Mr. X

"Because it wasn't missing after the break-in. I went back to the Cobden Building last night. By the time Stewart takes another look, everything will be back in place. Tell Ashleigh to make copies and return the originals."

"How did this anonymous guy get them?"

"He broke into thebuilding, how else? The guy has an old grudge against Hatch. In the process of smashing up the offices, he stumbled on these papers. He told you to go to a bench inTown Square, you went, you found the bag, you're bringing it to her. End of story." Robert left the sinks and moved to the door. "Good thing you were thrown out of that rooming house."

He stepped back and passed through the door. I mean that in the most literal sense possible. Robert did not open the men's room door, hepassed through it, smiling at me as his body melted into the white wood and, like the Cheshire cat, disappeared from view.

•74

•I locked myself into a stall and unbuckled the satchel. It was filled with fat manila folders: statements from a bank in the Virgin Islands; incorporation papers for companies named Glittermax Inc., Eagle Properties, and Delta Mud Holdings; deeds to buildings in Louisville and Cincinnati; letters from law firms. I thumbed through partnership agreements signed by Hatch and Grenville Milton. Two bundles of computer disks were tucked into side pockets.

Ashleigh put her arms around me and gave me a resounding kiss. "The unpredictable Ned Dunstan. What's in that beautiful bag?"

I put it on the table and sat facing her. "You tell me."

Ashleigh tucked her lower lip under her front teeth. "That's an interesting answer." A couple of seconds went by. "Are you interested in lunch?"

"That's an interesting question," I said.

“I'll have room service send up a couple of club sandwiches. How about that Pinot Grigio you liked so much?"

"Good old Pinot Grigio," I said.

She called room service, then sat down, opened the leather bag, and peered in. She glanced at me. I shrugged. Ashleigh took out one of the files and leafed through the papers. Her frown of concentration melted into blank surprise. She sampled another file. "Where did youget this stuff?"

I told her the fairy tale about the man who left a bag in Town

Square. "Hewants you to make copies. I guess he's going to put the originals back."

"Did you see him?"

"No. If this guy can break into the Cobden Building, he'sa tricky customer."

"This guy did more than break in." Ashleigh sorted through another set of papers. "He found Stewart's top-secret stash. Can you imagine how well this was hidden?"

"Can you use it?"

"Use it? This is like striking oil. He set up paper companies out of state, took over a bunch of nightclubs, and skimmed every penny he could. He sent the cash to banks in the Virgin Islands and laundered it through phony companies in the form of loans." She reached into the bag and brought out the disks. "Every transaction he made is probably on these things. Every crook has a fatal flaw, and Stewart is a control freak. Do you know what this means?"

"Tell me."

"There is no way on earth I can lose this case. It'd be nice if I could use this stuff in court, but I won't have to. Once we scare the shit out of the secondary parties, Stewart's going to be hung out to dry, and so is Milton." Her eyes changed. "Did Laurie Hatch arrange to get you these papers?"

"No. She did not."

Ashleigh leaned back in her chair. “I was about to come home empty-handed. My boss would have been patronizing and sympathetic. My colleagues would have disguised their glee at how badly I fucked up, and I'd be handling dipshit cases for the next two years. Now my boss is going to pin a gold medal on my chest, and the other assistant D.A.s are going to have to pretend they're overjoyed."

"You'll be able to explain . . . ?"

"How I got this material? Enter our old friend, the anonymous informant."

Ashleigh talked about her case until the room-service waiter showed up, and when he had uncorked the wine bottle and departed, she bit into her sandwich like a stevedore. "God, the way everything happened, it's like it was all set up in advance."

“I know what you mean," I said.

"And I have to say, Ned, when you're in that mood you were in Friday night, you're God's gift to women."

I slumped in my chair, and her face turned red. "Let's go down to the business center and copy this stuff."

•75

•When Ashleigh and I came back to her room, we looked at each other and undressed without saying a word. Later on, Ashleigh told me about her childhood in Lexington, Kentucky, and her marriage to Michael Ashton, who on their honeymoon had seduced the cocktail hostess at their hotel. I told her some things about Star, Phil and Laura Grant, and what I had done since leaving Naperville.

"Why did you leave Middlemount?"

“I couldn't handle the math and science courses."

"Wasn't it harder to learn programming than freshman calculus, or whatever it was?"

"Yeah," I said. "Come to think of it."

"Do you like your job?"

“It's the best job I ever had," I said. "Every time I get my paycheck, I'm astonished."

“Is money important to you?"

"No," I said. "That's why I'm astonished."

