Bill Pronzini

The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales

Copyright information on previously published stories: All stories copyrighted in the name of the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust, except as noted.

“The Cemetery Man,” © 2013, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

“Toiling in the Fields of the Lord,” © 2008, first published in Dago Red.

“Lines,” © 2012, first published in Cemetery Dance.

“McIntosh’s Chute,” © 1989, first published in New Frontiers 1.

“Trade Secret,” © 2011, first published in Damn Near Dead 2.

“Meadowlands Spike,” © 2011 by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini, first published in New Jersey Noir.

“Boobytrap,” © 1987, first published in Guilty as Charged.

“Confession,” © 2013, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

“The Storm Tunnel,” © 1987, first published in Whispers.

“The Hanging Man,” © 1981, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

“Putting the Pieces Back,” © 1976, first published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

“Man Cave,” © 2011, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

“Angelique,” © 2010, first published in Horror Drive-In.

“Out of the Depths,” © 1994, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

“Hooch,” © 2014, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

“Just Looking,” © 2002, first published in Flesh and Blood: Dark Desires.

“What Happened to Mary?” © 2008, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

“Caius,” © 2011 by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini, first published in Blood and Other Cravings.

“Breakbone,” © 2013, first published in Shivers VII.

Introduction by Ed Gorman

Bill Pronzini: Toiling in the Fields of the Lord

When the writer F. Paul Wilson noted several years ago that private eye novels are snapshots of a certain era, I wondered immediately if he had Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series in mind.

Unlike any other body of work in the genre, Nameless is a history of San Francisco and its environs over a period of five decades; a history of American culture from the time of the hippies through the new century when peace and love, brother, are not only forgotten but downright anathema to a country becoming more and more right-wing; and a fictional autobiography, if you will, of a detective who is very much like his creator. In fact, when Bill finally gave him a name, no one was surprised when it turned out to be “Bill.”

I began this introduction by alluding to the Nameless novels because they are not only the dominant part of Bill’s worldwide reputation, they also have a lot in common with the most neglected part of his work — his brilliant, urgent stand-alones. And the stand-alones have even more in common with Bill’s short stories.

“This land is populated by ‘sons of Cain,’ men doomed to walk alone. One of the major themes that comes from this is loneliness, or fear of apartness.”

(about John Steinbeck) StudyMode.com

Certainly there are times in the Nameless books when the mood of the detective fits the description above, but it is in such stand-alones as Blue Lonesome, A Wasteland of Strangers and The Crimes of Jordan Wise that Bill’s work begins to resonate with the same sense of doom as John Steinbeck’s, one of Bill’s favorite writers.

Three of the stories here have historical settings — “McIntosh’s Chute,” “The Hanging Man” and “Hooch.” The first two also show a particular kinship with Steinbeck’s work.

Bill’s early years were not unlike Steinbeck’s, young working-class man taking whatever jobs he could find while he wrote on the side:

“I haven’t held any other jobs since 1969. Before that: plumbing supply salesman, warehouseman, office typist, car-park attendant, part-time civilian guard for a U.S. marshal transporting federal prisoners from one lockup to another by car (sounds a lot more exciting than it was; mostly just boring road trips. But I did get one short story out of the experience).”

And so we come to the stories in this collection.

“What Happened to Mary?”

60 Minutes once ran a story about a town bully who became so much of a threat to everybody — including law enforcement — that he was mysteriously murdered. To say that the investigation into his death was sluggish and aimless would be to understate the matter. Bill has set many of his stories and not a few of his novels in small towns. He understands their rhythms and their rituals because he was born and raised in one.

Bill imparts a mythic quality to such places. You can imagine this story of a bully’s fate being passed down from generation to generation. While there are some mystery writers who long for literary acceptance, I think Bill’s best work has the kind of resonance and simple truth-telling that deserves it. And he achieves it without pretension.

Here the town is perfectly imagined and peopled. For all its external modernity, Ridgedale might well fit into an old Twilight Zone episode because in many respects it is no different than it was seventy or eighty years ago.

Few writers were as sensitive to nature as Steinbeck. You’ll find the same feelings in Bill’s work. Ridgedale “is all pine-covered hills, rolling meadows and streams full of fat trout.” It is untouched by condo builders and other developers. It has no McDonald’s.

All these facts contribute to the mythic quality I mentioned. A tale the town will never forget and neither will you.

“Toiling in the Fields of the Lord”

Forget Freddy Krueger, clever a concept as he is; forget the “Saw” movies, ugly as they are.

“Toiling” is a horror story of such finesse and strangeness that by its end it is as much a tone poem as a mordant depiction of madness. The specificity of the details remind me once again of Bill’s Steinbeckian connection with nature. Not only that, but the detail of the lifestyle itself, the migrant worker experience encapsulated with such precision and resonance.

No matter where you think this story is going, you’ll be wrong. This is the storyteller at his shrewd best. The finale bears on a profound aberration that speaks to true moral devastation.

This should have been nominated for both the Edgar and Bram Stoker awards.

“The Cemetery Man”

The title story, with the heft and ambience of a true crime story.

The concept is breathtaking and the voice and pace of the events are perfect.

Once again, a small town. Once again a sturdy, reliable small-town narrator.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a graveyard put to better use as a device for a story. Nor have I seen better use of an odd old man that children might be warned against but that adults might find interesting — as here.

This has the kind of dramatic arc that would have made it perfect — again — for The Twilight Zone. Or maybe the old thirty-minute Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Because this has parallels of a sort in the true-crime field, the ending here is particularly chilling.

“Breakbone”

I can’t decide if this would have been more at home in the old Manhunt magazine of the fifties or maybe as a storyline for the grimmest issue ever published of the often-banned EC Crime Comics.

Whew. This is one kick-ass story and the one-hundred-percent stuff of pure contaminated nightmare.

Bill at his cagiest.

I’m not sure that I would strike up a conversation with a man “close to seven feet tall” who looked kind of wasted and “forlorn, like a kid nobody wanted to have anything to do with.” But our narrator does because he’s not only the friendly type, he’s also charitable.

This one I can see as one of the radio shows I grew up listening to after the big war. Good actors, fine writing and absolutely spellbinding storytelling.

“Out of the Depths”

One of the most fascinating women I’ve ever encountered in crime fiction. And some of the finest dialogue Bill has ever written.

In what could have been a predictable take on traditional noir themes Bill, through the character of Shea, creates a classic story of isolation and terror.

The same can be said for Tanner, the epitome of the macho adventurer, who invites himself into her house in a Caribbean setting similar to the one in The Crimes of Jordan Wise. He is real and yet at times almost surreal. “He came tumbling out of the sea, dark and misshapen like a being that was not human. A creature from the depths...” These images open the story.

Shea must see him not only as a threat to her life but a sexual threat as well, for the subtext to this story is that of a frightened and betrayed woman who ultimately is as afraid of herself as much as she is of others.

Bill is a fine horror writer and a good deal of his crime work is tinged with horrific effects. As I said, the dialogue here is among the finest Bill has ever created. As ominous and omnipresent as Tanner is, the story is Shea’s, whose words, collectively, are a bitter confession of her entangled and failed life.

Will she be raped? Will she be murdered?

Does she even care?

A true masterpiece.

“Lines”

I don’t want to talk about this story in much detail because it is a dark and jarring journey you should take without any preparation. Let me just say that it breaks several forms and tropes in the telling and becomes by the end a kind of Dali-esque nightmare. Writers who pride themselves on being cutting-edge should study this to learn how to take a familiar situation and turn it into a true masterwork.

“Caius”

Barry Malzberg is one of the most important science fiction writers of my generation. He came into the field with serious intentions and turned those intentions into novels (and stories) as timeless as Guernica Night and Herovit’s World. Writers as important as the late Theodore Sturgeon considered him a major and lasting voice. His The Engines of the Night is a seminal collection of essays about the field.

Together Bill and Barry have produced four novels and numerous short stories in both science fiction and crime. I’ve always felt that their serial killer novel (written long before serial killers became a popular theme), The Running of Beasts, belongs on the same shelf as Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs.

I think this story speaks to a basic human need. “Why are we born to suffer and die?” is the question uppermost in the minds of all generations of Homo sapiens and doubtless the species that preceded us as well.

We’ve always responded to this question by searching for oracles. Think of the Egyptians. Think of the Mayans. Think of the American Indians. And yes, think even of the TV ministers shucking their believers out of money week in and week out. All of us, even atheists, look for oracles of one kind or another.

Bill and Barry have created the great paradox here — the oracle who is himself in need of an oracle. They touch on one man confronting in his loneliness and grief the universe his callers ask him to explain. But of course he can’t.

Quick takes on a few of the other stories:

“Confession” — A twist on James M. Cain theme, except it all goes badly in a more ironic way than even Cain imagined.

“Hooch” — Wry story about young bootlegger whose ambition to be a better writer than Dashiell Hammett gets him in trouble with his deadly companions.

“Boobytrap” — A true tour de force involving explosives both human and manufactured. Notably excellent plotting and some of the most finely drawn characters Bill has ever given us. This was the basis (though much changed) for the powerful Nameless novel of the same title.

“Angelique” — A horror story that Bill makes real through the voice of his narrator, who may or may not be mad, depending on the reader’s belief in the supernatural.

“The Storm Tunnel” — A very creepy take on childhood and going places your mom wouldn’t approve of.

“Putting the Pieces Back” — A tale that includes two of the cleverest twists Bill has ever come up with.

“Man Cave” — This has the feel of one of those true-crime shows on TV. A broken marriage so well fleshed out here it has the sorrowful bitter air of real life.

Reading these stories two or three times while preparing for this introduction I realized one important fact about Bill Pronzini’s work. That much of it, especially in the short stories and stand-alones, is ripe with a sense of Poe-esque dread.

The Steinbeck influence, as I mentioned in the preceding pages, is what grounds the stories in everyday reality. Bill is a sharp observer both of human behavior and nature. But what animates many of his characters is dread. As is the case in Poe’s best stories. Sometimes the protagonist is afraid of the person he seeks; sometimes the protagonist is afraid of himself.

In one of his two or three most important novels, A Wasteland of Strangers, virtually everybody in the book lives in dread of someone or something. They truly toil in the fields of the Lord.

The Cemetery Man

The first time I saw the Cemetery Man, I knew he wasn’t the usual kind of visitor we have at Shady Oaks. Most folks who come to visit the resting places of loved ones and friends follow one or more of the grid of interior roads so as to get as close to the gravesites as they can. This fellow parked his black sedan — a rental, I found out later — just inside the main entrance gates, opposite the administration building, and walked from there. He wasn’t dressed right for the warm Indian summer weather, either, in a long black overcoat. And he didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go.

Shady Oaks stretches over more than fifteen hillside acres just outside the Los Alegres city limits. The Catholic and Jewish cemeteries are east of the administration building, the larger, wider nondenominational and historic sections west of it. There are a couple of dozen blacktop roads that crisscross the grounds; the ten that lead uphill vertically are known to employees as Up Roads, the seven that run horizontally as Crossroads, and each one is numbered. On the west side the gravesite and outdoor crypt sections between the roads are lettered from A through Z, with A being the lowest near the entrance gates and Z far up on the brow of the hill. I’m explaining all this to give you an idea of what Shady Oaks is like and so you’ll know what I mean when I say I was working on #1 Crossroad above A Section the first time I saw the Cemetery Man.

What I was doing there was cleaning up leaves and twigs and branches that had blown down in a recent windstorm. It was a weekday afternoon in October and the grounds were mostly deserted. The work was easy enough and I was taking my time, so I noticed him as soon as he drove in and parked. He stood for a minute or so to look around, then headed on foot into A Section.

He was nobody I’d ever seen before. Close to seventy, somewhat frail-looking even at a distance, yet his back was straight and there was purpose in the way he moved. When he reached the first row of the A Section gravesites, he paused long enough at each to peer at the markers before moving on to the next. Looking for a particular plot, I thought, but not the way somebody does when he’s forgotten the exact location of one he’s visited before. As if he had no idea where the one he wanted was located.

He didn’t find it in A Section. While I raked and piled and bagged, I watched him cross #2 Up Road farther west and search through the B Section rows. The one he was looking for wasn’t there, either. He went uphill next, into F Section above where I was on #1 Crossroad.

Well, I’m what they call a people person. I know a good many of the visitors who come to Shady Oaks, on account of I’ve lived in the Los Alegres area all my life, and I enjoy passing the time of day with folks and offering a helping hand whenever I can. I admit to being a curious fellow, too — some might say nosy, not that that bothers me. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it never did me any harm.

So I tossed the last bag of debris into the back of my pickup and walked up to where the Cemetery Man was moving among the F Section plots. When he reached the near end of a row, I went up to him and smiled and said, “Afternoon. Having trouble finding a plot?”

He turned toward me, and I have to say I felt a little shock when I saw him up close. His cheeks and forehead were crosshatched with deep-cut lines; two that curved down around his mouth looked as if they might have been framed and dug out with a pair of calipers. His eyes were deep-sunk, the pupils shiny-dark with what I’d seen too many times not to recognize as grief and sorrow. The word that came to me when I looked into that face for the first time was “ravaged.”

He said in a thin, raspy voice, “I’ll find it eventually.”

“Maybe I can help. Jim Foley’s my name. Head groundskeeper at Shady Oaks for twenty-two years and counting. I don’t claim to know the names and locations of everyone at rest here, but I do know quite a few. Who is it you’re searching for?”

He hesitated so long I thought he was going to turn away without answering.

Then he said, “Peter J. Anderson,” but I had the feeling he gave the name reluctantly.

“Anderson, Peter Anderson.” The name didn’t ring any bells, not then. “Quite a few Andersons here, as you’d imagine. When did he pass on?”

“Twelve years ago. August eleventh, Two Thousand Two.”

“Member of a large family?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh? You’re not a relative, then?”

“No.”

“Friend of the deceased, or of a family member?”

“No.”

I thought it was funny that he’d be hunting for a stranger’s grave, but I didn’t say so. I said, “Are you sure he’s interred at Shady Oaks?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Well, you know, the quickest way to find out his resting place is to check with Mrs. O’Brien in the administration office. Each plot has a number that can be cross-referenced by name and date—”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll find it on my own. I have time.”

“This is a pretty big cemetery,” I said, “more than two thousand plots and crypts in this part alone—”

“I have time,” he said again.

I thought that was queer, too. But I said, “Yes, sir. Suit yourself. One thing you might want to know: No need to go looking in the sections up on the brow of the hill. That’s the oldest part of Shady Oaks, where most of our founding families are buried; some of the graves date all the way back to Gold Rush days. No new burials up there in more than fifty years.”

“Thank you,” he said, and then he did turn away. And went right on with his search.

It was about time for me to take my afternoon break, but the Cemetery Man was such an odd old duck I didn’t want to leave off keeping an eye on him. I went down and got into my pickup and drove on up to #2 Crossroad, where I had a clear view of him while I did some more raking and bagging.

He must have covered about a third of F Section before I saw him stop and stay stopped in front of a gravesite in the shadow of a big live oak. His body stiffened — I could tell that even from a distance — and he stood there staring at the plot for a minute or so without moving. Then he bowed his head, as if he might be praying, and stood like that for a longer time, must’ve been at least five minutes.

Afterward I watched him walk along #1 Crossroad to where his rental car was parked, and I thought, Well, that’s that. But it wasn’t. He didn’t get in and drive off as I expected him to. Instead he opened the trunk, took out what looked to be a large bouquet of flowers, and headed straight back to F Section.

When he came uphill toward the grave he’d found, I could make out that the flowers were carnations and two or three kinds of lilies — all of them white and all artificial. Each gravesite has metal cups sunk into the ground for flowers and such; the Cemetery Man arranged his bouquet in the one there, stood again for a little time with his head bowed. Then he returned to his car again and this time he did drive on out.

Well, that curiosity of mine got the best of me. Once I was sure he wasn’t coming back, I went to the plot under the big live oak. And when I looked at the headstone above the bunch of artificial flowers, I got my second little surprise of the day.

EVELYN BROWN

1983–2004

Earth Has No Sorrow

That Heaven Cannot Heal

Why had the old fellow asked for the grave of a man named Peter J. Anderson and then put flowers on a woman’s named Evelyn Brown? The Anderson name might have been a falsehood, I supposed, and he’d been looking for Brown all along, but that didn’t make sense, either. The only possibility I could think of that did make sense was that there was some sort of family connection between the Andersons and the Browns.

It was puzzling, all right, but in a minor sort of way. I had too much work to do to fuss about it. And I figured I’d never know one way or another because I’d never see him again.

Wrong. He was back again next day.

He must’ve come in sometime in the morning, but it wasn’t until around one o’clock that I saw his car parked in the same spot inside the gates, then him a little while later. My assistants and I had a burial to prepare for in the Catholic Cemetery, and some other work to attend to in the northeast quadrant after that, and I took time to eat my brown-bag lunch before I headed over onto the west side. I was on #3 Crossroad, on my way to fix a leaking hose bib on #4 Up Road, when I spotted him.

There’s a long curving row of crypts in a grove of pepper trees on that part of #3 Crossroad, where folks who don’t believe in ground burial inter the ashes of loved ones who have been cremated. That was where the Cemetery Man was, peering at the nameplates on the crypts. He didn’t pay any attention to me as I rolled slowly by. I almost stopped, but my sense of what’s right and proper in dealing with visitors trumped my curiosity and kept me from doing it.

I put new washers in the leaking hose bib, moved a fallen tree limb that was partially blocking #4 Up Road. The Cemetery Man had finished examining the crypts, I saw when I drove back past, and was now up in J Section. Standing before one of the plots just off #3 Up Road — standing the way he had in front of Evelyn Brown’s grave, stiff and still with his head bowed. Evidently he’d found what he was looking for today. After the switch yesterday, I couldn’t help wondering if it was Peter J. Anderson’s resting place or somebody else’s.

I drove up to #4 Crossroad, turned in there, and stopped. By then the Cemetery Man was moving again, down to #2 Crossroad — heading for his car. Same thing as yesterday, then: he took another bunch of artificial flowers from the trunk, brought them back to the new grave he’d found in J Section, arranged them in front of the headstone there, and stood for another minute or so with his head bowed. The bouquet looked to be identical to the one he’d put on Evelyn Brown’s grave — white carnations, white lilies.

Ten minutes later, he was back in his black sedan and gone.

Didn’t take me long after he passed through the gates to go have a look at the marker on the J Section plot. Peter J. Anderson. 1977–2002.

Well, that should have satisfied me. The Cemetery Man had come hunting for two graves, not just one, found them both, paid his respects and left flowers — end of story. Except that I had a feeling it wasn’t. And it still didn’t explain why he’d given me Peter J. Anderson’s name and not Evelyn Brown’s, or why he’d been so bent on locating their graves without help.

I drove to the administration building and asked Kay O’Brien, who has worked at Shady Oaks almost as long as I have, to look up the records on both plots. She didn’t ask me why I wanted the information. If I have too much curiosity, she doesn’t have any at all.

There was no connection between the Brown and Anderson plots, or at least none in the records. I’d been thinking that maybe the same person might be paying annual maintenance fees for both, but that wasn’t the case. One of the surviving members of the Brown family paid for upkeep on their plot; nobody paid for upkeep on the Anderson grave. That’s often the case with deceased individuals who come from poor families or have no families at all. We try to do a minimal amount of upkeep on those anyway, gratis, but there’s too much other work and barely enough public funding to maintain the roads and pay my and my crew’s salaries.

The only thing Evelyn Brown and Peter J. Anderson seemed to have in common was that they’d both died young, in their twenties, about fifteen months apart. Something about that stirred in the back of my mind, but it was vague and my memory’s not as sharp it used to be. I couldn’t quite dredge it out.

I told myself to forget it, it was really none of my business, and in any event the Cemetery Man was now gone for good. But I wasn’t a bit surprised when he showed up again the following day.

I was just pulling out of the maintenance yard above the administration building, heading out on my morning rounds, when his black sedan rolled in through the gates and stopped in the same place as before. He was still wearing that black overcoat even though it was even warmer today. He walked up to #4 Crossroad, then over into M Section.

Picking up where he’d left off the day before. Still looking.

Well, now I really had the wind up, as the British say. I had to fight down a couple of impulses, one to go poking around inside his car — he hadn’t locked it — to see if I could find out who he was, the other to chase after him and ask him point blank what he was up to. I had my job to consider, after all, and one sure way to lose it would be to hassle a visitor without good cause.

But I couldn’t just ignore him, either, and go on about my work as if he wasn’t there. So I hung around the general area, doing little make-work projects while I watched him conduct the same sort of methodical search as on the previous two days.

He went from M Section up to Q and down to N. The noon hour came and went; I didn’t bother to eat my lunch, which shows you how intent I was on the Cemetery Man. At one-thirty he was in R Section, which is mostly lawn on a gently rolling plateau, the grave markers nearly all plaques and small slabs that he had to stoop to read. And that was where he found the third grave.

I was standing alongside the pickup, fiddling with the tools inside the open side compartment, when he stopped and stared, then straightened and stood stiff-backed and bowed his head — exactly as he had at the Brown and Anderson sites. He stayed at this grave even longer than the others before he went off to his car. The ritual with the bouquet of flowers would be the same as before, I thought. And it was.

When he finished and walked away again, I hurried down to that third grave in R Section and leaned over to read what was etched on the already-tarnished bronze plaque.

SARAH JANE NOWITZKY

1985–2004

Death is Only a Shadow

Across the Path to Heaven

All sorts of bells went off in my head then. Even with a bad memory you don’t forget a name like Sarah Jane Nowitzky. Or what happened to her. And once you remember that, you can’t help but remember the connection between her and Evelyn Brown and Peter J. Anderson.

The Cemetery Man had almost reached the main drive. I ran for my pickup, got it turned around, and went barreling down that way. He had the door to the black sedan open when I got there. I braked nose up to the car’s front bumper and jumped out and faced him square.

“Mister,” I said, “I saw you put those flowers on Sarah Jane Nowitzky’s grave.”

All he said was, “Yes, I was aware of you watching me.”

“Evelyn Brown’s and Peter Anderson’s, too. You know what those three people have in common besides being young when they died? I sure do.”

He knew, all right. “They were all murdered,” he said, “between Two Thousand Two and Two Thousand Four. Each in a terrible way.”

“That’s right, and the murders were never solved. And now here you come ten years after the last one, looking for their graves and putting flowers on ’em. I think you better tell me why.”

“Or else you’ll go to the police.”

“Straight to the police.”

“That’s the right thing to do, Mr. Foley. I’ll even go with you if you like.”

It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say, and it took some of the wind out of me.

“You will?”

He nodded and then looked past me into the middle distance. “Evelyn Brown, Peter Anderson, Sarah Jane Nowitzky,” he said after a few seconds, in a voice not much louder than a whisper. “The only three in this area, thank God.”

“What do you mean, the only three in this area?”

“I don’t suppose it matters if I tell you. It won’t be long until it all comes out.” The Cemetery Man pulled his coat collar up to his chin, as if he were feeling a sudden chill. “There were thirty-four others over nearly thirty years. Not only in California — in eleven other states across the country.”

I guess I gawked at him. “Thirty-seven murders?”

“Twenty-six women and eleven men, most under the age of thirty. All killed by the same man, an itinerant carpenter named George Lampton who died of lung cancer three weeks ago. During his lifetime he was never identified, never punished for his crimes.”

“But then... how do you know he’s the one?”

“There was a diary among his effects. Names, dates, places. Methods. Each of his crimes recorded in explicit detail. A scrapbook, too — newspaper clippings, burial notices.”

“My God!”

“The FBI has them now,” the Cemetery Man said. “They’ll release the story to the media only after they’ve completed a thorough investigation. I should have enough time.”

“Enough time for what?”

“To locate most if not all of the graves of his thirty-seven victims, pray for each of them, tell them how sorry I am.

“But why? Why would you want to do that?”

“I have to,” he said, and tears glistened now on his ravaged face. “George Lampton was my son.”

Toiling in the Fields of the Lord

The harvest was almost done. One more week, maybe only a few days, and all the lettuce would be picked, the fields would be bare earth again.

It had been very hot this day, the hottest of the long season, and the air had cooled little since nightfall. I sat resting beneath the lamplit front window of my trailer. An old man’s bones ache in weather like this, from all the stooping and straightening and the slashing strokes of the lettuce knife. I was still strong enough to toil in the fields, do the Lord’s work, but for how much longer?

This was not a good thought and I put it out of my mind.

From the other end of the camp, the loud pagan music of the young people rose and fell and there were shouts and laughter. Angry voices, too, from both men and women. Nerves fray, tempers grow short, passions flare in the heat of summer. There had been two fights and much growling and name-calling in the fields today. Tonight, more of the same.

The camp sounds were of no interest to me. I listened to the throb of the crickets, the call of nightbirds in the willows that lined the river bank below. Here alone beneath the star-bright sky, I was at peace.

But I was not alone for long. Soon Rosa Caldera appeared, as she did almost every night, in one of her thin, tight dresses with nothing beneath it. Young, wild, filled with sin and mischief. Another like Corrine. She might have been Corrine, forty years ago. I knew them so well, the Corrines and Rosas, the other wicked ones in the fields and camps.

Rosa stopped, as she always did, and said in her teasing voice, “Hello, grandfather. Hot night, eh?”

“Yes. Very hot.”

“Cooler down by the river. Cooler in the river.”

I said nothing.

“I think I’ll go swimming. Will you come down later and watch me?”

“No.”

“Ah, but you will. I’ve seen you watching me before.”

I said nothing.

“Why don’t you come swimming with me tonight? No one else will be there. We’ll swim naked together.”

“No.”

“You’re too old, eh? Too old to do anything but watch.”

I said nothing.

“Well, abuelo?” she said, and laughed, and winked at me. “What do you say?”

“God will punish you for your sins.”

She laughed again. “That’s what you always say. Why don’t you think up something new?”

She walked away, laughing, swinging her hips. Once, she looked back over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at me. More laughter flowed back from her as she disappeared into the darkness.

I sat listening to the crickets and the nightbirds, wishing for a cool breeze. None came. What came were the two boys, Pete Simms and Miguel Santos, as they, too, did almost every night. Young like Rosa, their backs strong but their minds small and mean, their hearts cold. One was fat, the other thin, and both were ugly of face. They took much pleasure in deviling me because it gave them a sense of power. The young ones like Rosa would have nothing to do with them.

“Hey, there, Harry,” Pete said. “How’s it hanging tonight?”

I said nothing.

“It don’t hang on Harry no more,” Miguel said. “You get to be his age, it shrivels up and hides. Ain’t that right, old man?”

I said nothing.

“Oh, Christ, it’s hot. Don’t the heat never bother you?”

“No.”

“Nothing much bothers you, seems like.”

“A man lives long enough,” I said, “he learns patience.”

“Don’t worry, be happy. Right?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, be happy. Do what has to be done.”

“Like what? Picking lettuce for crappy wages?”

“Yes. Working in the fields.”

“You always been a farm worker, Harry? I mean, you ever do anything else?”

“No. Nothing else.”

Miguel laughed. “So you was born to it. Born migrant worker, born bracero.”

“Every man is born to do one good thing with his life,” I said.

“And you think picking lettuce is yours?”

“Toiling in the fields is honest work. The Lord’s work.”

They both laughed this time, like donkeys braying. “You hear that, Pete? The Lord’s work, he calls it. Toiling in the fields of the Lord!”

“You’re funny as hell, Harry, you know that? A freakin’ laugh riot.”

“Man, you really believe what you just said?”

“Yes,” I said. “I believe it.”

“Then you’re crazy. You been working in the hot sun too long.”

“Way too long,” Pete said. “His brain’s been fried.”

I said nothing. I reached behind my chair, lifted the full quart bottle, broke the seal, and took a small sip. They both watched me with their eyes opened wide.

“Hey,” Miguel said, “look at that. The holy roller’s got a jug of tequila.”

“Yeah. Good stuff, too.”

“Never seen you take a drink before, hombre viejo. You been holding out on us.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Every now and then, a sip or two, when the harvest is almost done.”

“A sip or two. Shit. One bottle prob’Iy lasts you the whole season.”

“Wouldn’t last me one night,” Pete said.

“How about letting us have a taste?”

“No. You boys are too young.”

They thought this, too, was funny.

“Come on, don’t be stingy. Just a quick one for each of us, hah?”

“No.”

“You better change that to yes,” Miguel said. “You wouldn’t want to make us mad at you.”

“Why should you be mad at me?”

“For holding out on us. For not sharing. If we got mad, why then maybe we’d just have to take that bottle away from you.”

“You would do that?”

“What would you do if we did, an old fart like you? Holler for help?”

“No.”

“Fight us, try to take the bottle back?”

“No.”

“So you see? Share and make us all happy.”

“Why are you picking on an old man?”

“You’re a funny dude, that’s why,” Pete said. “You make us laugh.”

I said nothing.

“Nobody’s looking, nobody’s around. Give us the bottle, let us have a couple of swallows.”

“That’s all we want,” Miguel said, “just a couple of swallows.”

I hesitated, but only for a moment. Then I sighed and held out the bottle. Miguel grabbed it first, drank long and deep until Pete took it away from him. He, too, drank long and deep, smacked his lips and wiped a fat hand across his mouth.

“Man, that’s good!”

“Strong as goat piss. Whoo.”

“I feel like having another one.”

“Yeah. Gimme that bottle.”

“You boys better not drink too much,” I said.

“No? Why’s that?”

“Too much tequila does bad things to a man on a hot night.”

“What bad things?”

I said nothing.

“He means it makes you horny,” Pete said. He punched me on the shoulder. “Isn’t that what you mean, Harry?”

I said nothing.

“Bad things,” Miguel said, and laughed. “Bet tequila don’t do nothing bad to the holy roller except get him a little borracho.”

“Hey, old man, we never seen you with a woman. You ever been married?”

“Yes.”

“No shit? What was her name?”

“Corrine.”

“What happened to her? She die or something?”

I said nothing.

“Maybe she dumped him,” Pete said. “That what happened? She dump your ass?”

I said nothing.

“Maybe she run off with somebody else,” Miguel said. “How about it, hombre viejo? That the way it was?”

“Yes.”

“Hah! So she did run off. When was that?”

“Long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Forty years.”

Pete drank more tequila. “Man, that’s just about forever.”

“What’d you do?” Miguel asked. “After she run off.”

“Nothing. There was nothing to do.”

“I know what I’d’ve done. I’d’ve gone after her and kicked her ass and busted the dude’s head. That’s what I’d’ve done.”

I said nothing.

“Forty years,” Pete said. “But you ain’t been without a woman since, right? You had plenty in your day, huh?”

“No.”

“No? What you mean, no?”

“Sins of the flesh,” I said.

They both laughed. “Sins of the flesh,” Miguel said. He took the bottle from Pete, drank deeply. “That’s a hot one, that is. That’s funny as hell.”

“You trying to tell us you ain’t had a woman in forty years? You ain’t been laid in all that time?”

“It’s the truth.”

“What kind of man don’t want to get laid for forty years? Huh?”

I said nothing.

“So what you been doing all that time?” Pete said. “Choking your lizard?”

I said nothing.

“He don’t even do that,” Miguel said. “All he does is pick crops and sit here by himself at night, all tired out from the Lord’s work.”

“Toiling in the fields of the Lord. Right, Harry?”

“Yes.”

They laughed and drank. I listened to the crickets and the nightbirds and wished for a small breeze. It was very hot.

“Damn,” Miguel said, “I’m getting a heat on.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Getting a hard-on, too. How about we go over to Salinas, pick up a couple of putas?”

“We ain’t been paid yet, remember? We ain’t got no money, remember?”

“Hey, Harry, you got any money?”

“No,” I said.

“Twenty bucks, that’s all we’d need. How about it?”

“I don’t have twenty dollars.”

“No, huh? No stash in your trailer?”

“No.”

“Maybe he’s lying,” Miguel said. “Maybe we oughta go in, have a look around.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “You won’t find any money.”

“Oh, shit, forget it,” Pete said. “He ain’t lying to us. All he’s got is this jug of the best damn tequila. And he wouldn’t mind if we was to go ahead and finish it, ain’t that right, old man?”

I said nothing.

“I tell you,” Miguel said, slurring his words now, “this tequila makes me horny as hell. Harry here don’t need pussy but I do. Man, real bad!”

“Forget it. Ain’t nobody in the camp gonna give it to you.”

“Rosa Caldera might.”

Pete laughed so hard he choked. “Rosa Caldera! That bitch! She wouldn’t let you screw her if you was the last dude on the planet.”

“Plenty of guys’ve had her.”

“Sure, but not you. Not either of us, man.”

“She came by here a few minutes ago,” I said.

They squinted at me. “Who did?” Pete said.

“Rosa Caldera. On her way to the river.”

“Yeah? Who was with her?”

“No one. She was alone.”

“So she was going to the river,” Miguel said. “What for?”

“To swim naked under the willows by the sandbar.”

“... Naked? How the hell you know that? She tell you that?”

“I know,” I said.

“She wouldn’t tell him nothing like that,” Pete said. “He must’ve seen her. That right, Harry? You seen Rosa swimming naked in the river?”

“Yes.”

Pete laughed. “Hey, he’s a peeper. A peeping holy roller.”

Miguel didn’t laugh. “She goes there alone? Swims alone?”

“Tonight, yes. But not always.”

“Who else swims with her?”

“Men. Different men.”

“They get naked too?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“What else they do besides swim, huh?”

I said nothing.

“Screw? Rosa screw guys down there in the river?”

I said nothing.

“Sure she does,” Pete said. “And Harry watches. You like to watch, huh, old man?”

“No.”

“Yeah, sure you do. You keep going back, right? That’s how you know about the guys Rosa screws down there.”

I said nothing.

Miguel drank again, licked his lips. “She went down there alone tonight, you said.”

“Yes. Alone.”

“Maybe she’s meeting some dude later,” Pete said.

“No. Not tonight.”

“How you know that?”

“She asked me to swim with her.”

“The hell she did!”

“She didn’t mean it. She was teasing me.”

“Yeah, Rosa the cockteaser.”

“How long she stay down there in the river?” Miguel asked.

“A long time on hot nights.”

“Under the willows by the sandbar — that’s where she swims?”

“Yes.”

They looked at each other. Again they drank. Their eyes were very bright in the pale light from my trailer window.

“Harry,” Pete said, “you’re too damn old to be drinking tequila on a hot night like this, so we’re gonna do you a favor — we’re gonna take this bottle away so you won’t be tempted. What you say to that?”

I said nothing.

Pete laughed again, but Miguel did not, and together they staggered away into the darkness.

Noises woke me, loud voices close by. I pulled on my pants and went outside. It was very late but the camp was alive with movement and bobbing lights, men and women running past my trailer in the direction of the river. I followed them.

Eladio Sanchez came hobbling up to me, as excited as I have ever seen him. His sun-weathered face was shiny with sweat.

“Harry,” he said, “it’s terrible, Harry — isn’t it terrible?”

“What is? What’s going on?”

“Haven’t you heard? Don’t you know?”

“No,” I said, “I was asleep. What happened?”

“Rosa Caldera’s been killed. Raped and killed.”

“Raped and killed, you say?”

“Down by the river. Jaime Valdez was out for a walk and heard her scream. She was dead when he found her. Naked, raped, her head crushed with a tequila bottle.”

“Do they know who did it?”

“Miguel Santos and Pete Simms,” Eladio said. “Jaime saw them running away. But they won’t get far, the police will catch them. Isn’t it an awful thing, Harry?”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s an awful thing.”

He hobbled away and I went back to my trailer. But I was not sleepy anymore. I walked down to a different part of the river and found a place under one of the willows.

It was cooler there, close to the moon-silvered water. The camp noise was only a low buzzing murmur, all but lost in the throbbing song of the crickets. Peaceful. A man could settle down in a place like this, if he was a settling-down kind of man.

But I was not, and had not been for forty years.

The harvest here in the Salinas Valley had been a good one, but now it was almost finished and soon I would be moving on. To other places, other crops, other fertile fields.

The Lord’s work is never done.

Lines

It was a wide spot on a secondary road in a corner of the Nevada desert.

Line, it was called. Some name for a town, Hood thought as he drove in. Maybe whoever founded it had called it that because the road ran line-straight through it from one long section of sun-blasted wasteland into another. Or maybe it was because of the dozen or so old-fashioned western-style buildings that faced each other across the road like sagging blocks stretched out along a plumb line.

Dry, dusty, deserted except for an old man sitting in the shade in front of one of the storefronts. A dead town. A nowhere place.

Fitting, though, name and town both. Just right. He was in Line to cross a line, to make Line the end of the line for Teresa and the drifter, Kincaid, she’d run off with three months ago.

Hood had done a lot of things in his life. Boosted cars when he was a kid in East L.A. Committed a couple of burglaries, sold some meth, worked as a bagman for a gambling outfit, busted a few heads for money. But he’d never killed anybody.

Until now. That was the line he was here to cross.

He’d tracked Teresa and Kincaid from L.A. to Phoenix to Vegas to Tonopah. Kincaid worked different jobs when he could get them — ranch hand, truck driver, laborer — but jobs were scarce these days and he hadn’t worked much in those three months. Mostly they were living off the two thousand of Hood’s money Teresa had stolen from him the night before they ran off. Traveling here and there in no definite pattern, spending their nights in cheap motels or holed up in Kincaid’s car. Not easy to track, but not too difficult, either — not when you had enough hate driving you.

Nobody ran out on Joe Hood. Nobody took what belonged to Joe Hood and got away with it. Nobody.

The two of them had spent last night in Tonopah. So from there Hood had driven north, the direction he figured they’d taken, and when he came to the secondary road leading to Line he knew that was where he’d find them. Knew it for certain, as if somebody had suddenly opened up his head and dumped in the knowledge.

It was late afternoon when he drove into Line. There was a crumbling, six-unit motel on the outskirts, but he didn’t stop there. On a blistering hot day like this, Teresa and Kincaid wouldn’t be holed up in their room or out driving around. They’d be sitting in a bar sucking down ice-cold beer, Teresa’s second favorite pastime.

