Parallelities Read Online Free PDF Page A

into gear. He followed its progress as it hummed down the driveway and out onto the main access road, a small metallic blue beetle disappearing into the gathering night. Then he turned and walked over the interlocking red paving bricks and up the concrete stoop to the front door. It was a plain, ordinary house door, not one of the garish amalgams of rare wood and stained glass—designed to intimidate visitors—that were so commonly encountered in the Brahman environs of power-conscious Los Angeles, where even the styling and construction of a front door were often construed as a sign of status.
    Similarly, the doorbell did not play Beethoven, tell jokes, or attempt an imitation of Big Ben on New Year’s Eve. Its chime was ingenuously normal.
    The man who opened the door was in his late fifties but remarkably fit. He wore Nikes, bright baggy multicolored weight lifter’s sweatpants, and a wrinkled T-shirt two sizes too big with the legend Keetmanshoop Hotel on it above a black-and-white drawing of a gemsbok at rest. Cut fashionably short, his gray-blond hair gave him the look of a retired Marine. From a slim gold chain around his neck dangled a gold charm in the shape of a bar code. The watch on his right wrist was a hard plastic multifunction Casio; nice, but hardly a Rolex or Patek Phillipe. Thick gray chest hair shoved its way out of the V neck of the tee, and more hair bristled on his exposed arms. He was six feet or so, muscular from years of chucking iron in the gym. Probably Boles’s bodyguard or senior manservant, Max decided.
    “Good evening. I’m looking for Barrington Boles.” Straining to see past the doorman, Max made out a normal-looking hallway. No skeletons hanging from the rafters, no cross-reflecting mirrors, no probing laser beams; just a few shelves lined with expensive but unpretentious objets d’art. Too bad. He’d been hoping for an immediate dose of weirdness.
    The man promptly extended a hand. “Pleasure to meet you, young man.”
    While his brain struggled to catch up, Max’s hand reacted instinctively and took the older man’s. In keeping with therest of the tanned physique, the grip was powerful, but restrained. “You’re Barrington Boles? I expected …”
    The older man grinned as he cut him off. “Someone much older? Or a clone of Christopher Lloyd’s Doc character from the
Back to the Future
movies? Somebody with wild eyes, frizzing hair, and a colorfully stained white lab coat?”
    “Yeah, that would be about right,” Max replied, deciding to take a chance. “Your standard clichéd garden-variety-issue mad scientist.”
    The welcoming hand withdrew. The skin on the back was wrinkled from long hours spent immersed in seawater. “Sorry to disappoint you. I’m neither mad, nor a scientist. And my taste in lab clothing runs more to shorts and tank tops.” He beckoned as he stepped aside. “Won’t you come in, Mr. …?”
    “Parker. Maxwell.” As he entered, Boles shut the door behind them. Though it smelled of money, the house felt far more normal than Max had anticipated, based on what he’d been told. The initial edginess he tended to feel when entering the lair of the presumably deranged was rapidly slipping away.
    “Nice to meet you, Max.” Boles guided his visitor into a spacious den dominated by redwood burl furniture, the kind that tended to swallow you when you sat down in a couch or chair fashioned from the stuff. An entertainment center with large-screen TV was built into the wall off to the left, while cathedral-sized picture windows directly opposite provided a view of the now dark coast and the immeasurable blackness ofocean beyond. The other walls were lined with built-in book-shelves. All of these were filled, in some cases to overflowing. Dominating the Mexican tile floor were several large, elaborate Persian rugs of estimable vintage and, even to Max’s untrained eye, considerable value, and a startling coffee table that consisted of a thick slab of