"Do you have close friends?"

"Medium close," I said. "Also semiclose, semidistant, and completely distant, except for insincere camaraderie. We're guys, we like it that way."

"How about girlfriends?"

"Off and on," I said.

"What about Laurie Hatch?"

"What about her?"

"You're enormously attracted to Laurie. And vice versa."

"There is some truth in that," I said.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"What do you think I should do?"

Ashleigh gripped my arm and shook it like a sapling. "Why are you asking me? If I had Laurie on the witness stand, I'd feel like I was questioning the Sphinx. But considering the way you feel about her, you should give yourself a break. I can't believe I'm saying this."

"You don't like her," I said. "Or you don't trust her."

The ends of her mouth curled up. "Have you slept with her yet?"

I wondered if I could get away with refusing to answer on the grounds of self-incrimination. I did not want to lie to Ashleigh, and she would have seen through any attempt to evade the question. By the time I had worked this out, the answer was already obvious. "Yes," I said.

“I knew it!"

"Then why did you ask?"

“I knew it was going to happen, I just didn't know howsoon. Why do you think she let you do that? Laurie Hatch isn't some bimbo on the make, she's. . . . Let's forget about Laurie Hatch. I want to concentrate on Ned Dunstan for a while."

•76

•I woke up about 1:30a.m., too late to visit Toby Kraft or look at the houses on Buxton Place. I felt my way around the room-service cart and took a shower. After I got dressed, I sat next to Ashleigh and stroked her back until she woke up.

"Who was that masked man?" she said. "Call me tomorrow morning, okay?"

I left the satchel in her room. It was safer than the Brazen Head, and the records of Stewart Hatch's peccadillos had to be stashed somewhere until Robert collected them. The ideal hiding place suggested itself as I watched the panel above the elevator door count down to L.

A solitary car moved past the front of Merchants Park. I stepped down into the empty avenue and saw a red glow above the townhousesalong Ferryman's Road. When I got near the center of the park, I caught the unmistakable odor of smoke.

At Chester Street, I looked north. Arcs of water turned from silver to red as they fell glittering onto a burning building. A small crowd stood behind a rank of fire engines. Then I realized that the fire was in the same block as Helen Janette's rooming house, and I sprinted toward it.

Flames poured through the front windows on both floors of the rooming house. A column of charcoal-colored smoke billowed from the roof. Helen Janette hugged her pink bathrobe over her chest, and Mr. Tite's fedora-topped head jutted behind her like an Easter Island statue. Beneath the cuffs of his pajamas, his bare feet glared angry white.

Miss Redman and Miss Challis had claimed the arms of an enchanted young firefighter. Roxy and Moonbeam wore gleaming satin slips no different from their party attire, and, like Frank Tite, were barefoot, but seemed to be having a much better time. Policemen and firefighters moved through the fire engines and squad cars. A clutch of onlookers, many of them in bathrobes, occupied the middle of the street.

A sheet of flame burst upward and tinted the smoke blood-red. The roof fell in with a barely audible crash. I had never before seen a serious fire, never heard how a fire celebrates destruction in a rushing, inhuman voice. Helen Janette screamed, "That's him! He burned down my house!"

Frank Tite plodded toward me, wincing. Roxy and Moonbeam fluttered forward. Two men in bathrobes appeared on either side of me. One of them twisted my arm behind my back.

“If you don't let go of my arm, I'll take your head off your shoulders."

Helen Janette screeched, “It was him!"

The man holding my arm was about forty pounds overweight. Prominent keloids dotted his face, and sweat cascaded from his every pore.

“I apologize to you," I said. “I got mad, so I said something stupid. How well do you get on with Helen Janette?"

He let go of my arm. "Mrs. Janette would sooner lick spit off the sidewalk than give me the time of day."

Mr. Tite minced up. "Get hold of him again."

"You hold him. I got no reason to believe your girlfriend or you either, Frank."

Followed by a bearlike man withcaptain stenciled in yellow across the front of his rubber coat, Helen Janette bustled beside Mr. Tite. "That's him. I want him put in jail."

The men around me retreated.

"Sir, what do you have to say?"

“I was walking back to my place from Merchants Hotel," I said. "When I noticed the flames I ran up, hoping it wasn't Mrs. Janette's house."

"He's lying," said Helen Janette.

"Do you really think I'd burn down your house because you kicked me out?"

"No!" she yelled. "You know why you did it."

"Helen," I asked, "did Otto get out in time?"

She closed her mouth.