Heat shimmers gave the false-front buildings a wavery, watery look. The sun-glare off white walls and sheet metal roofs was so bright it struck fiery glints off the windshield and created blind spots; Hood didn’t see the drunk come lurching out into the road until it was almost too late. He stood on the brakes, cramped the wheel, and the grill and right front fender just missed a collision.

“Watch where you’re going, you stupid son of a bitch!” Hood yelled through the open driver’s window.

The drunk stood staring and blinking stupidly, then wiped his mouth and shambled on across the street and disappeared into an alleyway between two of the storefronts.

The building the drunk had come out of had a sign on the front wall: Buckhorn Tavern. Hood drove ahead to the far end of town, going slow. There wasn’t another car in sight, not even a single one parked in front of the buildings. And no other bars besides the Buckhorn. He made a U-turn in the empty road, came back and parked across from the tavern.

He unlocked the glove box, unwrapped the chamois cloth from around the 9mm Glock. The piece was loaded, but he jacked the clip out, checked it, then checked the action before he slammed the clip home again. He flipped off the safety, stuck the gun in the waistband of his pants, and got out of the car. The sun’s heat seared him as he crossed the road, but he barely noticed it. He wasn’t even sweating when he walked into the tavern.

It was dark inside, cooled a little by a couple of whirring ceiling fans. Hood stood for a couple of seconds just inside the door, looking around. Not much different from every other small-town bar he’d been in: racks of antlers and deer heads on the walls, pool table, juke box. A fat bartender standing behind the long bar on the left, polishing glasses. A beefy guy in a pearl-button western shirt sitting on a stool with a schooner of draft beer in front of him.

And in one of the low-backed booths on the right, heads together over bottles of Bud, there they were — Teresa and a man that had to be Kincaid.

They didn’t see Hood at first. Too wrapped up in each other, hands clasped together on the table. Teresa didn’t look much different than the last time he’d seen her, big, sweet-faced, her feathery black hair heat-limp and ruffling in the faint breeze from the fans. Kincaid was long and lean, with a lantern jaw and a bald spot on the crown of his head. It was the first time Hood had set eyes on the man. What did Teresa see in a blue-collar jerk like him? Hung like a horse, probably. Size mattered to her, all right. Anything that had to do with sex mattered to her.

Nothing mattered to Hood, not anymore.

He walked over to the booth, taking the Glock out of his waistband on the way. “Hello, Teresa,” he said.

The look of shocked disbelief on her face was almost comical. She started up out of the booth. So did Kincaid. Hood shot Kincaid first, to get him out of the way — a clean kill shot that took off part of the right side of his head. The sound of the gun going off was deafening. Out of the corner of his eye Hood saw the bartender dive for cover behind the plank, the one other customer drop the beer schooner and kick over his stool as he jumped off and ran away down an aisle at the rear.

Teresa screamed, her eyes bulging wide, her hands clawing at the edge of the table.

“I told you,” Hood said. “I warned you what would happen if you ran out on me.”

“Oh God, Joe, no! Don’t!”

“Goodbye, baby.”

She threw up a hand, and he shot her right through it. Big round hole in her palm, big round hole in the middle of her forehead. And down she went, sliding off the seat and under the table.

The echoes faded. Quiet in there, then. Quiet as death.

Hood took one last look, then turned and walked back out into the heat.

Hood was sitting sleepily in the shade in front of the hardware store when his rheumy old eyes saw the car roll past and almost hit the drunk. Close but no cigar, he thought, and cackled to himself as the drunk staggered off. The car rolled on slow to the end of town, U-turned, came back and slid to the curb. The man who got out and went across into the Buckhorn was nobody Hood had ever seen before.

A little while later, when he heard the gunshots, he got up as quick as his tired old bones would let him and went inside the store. He didn’t want any part of what was going on over in the tavern.

Hood lurched out of the Buckhorn and into the street. He was pie-eyed drunk, drunker than anybody had a right to be in the middle of the day. But when it was this damn hot, what else was there to do but wrap yourself around a bucket of cold beer? The sun pounded at him, dazzled his already blurred vision, so that he didn’t see the car until it almost hit him.

“Watch where you’re going, you stupid son of a bitch!” the driver yelled at him.

Hood blinked at the man, didn’t recognize him. He wiped his mouth and staggered over into the alley between the feed store and café. In the shade there, he leaned over and puked until he felt better. Then he thought about having another beer or two.

From where he was polishing glasses behind the bar, Hood watched the stranger come in, stand for a few seconds, then walk over to the booth where the gangly guy and the girl were sitting. He didn’t spot the gun until it appeared in the stranger’s hand. At first he was so shocked that he just stood there staring. But then, when the shooting started and he saw the gangly guy’s head fly apart, Hood dropped and flattened himself on the planks and lay there shaking with his hands covering his head.

Hood was just lifting the schooner to his mouth when the stranger walked in. Big guy, tough looking. Better not be looking for trouble, Hood thought because the heat was making him feel mean. Anybody messes with me on a hell-hot day like this, I’ll kick a lung out of him.

He took a long draught from his mug as the stranger walked over to the only occupied booth. Next thing he knew, the big bastard had a gun in his hand and it went off like a cannon and the blood, oh Jesus the blood—

Hood moved so fast the schooner went flying one way and the stool the other. He ran straight down the aisle between the crappers and out the back door and didn’t stop until he was a block and a half away.

In the booth Hood was sitting with Teresa’s hand in his, watching her and thinking about how much he liked screwing her and wishing it wasn’t so damn hot so he could take her back to the motel and screw her again right now. Maybe he would anyway. Beer in the afternoon always made him horny.

He didn’t pay any attention when the door opened and somebody came in. But then he heard steps, hard steps, and when he looked up a big, stone-faced man was standing there looking at him. He knew right away who it was. Knew it before he heard Teresa’s gasp. Knew it with a kind of sick disbelief even before he heard the words, “Hello, Teresa,” and saw the gun.

Hood started up out of the booth, knowing there wasn’t time to do anything, that he was a dead man. The last thing he saw was the automatic’s muzzle swinging up toward his head.

In the booth Hood hung on tight to Kincaid’s hand. Five bottles of Bud had given her a buzz and she was feeling free and easy, the way she had ever since she’d let Kincaid talk her into taking the two thousand dollars and running off with him. She’d never felt about anybody the way she felt about Kincaid. Oh, sure, she’d been real afraid there for a while, but she wasn’t anymore. It’d been three months now and they were a long way from L. A., out in the middle of nowhere with their tracks all covered behind them. Safe.

She didn’t much care for the nowhere part, but that would change sooner or later. Kincaid would get a job or find some other way to make money, and when they had enough they’d head east to one of the big cities. Chicago, New York. Or Miami. She’d always wanted to go down to Florida. You could get lost forever in a place like Miami...

“Hello, Teresa.”

Hood looked up, blinked, gasped. Incredibly Hood was standing right there looking down at her, big as life, big as death. The first moment of shocked disbelief gave way to jets of fear when her eyes focused on the gun in his hand. Jerkily she started to stand up. Across from her Kincaid was doing the same — but before he got all the way up there was a deafening roar and his head exploded in a burst of bright red.

Hood screamed, her eyes bulging wide, her hands clutching at the edge of the table.

“I told you. I warned you what would happen if you ran out on me.”

“Oh God, Joe, no! Don’t!”

“Goodbye, baby.”

Hood threw up her hand, as if a hand could stop a bullet.

Hood walked slow out of the Buckhorn, crossed the deserted road again, and got into his car. The seat and the steering wheel were fire hot. He knew he should start the engine, get out of Line as fast as he could, but he didn’t do it. He had nowhere to go, nothing left to do. Now that Teresa and Kincaid were dead, he just didn’t care anymore.

End of the line for them. End of the line for him, too.

The Glock was still in his hand. After a time, all in one motion, he lifted it and put the muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

It was a wide spot on a secondary road in a corner of the Nevada desert.

Line, it was called. Some name for a town, Hood thought as he drove in. Maybe whoever founded it had called it that because the road ran line-straight through it from one section of sun-blasted wasteland into another. Or maybe it was because of the dozen or so old-fashioned western-style buildings that faced each other across the road like sagging blocks stretched out along a plumb line.

Dry, dusty, deserted except for an old man sitting in the shade in front of one of the storefronts. A dead town. A nowhere place...

McIntosh’s Chute

It was right after supper and we were all settled around the cookfire, smoking, none of us saying much because it was well along in the roundup and we were all dog-tired from the long days of riding and chousing cows out of brush-clogged coulees. I wasn’t doing anything except taking in the night — warm Montana fall night, sky all hazed with stars, no moon to speak of. Then, of a sudden, something come streaking across all that velvet-black and silver from east to west: a ball of smoky red-orange with a long fiery tail. Everybody stirred around and commenced to gawping and pointing. But not for long. Quick as it had come, the thing was gone beyond the broken sawteeth of the Rockies.

There was a hush. Then young Poley said, “What in hell was that?” He was just sixteen and big for his britches in more ways than one. But that heavenly fireball had taken him down to an awed whisper.

“Comet,” Cass Buckram said.

“That fire-tail... whooee!” Poley said. “I never seen nothing like it. Comet, eh? Well, it’s the damnedest sight a man ever set eyes on.”

“Damnedest sight a button ever set eyes on, maybe.”

“I ain’t a button!”

“You are from where I sit,” Cass said. “Big shiny mansized button with your threads still dangling.”

Everybody laughed except Poley. Being as he was the youngest on the roundup crew, he’d taken his share of ragging since we’d left the Box 8 and he was about fed up with it. He said, “Well, what do you know about it, old-timer?”

That didn’t faze Cass. He was close to sixty, though you’d never know it to look at him or watch him when he worked cattle or at anything else, but age didn’t mean much to him. He was of a philosophical turn of mind. You were what you were and no sense in pretending otherwise — that was how he looked at it.

In his younger days he’d been an adventuresome gent. Worked at jobs most of us wouldn’t have tried in places we’d never even hoped to visit. Oil rigger in Texas and Oklahoma, logger in Oregon, fur trapper in the Canadian Barrens, prospector in the Yukon during the ’98 Rush, cowhand in half a dozen states and territories. He’d packed more living into the past forty-odd years than a whole regiment of men, and he didn’t mind talking about his experiences. No, he sure didn’t mind. First time I met him, I’d taken him for a blowhard. Plenty took him that way in the beginning, on account of his windy nature. But the stories he told were true, or at least every one had a core of truth in it. He had too many facts and a whole warbag full of mementoes and photographs and such to back ’em up.

All you had to do was prime him a little — and without knowing it, young Poley had primed him just now. But that was all right with the rest of us. Cass had honed his storytelling skills over the years; one of his yarns was always worthwhile entertainment.

He said to the kid, “I saw more strange things before I was twenty than you’ll ever see.”

“Cowflop.”

“Correct word is ‘bullshit’,” Cass said, solemn, and everybody laughed again. “But neither one is accurate.”

“I suppose you seen something stranger and more spectacular than that there comet.”

“Twice as strange and three times as spectacular.”

“Cowflop.”

“Fact. Ninth wonder of the world, in its way.”

“Well? What was it?”

“McIntosh and his chute.”

“Chute? What chute? Who was McIntosh?”

“Keep your lip buttoned, button, and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you about the damnedest sight I or any other man ever laid eyes on.”

Happened more than twenty years ago [Cass went on], in southern Oregon in the early nineties. I’d had my fill of fur trapping in the Barrens and developed a hankering to see what timber work was like, so I’d come on down into Oregon and hooked on with a logging outfit near Coos Bay. But for the first six months I was just a bullcook, not a timberjack. Low-down work, bullcooking — cleaning up after the jacks, making up their bunks, cutting firewood, helping out in the kitchen. Without experience, that’s the only kind of job you can get in a decent logging camp. Boss finally put me on one of the yarding crews, but even then there was no thrill in the work and the wages were low. So I was ready for a change of venue when word filtered in that a man named Saginaw Tom McIntosh was hiring for his camp on Black Mountain.

McIntosh was from Michigan and had made a pile logging in the North Woods. What had brought him west to Oregon was the opportunity to buy better than 25,000 acres of virgin timberland on Black Mountain. He’d rebuilt an old dam on the Klamath River nearby that had been washed out by high water, built a sawmill and a millpond below the dam, and then started a settlement there that he named after himself. And once he had a camp operating on the mountain, first thing he did was construct a chute, or skidway, down to the river

Word of McIntosh’s chute spread just as fast and far as word that he was hiring timber beasts at princely wages. It was supposed to be an engineering marvel, unlike any other logging chute ever built. Some scoffed when they were told about it; claimed it was just one of those tall stories that get flung around among Northwest loggers, like the one about Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox. Me, I was willing to give Saginaw Tom McIntosh the benefit of the doubt. I figured that if he was half the man he was talked of being, he could accomplish just about anything he set his mind to.

He had two kinds of reputation. First, as a demon logger — a man who could get timber cut faster and turned into board lumber quicker than any other boss jack. And second, as a ruthless cold-hearted son of a bitch who bullied his men, worked them like animals, and wasn’t above using fists, peaveys, calks, and any other handy weapon if the need arose. Rumor had it that he—

What’s that, boy? No, I ain’t going to say any more about that chute just yet. I’ll get to it in good time. You just keep your pants on and let me tell this my own way.

Well, rumor had it that McIntosh was offering top dollar because it was the only way he could get jacks to work steady for him. That and his reputation didn’t bother me one way or another. I’d dealt with hard cases before, and have since. So I determined to see what Saginaw Tom and his chute and Black Mountain were all about.

I quit the Coos Bay outfit and traveled down to McIntosh’s settlement on the Klamath. Turned out to be bigger than I’d expected. The sawmill was twice the size of the one up at Coos Bay, and there was a blacksmith shop, a box factory, a hotel and half a dozen boardinghouses, two big stores, a school, two churches, and a lodge hall. McIntosh may have been a son of a bitch, but he sure did know how to get maximum production and how to provide for his men and their families.

I hired on at the mill, and the next day a crew chief named Lars Nilson drove me and another new man, a youngster called Johnny Cline, upriver to the Black Mountain camp. Long, hot trip in the back of a buckboard, up steep grades and past gold-mining claims strung along the rough-water river. Nilson told us there was bad blood between McIntosh and those miners. They got gold out of the sand by trapping silt in wing dams, and they didn’t like it when McIntosh’s river drivers built holding cribs along the banks or herded long chains of logs downstream to the cribs and then on to the mill. There hadn’t been any trouble yet, but it could erupt at any time; feelings were running high on both sides.

Heat and flies and hornets deviled us all the way up into scrub timber: lodgepole, jack, and yellow pine. The bigger trees — white sugar pine — grew higher up, and what fine old trees they were. Clean-growing, hardly any underbrush. Huge trunks that rose up straight from brace roots close to four feet broad, and no branches on ’em until thirty to forty feet above the ground. Every lumberman’s dream, the cut-log timber on that mountain.

McIntosh was taking full advantage of it too. His camp was twice the size of most — two enormous bunkhouses, a cookshack, a barn and blacksmith shop, clusters of sheds and shanties and heavy wagons, corrals full of work horses and oxen. Close to a hundred men, altogether. And better than two dozen big wheels, stinger-tongue and slip-tongue both—

What’s a big wheel? Just that, boy — wheels ten and twelve feet high, some made of wood and some of iron, each pair connected by an axle that had a chain and a long tongue poking back from the middle. Four-horse team drew each one. Man on the wheel crew dug a shallow trench under one or two logs, depending on their size; loader pushed the chain through it under the logs and secured it to the axle; driver lunged his team ahead and the tongue slid forward and yanked on the chain to lift the front end of the logs off the ground. Harder the horses pulled, the higher the logs hung. When the team came to a stop, the logs dropped and dragged. Only trouble was, sometimes they didn’t drop and drag just right — didn’t act as a brake like they were supposed to — and the wheel horses got their hind legs smashed. Much safer and faster to use a steam lokey to get cut logs out of the woods, but laying narrow-gauge track takes time and so does ordering a lokey and having it packed in sections up the side of a wilderness mountain. McIntosh figured to have his track laid and a lokey operating by the following spring. Meanwhile, it was the big wheels and the teams of horses and oxen and men that had to do the heavy work.

Now then. The chute — McIntosh’s chute.

First I seen of it was across the breadth of the camp, at the edge of a steep drop-off: the chute head, a big two-level platform built of logs. Cut logs were stacked on the top level as they came off the big wheels, by jacks crowhopping over the deck with cant hooks. On the lower level other jacks looped a cable around the foremost log, and a donkey engine wound up the cable and hauled the log forward into a trough built at the outer edge of the platform. You follow me so far?

Well, that was all I could see until Nilson took Johnny Cline and me over close to the chute head. From the edge of the drop-off you had a miles-wide view — long snaky stretches of the Klamath, timberland all the way south to the California border. But it wasn’t the vista that had my attention; it was the chute itself. An engineering marvel, all right, that near took my breath away.

McIntosh and his crew had cut a channel in the rocky hillside straight on down to the riverbank, and lined the sides and bottom with flat-hewn logs — big ones at the sides and smaller ones on the bottom, all worn glass-smooth. Midway along was a short trestle that spanned an outcrop and acted as a kind of speed-brake. Nothing legendary about that chute: it was the longest built up to that time, maybe the longest ever. More than twenty-six hundred feet of timber had gone into the construction, top to bottom.

While I was gawking down at it, somebody shouted, “Clear back!” and right away Nilson herded Johnny Cline and me onto a hummock to one side. At the chute head a chain of logs was lined and ready, held back by an iron bar wedged into the rock. Far down below one of the river crew showed a white flag, and as soon as he did the chute tender yanked the iron bar aside and the first log shuddered through and down.

After a hundred feet or so, it began to pick up speed. You could hear it squealing against the sides and bottom of the trough. By the time it went over the trestle and into the lower part of the chute, it was a blur. Took just eighteen seconds for it to drop more than eight hundred feet to the river, and when it hit the splash was bigger than a barn and the fan of water drenched trees on both banks —

“Hell!” young Poley interrupted. “I don’t believe none of that. You’re funning us, Cass.”

“Be damned if I am. What don’t you believe?”

“None of it. Chute made of twenty-six hundred feet of timber, logs shooting down over eight hundred feet in less than twenty seconds, splashes bigger than a barn...”

“Well, it’s the gospel truth. So’s the rest of it. Sides and bottom a third of the way down were burned black from the friction — black as coal. On cold mornings you could see smoke from the logs going down: that’s how fast they traveled. Went even faster when there was frost, so the river crew had to drive spikes in the chute’s bottom end to slow ’em up. Even so, sometimes a log would hit the river with enough force to split it in half, clean, like it’d gone through a buzz saw. But I expect you don’t believe none of that, either.”

Poley grunted. “Not hardly.”

I said, “Well, I believe it, Cass. Man can do just about anything he sets his mind to, like you said, if he wants it bad enough. That chute must of been something. I can sure see why it was the damnedest thing you ever saw.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Cass said.

“What? But you said—”

“No, I didn’t. McIntosh’s chute was a wonder but not the damnedest thing I ever saw.”

“Then what is?” Poley demanded.

“If I wasn’t interrupted every few minutes, you’d of found out by now.” Cass glared at him. “You going to be quiet and let me get to it or you intend to keep flapping your gums so this here story takes all night?”

Poley wasn’t cowed, but he did button his lip. And surprised us all — maybe even himself — by keeping it buttoned for the time being.

I thought I might get put on one of the wheel crews [Cass resumed], but I’d made the mistake of telling Nilson I’d worked a yarding crew up at Coos Bay, so a yarding crew was where I got put on Black Mountain. Working as a choke-setter in the slash out back of the camp — man that sets heavy cable chokers around the end of a log that’s fallen down a hillside or into a ravine so the log can be hauled out by means of a donkey engine. Hard, sweaty, dangerous work in the best of camps, and McIntosh’s was anything but the best. The rumors had been right about that too. We worked long hours for our pay, seven days a week. And if a man dropped from sheer exhaustion, he was expected to get up under his own power — and docked for the time he spent lying down.

Johnny Cline got put on the same crew, as a whistle-punk on the donkey, and him and me took up friendly. He was a Californian, from down near San Francisco; young and feisty and too smart-ass for his own good... some like you, Poley. But decent enough, underneath. His brother was a logger somewhere in Canada, and he’d determined to try his hand too. He was about as green as me, but you could see that logging was in his blood in a way that it wasn’t in mine. I knew I’d be moving on to other things one day; he knew he’d be a logger till the day he died.

I got along with Nilson and most of the other timber beasts, but Saginaw Tom McIntosh was another matter. If anything, he was worse than his reputation — mean clear through, with about as much decency as a vulture on a fence post waiting for something to die. Giant of a man, face weathered the color of heartwood, droopy yellow mustache stained with juice from the quids of Spearhead tobacco he always kept stowed in one cheek, eyes like pale fire that gave you the feeling you’d been burned whenever they touched you. Stalked around camp in worn cruisers, stagged corduroy pants, and steel-calked boots, yelling out orders, knocking men down with his fists if they didn’t ask how high when he hollered jump. Ran that camp the way a hardass warden runs a prison. Everybody hated him, including me and Johnny Cline before long. But most of the jacks feared him, too, which was how he kept them in line.

He drove all his crews hard, demanding that a dozen turns of logs go down his chute every day to feed the saws working twenty-four hours at the mill. Cut lumber was fetching more than a hundred dollars per thousand feet at the time and he wanted to keep production at a fever pitch before the heavy winter rains set in. There was plenty of grumbling among the men, and tempers were short, but nobody quit the camp. Pay was too good, even with all the abuse that went along with it.

I’d been at the Black Mountain camp three weeks when the real trouble started. One of the gold miners down on the Klamath, man named Coogan, got drunk and decided to tear up a holding crib because he blamed McIntosh for ruining his claim. McIntosh flew into a rage when he heard about it. He ranted and raved for half a day about how he’d had enough of those goddamn miners. Then, when he’d worked himself up enough, he ordered a dozen jacks down on a night raid to bust up Coogan’s wing dam and raise some hell with the other miners’ claims. The jacks didn’t want to do it but he bullied them into it with threats and promises of bonus money.

But the miners were expecting retaliation; had joined forces and were waiting when the jacks showed up. There was a riverbank brawl, mostly with fists and ax handles, but with a few shots fired too. Three timber stiffs were hurt bad enough so that they had to be carried back to camp and would be laid up for a while.

The county law came next day and threatened to close McIntosh down if there was any more trouble. That threw him into another fit. Kind of man he was, he took it out on the men in the raiding party.

“What kind of jack lets a gold-grubber beat him down?” he yelled at them. “You buggers ain’t worth the name timberjack. If I didn’t need your hands and backs, I’d send the lot of you packing. As is, I’m cutting your pay. And you three that can’t work — you get no pay at all until you can hoist your peaveys and swing your axes.”

One of the jacks challenged him. McIntosh kicked the man in the crotch, knocked him down, and then gave him a case of logger’s smallpox: pinned his right arm to the ground with those steel calks of his. There were no other challenges. But in all those bearded faces you could see the hate that was building for McIntosh. You could feel it too; it was in the air, crackles of it like electricity in a storm.

Another week went by. There was no more trouble with the miners, but McIntosh drove his crews with a vengeance. Up to fifteen turns of logs down the chute each day. The big-wheel crews hauling until their horses were ready to drop; and two did drop dead in harness, while another two had to be destroyed when logs crushed their hind legs on the drag. Buckers and fallers working the slash from dawn to dark, so that the skirl of crosscuts and bucksaws and the thud of axes rolled like constant thunder across the face of Black Mountain.

Some men can stand that kind of killing pace without busting down one way or another, and some men can’t. Johnny Cline was one of those who couldn’t. He was hotheaded, like I said before, and ten times every day and twenty times every night he cursed McIntosh and damned his black soul. Then, one day when he’d had all he could swallow, he made the mistake of cursing and damning McIntosh to the boss logger’s face.

The yarding crew we were on was deep in the slash, struggling to get logs out of a small valley. It was coming on dusk and we’d been at it for hours; we were all bone-tired. I set the choker around the end of yet another log, and the hook-tender signaled Johnny Cline, who stood behind him with one hand on the wire running to the whistle on the donkey engine. When Johnny pulled the wire and the short blast sounded, the cable snapped tight and the big log started to move, its nose plowing up dirt and crushing saplings in its path. But as it came up the slope it struck a sunken log, as sometimes happens, and shied off. The hook-tender signaled for slack, but Johnny didn’t give it fast enough to keep the log from burying its nose in the roots of a fir stump.

McIntosh saw it. He’d come catfooting up and was ten feet from the donkey engine. He ran up to Johnny yelling, “You stupid goddamn greenhorn!” and gave him a shove that knocked the kid halfway down to where the log was stumped.

Johnny caught himself and scrambled back up the incline. I could see the hate afire in his eyes and I tried to get between him and McIntosh, but he brushed me aside. He put his face up close to the boss logger’s, spat out a string of cuss words, and finished up with, “I’ve had all I’m gonna take from you, you son of a bitch.” And then he swung with his right hand.

But all he hit was air. McIntosh had seen it coming; he stepped inside the punch and spat tobacco juice into Johnny’s face. The squirt and spatter threw the kid off balance and blinded him at the same time — left him wide open for McIntosh to wade in with fists and knees.

McIntosh seemed to go berserk, as if all the rage and meanness had built to an explosion point inside him and Johnny’s words had triggered it. Johnny Cline never had a chance. McIntosh beat him to the ground, kept on beating him even though me and some of the others fought to pull him off. And when he saw his chance he raised up one leg and he stomped the kid’s face with his calks — drove those sharp steel spikes down into Johnny’s face as if he was grinding a bug under his heel.

Johnny screamed once, went stiff, then lay still. Nilson and some others had come running up by then and it took six of us to drag McIntosh away before he could stomp Johnny Cline a second time. He battled us for a few seconds, like a crazy man; then, all at once, the wildness went out of him. But he was no more human when it did. He tore himself loose, and without a word, without any concern for the boy he’d stomped, he stalked off through the slash.

Johnny Cline’s face was a red ruin, pitted and torn by half a hundred steel points. I thought he was dead at first, but when I got down beside him I found a weak pulse. Four of us picked him up and carried him to our bunkhouse.

The bullcook and me cleaned the blood off him and doctored his wounds as best we could. But he was in a bad way. His right eye was gone, pierced by one of McIntosh’s calks, and he was hurt inside, too, for he kept coughing up red foam. There just wasn’t much we could do for him. The nearest doctor was thirty miles away; by the time somebody went and fetched him back, it would be too late. I reckon we all knew from the first that Johnny Cline would be dead by morning.

There was no more work for any of us that day. None of the jacks in our bunkhouse took any grub, either, nor slept much as the night wore on. We all just sat around in little groups with our lamps lit, talking low, smoking and drinking cof fee or tea. Checking on Johnny now and then. Waiting.

He never regained consciousness. An hour before dawn the bullcook went to look at him and announced, “He’s gone.” The waiting was done. Yes, and so were Saginaw Tom McIntosh and the Black Mountain camp.

Nilson and the other crew chiefs had a meeting outside, between the two bunkhouses. The rest of us kept our places. When Nilson and the two others who bunked in our building came back in, it was plain enough from their expressions what had been decided. And plainer still when the three of them shouldered their peaveys. Loggers will take so much from a boss like Saginaw Tom McIntosh — only so much and no more. What he’d done to Johnny Cline was the next to last straw; Johnny dying was the final one.

At the door Nilson said, “We’re on our way to cut down a rotted tree. Rest of you can stay or join us, as you see fit. But you’ll all keep your mouths shut either way. Clear?”

Nobody had any objections. Nilson turned and went out with the other two chiefs.

Well, none of the men in our bunkhouse stayed, nor did anybody in the other one. We were all of the same mind. I thought I knew what would happen to McIntosh, but I was wrong. The crew heads weren’t fixing to give him the same as he gave Johnny Cline. No, they had other plans. When a logging crew turns, it turns hard — and it gives no quarter.

The near-dawn dark was chill and damp, and I don’t mind saying it put a shiver on my back. We all walked quiet through it to McIntosh’s shanty — close to a hundred of us, so he heard us coming anyway. But not in time to get up a weapon. He fought with the same wildness he had earlier but he didn’t have any more chance than he gave Johnny Cline. Nilson stunned him with his peavey. Then half a dozen men stuffed him into his clothes and his blood-stained boots and took him out.

Straight across the camp we went, with four of the crew heads carrying McIntosh by the arms and legs. He came around just before they got him to the edge of the drop-off. Realized what was going to happen to him, looked like, at about the same time I did.

He was struggling fierce, bellowing curses, when Nilson and the others pitched him into the chute.

He went down slow at first, the way one of the big logs always did. Clawing at the flat-hewn sides, trying to dig his calks into the glass-smooth bottom logs. Then he commenced to pick up speed, and his yells turned to banshee screams. Two hundred feet down the screaming stopped; he was just a blur by then. His clothes started to smoke from the friction, then burst into flame. When he went sailing over the trestle he was a lump of fire that lit up the dark... then a streak of fire as he shot down into the lower section... then a fireball with a tail longer and brighter than the one on that comet a while ago, so bright the river and the woods on both banks showed plain as day for two or three seconds before he smacked the river — smacked it and went out in a splash and steamy sizzle you could see and hear all the way up at the chute head.

“And that,” Cass Buckram finished, “that, by God, was the damnedest sight I or any other man ever set eyes on — McIntosh going down McIntosh’s chute, eight hundred feet straight into hell.”

None of us argued with him. Not even Poley the button.

Trade Secret

I was sitting in one of the canvas chairs on the back deck, adjusting the drag on my Daiwa fishing reel, when I heard the car grinding uphill through the woods. My cabin is on a backcountry lake, pretty far off the beaten track, and the gate across the private road has a No Trespassing sign. The only visitors I get are occasional tradespeople from the little town a dozen miles away, by invitation only, and I wasn’t expecting anybody today.

I got up, slow — now that the cool early fall weather had set in, my arthritis was acting up — and shuffled inside for my 30.06. Then I went out front to find out who it was. The car that rolled out of the pines was a shiny new silver Lincoln I’d never seen before. Illinois plates — that told me something right there. The driver was a man and he was alone; the angle of the sun let me see that much. But I didn’t get a good look at his face until the Lincoln swung to a stop alongside my Jeep and he opened the door.

Surprise. Easy Ed Malachi.

He hadn’t changed much. A little less of the dyed black hair, a few extra wrinkles in his jowly face and another ten pounds or so bulging his waistline. Dressed same as in the old days, like an Armani ad in a magazine — silk shirt, Bronzini tie, a suit that must’ve set him back at least three grand. But the outfit was all wrong for a trip into this wilderness country. That told me something, too.

Malachi was smiling when he got out, one of those ear to ear smiles of his that had always made me think of a shark. I leaned the rifle against the wall next to the stacked firewood, moved over to meet him when he came up onto the porch.

“Hey, Griff,” he said, and grabbed my hand and pumped it a couple of times. Sunlight glinted off his gold baguette diamond ring, the platinum Philippe Patek watch on his left wrist. “Hope you don’t mind me just showing up like this, but you’re a hard man to get hold of. Long time, huh? Must be, what, six years?”

“More like seven and a half.”

“Some place you got here. Middle of nowhere, not easy to find.”

“That’s the way I like it.”

“Sure, you always were your own man. But I never figured you’d turn into a hermit.”

“People change.”

“Sure they do. Sure. You’re looking good, though, fit as ever. Retirement agrees with you.”

“You didn’t come all the way up here to make small talk,” I said. “What do you want, Ed?”

“How about a drink for starters? I been on the road five hours, I can use one. You still drinking Irish?”

“Now and then.”

“Spare a double shot for an old friend?”

We’d never been friends, but there was no point in making an issue of it. I led him inside, poured his drink and a dollop for myself while he looked around at the knotty pine walls, the furniture and bookcases I’d built myself, the big native stone fireplace. “Some place,” he said again.

“Suits me.”

“You get cell phone reception up here?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. I couldn’t find a number. But I see you got a landline.”

“Unlisted and blocked. I don’t use it much.”

“What about TV reception? Pretty bad?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a television. Or want one.”

“Yeah? So what do you do nights, winters?”

“Read, mostly. Work puzzles, listen to CB radio. Fall asleep in front of the fire.”

“The quiet life.” Malachi’s expression said what he meant was boring life. He couldn’t imagine himself living the way I did, without luxuries and all the glitz he was used to. “What about women?”

“What about them?”

“You always had one around in the old days.”

“That was the old days. Now I like living alone.”

“But you don’t always sleep alone, right? I mean, you’re not even seventy yet.”

“One more year.”

“Hell, sixty-nine’s not old. I’m sixty-five and I still get my share.” His laugh sounded forced. “Good old Viagra.”

“Let’s take our drinks out on the deck,” I said.

We went out there. Malachi carried his glass over to the railing, stood looking down at the short wooden dock with my skiff tied up at the end, then out over the mile and a half of glass-smooth lake, the pine woods that hemmed it on three sides, the forested mountains in the near distance.

“Some view,” he said. “Anybody else live on this lake?”

“No. Nearest neighbors are six miles from here and they’re only around in the summer.”

“You do a lot of fishing?”

“Fair amount. Mostly catch and release.”

“No fun in that. What about deer? Catch and release them too?”

“I don’t hunt as much as I used to.”

“How come? Still got your eye, right?”

“My eye’s fine. Arthritis is the problem.”

“But you can still shoot? Your hand’s still steady?”

“Steady enough. Why don’t you get to the point, Ed, save us both some time?”

He took a swallow of his Irish, coughed, drank again. He was still smiling, but it looked as forced now as his laugh had been. “I got a problem,” he said. “A big problem.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. And you wouldn’t’ve come alone.”

“I don’t know who to trust anymore, that’s the thing. I’m not even sure of my bodyguards, for Christ’s sake. Things’ve gotten dicey in the business, Griff. Real dicey.”

“Is that right?”

“Might as well tell you straight out. Me and Frank Carbone, we’re on the outs. Big time.”

“What happened?”

“Power struggle,” Malachi said, “and it’s none of my doing. Frank’s gotten greedy in his old age, wants to expand operations, wants full control.”

“Why come to me about it?”

“Why do you think? Do I have to spell it out?”

“Contract offer? After all these years?”

“Sure, a contract. Best one you ever had.”

“I’m an old man. Why not bring in some young shooter from out of town? Detroit, Miami, L.A.”

“I got to have somebody I know, somebody I can trust. I could always trust you, Griff. You never took sides, never rocked the boat. Just took the contracts we gave you and carried them out.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said. “I’ve been out of the business almost eight years.”

“Not such a long time. I’m betting you’re as good as you ever were. The best. Not one screw-up, not one miss. And you always had an angle nobody else thought of. Like the time the cops stashed that fink Jimmy Conlin in the safe house with half a dozen guards, and still you found a way to make the hit. How’d you manage it, anyway? I always wondered.”

“Trade secret,” I said.

Another forced laugh. He gulped the rest of his drink before he said, “Fifty K was the most you ever got in the old days, right? For Jimmy Conlin? I’ll pay you seventy-five to hit Frank Carbone.”

“I’m not interested.”

“What? Why the hell not? Seventy-five’s a lot of money.”

“Sure it is. But I don’t need it.”

“Everybody needs money. Sooner or later.”

Well, he was right about that. I was down to only a few thousand stashed in the strongbox under the bedroom floor, and the cabin could use a new roof, a new hot water heater. I could use a bigger skiff, too, with a more reliable outboard. But money and the things it could buy weren’t important to me anymore. I could make do with what I had, make it last as many years as I had left.

“No sale, Ed.”

“Come on, don’t play hard to get. Seventy-five’s all I can afford. Think what that much green’ll buy you. Round the world cruise. Trips to Europe, South America, anywhere you want to go.”

“There’s no place I want to go,” I said. “Everything I want is right here. I haven’t been away from this wilderness in five years, not even for one day, and I don’t intend to leave again for any reason or any amount of money. I’m staying put for the rest of my life.”

“Bullshit, Griff. Can’t you see how desperate I am?”

“I see it, but the answer is still no.”

Malachi’s fat face was a splotchy red now — anger, fear, the whiskey. “Goddamn you, I done plenty for you in the old days. Plenty. You owe me.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t owe you or anybody else. I paid all my debts before I retired.”

“You better take this contract,” he said. He pointed an index finger at me, cocked his thumb over it. “You hear me? You know what’s good for you, you take it and you do it right and fast.”

“You threatening me, Ed? I don’t like to be threatened.”

“I don’t care what you like. You got to do this for me, you got to hit Frank, that’s all there is to it. If you don’t and I have to take a chance on somebody else—”

“Then that somebody hits me too. That what you’re saying?”

“Don’t make me do this the hard way, that’s what I’m saying. I like you, Griff, I always have, you know that. But you got to take this contract.”

I gave him a long look. His words had been hard, but his eyes were pleading and he was sweating into the collar of his expensive silk shirt. I said, “I guess I don’t have much choice.”

“Neither of us has. So you’ll take it?”

“Yeah. I’ll take it.”

“Good! Good man! I knew you’d come around.” Malachi’s big smile was back, crooked with relief. He used a monogrammed handkerchief to wipe off his sweat, then clapped me on the arm. “How about we have another drink,” he said, “seal the bargain?”

I said that was fine with me and went inside to refill our glasses. Before I took them out to the deck, I made a quick detour into the bedroom.

“What’s that you got there?” Malachi asked when I handed him his drink. He was looking at the wicker creel I’d slung over my shoulder.

“Creel. I’m going fishing after you leave. Let’s take our drinks down to the dock.”

“The dock? What for?”

“Nice by the water this time of day, good place to talk. There’re a few things I’ll need to know about Frank and his habits. Besides, there’s something I want to show off, something I pulled out of the lake.”

“Sure, okay, what the hell.”

We went down the back steps, across to the dock, out along it to where the skiff was tied at the end.

Malachi said, “So what’s this thing you want to show me?”

“Down there, in the skiff.”

When he turned and bent to look, I took the silenced.38 out of the creel and shot him twice point blank. He fell over into the skiff’s stern, just as I’d intended him to. Neat and clean like in the old days.

