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got out the Santa Barbara telephone directory, stashed near the Gideon bible next to my bed, and looked up Kenneth Millar. Lo and behold, there he was, big as life. I dialed the number.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œIs this Kenneth Millar?”
    â€œYes?”
    Wow. Now what?
    â€œWell, uh, you don’t know me, but I’ve been driving across the country, reading your books.”
    â€œOh?” He was definitely wary now. No surprise. With the kind of books he wrote, the notion of some wacko picking up the phone (or worse) must have occurred to him, or even happened before.
    (Then how come he told everyone how to find him on the back of each of his books?)
    â€œI was just sort of wondering,” I pressed on, “were you, that is, are you a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s?”
    Impossible to tell from the silence that followed what he made of me now. A literate psychopath? Someone who would bore him to death before bludgeoning him?
    â€œI admire Doyle, of course,” he said carefully, “though I’d guess I was rather more influenced by Poe.”
    Really. (I hadn’t yet formed my theory about how pointless it is to ask people about their influences.)
    â€œReally?”
    He let the silence hang there. I thought I’d pushed this about as far as I could. I found I was gripping the receiver in a white-knuckled clench.
    â€œWell, thanks very much for your time. I’ll let you get on with your . . .” (what was it I interrupted?) “your life. So long.”
    â€œGood-bye.”
    I sank heavily onto the bed, covered in sweat.

LOS ANGELES
    Los Angeles, when I arrived the next day, was just about as horrible as everyone predicted. I got off the San Diego freeway at Wilshire Boulevard (something that sounded vaguely familiar), and I headed east, assuming this broad thoroughfare would bring me downtown.
    I had not yet heard Gertrude Stein’s celebrated description of Oakland, her own hometown: “Once you get there there’s no there there,” which will apply equally to LA.
    I now know I would have reached downtown if I’d only kept going far enough along Wilshire, but I gave up after about fifteen miles. Often I’d see a cluster of office buildings draw near and think I’d found the damn thing, only to grind my teeth with vexation when this same inexorable avenue spun past them, leaving the pathetic little group behind, to be replaced by more bungalows and a series of incongruous palm trees, their tall, thin trunks raveling pointlessly upward forever, crowned, finally, by an absurd thatch of fronds.
    Where did they keep the damn city?
    There was really no postponing the moment any longer. I fished out a dime, used a parking lot phone booth, and called the International Famous Agency. What was I going to do with my life if they said they weren’t interested?
    We’ll never know the answer to that one because the call was forwarded to a young agent named John Ptak, who said he liked my stuff and wanted to meet me. I acquired directions and the rest is more or less history. After meeting with him, I opened the trunk of my car, checked my remaining supply of traveler’s checks, and concluded that I could hold out till Christmas.
    I rented an apartment in someplace called Culver City, more or less beneath the intersection of the Santa Monica and San Diego freeways. It was the same size or smaller than my flat in New York, but I thought it was great because it had a swimming pool the size of a postage stamp in the middle of a courtyard. I emptied the contents of my trunk into the little place and got into my car to look for dinner.
    After dinner I got into my car again and began driving before I realized that I had no idea where I lived. I had forgot to learn my address. All my possessions (my music collection! my Ross Macdonald books!) were resting comfortably in some anonymous location, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall where it