The fire captain asked my name and said, "We were unable to rescue the tenant who did not exit with the others." He looked into my eyes. "Was the victim a friend of yours?"

"Otto was a nice man," I said. "Sometimes he fell asleep when he was smoking."

"Why are you juststanding here?" Helen Janette shouted.

A police car came flashing around the corner of Ferryman's Road. "Here's what's going to happen," the captain said. “I will ask Mr. Dunstan to sit in the police car and sort things out with the officer. Mrs. Janette will be allowed to speak her piece, and she will do so in an orderly fashion. You, sir, will go back over there on the sidewalk, where you belong."

Helen Janette nodded at Tite. He stalked away, and she tightened her bathrobe around herself, ready for battle.

Treuhaft and Captain Mullan got out of the car. Helen Janette said, “I want you to arrest this man on charges of arson and murder."

Mullan followed the direction of her extended finger. "Not you."

"Believe it or not," I said.

"Mr. Dunstan, you spread joy wherever you go."

“I was at Merchants Hotel until about one-thirty this morning. The desk clerk saw me leave, but you could confirm my story by talking to Assistant District Attorney Ashton."

“I love these familiar old songs." Mullan went back to Helen Janette. "You are accusing this man of setting the fire?"

She wrenched her robe tight as a sausage casing. "Maybe you remember the trouble I got into when my name was Hazel Jansky. I was punished for trying to do good for a few helpless babies."

Mullan was completely unhurried. “I remember that name."

"Mr. Dunstan heard a filthy lie from Toby Kraft. I call it a filthy lie because that's what it was, and Toby Kraft knows it." She shivered.

"The way people carried on, you'd think I was a criminal, instead of someone who helped little babies find good homes."

Mullan gave me a weary look. "Can you help me out here?"

"My mother thought Hazel Jansky abducted one of her children. Even if I thought she was right, I wouldn't have done this."

Mullan closed his eyes, opened the rear door, and waved me in. He and Treuhaft got in the front seat. "Merchants Hotel," Mullan said. "Dunstan, why don't you save yourself travel time and move into the place?"

“I like the Brazen Head."

"You should know a few things about the night clerk," Mullan said. Treuhaft gave an evil chuckle.

When we pulled up in front of the hotel, Mullan told Treuhaft to ask the desk clerk if he had seen a man of my description leaving the hotel at any time past1:00a.m.,and if so, to give an approximate time. “I'm sick of waking up Assistant District Attorney Ashton with inquiries about Mr. Dunstan's whereabouts. If the clerk didn't see him leave, we'll take it from there."

Mullan rested the back of his head on the seat. “I don't suppose you started that fire after all?"

“It was going before I left Ashleigh's room," I said. "The man who lived across the hall from me used to fall asleep smoking in his chair. Last night, he almost burned the place down."

"This fire was no accident," Mullan said. "Our first call said there was a broken basement window in back of the house. Someone crawled in and poured an inflammatory over everything in sight. Then he crawled back out and torched the place. We have to wait for the investigators' report, but that's what it's going to say."

"Joe Staggers?"

“I'll check on him, but Staggers wants to deal with you in person. Have you seen any other characters hanging around the building?"

"Well," I said, "after the break-in at the Cobden Building, Frenchy La Chapelle looked like he was following me back to the house."

Treuhaft let himself into the driver's seat, and the car sagged under his weight. "The desk man says Mr. Dunstan left the hotel around one forty-five."

Mullan nodded. "How does a recent visitor to our city become acquainted with Frenchy La Chapelle?"

Treuhaft swung his head toward Captain Mullan.

"My Uncle Clark pointed him out when he and Cassie Little visited Clyde Prentiss atSt. Ann's. All I'm saying is that he watched me go up Chester Street to the rooming house."

"Frenchy followed you home from Merchants Park?"

“It looked like it," I said.

"Can you think of any reason why one of our favorite dirtbags should take an interest in you, Mr. Dunstan?"

"None at all."

Mullan's face stretched into a yawn. "Officer Treuhaft, Mr. Dunstan and I are going to step out for a private word."

Mullan strolled past the hotel's entrance and wagged his head toward the polished stone, and I leaned back against the facade. A thick smell of smoke drifted toward us. Mullan sighed and buttoned his suit jacket. He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked down at his shoes. He sighed again.

"You have something on your mind," I said.

Mullan turned halfway around and looked across Commercial Avenue. A solid column of smoke darkened the air above Chester Street. “I have been very good to you, Mr. Dunstan. You keep popping up at crime scenes, you are accused of one thing after another, but I have not let the system run over you."