I climbed down and made sure he was dead. Then I stripped off his diamond ring and the Philippe Patek watch, put them in my pocket, and covered him up with the tarp. Later I’d run the body out to the middle of the lake and weight it and drop it overboard. I’d have to get rid of the Lincoln, too, but in rugged mountain country like this it wouldn’t be too much of a chore, even for an old guy like me.

Back in the cabin, I put in a long distance call that got picked up right away. “I changed my mind,” I said. “I’ll take you up on that contract offer after all. But it’ll cost you seventy-five.”

“For you I don’t argue,” Frank Carbone said. “Seventy-five it is. But how come you changed your mind? You told me before you’re never leaving that retirement place of yours.”

I didn’t have to, now. Didn’t have to worry about having enough money to last me the rest of my life, either. But all I said was, “Send somebody up with the cash in a couple of days. I’ll have proof the job’s done in exchange.”

“A couple of days? How you going to do it that quick?”

“That’s my business.”

“Sure, sure. Same old Griff. Trade secret, huh?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Trade secret.”

Meadowlands Spike

(with Barry N. Malzberg)

Listen to me. Please listen. Everything I’m about to tell you is the gospel truth.

I can’t live with this terrible secret any longer. It’s been thirty-five years, but I’ve never stopped thinking about what I did. Not for a single day. It’s all there, every detail burned into the walls of my mind. It could’ve happened yesterday, that’s how clear it is.

I see him alive, not just that night before the bullets tore into him, but the way he was when he had the power. Big man, bigger than life, bigger than death everybody thought, shouting words and slogans, promises and lies in his giant’s voice. King of Labor, King of the Long Labor Con. The job action. The sitdown strike. The secondary boycott. The sick-in. All of that and so much more until they threw him in the slammer for jury-tampering.

James Earl Hoffa, that’s right.

And then came the Nixon pardon that set him up for another run at the Union presidency. He should’ve known it wasn’t going to happen. No one was stupid enough other than Brother James Earl himself to think he’d get the deal past his successors, as hard-nosed a bunch as he was. Should’ve known they’d take him out by any means necessary.

I was the means.

I picked him up that night in my car. Just me and him, nobody else. He thought we were going to a secret hush-hush meeting with some bigwigs in Rutherford—

Sure, I know he was last seen in the Detroit area, but that was the day before.

They set him up by calling him back to Jersey on the QT. Nobody but Big Billy and me and a couple of others knew that the only meeting he was going to was with God or the Devil.

So anyhow, I drove him to the closed-up garage I owned. That’s where I emptied my Colt automatic into him, six shots grouped in his chest like it was a bull’s-eye target.

Then I put on overalls and gloves, dragged his body down into the grease pit, and dismembered it with a hatchet and a hacksaw. Awful job. Awful. But that was the way the big boys uptown wanted it done, don’t ask me why.

I can still see him lying there dead after I put those six rounds into his chest. Still see the pieces of him after the butchering was done, all the bloody pieces, all the King’s parts: legs, arms, torso, head — my last view of the Great Man before I stuffed the pieces into six separate plastic bags and put the bags into the trunk of my Buick.

Jimmy H. alive, Jimmy H. dead, Jimmy H. in pieces. Nothing left but chopped-up clay, the torso weighted with lead pellets, bouncing and thudding in the trunk as I raced along the Turnpike to the new Meadowlands stadium.

That’s what I said, the Meadowlands.

How did I get in? I had a key to the gate, that’s how. Back then I had connections, guys who’d do me a favor without asking questions and then keep their mouths shut. The refineries five miles to the south would have made quicker work of the remains, but butchering him was bad enough, I couldn’t burn him up too. The Meadowlands was better. Home base. Burial instead of cremation.

The State of New Jersey is where America comes to die. You don’t think so? Remember Paul Simon? The cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, each filled with people in search of America. I was one of them that night, in a Buick with a dismembered slab of America in my trunk and the rising yellow clouds from the refineries staining the night around me.

Oh, I remember, all right. Every detail after three and a half decades. Arriving at the deserted stadium site. Opening the Buick’s trunk in the moonlit dark to get the shovel. Digging six holes all across the south end zone—

Don’t laugh. It’s not funny. I’m telling you just what I did: dug six holes, six little graves for the six pieces of Jimmy H.

If New Jersey is where America comes to die, then the end zone was the perfect burial spot for Brother James Earl. Hell, it would have been perfect for the Wobblies, Mother Jones, the ’37 Ford strikers, hundreds of others like them. You see what 1 mean?

Once the bags were planted, the holes covered up and smoothed out, I stood leaning on the shovel, gasping in the cold, like an exhausted actor taking an involuntary crooked bow after a command performance. Thinking that the whole business hadn’t been so bad, that I’d gotten it all done pretty quick. A speed run from the killing to the cutting up to the driving to the burying. Thinking that was the end of it.

But it wasn’t. Not for me. I should have known it wouldn’t be because even then I could see the pieces spread out deep under the end zone turf, as if I had X-ray vision. The flesh that would decay in summer heat and winter ice. The scattered bones that would crumble to dust.

I didn’t stay there long. It was almost dawn and the almost finished stadium was glowing in the restless early light. Soon there’d be workers, traffic. I couldn’t afford to be seen in the area.

I drove the Buick straight back to the garage, backed it inside, and took care of the clean-up. Washed the blood down the grease pit drain with a hose. Used some solvent to remove a couple of stains in the trunk. Burned the overalls and gloves and my filthy clothes in the incinerator out back. When I was done, there wasn’t a trace left.

My house was half a mile from station. Jane was waiting for me when I got there.

Where were you all night? she said.

Never mind, I said. It’s none of your business.

You look terrible, she said. What have you been doing?

Nothing, I said. What else could I have said to her? Oh, nothing much, babe, just out murdering the boss, cutting up the boss, burying the boss.

I walked past her, heading toward the shower. This is a filthy place, I said then. It’s always filthy. Why don’t you ever clean it up?

She didn’t like that. She hadn’t liked anything about me for a long time. Even thirty-five years later I can feel her contempt, her suspicion. I guess I can’t blame her. Living jammed close together in that little house, not just her and me but the kid too, none of us getting along with each other, fearing Big Billy and the uptown boys, torn apart by secrets. She left me not long after that night, you know, just as soon as the kid got out of high school, and for all I know she’s dead now. The kid, too — I haven’t seen or heard from him in twenty years.

But I’m getting off track. After I had my shower and put on some of my better threads I drove into the city to report to Big Billy.

Disposing of Jimmy H. was the nasty part of the assignment, but facing Big Billy wasn’t much better. You remember him? Sure. He’s long gone now, most of the uptown boys are long gone, but back then he was a force. I did a lot of jobs for him before that night, but none like the one with Brother James Earl. None that was even close.

An hour later I was standing in Big Billy’s office, surrounded by concrete, his hard little eyes boring into mine.

I dumped him, I said. It’s finished business.

Don’t tell me dumped, Big Billy said. Don’t tell me finished business. Where did you put the fucker?

You really want to know? I said. You told me handle it any way I want, just make him disappear. So that’s what I did.

I got to know, he said, so I can tell them uptown.

Well, they didn’t want to know uptown, he’d told me that before. He wanted the information only for himself. But if you didn’t want to end up like Jimmy H., you did what Big Billy told you to. And you never lied to him.

So I told him the truth. I put him where they’ll never find him, I said. The Meadowlands Stadium. Under the south end zone.

I thought he’d say that was a perfect spot, I couldn’t have come up with a better one. I thought he’d say Good job, you’ll get a bonus.

Get the fuck out of here, he said, and don’t come around no more.

That was the last I ever saw of him. But that was all right with me. I didn’t want any part of his operation after that night, any more than he wanted me to be part of it. I’m still above ground, so he must not have talked to the boys uptown. Or if he did, they decided I’d done the job right even if Big Billy didn’t think so. Nothing ever happened to me because I was right: they never found Jimmy H.

It seems simple when you look at it that way. But it’s not simple. New Jersey is not a state of simplicity, the sinkhole town of Rutherford not a site of easy answers. New Jersey is a place of secrets, complex, rotten with tangled branching vines and rivers of ancient, heaving blood. Somebody said that to me once, I don’t remember who.

Well, anyhow, that’s about it. They tore the stadium down after thirty-some years and still they didn’t find what was left of Brother James, that’s how good a planting job I did. I don’t know how they could’ve missed finding the skull, some of the bones, but I guess they were in a hurry and careless with the demolition.

If it didn’t make me sick now, thinking about it, I’d have to laugh about the turf wars between the Giants and all those other teams right there in the shadow of that end zone, in the end zone itself, players after they scored a touchdown spiking the ball down hard right above where the boss’s head was buried —

What’s that you said?

No, I sure as hell didn’t make all of this up. You got no right to say that. I told you before, it’s the gospel truth. Give me a Bible and I’ll swear on it.

What do you mean, New Jersey is full of mooks like me, little guys with big ideas? I was never a little guy, I had connections, I knew secrets. That’s how I got the job to take out the boss. One of the biggest jobs ever, horrible as it was, and my disposal idea was just as big. Smart. I couldn’t have got away with it for thirty-five years if it wasn’t big and smart.

Yeah, I got away with it, but I couldn’t get away from it. You cops can’t imagine what a burden it’s been on me all that time — not the Meadowlands part, the killing and butchering part. How much of a toll it’s taken. That’s why I’m here now, that’s what I been trying to get across to you. I can’t live with it anymore. The nightmares, the awful bloody images—

What? No! This isn’t another false confession. It’s my one true confession. Don’t you see, don’t you get it? Those previous confessions of mine... substitutes, surrogates. I couldn’t make myself tell what I did to the boss, so I copped to other murders, other crimes instead.

I was trying to pay my debt with phony claims so I could finally have some peace. But now I know the only way to stop the haunting and the hurting is to reveal my secret, New Jersey’s secret, America’s secret—

What’re you doing, Lieutenant? Who’re you calling?

Oh Christ, no, you can’t send me back to the Pines. I don’t belong in that place. I’m not crazy any more than John the Baptist was crazy.

Please, you have to believe me! I shot Jimmy H., I dismembered his body, I buried the pieces in the end zone at the Meadowlands Stadium. I did, I did!

Boobytrap

tick...

He finished making the third bomb just before nine Sunday night.

Except, of course, that it wasn’t a bomb. No. It was a “destructive device.” That was the official legal definition in the California Penal Code. Chapter 2.5: Destructive Devices. Section 12303.3: Explosion of Destructive Device. He knew the section’s wording by heart. It had been drummed into his head at the trial; he’d read it over and over again in the prison library.

“Every person who possesses, explodes, ignites, or attempts to explode or ignite any destructive device or any explosive with intent to injure, intimidate, or terrify any person, or with intent to wrongfully injure or destroy any property, is guilty of a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of three, five, or seven years.”

Point of law, Mr. Sago.

Ah, but that hadn’t been enough for them. The destructive devices he’d made six years ago, the three destructive devices he’d manufactured here, were more than just destructive devices. They were also Chapter 3.2: Boobytrap. Specifically, Section 12355: Boobytraps — Felony.

“Any person who assembles, maintains, places, or causes to be placed a boobytrap device as described in subdivision (c) is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or five years.” Subdivision (c) stating in part “For purposes of this section, ‘boobytrap’ means any concealed or camouflaged device designed to cause great bodily injury when triggered by an action of any unsuspecting person coming across the device.”

Point of law, Mr. Sago.

Guilty as charged, Mr. Sago.

Five years of hell in San Quentin, Mr. Sago.

The rage was in his blood again, rising. He tamped it down by focusing on the bomb, destructive device, boobytrap on the table in front of him. And by thinking about Douglas Cotter lying dead on his lawn with his self-righteous, “You need psychiatric help, Mr. Sago,” four-eyed head blown off. Beautiful image, that, provided by this morning’s newscast. Device number one: mission accomplished. But Cotter was the one he hated least of the trio, a minor collaborator in the legal conspiracy. Much more satisfaction when device number two made a pincushion of Judge Norris Turnbull. And when this pretty little baby here, pretty little surprise package number three right here, tore the life out of Patrick Dixon... why, then he would really have cause for rejoicing.

Vengeance is mine, saith Mr. Sago.

Carefully, he rearranged his tools in the kit he’d bought in San Francisco. Put the rest of his materials away in their various containers and then wiped his hands on a rag. When he stood and felt the creak of his stiffened muscles, he realized for the first time how tired he was. And how hungry. He hadn’t eaten since noon. Better put something in his stomach before he went to bed; he’d sleep better. Three A.M. was only a few hours off, and there wouldn’t be time for even a quick breakfast. Drop the judge’s present off first, then drive all the way to Mountain Lake — two and a half hours, at least — and find a proper place to leave Dixon’s package. Very tight schedule.

He went into the cramped kitchen. The pilot light on the stove had gone out; he relit it, opened a can of Dinty Moore beef stew and emptied it into a saucepan, put the pan on to heat. Miserable place, this. “Charming one-bedroom seaside cottage, completely furnished,” the ad in the paper had read. Drafty Half Moon Bay shack with bargain-basement furnishings, no central heating, a propane stove that didn’t work right, and a toilet that wouldn’t stop running no matter what you did to the handle or the float arm or the flush valve. Four hundred dollars rent, in advance, even though he would be here less than two weeks. Criminal. Even so, it was better than the studio apartment near the beach in San Francisco — and palatial compared to his prison cell. Away from that hellhole two months now, and still the nightmares kept coming — the worst one again last night, the one where he was still trapped in the cell, crouching in a corner, the giant rats in guards’ and cons’ uniforms slavering all around him.

Cottage did have plenty of privacy, at least. Nearest neighbor was three hundred yards up the beach. And most important, it was even closer to the Pacific than the city apartment; the sound of the surf was with him every minute he spent here. He’d needed so badly to be close to the ocean when they let him out. Still did. Freedom. All that bright blue freedom after five years of torment.

The stew was ready. He poured it into a bowl, opened a packet of saltine crackers, and sat down to appease his hunger.

He thought about Kathryn while he ate. Did she feel warm and secure tonight, snuggled up to that bastard Culligan? Did she think he wouldn’t find out she’d married Lover Boy and moved to his old hometown in Indiana and had the brat she’d always wanted? Or was she afraid, huddled sleepless in the dark, knowing he’d come for her sooner or later? He hoped she was afraid. Aware that he was out on parole, knowing he’d come, and terrified.

All her fault, the bitch. Ruined everything, the good life they’d had together — blew it all up as surely as if she’d set off a destructive device of her own. “Intent to wrongfully injure.” She was the one who was guilty of that, not him. She was the one who should have suffered.

J’accuse, Mrs. Sago.

Guilty as charged, Mrs. Sago.

The sentence is death, Mrs. Sago.

The fourth boobytrap, the one he would begin making tomorrow afternoon, the biggest and best and sweetest of them all, was for Kathryn — and Lover Boy and the brat, too — back there in Lawler Bluffs, Indiana.

tick... tick...

Mountain Lake lay nestled in a deep hollow among pine-and fir-crowded Sierra foothills, glittering like a strip of polished silver under the late-morning sun. It made Patrick Dixon smile as it always did when he first glimpsed it from the crest of Deer Hill. And, as always, memories flooded his mind. The day his father had let him take the outboard’s tiller for the first time. The day he’d swum the length of the lake and back on a dare from one of the other summer kids and nearly drowned from exhaustion. The night he’d lost his virginity with Alice Fenner in the woods along the east shore. Sixteen, then... no, still fifteen, three weeks shy of his sixteenth birthday. Lord, what a young stud he’d been that night. Four times, one right after the other — bam, bam, bam, bam. Twenty-five years ago already. Didn’t seem half that long. Now, though, the tired old stallion was lucky if he could go the distance once a week.

“... looks like their car down there.”

“What?” He glanced over at Marian beside him. “Sorry, I was woolgathering.”

“I said I think the Andersons are here. Car down there looks like theirs.”

“Good.” He liked the Andersons. Half of the ten cottages that ringed the lake were now owned by newcomers who’d bought within the past five years, and of all of them, the Andersons were the friendliest and most compatible.

“I’ll go over after we’re settled and invite them for dinner and bridge one night.”

“Dinner, anyway.” He didn’t like bridge.

In the backseat, Chuck had been leaning out the window for a better view. He drew his head back in and said, “Bet there’s some big babies in those reeds at Rocky Point this year. Bass, not crummy channel cats.”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

“When? Tonight?”

“Or first thing in the morning.”

“Bass bite better at dusk, Dad, you know that.”

Twelve years old and a fishing junkie. It was all Chuck talked about. Didn’t seem to be a passing fad, either; his room had been cluttered with angling books and paraphernalia for two years now. Hemingway in training; he was already making plans to go down to Florida when he turned eighteen, to troll for sailfish and marlin.

Dixon thought again, as he often did, how lucky he and Marian were. Their son could have turned out like so many other kids these days, even ones from good homes — that other kind of junkie he saw nearly every day at the Hall of Justice and City Hall, the ones the DA’s office sometimes had to prosecute as adults...

Uh-uh, he told himself, none of that. You’re on vacation. Fourteen days of sorely needed R&R, thanks to Nils Ostergaard’s insistence that he take his first two-week block a month early. No work, no phone at the cabin to yank him back into the urban jungle he occupied for forty-some weeks a year. Felons and felonies — and tragedies like the bomb killing of poor Doug Cotter yesterday morning — were part of his life in San Francisco. Up here, they were verboten.

At the bottom of the hill, he turned onto the narrow blacktop that skirted the lake’s rim. The road dipped up and down, cutting sharp around trees and outcrops: Most of the cottages were set below it, down near the water’s edge. Theirs was the third to the north of the intersection, half hidden among moss-hung lodgepole pine and Douglas fir. He smiled again when he saw the wooden arrow marker with the name “Dixon” burned into the wood. His father had nailed that sign to the tree nearly forty years ago, the day he’d finished building the cabin, and it had remained there ever since — a symbol of security and stability. If he had his way, it would continue to be nailed there at least throughout Chuck’s lifetime. Father to son, father to son.

He swung the station wagon onto the two-car parking platform opposite the marker. The cabin and its lakeside deck were mostly visible from the platform: old redwood boards, shingles, and shakes and dark green shutters. Built to last with simple materials. Below the deck, the ground sloped to the boathouse and stubby dock. Trees and other vegetation grew densely on both sides, almost to the waterline, to provide additional privacy.

Chuck bounced out of the car and began to unload his fishing gear from among the clutter in back. Tucked away in the storage shed behind the cabin were poles and reels and tackle that had belonged to Dixon’s father, more than enough equipment for all three of them. But Chuck preferred his own new Daiwa rod and reel. He’d even learned to tie flies and had brought a case of his creations along to try out on the bass population. He was tired of yanking in bullheads and catfish, he said; he’d designed his flies to attract only bass. Mr. Optimism.

Marian said, “I wish I had half his energy.”

“Me, too. We’ll build up fresh reserves after a few days.”

“Sure, but then you’ll want to work them right off.”

He waggled an eyebrow at her “Good old mountain air does wonders for the libido.”

“Doesn’t it, though.”

Dixon went down and unlocked the cabin and took a turn through each of its five rooms, as he always did first thing to make sure everything was in order. Okay. No one had had any real problems with break-ins or vandalism up here — one of the cottages was owned by Bert Unger, a retired Sacramento sheriff’s deputy, and his wife who lived at the lake year-round and kept a sharp eye on things — but nowadays you were wise not to take anything for granted.

The day was hot, and several trips up and down the platform stairs had them all sweating when they were done. In the kitchen, Chuck said, “I’m for a swim. How about you, Mom?”

She sneezed. “Not right now. This place needs airing out before I do anything else.”

“Dad?”

“Pretty soon. You go ahead.” Marian sneezed again. Dixon said to her, “Must be bad this year, whatever you’re allergic to. Usually you don’t start sneezing and snuffling until we’ve been here a few hours.”

“I wish I knew what it was. I’d rip every bit of it out of the ground with my bare hands.”

“Better settle for taking an allergy pill.”

“Thank you for your advice and sympathy, Doctor Dixon.”

He grinned and helped himself to a cold beer from the ice chest they’d brought. He carried it out onto the deck, stood admiring the lake’s silver-blue placidity. It was a mile and a half long, a third of a mile wide toward the middle, and much narrower at the ends, tightly hemmed by trees and by bare-rock scarps along the south shore, All of the land was privately owned, and so far the newcomers had kept the faith and brought in none of the trappings of modern society to spoil its natural beauty. Peace and privacy were what the people who came here were after — people like Marian and him, who had stressful city jobs. Mountain Lake offered plenty of both qualities. And you really did need to love bucolic isolation, because it was nearly ten miles by switchbacked mountain road to the village of Two Corners and the nearest dispenser of beer, bread, and toothpaste.

Lean and wiry in his trunks, long hair flying, Chuck came racing out of the cabin and down to the boathouse. He had Marian’s symmetrical features, her intense blue eyes, her ash-blond hair — and a good thing, too, that her genes had dominated. Nobody had ever accused Pat Dixon of being a handsome hunk; “craggy” was about the most complimentary word that had been used to describe his looks—

“Dad! Hey, Dad!”

Dixon shaded his eyes. Chuck was at the side door to the boathouse, excitedly waving an arm.

“What’s the matter, sport?”

“Somebody’s been in the boathouse.”

Under his breath, Dixon said, “Damn!” and went to join his son. Sure enough, the padlock was gone from the hasp, and the boathouse door stood open a crack. Chuck had hold of the handle and was tugging on it, but the bottom edge seemed to be stuck.

“Crap,” he said disgustedly. “Who do you figure it was? Homeless people?”

“Way up here? Not likely.”

“I’m gonna be pissed if they stole our boat.”

Dixon took the handle, gave a hard yank. The second time he did it, the bottom popped free, and the door wobbled open. He leaned inside. There were chinks between warped wallboards; in-streaming sunlight let him see the aluminum skiff upside down on the sawhorses, where they’d laid it at the end of last summer. Its oars were on the deck beside it. The Evinrude outboard had been locked away in the storage shed.

“Whew, still there,” Chuck said. “Looks like everything else is, too. So how come they busted in?”

“Place to sleep, maybe.” But it didn’t look as though anyone had been sleeping inside. Or had used the boathouse for any other purpose.

“You think they got into the storeroom, too?”

“We’ll soon find out.”

The shed was attached to the back wall of the cabin, and much more solidly constructed than the boathouse. The padlock was missing from the hasp there, too. Tight-mouthed, Dixon opened the door. He had put fuses in the switchbox just after their arrival; he pulled the cord to light the overhead bulb.

“Hey,” Chuck said, “this is weird.”

Weird was the word for it. Nothing seemed to be missing from the shed, either. The Evinrude outboard, their fishing equipment, shovels, rakes, an extra oar for the skiff, miscellaneous items and cleaning supplies — all in place on shelves and the rough wood floor. No sign of disturbance. No sign that anyone had even been inside.

“Maybe it’s the padlocks,” Chuck said.

“What?”

“What they were after. You know, a gang of padlock thieves.”

Dixon didn’t smile. Both locks had been the heavy-duty variety, with thick staples — the kind that were advertised on TV as impregnable. They couldn’t be picked or shot open, maybe, but the staples were certainly vulnerable to hacksawing. You’d need the right kind of blade, though, and it would take some time even then. Why go through all the trouble, if you weren’t going to steal anything? There didn’t seem to be any sense in it.

Gang of padlock thieves. It was as good an explanation as any.

Dixon turned off the light, shut the door, and walked around to the front, Chuck at his heels. Marian was doing cleanup work in the kitchen. She turned to glance at him with allergy-reddened eyes and then said immediately, “What’s the matter? You look odd.”

He told her, with embellishments from Chuck. “But that’s crazy,” she said. “Kids, you think, playing some kind of game?”

“I don’t know what to think. I’m going to have another look around in here.”

He found nothing amiss this time, either. No objects gone, no indication that anyone but the three of them had been inside.

“Weird,” Chuck said again. “Weird, man.”

Marian said, “Well, it’s not anything we should worry about. I don’t see how it could be.”

“Neither do I,” Dixon said.

But it did worry him, a little. City-bred paranoia, maybe; but he thought he’d talk to the Andersons and the Ungers about it, just to be on the safe side.

tick... tick... tick...

Two down, four to go.

The news bulletin came over the car radio as he was driving back from Mountain Lake. Explosion in the garage of Judge Norris Turnbull’s Sea Cliff home at seven-forty this morning. Turnbull dead on arrival at Mt. Zion Hospital. San Francisco police refuse to speculate on a possible motive, or link between this bombing incident and the one yesterday morning that claimed the life of attorney Douglas Cotter.

He laughed when he heard the last part. And when he pictured Turnbull lying broken and bloody with his wrinkled old face full of metal barbs like porcupine quills, he laughed even harder. Always hunching forward at the trial — a big vulture in his black robes. Always peering down through his glasses, too, stern-faced, eyes like hot stones, as if he thought he was God on the judgment seat. Hunched and peered once too often, didn’t you, judge? Passed judgment once too often, didn’t you?

I sentence you to five years in the state prison on each count, Mr. Sago.

I sentence you straight to hell, judge Turnbull.

He laughed so hard, tears rolled down his cheeks.

tick... tick... tick... tick...

“The Andersons haven’t had any trouble on their property,” Dixon said “No break-ins or missing items, no acts of vandalism. Tom hasn’t seen anyone around who doesn’t belong at the lake. But then, they’ve only been up from Stockton four days.”

Marian sneezed, said, “Damn allergies,” irritably, and blew her nose. Then she said, “Are you sure you’re not worried about those missing padlocks?”

“It’s the inexplicability that bothers me.”

“Well, there has to be some logical explanation. Why don’t you go see what Bert Unger has to say about it?”

“I will, after lunch. But I doubt he knows anything. Tom went fishing with him yesterday, and Bert didn’t say a word about any trouble.”

Marian blew her nose again and then went to the sink to wash her hands. Through the kitchen window, Dixon could see Chuck with his snorkeling mask on, swimming back and forth beyond the end of the dock.

“Pat, do you know where we put the bread board?”

“Bread board? Not where it always is?”

“No. I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Did you look in the pantry?”

“What would it be doing in the pantry?”

“I don’t know — having sex with the toaster, maybe?”

“Ha ha. Why don’t you take a look? My eyes are so teary, I might’ve missed it”

The pantry was a tiny alcove about as large as the storage shed. Dixon put on the light and wedged himself inside. And found the bread board in thirty seconds — on a top shelf, half hidden in the shadow of a slanted ceiling beam. Now what had possessed one of them to put it way up there? He caught hold of the paddle-shaped handle, started to pull it down.

Something that had been on top of the board came flying down at him.

His reflexes were good; he twisted and managed to jerk his head out of the path of the falling object, though in the process he cracked his elbow against the wall. The object clattered against another shelf, dropped at his feet. Muttering, he bent to pick it up with his free hand.

“Pat? What was that noise?”

“Damn can of pork and beans. It nearly brained me.”

“Be more careful, will you?”

“Wasn’t my fault.” He set the can down so he could rub his elbow. “Somebody put the board on the top shelf and the can on top of the board.”

“Well, I don’t think it was me, and Chuck’s not tall enough. Guess who that leaves?”

“Okay, so maybe it was my fault. In a hurry or distracted at the time.”

“At least you found it,” Marian said when he brought the bread board out to her. Then she sneezed again, explosively, and almost dropped it. “Damn these allergies!”

“That medicine of yours ought to be working by now. Maybe you’d better take another pill.”

“I would, except that I don’t have any more.”

“I thought you packed an entire bottle.”

“So did I. But I had two, one full and one almost empty. I put the wrong one in my case.”

“Uh-huh. The old in-a-hurry-or-distracted excuse.”

“I’ll need to take a couple tonight, or I won’t sleep.”

“I know. And then I won’t, either. I’ll drive down to Two Corners after lunch, before I see Bert Unger.”

“Do you mind? I’d go myself, but the way I keep snuffling and sneezing...”

He kissed her neck. “I don’t mind,” he said.

tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...

Sago’s good humor lasted most of the way back to Half Moon Bay. Would have lasted the entire distance if it hadn’t been for the car overheating as he rode up through Altamont Pass. He had to swing off the freeway in Livermore and find a service station and wait around until a mechanic fixed the problem with the cooling system.

Fifteen-year-old piece of crap, that car. But it was all he’d been able to afford when he was released from San Quentin. A wonder he’d had any money left after his lawyer and Kathryn and her lawyer and all the creditors got done slicing up his assets. A few thousand dollars, that was all they’d left him — and at that he’d had to hide it away in cash in a safety deposit box. On top of the world one day, successful business, financial security, nice home, good clothes, a Porsche to drive, what he’d thought was a rock-solid marriage — and then Kathryn had brought it all crashing down around his ears. Bitch! Having an affair with that bastard Culligan, a lousy big-eared pharmacist, and then telling him it was all his fault because she was starved for genuine love and affection. Calling the cops and filing an assault charge when he smacked her. Finally walking out on him, straight into Lover Boy’s scrawny arms. He’d had a right to do what he’d done in retaliation. He’d had a right.

Not according to Cotter and Turnbull and Dixon, though. They’d picked up here Kathryn left off, persecuting him, all but destroying what little of him was left. Well, now they were the ones who were being destroyed. And with perfect justice, too. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and they’d sown the seeds of their own destruction.

Maybe he’d make a few others pay, too, when he was done with Kathryn. Maybe he’d come back here and send a present to that lawyer of hers, what was his name? Benedict? Snotty, self-righteous prick. And the tough cop, Michaels, who’d arrested him after the destructive device blew the ass end off of Lover Boy’s house; treated him like dirt. And Arthur Whittington, his old buddy the banker, who wouldn’t give him even a small loan so he could pry himself out of debt; he’d made the son of a bitch thousands in mutual funds investments, and that was the thanks he got. They deserved to suffer, too, by God. So did a couple of other business associates and fair-weather friends who’d deserted him before and after the trial, left him to endure five years of torment alone. Make little presents for all of them.

He kept hoping there’d be another news bulletin before he reached the charming furnished seaside shack in Half Moon Bay, but there wasn’t. Not yet, but soon. Inside the cottage, with the door locked, he switched on the portable radio on his worktable and tuned it to an all-news station. He didn’t want to miss the announcement when it finally came.

Surprise, Mr. Dixon.

Surprise!

tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...

The owner of Two Corners Grocery, a talkative old man named Finley, was watching television behind the counter. Another victim of the satellite dish, Dixon thought wryly. He paid no attention to the flickering images and droning voices as he was fetching Marian’s allergy medicine; but when he gave it to Finley to ring up, a familiar name registered and turned his head toward the screen. And he found himself staring at an enlarged photograph of Judge Norris Turnbull.

“Terrible thing, isn’t it?” Finley said.

“What is? What happened?”

“Mean you don’t know? Special news reports all day.”

He shook his head. It was a family rule that they left the car radio off on long drives, and even Chuck’s boom box had been silent so far.

“Well, that judge was killed this morning,” Finley said. “Somebody blew him up with a bomb.”

Dixon grimaced. Blew him up... Douglas Cotter yesterday, and now Judge Turnbull... good God! After a few seconds, shock gave way to an impotent anger. He hadn’t seen much of Cotter since Doug left the DA’s office four years ago to open his own practice, but they’d worked together for two years and had been friendly enough; and Turnbull was a man he’d respected and admired. It seemed unthinkable that either of them, of all the attorneys and jurists in the city, would become the target of some crazy bomber. Unthinkable and outrageous.

The news report was ending; what few details he was able to pick up from the newscaster’s closing remarks were sketchy. Finley tried to tell him about it, but he had no interest in a third-hand rehash. He cut the old man short and hurried out to where a public phone box was affixed to the grocery’s front wall. He used his long-distance credit card to put in a call to Nils Ostergaard’s private line. The DA was in; he answered immediately.

“Nils, I just heard about Judge Turnbull. Two in two days — what the hell’s going on?”

“No idea yet, Pat.” Ostergaard sounded tense and harried. “There has to be a connection; nobody buys coincidence. But aside from the fact that both men were in the legal profession, the link isn’t there yet.”

“No notes or calls from the bomber?”

“Not a word.”

“Same kind of device in both cases?”

“No. Both were set as boobytraps, but the one that killed Cotter was a simple type — black powder and metal frag packed into a lawn sprinkler and initiated by a tripwire hidden in the grass. The one that killed Norris... nasty. I hope I never hear of a nastier one.”

“Nasty how?”

“As near as the bomb techs could tell, the device was a small box of some kind left on the front seat of the judge’s car. Inside his garage; bomber gained access through a side window. When Norris opened the box to look inside, it blew fifty or sixty thin, sharpened steel rods straight up into his face.”

“Jesus,” Dixon said.

“Yeah. It’s obvious we’re dealing with the worst kind of psycho here — intelligent enough to construct a more or less sophisticated explosive device, crazy enough to believe he’s got a good reason for ripping a man’s head apart with sharpened steel rods.”

“Who’s in charge of the investigation? Dave Maccerone?”

“Dave, and Charley Seltzer of the bomb squad. Ed Bozeman’s working with them from our end. A-priority, down the line.”

“If Ed’s working with the PD, that cuts you thin. Maybe I’d better come in.”

“No, no,” Ostergaard said “We’re okay. For now, anyway. You’ve earned your vacation, Pat. I’ll yell if I need you. Where’re you calling from?”

“Grocery in Two Corners, a village about ten miles from Mountain Lake. But there’s a closer phone. Neighbors of ours, the Ungers, have one.”

“Give me the number. I’ll call if—” Ostergaard broke off, and Dixon could hear the mutter of voices in the background. Then, “Pat, hold on a minute, will you? Dave Maccerone just came in.”

“Right.”

Ostergaard put him on hold. The phone box was in a slant of direct sunlight, and Dixon was sweating; he wiped his face with his handkerchief, dried his hands. Thinking: why the two different types of bombs? The simple explanation was that the perp had hated Judge Turnbull even more than Doug Cotter, but that still didn’t explain the use of sharpened steel rods. Some significance in those rods? He couldn’t imagine what it might be, if so —

Click on the line, and Ostergaard said, “Pat?”

“Still here.”

“The lieutenant wants to talk to you.” There was a different inflection in the DA’s voice, a new tension that made Dixon grip the receiver more tightly. “Just a second... here he is.”

“Yo, Pat,” Maccerone’s heavy voice said. “Good thing you called in; timing’s right all around, for a change. Listen, I think we’ve got a handle on the bombings.”

“You know who’s responsible?”

“Pretty sure we’ve ID’d him. You know how each of these serial bombers has his own signature — the way he puts his device together, the kinds of connections he makes, the types of powder, cord, solder, circuitry he uses. Each signature’s different, and it seldom varies. Well, the lab techs finished going over the postblast evidence from this morning, and the signature’s not only the same as on the Cotter case but as on one other about six years ago. Computer match probability is ninety-five percent.”

“Whose signature?”

“Man named Leonard Sago. Name ring any bells?”

“Sago, Sago... vaguely familiar. Should I know him?”

“Financial consultant here in the city,” Maccerone said. “Ex-Marine with explosives training. Went over the edge when he found out his wife was having an affair. Put a boobytrap bomb in the trunk of the boyfriend’s car, hooked to the inside trunk release; that one didn’t go off because of a bad solder joint. A second bomb under the back porch of the guy’s house did go off — cut him up some with flying glass and debris. Sago claimed he didn’t intend bodily harm, the bombs were just messages to leave his wife alone. Insufficient evidence to nail him on attempted homicide, but enough to convict on two other felony counts: explosion of a destructive device and setting boobytraps. Five years on each count. Coming back to you now?”

Dixon had gone rigid. “Yes.”

“Well, Sago served a total of five years and was paroled two months ago. I just talked to his PO. Sago seemed okay at first, rehabilitated, but then he started to show signs of continued hostility toward his ex-wife and the people who put him in prison. He disappeared last week. The PO violated him right away, but he still hasn’t turned up.”

Dixon said thinly, “Doug Cotter was the assistant prosecutor on the case. Norris Turnbull was on the bench.”

“Afraid so, Pat.”

“And I was the chief prosecutor. Sago struck me as arrogant and unrepentant, and still dangerous, and I went after him hard. Now he’s after me, right? Cotter, Turnbull, and now me.”

“Looks that way,” Maccerone said. But it’s not as bad as it could be, believe me. If he did set a trap for you, it’s probably at your house here. I’ve already sent the bomb squad out; they’ll spot it if it’s there.”

“Suppose it isn’t. Suppose he found out I was going on vacation. He could have — I didn’t make any secret of the fact. He could’ve found out about my summer place, too—”

“Take it easy, counselor. You’re not in any immediate danger; if Sago was that smart, you wouldn’t be talking to me right now. You’re in a place called Two Corners, Nils says. Okay. Go back to your cabin, collect your family, drive to the nearest motel. If the bomb squad strikes out at your house here, I’ll call the Sacramento PD and have them send up a crew to sweep the cabin—”

The padlocks! Sweet Jesus, the missing padlocks!

Dixon threw the phone down and ran for the station wagon.

tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...

Kathryn’s surprise was really going to be something.

As tired as he was from all the driving, he was ready and eager to start assembling it. The carton he’d gotten from the supermarket Dumpster, a little larger than the one he’d used for the judge’s package, was on the floor next to the table, along with the bag of bubble wrap for packing. And on the table, all neatly arranged, were the tools and other materials he would need. Pliers, screwdrivers, cold chisel. Soldering gun and spool of wire solder. Aluminum canister. Microswitch. Six-volt battery. Fresh tin of smokeless black powder, the last of the three he’d bought at the gun shop in Pacifica (said he was a duck hunter and loaded his own shotgun shells). C-4 plastic explosive, the kind they used in Nam, would have been better; more pucker power and a hotter blast, just right for sending Kathryn on her way to hell. But you needed connections to get C-4, and his military ties were a thing of the past. Along with just about everything else that had mattered in his life.

