sometimes I look at my editors, and I can tell they won't go with certain stories because they are afraid. They don't even know what they are afraid of. They're just afraid."

"So much for a free press."

"Hey," Ken said. "This is not the time for sophomore bullshit. You know how it works. The American press reports the prevailing opinion. The prevailing opinion is the opinion of the group in power. The Japanese are now in power. The press reports the prevailing opinion as usual. No surprises. Just take care."

"I will."

"And don't hesitate to call, if you decide you want to arrange mail service."

I wanted to talk to Connor. I was beginning to understand why Connor had been worried, and why he had wanted to conclude the investigation quickly. Because a well-mounted campaign of innuendo is a fearsome thing. A skillful practitioner - and the Weasel was skillful - would arrange it so that a new story came out, day after day, even when nothing happened. You got headlines like GRAND JURY UNDECIDED ON POLICEMAN'S GUILT when in fact the grand jury hadn't met yet. But people saw the headlines, day after day, and drew their own conclusions.

The truth was, there was always a way to spin it. At the end of the innuendo campaign, if your subject was found blameless, you could still mount a headline like GRAND JURY FAILS TO FIND POLICEMAN GUILTY or DISTRICT ATTORNEY UNWILLING TO PROSECUTE ACCUSED COP. Headlines like that were as bad as a conviction.

And there was no way to bounce back from weeks of negative press. Everybody remembered the accusation. Nobody remembered the exoneration. That was human nature. Once you were accused, it was tough to get back to normal.

It was getting creepy, and I had a lot of bad feelings. I was a little preoccupied, pulling into the parking lot next to the physics department at U.S.C., when the phone rang again. It was assistant chief Olson.

"Peter."

"Yes, sir."

"It's almost ten o'clock. I thought you'd be down here putting the tapes on my desk. You promised them to me."

"I've been having trouble getting the tapes copied."

"Is that what you've been doing?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Because from the calls I get, it sounds like you aren't dropping this investigation," Jim Olson said. "In the last hour, you've been out asking questions at a Japanese research institute. Then you've interrogated a scientist who works for a Japanese research institute. You're hanging around some Japanese seminar. Let's get it straight, Peter. Is the investigation over, or not?"

"It's over," I said. "I'm just trying to get the tapes copied."

"Make sure that's all it is," he said.

"Right, Jim."

"For the good of the whole department - and the individuals in it - I want this thing behind us."

"Right, Jim."

"I don't want to lose control of this situation."

"I understand."

"I hope you do," he said. "Get the copies made, and get your ass down here." And he hung up.

I parked the car, and went into the physics building.

Chapter 6

I waited at the top of the lecture hall while Phillip Sanders finished his lecture. He stood in front of a blackboard covered with complex formulas. There were about thirty students in the room, most of them seated down near the front. I could see the backs of their heads.

Dr. Sanders was about forty years old, one of those energetic types, in constant motion, pacing back and forth, tapping the equations on the blackboard in short emphatic jabs with his chalk as he pointed to the "signal covariant ratio determination" and the "factorial delta bandwidth noise." I couldn't even guess what subject he was teaching. Finally I concluded it must be electrical engineering.

When the bell rang on the hour, the class stood and packed up their bags. I was startled: nearly everyone in the class was Asian, both men and women. Those that weren't Oriental were Indian or Pakistani. Out of thirty students only three were white.

"That's right," Sanders said to me later, as we walked down the hallway toward his laboratory. "A class like Physics 101 doesn't attract Americans. It's been that way for years. Industry can't find them, either. We would be up shit creek if we didn't have the Orientals and Indians who come here to get doctorates in math and engineering, and then work for American companies."

We continued down some stairs, and turned left. We were in a basement passageway. Sanders walked quickly.

"But the trouble is, it's changing," he continued. "My Asian students are starting to go home. Koreans are going back to Korea. Taiwanese the same. Even Indians are returning home. The standard of living is going up in their countries, and there's more opportunity back home now. Some of these foreign countries have large numbers of well-trained people." He led me briskly down a flight of stairs. "Do you know what city has the highest number of Ph.D.'s per capita in the world?"

"Boston?"

"Seoul, Korea. Think about that as we rocket into the twenty-first century."

Now we were going down another corridor. Then briefly outside, into sunlight, down a covered walkway, and back into another building. Sanders kept glancing back over his shoulder, as if he was afraid of losing me. But he never stopped talking.

"And with foreign students going home, we don't have enough engineers to do American research. To create new American technology. It's a simple balance sheet. Not enough trained people. Even big companies like IBM are starting to have trouble. Trained people simply don't exist. Watch the door."

The door swung back toward me. I went through. I said, "But if there are all these high-tech job opportunities, won't they begin to attract students?"

"Not like investment banking. Or law." Sanders laughed. "America may lack engineers and scientists, but we lead the world in the production of lawyers. America has half the lawyers in the entire world. Think of that." He shook his head.