“I know," I said. "And I'm grateful."

"Do you have any kind of professional relationship with Assistant District Attorney Ashton?"

“I do not."

"Are you an employee of any federal agency?"

"No."

"Do you have a professional association with any law enforcement body?"

"Of course not," I said.

"Do you work as a private detective?"

“I write software programs for a company called Vision, Inc. I'm not in the CIA, the FBI, the Treasury Department, or any other outfit that might be interested in Stewart Hatch."

“I assume you'd have no objections to my checking you for a wire."

I told him to go ahead. He patted my chest and back and knelt to run his hands down my legs. "Open your jacket." I held my jacket away from my sides, and Mullan felt under my arms and around the back of my collar.

"All right," he said. "Maybe you are a civilian who happened to meet an assistant D.A. from Kentucky on the way to Edgerton. And maybe you stumbled into a friendship with Hatch's wife. I guess that's almost possible. But no matter what the hell you are, I want to say a few things, and I want you to listen to them. I don't like Lieutenant Rowley. Cops like Rowley give us all a bad name. What did he do, hit you?"

"He caught me off guard and punched me in the stomach," I said. "Then he knocked me down and kicked me. He wanted me to get a bus out of town, and I didn't cooperate. After that, he stole a hundred bucks from the money I turned in at headquarters."

"You didn't file a complaint."

“I didn't think a complaint would turn out too well."

"You could have come to me, Mr. Dunstan. But so be it. This morning, you implied that Lieutenant Rowley has an arrangement with Stewart Hatch. Most likely, he does. When I was a patrolman, the captain of detectives and the chief of police lived in houses Cobden Hatch paid for. I bought my own house, Mr. Dunstan. The only money I get comes in salary checks from the City of Edgerton, but I do live here, and if you're not what you claim to be, you'll crawl on your hands and knees over a mile of broken glass before you squirm your way into another job."

"My mother's funeral is on Wednesday," I said. "The day after that is my birthday. On Friday, I'll go back to New York. You'll never see me again."

Mullan spun away and went back to the police car.

•77

•The remaining firefighters aimed their hoses at the smoldering mound beneath the rows of concrete blocks. A corner post jutted up into the smoke like a used kitchen match. Somewhere down there, whatever was left of OttoBremenwaited to be unearthed. A photographer set off a heartless flash of light that exposed the remains of a shattered wall, a picture frame, a twisted metal lamp. Side by side in front of a fire engine, Helen Janette and Mr. Tite numbly watched flames poke out of the wreckage.

At the sight of me, Helen Janette quivered and stepped back. Mr.

Tite moved between us. "What are we supposed to do now? Got ananswer for that?"

"Someone will find you a place to stay," I said. "You're not the first people to be burned out of their house."

Enraged, Helen Janette moved beside him. "You should be in jail, you lunatic! Burn me out of house and home."

“I'm not the person who burned you out of house and home, Mrs. Janette." She muttered something I could not hear. "Can you tell me what happened?"

“If you think you have to know. I woke up and smelled smoke. I went out of my room. There was fire all over the floor and fire running up the stairs. You could hardly see for the smoke. I banged on Mr. Tite's door, and we ran down the hall to help Miss Carpenter, Miss Burgess, and Mrs. Feldman out the back door. Mrs. Feldman almost got me killed looking for her fur coat, which is the last time I do a favor for that woman. The girls climbed out through their window, and we all came around and tried to wake up Mr. Bremen. One of the neighbors must have called the Fire Department, because the trucks came about two minutes later. By then the whole house was burning."

“It started in the basement," I said.

"You know where it started," she said. "What I want to know is, where am I going to stay? All my cash is down in that hole, along with my credit cards and my checkbook."

"Some money recently came to me," I said. "Four hundred and eighty dollars. I'll split it with you. You and Mr. Tite can get a room for the night and buy some clothes in the morning."

"You're joking."

I reached for my wallet and counted out $240.

"We don't take blood money," said Mr. Tite.

"Speak for yourself, Frank." She held out her hand, and I put the bills onto her palm. “I'm not too proud to accept charity."

“I'm glad I can help," I said. "And I'd be grateful for whatever you can tell me about the night I was born."

She thought about it for a couple of seconds. "For an even three hundred. Clothes cost money."

I counted out another three twenties. "You were supposed to bring out a baby that night. But everything went crazy during the storm, and the baby died."

"That baby was born dead."

“I know. But then my mother unexpectedly delivered twins, and the second one came out so easily it might as well have been the placenta."