The other item on the table was one of two pieces de resistence — a glass jar, full to the brim. The second was spoiling on a shelf on the rear porch, where he didn’t have to smell it. He’d put that one in the package after he got to Lawler Bluffs, Indiana, just before he was ready to spring the surprise.

He’d given a lot of thought to what to add to Kathryn’s present. Something just for her; the pharmacist and their brat were incidental. The devices for Cotter and Turnbull and Dixon had been easy to arrange, but Kathryn was a different story. Had to be just right. He’d discarded half a hundred possibilities before he made his selections, and as soon as he thought of each, he knew it was perfect.

She’d taken everything from him; she’d gotten all the marbles. Okay, then, he’d give her two hundred more than she bargained for — two hundred cheap glass marbles from a toy store in Half Moon Bay, the kind that would fly apart in a million fragments from the force of the blast.

What else do you give an unfaithful bitch for her final sendoff? Why, a bagful of rancid bones, of course. Soup bones that would splinter and gouge and tear the same as the marbles.

Too bad he couldn’t tell her beforehand what she was getting. Too bad she’d never know. Always accusing him of not having a sense of humor. Well, this proved different, didn’t it? He had a terrific sense of humor, much better than hers.

Kathryn would get a bang out of her present, all right.

And then he’d have the last laugh.

tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...

Dixon drove too fast, twenty and twenty-five miles an hour faster than was safe on the twisty mountain road; braking hard on the curves, recklessly passing the two other cars he rushed up behind. And he bad to fight the urge to increase his speed even more. Any faster, and he was liable to wrap the station wagon around a tree, send it hurtling off the road into one of the canyons, and what good would he be to Marian and Chuck then?

What if he was already too late —

No. Don’t think it, it isn’t so.

Where in God’s name had Sago hidden the bomb? Boathouse or storage shed, one or the other — had to be. Both padlocks missing, he must’ve been looking for something in one that wasn’t there, and so he’d gone to the other. But what? Some kind of container for the boobytrap? And what would initiate it? Tripwire, triggering mechanism attached to a box lid, something else entirely? The can of pork and beans that had come flying off the shelf when he’d pulled on the bread board... a bomb could be initiated that way, too. Usually bomb type and packaging and initiating mechanisms followed a pattern, part of the bomber’s signature, but Sago had varied the first two, and that made the third problematical.

Marian, Chuck stay away from the boathouse, the storage shed.

Don’t be hurt — please don’t be hurt.

Four more miles to go. He felt cold and feverish at the same time, a prickling on his skin as though it had sprouted stubble, his insides so knotted up that even his bones seemed tight. A gritty sweat kept stinging his eyes; he blinked and rubbed constantly to clear his vision.

Leonard Sago. He remembered him now, all too well. Classic profile of a bomber: intelligent but skewed and illogical in his thought processes; sociopathic tendencies; and a paramilitary attitude toward life. Owned guns, including a couple of semi-automatic weapons; even had a subscription to Soldier of Fortune. Workaholic, too, to the point of exhaustion. Add all of that together, and you had a ticking bomb in human form. His wife’s infidelity had been the first trigger. But the boobytraps aimed at her lover were only a partial release; Sago had been capable of more and greater violence, a fact made evident by his attitude and behavior. They could have plea-bargained if he’d been willing to accept psychiatric help, but Sago refused to admit he had a problem, wouldn’t even let his attorney plead temporary insanity. No choice but to go after him hard, put him away where he couldn’t harm his wife or her boyfriend or an innocent bystander. Except that the prison time had been counterproductive, had made him worse instead of better. True psychopath now. Sharpened steel rods... good God! His hatred must be an inferno, all-consuming, for him to contrive a horror like that.

What horror did he contrive for me?

No, don’t even...

Wait, those other bombs...

Tripwire, sharpened rods. Glimmer of a connection, and of a connection to something else, but I can’t quite... Think, think!

Gone.

Dammit, how much farther? Two miles.

Please don’t be hurt.

Please.

tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...

Still no report on the radio about Dixon.

Didn’t mean anything; he just hadn’t opened his present yet. Or if he had, way up there in the Sierra foothills, the media hadn’t had time to get wind of it. Pretty soon now, either way. Pretty soon. Nothing to worry about.

The chief prosecutor wouldn’t get off the hook.

Ha! No, he sure wouldn’t. Chuckling, Sago paused in his work on Kathryn’s package to visualize what Dixon would look like after the blast. So much quieter, so much more bloody fetching than he had been in the courtroom. Strutting around during the trial like a rooster in a barnyard. Demanding that the jury convict Mr. Sago, demanding that Mr. Sago be given the maximum penalties as prescribed by law.

Well, Mr. Dixon, now I’m the one doing the demanding. I demand that you receive the maximum penalty for your crimes, as prescribed by Leonard Sago.

I demand that you be blown up, torn up, and spend eternity strutting your stuff in the Pit.

tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...

They were all right, still all right.

No explosion, no fire, everything lakeside normal and quiet in the heat-drowsy afternoon.

He saw that much from the top of Deer Hill, with a thrust of relief so acute it blew his breath out in a grunting sigh. But the relief lasted for only a few seconds. He still had to get down there, round up Marian and Chuck... they were still in harm’s way.

He barreled the station wagon through the hill’s snake turns, skidded onto the lake road. Their parking platform appeared ahead; he could just make out the cabin’s roof through the trees. He braked hard as he came up on the platform, cut the wheel too sharply, and almost lost control as the wagon bumped off the road onto the pine-needled boards; the front bumper cracked against the low back wall. He shut down the engine, tried to run as soon as he was out. But he’d been driving under such tension that the muscles in his legs and upper body were constricted. His right knee cramped as he came around behind the wagon toward the stairs. He would have fallen if the railing hadn’t been there to catch his outthrust hands.

He saw Chuck in his first quick scan below. The boy was standing in the open door to the boathouse, looking up at him, held there by the unexpected tire and engine noise and the bumper hitting the wall. When he recognized his father, he waved and turned to go inside.

“Chuck! No!”

Another wave, and he vanished.

Dixon flung himself down the stairs, hobbling until he reached solid ground, then running with speed as the cramped leg muscle unknotted. Chuck was doing something inside the boathouse: shifting sounds of metal on wood. The skiff — moving the skiff. The door seemed to rush at Dixon as if it and not he were being propelled; he caught its edge, levered his body around it and inside, squinting to see in the dim light.

“Chuck, leave it alone!”

The boy swung toward him, startled. The sudden movement caused him to jerk the painter rope trailing from his hand to the skiff’s bowring; and that caused the skiff, already half off the sawhorses, to tilt and slide the rest of the way. Dixon lunged for it, but Chuck was in the way, he couldn’t reach it in time. He cringed, twisting to shield his son, as the skiff hit the decking with a booming metallic clatter—

That was all, just the clatter. And the after-sounds of the skiff bouncing off the deck boards, splashing upright into the narrow channel that bisected the enclosure.

“Jeez, Dad, you scared the crap out of me. What—?”

“Where’s your mother?”

“Mom? Why? Dad, you look—”

“Answer me, Chuck, where is she?”

“She said she was gonna go get the fishing stuff, yours and hers. We were gonna go out early to Rocky Point—”

The storage shed.

“Stay here, you hear me? Stay here!”

He ran out into the blazing sunlight. At first, after the gloom of the boathouse, the glare half blinded him, he faltered, swiping at his eyes. The cabin swam into focus, but from this angle he couldn’t see the shed. And there was no sign of Marian.

Running again, he shouted her name.

And she appeared, walking around the lower corner of the cabin.

He slowed, another faltering step. Surge of relief but in the next second, when he realized what she was carrying, it died under a new slice of panic. Two bamboo fishing rods in her left hand, his father’s battered old tackle box in her right. That tackle box... sinkers and flies and hooks—

Hooks.

He yelled at her, “Stop! Wait there! Don’t move!” and plunged ahead.

She froze in surprise, the tackle box hanging so heavy from her hand that she listed slightly to that side.

“Don’t let go of the box!”

It was as if he ran the last few steps in slow-motion, the mired, slogging slow-motion of a dream. The sensation was the opposite when he reached her, reached out to clutch at the box: everything then seemed to happen at an accelerated speed. He worked the box free of her grasp, warning himself not to wrench it, it was liable to explode if it were shaken or jarred or dropped. Marian didn’t struggle, but he heard her say in a thin, frightened voice, “What’s gotten into you? Have you gone crazy?” Then he was backing away, lowering the box gently to the ground. His hands tingled when he let go of it, as if its lethal contents had imparted a subtle radioactivity to his flesh.

He straightened, staring down at it. Ordinary-looking tackle box. But inside... God, inside...

He turned as Chuck, disobedient, came racing up. Dixon caught hold of his arm, of Marian’s arm, and herded both away from there, pulling and prodding until they were all the way up onto the parking platform. Only then did he release them. And when he did, the act seemed to release the tension in him as well, leaving him weak-kneed and sagging against the station wagon’s fender.

“Pat, for heaven’s sake, what—?”

“The tackle box.” He had to draw several deep breaths before he could go on. “It’s boobytrapped. There’s a bomb inside.”

Chuck said, “A bomb!” Marian blanched, staring at him goggle-eyed.

“And hooks,” he said. “Fish hooks, probably, I don’t know, but a lot of them. Attached to lines or wires or both.”

“What’re you talking about?”

Penal Code, he thought. Chapter 3.2, Section 12355, subdivision (c): “Boobytraps may include, but are not limited to, explosive devices attached to tripwires or other triggering mechanisms, sharpened stakes, and lines or wire with hooks attached.”

Stakes, not rods. Tripwire, sharpened stakes, and lines or wire with hooks attached.

We convicted Sago on that statute. He twisted it to suit his own perverted brand of justice, condemned us with the letter of the law.

Dixon pushed himself off the fender. “It’s a hell of a story,” he said to Marian. “Literally. I’ll explain on the way to the Ungers’.” And explain by phone to Dave Maccerone and Nils Ostergaard once they got there.

tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...

He finished making the bomb, destructive device, booby-trap, big-bang present for Kathryn a few minutes past eight.

Nice job, Mr. Sago.

Why, thank you very much, Mr. Sago.

He sat back, smiling, pleased. Even the lack of news on the radio about Dixon failed to dampen his spirits; still nothing to worry about there. If the chief prosecutor hadn’t opened his present today, he’d open it tomorrow. Verification of that, on top of a good night’s sleep, and he’d be ready to leave for Indiana. Once in good old Lawler Bluffs, all he had to do was arrange the rancid bones inside the package, connect the leads to the microswitch, and then find a spot to leave it for Kathryn and Lover Boy and their brat. Just where depended on her living arrangements these days. A fitting and proper spot, wherever. Maybe even one where he could linger nearby and watch it happen. Wouldn’t that be sweet!

His stomach growled. He’d been so intent on his work that he’d forgotten to eat again. He started to put his tools away, then changed his mind. Cleanup tonight could wait. Good work deserved a reward; it was time for his reward right now.

He stood, stretched, and padded into the kitchen. And, of course, the damn pilot light on the stove had gone out again. Annoyed, feeling martyred, he reached for the box of kitchen matches.

tick!

The vacation had been temporarily postponed. Even if he and Marian and Chuck had wanted to spend the night at Mountain Lake after bomb techs from Sacramento removed the tackle box, which they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been a wise decision with Leonard Sago still at large. So they’d slept at a motel in Jackson and driven to San Francisco that morning. For the time being, they were better off in the urban jungle.

Dixon felt that way even after Dave Maccerone’s telephone call, not long after they got home.

“I’ve got some good news, counselor,” Maccerone said. “You can quit worrying about Leonard Sago. We found him.”

He sank into a chair. “Where?”

“Half Moon Bay. Just enough of him for a positive ID.”

“You mean he’s dead?”

“They don’t get any deader. He blew himself up.”

“Christ. How? Making another bomb?”

“No,” Maccerone said. “Well, he was making another one, but that wasn’t what finished him. Pretty ironic, actually.”

“Ironic?”

“He was living in this cheap rented place, not much more than a shack, on the beach. It had a faulty propane stove, one of those old ones that the landlord should’ve replaced a long time ago. Connection worked loose or corroded through, and gas leaked out. You know how volatile propane is when it builds up. Sago lit a match or caused some other kind of spark — boom. One of the investigators down there called the stove an explosion just waiting to happen. Fire marshal had a better term for it.”

“I’ll bet he did.”

“Yeah. He said it was a regular damn boobytrap.”

Confession

The night is dark up here on the cliffs above Bodega Head, moonless, the stars hidden behind scudding clouds. Three A.M. dark, Fitzgerald’s dark night of the soul. Bitter cold, too. The sea wind whipping across the deserted parking lot is fierce; it buffets the car, howls and whistles at the windows. In the blackness hundreds of feet below, I can hear the gale frothing the sea and hurling high waves in a constant pounding roar against the rocks.

Dark. Cold. But no darker and no colder than it is inside the shell of Lewis Everett.

Yet as I sit here recording these words, this confession, my voice is calm and I’m no longer afraid. This night has been coming for a long time, though I never expected it would happen on our anniversary, Alicia’s and mine. I bought the recorder on a whim some time ago, or so I told myself then, but it wasn’t a whim at all. In the back of my mind I’ve known all along what I would use it for.

My mind is empty now of all except dull resolve. And an awareness of one simple, inescapable truth, a lesson learned too late. Much, much too late.

You can’t get away with murder. Sooner or later, one way or another, you have to pay.

In the beginning I thought you could. I believed that if you planned carefully enough, took all the right precautions, never for a moment lost your cool before, during, and after the act, you could create the perfect crime. So did Alicia.

The two of us laboring under the same delusion, reinforcing it in each other.

But we were different people then. Arrogant, selfish, convinced that we were invincible. All things seem possible when you’re in love, or think you are, and hungry enough and bold enough to take the necessary risks.

I remember as vividly as if had happened yesterday the afternoon we first talked about killing Alicia’s husband, Jack Maitland. We were in bed together in an Inverness motel, lying close after a half hour’s frenzied passion had been spent, not talking in normal voices but whispering, as if the walls had ears or hidden microphones.

“We can’t go on like this,” I said. “He’s bound to find out, and when he does there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

“I know,” she said. “Beat me up, beat you up, maybe even kill us both. He’s capable of it, Lew. My God, you don’t know how mean he can be when he’s mad enough.”

“I’ve had a taste of his temper,” I said.

“I’ve had whole meals,” she said, “and I don’t want any more.”

“All right, then. There’s only one thing we can do if we want to have a life together and all that goes with it. It’s what we’ve both been thinking.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you hate him enough to go through with it?”

“More than enough. More.”

“You’re sure his will leaves everything to you, no other bequests?”

“Positive. He has no relatives and he’s never given a dime to charity. It’ll all be mine.”

“Ours,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “ours. But how can we do it without getting caught?”

“I’ve already thought of a way. A foolproof way, if we’re careful.”

“When? How soon?”

“As soon as we can arrange it,” I said. “After he’s dead, we’ll have to wait a few months to make sure we’re not suspected. Then we’ll have each other and everything we ever wanted.”

Each other and everything we ever wanted.

Jack Maitland was a big man in Los Alegres. Owned the only luxury car dealership in the area, served one term on the city council, knew everybody of any importance well and peddled influence in exchange for favors. Worth better than half a million by Alicia’s estimate — his business, a two-story Spanish style home in the best neighborhood, a portfolio of blue-chip stocks, cash in a pair of bank accounts in his name only and more cash that he hadn’t declared to the IRS squirreled away in a private safe.

Alicia was ten years younger than Maitland, a red-haired beauty by anybody’s standards. Bitter and full of hate for him because of the way he treated her, restless and hungry for the good things in life because he kept her on a short financial leash. I was her age, good-looking enough and smooth enough to attract her, and just as restless, just as hungry. Working as one of Maitland’s salesmen for a small salary plus commissions, a dead-end job. He seldom spoke to me after I was hired, hardly even noticed I was around. So wrapped up in himself he never suspected his wife was having a torrid affair with a man like me.

Maitland had two passions. One was making money, the other was driving back country roads at high speeds in his favorite of the three cars he owned, a souped-up Porsche 356. The race car driver mentality. He had insomnia and did his joyriding at night, usually late at night, because he claimed it helped him relax enough so he could sleep. And he always went alone.

A perfect set-up, the way I figured it, for the perfect crime.

All Alicia and I had to do was turn the Porsche into a death trap.

It wasn’t difficult to accomplish once I had the logistics of the plan worked out. Maitland kept the Porsche locked up tight in his garage when he wasn’t out joyriding or taking long road trips by himself; he drove a Buick to work and to meetings and such around town because Buicks and Lincolns were what he sold. It was too much of a risk for me to try to get into the garage and doctor the Porsche myself, so the first step in the plan was Alicia’s.

She knew a little about cars and how they run, enough so that when I showed her a schematic of the Porsche’s engine in a repair manual and explained to her what to do, she understood right away. It was a simple matter of replacing the condenser on the distributor with a faulty unit I’d picked up at a car dismantler’s in another town. The distributors are out in the open on a 356, easy to get at, and it doesn’t take a mechanic’s skill to make the switch.

She managed it with no trouble while Maitland was out of the house at a Chamber of Commerce meeting. What the faulty condenser did was to let the Porsche run okay at idle and low speeds, but then make it misfire at higher speeds — a problem that can drive even the best mechanics crazy trying to figure out the cause. When the engine started acting up, Maitland had no choice but to put the Porsche into the shop for repairs. I knew he’d pick the one at the dealership rather than a shop specializing in foreign cars because his head mechanic had worked on his Porsche before and it wouldn’t cost him anything.

I made sure I was hanging around when he told the mechanic about the engine trouble, and like a good little employee I stepped in and offered to pick it up at his house and run it in for him, save him the trouble. I was pretty sure he’d agree because Alicia told me he had a full schedule that day, and he did agree right away. To make sure the Porsche stayed in the shop overnight, I stalled around before bringing it in until it was too late in the afternoon for an engine check and the repair work to get done.

As one of the salesmen I had a key to the lot gates, and it was easy enough to filch one of the spares for the shop when no one was looking. That night after midnight I slipped in and gimmicked the brakes. Porsche 356’s have master cylinders tied to all four brake lines, so one defective line affects the whole system. Cut the line outright and there’d be no pressure almost immediately; but puncture any one line with the tip of an icepick, just a tiny hole, and the brakes will hold at low speeds and a light touch on the pedal, while hard pumps at high speed will cause the line to rupture. When you’re traveling at seventy or more on winding country roads at night, the gearbox alone isn’t enough for even an experienced driver to maintain control.

We didn’t have long to wait once the faulty condenser had been replaced. Two nights later, the night of May 12, Maitland wrapped the Porsche around a tree on Chileno Valley Road, traveling at a speed estimated at eighty when the brakes went out. Dead on impact, his body so badly mangled that he had to be buried in a closed casket.

Just another tragic accident.

Alicia and I waited six months, still meeting on the sly in places far from Los Alegres, before we started seeing each other openly. Us dating didn’t raise any eyebrows; nobody suspected a thing. After two months, we went up to Reno and got married. And then we had each other and Maitland’s business and Maitland’s house and Maitland’s money — every thing we’d ever wanted. Top of the world, Ma.

Only it didn’t last very long. Not very long at all.

The money just seemed to evaporate. My fault as much as Alicia’s. Expensive sailboat, expensive clothes, expensive jewelry, expensive gadgets. Trips to Las Vegas, New York, Hawaii. Catered parties at home with French champagne and gourmet food, lavish meals in the best restaurants in San Francisco. And I listened to somebody’s can’t-miss recommendation on a stock that had just gone public and took a flyer and lost a bundle.

Maitland’s blue chips went next, at a loss in a buyer’s market. It wasn’t long before the money from that ran out, too. And then we lost the business because of poor management and a lousy economy that kept people from buying luxury cars. I didn’t know or care anything about running a large dealership and the man I hired as manager proved to be incompetent and a crook besides; I found out too late that he’d been knocking down a percentage of every sale on the sly.

The bankruptcy forced us to sell the house, and we didn’t get anywhere near what it was worth or realize much profit once the balance of the mortgage and the realtor’s fees were paid. And when the money from that was gone, we were right back where we’d started. Or rather I was. I had to go to work as a used-car salesman to pay the bills, and at that we almost went under. All that saved us was Alicia grudgingly taking a job selling cosmetics.

That was when I knew for sure that there’s no such thing as a perfect crime. That there are other kinds of punishments besides prison and the death penalty. That you can pay and keep on paying in installments, a little at a time over a period as long as a jail sentence.

I don’t know why Alicia and I stayed together after we lost the house and the last of the good life disappeared. It wasn’t love; that ended as soon as things started going bad. Not sex, either; we quit sleeping together early on and went our separate ways when itches needed scratching. Inertia had something to with it, I suppose. And guilt. And the subconscious desire to hurt and be hurt. But the main reason was the fear that if we split up, one of us would be vindictive enough to take revenge on the other, no matter what the cost. We were tied tight together by the invisible strings of what we’d done, and by love’s flip-side replacement, hate.

I thought of ways of cutting those strings. So did Alicia, I’m sure. But both of us were too beaten down, too scared, too dependent, too gutless to do anything about it. We just went on and on and on in the mire of our shared misery.

Until tonight.

Until our anniversary.

We fought constantly after everything went to hell. Just about every day, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries included... no truces, no cease fires. Verbal battles, mostly — name-calling, accusations, recriminations, empty threats. But every now and then things erupted into violence. She’d slap me, I’d slap her back. Once she threw a dish that opened a gash on my forehead; another time in the heat of rage she tried to stab me with a paring knife. I hit her with my fist that time and knocked her down, and just barely managed to stop myself from doing what Maitland had done on a couple of occasions, hitting her again and again, beating her bloody.

The fight tonight started because I made the mistake of mentioning the anniversary, I don’t know why except that I’ve always had a good memory for dates. It set her off on an immediate tirade. One of those that went on and on, an endless rehash of what crap our life together had turned out to be, how killing Maitland had all been for nothing and losing everything was my fault. She wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, the words that rolled off her viper’s tongue growing uglier and uglier until my nerves were raw wounds and my fury was even greater than hers and I... I don’t know, I guess I snapped. Finally snapped.

I have only a vague memory of rushing into the bedroom, yanking my revolver out of the closet, then running back into the living room shouting “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” and pointing the gun at her and pulling the trigger. But that’s what I did, just what I did. I shot Alicia dead and shut her up forever.

Murder number two.

If I’d had the courage then, I might have turned the gun on myself. But I didn’t; my hand was shaking so badly I couldn’t even hold onto it. I staggered out to the car and drove around and around, going nowhere, until I calmed down enough to think clearly. I knew then what I had to do. And I drove straight here to Bodega Head, a place we went to now and then in the beginning to be alone together and look at the ocean and make some of our plans.

But the nights were never so cold back then, the sky never so dark.

The wind is louder now, the noises it makes like the screaming voice of a woman. Like Alicia’s voice, just before I killed her.

No, you can’t get away with murder. Sooner or later, one way or another, you have to pay.

My confession is nearly finished. In a minute or so I’ll get out of the car and walk as steadily as I can to the cliff edge and then step off into the dark — make the final payment for my two murders.

The one I committed on May 12, 1964.

And the one I committed tonight, on the fiftieth anniversary of the first.

The Storm Tunnel

The two boys stood on the grassy creek bank, staring down through the darkness at the yawning mouth of the storm tunnel. Raymond shivered. “It looks kind of spooky at night.”

“Sure,” Timmie said. “That’s what makes it such a swell place to explore.”

“You’ve really been inside before?”

“Lots of times.”

“At night?”

“Sure.”

“Alone?”

“Sure.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Not me,” Timmie said.

“How far inside did you go?”

“Pretty far.”

“What’s it like?”

“Neat,” Timmie said. “Lots of twists and turns, and water and leaves and stuff on the floor.”

Raymond shivered again. “You didn’t... see anything, did you?”

“Like what?”

“You know.”

Timmie laughed. “It’s just an old storm tunnel.”

“I heard that rats and animals and... things live in old storm tunnels,” Raymond said.

“You don’t believe that junk, do you?”

Raymond toyed with the zipper on his jacket.

“Well, do you?” Timmie asked him again.

“I guess not.”

“Come on, then.”

Timmie started down the bank, but Raymond did not move. “My folks would skin me if they knew I was here,” he said.

“But they don’t know, do they?”

“No. I snuck out my bedroom window like we said.”

“Then it’s all right.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not scared?”

“No.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“It’s just spooky, that’s all,” Raymond said.

“Are you coming or not?”

Raymond took a long breath. “Yes,” he said. “I’m coming.”

The two boys picked their way down the steep bank, holding onto bushes and shrubs that grew there, digging their feet into the spongy ground. Pretty soon they stood on the sharp stones of the creek bed. In its center, a thin line of water came out of the darkness and disappeared inside the tunnel.

It was very dark. There was no moon on this night, and the trees that rimmed the creek looked like pieces of black cardboard pasted against the sky. The soft gurgle of water was the only sound.

Timmie said, “Follow me, Ray.”

“All right.”

They stepped along the stones. Timmie paused before the tunnel mouth and took a flashlight from his pocket. Raymond said, “Maybe I should have brought one, too.”

“One is all we need.”

They entered the tunnel. Timmie switched on his flashlight and played the beam along the concrete walls. They were dry and smooth at this point, but the floor was wet, littered with leaves, twigs, mud and bits of garbage. In the middle the stream flowed, slowly here, dying.

“I don’t like this place,” Raymond said.

“That’s silly.”

“Timmie...”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Raymond said. “I guess I’m ready.”

He hung onto Timmie’s jacket as they set off deeper into the tunnel. The footing was uncertain, but Timmie moved quickly, surely. The bobbing light from his flash cast grotesque shadows on the walls. The blackness outside the beam was thick and dank.

They had gone a hundred yards or so when Timmie stopped. “What’s the matter?” Raymond asked, alarmed. The sound of his voice echoed hollowly off the concrete walls.

“Nothing,” Timmie said.

“Why did you stop?”

“The tunnel curves up ahead. Down toward the river. The water gets deeper and you’ve got to watch your step. Stay close to the wall on your right.”

“Okay,” Raymond agreed.

They followed the gradual curve of the tunnel. Here, the dampness was pervasive; the walls were covered with a greenish slime and water dripped from them, making tiny splashes on the floor like gently falling rain. The only other sounds were the shuffle of their sneakers and their quiet breathing.

When they had gone another hundred yards, the tunnel curved again, sharply to the right. Another sound reached Raymond’s ears, and he stopped.

“What’s that, Timmie?”

“The river.”

“It sounds like water boiling in a kettle.”

“I know. Come on.”

“We’re not going around there?”

“Sure we are.”

“But... is it safe?”

“Sure. I’ve been down there before, lots of times. All you have to do is stay close to the wall on your right.”

“I think we ought to go back, Timmie.”

“What for?”

“I’m not going to pretend anymore,” Raymond said. “I’m really scared.”

“You’re acting like an old girl.”

“I don’t care.”

“Oh come on, Ray. We won’t go much farther.”

Raymond bit at his lower lip. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Positive.”

“Well... okay. But not far.”

“No,” Timmie said. “Not far.”

They began to move around the sharp bend. The rushing whisper of the river grew louder. Raymond hugged the concrete wall on the right; Timmie, holding the flashlight, playing the beam ahead of them, walked slightly to his left.

As soon as the curve ended, another began, twisting back to the left. Timmie started into the new curve. But just as he did, the narrow cone of light winked out and plunged the tunnel into total blackness.

“Timmie!” Raymond cried.

“It just went off,” Timmie said. “The batteries must’ve gone dead.”

“What’ll we do?”

“Don’t worry. There’s a place up ahead where the tunnel branches. The main section leads down to the river, but the branch hooks up and comes out on Orchard Street, by the school.”

“Let’s just go back the way we came.”

“It’s shorter to Orchard Street,” Timmie said. “We won’t have to go so far in the dark.”

“Can’t you make the flashlight work?”

“It’s no use; the batteries are gone.”

“I’m scared, Timmie.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“The river sounds awfully close...”

“Just stay against the wall.”

“How far is it to the branch?”

“Not very far. It’s on the other side of this curve.” Timmie took hold of Raymond’s arm. “You’re in the Cub Scouts, Ray. One of the things they teach you is finding your way in the dark, isn’t it?”

“Sure, but...”

“Come on, then.”

Raymond swallowed, then eased his body forward; the deepening water saturated the thin canvas of his sneakers. The sound of the river became a hissing roar in his ears, and the dank, brackish odor of the water flared his nostrils. But Raymond kept moving, feeling the wall with his hands.

Ahead to the left, something made a faint scraping noise.

Raymond stopped. “Timmie? What was that?”

“What was what?” Timmie’s voice seemed to come from behind him now, and he realized that Timmie was no longer holding onto his arm.

“That noise,” Raymond said. “Didn’t you hear it?”

“Probably just a rat.”

“A rat? I thought you said—”

“It’s all right. Go ahead.”

Hesitantly, Raymond felt his way around the bend in the wall. And the smell in the tunnel changed suddenly. The new odor that came out of the blackness ahead was foul and sickening, like the dead cat he had once found in his back yard.

“Timmie!”

The scraping noise again, louder, closer, a claw-sound on the concrete floor. Raymond started to back up, to turn and run — and something caught hold of his leg, ripping through the trouser material, bringing a sharp cut of pain.

Raymond screamed.

A huge shape hurtled against him, drove him hard into the wall. Cold, slimy, with fur on it. Snarling and snuffling, breathing its dead-cat smell into his face. He opened his mouth to scream again.

Then the claws ripped into his chest, and there was more tearing pain, and that was all he knew...

Timmie stood against the wall on the other side of the bend, listening. The snarling and snuffling stopped; he heard the claw-sounds once more, the splashes and rustles of Raymond being dragged away through the water.

“Now we can be friends,” he said softly. “I know we can — just you and me.”

Timmie backed away, pivoted, and then switched the flashlight on. It’s nice to have a pet, he thought as he followed the beam back toward the tunnel mouth. I never had a pet before.

In the darkness behind him, the gnawing began.

“I don’t think this is such a good idea!” Peter said.

“Why not?”

“We shouldn’t be out after dark,” Peter said. “Not after the way Ray Wilson disappeared so funny last week.”

“You want to explore the storm tunnel, don’t you?”

“Well... I guess so.”

Timmie started down the grassy creek bank. Halfway to the bottom, he paused to smile up at Peter.

“Come on,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The Hanging Man

It was Sam McCullough who found the hanging man, down on the river bank behind his livery stable.

Straightaway he went looking for Ed Bozeman and me, being as we were the local sheriff’s deputies. Tule River didn’t have any full-time law officers back then, in the late 1890s; just volunteers like Boze and me to keep the peace, and a fat-bottomed sheriff who came through from the county seat two or three days a month to look things over and to stuff himself on pig’s knuckles at the Germany Café.

Time was just past sunup, on one of those frosty mornings Northern California gets in late November, and Sam found Boze already to work inside his mercantile. But they had to come fetch me out of my house, where I was just sitting down to breakfast. I never did open up my place of business — Miller’s Feed and Grain — until 8:30 of a weekday morning.

I had some trouble believing it when Sam first told about the hanging man. He said, “Well, how in hell do you think I felt.” He always has been an excitable sort and he was frothed up for fair just then. “I like to had a hemorrhage when I saw him hanging there on that black oak. Damnedest sight a man ever stumbled on.”

“You say he’s a stranger?”

“Stranger to me. Never seen him before.”

“You make sure he’s dead?”

Sam made a snorting noise. “I ain’t even going to answer that. You just come along and see for yourself.”

I got my coat, told my wife Ginny to ring up Doc Petersen on Mr. Bell’s invention, and then hustled out with Sam and Boze. It was mighty cold that morning; the sky was clear and brittle-looking, like blue-painted glass, and the sun had the look of a two-day-old egg yolk above the tule marshes east of the river. When we came in alongside the stable I saw that there was silvery frost all over the grass on the river bank. You could hear it crunch when you walked on it.

The hanging man had frost on him, too. He was strung up on a fat old oak between the stable and the river, opposite a high board fence that separated Sam’s property from Joel Pennywell’s fixit shop next door. Dressed mostly in black, he was — black denims, black boots, a black cutaway coat that had seen better days. He had black hair, too, long and kind of matted. And a black tongue pushed out at one corner of a black-mottled face. All that black was streaked in silver, and there was silver on the rope that stretched between his neck and the thick limb above. He was the damnedest sight a man ever stumbled on, all right. Frozen up there, silver and black, glistening in the cold sunlight, like something cast up from the Pit.

We stood looking at him for a time, not saying anything. There was a thin wind off the river and I could feel it prickling up the hair on my neck. But it didn’t stir that hanging man, nor any part of him or his clothing.

Boze cleared his throat, and he did it loud enough to make me jump. He asked me, “You know him, Carl?”

“No,” I said. “You?”

“No. Drifter, you think?”

“Got the look of one.”

Which he did. He’d been in his thirties, smallish, with a clean-shaven fox face and pointy ears. His clothes were shabby, shirt cuffs frayed, button missing off his cutaway coat. We got us a fair number of drifters in Tule River, up from San Francisco or over from the mining country after their luck and their money ran out — men looking for farm work or such other jobs as they could find. Or sometimes looking for trouble. Boze and I had caught one just two weeks before and locked him up for chicken stealing.

“What I want to know,” Sam said, “is what in the name of hell he’s doing here?”

Boze shrugged and rubbed at his bald spot, like he always does when he’s fuddled. He was the same age as me, thirty-four, but he’d been losing his hair for the past ten years. He said, “Appears he’s been hanging a while. When’d you close up last evening, Sam?”

“Six, like always.”

“Anybody come around afterwards?”

“No.”

“Could’ve happened any time after six, then. It’s kind of a lonely spot back here after dark. I reckon there’s not much chance anybody saw what happened.”

“Joel Pennywell, maybe,” I said. “He stays open late some nights.”

“We can ask him.”

Sam said, “But why’d anybody string him up like that?”

“Maybe he wasn’t strung up. Maybe he hung himself.”

“Suicide?”

“It’s been known to happen,” Boze said.

Doc Petersen showed up just then, and a couple of other townsfolk with him; word was starting to get around. Doc, who was sixty and dyspeptic, squinted up at the hanging man, grunted, and said, “Strangulation.”

“Doc?”

“Strangulation. Man strangled to death. You can see that from the way his tongue’s out. Neck’s not broken; you can see that too.”

“Does that mean he could’ve killed himself?”

“All it means,” Doc said, “is that he didn’t jump off a high branch or get jerked hard enough off a horse to break his neck.”

“Wasn’t a horse involved anyway,” I said. “There’d be shoe marks in the area; ground was soft enough last night, before the freeze. Boot marks here and there, but that’s all.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Doc said. “All I know is, that gent up there died of strangulation. You want me to tell you anything else, you’ll have to cut him down first.”

Sam and Boze went to the stable to fetch a ladder. While they were gone I paced around some, to see if there was anything to find in the vicinity. And I did find something, about a dozen feet from the oak where the boot tracks were heaviest in the grass. It was a circlet of bronze, about three inches in diameter, and when I picked it up, I saw that it was one of those Presidential Medals the government used to issue at the Philadelphia Mint. On one side it had a likeness of Benjamin Harrison, along with his name and the date of his inauguration, 1889, and on the other were a tomahawk, a peace pipe, and a pair of clasped hands.

There weren’t many such medals in California; mostly they’d been supplied to Army officers in other parts of the West, who handed them out to Indians after peace treaties were signed. But this one struck a chord in my memory: I recollected having seen it or one like it some months back. The only thing was, I couldn’t quite remember where.

Before I could think any more on it, Boze and Sam came back with the ladder, a plank board, and a horse blanket. Neither of them seemed inclined to do the job at hand, so I climbed up myself and sawed through that half-frozen rope with my pocket knife. It wasn’t good work; my mouth was dry when it was done. When we had him down we covered him up and laid him on the plank. Then we carried him out to Doc’s wagon and took him to the Spencer Funeral Home.

After Doc and Obe Spencer stripped the body, Boze and I went through the dead man’s clothing. There was no identification of any kind; if he’d been carrying any before he died, somebody had filched it. No wallet or purse, either. All he had in his pockets was the stub of a lead pencil, a half-used book of matches, a short-six seegar, a nearly empty Bull Durham sack, three wheatstraw papers, a two-bit piece, an old Spanish real coin, and a dog-eared and stained copy of a Beadle dime novel called Captain Dick Talbot, King of the Road; Or, The Black-Hoods of Shasta.

“Drifter, all right,” Boze said when we were done. “Wouldn’t you say, Carl?”

“Sure seems that way.”

“But even drifters have more belongings than this. Shaving gear, extra clothes — at least that much.”

“You’d think so,” I said. “Might be he had a carpetbag or the like and it’s hidden somewhere along the river bank.”

“Either that or it was stolen. But we can go take a look when Doc gets through studying on the body.”

I fished out the bronze medal I’d found in the grass earlier and showed it to him. “Picked this up while you and Sam were getting the ladder,” I said.

“Belonged to the hanging man, maybe.”

“Maybe. But it seems familiar, somehow. I can’t quite place where I’ve seen one like it.”

Boze turned the medal over in his hand. “Doesn’t ring any bells for me,” he said.

“Well, you don’t see many around here, and the one I recollect was also a Benjamin Harrison. Could be coincidence, I suppose. Must be if that fella died by his own hand.”

“If he did.”

“Boze, you think it was suicide?”

“I’m hoping it was,” he said, but he didn’t sound any more convinced than I was. “I don’t like the thought of a murderer running around loose in Tule River.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

Doc didn’t have much to tell us when he came out. The hanging man had been shot once a long time ago — he had bullet scars on his right shoulder and back — and one foot was missing a pair of toes.

There was also a fresh bruise on the left side of his head, above the ear.

Boze asked, “Is it a big bruise, Doc?”

“Big enough.”

“Could somebody have hit him hard enough to knock him out?”

“And then hung him afterward? Well, it could’ve happened that way. His neck’s full of rope burns and lacerations, the way it would be if somebody hauled him up over that tree limb.”

“Can you reckon how long he’s been dead?”