"We have four percent of the world population. We have eighteen percent of the world economy. But we have fifty percent of the lawyers. And thirty-five thousand more every year, pouring out of the schools. That's where our productivity's directed. That's where our national focus is. Half our TV shows are about lawyers. America has become Land of Lawyers. Everybody suing. Everybody disputing. Everybody in court. After all, three quarters of a million American lawyers have to do something. They have to make their three hundred thousand a year. Other countries think we're crazy."

He unlocked a door. I saw a sign that said ADVANCED IMAGING LABORATORY in hand-painted lettering, and an arrow. Sanders led me down a long basement hallway.

"Even our brightest kids are badly educated. The best American kids now rank twelfth in the world, after the industrialized countries of Asia and Europe. And that's our top students. At the bottom, it's worse. One-third of high school graduates can't read a bus schedule. They're illiterate."

We came to the end of the hallway, and turned right. "And the kids I see are lazy. Nobody wants to work. I teach physics. It takes years to master. But all the kids want to dress like Charlie Sheen and make a million dollars before they're twenty-eight. The only way you can make that kind of money is in law, investment banking, Wall Street. Places where the game is paper profits, something for nothing. But that's what the kids want to do, these days."

"Maybe at U.S.C."

"Trust me. Everywhere. They all watch television."

He swung another door open. Still another corridor. This one smelled moldy, damp.

"I know, I know. I'm old-fashioned," Sanders said. "I still believe that every human being stands for something. You stand for something. I stand for something. Just being on this planet, wearing the clothes we wear, doing the work we do, we each stand for something. And in this little corner of the world," he said, "we stand for cutting the crap. We analyze network news and see where they have been fucking around with the tape. We analyze TV commercials and show where the tricks are - "

Sanders suddenly stopped.

"What's the matter?"

"Wasn't there someone else?" he said. "Didn't you come here with someone else?"

"No. Just me."

"Oh, good." Sanders continued on at his same breakneck pace. "I always worry about losing people down here. Ah, okay. Here we are. The lab. Good. This door is just where I left it."

With a flourish, he threw the door open. I stared at the room, shocked.

"I know it doesn't look like much," Sanders said. That, I thought, was a serious understatement.

I was looking at a basement space with rusty pipes and fittings hanging down from the ceiling. The green linoleum on the floor curled up in several places to expose concrete beneath. Arranged around the room were battered wooden tables, each heaped with equipment, and drooping wires down the sides. At each table, a student sat facing monitors. In several places, water plinked into buckets on the floor. Sanders said, "The only space we could get was here in the basement, and we don't have the money to put in little amenities like a ceiling. Never mind, doesn't matter. Just watch your head."

He moved forward into the room. I am about a hundred and eighty centimeters tall, not quite six feet, and I had to crouch to enter the room. From somewhere in the ceiling above, I heard a harsh rasping sizzle.

"Skaters," Sanders explained.

"Sorry?"

"We're underneath the ice rink. You get used to it. Actually, it's not bad now. When they have hockey practice in the afternoon, then it's a bit noisy."

We moved deeper into the room. I felt like I was in a submarine. I glanced at the students at their workstations. They were all intent on their work; nobody looked up as we passed. Sanders said, "What kind of tape do you want to duplicate?"

"Eight-millimeter Japanese. Security tape. It might be difficult."

"Difficult? I doubt that very much," Sanders said. "You know, back in my youth, I wrote most of the early video image-enhancement algorithms. You know, despeckling and inversion and edge tracing. That stuff. The Sanders algorithms were the ones everybody used. I was a graduate student at Cal Tech then. I worked at JPL in my spare time. No, no, we can do it."

I handed him a tape. He looked at it. "Cute little bugger."

I said, "What happened? To all your algorithms?"

"There was no commercial use for them," he said. "Back in the eighties, American companies like RCA and GE got out of commercial electronics entirely. My image enhancement programs didn't have much use in America." He shrugged. "So I tried to sell them to Sony, in Japan."

"And?"

"The Japanese had already patented the products. In Japan."

"You mean they already had the algorithms?"

"No. They just had patents. In Japan, patenting is a form of war. The Japanese patent like crazy. And they have a strange system. It takes eight years to get a patent in Japan, but your application is made public after eighteen months, after which royalties are moot. And of course Japan doesn't have reciprocal licensing agreements with America. It's one of the ways they keep their edge.

"Anyway, when I got to Japan I found Sony and Hitachi had some related patents and they had done what is called 'patent flooding.' Meaning they covered possible related uses. They didn't have the rights to use my algorithms - but I discovered I didn't have the rights, either. Because they had already patented the use of my invention." He shrugged. "It's complicated to explain. Anyway, that's ancient history. By now the Japanese have devised much more complicated video software, far surpassing anything we have. They're years ahead of us now. But we struggle along in this lab. Ah. Just the person we need. Dan. Are you busy?"