"Came outwith the placenta. It was so dark, I didn't know what was going on until I caught it in my hands. I'm going to give you a good home, I said to myself."

"Through Toby Kraft. Who set you up in the rooming-house business after you served your time."

"What the hell are you people talking about?" Mr. Tite said. "There was no other baby, the night of the storm."

"You don't know," she said. “I never told you, but now I can say what I like. I served my time." She looked back at me, her eyes dark with anger. "We had asystem. Our system rescued innocent babies from terrible homes. The judge admitted that."

“It was for the good of the children," said Mr. Tite. I almost laughed out loud.

"You took the second baby from the delivery room in the middle of the storm. Where did you put him?"

"Same place I put you. Down the hall, in the nursery."

"Only that didn't happen," said Mr. Tite.

Helen Janette whirled on him. "What jail did they put you in, Frank? I forget the name." She turned back to me. “I cleaned him up in the dark, same as you. In the nursery, there was a cradle marked Dunstan, and I found it with my flashlight, and I picked you up and put him in it. Then I brought you back to your mother. 'I had twins,' she said, 'where's the other one?' I told her it was only the placenta, and then the lights went back on. I made my report to the doctor. I told him what your mother said, so he wouldn't be surprised later. Then I went back to the nursery. Nearly died of a heart attack. The Dunstan cradle was empty. I thought I put it in the wrong cradle by mistake, but the ones on either side were empty, too."

"Someone else grabbed the kid?" said Mr. Tite.

“It didn't get up and walk out by itself. I think it was that Mrs. Landon, the one who had the stillbirth. I think she snuck out to the nursery, picked up the baby, and hid it in her bedclothes. She checked out of the hospital as soon as the storm was over. I didn't realize it was probably her until the next day. Her records said her address was the Hotel Paris, but she checked out of there the same morning she left the hospital."

"You tried to find her," I said.

“I was thinking about the health of that baby."

She had been thinking about the health of her wallet. And then I thought:Maybe Robert did get out of the cradle and leave by himself.

“If you burned down my house to get back at me, it was all for nothing."

She tugged at the sleeve of Mr. Tite's robe and led him to a policeman seated at the wheel of a squad car. After a few words, the officer let them in, turned on his lights, and drove down the street toward me. Helen Janette was looking straight ahead. I followed their tail lights as far as Word Street.

•A minute or two after entering the first of the lanes, I got the same prickly feeling I'd had before seeing Frenchy La Chapelle's imitation of an innocent pedestrian. I glanced over my shoulder at an empty lane and shuttered buildings. I began walking faster as I turned into Leather. Either one of Captain Mullan's dirtbags had taken an interest in me, or recent events had made me unreasonably jumpy. The latter sounded closer to reality.

On the other hand, Frenchy had trailed me to the rooming house. Maybe he had set the fire and discovered that he had killed the wrong person. Where Fish crossed Mutton, I came to a halt beside a burned-out street lamp and looked back at a dark, dimensionless well that could have hidden a dozen men. A few cars swished along Word Street. In a nearby lane, a man hawked up sputum. I heard no other sounds, but the back of my neck still prickled.

Fish Lane intersected Raspberry and Button before meeting the fifty feet of Wax leading to Veal Yard. On an ordinary night, this distance would have been no more than a short, not uninteresting walk; with the specter of Frenchy La Chapelle lurking behind me, it felt like a wasteland. I quickened my step and moved into the next length of the narrow lane.

A nearly inaudible sound like a footfall came from behind me. If I had been walking along Commercial Avenue in daylight, I don't think I would have heard it. In the confines of Fish Lane, the little sound made me spin around. I could see only empty buildings and the dull reflection of starlight on the cobbles. Joe Staggers had not stopped looking for me, I remembered.

I ran the rest of the way to Raspberry, darted across the intersection of the lanes, and raced toward the hovering gray haze marking the crossing of Fish and Button. Although I could not hear footsteps at my back, Ifelt the approach of a pursuing figure. I shot across Button and heard another delicate footfall. My heart nearly burst. I raced up the lane and glanced over my shoulder a second before I swung into Wax.

I don't know what I saw. The image vanished too quickly for me to be certain I had seen anything at all. I thought I saw the tails of a dark overcoat whisking into an unseen passage. At the time, I could think only that the old adversary I called Mr. X had just slipped out of sight. My blood turned to glue. When I could move again, I sprinted down the fifty feet of Wax Lane, clattered into Veal Yard, and burst through the front door of the Brazen Head. A bald night clerk with a hatchet tattooed above his right ear looked up from a paperback.

