Lenz stalks the Chinese women (pp. 717–719)
he had been sent Away, Alone, and at least now could openly hide. R. Lenz lived by his wits out here, deeply disguised, on the amonymous streets of N. Cambridge and Somerville, never sleeping, ever moving, hiding in bright-lit and public plain sight, the last place They would think to find him.
Context
Here is the theme's central credo — "openly hide," "hiding in bright-lit and public plain sight" — put verbatim in the mouth of a cokehead fugitive, which is exactly the plan's point: this is Steeply's and the A.F.R.'s own method (the one-way veil, the operative hidden by conspicuousness) debased to its lowest register. Lenz believes himself "deeply disguised" and invisible to a pursuing "They," and by scene's end has flipped the fantasy inside out — from the surveilled to the surveiller: "the unwitting Oriental women had no idea he was back there surveilling them," "He was in total control of this situation. And they did not even know there was a situation," his "adrenaline invisible for all to see." The professionals' doctrine of hiding-by-openness survives intact in Lenz; only the mind operating it has rotted.