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to
stand, Z was struck by the dagger of the sun's direct
rays.
    Recovering, slamming the tinny door,
he set out across the badly cracked pavement, his nose tortured by
the oily smell of tar cooked on the street's "solar" griddle, the
road soft underfoot. Blistering. Sticky.
    Stepping up on the unkempt parking, Z
crossed the weed-grown, crazed brick crosswalk, going through the
open gate to pick his way up the house's octagonal tile
path.
    At the porch, climbing the splintered,
wooden steps, Z knocked on the door.
    No answer, of course, his knock's
reverberation seconding what he'd assumed: that the place was ...
empty.
    Antique deadbolt lock on the door.
Crude, but effective for its day.
    The knocking over, Z backed off the
porch to walk around the left side of the house and down the
burnt-out side yard, pausing to take a hand-shaded look into what
had to be the living room, moving on to a bedroom window, only to
discover that the inside of the house was set up the way he'd
envisioned it.
    Beyond that, it was too dark in there
to see anything much ... except that there was little left to
see.
    Nothing remarkable out back either,
the backyard, like the residence itself, in the middle of the "war
zone" of smashed houses.
    Something shiny catching Z's eye, he
bent to inspect the house's sloped-flat, overlapping cellar doors.
Found that the reflection came from a cheap combination lock
clicked through the double doors' rusty, but solid,
hasp.
    Finished with the cellar doors, Z rose
to examine the back door, finding it "protected" by a standard
spring lock -- easiest thing in the world to jimmy.
    Z grinned.
    To one-up the ghost
hunter, Z would finesse his way past the well-protected front door; get some
respect by showing off his lock-picking skills.
    Until then .....
    The heat hurrying him, salty sweat
sliding from the runnels along his forehead, Z completed the
circumnavigation of the house, cutting back across the abandoned
yard before crossing the street to the sun-struck
Cavalier.
    Squeezing himself into the steamy
little car, ignoring the heat buildup of the thinly padded seat, Z
ground the car's small engine into life, popped the automatic into
drive and slipped on past 2609.
    Pulling up in a wide spot
ahead, Z U-turned the Cavalier to ease back the way he'd come, it
occurring to him he could do something to make this Liberty trip more than
a complete waste of time.
    "Someone" had reported there was a
"ghost light" at 2609, that "someone" in the only other house in
sight.
    Figuring to pick up background
information, driving past 2609, Z stopped in front of
2607.
    Again with no way to "blend in," all Z
could do was get out and struggle up 2607's front walk.
    No reason to rush, Z needing time to
decide who he wanted to portray in order to prompt a friendly chat
with the person answering the door.
    Still thinking about an alias, he
pried himself out of the car, rounding the front bumper -- hamming
it up shamefully -- and strained his leg over the concrete curb,
all the while keeping his eyes open.
    The house at 2607 had no fence, just a
yard -- not too well-kept, a blind man "seeing" these last two
houses were slated for demolition.
    He'd need an excuse for knocking on
the door, of course; meaning he had to choose which of his
billfold's fake identity cards he'd use to impress the occupant
(forged cards like these available to friends of Johnny
Dosso.)
    For instance, no sign of a dog argued
against flashing his dog catcher credentials. Anyway, who'd
complain about a barking dog in what had become nowhere?
    Ah! An old house in an old
neighborhood. Probably meant old people, old folks tending to be
religious ....
    OK, then. He'd be Pastor Goodfellow,
recently arrived in Liberty to establish a ministry at his newly
hallucinated, Church of the Living Word.
    Concentrating, Z believed the I.D.
card showing him to be the redoubtable Goodfellow was the third
from the front of his billfold. (It would never do to identify
himself one way