the fugitive hiding in plain sight

Randy Lenz is the criminal-amateur node of the book's surveillance web, and he runs real tradecraft badly. Wanted by "both sides of the law" after screwing a D.E.A. sting, he "is here mostly just to hide out: he rarely leaves the House except under compulsion, avoids windows," and when the meeting-mandate forces him outdoors he goes in a disguise so garish it "makes him look like Cesar Romero after a terrible accident," then insists on walking home alone. The concealment is self-defeating — a disguise that draws the eye, an avoidance pattern any watcher could chart — and he is in fact being charted: Gately "observes Lenz's position routinely for his own interest and files," the informal House surveillance that will become Gately's literal log (169). The hider is himself under watch.