By William Nack

Yasser Seirawan, one of the world's strongest players, speaks for all young U.S. chess masters when he says, "It's a tragedy. Imagine: The greatest chess player who ever lived is living in our time, and he's not even playing. I've never even met him. It's very frustrating."

Grandmaster Lubomir Kavalek, a 41-year-old Czechoslovakian expatriate living in Reston, Va., says, "Players Bobby's age, like myself, are a lost generation. We always lived in the shadow of Bobby. We had him as an idol. He was someone to follow. When he stopped playing, I somehow got lost. We lost our inspiration. The last decade belonged to me in the United States. I was always ahead in ratings, but I can't say I was first because, in the back of my mind, there was always Bobby. He was still alive. He is still alive."

That he was out there, still lurking around, was what had drawn me to the second-floor rotunda of the Los Angeles Public Library at 7:51 p.m. on the night of April 3. Desperately looking for a lead earlier that day, I had visited the chambers of Madame Lola, a clairvoyant working in Westminster, Calif., and sought her help in ferreting out Fischer.

"Have you ever thought he might want to be left alone?" Madame Lola asked.

"Look, Madame Lola, a lot of people are wondering what has happened to him," I said.

"A lot of celebrities want to be left alone," she said.

In my own paranoia, the thought suddenly occurred to me: Maybe she knows Bobby and is trying to protect him.

"Do you know Fischer or something?" I blurted.

There was no doubt that I had become slightly wiggy. I had been prowling the catacombs of the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library for months because Fischer had often been sighted there -- as recently as a few weeks earlier -- but he had never appeared when I was there. I had begun to think that perhaps he had contacts at the library who would tip him off whenever I showed up. After all, I had a source working at the library, Gordon Brooks, who had promised to call me if Fischer ever showed. In fact, over the last few weeks, I had developed a network of librarians who had agreed to call Brooks, who in turn would ring me, if they spotted him.

The day before, on April 2, I had gone to a Goodwill store in the city of Orange and purchased a disguise, clothes that would have suited any bum wandering around nearby MacArthur Park or the broken-bottle district of downtown L.A.: a $5 pair of baggy brown pants, marked down to $2.50, whose cuffs scraped the floor; a large gold shirt for $3; a white tie, with a bright yellow stain, for 15 cents; a pair of brown shoes, which I wore without socks or laces, for $5; and the ugliest sports coat in the store, a black number with red and white flecks, for $2.50. An accommodating friend stained the coat and pants with grease and glue to match the sorry tie. At a magic shop, I bought a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a can of gray makeup paint with which I liberally doused what was left of my hair.

Thus disguised on April 3, on my way to the library I stopped off to see Madame Lola. It was a sweltering day, about 85 degrees, but the disguise and the promise of finding Fischer had buoyed me with a new sense of mission. I strode into her storefront chambers, apologized for my wardrobe, and within 10 minutes we were ensconced in a backroom cubicle adorned with religious paintings and statues. At Lola's request, I had brought several pictures of Fischer that I had been showing around restaurants and stores in Pasadena, hoping someone might recognize him. I also brought copies of papers bearing Fischer's handwriting, including the pseudonym Robert D. James, which appeared at the end of his 14-page pamphlet, I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse.

Fischer had written it in 1981 after he was arrested in Pasadena -- he was mistaken for a bank robber -- and jailed for two days. In this remarkable document, Fischer described his arrest and then detailed what happened to him in two days of incarceration, during which, he says, he was ordered to strip and was threatened with confinement in a mental hospital. The chapter headings include: Brutally Handcuffed, False Arrest, Insulted, Choked, Stark Naked, No Phone Call, Horror Cell, Isolation & Torture.

Madame Lola placed her hands on the papers and the photographs, tipped her head forward and closed her eyes. "He has been hurt in many ways by people in business," she began. "He feels that people are going to take advantage of him. . . . Have you tried looking toward the desert?"

"The desert?" I said. "No . . . what about Pasadena?"

Madame Lola opened and closed her eyes. "He's not there now," she said. "I feel him towards some place hot, very hot. Very, very warm. I feel a lot of sun. . . ." Outside, it felt hot enough to roast a duck, but that was not what Lola meant. "It could be Nevada," she said. "This is what I'm picking up. . . . He is a very confused person. . . . He feels everyone is going to recognize him. . . . I feel you will find him when you least expect him."

Madame Lola looked up, fixed me with her eyes and said finally, "He's always one step ahead of you. I'd give up on the whole idea."

Moments later I was heading for the library in Los Angeles. Time was getting short. By now, the office was restless, and more than one editor had told me to write the story whether I had found him or not, but I was having trouble letting it go.

So what was I doing here, dressed up like an abject bum and looking for a rnan who would bolt the instant he knew who I was? And what on earth might he be doing now in the desert? Pumping gas in Reno? Riding a burro from dune to dune in the Mojave, looking over his shoulder as the sun boiled the brain that once ate Moscow? And what of his teeth? I had been thinking a lot lately about Fischer's teeth. In the spring of 1982, one of Fischer's oldest chess-playing friends, Ron Gross of Cerritos, Calif., suggested to him that

the two men take a fishing trip into Mexico. Gross, now 49, had first met Fischer in the mid-'50s, back in the days before Bobby had become a world-class player, and the two had kept in irregular touch over the years. In 1980, at a time when Fischer was leaving most of his old friends behind, he had contacted Gross, and they had gotten together. At the time, Fischer was living in a dive near downtown Los Angeles.

"It was a real seedy hotel," Gross recalls. "Broken bottles. Weird people."

At one point, Gross made the mistake of calling Karpov the world champion. "I'm still the world champion," snapped Fischer. "Karpov isn't. My friends still consider me champion. They took my title from me."

By 1982, Fischer was living in a nicer neighborhood in Los Angeles. Gross began picking him up and letting him off at a bus stop at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax, near an East Indian store where Bobby bought herbal medicines.

That March, on the fishing trip to Ensenada, Fischer got seasick, and he treated himself by sniffing a eucalyptus-based medicine below deck. Fischer astonished Gross with the news about his teeth. Fischer talked about a friend who had a steel plate in his head that picked up radio signals.

"If somebody took a filling out and put in an electronic device, he could influence your thinking," Fischer said. "I don't want anything artificial in my head."

"Does that include dental work?" asked Gross.

"Yeah," said Bobby. "I had all my fillings taken out some time ago."

"There's nothing in your cavities to protect your teeth?"

"No, nothing."

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