I tried to imitate a person in a normal state of mind as I walked across the lobby. The night man kept his eyes on me until I started up the stairs. I came to the second floor, pulled out my key, and opened the door to room 215. A lamp I had not switched on shed a yellow nimbus over the end of the bed and the worn green carpet. Seated beside the round table with his ankles crossed before him, Robert closed the covers ofFrom Beyond and smiled at me.

•78

•“Old Dad was a pretty lousy writer, wasn't he? Don't you get the feeling hebelieved all this stuff?"

“I hope you didn't set that fire."

"Why would I?" Robert said. "Any fatalities?"

"One. An old man named Otto Bremen."

“I don't suppose anyone is going to miss him very much."

“I was supposed to die in that fire, and you know it." Robert cocked an ankle on his knee, dropped his chin into his hand, and gazed at me with an expression of absolute innocence.

"You knew the building was going to burn down. You said it was a good thing I moved out."

"Wasn't it?"

"Couldn't you have told me what was going to happen? You let a man die."

“I wish I had twenty-twenty foresight, but it isn't that specific. I knew you'd be better off out of there, and that's as far as it went."

I sat on the other side of the table. Irritatingly, Robert adjusted his chair and resumed the chin-on-hand, elbow-on-table posture. "You set me up to meet Ashleigh."

"The sweetie must have been thrilled by those documents."

"Yes," I said. "When you want to put them back, they'll be in Toby Kraft's office safe."

"You don't want me to call on our little friend?" Robert was grinning. "Hatch won't check his hiding place for a couple of days. He's too secure to get worried."

"Why should you give a damn if Stewart Hatch goes to jail?"

"Brother dear," he said, "do you suspect me of manipulation?"

Because right and left had not been reversed, the face across from me was as strange as it was familiar, and the strangeness contained a kind of rawness I thought other people had always seen in me.

“I suspect you of manipulation, yes," I said. "And I resent it. Enormously."

Robert took his hand from his chin and uncrossed his legs in an elaborate display of concern that suggested that I had missed the point. He placed his forearms on the table, knitted his hands together, and sent me a glance agleam with irony, as if to say that he and I had no need for such games.

"Can you honestly say you're notenormously attracted to Laurie Hatch? Haven't you had fantasies about marrying her?"

"You make me sick."

"Even someone like me would appreciate occasional access to a fortune."

"Laurie doesn't get any money if her husband goes to jail. You should have done your homework."

Robert straightened up and took his arms off the table. "Let's examine what happens if Stewart is convicted. Approximately twenty million dollars fall into the hands of little Cobden Carpenter Hatch. His mother has discretion over the entire sum. I know this goes against your puritanical instincts, but if you follow your own desires and marry Laurie, the rest of your life will be extraordinary."

"Unfortunately, it already is," I said.

"Doesn't perfect freedom appeal to you?"

"Marrying for money doesn't sound like freedom to me. Just the opposite, in fact."

"Then forget the money and marry for love. You even like her son. In fact, you love him, too. It's perfect."

"How do you come into this arrangement?"

"You would agree to one condition."

"Which is?"

Robert leaned back and spread his arms. "To share it with me. Once every couple of months, you go out on an errand, and I come back in your place. Eight hours later, twelve hours later, we do the same thing in reverse. No one would ever know, Laurie and Cobbie least of all."

"No thanks," I said.

"Let it sink in. Your wife would have no idea she was sleeping with two men instead of one. The time will come, as it does in all marriages, when you'll find it convenient to leave the house undetected. And we'd be carrying on a family tradition. Our great-great grandfathers did it all the time."

"Right up to the time when Sylvan killed Omar," I said.

"You're kidding. I never heard that."

"So it would be in the family tradition for you to kill me and get everything for yourself."

“I don'twant it!" Robert said. "Ned, remember who I am. I am not domestic. The idea of living with one woman, tied to a schedule. . . . I'm not really a human being, after all. I'm pureDunstan. We weren't supposed to be like this, we were supposed to be one person, but we were separated in the womb, or on the night we were born, I don't know, it happened anyhow, and I couldn't harm you in any way, Ican't. I need you. Besides that, ordinary human life makes me want to puke. How could I want to settle down with Laurie Hatch?"

"You haven't needed me so far," I said, though Robert's assertion had moved me.

"Why do you think I came to Star in Naperville and told her you should leave college? When you insisted on going back, why did I make sure someone would look out for you? Or meet Star in front of Nettie's house and tell her you were in danger?"