“Last night some time. Best I can do.”

Boze and I headed back to the livery stable. The town had come awake by this time. There were plenty of people on the boardwalks and Main Street was crowded with horses and farm wagons; any day now I expected to see somebody with one of those newfangled motor cars. The hanging man was getting plenty of lip service, on Main Street and among the crowd that had gathered back of the stable to gawk at the black oak and trample the grass.

Nothing much goes on in a small town like Tule River, and such as a hanging was bound to stir up folks’ imaginations. There hadn’t been a killing in the area in four or five years. And damned little mystery since the town was founded back in the days when General Vallejo owned most of the land hereabouts and it was the Mexican flag, not the Stars and Stripes, that flew over California.

None of the crowd had found anything in the way of evidence on the river bank; they would have told us if they had. None of them knew anything about the hanging man, either. That included Joel Pennywell, who had come over from his fixit shop next door. He’d closed up around 6:30 last night, he said, and gone straight on home.

After a time Boze and I moved down to the river’s edge and commenced a search among the tule grass and trees that grew along there. The day had warmed some; the wind was down and the sun had melted off the last of the frost. A few of the others joined in with us, eager and boisterous, like it was an Easter egg hunt. It was too soon for the full impact of what had happened to settle in on most folks; it hadn’t occurred to them yet that maybe they ought to be concerned.

A few minutes before ten o’clock, while we were combing the west-side bank up near the Main Street Basin, and still not finding anything, the Whipple youngster came running to tell us that Roberto Ortega and Sam McCullough wanted to see us at the livery stable. Roberto owned a dairy ranch just south of town and claimed to be a descendant of a Spanish conquistador. He was also an honest man, which was why he was in town that morning. He’d found a saddled horse grazing on his pastureland and figured it for a runaway from Sam’s livery, so he’d brought it in. But Sam had never seen the animal, an old sway backed roan, until Roberto showed up with it. Nor had he ever seen the battered carpetbag that was tied behind the cantle of the cheap Mexican saddle.

It figured to be the drifter’s horse and carpetbag, sure enough. But whether the drifter had turned the animal loose himself, or somebody else had, we had no way of knowing. As for the carpetbag, it didn’t tell us any more about the hanging man than the contents of his pockets. Inside it were some extra clothes, an old Colt Dragoon revolver, shaving tackle, a woman’s garter, and nothing at all that might identify the owner.

Sam took the horse, and Boze and I took the carpetbag over to Obe Spencer’s to put with the rest of the hanging man’s belongings. On the way we held a conference. Fact was, a pair of grain barges were due upriver from San Francisco at eleven, for loading and return. I had three men working for me, but none of them handled the paperwork; I was going to have to spend some time at the feed mill that day, whether I wanted to or not. Which is how it is when you have part-time deputies who are also full-time businessmen. It was a fact of small-town life we’d had to learn to live with.

We worked it out so that Boze would continue making inquiries while I went to work at the mill. Then we’d switch off at one o’clock so he could give his wife Ellie, who was minding the mercantile, some help with customers and with the drummers who always flocked around with Christmas wares right after Thanksgiving.

We also decided that if neither of us turned up any new information by five o’clock — or even if we did — we would ring up the country seat and make a full report to the sheriff. Not that Joe Perkins would be able to find out anything we couldn’t. He was a fat-cat political appointee, and about all he knew how to find was pig’s knuckles and beer. But we were bound to do it by the oath of office we’d taken.

We split up at the funeral parlor and I went straight to the mill. My foreman, Gene Kleinschmidt, had opened up; I’d given him a set of keys and he knew to go ahead and unlock the place if I wasn’t around. The barges came in twenty minutes after I did, and I had to hustle to get the paperwork ready that they would be carrying back down to San Francisco — bills of lading, requisitions for goods from three different companies.

I finished up a little past noon and went out onto the dock to watch the loading. One of the bargemen was talking to Gene. And while he was doing it, he kept flipping something up and down in his hand — a small gold nugget. It was the kind of things folks made into a watch fob, or kept as a good-luck charm.

And that was how I remembered where I’d seen the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Medal. Eight months or so back a newcomer to the area, a man named Jubal Parsons, had come in to buy some sacks of chicken feed. When he’d reached into his pocket to pay the bill he had accidentally come out with the medal. “Good-luck charm,” he said, and let me glance at it before putting it away again.

Back inside my office I sat down and thought about Jubal Parsons. He was a tenant farmer — had taken over a small farm owned by the Siler brothers out near Willow Creek about nine months ago. Big fellow, over six feet tall, and upwards of 220 pounds. Married to a blond woman named Greta, a few years younger than him and pretty as they come. Too pretty, some said; a few of the womenfolk, Ellie Bozeman included, thought she had the look and mannerisms of a tramp.

Parsons came into Tule River two or three times a month to trade for supplies, but you seldom saw the wife. Neither of them went to church on Sunday, nor to any of the social events at the Odd Fellows Hall. Parsons kept to himself mostly, didn’t seem to have any friends or any particular vices. Always civil, at least to me, but taciturn and kind of broody-looking. Not the sort of fellow you find yourself liking much.

But did the medal I’d found belong to him? And if it did, had he hung the drifter? And if he had, what was his motive?

I was still puzzling on that when Boze showed up. He was a half hour early, and he had Floyd Jones with him. Floyd looked some like Santa Claus — fat and jolly and white-haired — and he liked it when you told him so. He was the night bartender at the Elkhorn Bar and Grill.

Boze said, “Got some news, Carl. Floyd here saw the hanging man last night. Recognized the body over to Obe Spencer’s just now.”

Floyd bobbed his head up and down. “He came into the Elkhorn about eight o’clock, asking for work.”

I said, “How long did he stay?”

“Half hour, maybe. Told him we already had a swamper and he spent five minutes trying to convince me he’d do a better job of cleaning up. Then he gave it up when he come to see I wasn’t listening, and bought a beer and nursed it over by the stove. Seemed he didn’t much relish going back into the cold.”

“He say anything else to you?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“Didn’t give his name, either,” Boze said. “But there’s something else. Tell him, Floyd.”

“Well, there was another fella came in just after the drifter,” Floyd said. “Ordered a beer and sat watching him. Never took his eyes off that drifter once. I wouldn’t have noticed except for that and because we were near empty. Cold kept most everybody to home last night.”

“You know this second man?” I asked.

“Sure do. Local farmer. Newcomer to the area, only been around for—”

“Jubal Parsons?”

Floyd blinked at me. “Now how in thunder did you know that?”

“Lucky guess. Parsons leave right after the drifter?”

“He did. Not more than ten seconds afterward.”

“You see which direction they went?”

“Downstreet, I think. Toward Sam McCullough’s livery.”

I thanked Floyd for his help and shooed him on his way. When he was gone Boze asked me, “Just how did you know it was Jubal Parsons?”

“I finally remembered where I’d seen that Presidential Medal I found. Parsons showed it when he was here one day several months ago. Said it was his good-luck charm.”

Boze rubbed at his bald spot. “That and Floyd’s testimony make a pretty good case against him, don’t they?”

“They do. Reckon I’ll go out and have a talk with him.”

“We’ll both go,” Boze said. “Ellie can mind the store the rest of the day. This is more important. Besides, if Parsons is a killer, it’ll be safer if there are two of us.”

I didn’t argue; a hero is something I never was nor wanted to be. We left the mill and went and picked up Boze’s buckboard from behind the mercantile. On the way out of town we stopped by his house and mine long enough to fetch our rifles. Then we headed west on Willow Creek Road.

It was a long cool ride out to Jubal Parsons’ tenant farm, through a lot of rich farmland and stands of willows and evergreens. Neither of us said much. There wasn’t much to say. But I was tensed up and I could see that Boze was, too.

A rutted trail hooked up to the farm from Willow Creek Road, and Boze jounced the buckboard along there some past three o’clock. It was pretty modest acreage. Just a few fields of corn and alfalfa, with a cluster of ramshackle buildings set near where Willow Creek cut through the northwest corner. There was a one-room farmhouse, a chicken coop, a barn, a couple of lean-tos, and a pole corral. That was all except for a small windmill — a Fairbanks, Morse Eclipse — that the Siler brothers had put up because the creek was dry more than half the year.

When we came in sight of the buildings I could tell that Jubal Parsons had done work on the place. The farmhouse had a fresh coat of whitewash, as did the chicken coop, and the barn had a new roof.

There was nobody in the farmyard, just half a dozen squawking leghorns, when we pulled in and Boze drew rein. But as soon as we stepped down, the front door of the house opened and Greta Parsons came out on the porch. She was wearing a calico dress and high-button shoes, but her head was bare; that butter-yellow hair of hers hung down to her hips, glistening like the bargeman’s gold nugget in the sun. She was some pretty woman, for a fact. It made your throat thicken up just to look at her, and funny ideas start to stir around in your head. If ever there was a woman to tempt a man to sin, I thought, it was this one.

Boze stayed near the buckboard, with his rifle held loose in one hand, while I went over to the porch steps and took off my hat. “I’m Carl Miller, Mrs. Parsons,” I said. “That’s Ed Bozeman back there. We’re from Tule River. Maybe you remember seeing us?”

“Yes, Mr. Miller. I remember you.”

“We’d like a few words with your husband. Would he be somewhere nearby?”

“He’s in the barn,” she said. There was something odd about her voice — a kind of dullness, as if she was fatigued. She moved that way, too, loose and jerky. She didn’t seem to notice Boze’s rifle, or to care if she did.

I said, “Do you want to call him out for us?”

“No, you go on in. It’s all right.”

I nodded to her and rejoined Boze, and we walked on over to the barn. Alongside it was a McCormick & Deering binder-harvester, and further down, under a lean-to, was an old buggy with its storm curtains buttoned up. A big gray horse stood in the corral, nuzzling a pile of hay. The smell of dust and earth and manure was ripe on the cool air.

The barn doors were shut. I opened one half, stood aside from the opening, and called out, “Mr. Parsons? You in there?”

No answer.

I looked at Boze. He said, “We’ll go in together,” and I nodded. Then we shouldered up and I pulled the other door half open. And we went inside.

It was shadowed in there, even with the doors open; those parts of the interior I could make out were empty. I eased away from Boze, toward where the corn crib was. There was sweat on me; I wished I’d taken my own rifle out of the buckboard.

“Mr. Parsons?”

Still no answer. I would have tried a third time, but right then Boze said, “Never mind, Carl,” in a way that made me turn around and face him.

He was a dozen paces away, staring down at something under the hayloft. I frowned and moved over to him. Then I saw too, and my mouth came open and there was a slithery feeling on my back.

Jubal Parsons was lying there dead on the sod floor, with blood all over his shirtfront and the side of his face. He’d been shot. There was a .45–70 Springfield rifle beside the body, and when Boze bent down and struck a match, you could see the black-powder marks mixed up with the blood.

“My God,” I said, soft.

“Shot twice,” Boze said. “Head and chest.”

“Twice rules out suicide.”

“Yeah,” he said.

We traded looks in the dim light. Then we turned and crossed back to the doors. When we came out Mrs. Parsons was sitting on the front steps of the house, looking past the windmill at the alfalfa fields. We went over and stopped in front of her. The sun was at our backs, and the way we stood put her in our shadow. That was what made her look up; she hadn’t seen us coming, or heard us crossing the yard.

She said, “Did you find him?”

“We found him,” Boze said. He took out his badge and showed it to her. “We’re county sheriff’s deputies, Mrs. Parsons. You’d best tell us what happened in there.”

“I shot him,” she said. Matter-of-fact, like she was telling you the time of day. “This morning, just after breakfast. Ever since I’ve wanted to hitch up the buggy and drive in and tell about it, but I couldn’t seem to find the courage. It took all the courage I had to fire the rifle.”

“But why’d you do a thing like that?”

“Because of what he did in Tule River last night.”

“You mean the hanging man?”

“Yes. Jubal killed him.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. Not long before I shot him.”

“Why did he do it — hang that fellow?”

“He was crazy jealous, that’s why.”

I asked her, “Who was the dead man?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean to say he was a stranger?”

“Yes,” she said. “I only saw him once. Yesterday afternoon. He rode in looking for work. I told him we didn’t have any, that we were tenant farmers, but he wouldn’t leave. He kept following me around, saying things. He thought I was alone here — a woman alone.”

“Did he — make trouble for you?”

“Just with words. He kept saying things, ugly things. Men like that — I don’t know why, but they think I’m a woman of easy virtue. It has always been that way, no matter where we’ve lived.”

“What did you do?” Boze asked.

“Ignored him at first. Then I begged him to go away. I told him my husband was wild jealous, but he didn’t believe me. I thought I was alone too, you see; I thought Jubal had gone off to work in the fields.”

“But he hadn’t?”

“Oh, he had. But he came back while the drifter was here and he overheard part of what was said.”

“Did he show himself to the man?”

“No. He would have if matters had gone beyond words, but that didn’t happen. After a while he got tired of tormenting me and went away. The drifter, I mean.”

“Then what happened?”

“Jubal saddled his horse and followed him. He followed that man into Tule River and when he caught up with him he knocked him on the head and he hung him.”

Boze and I traded another look. I said what both of us were thinking: “Just for deviling you? He hung a man for that?”

“I told you, Jubal was crazy jealous. You didn’t know him. You just — you don’t know how he was. He said that if a man thought evil, and spoke evil, it was the same as doing evil. He said if a man was wicked, he deserved to be hung for his wickedness and the world would be a better place for his leaving it.”

She paused, and then made a gesture with one hand at her bosom. It was a meaningless kind of gesture, but you could see where a man might take it the wrong way. Might take her the wrong way, just like she’d said. And not just a man, either; women, too. Everybody that didn’t keep their minds open and went rooting around after sin in other folks.

“Besides,” she went on, “he worshipped the ground I stand on. He truly did, you know. He couldn’t bear the thought of anyone sullying me.”

I cleared my throat. The sweat on me had dried and I felt cold now. “Did you hate him, Mrs. Parsons?”

“Yes, I hated him. Oh, yes. I feared him, too — for a long time I feared him more than anything else. He was so big. And so strong-willed. I used to tremble sometimes, just to look at him.”

“Was he cruel to you?” Boze asked. “Did he hurt you?”

“He was and he did. But not the way you mean; he didn’t beat me, or once lay a hand to me the whole nine years we were married. It was his vengeance that hurt me. I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t take any more of it.”

She looked away from us again, out over the alfalfa fields — and a long ways beyond them, at something only she could see. “No roots,” she said, “that was part of it, too. No roots. Moving here, moving there, always moving — three states and five homesteads in less than ten years. And the fear. And the waiting. This was the last time, I couldn’t take it ever again. Not one more minute of his jealousy, his cruelty... his wickedness.”

“Ma’am, you’re not making sense—”

“But I am,” she said. “Don’t you see? He was Jubal Parsons, the Hanging Man.”

I started to say something, but she shifted position on the steps just then — and when she did that her face came out of shadow and into the sunlight, and I saw in her eyes a kind of terrible knowledge. It put a chill on my neck like the night wind does when it blows across a graveyard.

“That drifter in Tule River wasn’t the first man Jubal hung on account of me,” she said. “Not even the first in California. That drifter was the Hanging Man’s eighth.”

Putting the Pieces Back

You wouldn’t think a man could change completely in four months — but when Kaprelian saw Fred DeBeque come walking into the Drop Back Inn, he had living proof that it could happen. He was so startled, in fact, that he just stood there behind the plank and stared with his mouth hanging open.

It had been a rainy off-Monday exactly like this one the last time he’d seen DeBeque, and that night the guy had been about as low as you could get and carrying a load big enough for two. Now he was dressed in a nice tailored suit, looking sober and normal as though he’d never been through any heavy personal tragedy. Kaprelian felt this funny sense of flashback come over him, like the entire last seven months hadn’t even existed.

He didn’t much care for feelings like that, and he shook it off. Then he smiled kind of sadly as DeBeque walked over and took his old stool, the one he’d sat on every night for the three months after he had come home from work late one afternoon and found his wife bludgeoned to death.

Actually, Kaprelian was glad to see the change in him. He hadn’t known DeBeque or DeBeque’s wife very well before the murder; they were just people who lived in the neighborhood and dropped in once in a while for a drink. He’d liked them both though, and he’d gotten to know Fred pretty well afterward, while he was doing that boozing. That was why the change surprised him as much as it did. He’d been sure DeBeque would turn into a Skid Row bum or a corpse, the way he put down the sauce; a man couldn’t drink like that more than maybe a year without ending up one or the other.

The thing was, DeBeque and his wife really loved each other. He’d been crazy for her, worshipped the ground she walked on — Kaprelian had never loved anybody that way, so he couldn’t really understand it. Anyhow, when she’d been murdered DeBeque had gone all to pieces. Without her, he’d told Kaprelian a few times, he didn’t want to go on living himself; but he didn’t have the courage to kill himself either. Except with the bottle.

There was another reason why he couldn’t kill himself, DeBeque said, and that was because he wanted to see the murderer punished and the police hadn’t yet caught him. They’d sniffed around DeBeque himself at first, but he had an alibi and, anyway, all his and her friends told them how much the two of them were in love. So then, even though nobody had seen any suspicious types in the neighborhood the day it happened, the cops had worked around with the theory that it was either a junkie who’d forced his way into the DeBeque apartment or a sneak thief that she’d surprised. The place had been ransacked and there was some jewelry and mad money missing. Her skull had been crushed with a lamp, and the cops figured she had tried to put up a fight.

So DeBeque kept coming to the Drop Back Inn every night and getting drunk and waiting for the cops to find his wife’s killer. After three months went by, they still hadn’t found the guy. The way it looked to Kaprelian then — and so far that was the way it had turned out — they never would. The last night he’d seen DeBeque, Fred had admitted that same thing for the first time and then he had walked out into the rain and vanished. Until just now.

Kaprelian said, “Fred, it’s good to see you. I been wondering what happened to you, you disappeared so sudden four months ago.”

“I guess you never expected I’d show up again, did you, Harry?”

“You want the truth, I sure didn’t. But you really look great. Where you been all this time?”

“Putting the pieces back together again,” DeBeque said. “Finding new meaning in life.”

Kaprelian nodded. “You know, I thought you were headed for Skid Row or an early grave, you don’t mind my saying so.”

“No, I don’t mind. You’re absolutely right, Harry.”

“Well — can I get you a drink?”

“Ginger ale,” DeBeque said. “I’m off alcohol now.”

Kaprelian was even more surprised. There are some guys, some drinkers, you don’t ever figure can quit, and that was how DeBeque had struck him at the tag end of those three bad months. He said, “Me being a bar owner, I shouldn’t say this, but I’m glad to hear that too. If there’s one thing I learned after twenty years in this business, you can’t drown your troubles or your sorrows in the juice. I seen hundreds try and not one succeed.”

“You tried to tell me that a dozen times, as I recall,” DeBeque said. “Fortunately, I realized you were right in time to do something about it.”

Kaprelian scooped ice into a glass and filled it with ginger ale from the automatic hand dispenser. When he set the glass on the bar, one of the two workers down at the other end — the only other customers in the place — called to him for another beer. He drew it and took it down and then came back to lean on the bar in front of DeBeque.

“So where’d you go after you left four months ago?” he asked. “I mean, did you stay here in the city or what? I know you moved out of the neighborhood.”

“No, I didn’t stay here.” DeBeque sipped his ginger ale. “It’s funny the way insights come to a man, Harry — and funny how long it takes sometimes. I spent three months not caring about anything, drinking myself to death, drowning in self-pity; then one morning I just woke up knowing I couldn’t go on that way any longer. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew I had to straighten myself out. I went upstate and dried out in a rented cabin in the mountains. The rest of the insight came there: I knew why I’d stopped drinking, what it was I had to do.”

“What was that, Fred?”

“Find the man who murdered Karen.”

Kaprelian had been listening with rapt attention. What DeBeque had turned into wasn’t a bum or a corpse but the kind of comeback hero you see in television crime dramas and don’t believe for a minute. When you heard it like this, though, in real life and straight from the gut, you knew it had to be the truth — and it made you feel good.

Still, it wasn’t the most sensible decision DeBeque could have reached, not in real life, and Kaprelian said, “I don’t know, Fred, if the cops couldn’t find the guy—”

DeBeque nodded. “I went through all the objections myself,” he said, “but I knew I still had to try. So I came back here to the city and I started looking. I spent a lot of time in the Tenderloin bars, and I got to know a few street people, got in with them, was more or less accepted by them. After a while I started asking questions and getting answers.”

“You mean,” Kaprelian said, astonished, “you actually got a line on the guy who did it?”

Smiling, DeBeque said, “No. All the answers I got were negative. No, Harry, I learned absolutely nothing — except that the police were wrong about the man who killed Karen. He wasn’t a junkie or a sneak thief or a street criminal of any kind.”

“Then who was he?”

“Someone who knew her, someone she trusted. Someone she would let in the apartment.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Kaprelian said. “You have any idea who this someone could be?”

“Not at first. But after I did some discreet investigating, after I visited the neighborhood again a few times, it all came together like the answer to a mathematical equation. There was only one person it could be.”

“Who?” Kaprelian asked.

“The mailman.”

“The mailman?”

“Of course. Think about it, Harry. Who else would have easy access to our apartment? Who else could even be seen entering the apartment by neighbors without them thinking anything of it, or even remembering it later? The mailman.”

“Well, what did you do?”

“I found out his name and I went to see him one night last week. I confronted him with knowledge of his guilt. He denied it, naturally; he kept right on denying it to the end.”

“The end?”

“When I killed him,” DeBeque said.

Kaprelian’s neck went cold. “Killed him? Fred, you can’t be serious! You didn’t actually kill him—”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” DeBeque said. “What else could I do? I had no evidence, I couldn’t take him to the police. But neither could I allow him to get away with what he’d done to Karen. You understand that, don’t you? I had no choice. I took out the gun I’d picked up in a pawnshop, and I shot him with it — right through the heart.”

“Jeez,” Kaprelian said. “Jeez.”

DeBeque stopped smiling then and frowned down into his ginger ale; he was silent, kind of moody all of a sudden.

Kaprelian became aware of how quiet it was and flipped on the TV. While he was doing that the two workers got up from their stools at the other end of the bar, waved at him, and went on out.

DeBeque said suddenly, “Only then I realized he couldn’t have been the one.”

Kaprelian turned from the TV. “What?”

“It couldn’t have been the mailman,” DeBeque said. “He was left-handed, and the police established that the killer was probably right-handed. Something about the angle of the blow that killed Karen. So I started thinking who else it could have been, and then I knew: the grocery delivery boy. Except we used two groceries, two delivery boys, and it turned out both of them were right-handed. I talked to the first and I was sure he was the one. I shot him. Then I knew I’d been wrong, it was the other one. I shot him too.”

“Hey,” Kaprelian said. “Hey, Fred, what’re you saying?”

“But it wasn’t the delivery boys either.” DeBeque’s eyes were very bright. “Who, then? Somebody else from the neighborhood... and it came to me, I knew who it had to be.”

Kaprelian still didn’t quite grasp what he was hearing. It was all coming too fast. “Who?” he said.

“You,” DeBeque said, and it wasn’t until he pulled the gun that Kaprelian finally understood what was happening, what DeBeque had really turned into after those three grieving, alcoholic months. Only by then it was too late.

The last thing he heard was voices on the television — a crime drama, one of those where the guy’s wife is murdered and he goes out and finds the real killer and ends up a hero in time for the last commercial...

Man Cave

It was the smallest room in the house, at the rear behind the kitchen and pantry. Katie’s room until her eighteenth birthday, when she’d moved to an apartment in San Francisco. The understanding had always been, or so Wyatt had believed, that when Katie left it would become his den. But Ruth said no, insisting they keep it the way it was “in case the silly girl decides to move back home.” That would never happen; like Tom before her, Katie had suffered too long under her mother’s grinding thumb to ever return to the nest. (Laura hadn’t waited until she was eighteen to gain her freedom; she’d gotten herself pregnant and then married at sixteen. She and the boy were now living in Minneapolis with a daughter and a son Wyatt had never seen.) But it was only an excuse anyway. The truth was, Ruth didn’t want him to have a room of his own.

“You don’t need a den,” she kept saying. “Isn’t the living room enough for you?”

No, it wasn’t. The living room wasn’t his, it was hers. So were the master bedroom and the kitchen and the never-occupied guest room (Tom’s bedroom) and her sewing room (Laura’s old room). And so were the rose garden and vegetable garden in the backyard, the flower beds and lawn in front. All Ruth’s. He had been reduced to the role of tenant, and not a rent-free one: it was his pension and social security checks that paid the bills.

He had no one to blame but himself, of course. He’d passively allowed her to take control of the house, the kids, himself. Mild-mannered, non-confrontational, easily manipulated, easily controlled — that was Wyatt Potter in a nutshell. He knew it, chafed at it, and yet his placid nature held him powerless. If you looked in the dictionary under the word milquetoast, Ruth had said to him once, it would be his photograph you’d find to illustrate the definition.

She was the exact opposite. Iron-willed, domineering, merciless in her need to have things her way, bend everyone to her will. She had not only alienated her son and daughters with her coldness, her inflexible rules and demands, but nearly all of a dwindling succession of friends. He would have fled from her, too, if only he’d had the gumption. Now it was too late. He was sixty-two years old, not in the peak of health, had been pensioned out of his assistant manager’s job at the bank just in time to collect social security, and none of his children was emotionally or financially equipped to care for him. He simply had nowhere else to go.

Thirty-three years — that was how long he’d been married to Ruth. It was difficult after so many years to remember what it was that attracted her to him in the first place. Certainly not her looks; she was as plain as he was, and stout even before her eating habits added another fifty pounds. Her willful self-assurance, probably. The type of alpha female his sort of man naturally gravitated to.

Their first year together had been good, the next four tolerable until after Laura was born, and the rest... well, nightmarish was too strong a word, but peace and harmony were virtually nonexistent in his life the past two and a half decades. Katie had been unplanned, the result of one of the few times Ruth had grudgingly permitted him to satisfy what she referred to as his “carnal male appetite.” And the last. She blamed him for the “accident,” of course, and had refused to allow him into her bed since. Not that he’d asked very often, or cared to in so long he could barely recall what it was like to have a carnal male appetite.

Now, at sixty-two, he had only one appetite left: for the room of his own, where he could be alone to read, listen to music, watch old movies and TV programs that interested him. (Ruth refused to look at anything other than soap operas, sitcoms, and gory crime shows on the new forty-inch flat-screen high-definition television set she’d bought without telling him. Whenever he turned on the History Channel or the Discovery Channel or an old black and white film, she immediately switched channels.)

“I’ve never asked you for much,” he said to her one evening, when his den-hunger had reached the critical point. “Please don’t deny me this.”

“You don’t need a den.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why? So you can hide in it, I suppose. Get away from me.”

“No,” he said. Yes, he thought. “It’s a matter of comfort. You like your TV programs, I prefer different ones. Or to just sit quietly and read.”

“Do I try to stop you from reading?”

“No, but I can’t concentrate with the TV blaring—”

“Blaring? I suppose you think I turn the sound up on purpose to annoy you. Well, I don’t. My hearing isn’t what it used to be, you know that. Don’t be so inconsiderate, Wyatt.”

It was impossible to reason with the woman. She turned everything around so that she was right and he was wrong, she made the sacrifices and he was the thoughtless one.

He kept pleading with her just the same. “You have your sewing room. Is it really too much to want a private space of my own?”

“I won’t have you turning Katie’s room into a man cave.”

“A what?”

“You heard me. Man cave. That’s what they call them now.”

“A simple den, for heaven’s sake?”

“Den. Another word for cave. Smelly places men lock themselves into to avoid their wives and responsibilities. Next thing you’ll be wanting a computer so you can look at pictures of naked women.”

“I don’t want a computer. I don’t want to look at pornographic pictures. All I want is a comfortable chair, a small TV set, a CD player—”

“We can’t afford any of that nonsense.”

“—and all my books. Yes, we can. I’ll buy everything at garage sales or Goodwill.”

“No. I won’t have it.”

“Ruth, please—”

“No!”

The next morning she vacuumed and dusted Katie’s room, closed the blinds and frilly curtains over the window that overlooked the backyard, then made him watch as she locked the door and dropped the key into her pocket — the key she had used to keep Katie locked inside as punishment for real or imagined misbehavior as often as Katie had used it for personal privacy.

“There now,” she said. “That settles it.”

Yes, it did. But not the way she thought.

He had never before gone against Ruth’s wishes, and he was well aware of what was likely to happen if he did. But he was determined to have his den. If not with her permission, then without it through daring and guile and damn the consequences. And once he had it, he would keep it no matter what she said or did.

It didn’t take him long to develop a plan of action. What he came to think of as an adventure, a covert one that added a small but spicy element of danger to his quest.

Ruth did all their grocery shopping alone, claiming that he slowed her down by dilly-dallying and bought too many useless food and drug items — a pair of gross exaggerations. The next time she went, he called Katie in the city and told her what he proposed to do. She had no objections to the makeover of her old room, in fact encouraged him in the project. Out of spite for her mother, he thought, not because she cared whether or not he had his den. Katie had inherited some of Ruth’s less than endearing traits, though she would have thrown a fit if this had been suggested to her.

Wyatt’s next step was a search for Katie’s room key. Ruth hadn’t bothered to pick a clever hiding place for it; it took only a few minutes to find it, in the back of a drawer in her sewing table. For the time being he left it where it was.

Saturdays from eleven until five o’clock were reserved for Ruth’s weekly visit with her widowed sister Elaine in Bayport. Wyatt made prior arrangements with a locksmith to come by at noon the following Saturday; fetched the key to unlock the door before the man arrived and then returned it to the sewing drawer. The locksmith replaced the lock with a similar one, after which Wyatt added its key to his keyring. There was virtually no risk in this maneuver. Ruth would have no reason to try to enter the room again during the next month — one cleaning-and-dusting was always good for at least four weeks. And once she laid down the law, she expected him to obey it implicitly.

Over the next few weeks, whenever Ruth was out shopping or away at her sister’s, he began making Katie’s room over into his. He boxed up the relatively few articles of clothing and other possessions that she’d left behind, added a scattering of toilet articles from the adjacent bathroom, and stored the cartons among others in the garage in case she wanted any of it someday. The bedside lamps and the fuzzy white throw rug also went into concealed storage. With the window blinds closed tight, there was no danger of Ruth happening to look inside while she was out puttering in her rose garden.

Seven days later Wyatt elicited the aid of Charlie Ledbetter, one of his few remaining friends, and together they moved out the remaining items. The bed, nightstands, bureau, and small writing desk went to a Goodwill donation center, the mattress and frilly window curtains to a local recycler. The room was then completely empty. Or it was until he and Charlie carried in the half dozen boxes of books — travel, Western Americana, a complete set of the classics — that Ruth had made him put in the garage because she refused to have “all those dust catchers cluttering up my house.” Charlie, who understood electrical matters, also found a way to hook up the new TV set to the house cable line.

Wyatt made the rounds of thrift shops and the local flea market the following week. A small portable TV set and roller stand were his first purchases, then a combination radio and CD player that a vendor called a “baby boom box.” He returned home just in time to lock the last of the items in his den before Ruth came back.

The next two Saturdays, again with Charlie’s help, he bought and moved in a chair, two medium-size bookcases, and a small oriental rug. The chair was a brown naugahyde recliner with a torn but reparable arm that cost him surprisingly little at a hospice thrift store. The bookcases, a matching pair stained a light walnut color that went well with the recliner, came from a garage sale. The rug, which looked expensive but wasn’t, had been an impulse buy at another thrift shop — three by four feet in size, an exotic wine red color with a blue, green, and yellow design and fringed edges.

When he had everything arranged to his satisfaction, he sat down in the recliner and surveyed his domain. It might not be perfect, but it was his and it pleased him — so much so that he couldn’t stop smiling.

There was nothing more to be gained in keeping it a secret from Ruth, he decided. It wouldn’t be possible anyway if he was going to spend time in here. Might as well unveil it to her as soon as she came home. When she saw how simply and inexpensively furnished it was, how happy it made him, she might not even make a fuss.

He should have known better.

As soon as Ruth stepped into the den, she let out a screech like a wounded parrot. Her heavy body went rigid; she spun around glaring, bared her teeth in a snarl, and growled, “You deceitful sneak! How could you do a thing like this!”

“Ruth, please don’t be upset—”

“Upset? Furious is more like it. Defying me, skulking around behind my back, turning Katie’s room into a man cave when I told you to leave it be. How dare you!”

“I didn’t want to go behind your back, but you just wouldn’t understand how much a room of my own means to me. Don’t you think it looks nice now that it’s finished?”

“It’s hideous! That disgusting rug... I suppose you paid a fortune for it.”

“No, it only cost—”

“What did you do with Katie’s things?”

“Stored them in the garage, all except the furniture.”

“And I suppose you gave that to Goodwill.”

“Yes. As old and worn as it was, it didn’t seem to be worth keeping...”

She made a sound like a dog’s growl. “You’ve lost your mind, Wyatt Potter. Katie will be irate when she finds out.”

“She already knows. I called her before I started the makeover. She didn’t mind, she gave me her blessings.”

“Blessings! I don’t believe it.”

“It’s the truth,” Wyatt said. “She doesn’t care about any of the things she left behind. She’s never coming home again, we both know that—”

“I know no such thing. All I know is that you’ve deceived and defied me. I want all of this... junk taken out of here immediately. I want Katie’s things, what’s left of them, put back where they were.”

The path of least resistance had always been Wyatt’s choice when Ruth threw one of her tantrums. But not this time. Worms can turn if the stakes are high enough; he had already half turned by creating his den on the sly, and without even thinking about it he went the rest of the way.

“No,” he said.

“... What did you say?”

“I said no. The room is mine now and it’s going to stay the way it is.”

Ruth stared at him as if she had never seen him before. “I won’t stand for it! I won’t have it!”

Wyatt said resolutely, “But I will,” and closed the door between them and locked himself inside.

Over the next several days Ruth went through her entire repertoire of threats, taunts, fits of pique, crocodile tears, and refusal to cook his meals or do his laundry. All of these had bent him to her will at one time or another, but on the den issue he was unbendable. Whenever her tirades became too much to bear, he retreated into his den. With his headphones on, she could rant and rave and pound on the door until she was blue in the face; he wouldn’t hear her, wouldn’t even know she was there.

When he wasn’t in the den, he kept the door locked and the key on the ring in his pocket. At night he put the keyring under his pillow, in case she had any ideas of trying to appropriate it while he was asleep. Eventually she pretended to give in and settled into an icy, spiteful silence, but he wasn’t fooled. It was only a temporary cease-fire in the war of nerves.

He began spending more and more time in the den. Mainly listening to folk music and Dixieland jazz, his two favorites, and reading Hawthorne, Melville, Dickens. Alone, unbothered. Content.

Until he had the heart attack.

It happened one morning while he was boiling a breakfast egg for himself. When he finally managed to convince Ruth that the chest pains were more serious than indigestion, she drove him grumbling to the hospital. Doctors confirmed the cardiac episode and he was bedridden for three days while they ran more tests to determine the extent of the damage. It turned out to be relatively little; the attack had been mild, his body “delivering a warning” as his cardiologist put it.

Ruth didn’t come to see him during his stay — his only visitor was Charlie Ledbetter — but she did deign to pick him up when he was released and drive him home. The whole way she wore an odd, satisfied little smile that puzzled him until a few minutes after their arrival, when he unlocked the door to his den and stepped inside.

And discovered that he didn’t have a den anymore.

The room was empty.

He swung around to see Ruth standing in the hall behind him, her arms folded across her chest, the satisfied smile wider on her mouth now. No, not satisfied — gloating. A smile of gloating triumph. And he realized she’d resorted to the same key trick he had, but with malice rather than necessary deception: taken the key while he was in the hospital, unlocked the door, then returned it to his keyring so she could savor his reaction.

“My den,” he said, “you stole my den.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. All I did was clean out a pesthole.”

“Pesthole? My books, my chair, my TV—”

“Rubbish, the lot of it. I had it all hauled away.”

“Hauled away where?”

“To the dump, of course. The only fit place for rubbish.”

She turned away from him, still smiling, and waddled into the kitchen. Wyatt followed her, confronted her again in front of the stove. His hands were shaking; he had never before been this angry.

“You had no right,” he said. “No right.”

“I had as much right as you did to sneak around and destroy Katie’s room in the first place.”

“It’s not Katie’s room, it’s mine.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t. If you have any idea of building another man cave to hibernate in, you’d better forget it. The room is mine now.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Mine. I’ve decided it’s too late to put it back the way it was, so I’m going to make it into an indoor garden. Orchids, schefflera, and the like. Once those window blinds are taken down, there’ll be more than enough light.”

“No,” Wyatt said. “No, no, no.”

“Yes,” she said, still smiling. “Yes, yes, yes.”

A thickening red mist formed behind his eyes. Her face shimmered in it, was consumed by it. Dimly he heard a thudding sound. Another. And then the mist was gone and he saw Ruth lying on the floor at his feet, felt the weight of an iron skillet in his hand. He didn’t remember picking up the skillet or hitting her on the head with it, but that was what he’d done: the left side of her skull was crushed.

His first reactions were shock, horror, remorse, but none of them lasted long. A strange sort of calm descended on him. He put the skillet back on the stove, bent to feel for a pulse that wasn’t there. Then he went to what had been his den and locked himself inside.

He knew he should call 911. Or Ruth’s sister Elaine or Charlie Ledbetter. Or drive to the police station and turn himself in. Something. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to leave the empty, ravaged room, not even for a few seconds.

He was still there two days later, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, when Elaine came and found the body and called the police.

Wyatt made a full voluntary confession. The detectives who questioned him were dubious at first when he told him why he had killed his wife. But when he explained in detail the manner in which she’d stolen the one thing that mattered most in his otherwise empty life, they seemed to understand.

