Century City is a recurring urban setting in which Robert Mallory’s account of his new life in Los Angeles intersects with the novel’s wider pattern of home invasions, pursuit, and concealed violence. Introduced through Robert’s Century Towers address, it serves as both a plausible residential anchor and a place whose apparent familiarity does not resolve the questions surrounding him. Later, the district becomes the setting for the aftermath of the attack on Susan Reynolds and Thom Wright, Robert’s return to his building, and the fatal high-rise incident that draws the Trawler investigation into public view.

Setting and Robert’s Arrival

When Robert’s name comes up among the students, Susan Reynolds says that he has an address in Century City and lives in one of the Century Towers. Jeff Taylor remarks that it is unusual for a new student to arrive in their senior year; Debbie Schaffer asks where Robert comes from and who his parents are. The exchange establishes Century City as the first concrete piece of information the group has about him, while making clear how little else they know.

Robert’s explanation fills in some of that blank. He says he has been visiting Los Angeles intermittently since the summer of 1980 and staying with his paternal aunt in her Century City condominium. He has not, he says, become well acquainted with the city: he knows Century City, Westwood, Beverly Hills, and the beaches, but not Hollywood, the Eastside, or the Valley. The district is therefore more than an address; it is the limited, selective map of Los Angeles that Robert presents to his new classmates.

He says that he moved to the city after his mother died in what he describes only as an accident. Following conflict with his father, his father’s wife, and her teenage daughter, his aunt intervened and offered to have him live with her while completing high school in Los Angeles. His father had initially wanted to send him to a military academy, then agreed to the move. Century City is the endpoint of this family arrangement and the setting for Robert’s first account of his past, though the account leaves important details withheld.

A City Seen Through Pursuit

Century City also lies within the broader landscape of the Trawler’s crimes. The narrator recounts that the first wave of home invasions began in May 1980, with twenty break-ins that summer in the San Fernando Valley communities below Mulholland, before incidents spread briefly to Bel Air and Benedict Canyon and then to other parts of Los Angeles. One later report describes an attack in a residence in Century City, above Santa Monica Boulevard. The location connects the district to the pattern of assaults without, by itself, establishing who was responsible for any particular crime.

The narrative repeatedly makes this dispersed city legible through driving and following. After seeing Robert leave Buckley, Bret Ellis follows him in his car, initially supposing that Robert will return to Century City. On another occasion, Bret tracks the black Porsche through Benedict Canyon and watches Robert enter a house, then leave about ten minutes later. These drives do not produce a clear explanation of Robert’s movements. Instead, the changing routes turn the city’s neighborhoods into a field of observation where Bret’s suspicions grow faster than his certainty.

The same tension appears in a report of a Woodland Hills invasion. Its details echo earlier incidents: calls before the attack, rearranged furniture, a missing neighborhood dog, and an intruder who attacks a resident. Reading the report, Bret begins to wonder whether the home invasions and disappearances are connected to the Riders of the Afterlife, a group he has just read about. The possibility is his fearful speculation, not a confirmed explanation. In this sequence, Century City belongs to a wider urban network whose incidents invite patterns and theories even when their causes remain unknown.

The Towers and the Aftermath

The Century Towers become especially significant after the attack on Susan and Thom at a house on Canon Drive. Susan’s father tells Bret that Robert brought the injured pair to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and that Thom is in surgery. When Bret asks whether Robert is still there, he learns that Robert has left for Century City. The call leaves Bret fixed on Robert’s whereabouts, even as the urgent consequences of the attack are unfolding elsewhere.

According to the Century Towers valet and front desk, Robert was last seen entering the lobby at 8:50, with dried blood on his clothes and face and a black duffel bag over his shoulder. He tells the doorman that he has witnessed a terrible accident and intends to clean up before returning to the hospital. The account sets his explanation beside a conspicuous departure from the hospital, sharpening suspicion without yet settling what happened.

Bret drives to the Towers and claims that Robert called him and needs to see him. The valet directs him to a parking space near the fountains; Bret then bypasses the distant front desk, enters an elevator, and presses for the twenty-eighth floor. He has a key obtained from the room Robert occupied in an abandoned house in Benedict Canyon, and uses it to enter Robert’s aunt Abigail’s condominium. The movement from the public lobby to a private apartment makes Century City a threshold in Bret’s investigation: his pursuit has brought him into a space where he can act, but it has not made the truth secure.

Public Account and Narrative Significance

After Robert’s death, the local news reports that a prep-school boy leapt to his death from a Century City high-rise after assaulting a classmate. The report links the incident to the attack on Susan and Thom because Robert was connected to both. It also raises the Trawler, noting that, even if Robert was not the Trawler, his connections to the serial killer seemed increasingly apparent. The broadcast signals that the private suspicions surrounding Robert have become a public story, while acknowledging that the nature of those connections is still unknown.

That uncertainty is central to Century City’s role in the novel. The district first offers a simple biographical fact—Robert’s address—then recurs as a destination, a point of return, and the setting for a public account that cannot explain the full chain of events. Its towers suggest stable residence and visible landmarks, but the story repeatedly attaches them to incomplete testimony, withheld history, and competing interpretations. Century City thus anchors the plot geographically while preserving the gap between what characters observe and what they can prove.