Dwight Mercer

Dwight Mercer is 39 and talks at the speed of someone always selling, even when he isn't. Born in Ohio, the son of an insurance broker, he learned early to open a conversation at the front and close the deal at the back. He arrived in Los Angeles at twenty-two with a sample case, worked in electronics stores and for some years has been at Kensei Video, selling the future on installments.

He lives where work dictates: tour hotels, temporary apartments, motel rooms with color TV. He has a counter office with shelves of old cameras, stacked equipment and a big window display of dark televisions. He drinks coffee in paper cups, eats at roadside diners and keeps the business cards of the most famous people in a little plastic box that he shows to anyone who didn't ask.

He is of medium height, with a soft body, a round, ruddy face, a full brown mustache and hair parted to the side covering his ears. He wears gold metal-rimmed glasses, a wide-collared printed shirt under a beige polyester blazer, a digital watch and an aluminum case he never lets go of. He is far too friendly, calls everyone friend and clings to famous names like a life buoy.

He says he met the actor on a set, in Burbank, six years ago: he sold video to Kensei, the actor loved new equipment, and ever since he has set up his cameras in every city on the tour. As for the caretaker, Gus, he recalls that he has the master key to everything in the complex and that the actor had complained about things moved in the apartment and a whiskey bottle emptied by itself. He advises looking at him, friend. And asks for calm, saying he won't confess to what he didn't do.

Dwight knows a man who talks so much gets used to being listened to carefully. It could be the enthusiasm of a salesman who likes famous people. It could be someone who talks fast so the pause doesn't arrive before the answer. The detective will have to decide which.