He was held in custody in the crowded county jail before and after his arraignment, where he was charged with murder in the second degree. Tom and Katie came for brief visits; Laura called from her home in Minneapolis. They, too, seemed to understand that he’d been driven to do what he’d done, but their expressions of support were tepid and dutiful. They resented him for not being there for them while they were growing up, he knew, and always would. The chasm between him and his children that Ruth had created and his passivity had widened was too great to ever be bridged.

The trial went swiftly. The young public defender did his best against an uncompromising prosecutor, calling Tom and Charlie Ledbetter to testify as character witnesses in an effort to gain the jury’s sympathy. But the evidence against Wyatt was irrefutable. The jurors deliberated for less than an hour before returning a verdict of guilty without recommendation for leniency.

The judge gave him the maximum of twenty years, which of course amounted to a life sentence. There was, however, one tempering factor in the judgment. Because of his age, his heart condition, and lack of a prior criminal record, Wyatt was remanded to one of the state’s medium security prisons.

He thought he would be unhappy in prison, but he wasn’t. Just the opposite. He adjusted quickly to the routine, and over a period of time grew comfortable with it.

At first he had to share space with another inmate, but because he was a model prisoner, quiet and cooperative, he was soon given a private cell and permitted a television set and a CD player with headphones. His job in the prison library allowed him unlimited access to books and CDs, and eventually the warden rewarded his good behavior by allowing him a small secondhand armchair. He was required to leave his cell, which was almost exactly the same size as his den had been, for only a few hours each day — meals, work in the library, a short stay in the exercise yard. The rest of the time he was left alone. That was the best part — no one bothered him while he was locked up tight in his cell.

The room of his own at home hadn’t been perfect, but all things considered, this one was. About as perfect a man cave as Wyatt Potter could ever have hoped to have.

Angelique

She comes to me in the night, naked in the night.

The first time I believed her to be a dream image, a figment born of my passionate worship. I had dreamed of her often before then, more than once as she looked in the erotic nude scenes in her films, but not once had I imagined her there with me in my bed. My desire for her was intense, yet I never allowed it to become more than the wishful, respectful, unattainable kind one feels for a goddess.

On that first night when I heard the rustle of the sheets, smelled the alluring scent of her perfume, felt the velvety perfection of her body against mine, I thought: Don’t wake up, not yet! But I was already awake. When I was sure of it, I reached out to turn on the bedside lamp. I cannot describe the awe, the rapture I felt when I saw her there naked beside me.

“You can’t be real,” I said to her. “You can’t be Angelique.”

“Oh, but I am,” she said.

“How? Why? You don’t know me.”

“But I do know you. I know that you want me, I know that I want you.”

“A woman like you, a man like me? It isn’t possible.”

“I came because you love me. Anything is possible when love and need are strong enough.”

“I’m imagining this. You can’t be real...”

She took my hand. “Touch me here... is this real? And here. Ah, and here. Is all of it real?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“And this?” she said as she lifted her body onto mine, as the soft wetness of her engulfed me like a fire that did not burn. “Is this real?”

“Yes!”

“Say my name.”

“Angelique.”

“Say it again.”

“Angelique. Angelique. Angelique.”

I am neither a handsome nor a successful man. Small, mild, nondescript, with a mundane job to match. No family left, no close friends. Lonely, yes, yet the real world often frightens and bewilders me. And so by design and inclination, as a form of self-defense, I’ve become an escapist.

I have always loved films of all types. A great deal of my free time is spent in darkened movie theaters, in front of television and computer screens in my modest apartment. By a conservative estimate I watch perhaps one hundred films new and old each month, and I have the capacity to lose myself in every one, to become part of whatever story is being told no matter how good or bad. In that respect, and this too I freely admit, I am an emotional sponge.

But I am not given to Walter Mitty-like flights of fancy. I do not see people who aren’t there. I have no fantasy life beyond my involvement in the films I watch. I have not masturbated in thirty-three years, since the age of fourteen.

I did not and do not imagine that Angelique comes to me in the night, naked in the night, and mounts me, and gives me the greatest sexual pleasure I have ever known. She is not a dream or a figment. Not an astral projection or anything of that fantastic nature. She is real, flesh and blood real, and for some strange and wondrous reason which she refuses to divulge, she chose me, Harold Brenner, out of all her millions of admirers, to be her new lover. I did not doubt it that first night, I did not doubt it in the cold light of morning after she was gone, I do not doubt it now. I simply accept it on faith.

And I feel blessed.

Angelique has always been my favorite actress. And not just mine — the favorite of countless others world-wide. She is the brightest star in the firmament of Hollywood stars, as Venus at dusk is the brightest in the heavens. No matter what role she plays, her talent shines so much more radiantly than that of anyone around her. Even Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman pale into insignificance alongside Angelique. Her luminous eyes, the golden fall of her hair, the sweetness of her smile and the grace of her movements are unparalleled. The critics might not agree with this assessment, but what do critics know?

I have seen all forty-two of her films at least a dozen times each, and I never tire of watching her perform. I could watch each one five hundred times and I would never tire of her. Perhaps the extent and magnitude of my adoration is the reason why she chose me.

Angelique came again two nights later, and the second night after that, and the next after that. Our bodies joined and rejoined... again, again, again. And each time the level of my ecstasy intensified until it became nearly unbearable and I cried her name, cried out my love for her. Not once did she speak my name, nor tell me how much she loved me, but I don’t fault her for this. She comes to me, she’s real, she’s mine for as long as she’ll have me. That is all that matters.

Now she comes every night, and stays until just before dawn. Three, four, six, as many as eight times we merge and writhe and achieve simultaneous release. I think I can’t possibly accommodate her so often, I am a middle-aged man with so little sexual experience, but no matter how many times we have made love, she has only to touch me, lightly, and again I become like stone.

Once, in our second week together, I said to her, “You’re wearing me out, Angelique. Taking all my precious bodily fluids.”

“Yes. Isn’t it wonderful?”

She seemed not to have understood the small joke I’d made. Was it possible she was not as well versed as I in Hollywood film lore? “Precious bodily fluids,” I said again. “General Jack D. Ripper’s phrase in Dr. Strangelove. He felt it necessary to deny women his essence in order to remain pure.”

Angelique bathed me in the glow of her smile. “But you’ll never deny me yours.”

“No. Never.”

Again she touched me and again I was stone.

Every night, all night long, we revel in each other. That is all we do; she prefers not to talk about herself, me, anything at all. Again and again, again and again, with only short periods of rest between each coupling. Neither of us slept much in the beginning; now we hardly sleep at all. I am so tired each morning after she leaves that I can barely drag myself out of bed.

As much as I love and desire her, I must have a respite now and then — a night off to recharge my batteries, as it were. Tonight when she comes I’ll ask her to grant me this small favor, for both our benefits.

Her answer was no. A sweet and gentle no.

“I can’t get enough of you,” she said. “Don’t you feel the same about me anymore?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then don’t deny me. If you deny me, I might not come to you again.”

“Don’t say that! I couldn’t bear it.”

She gathers me to her again. And once more I drown in her warm soft wetness.

So tired now. Weak. I need sleep desperately, but even in the daytime I can’t seem to do more than doze for a few minutes. Can’t seem to eat anything, either; I have no appetite. My body looks and feels shrunken, shriveled, like that of a very old man.

I could not get out of bed at all yesterday or this morning. I can only lie here wide awake and wait for the night.

All day I found myself hoping Angelique would not come. But of course she does. And it seems not to matter to her that when she slips naked into my bed, she finds herself clutching a desiccated shell of a man.

“Not tonight,” I say to her in a voice that croaks like a frog’s, “please, not again tonight,” but she only laughs and reaches out her hand to touch me. I try to will myself not to respond, but I have no resistance. Her seductive powers are amazing. In an instant I am as ready for her as I was the first night.

When she joins her body to mine she laughs again, but this time the laughter is neither soft nor throaty with passion. It’s strange, shrill, a kind of hideous triumphant sound that fills me with ice instead of heat, terror instead of love. And I realize that I am not blessed but cursed.

“Lie still,” she says. “I’m almost done.”

I have no choice — I lie still.

“Now turn on the lamp. I want you to see me this last time.”

I have just enough strength left to turn on the lamp. In its pale glow as she writhes above me, the flawless beauty of her face shimmers, fragments, falls away like a crumbling mask, and when I see what lies beneath I scream... I scream... I scream... but my screams have no voice.

Quickly, hungrily, the thing that is not and never was Angelique finishes draining me dry.

Out of the Depths

He came tumbling out of the sea, dark and misshapen, like a being that was not human. A creature from the depths; or a jumbee, the evil spirit of West Indian superstition. Fanciful thoughts, and Shea was not a fanciful woman. But on this strange, wild night nothing seemed real or explicable.

At first, with the moon hidden behind the running scud of clouds, she’d seen him as a blob of flotsam on a breaking wave. The squall earlier had left the sea rough and the swells out toward the reef were high, their crests stripped of spume by the wind. The angry surf threw him onto the strip of beach, dragged him back again; another wave flung him up a little farther. The moon reappeared then, bathing sea and beach and rocks in the kind of frost-white shine you found only in the Caribbean. Not flotsam — something alive. She saw his arms extend, splayed fingers dig into the sand to hold himself against the backward pull of the sea. Saw him raise a smallish head above a massive, deformed torso, then squirm weakly toward the nearest jut of rock. Another wave shoved him the last few feet. He clung to the rock, lying motionless with the surf foaming around him.

Out of the depths, she thought.

The irony made her shiver, draw the collar of her coat more tightly around her neck. She lifted her gaze again to the rocky peninsula farther south. Windflaw Point, where the undertow off its tiny beach was the most treacherous on the island. It had taken her almost an hour to marshal her courage to the point where she was ready — almost ready — to walk out there and into the ocean. Into the depths. Now...

Massive clouds sealed off the moon again. In the heavy darkness Shea could just make him out, still lying motionless on the fine coral sand. Unconscious? Dead? I ought to go down there, she thought. But she could not seem to lift herself out of the chair.

After several minutes he moved again: dark shape rising to hands and knees, then trying to stand. Three tries before he was able to keep his legs from collapsing under him. He stood swaying, as if gathering strength; finally staggered onto the path that led up through rocks and sea grape. Toward the house. Toward her.

On another night she would have felt any number of emotions by this time: surprise, bewilderment, curiosity, concern. But not on this night. There was a numbness in her mind, like the numbness in her body from the cold wind. It was as if she were dreaming, sitting there on the open terrace — as if she’d fallen asleep hours ago, before the clouds began to pile up at sunset and the sky turned the color of a blood bruise.

A new storm was making up. Hammering northern this time, from the look of the sky. The wind had shifted, coming out of the northeast now; the clouds were bloated and simmering in that direction and the air had a charged quality. Unless the wind shifted again soon, the rest of the night would be even wilder.

Briefly the clouds released the moon. In its white glare she saw him plodding closer, limping, almost dragging his left leg. A man, of course — just a man. And not deformed: what had made him seem that way was the life jacket fastened around his upper body. She remembered the lights of a freighter or tanker she had seen passing on the horizon just after nightfall, ahead of the squall. Had he gone overboard from that somehow?

He had reached the garden, was making his way past the flamboyant trees and the thick clusters of frangipani. Heading toward the garden door and the kitchen; she’d left the lights on in there and the jalousies open. It was the lights that had drawn him here, like a beacon that could be seen a long distance out to sea.

A good thing she’d left them on or not? She didn’t want him here, a cast up stranger, hurt and needing attention — not on this night, not when she’d been so close to making the walk to Windflaw Point. But neither could she refuse him access or help. John would have, if he’d been drunk and in the wrong mood. Not her. It was not in her nature to be cruel to anyone, except perhaps herself.

Abruptly Shea pushed herself out of the chair. He hadn’t seen her sitting in the restless shadows, and he didn’t see her now as she moved back across the terrace to the sliding glass doors to her bedroom. Or at least if he did see her, he didn’t stop or call out to her. She hurried through the darkened bedroom, down the hall, and into the kitchen. She was halfway to the garden door when he began pounding on it.

She unlocked and opened the door without hesitation. He was propped against the stucco wall, arms hanging and body slumped with exhaustion. Big and youngish, that was her first impression. She couldn’t see his face clearly.

“Need some help,” he said in a thick, strained voice. “Been in the water... washed up on your beach...”

“I know, I saw you from the terrace. Come inside.”

“Better get a towel first. Coral ripped a gash in my foot... blood all over your floor.”

“All right. I’ll have to close the door. The wind...”

“Go ahead.”

She shut the door and went to fetch a towel, a blanket, and the first aid kit. On the way back to the kitchen she turned the heat up several degrees. When she opened up to him again she saw that he’d shed the life jacket. His clothing was minimal: plaid wool shirt, denim trousers, canvas shoes, all nicked and torn by coral. Around his waist was a pouch-type waterproof belt, like a workman’s utility belt. One of the pouches bulged slightly.

She gave him the towel, and when he had it wrapped around his left foot he hobbled inside. She took his arm, let him lean on her as she guided him to the kitchen table. His flesh was cold, sea-puckered; the touch of it made her feel a tremor of revulsion. It was like touching the skin of a dead man.

When he sank heavily onto one of the chairs, she dragged another chair over and lifted his injured leg onto it. He stripped off what was left of his shirt, swaddled himself in the blanket. His teeth were chattering.

The coffeemaker drew her; she poured two of the big mugs full. There was always hot coffee ready and waiting, no matter what the hour — she made sure of that. She drank too much coffee, much too much, but it was better than drinking what John usually drank. If she—

“You mind sweetening that?”

She half turned. “Sugar?”

“Liquor. Rum, if you have it.”

“Jamaican rum.” That was what John drank.

“Best there is. Fine.”

She took down an open bottle, carried it and the mugs to the table, and watched while he spiked the coffee, drank, then poured more rum and drank again. Color came back into his stubbled cheeks. He used part of the blanket to rough-dry his hair.

He was a little older than she, early thirties, and in good physical condition: broad chest and shoulders, muscle-knotted arms. Sandy hair cropped short, thick sandy brows, a long-chinned face burned dark from exposure to the sun. The face was all right, might have been attractive except for the eyes. They were a bright off-blue color, shielded by lids that seemed perpetually lowered like flags at half-mast, and they didn’t blink much. When the eyes lifted to meet and hold hers something in them made her look away.

“I’ll see what I can do for your foot.”

“Thanks. Hurts like hell.”

The towel was already soaking through. Shea unwrapped it carefully, revealing a deep gash across the instep just above the tongue of his shoe. She got the shoe and sock off. More blood welled out of the cut.

“It doesn’t look good. You may need a doctor—”

“No,” he said, “no doctor.”

“It’ll take stitches to close properly.”

“Just clean and bandage it, okay?”

She spilled iodine onto a gauze pad, swabbed at the gash as gently as she could. The sharp sting made him suck in his breath, but he didn’t flinch or utter another sound. She laid a second piece of iodined gauze over the wound and began to wind tape tightly around his foot to hold the skin flaps together.

He said, “My name’s Tanner. Harry Tanner.”

“Shea Clifford.”

“Shea. That short for something?”

“It’s a family name.”

“Pretty.”

“Thank you.”

“So are you,” he said. “Real pretty with your hair all windblown like that.”

She glanced up at him. He was smiling at her. Not a leer, just a weary smile, but it wasn’t a good kind of smile. It had a predatory look, like the teeth-baring stretch of a wolf’s jowls.

“No offense,” he said.

“None taken.” She lowered her gaze, watched her hands wind and tear tape. Her mind still felt numb. “What happened to you? Why were you in the water?”

“That damned squall a few hours ago. Came up so fast I didn’t have time to get my genoa down. Wave as big as a house knocked poor little Wanderer into a full broach. I got thrown clear when she went over or I’d have sunk with her.”

“Were you sailing alone?”

“All alone.”

“Single-hander? Or just on a weekend lark?”

“Single-hander. You know boats, I see.”

“Yes. Fairly well.”

“Well, I’m a sea tramp,” Tanner said. “Ten years of island-hopping and this is the first time I ever got caught unprepared.”

“It happens. What kind of craft was Wanderer?”

“Bugeye ketch. Thirty-nine feet.”

“Shame to lose a boat like that.”

He shrugged. “She was insured.”

“How far out were you?”

“Five or six miles. Hell of a long swim in a choppy sea.”

“You’re lucky the squall passed as quickly as it did.”

“Lucky I was wearing my life jacket, too,” Tanner said. “And lucky you stay up late with your lights on. If it weren’t for the lights I probably wouldn’t have made shore at all.”

Shea nodded. She tore off the last piece of tape and then began putting the first aid supplies away in the kit.

Tanner said, “I didn’t see any other lights. This house the only one out here?”

“The only one on this side of the bay, yes.”

“No close neighbors?”

“Three houses on the east shore, not far away.”

“You live here alone?”

“With my husband.”

“But he’s not here now.”

“Not now. He’ll be home soon.”

“That so? Where is he?”

“In Merry wing, the town on the far side of the island. He went out to dinner with friends”

“While you stayed home ”

“I wasn’t feeling well earlier.”

“Merrywing. Salt Cay?”

“That’s right.”

“British-owned, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You’ve never been here before?”

“Not my kind of place. Too small, too quiet, too rich. I prefer the livelier islands — St. Thomas, Nassau, Jamaica.”

“St. Thomas isn’t far from here,” Shea said. “Is that where you were heading?”

“More or less. This husband of yours — how big is he?”

“... Big?”

“Big enough so his clothes would fit me?”

“Oh,” she said, “yes. About your size.”

“Think he’d mind if you let me have a pair of his pants and a shirt and some underwear? Wet things of mine are giving me a chill.”

“No, of course not. I’ll get them from his room.”

She went to John’s bedroom. The smells of his cologne and pipe tobacco were strong in there; they made her faintly nauseous. In haste she dragged a pair of white linen trousers and a pullover off hangers in his closet, turned toward the dresser as she came out. And stopped in midstride.

Tanner stood in the open doorway, leaning against the jamb, his half-lidded eyes fixed on her.

“His room,” he said. “Right.”

“Why did you follow me?”

“Felt like it. So you don’t sleep with him.”

“Why should that concern you?”

“I’m naturally curious. How come? I mean, how come you and your husband don’t share a bed?”

“Our sleeping arrangements are none of your business.”

“Probably not. Your idea or his?”

“What?”

“Separate bedrooms. Your idea or his?”

“Mine, if you must know.”

“Maybe he snores, huh?”

She didn’t say anything.

“How long since you kicked him out of your bed?”

“I didn’t kick him out. It wasn’t like that.”

“Sure it was. I can see it in your face.”

“My private affairs—”

“—are none of my business. I know. But I also know the signs of a bad marriage when I see them. A bad marriage and an unhappy woman. Can’t tell me you’re not unhappy.”

“All right,” she said.

“So why don’t you divorce him? Money?”

“Money has nothing to do with it.”

“Money has something to do with everything.”

“It isn’t money.”

“He have something on you?”

“No.”

“Then why not just dump him?”

You’re not going to divorce me, Shea. Not you, not like the others. I’ll see you dead first. I mean it, Shea. You’re mine and you’ll stay mine until I decide I don’t want you anymore...

She said flatly, “I’m not going to talk about my marriage to you. I don’t know you.”

“We can fix that. I’m an easy guy to know.”

She moved ahead to the dresser, found underwear and socks, put them on the bed with the trousers and pullover. “You can change in here,” she said, and started for the doorway.

Tanner didn’t move.

“I said—”

“I heard you, Shea.”

“Mrs. Clifford.”

“Clifford,” he said. Then he smiled, the same wolfish lip-stretch he’d shown her in the kitchen. “Sure — Clifford. Your husband’s name wouldn’t be John, would it? John Clifford?”

She was silent.

“I’ll bet it is. John Clifford, Clifford Yacht Designs. One of the best marine architects in Miami. Fancy motor sailers and racing yawls.”

She still said nothing.

“House in Miami Beach, another on Salt Cay — this house. And you’re his latest wife. Which is it, number three or number four?”

Between her teeth she said, “Three.”

“He must be what, fifty now? And worth millions. Don’t tell me money’s not why you married him.”

“I won’t tell you anything.”

But his wealth wasn’t why she’d married him. He had been kind and attentive to her at first. And she’d been lonely after the bitter breakup with Neal. John had opened up a whole new, exciting world to her: travel to exotic places, sailing, the company of interesting and famous people. She hadn’t loved him, but she had been fond of him; and she’d convinced herself she would learn to love him in time. Instead, when he revealed his dark side to her, she had learned to hate him.

Tanner said, “Didn’t one of his other wives divorce him for knocking her around when he was drunk? Seems I remember reading something like that in the Miami papers a few years back. That why you’re unhappy, Shea? He knock you around when he’s drinking?”

Without answering, Shea pushed past him into the hallway. He didn’t try to stop her. In the kitchen again, she poured yet another cup of coffee and sat down with it. Even with her coat on and the furnace turned up, she was still cold. The heat from the mug failed to warm her hands.

She knew she ought to be afraid of Harry Tanner. But all she felt inside was a deep weariness. An image of Windflaw Point, the tiny beach with its treacherous undertow, flashed across the screen of her mind — and was gone again just as swiftly. Her courage, or maybe her cowardice, was gone too. She was no longer capable of walking out to the point, letting the sea have her. Not tonight and probably not ever again.

She sat listening to the wind clamor outside. It moaned in the twisted branches of the banyan tree; scraped palm fronds against the roof tiles. Through the open window jalousies she could smell ozone mixed with the sweet fragrances of white ginger blooms. The new storm would be here soon in all its fury.

The wind kept her from hearing Tanner reenter the kitchen. She sensed his presence, looked up, and saw him standing there with his eyes on her like probes. He’d put on all of John’s clothing and found a pair of Reeboks for his feet. In his left hand he held the waterproof belt that had been strapped around his waist.

“Shirt’s a little snug,” he said, “but a pretty good fit otherwise. Your husband’s got nice taste.”

Shea didn’t answer.

“In clothing, in houses, and in women.”

She sipped her coffee, not looking at him.

Tanner limped around the table and sat down across from her. When he laid the belt next to the bottle of rum, the pouch that bulged made a thunking sound. “Boats too,” he said. “I’ll bet he keeps his best designs for himself; he’s the kind that would. Am I right, Shea?”

“Yes.”

“How many boats does he own?”

“Two.”

“One’s bound to be big. Oceangoing yacht?” “Seventy-foot custom schooner.”

“What’s her name?”

“Moneybags.”

Tanner laughed. “Some sense of humor.”

“If you say so.”

“Where does he keep her? Here or Miami?”

“Miami.”

“She there now?”

“Yes.”

“And the other boat? That one berthed here?”

“The harbor at Merrywing.”

“What kind is she?”

“A sloop,” Shea said. “Carib Princess.”

“How big?”

“Thirty-two feet.”

“She been back and forth across the Stream?”

“Several times, in good weather.”

“With you at the helm?”

“No.”

“You ever take her out by yourself?”

“No. He wouldn’t allow it.”

“But you can handle her, right? You said you know boats. You can pilot that little sloop without any trouble?”

“Why do you want to know that? Why are you asking so many questions about John’s boats?”

“John’s boats, John’s houses, John’s third wife.” Tanner laughed again, just a bark this time. The wolfish smile pulled his mouth out of shape. “Are you afraid of me, Shea?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

“Why? Should I be?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

“Then how come you lied to me?”

“Lied? About what?”

“Your husband. Old John Clifford.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You said he’d be home soon. But he won’t be. He’s not in town with friends, he’s not even on the island.”

She stared silently at the steam rising from her cup. Her fingers felt cramped, as if she might be losing circulation in them.

“Well, Shea? That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s the truth.”

“Where is he? Miami?”

She nodded.

“Went there on business and left you all by your lonesome.”

“It isn’t the first time.”

“Might be the last, though.” Tanner reached for the rum bottle, poured some of the dark liquid into his mug, drank, and then smacked his lips. “You want a shot of this?”

“No”

“Loosen you up a little.”

“I don’t need loosening up.”

“You might after I tell you the truth about Harry Tanner.”

“Does that mean you lied to me too?”

“I’m afraid so. But you fessed up and now it’s my turn.”

In the blackness outside the wind gusted sharply, banging a loose shutter somewhere at the front of the house. Rain began to pelt down with open-faucet suddenness.

“Listen to that,” Tanner said. “Sounds like we’re in for a big blow this time.”

“What did you lie about?”

“Well, let’s see. For starters, about how I came to be in the water tonight. My bugeye ketch didn’t sink in the squall. No, Wanderers tied up at a dock in Charlotte Amalie.”

She sat stiffly, waiting.

“Boat I was on didn’t sink, either,” Tanner said. “At least as far as I know it didn’t. I jumped overboard. Not long after the squall hit us.”

There was still nothing for her to say.

“If I hadn’t gone overboard, the two guys I was with would’ve shot me dead. They tried to shoot me in the water but the ketch was pitching like crazy and they couldn’t see me in the dark and the rain. I guess they figured I’d drown even with a life jacket on. Or the sharks or barracuda would get me.”

Still nothing.

“We had a disagreement over money. That’s what most things come down to these days — money. They thought I cheated them out of twenty thousand dollars down in Jamaica, and they were right, I did. They both put guns on me before I could do anything and I thought I was a dead man. The squall saved my bacon. Big swell almost broached us, knocked us all off our feet. I managed to scramble up the companionway and go over the side before they recovered.”

The hard beat of the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Momentary lull: the full brunt of the storm was minutes away yet.

“I’m not a single-hander,” he said, “not a sea tramp. That’s another thing I lied about. Ask me what it is I really am, Shea. Ask me how I make my living.”

“I don’t have to ask.”

“No? Think you know?”

“Smuggling. You’re a smuggler.”

“That’s right. Smart lady.”

“Drugs, I suppose.”

“Drugs, weapons, liquor, the wretched poor yearning to breathe free without benefit of a green card. You name it, I’ve handled it. Hell, smuggling’s a tradition in these waters. Men have been doing it for three hundred years, since the days of the Spanish Main.” He laughed. “A modern freebooter, that’s what I am. Tanner the Pirate. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Why not? Don’t you find it interesting?”

“No.”

“Okay, I’ll give it to you straight. I’ve got a problem — a big problem. I jumped off that ketch tonight with one thing besides the clothes on my back, and it wasn’t money.” He pulled the waterproof belt to him, unsnapped the pouch that bulged, and showed her what was inside. “Just this.”

Her gaze registered the weapon — automatic, large-caliber, lightweight frame — and slid away. She was not surprised; she had known there was a gun in the pouch when it made the thunking sound.

Tanner set it on the table within easy reach. “My two partners got my share of a hundred thousand from the Jamaica run. I might be able to get it back from them and I might not; they’re a couple of hard cases and I’m not sure it’s worth the risk. But I can’t do anything until I quit this island. And I can’t leave the usual ways because my money and my passport are both on that damn ketch. You see my dilemma, Shea?”

“I see it.”

“Sure you do. You’re a smart lady, like I said. What else do you see? The solution?”

She shook her head.

“Well, I’ve got a dandy.” The predatory grin again. “You know, this really is turning into my lucky night. I couldn’t have washed up in a better spot if I’d planned it. John Clifford’s house, John Clifford’s smart and pretty wife. And not far away, John Clifford’s little sloop, the Carib Princess.”

The rain came again, wind-driven, with enough force to rattle the windows. Spray blew in through the screens behind the open jalousies. Shea made no move to get up and close the glass. Tanner didn’t even seem to notice the moisture.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “At dawn we’ll drive in to the harbor. You do have a car here? Sure you do; he wouldn’t leave you isolated without wheels. Once we get there we go onboard the sloop and you take her out. If anybody you know sees us and says anything, you tell them I’m a friend or a relative and John said it was okay for us to go for a sail without him.”

She asked dully, “Then what?”

“Once we’re out to sea? I’m not going to kill you and dump your body overboard, if that’s worrying you. The only thing that’s going to happen is we sail the Carib Princess across the Stream to Florida. A little place I know on the west coast up near Pavilion Key where you can sneak a boat in at night and keep her hidden for as long as you need to.”

“And then?”

“Then I call your husband and we do some business. How much do you think he’ll pay to get his wife and his sloop back safe and sound? Five hundred thousand? As much as a million?”

“My God,” she said. “You’re crazy.”

“Like a fox.”

“You couldn’t get away with it. You can’t.”

“I figure I can. You think he won’t pay because the marriage is on the rocks? You’re wrong, Shea. He’ll pay, all right. He’s the kind that can’t stand losing anything that belongs to him, wife or boat, and sure as hell not both at once. Plus he’s had enough bad publicity; ignoring a ransom demand would hurt his image and his business and I’ll make damned sure he knows it.”

She shook her head again — a limp, rag-doll wobbling, as if it were coming loose from the stem of her neck.

“Don’t look so miserable,” Tanner said cheerfully. “I’m not such a bad guy when you get to know me, and there’ll be plenty of time for us to get acquainted. And when old John pays off, I’ll leave you with the sloop and you can sail her back to Miami. Okay? Give you my word on that.”

He was lying: his word was worthless. He’d told her his name, the name of his ketch and where it was berthed; he wouldn’t leave her alive to identify him. Not on the Florida coast. Not once they left the island.

Automatically Shea picked up the mug, tilted it to her mouth. Dregs. Empty. She pushed back her chair, crossed to the counter, and poured the mug full again. Tanner sat relaxed, smiling, pleased with himself. The rising steam from the coffee formed a screen between them, so that she saw him as blurred, distorted. Not quite human, the way he had seemed to her when he had come out of the sea earlier.

Jumbee, she thought. Smiling evil.

The gale outside flung sheets of water at the house. The loose shutter chattered like a jackhammer until the wind slackened again.

Tanner said, “Going to be a long, wet night.” He made a noisy yawning sound. “Where do you sleep, Shea?”

The question sent a spasm through her body.

“Your bedroom — where is it?”

Oh God. “Why?”

“I told you, it’s going to be a long night. And I’m tired and my foot hurts and I want to lie down. But I don’t want to lie down alone. We might as well start getting to know each other the best way there is.”

No, she thought. No, no, no.

“Well, Shea? Lead the way.”

No, she thought again. But her legs worked as if with a will of their own, carried her back to the table. Tanner sat forward as she drew abreast of him, started to lift himself out of the chair.

She threw the mug of hot coffee into his face.

She hadn’t planned to do it, acted without thinking; it was almost as much of a surprise to her as it was to him. He yelled and pawed at his eyes, his body jerking so violently that both he and the chair toppled over sideways. Shea swept the automatic off the table and backed away with it extended at arm’s length.

Tanner kicked the chair away and scrambled unsteadily to his feet. Bright red splotches stained his cheeks where the coffee had scalded him; his eyes were murderous. He took a step toward her, stopped when he realized she was pointing his own weapon at him. She watched him struggle to gain control of himself and the situation.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Shea.”

“Stay where you are.”

“That gun isn’t loaded.”

“It’s loaded. I know guns too.”

“You won’t shoot me.” He took another step.

“I will. Don’t come any closer.”

“No you won’t. You’re not the type. I can pull the trigger on a person real easy. Have, more than once.” Another step. “But not you. You don’t have what it takes.”

“Please don’t make me shoot you. Please, please don’t.”

“See? You won’t do it because you can’t.”

“Please.”

“You won’t shoot me, Shea.”

On another night, any other night, he would have been right. But on this night—

He lunged at her.

And she shot him.

The impact of the high-caliber bullet brought him up short, as if he had walked into an invisible wall. A look of astonishment spread over his face. He took one last convulsive step before his hands came up to clutch at his chest and his knees buckled.

Shea didn’t see him fall; she turned away. And the hue and the cry of the storm kept her from hearing him hit the floor. When she looked again, after several seconds, he lay facedown and unmoving on the tiles. She did not have to go any closer to tell that he was dead.

There was a hollow queasiness in her stomach. Otherwise she felt nothing. She turned again, and there was a blank space of time, and then she found herself sitting on one of the chairs in the living room. She would have wept then but she had no tears. She had cried herself dry on the terrace.

After a while she became aware that she still gripped Tanner’s automatic. She set it down on an end table; hesitated, then picked it up again. The numbness was finally leaving her mind, a swift release that brought her thoughts into sharpening focus. When the wind and rain lulled again she stood, walked slowly down the hall to her bedroom. She steeled herself as she opened the door and turned on the lights.

From where he lay sprawled across the bed, John’s sightless eyes stared up at her. The stain of blood on his bare chest, drying now, gleamed darkly in the lamp glow.

Wild night, mad night.

She hadn’t been through hell just once, she’d been through it twice. First in here and then in the kitchen. But she hadn’t shot John. She hadn’t. He’d come home at nine, already drunk, and tried to make love to her, and when she denied him he’d slapped her, kept slapping her. After three long hellish years she couldn’t take it anymore, not anymore. She’d managed to get the revolver out of her nightstand drawer... not to shoot him, just as a threat to make him leave her alone. But he’d lunged at her, in almost the same way Tanner had, and they’d struggled, and the gun had gone off. And John Clifford was dead.

She had started to call the police. Hadn’t because she knew they would not believe it was an accident. John was well liked and highly respected on Salt Cay; his public image was untarnished and no one, not even his close friends, believed his second wife’s divorce claim or that he could ever mistreat anyone. She had never really been accepted here — some of the cattier rich women thought she was a gold digger — and she had no friends of her own in whom she could confide. John had seen to that. There were no marks on her body to prove it, either; he’d always been very careful not to leave marks.

The island police would surely have claimed she’d killed him in cold blood. She’d have been arrested and tried and convicted and put in a prison much worse than the one in which she had lived the past three years. The prospect of that was unbearable. It was what had driven her out onto the terrace, to sit and think about the undertow at Windflaw Point. The sea, in those moments, had seemed her only way out.

Now there was another way.

Her revolver lay on the floor where it had fallen. John had given it to her when they were first married, because he was away so much; and he had taught her how to use it. It was one of three handguns he’d bought illegally in Miami.

Shea bent to pick it up. With a corner of the bed-sheet she wiped the grip carefully, then did the same with Tanner’s automatic. That gun too, she was certain, would not be registered anywhere.

Wearily she put the automatic in John’s hand, closing his fingers around it. Then she retreated to the kitchen and knelt to place the revolver in Tanner’s hand. The first aid kit was still on the table; she would use it once more, when she finished talking to the chief constable in Merrywing.

We tried to help Tanner, John and I, she would tell him. And he repaid our kindness by attempting to rob us at gunpoint. John told him we kept money in our bedroom; he took the gun out of the nightstand before I could stop him. They shot each other. John died instantly, but Tanner didn’t believe his wound was as serious as it was. He made me bandage it and then kept me in the kitchen, threatening to kill me too. I managed to catch him off guard and throw coffee in his face. When he tried to come after me the strain aggravated his wound and he collapsed and died.

If this were Miami, or one of the larger Caribbean islands, she could not hope to get away with such a story. But here the native constabulary was unsophisticated and inexperienced because there was so little crime on Salt Cay. They were much more likely to overlook the fact that John had been shot two and a half hours before Harry Tanner. Much more likely, too, to credit a double homicide involving a stranger, particularly when they investigated Tanner’s background, than the accidental shooting of a respected resident who had been abusing his wife. Yes, she might just get away with it. If there was any justice left for her in this world, she would — and one day she’d leave Salt Cay a free woman again.

Out of the depths, she thought as she picked up the phone. Out of the depths...

Hooch

The three of us were in the cab of the chicken rancher’s truck, heading to Bringle’s Cove on the Sonoma County coast to pick up a whiskey shipment from Canada. The second truck, the bigger Graham, was five minutes or so behind us. It was five in the morning and there was hardly any traffic, but you never want to run trucks close together so it looks like a caravan, no matter what the hour. Angelo was driving and the kid, Bennie Sago, was in the middle between us. He had his Thompson gun tight between his knees, his skinny fingers sliding back and forth over the butt. My chopper was propped against the door, Angelo’s up behind the seat. The payoff money was in a sack underneath. Nobody touched that but me.

The kid was antsy as hell. Not scared, far as I could tell, just excited. This was his first run with Angelo and me. Twenty-three, twenty-four, face like a beagle, straggly mustache, hair slicked down flat with pomade. Too cocky, too mouthy for my liking, but I had to put up with him for the time being. He’d been working for Renzo four or five months now, hired on as a favor to a gee Renzo knew in the Central Valley, and the jobs he’d done so far were up to snuff. When Renzo told you to partner with somebody, you didn’t argue.

“Three hundred cases coming in, right, Joey?” this Bennie said for the second or third time.

“I already told you.”

“Some twelve-year-old Scotch, too,” Angelo said. “Twenty cases.”

“Twelve-year-old? Sure be swell to get a couple of bottles of that.”

“Don’t even think about swiping any,” I said, “you know what’s good for you.”

“Hey, Joey, I was only kidding,” the kid said. He gave a nervous little laugh. “I’d never do nothing like that.”

“Damn well better not.”

He was quiet for half a mile. Then he said, “You think we’ll have any trouble?”

“No.”

“I don’t mean with the Coast Guard or the Feds. Fix is in up at Point Arena, right? Draw them all up to Mendocino County while we make the pick-up down here. But what about hijackers?”

“What about them?” Angelo said.

“Never know when they’ll show. On land or on the ocean.”

“No trouble with hijackers in over a year.”

“Could still happen, though.”

“Not this run. Don’t wet your pants worrying about it.”

“I’m not worrying.” The kid’s fingers kept sliding over the Thompson, fondling it like you would a woman. “Just thinking what it’d be like to see some action.”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“I don’t know, maybe I would.”

“You just think you would. Get into a shootout, you’d wet your pants for sure.”

“Not me. Uh-uh, not me.”

“You ever fire that Thompson at a man?” I said.

“No. Just target practice so far. But it wouldn’t bother me none. I’m ready, willing, and able.”

“Sure you are. All hot to trot.”

Bennie was quiet for a while, until we cut off Highway One just south of Bodega Bay. It was getting close to dawn by then. Dark night, no moon, sky full of running clouds, fogbank out on the horizon — a good night for Cap Doolin’s speedboat to leave Bodega Bay and slip into Bringle’s Cove without being spotted.

“Say, Joey,” the kid said then, “you ever read Little Caesar?” Out of the blue, just like that.

“Little what?”