"Maybe you do need me," I said. “I need you, too, Robert. But I am not going to marry Laurie Hatch so you can buy Armani suits and gold Rolexes. Even if she would agree to marry me, I have no idea who she really is."

"Are you going to let a small-town Daddy Warbucks like Stewart Hatch poison your mind? You don't give a shit about her background.

Look at ours! It only means you have more in common with her than you thought."

This notion had already occurred to me.

Robert leaned toward me again. "Ned, you're already half in love with Laurie Hatch. It's karma."

“If I don't know what to think about Laurie, I really don't know what to make of you."

“Imagine how I feel about you. Yet in some way we are the same person, after all. And you might stop to consider that my life has been much more difficult than yours."

"How would you know anything about my difficulties?"

"That's a fair question, but you are more or less human, and I'm scarcely human at all. Do you think that's been easy for me?"

“I have no idea," I said.

"But aren't you grateful for what you've learned in the past two days? And that we came together like this?"

I wanted to say, No,all of this sickens me, but the truth spoke itself. "Yes."

Robert smiled. "At the right moment, you always say 'Yes.' "

This unexpected allusion to my recurring dream gave me the beginning of an idea. "You must have paid a visit to New Providence Road."

I had taken him unawares. "Where?"

"Howard Dunstan's old house. The one Sylvan reconstructed with the original stones from Providence."

"That place is bad luck. It's like black magic, it'll eat you alive."

“It's where you always wanted me to go," I said.

Robert gathered himself before once more regarding me with what appeared to be absolute sincerity. "You're talking about the dreams you used to have. They weredreams. I wasn't in charge. You were. That's how dreams work—you're saying something toyourself."

"How do you know what my dreams were about?"

"We were supposed to be the same person," he said. “It's not surprising that we should have the same dreams now and then."

I wondered what would have happened if Robert and I had been born into the same body and felt a disorienting rush of emotions, a kind of swoon made equally of attraction and repulsion. I heard Howard Dunstan say,We flew from the crack in the golden howl. We are smoke from the cannon's mouth. We had flown through the flaw in the bowl and been ripped from the pockets of fallen soldiers—it was as good as any other explanation for the joy, equal to but more powerful than the fear that accompanied it, flooding through me.

"Whatever you are, you're my brother," I said. “It's even more than that. You're half of me."

“I fought this." Robert shivered in his chair. "You have no idea." He turned his head away before looking back with a quantity of feeling that equaled mine. “I despised you. You can't imagine my resentment. I hardlyknew our mother. You got tolive with her, at least off and on, and when you couldn't, she visited you. She sent you birthday cards. I didn't have any of that. Robert was stuck away in the shadows. Star had to protect her little Ned. We only met once."

A recognition with the force of a locomotive moved into me.

"Yes?" Robert said.

“It was our ninth birthday. Something happened. I got sick the day before."

"No kidding," Robert said.

“I didn't get there in time. Wherever it was."

"You almost got me killed," Robert said.

“I had a fever, and I couldn't get out of bed. Star came into our room. I thought I was safe, because my seizures usually hit me in the middle of the afternoon. She was standing next to my cot. . . . Where were you? Where did I go?"

"That year, it was the Anscombes," Robert said. "Or so they called themselves. They took me in because their own kid died."

"Oh, my God," I said. "You were in Boulder."

"Until then, I could always feel him sniffing me out in time to get away. That year, you picked the wrong day to get sick, and I didn't feel anything."

Inside my head, Frank Sinatra sang the wordFight at the top of a beat and hung back for a long, stretched-out moment before coming in with:

fight,

fight it with aaall of your might...

and on the downward curve of the phrase, everything I had chosen to forget came flooding back to me. “I was you," I said.

•79

•By 10:00 P.M. of their mutual birthday in 1967, Ned Dunstan and the boy known as "Bobby Anscombe" imagined themselves safe from the annual trial. Ned had spent the previous day and most of this one in a fever that spun him between dehydrated exhaustion and episodes of cinematic delirium. The fever had peaked before sundown, leaving him soaked in sweat, thirsty, and rational enough to think that he had deflected his annual seizure. "Bobby Anscombe" had received none of the signals—a sense of electricity in the air, an intermittent tingle running along both of his arms, sudden glimpses of a scatter of bright blue dots floating at the corners of his vision—that came to him two or three days before his birthday and announced that it was time to surrender again, until his next release into the human world and the care of a couple who would take him in because they would recognize him as family, to the formless void in which most of his ravenous childhood had been spent. "Bobby" was kneeling on the attic floor, wondering how much money would not be missed if he removed it from the leather trunk he had discovered behind an unfinished wall. Another cache of bills was secreted in the kitchen, but "Michael Anscombe" kept his eye on that one. Ned Dunstan lay on Star's bed, the sweaty sheet thrust aside, while his mother stroked his forehead.

