RAY MATUSOW COLLECTED the most recent set of tapes that were keeping track of the home life of Katherine Przyszewski and her small brood.
Ray started at the office in the morning and spiraled outward through Los Angeles. The Przyszewskis were number four on his list of seven. Like Taylor and Sheehan, he did not yet know what the purpose of his work was, only the names of the people he was responsible for covering. Except for Joe and Maggie, they all worked directly for John Lincoln Beagle. Teddy Brody, day librarian. Luke Przyszewski, night librarian, no relation to Kitty, though Beagle had thought he must be because of his name, and hired him to please her. Beagle had thought the world of Kitty until this point of confusion. Carmine Cassella, projectionist. Seth Simeon, staff artist and designer. Maxwell Nurmberg and Morris Rosenblum, who were the electrical-engineer, computer whiz, tech-nerd, tinkering video mavens that had put together the ten-screen view system in Beagle’s studio.
Somebody else, Ray didn’t know who, handled Beagle himself, including his offices, his home, his child, and his wife, Jacqueline Conroy. Perhaps there was even a third to track the rest of the people employed at CinéMutt, Beagle’s studio and research setup.
When he’d collected them all, he went home. That was his routine. He spot-checked the tapes, logged them, and then copied them on a high-speed duping machine. Ray believed in redundancy. He’d had supervisors misplace material and clients ruin recordings and then turn to him and act like it was his fault. In the morning he’d bring the originals into the office, log them in there, then start again.
He was upset to discover that the last tape from the Przyszewski set seemed to run out in the middle of a conversation. He knew approximately what their daily dose of talk was and he’d had enough machines and tape to record three times that much. He played them back and listened enough to discover that Kitty had quit her job and had been home all day. Plus, she’d spent a lot of time talking to her daughter. Kitty told Agnes that she was going to find a new job where she could be of real help to Agnes’s career, that her mother could help her, and would help her, more than anyone else in the world. There was no way that Ray could have anticipated those events. He would put in a couple more machines the next day. Meanwhile, he’d file a report that explained what had happened.
In the morning, when Ray drove into the office with the tapes from the day before and his report, he didn’t notice that he was being followed. Just as he hadn’t noticed it all day the day before.