“Little Caesar. You know, the book by W.R. Burnett.”

“No. Never heard of it.”

“It’s the real goods, all about this Chicago gang-boss named Rico Bandello. Only problem with it is, he gets bumped off in the end.”

“Then why the hell bother to read it?”

“Because it’s the real goods, like I said. The Maltese Falcon, that’s another one with the real goods. You ever read that one?”

“No.”

“But you heard of the guy wrote it, Dashiell Hammett?”

“No.”

“Never heard of Hammett? Ah, come on.”

“You calling me a liar?”

“No, no. I’m just surprised, that’s all. He’s a local bird. Lives in San Francisco, hangs out at John’s Grill on Ellis Street. I almost met him there once about a year ago, right after The Maltese Falcon got published as a book. It was a serial in Black Mask before that.”

“So what?”

“He wrote some other books, too,” the kid said. “Red Harvest. The Dain Curse. Short stories, too. I read ’em all. He’s some writer, that Hammett. Even better than Burnett.”

“Yeah?” Angelo said. “What’s he write about?”

“Knockovers, mob wars, cheating dames, you name it. And private dicks — Sam Spade, the Continental Op. Real tough gees. He used to be a private dick himself, so he knows all about how they operate.”

“Sure he does,” I said. “Then how come he quit being one?”

“So he could write. That’s what he always wanted to do. You really ought to read one of his books, Joey.”

“I got no time to read books.”

“His stories in Black Mask, then. You know Black Mask, right?”

“No.”

“What’s Black Mask?” Angelo said.

“It’s a pulp magazine. You never heard of it?”

“No.”

“You guys ought to read it,” the kid said. “Hammett’s stories ain’t the only swell ones. Raoul Whitfield, Frederick Nebel, Carroll John Daly — they deliver the goods too.”

“Yeah? What do those birds write about?”

“Same like Hammett.”

“You do a lot of reading, huh, Bennie?” Angelo said.

“Oh, sure. A lot.”

“Bad for your eyes.”

“Hah. You sound like my old lady.”

We were less than a mile now from the side road that led to Bringle’s Cove. There was still no traffic. Bringle’s was the best delivery spot along this section of the coast. Off the beaten track, natural jetty, no hidden offshore rocks or kelp beds to foul up a boat’s engine, no place for Feds or hijackers to set up in ambush. We’d been using the cove off and on since ’27 and never had any trouble.

“I do a lot of writing, too,” the kid said. “One of these days I’m gonna write some stories for Black Mask. Right now I’m writing a book.”

“A book, huh?” Angelo said.

“Yeah. I been working on it ever since I come up permanent from the valley.”

“What kind of book?”

“A fiction book, a novel like Little Caesar and The Maltese Falcon, only better. Real tough, tougher than Burnett and Hammett.”

“What’s it about, this book of yours?”

“The liquor business. Write what you know, that’s what they tell you.”

Angelo didn’t say anything. I said, “That mean you’re writing about us, the operation?”

“Well, yeah, sort of.”

“Renzo, me, Angelo, you?”

“We’re all in it, sure, but not under our real names, not so’s we’d be recognized. I mean, I’m giving the real inside dope on how the racket works out here, but it’s all disguised, fictionalized. Nothing the cops or Feds could use, you don’t have to worry none about that.”

“What happens to us in this book of yours?”

“Nothing. That’s the beauty of it, see? None of us gets caught or shot up like Rico Bandello.” The kid squirmed some more and then laughed. “We outfox the cops and the Feds, same as we’re doing in real life, and get away clean in the end. Pretty nifty, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Nifty.”

“I call it Hooch. Couldn’t ask for a better title. Hooch.”

We jounced over the side road into Bringle’s Cove. It was a few minutes before dawn, still mostly dark, just enough daylight so you could tell the beach, the cliffside caves, the jetty were all empty except for squawking seagulls. Angelo drove into the biggest of the caves where we always left the trucks. The three of us got out with the choppers and me with the money sack and stood around waiting. The kid was still antsy. Once he said, “Man, I can’t wait to get out there and make the pickup. Action or no action.” I told him to shut his mouth and for once he shut it.

The big Graham, its canvas sides rolled halfway up so you could see the produce boxes stacked inside, rattled in about five minutes later. Three-man crew on it too. Six soldiers and six machine guns were all we’d need even if we ran into hijackers. That had only happened once on any of my runs, and what that bunch got out of it was two dead and a shot-up boat. It wasn’t anything to sweat about.

Cap Doolin showed up right on time, with just enough dawn in the sky so he could drift in without running lights. His boat was a forty-foot cruiser with twin diesels, squat-hulled and clean-decked, flush from stem to stern except for a small glassed-in pilot’s hood. She could outrun any Coast Guard cutter and had proved it more than once. Doolin eased her in close to the end of the jetty, just long enough for the six of us to climb on board. Then we headed out, running wide open once we got far enough offshore.

There was a wind and the water was choppy. Spray rattled like birdshot against the pilot house windows. Nobody said anything, not even the kid. He had his sea legs and he seemed to be handling himself all right, with his lip still buttoned.

It was full light when we neared the big Canadian rumrunner, anchored in the fogbank outside the twelve-mile limit. You couldn’t see her clear until we got close, and even then she looked like a ghost ship in the fog. The kid stood gawking at her through the windscreen. “Hey,” he said then, “hey, she’s one big mother, ain’t she.”

She was that. Hundred and ten feet, narrow-gutted, low-hulled, painted battleship gray from her waterline to the trucks of her stubby masts. Like a long, lean whale.

“How much liquor can she carry?”

“Sixty tons loaded full,” Doolin said.

“Sixty! Man!”

Doolin slid us alongside, up against the heavy rope fenders hanging from the ship’s bulwark. The six of us were all on deck by then, spreading out to watch and wait. Crewmen with machine guns were stationed on the rumrunner’s deck too. But it was all just everybody being careful. We’d done plenty of business with this bunch before.

I went over to the rail and tossed the money sack up to the Canadian captain. He knew all the cash would be there so he never bothered to count it anymore, just went ahead and ordered his crew to strip the hatch covers off the cargo hold. Doolin and his men did the same on the speedboat. I kept one eye on the kid while this was going on. Still up to snuff, but still keyed up too, his eyes jumping this way and that. The way he held his chopper, his finger skipping back and forth across the trigger, you could tell he was hoping somebody would start something.

The rumrunner’s electric power winch started to whir. The first fifty cases, already loaded into the rope net sling, came up fast out of her hold. The winchman swung them over on the flexible steel cable, lowered them quick through the cruiser’s open hatch. Everybody had the transfer down pat. It didn’t take more than an hour to load and unload all six slings.

“Smooth as silk,” the kid said when Doolin had us underway again. “But I still kind of wish we’d run into hijackers. Make a swell chapter for my book.”

“You and your goddamn book,” Angelo said.

We made short work of the Bringle’s Cove transfer too. Two hundred cases went onto the Graham, hidden by the produce crates. We took the other hundred in the chicken truck, including the twenty of twelve-year-old Scotch that somebody up here in the county had ordered special. The Graham headed northeast to Santa Rosa to make its delivery, we drove south to Constantine’s chicken ranch outside Petaluma. Constantine would handle local distribution from there.

In Angelo’s flivver, on the way to the Sausalito ferry, the kid started chattering again about the book he was writing. Hooch this, Hooch that. And some more about how all of us were in it under made-up names.

It was early evening by the time I got to the Bay Area Distributors warehouse, on the Embarcadero down by Islais Creek. Renzo’s operation was big, the biggest in San Francisco and the North Bay. More than four hundred on his payroll, contracts with haulers and distributors and homegrown suppliers of cheap jackass brandy and dago red. He ran it all from here, but he had another storage warehouse in South S.F. and a third up in Santa Rosa. All of them were packed with barrels of wine, crates of the jackass brandy, bonded Canadian Club and the best Scotch and Irish whiskey. Just about any liquor anybody could want, even some fancy cordials from France and Italy.

None of the warehouses had ever been raided. The fix was in with the city coppers and the county sheriffs here and up north. A few of the Feds, too. Not everybody’s got his price but plenty enough do. We’d had a little trouble with a couple of rival gangs trying to muscle in, but we handled them the way we handled the hijackers. Everything was running smooth now, smooth as silk like the kid said. But you still had to be careful. Real careful. You couldn’t afford to take chances.

Stairs at the far wall led up to Renzo’s office. I could smell the wine in there as I climbed up. Most of it was good, pre-Prohibition Burgundy from Sonoma and Napa counties, but there was plenty of the cheap stuff too. You couldn’t smell it from outside. The walls were thick concrete with wood facing. The warehouse was like a fortress.

Renzo’s office was blue with the smoke from the Toscanelli stogies he smoked. Why he liked those stinking black tule roots I couldn’t figure. You had to drag hard just to get smoke from one end to the other and even then you couldn’t get enough to inhale.

“Hey, Joey,” he said. “How’d it go up the coast?”

“Like usual. Clean operation.”

“Good, good. So how come you don’t look happy?”

“I think maybe we got a problem.”

“Yeah? What kind of problem?”

I told him what kind.

He fired up another Toscanelli while he thought it over. Then he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean. Probably nothing to get worked up about, but we can’t afford to take chances.”

“Just what I was thinking. You want me to handle it?”

“You’re my right hand, Joey. I wouldn’t trust nobody else.”

The next night I called up Angelo and had him come get me in his flivver. He didn’t say much when I told him what we were going to do. Good boy, Angelo. Reliable. Did what he was told and didn’t ask questions.

We picked up Bennie Sago at his apartment on Fell Street. He said when he climbed in, “So what’s happening tonight? Another coast run?”

“No,” I said. “We got some business down in Brisbane.”

“What kind of business?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

We headed south out of the city. “How’s that book of yours coming?” I asked him.

“Real good. I’m telling you, Joey, Hooch is gonna be better than Little Caesar, Red Harvest, all the rest. It’ll sell like hotcakes, then get made into a talking picture. Make me famous.”

“Me and Angelo and Renzo, too, huh?”

“Oh, sure. Only nobody’ll know it but us. We’ll all have a big laugh over that, right?”

He was primed now. He kept flapping his gums while Angelo swung us away from the Bay and up into the Brisbane hills. About how swell Hooch was, and did Angelo and me want to borrow some copies of this Black Mask so we could see if he wasn’t right about Hammett and Daly and the other hard-boiled writers. I quit listening after a while. He didn’t care. He went right on jabbering to Angelo.

We were up into the thickly wooded part of the hills, nobody around, no lights anywhere, when he finally ran down. “Say,” he said, “where we going, anyhow? This road’s nothing but a fire trail.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did Angelo.

“Joey? How much farther we got to go?”

“This’ll do right here,” I said, and Angelo pulled the flivver over to the side. “Get out, Bennie.”

“Here? What for?”

“Get out. Stand in the lights.”

He got out, went around to the front. Stood there looking around, then at me with this puzzled look on his face. Punk kid wasn’t even half as smart as he thought he was. He didn’t have a clue what was happening until I showed him my rod.

His eyes got big then, round and white as eggs in the headlights. “Christ, Joey, why? Why?”

“That book of yours,” I said. “That’s why.”

“Hooch? No! No, wait, listen to me—”

“Too late for that.”

“Please, Joey, please, you got to listen!”

I shot him twice, then went over and put a third round into him to make sure. I’ll give him this — he hadn’t tried to beg or run. He stood there and took it like a man.

I opened the door to the Fell Street apartment with the key I’d taken off Sago’s body. It wasn’t much of a place and it didn’t take Angelo and me long to search it top to bottom, every corner, every nook and cranny.

There were a bunch of books in a little case, the ones the kid had talked about and a few he hadn’t. A stack of Black Mask magazines and some other pulps too.

But there wasn’t any Hooch.

No manuscript pages, no notes, nothing at all written down. The kid hadn’t even owned a typewriting machine.

“He never wrote a word about us and the operation,” Angelo said. “Damn fool was just trying to make himself sound important. You didn’t need to bump him after all.”

“Yeah, I did. Can’t trust a punk even thinks about doing something like that.”

“Well, you and Renzo don’t have to worry about me writing a book. I ain’t ever even gonna read one.”

“That’s playing it smart,” I said. “All them things do is put ideas in your head.”

Just Looking

He hadn’t had a woman in so long, he’d started carrying a picture of his right hand around in his wallet.

Everybody he told that to, the guys he worked with at Mossman Hardware, his buddies at the Starlite Tavern, thought it was a pretty funny line. He laughed right along with them. But at night, alone in his two-room apartment, he didn’t think it was so funny anymore. Thing was, it was the plain damn truth. He’d only had a couple of women in his entire life — thirty-four years old and been laid just twice, both of those times with hookers, last time had been over eight years ago. He was just too embarrassed to get undressed in front of some hard-shell whore in a lighted room, have her look at him naked and see the contempt and laughter in her eyes. Too painful, man.

The way he figured it now, he’d never have sex again unless he paid for it. Never get married, never have the kind of relationship other guys had with a woman. He was too butt-ugly. No getting away from that — he had mirrors in his apartment, he saw his reflection in store windows, he knew what he looked like. Big puffy body on little stubby legs, not much chin, mouth like a razor slash, knobby head with a patch of hair like moss growing on a tree stump. Somebody’d said that to him once, in the Starlite or someplace. “You know something, man? You got a head looks like moss growing on a fuckin’ tree stump.”

Most of the time it didn’t bother him too much, being a toad and not having a woman. Most of the time he was a pretty happy guy. He liked his job at Mossman Hardware, he liked drinking and shooting pool with his buddies, he liked baseball (even if some of the players nowadays with their billion-dollar contracts were assholes), he liked bowling at Freedom Lanes and playing draw poker at Henson’s Card Room and watching martial arts flicks on the tube and now and then reading a Louis L’Amour western if he was in the mood for a good book. And when he got horny, well, he had his collection of porn videos and he could go on the Net and surf through the porn sites. Looking was the next best thing to having, right? Just looking could be pretty damn good.

But sometimes, some nights, not having a woman really bothered him. Some nights he felt like busting down and bawling. Life sucked sometimes. When you had a face and a body like his, when you looked like you’d been whupped with an ugly stick, life really sucked sometimes.

He figured things would go on pretty much as they always had, the good and the bad, right up until he croaked. One day the same as another. Weekdays he went to work at the hardware store, knocked off at six, headed to the Starlite or Freedom Lanes or Henson’s, went home and watched a video or fooled around online and then went to bed. Weekends he took in a ballgame, holed up in the Starlite, played poker, played pool, played with his computer, played with himself. Boring, sure, but he was used to it and mostly it suited him. He was better off than a lot of poor jobless schmucks living on the streets or on welfare or hooked on drugs, wasn’t he?

Yeah. Sure he was.

Only then, all at once, everything changed.

Then he met Julie Brock.

Well, he didn’t really meet her. More like he ran into her, almost. It was on a Saturday morning and he was in Safeway buying a couple of six-packs and some TV dinners and other stuff.

He pushed his cart around into the frozen food aisle, and there she was, not two feet away, so that he had to veer off to avoid slamming his cart into hers. As soon as he got a good look at her, it was like he’d been punched in the belly. He couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t stop staring. He must’ve looked like one of those cartoon characters, Wile E. Coyote or Bugs Bunny, when they got surprised — tongue hanging loose, eyes bugged out so far it was like they were on the end of stalks.

She was a blonde. Not your ordinary blonde, not your Marilyn Monroe type. Sort of a tawny blonde, dark and light at the same time, he’d never seen a color like it. And tall, real tall, almost six feet, with perfect bare legs that went up and up and up. Nice little rack, nice tight ass. Oh, she was gorgeous, man, the sweetest piece of sweetmeat he’d ever feasted his eyes on. She knew it, too. Walked slow and lazy, like a cat, her head up and her nose up. Haughty. Sweet and haughty and twice as sexy in a pair of shorts and a blouse as any of the naked broads on the Net or humping in one of his porn flicks.

She didn’t pay any attention to him, didn’t even glance at him. She stopped pushing her cart and opened a freezer case and bent over to get something off one of the lower shelves so he had an even better view of her ass. He stood there staring until she moved on. Then he started pushing his cart after her. He couldn’t stop looking, he couldn’t just let her go away. He felt like he’d died and gone to heaven. He felt like... he didn’t know what he felt like, except that he was all hot and cold inside and his johnson was half standing at attention in his shorts.

He followed her around the store, not real close so’s she or anybody else would notice. He got in the same checkout line she did. He trailed her out to the parking lot, to a little red Miata. His own beat-up wheels were in the next row. He hustled over there and threw his bags in the backseat, and when she pulled out of the lot he was right behind her.

This is crazy, he thought after a few blocks. Me following a woman around, any woman, let alone a stone fox like her. But what the hell, it wasn’t like he was a pervert or anything. He didn’t mean her any harm. All he was doing was looking.

So he kept on following her, all the way home. And it turned out she lived in a bungalow on Acacia Street, five blocks from his apartment. He parked across the street and watched her carry her groceries inside, and he had a big urge to go over there, offer to help so he could see her again up close. But he didn’t give in to it because he knew what’d happen if he did. She’d take one look at him and tell him to bugger off. She probably had a dozen handsome guys sniffing after her every day, she might even be married or living with somebody. She wouldn’t want anything to do with a butt-ugly toad with a head that looked like moss growing on a fuckin’ tree stump.

She took the last grocery bag into the bungalow and didn’t come out again. He stayed put for a while, but he couldn’t keep on sitting there all day waiting for another look. That was just plain stupid. So he drove on to his apartment and put his groceries away and sat down in his recliner. He’d planned to go to a ballgame today, Giants were playing the Dodgers, but now he didn’t feel like it. Didn’t feel like bowling or going to the Starlite or doing anything else he liked to do on Saturdays.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the blonde. It was like she was lodged inside his head, big as life, that tawny light-and-dark hair and that gorgeous face and that hard body.

Oh, that fine, hard body!

Sunday morning he drove over to Acacia Street again. He’d dreamed about her that night, damn near a wet dream, and woke up with her, and wanted to see her again in the flesh so bad he couldn’t think about anything else.

Damn, though — her Miata wasn’t in the driveway. He parked and waited a half hour or so, but she didn’t come home. He got tired of just sitting and walked over in front of her place, casual, like a guy out for a Sunday stroll. Her bungalow was small, painted a bright blue with white trim, trees and bushes growing thick along both sides. When he squinted down the driveway he could see a jungly backyard, too — part of a lawn, more trees, some tall oleanders. He knew this neighborhood almost as well as his own and he was pretty sure the yard butted up close to Miller Creek.

Back in his car, he drove around the block. Two blocks, matter of fact, because what was behind her place was a grammar school. Nobody was at the school today except some kids playing basketball on the courts behind the classrooms. He walked past them, across a soccer field and another acre or so of lawn. A chainlink fence made up the far boundary. On the other side of that was Miller Creek, and on the other side of the creek was the blue bungalow. He could see part of its ass end when he got to the fence, but the rest was hidden by the trees and oleanders.

Another thing he could see was that it was a short distance down the bank, across the mostly dry creekbed, and up the other bank into those bushes. Be easy enough to find your way in the dark if you were careful. You wouldn’t need to climb the fence, either. There was a gate about twenty yards away. Why they’d put a gate in the fence here was anybody’s guess, but there it was. The padlock on it was an old Schindler. He grinned when he saw that. Hell, with one of the passkeys they had at Mossman Hardware, you could open that puppy up in about two seconds flat.

Eight o’clock Monday morning, he was back across the street from the blue bungalow. He didn’t have to be at work until ten and he was hoping the blonde would leave for whatever job she had long before that. Sure enough, she came out at about eight-twenty. All dressed up in a tan suit, that tawny blonde hair piled high on top of her head. Sweetmeat for a treat!

He followed her red Miata downtown. She stopped for coffee and a doughnut or something at a bakery on Fourth and then she went to the Merchants’ Exchange Bank on Hollowell. The bank wasn’t open yet, but somebody let her in and she didn’t come out again. So that had to be where she worked.

He took another ride to the bank on his lunch hour, and this time he went inside. He saw her right away. She wasn’t a teller — she had her own desk and she was tapping away on a computer, her lower lip caught between her teeth. He tried not to stare too hard as he walked by. There was one of those little nameplates on her desk and that was how he found out her name was Julie Brock.

Over the next week he found out some more things about her, just by hanging around the bank and her neighborhood. Turned out she wasn’t married or living with anybody. She did have a boyfriend, handsome football player type who drove a fuckin’ Mercedes. The boyfriend stayed late at her bungalow a couple of times, but not the whole night. Which maybe meant he was married, or maybe it didn’t mean anything at all. Guy didn’t come over every night, either, only on Friday and Saturday. During the week, she turned out her lights and hit the sack before eleven. Probably because she had to get up early for her job.

The following Monday night, he left his apartment a little before ten and drove to the grammar school. He made sure nobody was around before he went into the schoolyard, across to the chainlink fence. He was scared and excited, both. He knew he was taking a real big risk, he’d had a lot of conversations with himself about that, but he hadn’t been able to talk himself out of it. Crazy, sure, but it was the only way he’d ever get to see her alone, up close and personal.

He slipped through the gate, picked his way across the creek and up into her yard without making enough noise to carry. The rear windows and back entrance were dark, but he found a lighted window on the far side. The curtains were open and the room inside was plain as day. Oh, man, it was her bedroom! She wasn’t in there, but the covers on the bed were turned down and more light was showing behind a partly open door in the far wall.

He stepped into a patch of tree shadow, his mouth dry and metal-tasting. It was a perfect spot for looking, only about twenty-five feet of lawn between him and the window. He waited there, so damn excited he had trouble catching his breath.

And then he heard the sound of a toilet flushing and she walked out of the bathroom, and all she was wearing was a bra and panties. Bug-eyed, he watched her move around here and there, arranging clothes and stuff. And then she started doing a bunch of exercises, bending over, stretching, jumping, twisting, all that fine glistening flesh shaking and quivering.

He didn’t think the show could get any better, but pretty soon it did. As soon as she stopped exercising, she reached up behind her and unhooked her bra and let it fall. A couple of seconds later she was out of her panties, too. Natural blonde! He couldn’t believe he was seeing her like that, all of her, naked. Hot and sweaty and naked, right there in front of him, rubbing her hands under her breasts and down over her hips...

Man, oh, man, oh man oh man oh man ohmanohmanohmanohmanohman — oh!

He kept going back there. After that show the first night, he wouldn’t’ve stayed away for a million bucks. Didn’t go Friday or Saturday, but most every other night. Once the boyfriend was there even though it wasn’t the weekend, the two together in the sack, but the only light was in the bathroom and he couldn’t see much of what they were doing. Another time she had the curtains closed for some damn reason. The rest of the nights it was showtime. Into the bedroom she’d come in bra and panties, fuss around, do those exercises for about ten minutes, get naked, rub up that hot sweaty body for a minute or so, then go take a shower and get into bed and shut off the light. Man, it was better than any video he’d ever seen, porn or otherwise.

Then one night, a real warm night, she had the bedroom window open for some air. She came out and did her number, and he must’ve shifted around and made a noise or something because all of a sudden she quit exercising and moved to the window and stood peering out. He was pretty sure she couldn’t see him out in the dark, but he froze anyway. She stood staring for a few seconds and then, quick, she shut the window and went and turned out the light before she got into bed.

He should’ve taken that as a warning and not gone back for a while. But he didn’t. He went back the next night at the same time.

And that was his big mistake.

The lights were on in her bedroom, same as usual, but he didn’t see her as he slipped through the oleanders to his ringside spot. He figured she was still in the bathroom, which was always a relief because a time or two he’d got there a little late and missed part of the show. He eased forward into the patch of tree shadow, licking his lips.

And all of a sudden a bright beam of light hit him square in the eyes and a voice, her voice, said hard and angry, “You dirty damn pervert!”

He almost jumped out of his skin. Panic surged in him and he’d’ve taken off, run like the fuckin’ wind if she hadn’t said, “Stand right there — I have a gun, I’ll shoot if you move.”

He froze. Heard himself say, “A gun?” in a voice like a frog croaking.

“That’s right, and I know how to use it. You don’t think I’d be out here waiting for you unarmed, do you?”

“Listen, I’m sorry, Julie, I didn’t mean nothing—”

“Oh, so you know my name. Well, I know you, too, you fat creep, I’ve seen you before. What were you planning to do? Sneak in some night and rape me?”

“No! Jesus, no, I never would’ve done nothing like that, I never would’ve hurt you...”

“You just like to watch, is that it? Well, your Peeping Tom days are over right now.”

“What... what’re you gonna do?”

“Call the police, that’s what I’m going to do.”

“No, wait, you can’t—”

“Can’t I? You just watch me. Go on, get moving.”

“Moving? Where?”

“Into the house, where do you think?”

He didn’t want to go into the house. He still wanted to run, but what good would that do? She could identify him, she’d sic the cops on him anyway—

“Move, I said. If you don’t do what I say, if you try anything, I’ll shoot you. I mean it, I will.”

For a few seconds more it was like he was paralyzed. Then he wasn’t anymore, his legs were moving and taking him out onto the lawn. The flashlight glare slid out of his eyes — she was over on the other side of the tree — but he was still half blind. He stumbled and heard somebody make a little moaning sound... him, it came out of him. She told him to walk around to the back door and he did that. She told him to open it and go inside and he did that, too.

Kitchen. He stood there blinking, trying to focus, so scared he was shaking all over. She came in behind him, looped around to one of those breakfast bar counters a few feet away. She had a gun, all right. Little silver automatic that caught the light and seemed to be winking at him.

“Sit down at the table over there,” she said.

Still blinking, he started over to the table. Then he stopped and swung his head toward her again. Now she had a cordless phone in her other hand. Her eyes shifted back and forth between him and the phone, her face all scrunched up and hot-eyed, and she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen anymore, she wasn’t even pretty, she was a hag as ugly as he was getting ready to have him arrested, put in prison —

He lunged at her. Didn’t think about what he was doing, just did it. She swung the gun up and squeezed the trigger point blank. She’d’ve killed him sure, shot him down like a dog, except that the little automatic must’ve jammed, it didn’t go off, and in the next second he was on her.

He knocked the fuckin’ gun out of her hand, yanked the phone away from her. She opened up her mouth to scream. He jammed his hand over it, dragged her body in tight against his. Even then, even after she’d tried to blow his brains out, he didn’t have any idea of hurting her, only wanted to keep her from yelling somehow so he could get away. But she fought and squirmed, kicking his shins, clawing his arm, it was like he had hold of a wildcat. She got one arm all the way loose and those long nails slashed up and ripped furrows in his neck. That hurt, really hurt. Made him mad and kind of wild himself. He couldn’t hold her, and she twisted her body and pulled loose and tried to break his balls with her knee.

The next thing he knew he was hitting her with the phone. Hitting her, hitting her, hitting her until she quit making noises and quit fighting and fell down on the floor on her back. There was blood all over her face and head and her eyes were wide open with a lot of the white showing. He saw that and he wasn’t wild anymore. He stared at her, stared at the blood, stared at the bloody phone in his hand. He made the same kind of sound he’d made outside and dropped the phone and went down on one knee beside her. Picked up one of her wrists — limp, no pulse — and put his fingers against her neck and didn’t feel any pulse there, either.

Dead!

Then he ran. Ran like there was a pack of junkyard dogs on his heels. Out of the kitchen, across the yard, through the bushes, across the creek, through the fence gate, across the schoolyard and out to where he’d parked his wheels. Not caring how much noise he made or if anybody saw him, not caring about anything except getting far away from there.

He didn’t remember driving home. He was running and then he was at the car and then he was in his apartment putting on the dead bolt and the chain lock. He was shaking so hard he could hear a clicking sound, his teeth knocking together or maybe the bones rattling inside his skin. When he put on the light he saw blood on his hands, on his shirt and jacket. He ripped all his clothes off and got into the shower and scrubbed and scrubbed, but he couldn’t make himself feel clean. He couldn’t get warm, either, not even lying in bed with the electric blanket turned all the way up.

He lay there in the dark, his head full of pictures of her lying on her kitchen floor all bloody and dead. But it wasn’t his fault. She’d tried to kill him, hadn’t she? Clawed him, tried to break his balls? He hadn’t wanted to hurt her — she’d made him do it in self-defense. Her fault, not his. Hers, hers, hers!

He kept listening for the doorbell. Waiting for the cops to come. He’d tell them it wasn’t his fault, but he knew they’d take him to jail anyway

Only the cops didn’t come. He lay wide awake the whole night, waiting, and in the morning he was amazed he was still alone.

He called up his boss, Mr. Mossman, and said he was sick, he wouldn’t be in today. Then he put on his robe and sat in his recliner with the TV going for noise and waited for the cops to show up.

All day he sat there and still no cops.

At six o’clock he switched over to the news and pretty soon he heard her name, saw her picture flash on the screen. Julie Brock, twenty-seven, found dead in her rented bungalow on Acacia Street, bludgeoned to death with a cordless phone. Neighbors had heard noises, one of them saw a man running away but couldn’t describe him because it’d been too dark. The TV guy said the police were working on several leads and expected to make an arrest soon. Maybe that was the truth and maybe it wasn’t. All he could do was sit scared, wait scared to find out.

He waited four whole days, there in the apartment the whole time. Told Mr. Mossman he had the flu and Mr. Mossman said take care of himself, get plenty of rest, drink plenty of liquids. He drank plenty of liquids, all right. Beer, wine, scotch, every kind of alcohol he had in the place. Watched TV, drank, threw up most of what he ate, and waited.

The cops never did show up.

On the fifth day he wasn’t so scared anymore. On the sixth day he was hardly scared at all and he went out for the first time to buy some more beer and booze. On the seventh day he knew they weren’t going to come and arrest him, not ever. He couldn’t say how he knew that, he just did.

The furrows on his neck were mostly healed by then, but he put on a high-necked shirt and buttoned the top button to make sure the marks didn’t show. Then he went back to work. Mr. Mossman said it was good to have him back. That night, when he went to the Starlite Tavern, his buddies said the same thing and bought him a couple of rounds of drinks and he won eight bucks shooting pool.

Things settled down to normal again. He worked and went to the Starlite and Freedom Lanes and Henson’s Card Room, the same as he used to, and the whole crazy thing with Julie Brock faded and faded until he wasn’t thinking about her at all anymore. It was as if none of it ever happened. Not just that last night in her bungalow — all the nights before it, the whole crazy business. He couldn’t even remember what she looked like.

A lot more time passed, and his life was just the way it’d been before, good sometimes, boring sometimes, lonely sometimes. And then one day he was working behind the counter at the hardware store and he looked up and this babe was standing there. A redhead — oh, man, the most gorgeous redhead he’d ever seen. His eyes bugged out like they were on stalks. Young, slim, that red hair like fire around her head, white skin smooth as cream, a great rack poking out the front of her sweater, her mouth big and soft and smiling at him. He stared and stared, but she didn’t stop smiling. Real friendly type, wanted to buy a space heater and some other stuff for her new apartment.

He showed her around, helped her pick out the best items, wrote up her order. She wanted to know could she have it delivered, and he said sure, you bet, and she gave him her address along with her credit card. He watched her walk out, the way her ass swung under her green skirt, and his mouth was dry and he felt all hot and cold inside and his johnson was having fits in his shorts.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her all day. She was the most beautiful, exciting woman he’d ever feasted his eyes on. Before he got off work he packed up her order so he could deliver it himself, personally. He had to see her again, see where she lived. There wasn’t any harm in that, was there?

Just looking?

What Happened to Mary?

When you live in a small town and something way out of the ordinary happens, it’s bound to cause a pretty big fuss. Such as a woman everybody knows and some like and some don’t disappearing all of a sudden, without any warning or explanation. Tongues wag and rumors start flying. Folks can’t seem to talk about anything else.

That’s what happened in my town last year. Ridgedale, population 1,400. Hundred-year-old buildings around a central square and bandstand, countryside all pine-covered hills, rolling meadows, and streams full of fat trout. Prettiest little place you’d ever want to see. Of course, I’m biased. I was born and raised and married here, and proud to say I’ve never traveled more than two hundred miles in any direction in the fifty-two years since.

Mary Dawes, the woman who disappeared, wasn’t a native herself. She moved to Ridgedale from someplace upstate after divorcing a deadbeat husband. Just drifted in one day, liked the look of the town, got herself a waitress job at the Blue Moon Café and a cabin at the old converted auto court on the edge of town, and settled in. Good-looking woman in her thirties, full of jokes and fun, and none too shy when it came to liquor, men, and good times. She had more than her share of all three in the year or so she lived here, but I’m not one to sit in judgment of anybody’s morals. Fact is, I own Luke’s Tavern, Ridgedale’s one and only watering hole. Inherited it from my father, Luke Gebhardt, Senior, when he died twenty years ago.

Mary liked her fun, like I said, and rumor had it she didn’t much care if the man she had it with was married or single. But she never openly chased married men and she wasn’t all that promiscuous, even if some of the wives called her the town slut behind her back. One relationship at a time and not flagrant about it, if you know what I mean. She came into the tavern one or two nights a week and drank and laughed and played darts and pool with the other regulars, but I never once saw her leave with a man. She made her dates in private. And never gave me or anybody else any trouble.

One of the regulars gave her trouble, though, same as he gave trouble to a lot of other folks at one time or another. Tully Buford, the town bully. Big, ugly, with bad teeth and the disposition of a badger. Lived by himself in a run-down little farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Carpenter and woodworker by trade, picked up jobs often enough to get by because he was good at his work.

Thing about Tully, he was more or less tolerable when he was sober, but when he drank more than a few beers he turned loudmouthed mean. More than once I had to throw him out when he had a snootful. More than once the county sheriff’s deputies had to arrest him for fighting and creating a public disturbance, too, but he never started any fights or did any damage in my place. If he had, I’d’ve eighty-sixed him permanently. Worse he ever did was devil people and throw his weight around, and as annoying as that was, I couldn’t justify barring him from the premises for it.

Oh hell now, Luke Gebhardt, be honest. You were afraid if you did bar him, he’d come in anyway and start some real serious trouble.

He was capable of it. Town bully wasn’t all he was. Vandal, too, or so most of us believed; Ridgedale had more than its share of that kind of mischief, all of it done on the sly at night so nobody could prove Tully was responsible. Animal abuse was another thing he was guilty of. Doc Dunaway saw him run down a stray dog with his pickup and swore it was deliberate, and there’d been some pet cats, a cow, and a goat shot that was likely his doing.

So it was easier and safer to just stay clear of him whenever possible and try to ignore him when it wasn’t. The only one who felt and acted different was J.B. Hatfield, but I’ll get to him in a minute.

Now and then Tully tried to date Mary Dawes. Like every other woman in Ridgedale, she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Just laughed and made some comical remark meant to sting and walked away. One night, though, he prodded her too long and hard and she slapped his face and told him if he didn’t leave her alone, he’d have to go hunting a certain part of his anatomy in Jack Fisher’s cornfield. Everybody had a good laugh over that and Tully went stomping out. That was two days before Mary disappeared.

Disappeared into thin air, seemed like. One day she was there, big as life, and the next she was gone. The last time any of us saw her was when she left the tavern, alone, about eleven-thirty on a warm Thursday night in October.

She hadn’t told anybody she was thinking of leaving Ridgedale, hadn’t given notice at the Blue Moon. On Friday, Harry Duncan, the Blue Moon’s owner, went out to her cabin at the old auto court. Her car was there but she wasn’t. She hadn’t checked out and none of the other residents had seen her leave or knew where she’d gone. That’s when everybody started asking the same question.

What happened to Mary?

The first time I heard foul play suggested was on the second day after she went missing. J.B. Hatfield was the one who said it. Tully Buford was there, too, and so were old Doc Dunaway and Earl Pierce. Doc is a retired veterinarian, had to give up his profession when his arthritis got too bad; he’s the quiet one of the bunch, likes to play chess with Cody Smith, the town barber, or just sit minding his own business. Earl owns Pierce’s Auto Body, but he spends more time in my place than he does at his own; lazy is the word best describes him, and he’d be the first to admit it. J.B. works for Great Northwest Building Supply. Young fellow, husky, puts on a tough-guy act now and then but not in an offensive way. He’s the only one who wasn’t afraid to stand up to Tully Buford. Two of them were always sniping at each other. One time they went outside in the alley to settle an argument, but no blows were struck. Tully was the one who backed down, not that he’d ever admit it. J.B. got the worst of the face-off though. It was his goat that was shot a week or so later.

The bar talk that evening was all about Mary Dawes, naturally, and J.B. said, “I wonder if somebody killed her.”

“Now who’d do a crazy thing like that?” I said.

“Her ex-husband, maybe.”

“Wasn’t a bitter divorce. What reason would he have?”

“Hell, I don’t know. But it sure is funny, her disappearing so sudden and her car still out there at the auto court.”

Earl said, “Could be she went with a man one time too many.”

“Picked the wrong one, you mean?” I said. “A stranger?”

“Somebody passing through and stopped in at the Blue Moon for a meal. Lot of crazies running around out there these days.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” J.B. said, and looked straight at Tully.

Tully didn’t catch the look. He said to Doc, “Hey, Doc, you think Mary’s been killed?”

“I have no opinion.”

“You never have no opinion about nothing. Come on, now, you old fart. If she was killed, who you suppose done it?”

“There’s no point in speculating.”

“I asked you a question,” Tully said, harsh. “I want an answer.”

Doc sighed and looked him square in the eye. He’s mild-mannered, Doc is; usually he just ignored Tully. But Tully picked on him more than most and even a quiet old gent can get fed up. “All right, then,” he said. “If she was murdered, the person responsible might be living right here in Ridgedale. Could even be the same coward who runs down stray dogs and shoots defenseless animals in the middle of the night.”

It got quiet in there. Tully’s face turned a slow, turkey-wattle red. He said, “You accusing me, Doc?”

“Did you hear me say your name?”

“You better not be accusing me. I told you before, I never run down that mutt on purpose. You go around accusing me of that and worse, you’ll be damn sorry.”

“What’ll you do?” Doc asked. “Throw a rock through one of my windows? Pour sugar in my gas tank? Shoot some more cats in my neighborhood?”

