Century Towers

Century Towers is the twenty-eight-story residential complex in Century City that houses Abigail Mallory’s penthouse and, for a time, Robert Mallory. Its repeated appearance turns an ordinary urban landmark into a point of convergence: Bret follows Robert there, watches Ryan arrive there, visits the penthouse, and finally returns after Robert summons him. The building’s controlled entrances and recognizable routes make it both a place of private domestic life and a stage for Bret’s increasingly dangerous investigation.

Setting and Residents

Robert tells his classmates that he lives at Century Towers, in an apartment associated with his aunt, Abigail Mallory. He has been staying with her during visits to Los Angeles since the summer of 1980, although he says he still knows only a limited part of the city. When he arrives at Buckley, he explains that his unfamiliarity with the wider city is why he was late. The residence therefore belongs to a life Robert presents as orderly and privileged, even as the novel increasingly links him to violence and uncertainty.

The complex is described as two matching towers, each twenty-eight stories tall, overlooking Hillcrest Country Club and the Rancho Park golf course. The towers stand at the end of Avenue of the Stars near Pico Boulevard. Their symmetrical appearance and prominent position give the place a composed, conspicuous quality, in contrast with the secrecy surrounding Robert’s movements and Bret’s efforts to understand them.

Abigail’s residence is a penthouse at the top of the tower closest to Pico Boulevard. A key marked for the twenty-eighth floor identifies the apartment as Unit 2802. The penthouse is not merely Robert’s stated address: it becomes a concrete link between Bret’s suspicions, his search of a separate abandoned house, and his eventual return to Century Towers.

Bret’s Surveillance of Robert

After an intimate conversation concerning Matt Kellner and Robert leaves Bret upset, Bret follows Robert’s black Porsche. The pursuit begins on Stansbury Avenue and continues onto Valley Vista Boulevard. In a later, more deliberate sequence, Bret follows the same route repeatedly: from Stansbury to the 405, through the Sepulveda Pass, off at Santa Monica Boulevard, and along Avenue of the Stars to Century Towers. He keeps two or three cars behind Robert, makes a U-turn after Robert enters the driveway, and watches him go into the building.

The repetition matters. Robert’s movements appear ordinary—he arrives, leaves his car with a valet, and enters the tower—yet Bret returns the next day to observe the same routine. The building supplies a fixed endpoint for a pursuit shaped by doubt rather than proof. Bret’s attention to its driveway, valet, gates, and entrances makes ordinary details of access and visibility part of his private investigation.

Century Towers also becomes the site of a second, destabilizing observation. While watching the building, Bret sees Ryan Vaughn arrive in a black Trans Am, still wearing his Buckley uniform and letterman’s sweater. Ryan asks the valet for something, and the valet indicates the tower Robert entered about half an hour earlier. Bret is shocked by the sight but cannot determine what it means. The encounter widens his suspicions beyond Robert: the building is now where two relationships and lines of inquiry appear to meet, without resolving what connects them.

A Threshold into Robert’s Private Life

Later, Bret goes to Century Towers at night to pick up Robert. He identifies himself to a security guard, follows directions to the lobby of the tower nearest Pico Boulevard, and is admitted to the building. The circular fountain outside is illuminated, and the lobby and elevator carry him toward Abigail’s penthouse. Bret imagines the ordinary routines of a teenager’s home life there, but these are entangled in his mind with his fears about Robert and the Trawler’s crimes. The penthouse thus becomes a threshold where domestic familiarity and Bret’s suspicions occupy the same space.

Bret’s access to Unit 2802 is tied to an earlier search. At the abandoned house on Benedict Canyon, he finds a key marked for the apartment and pockets it. After Robert calls him to come to Century Towers, Bret uses that key to enter Abigail’s condo without checking in with the doorman. The key converts a tentative connection between Robert and the house into practical access to Robert’s residence, while Bret’s decision to bypass the front desk marks a further escalation from watching to entering.

The visit does not settle Bret’s suspicions. In the ensuing confrontation, Robert attacks him with a knife and then leaves the room. Robert later goes over the railing and falls into the darkness. The building’s private interior and its height become the setting for the final rupture between the two boys; what had been the endpoint of Bret’s surveillance becomes the place where the pursuit ends in Robert’s death.

Death, Aftermath, and Narrative Role

The account of Robert’s last movements at Century Towers is presented through partial observations. According to the valet and front desk, Robert was last seen entering the lobby at 8:50, with blood on his clothes and face and a black duffel bag over his shoulder. He told the doorman that he had witnessed a terrible accident and planned to clean up before returning to the hospital. About thirty minutes later, Bret arrives, says Robert called him, and enters the building. The difference between Robert’s explanation to the staff and the confrontation Bret experiences sharpens the gap between public account and private knowledge.

After Robert falls, his remains are found on the roof of the Century Towers garage. The scene is described as having been distorted by the impact, and Bret loses consciousness after recognizing Robert. The building is therefore not simply a backdrop to the death: the tower, railing, and garage roof shape the event’s physical sequence, while the staff’s account preserves an earlier, apparently composed version of Robert at the entrance.

Century Towers recurs as a spatial counterpoint to the dispersed routes of Los Angeles. Bret’s car follows Robert across freeways and boulevards, but the pursuit repeatedly resolves at the same recognizable complex, where valets, guards, a lobby, elevators, and an apartment regulate movement without preventing the decisive violence. Its polished residential setting does not clarify what Robert has done or what Bret can truthfully report. Instead, the building gathers the novel’s central uncertainty into one address: surveillance becomes access, access becomes confrontation, and the ending remains entangled with competing accounts of what happened.