Tully shouted, “I never done none of those things!” and grabbed Doc’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough to make him yell.

“Leave him alone.” That was J.B. He stood up and pulled Tully’s hand off Doc’s shoulder. “Doc’s got bad arthritis — you know that, you damn fool.”

“Who you calling a damn fool?”

“You, you damn fool.”

Tully was up, too, by then and the two of them stood nose to nose, glaring. I said, “Take it outside, you want to fight,” but it didn’t come to blows between them this time, either. The glaring contest went on for about a minute. Then Tully said, “Ah, the hell with it, the hell with all of you,” and went storming out.

Earl said as J.B. sat down again, “I was you, J.B., I’d lock up that new goat of yours and keep a sharp eye on your property from now on.”

It was the next day, Saturday, the manager of the old auto court opened up Mary’s cabin and found the bloodstains.

More than a few, the way we heard it, on the bed and on the bathroom floor. Long dried, so they must’ve been made the night she disappeared. The place was torn up some, too, from some kind of struggle. The county sheriff came out to investigate and didn’t find anything to tell what had happened, but he considered the cabin a crime scene and kept right on investigating.

News of the bloodstains really stirred things up. It looked like murder, all right, and we’d never had a mystery killing in Ridgedale — no killing of any kind since one of the DiLucca sisters shot her unfaithful husband thirty-five years ago. Nobody who came into my place that night talked about anything else. Tully Buford wasn’t among them, though; he never showed up.

“Blood all over the place,” J.B. said. “Told you she’d been killed, didn’t I?”

“Well, we still don’t know it for sure,” I said. “They haven’t found her yet.”

“Might never find her. Plenty of places to hide a body in all the wilderness around here.”

“Won’t make any difference if they do or don’t,” Earl said. “Whoever done it’s long gone by now.”

“Not the way I see it, he isn’t.”

“You think it’s somebody lives here, J.B.?”

“I think it’s Tully.”

“Come on, now,” I said. “What Doc said last night, he didn’t mean it literally. Did you, Doc?”

He shrugged. “It’s possible.”

“I don’t know. Tully’s a bully and a bunch of other things, but a murderer?”

“Shot my goat, didn’t he?” J.B. said. “Run over that stray dog on purpose, didn’t he?”

“Big difference between animals and a woman.”

“Mary might’ve turned him down once too often. Tully’s got a hell of a temper when he’s riled and drunk.”

“I sure hope you’re wrong.”

“I hope I’m not,” J.B. said.

Well, he wasn’t. And we found it out a lot sooner than any of us expected.

Sunday morning, the sheriff arrested Tully Buford for the murder of Mary Dawes.

Cody Smith came into the tavern, all hot and bothered, and told us about it. He got the news from his brother-in-law, who works as a dispatcher in the county sheriff’s office, and he couldn’t wait to spread it around.

“Sheriff found Mary’s dress and underclothes and purse in a box under Tully’s front porch. Soaked in blood, the lot.”

I said, “The hell he did!”

“There was a bloody knife in there, too. Tully’s knife and no mistake — his initials cut right into the handle.”

“Told you!” J.B. said. “Didn’t I tell you he did it?”

“How’d the sheriff come to find the evidence?” I asked. “What set him after Tully?”

“Phone call this morning,” Cody said. “Man said he was driving past the auto court three nights ago, late, and saw Tully putting something big and heavy wrapped in a blanket in the back of his pickup. Decided he ought to report it when he heard about the bloodstains in Mary’s cabin.”

“Anonymous call?”

“Well, sure. Some folks, you know, they don’t want to get themselves involved directly in a thing like this.”

“But the sheriff took the call seriously?”

“Sure he did. Figured at first it might be some crank, but then he got to thinking about the trouble he’d had with Tully and Tully’s reputation and he decided he’d better have a talk with Tully. Got himself a search warrant before he went, and a good thing he did. Soon as he found the box and saw what was in it, he handcuffed Tully and hauled him off to jail.”

“Tully admit that he done it?” Earl asked.

“No. Swore up and down he never went near Mary’s cabin the night she disappeared, never saw the box or the bloody clothes.”

“What about his knife?”

“Claimed somebody stole it out of his truck a couple of weeks ago.”

“He’ll never confess,” J.B. said. “He never owned up to anything he done in his entire miserable life.”

Doc said mildly, “A man’s innocent until proven guilty.”

“You standing up for Tully now, Doc?”

“No. Just stating a fact.”

“Well, I don’t see much doubt. He’s guilty as sin.”

“They haven’t found Mary yet, have they?”

“Not yet,” Cody said, “but a team of deputies has already started hunting on Tully’s property. If they don’t find her or what’s left of her there, sheriff’s gonna organize a search with cadaver dogs.”

Well, they didn’t find Mary on Tully’s property and the search teams and cadaver dogs didn’t find any trace of her in the surrounding countryside. They were out combing the hills and woods five days before they gave up. Sheriff’s men did find one other piece of evidence against Tully, though. More bloodstains, small ones in the back of his pickup. All the blood was the same — type AB negative, Mary’s type and not too common. They knew that on account of she’d given blood once during a drive at the county seat.

Meanwhile, Tully stayed locked in a cell hollering long and loud about how somebody was trying to frame him. According to Cody’s brother-in-law, he threw out the names of just about everyone he knew, J.B. Hatfield’s number one among them. But it was just a lot of noise that didn’t get listened to. Nobody liked Tully worth a damn, but who’d hate him enough to frame him for murder?

None of us went up to the county jail to see him. None of us would have even if he hadn’t been throwing accusations around, trying to lay the blame on somebody else. Plain fact was, life in Ridgedale was a lot more pleasant without Tully Buford around.

There was a lot of speculation about whether or not the county district attorney would prosecute him for first-degree murder. “Bet you he won’t,” Earl said. “Not without a whatyoucallit, corpus delicti.” Doc Dunaway pointed out that corpus delicti meant “body of the crime,” not an actual dead body, and that precedents had been established for first-degree homicide convictions in nobody cases. Even so, the D.A. was a politician first and a prosecutor second, and he didn’t want to lose what in our small county was a high-profile trial. Most of us figured he’d play it safe. Try Tully on a lesser crime, like manslaughter. Like as not there was enough circumstantial evidence for him to get a conviction on that charge.

Turned out that’s just what he did. The trial lasted about a week, with a parade of witnesses testifying against Tully’s character and nobody testifying in his favor. The public defender didn’t put up much of a defense, and Tully hurt himself with enough cussing and yelling in the courtroom to get himself restrained and gagged. The jury was out less than an hour before they brought in a guilty verdict. First-degree manslaughter, ten to fifteen years in state prison.

There wasn’t a soul in Ridgedale didn’t believe justice had been served.

Well, that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. Or it was until this morning, nearly a year after the trial ended. Now all of a sudden I’ve got a whole different slant on things.

It was Al Phillips gave it to me. Al is Soderholm Brewery’s delivery-man on the route that includes Ridgedale; he stops in once a month to pick up empty kegs and drop off full ones. I went out to talk to him and lend a hand, as I usually do, and while we were loading the fresh kegs he said, “I was up in the state capital last weekend. Took my wife to the outdoor jazz festival up there.”

“How was it?” I asked.

“Oh, fine. But a funny thing happened afterward.”

“What sort of funny thing?”

“Well, believe it or not, I think I saw Mary Dawes.”

My first reaction was to laugh. “You must be kidding.”

“No, sir,” he said seriously. “Not a bit.”

“Must’ve been some woman looks like Mary.”

“Could be, but then she’d just about have to be her twin,” Al said. “I stopped in at the Blue Moon for lunch enough times to know Mary Dawes when I see her.”

“Al, she’s been dead a year. You know that.”

“All I know is what I saw last Sunday.”

“You talk to this woman?”

“I tried to, but she hustled off into the crowd before I could.”

“Did she see you?”

“I don’t know. Might have.”

“If she did, why would she avoid you like that?”

Al shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Mary,” I said. “Mary Dawes.”

“Yes, sir. Mary Dawes.”

I didn’t believe it then. I’m not positive I do even now. But after Al left I couldn’t get rid of the notion that Mary might still be alive. I was still chewing on it when Doc Dunaway came in. It was early afternoon then and there weren’t any other customers. I drew him a pint of lager, his only tipple, and when I set the glass down in front of him, he said, “You’ve got a funny look, Luke. Something the matter?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said, and I told him what Al had told me.

He drank some of his beer. “It couldn’t have been Mary,” he said. “A woman who looks like her, that’s all.”

“That’s what I said. But Al sure sounded convinced. If he’s right, then Tully’s innocent like he claimed and somebody really did frame him — for a murder that never happened.”

“Then how do you explain Mary’s sudden disappearance? Where did the blood in her room come from, the blood on her clothes and Tully’s knife and in the bed of Tully’s pickup?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. Suppose it was all part of a plan. Suppose whoever wanted to frame Tully paid her to disappear the way she did. Paid her enough so she wouldn’t mind having herself cut and spilling some of her blood.”

“Sounds pretty far-fetched to me.”

“Not if whoever it was hated Tully enough.”

“You don’t mean J.B?”

“Well, he’s the first one I thought of,” I said. “Only J.B. doesn’t have much money and it would’ve taken plenty to convince Mary. And he’s not too smart, J.B. isn’t. I just can’t see him coming up with a plan like that.”

“Who else could it be?”

“Somebody with both brains and money. Somebody who was sick and tired of Tully and his bullying and carousing and killing of defenseless animals—”

I stopped. Of a sudden, the back of my scalp started to crawl. Doc? Doc Dunaway?

No, it couldn’t be. But then I thought, yes it could. He was a vet for forty years and he loved animals and he was smart as a whip and he had a nice fat nest egg put away from the sale of his veterinary practice. Old and arthritic, sure, but a man didn’t have to be young and hale to steal a knife out of an unlocked truck or help mess up a cabin and sprinkle some blood around or hide a box under a porch or make an anonymous telephone call. And a vet would know exactly how and where to make a surgical cut on a person’s body that would bleed a lot without doing any real damage...

Doc sat watching me through his spectacles. His eyes have always been soft and kind of watery; now they seemed to have a hard shine on them, like polished agates.

Pretty soon he said in his quiet way, “Won’t do to go around speculating, Luke. That’s how ugly rumors get started and folks get hurt.”

“Sure,” I said, and my voice sounded funny. “Sure, that’s right.”

“Chances are it wasn’t Mary Al Phillips saw. And even if it was, why, she might not be in the capital for long. Might decide to leave the state entirely this time, move back East somewhere.”

“Why would she do that?”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say your theory is correct. The person who conceived the plan might have kept in touch with her, mightn’t he? Might offer her more money now to move away so far she’ll never be seen again by anyone from this county. Then there’d be no proof she’s alive. No proof at all.”

I didn’t say anything. My throat felt dry.

“Know what I’d do if I was you, Luke?”

“... What’s that?”

“I wouldn’t mention what Al Phillips told you to anybody else. I’d just forget about it. Tully Buford belongs where he’s at, behind bars. Ridgedale is better off without him.” Doc finished his beer, laid some money on the bartop, and eased himself off the stool in his slow, arthritic way. Then he said, “Well, Luke? Are you going to take my advice?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said.

“Better think on it long and hard before you do anything,” he said, and shuffled out.

Think on it long and hard? I haven’t done anything else. And I still can’t make up my mind.

I’m a law-abiding citizen; I always try to do the right thing, always want to see justice done. It’s just not right for an innocent man to be sitting in prison for a crime that never happened in the first place-even a man like Tully Buford. My duty is to go to the sheriff and tell him what I suspect.

But what can he do? Nothing, that’s what. Not without proof that Mary’s alive and Tully was framed, and I don’t have a shred to give him. Just a lot of unsubstantiated maybes and what-ifs.

And I could be mistaken about Doc Dunaway. I don’t think I am, not after the conversation we had, but I could be. There wouldn’t be any justice in smearing his good name without evidence, would there? I sure wouldn’t want that on my conscience. Besides I’ve always liked Doc; he minds his own business, never bothers anybody, just wants to be left alone to live out the rest of his days in peace.

And there’s no denying he was right about Tully. Tully might not be guilty of murder, but he’s guilty of plenty of other crimes and he belongs in prison. You wouldn’t get an argument about that from anybody in Ridgedale.

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

What would you do?

Caius

(with Barry N. Malzberg)

Caius watches the lights on the board, red, red, red, red, with eager eyes (not that he could be seen) and fast-beating heart (not that he could be monitored). Elbows on the table, headphones tight against his ears. Throat cleared to allow his mellifluous voice to draw slowly, exquisitely, the pulp of his listeners’ desires.

Jeremy, his engineer, picks one red light at random. No screening except for the FCC mandated seven-second delay — Caius does not need to have his calls screened. There is no listener, no heckler, no type of problem or question that he cannot address with knowledge, wit, perfect aplomb.

This caller, as usual, is one of the faithful. Stan in Cheyenne. How’re they screwing you, Stan, he asks, up there in the cold, cold Rockies? Stan mumbles, grumbles, spews harsh and bitter words into his ears. One and a half minutes of Stan is sufficient. Caius deftly cuts him short, waves to Jeremy to put on another caller.

Georgiana in Seattle. Yes, of course, he says to her, let’s talk about the rule of the gun and the rule of law, not that there’s any difference in these United States. He draws her out slowly, inexorably, tugging on and loosening the strangling rope of her consciousness.

“Now do you understand, Georgiana?” Caius says when her three minutes are up. “Do you know what must be done?”

“Oh, yes, Caius,” she says. Her voice is breathless, as if his words have brought her to orgasm. “Oh, yes!”

In the glistening glass wall of the engineer’s booth, he sees reflected the outlines of his own face. Strong jaw, ears like miniature radar scanners, eyes huge and glowing with testimony to his incontestable vision, his indomitable spirit. Caius, nomad of the Space Age airwaves. Caius, the man with the answers, the man with the power to strip away falsehoods and false fronts, to unburden and provide direction to so many in this age of inanition. Caius, the oracle of his times. How he has suffered for his art, his genius! How he suffers as confessor for these fools who know nothing of the gravity of his heart.

He feels their pain radiating through the headphones. He hears their murmuring voices, millions of voices, echoing through the corridors of his mind. He has come to give them what they need, not what they want, the difference accomplished through his own inextinguishable judgment.

We live in perilous times, he tells them again and again. Times in which the bad has been masked as good, in which destruction has been masked as compassion. Times which have taken from us what we might have had, what we should have received. Are they listening? Are you listening, Georgiana in Seattle, Stan in Cheyenne, Karl in Saginaw, Benjamin in Coeur d’Alene, all the rest of you?

Sometimes he thinks they ask too much of him, they ask more than he can give — he is, after all, only one man, one frail stanchion standing against the enormities of the present and the future. Sometimes he despises them, the puny, stupid ones unworthy of his benevolence. Sometimes he thinks it doesn’t matter what he does, for his power, always, is in what he could do if he wanted to.

Jeremy signals that another caller is on the line. Caius waves him off, indicates that it is time to cut to the usual recorded commercial messages. Sighs, removes his headphones. Enough for now. Enough. He needs a few minutes to regenerate himself before he once again takes the fools through the inconstancy of this world and points them in the right direction. One day he might even lead them, all of them, all his faithful, into the promised land.

Dazzled by the images of himself reflected from the glass walls, he stands, stretches. Caius, cloned and magnified, larger than life.

The door to the control booth opens and Jeremy comes in. Caius favors him, as he does all his minions, with a beneficent smile. “Going well tonight,” he says.

Jeremy nods. Jeremy nods at everything. A fawning youth, nothing like what Caius was at his age, no ambition for one thing, but he does his job and that is sufficient. If Caius needed more, he could have more. But he doesn’t. Why should he? Jeremy is no different than Stan in Cheyenne or Gail in Indianapolis, but Caius is kind to him nonetheless. He is kind to all the members of his flock. One of the obligations of power.

“As always,” Jeremy says. “You the man.”

“Caius, nomadic interpreter of all their secrets.”

“Absolutely right, that’s what you are. Not even Limbaugh can keep them coming back the way you do.”

“How many calls so far tonight?” Caius asks.

“Ninety-six.”

“Grand total to date?”

“Nearly a million since you’ve been on the air.”

“Six million listeners, one million calls.”

“Amazing record,” Jeremy says. “Amazing. It’s an honor to work with a great man like you, a real honor.”

An honor. That is what so many of them say when Caius releases them from the coffins of their unnecessary, irrelevant lives. What an honor to speak with you! What a thrill! Been listening to you for years, you taught me a lot, you make such good sense. Their praise, their unction coursing through him like the fever heat of his own blood.

“We need some sound bytes,” he says to Jeremy. “You have them ready on the roll, of course?”

“Yes, sir. Always. Ready when you are.”

“Numbers forty-two and fifty-seven,” Caius says. “Those are the ones I want tonight. First the one where the Pope attacks me personally, by name, then my clip at the Correspondents Dinner.”

“Forty-two and fifty-seven. Right.” Jeremy chuckles. “I remember that dinner clip. Pretty funny stuff.”

“Yes, very amusing.”

“You nailed the bastards in that one,” Jeremy says. “Nailed ’em right up there on the cross, just like Jesus.”

Just like Jesus.

And just like Jesus, Caius thinks, I have my disciples. My Caiusites. My Causations. My Causators. The groveling faithful that pour through all the tangled and whizzing lines of the nation directly into me, Caiusites drawing from the power which is mine.

In the early years he had traveled everywhere, spoke from the trenches and the front lines in all the gleaming, devastated parts of the nation, advancing to this destination in stages, in movements as careful and well planned as those on a chess board. He has a history, he sometimes likes to remind his listeners, his disciples, he didn’t get to this point without years of study, questing, humility, honor, suffering.

He heard their pleas then, the same ones he hears now: Tell us, Caius. Lead us, Caius. But he also heard, sometimes still hears, their bitterness and their spite. Why are you where you are, Caius, and we’re trapped down here in the swamps of human existence? How did you get the power instead of us? When he is confronted with such apostasy he thinks of sucking out their brains, the gray and spongy material which surrounds their tiny thoughts, and draping them on a line to wave in the breeze before he puts the torch to them. Blinding fire against the sky. Caius remembers John Lennon. First they ask for an autograph and then they come back and kill you. That Spider’s Kiss.

But Lennon’s fate will not be his. No, never. He is above such an absurd end to his life and his life’s work. He is destined to continue his mission for many more years to come. Caius, the invincible.

Jeremy gestures at the clock. “Almost airtime again,” he says.

“Yes, I see.”

The engineer leaves the booth quickly and quietly, and Caius sits again in his comfortable chair. Headphones on. Microphone on. Green light on. And here I am again, listeners, disciples, Caiusites, he thinks but doesn’t say. Go ahead, Ronald in Little Rock, he says. What’s on your mind this evening, Ronald? How can I help? How can I bring you the wisdom of Caius?

The board continues to light up with incoming calls, red, red, red, red, red. Jeremy makes his selection, Caius presses the button that opens the line. The voice of Elaine in Charleston drones in his ear. Tormented Elaine, until Caius’s words elevate her to new heights of consciousness and perception.

Another green light. Marvin in San Antonio. Another. Big Dave in Biloxi. Another. Linda and Jolene, mother and daughter, suffering in Corpus Christi. Help us, Caius. Lead us, Caius. Save us, Caius.

One after another he takes the calls, listens to the voices of the faithful and, now and then, the unfaithful. So many voices. Night after night. And after a while they begin to blend and flow together, to rise to a roar that pours through the headphones, through his ears, into the center of him. The voices of admiration, of love and approbation, these are what he lives for.

And yet—

And yet, the voices grow decibel by painful decibel until they fill him, swell him to the bursting point. Frantically he signals to Jeremy to cut off the new caller — Darlene in Thousand Oaks? Andrew in Sheboygan? — but the engineer ignores him. Caius rips off the headphones, claps his hands over his ears. The roar of the million voices continues to increase, louder, louder, louder, until it reaches a thunderous crescendo.

Caius’s vision dims when this happens, shifts, and the glass walls shimmer, Jeremy shimmers in the control booth, everything shimmers, blurs, fades, and then re-emerges as something other than the familiar surroundings of the studio, as white cushioned walls, white cushioned floor, bare cot, screens and bars, Jeremy in a white attendant’s uniform. The voices cease their babel; all at once he finds himself wrapped in a deep trembling silence. He cries out, but there is no one to hear him, he is alone. Alone. He understands then, the monstrous knowledge descends upon him with the force of a blow, and he screams, he screams—

— and the white room shifts, shimmers, fades, and then re-emerges as the interior of his booth at the studio, where he is once again sprawled in his comfortable chair, headphones on, microphone on, his mind as clear as the glistening glass walls. He looks at the board, red, red, red, red. Sees Jeremy signal from the control booth, then turn one flashing red to green. Smiles, winks, gives the thumbs up. And safe, secure, supremely confident as always in the efficacy of his genius, he takes a call from Eric in Council Bluffs.

Caius, nomad of the Space Age airwaves. Caius, oracle of his times. Caius, the man with the answers, the man with the power, the man who will one day show them all the way into the light, finally and forever into the light.

Breakbone

The dashboard clock read 7:30 when I pulled into the truck stop west of Tucumcari, New Mexico — and there he was, sitting on a bench outside the café.

It was a hot July evening and I’d been on the road for nine hours and nearly seven hundred miles, but after dinner I figured I could make another hundred or more before I packed it in for the day. Pushing it because of the job with Burnside Chemicals but mainly because Karen was waiting in L.A. I hadn’t seen her in two weeks and I was hungry for her and she would be for me, too.

Right now it was food I was hungry for; I hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast. I filled the Audi’s tank and then pulled over into one of the parking slots near the café. On the walk from there to the entrance I had to pass by the guy sitting slumped on the bench.

He was the biggest man I’d ever seen outside a basketball arena. Close to seven feet tall, lean but not skinny; huge hands like a couple of fur-backed catcher’s mitts, the fingers gnarled and scarred from manual labor. Wearing a sweat-stained shirt, dusty Levi’s, and old, heavily scuffed boots. He was bent forward with the hands hanging down between his knees, his chin tipped toward his chest, his gaze on the small, battered duffel between his feet. He had a kind of heavy, bland face, and he looked hot and tired and forlorn, like a kid nobody wanted to have anything to do with. But he wasn’t a kid, exactly. Late twenties, I thought, a few years younger than me.

I went past him by a couple of steps, then stopped and turned back. There was just something about him. That forlorn look, I guess. Karen says I’m a sucker for strays, the lost and lonely in human and animal kingdoms both. I don’t deny it. Better that kind of person than the one who doesn’t give a damn.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but are you okay?”

He looked up. He had big, sad eyes, the irises the color of milk chocolate. “Hot,” he said. His voice was soft, a little dull.

“Sure is that. Why don’t you go inside? Sign there says it’s air-conditioned.”

“Can’t. Don’t have no money.”

“That’s too bad. You live around here?”

“No. Just passing.”

“How about your car? Got enough gas?”

“Don’t have a car,” he said.

“How’d you get here, then? Hitchhike?”

“Walked.”

“Walked? From where?”

“Town back there.”

“All the way from Tucumcari? That’s a lot of hot miles.”

“Wouldn’t nobody give me a ride today.” He added in melancholy tones, “Won’t most days.”

“Man, you must be exhausted. When did you eat last?”

“Yesterday sometime.”

Exhausted and starving. “Lot of people stop here,” I said. “Have you asked any of them? I mean... you know.”

“Don’t believe in it. Begging.”

I hesitated, but I just couldn’t walk away from a man in his condition. “How about a helping hand from a fellow traveler?”

“Huh?”

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll treat you to a cold drink and a sandwich.”

He blinked. “Do that for me? Why?”

“Why not? You’re hungry and so am I.”

“Nobody ever bought me nothing before.”

“First time for everything,” I said. “How about it?”

“Okay.”

I watched him unfold from the bench. God, he was big — almost twice my size. He towered over me; it was like looking up at a beanstalk giant, only one of the gentle type. We went into the café. The place was crowded, but there was one empty booth at the far wall. Heads turned and faces stared as the giant and I walked over to the booth and sat down. A few of them kept right on staring. He didn’t seem to notice.

A waitress brought over menus and some ice water. The big guy emptied his glass in one long slurp. She couldn’t help staring, either, her eyes round and her forehead washboarded as if he was some kind of sideshow freak. I didn’t open the menu; neither did he. He waited for me to order — a cheeseburger with fries and a large lemonade — and then said he’d have the same.

“My name’s Jack,” I said when the waitress moved away. “Jack Tobin. What’s yours?”

“Breakbone.”

It was my turn to blink. “How’s that again?”

“Breakbone. That’s what they call me.”

“That’s some name.”

“Not my real one. Kind of a nickname. On account of how big I am. And my hands — they’re real strong.”

“I believe it. Do me a favor — don’t shake with me.”

“Okay. Can I have your water?”

“Help yourself.”

One long swallow emptied my glass, too.

“So where are you headed, uh, Breakbone?” I asked him.

“Nowhere in particular. Moving around, different places.”

“Looking for work?”

“Looking,” he said.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Don’t matter. Any kind.”

“Where’s your home, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ain’t got one.”

“I mean originally. What part of the country?”

“Midwest.” He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I got off the subject.

“California’s where I’m going,” I said. “Moving out there from Pennsylvania. I’ve got a good job waiting for me, much better than my old one and lucky to get it. I’m a research chemist.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My girl’s waiting, too. She’s been in L.A. two weeks now, setting up housekeeping for us. We’re getting married as soon as I settle into the new job — September, probably.”

“I never had a girl,” Breakbone said.

“That’s too bad. Every guy should have a girl. Unless he’s gay, of course.”

“I ain’t gay.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” I said quickly, even though he didn’t sound annoyed or angry. “I’m sorry you never had a girl. One of these days maybe you will.”

“Naw,” he said. “They don’t like me. I’m too big.”

“Lot of big girls out there that like big men.”

“Not me.”

I let it go. Trying to hold a conversation with him wasn’t easy. His mind seemed to work in a slow and not quite linear fashion. Not that it mattered to me, but I wondered if he was mildly retarded.

We didn’t have much more to say to each other. The food came and he wolfed his, finishing everything on his plate before mine was half empty. Poor bastard, I thought. Probably the first decent meal, if you could call a greasy burger decent, he’d had in a long time. I was glad I’d decided to treat him to it.

I paid the bill and we went back out into what was left of the day’s heat. He stood looking past the gas pumps to Interstate 40 with that forlorn expression back on his face.

“What’re you going to do now?” I asked him.

“Dunno. Ranches around here ain’t hiring this time of year. Not me, anyways. Got a better chance of finding something in a town.”

“It’s a long way to the nearest one.”

“Don’t matter. I’m used to walking, sleeping out.”

I was still feeling sorry for him. “Well, look, Breakbone, I’ll give you a ride as far as Santa Rosa if you want. I’d stake you to a night’s lodging, too, but I’m short on funds right now. Enough for another meal’s the best I can do.”

He gave me a long, solemn look. “Do all that for me, too?”

“The original good Samaritan, that’s me. How about that ride?”

“Sure. Okay.”

We got into the Audi. He was so tall that he had to sit scrunched down with his duffel on the floor mat and his knees up against the dashboard, and at that the top of his head scraped the headliner. He didn’t have anything to say once we were underway. That was all right with me. Having to hold a conversation while I’m driving, particularly after an already long day behind the wheel, tends to distract me, even out in the middle of nowhere.

This was high desert country, pretty desolate, mostly flat with a few rolling hills and mesas in the background. Horse and cattle country, though how cattle could survive on the sparse grass was beyond me. Most of the terrain seemed to be barren except for patches of cactus and yucca and stunted juniper trees.

Traffic was light. We’d gone about ten miles and were making good time when an interchange appeared ahead. As we neared it, I noticed a guy with a backpack sitting on the grassy verge between the entrance ramp and the highway on this side. Another hitchhiker. It’s against the law to troll for rides on an interstate, but there’s always somebody ready and willing to defy laws and take chances.

Breakbone was looking out the side window at the hitchhiker as we rolled on past. He said suddenly, “Stop the car.”

“What? No way. I don’t pick up hitchers—”

“Stop the car.”

“—and even if I did, there’s not enough room in back—”

His body turned and one of his huge hands clamped down in a tight squeeze on my right knee. “Stop the car!”

It was like being caught in the iron jaws of a scoop shovel. I felt cartilage grind; pain shot all the way up into my groin. Reflex made me jam my left foot down so hard on the brake I nearly lost control of the car. The rear end fishtailed, wobbling, the skidding tires smoked and must have laid fifty feet of rubber before I managed to straighten out and then maneuver the Audi off onto the side of the highway. No other car had been close; if one had been...

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what’s the idea? You nearly caused an accident.”

He wasn’t listening to me. He had the passenger door open and was looking back, gesturing. In the rearview mirror I saw the hitchhiker running toward us, his backpack clutched against his chest. Young guy, nineteen or twenty; short and thin, with a long mop of blond hair and a heat-blotched face.

Breakbone got out and opened the rear door. The kid came to an abrupt stop, staring up at him. “Wow,” he said.

“Get in,” Breakbone said. “There’s enough room.”

“Hey, thanks, thanks a lot.” The kid squeezed himself into what little space there was on the rear seat, holding the backpack on his lap. “Man, that air-conditioning feels good,” he said. Then, to me through a friendly grin, “Thanks to you, too, mister. I didn’t think anybody was going to stop and I’d have to spend the night out there.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“Yeah, I saw. You sure made up your mind in a hurry.”

“Didn’t I, though.”

Breakbone was filling up the passenger seat again. He said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

I wanted to say something more to him in protest; my knee and leg were still smarting. But with the kid already in the car now, it didn’t seem to be worth making an issue of it. Over and done with and no real harm done. I put the car in gear and pulled back onto the highway.

We went a mile or so in silence. Then the kid said, “All this stuff back here. You guys moving somewhere?”

“Just me,” I said. “California.”

“I’m going to Phoenix. Well, Tempe. Arizona State University. I’m a student there. I don’t suppose you could take me that far? Or at least as far as Flagstaff if you’re staying on Forty?”

“Well...”

“I understand if you can’t. I’m grateful for any ride I can get, as far as I can get. My name’s Rob, by the way.”

“Jack.”

Breakbone didn’t offer his nickname.

It got quiet again. I could feel an edginess growing in me. It wasn’t the same having Breakbone along now, after that knee-squeezing business. I didn’t want him in the car anymore. Once we got to the outskirts of Santa Rosa, I’d stop and let him out. The kid, Rob, seemed to be all right; I could take him as far as Phoenix because my route plan was to swing down through there and pick up Interstate 10 into L.A. But I didn’t want him with me, either — no more company at all after Santa Rosa. Why had Breakbone forced me to stop for him? Compassion for a fellow traveler, I supposed, like I’d had compassion for him.

The quiet kept playing on my nerves. I turned on the radio, thinking: Music, news, call-in show — any thing. The station I was tuned to was playing a song by Willie Nelson. Breakbone immediately reached over and turned it off.

“What’d you do that for?”

“Don’t like the radio playing.”

“Well, I do.”

“So do I,” the kid said. “Jazz is my thing, though. None of that country stuff.”

“Leave it off, Jack,” Breakbone said.

I didn’t argue with him. I wanted to, it was my car, dammit, but I didn’t. There was something about the way he was sitting there, so damn big and Sphinx silent, those massive hands bulked together in his lap.

The miles piled up, fifteen or so. Dusk had settled; I switched the headlights on. How many more miles to L.A. and Karen? Only about eight-fifty now. And maybe another hundred closer before I called it a day. I could be with her sometime tomorrow night if I got an early start in the morning and drove straight through. I was even more eager to see her now. And it wasn’t just sex. It was her... her smile, her voice, the way she laughed, everything about her. I’d been in love before, but never the way I was in love with Karen...

Twilight was rapidly fading into darkness, the shadows long and clotted on the empty desert landscape. Night came down fast out here. It’d be full dark in another few minutes.

Another mile clicked off on the odometer. And then Breakbone put an end to the silence. “That exit up there, Jack,” he said. “Take it.”

I peered ahead. The exit, according to the sign, was to a secondary road that led to a couple of far-off towns I’d never heard of. There were no services there, just the offramp and sign and a crossroad stretching both ways across the desert flats.

“What for?”

“Take it.”

“Now listen—”

His big hairy paw dropped on my knee again, the stone-hard fingers digging in. Not with any pressure, not yet. “Take it.”

I slowed and took it.

“What’s going on?” Rob said from the back seat. He sounded sleepy; he must have been dozing.

“Turn right,” Breakbone said.

Don’t do it, I thought. But I didn’t even hesitate at the stop sign, just swung onto the secondary road heading east. “Where is it you want to go?”

“Keep driving.”

A mile, two miles. Full dark now, no moon, the black sky pricked with stars that seemed paler and more remote than usual. Up ahead, the headlights picked out the opening to a side road that branched off to the left. We’d almost reached it when Breakbone said, “Turn in that road.”

I still couldn’t make myself defy him. We rattled over a cattle guard. The narrow track was unpaved, dusty, rutted — some sort of backcountry ranch road. We bounced along at less than twenty through a grove of yucca trees. I didn’t dare go any faster.

“Hey,” Rob said, “what’s the idea?” He sounded scared, as scared as I was now. “You guys thinking of robbing me or what? You won’t get much, I’m only carrying a few dollars...”

“Shut up.”

The kid shut up.

Pretty soon Breakbone said, “Far enough, Jack. Stop the car.”

I stopped.

“Shut off the engine.”

As soon as I did that, he reached over and yanked the keys out of the ignition.

“Now the headlights.”

Everything went black when I clicked the switch, the yucca trees blotting out all but a faint glimmer of starshine. It gave me a sudden feeling of suffocation, as if I’d been trapped inside a box. I heard Rob making moaning noises and fumbling at the door handle, trying to get away. Then the dome light came on, but not because the kid had gotten his door open; it was Breakbone climbing out through the passenger door. He yanked the back one open, hauled the kid out with one of his huge paws. Rob fought him, yelling, but he couldn’t break loose. It was like a small animal trying to fight a behemoth.

Breakbone picked him up under one arm as if he weighed nothing at all, grabbed the backpack with his other hand. “Stay here, Jack,” he said to me. “Don’t go nowhere.” Then he kicked both doors shut, closing me into the black box again, and went stomping off into the darkness outside.

I just sat there, numb. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was going on. Things like this didn’t happen in my world, they just didn’t happen—

Then it got worse, much worse.

Then the screaming started.

Horrible screams like nothing I’d ever heard before, shrill with pain and terror, so loud that they penetrated and echoed inside the box. On and on, on and on, as if the night itself was being ripped apart. I jammed the heels of my hands over my ears, but I could still hear them. They were like knifepoints jabbed into my eardrums.

I couldn’t stand it in there, surrounded by the noise; couldn’t breathe. I flung myself out of the car and stumbled around and away from it, trying to escape the screams. But I lost my bearings among the yuccas and went the wrong way, toward them instead — far enough to hear the other sounds that came before each of the shrieks. Meaty thwacking sounds. Crunching, snapping sounds.

I swung around, staggered back to the car. I knew I ought to run, hide, but my legs wouldn’t work anymore. All I could do was lean against the front fender with my hands back over my ears.

It was a long time before the screaming stopped. And then I heard him coming back, shuffling over the parched ground — alone. He was just a giant looming shape until he reached the car and opened the passenger door and the dome light came on again. Then I saw the blood. It was smeared on his hands and on his pantlegs where he’d wiped them, spattered on forearms and across the front of his shirt. Even more terrible was the way he was grinning. Like a death’s head mask. Like a skull.

I turned aside and puked up my dinner. When the convulsions stopped I sagged against the fender again, weak, shaking, my knees like pudding. He was watching me. Not grinning any more, his face without expression of any kind.

“You killed him.” Somebody else’s voice, not mine.

“Yeah. Busted all his bones.”

“A kid, a stranger. Why?”

“I like it. It’s fun.”

Fun. Jesus!

“Tell you a secret,” he said. “Nobody give me my nickname, like I told you before. I give it to myself after the first time I done it.”

I couldn’t look any more at those hands, the scars and gnarled joints that hadn’t come from manual labor, the blood glistening like black worms in the spill from the dome light. I said to the darkness, “You going to kill me now?”

“Kill you? Naw, I wouldn’t do that. I like you, Jack, you been real nice to me. We’re friends. I never had a friend before.”

Friends...

“You got a blanket or something in the car?”

“What?”

“So I don’t get blood all over the seat.”

“Trunk.”

He went back there, rummaged around, came back with the picnic blanket Karen had bought for us. “Okay,” he said then. “Let’s go.”

I groped around to the driver’s side. He squeezed in next to me, the blanket wrapped around him, and let me have the keys, but it was a little while before I was steady enough to drive. I still couldn’t think, didn’t want to think. Finally I started the engine, turned the car around, headed back down the road with the headlights boring holes in the night.

When we neared the intersection with the county road, I heard myself say, “What now?”

“Find some place I can wash up, change clothes.”

“Then what?”

“Keep on going. Drive all night, maybe. Get us another car, bigger one, then go wherever we feel like. Big country. Ain’t hardly seen much of it yet.”

It took a few seconds for his meaning to sink in. “No! No! My girl, my job...”

“They don’t matter no more. Just you and me, Jack, from now on.”

Bloodstained fingers snaked out of the blanket, closed around my knee again. The feel of them made my flesh crawl.

“We’ll have fun together,” he said. “Lots of fun.”

Content

Bill Pronzini
The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales

Introduction by Ed Gorman Bill Pronzini: Toiling in the Fields of the Lord

The Cemetery Man

Toiling in the Fields of the Lord

Lines

McIntosh’s Chute

Trade Secret

Meadowlands Spike (with Barry N. Malzberg)

Boobytrap

Confession

The Storm Tunnel

The Hanging Man

Putting the Pieces Back

Man Cave

Angelique

Out of the Depths

Hooch

Just Looking

What Happened to Mary?

Caius (with Barry N. Malzberg)

Breakbone