•In the bedroom on Cherry Street, Ned felt a great pressure settling down upon his body, as if the air had doubled in weight. A buzzing sensation he knew too well moved into his chest and traveled along his nerves. When his mother leaned over him, the deep green of her blouse and the black at the center of her eyes blazed and shimmered.

•Something had happened within the house, Robert could not tell what. An unexpected noise, a shift in the air currents, an opened door, a footstep on the attic stairs? If "Mike Anscombe" had checked his bedroom, he would have to invent an excuse for his disobedience, fast. "Mike Anscombe" had no tolerance for disobedience. Robert scuttled toward the attic door, and blue flames shot through the gaps in the floorboards.

•Ned's body stiffened, twitched upward, and slammed back down on themattress. Before be plummeted away, he saw Star's stricken face glide toward him.

Through walls of blue fire, he was rushing behind Mr. X up an asphalt driveway toa suburban house with a conspicuous new addition on its left side. A bicycle leaned on its kickstand. A flat-faced moon glared down from above a row of mountain peaks unreal as a backdrop. Fir trees scented the chill night air.

Theatrically, Mr. X pressed the bell. When the door opened, he rammed a knife into the belly of the man before him and walked him backward. The invisible pressure that had blown Ned up the asphalt drive pushed him into the room. From speakers on either side of the fireplace, the voice of Frank Sinatra unrolled a long phrase about an immovable object and an old, irresistible force.

•Robert stood listening at the attic door.

•“Mr. Anscombe, I presume," said Mr. X.

The man gaped at the purple ropes sliding out of his body. In an unexpected atmospheric shift that returned to him the odd memory of a stuffed fox lifting its paw within a glass bell, Ned took advantage of Mr. X's pleasure in his task and stepped backward until he struck the door. Veils of blue fire drifted over the walls, and Frank Sinatra insisted that someone had to be kissed.

Gleeful Mr. X opened "Michael Anscombe's" throat.

Ned glanced to his left and through an intervening wall caught a snapshot-like vision of a heavy woman with tangled blond hair lying in bed readingGoodnight Moon. With the vision came certain unhappy information: the woman on the bed had given birth to a dead child who had been horribly, appallinglywrong.

Ned raced into a brief hallway ending at a closed door. Before him, uncarpeted stairs led to another, narrower doorway.

•Robert pressed his hands against the wood and focused on what was going on beneath him. Transparent blue flames licked in past his feet and traveled in bright, ambitious lines across the attic floor. The faint sounds from below told Robert that "Michael Anscombe" had been slit open by a joyous being finally within reach of its quarry. Robert's life depended upon his capacity to evade this predatory being's annual descents into this strange, transitory existence.

Footsteps of an unearthly softness, lighter than a child's and completely inexplicable, glided toward him from the bottom of the staircase.

•Ned moved half of the way up the stairs and froze where he stood. With the ease of a figure in a dream,a boy identical to himself was emerging through the unopened door.

•Robert looked down in amazed relief at the goggling figure of his overprivileged, sheltered brother and understood that here before him was the means of his survival. He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed down. His brother retreated, and Robert floated noiselessly to the ground floor.

•Ned moved away from the bottom of the stairs. His astonishing double pointed to the end of the hallway. Ned went to the door and attempted to open it. His hand melted through the doorknob and closed upon itself.

He glanced over his shoulder and, past the figure of his enraged double, looked through a transparent wall to see Mr. X striding away from the triangular hump of "Michael Anscombe's" body to invade a room stacked with cardboard boxes. The woman with tangled hair shuffled forward, holdingGoodnight Moon to her chest like a talisman.

•Robert saw the double's fingers pass through the knob of his bedroom door and knew that he was notreal. Thereal Ned Dunstan dreamed on in Edgerton, and what had been sent to Boulder was an illusory replica. For the first time in his peculiar life, Robert found himself capable of setting resentment aside long enough to grasp that although his mother's darling was not physically present, some aspect of Ned Dunstan had been delivered to him, and thatthis figment, thisduplicate, was what he needed to get out of this house.

Robert spun on his heel to observe exactly what his brother had seen a moment before.

•A second after Robert took off down the hall, Ned followed, expecting his double to dash into the living room and melt through the front door. Robert reached the end of the hallway and disappeared. Baffled, Ned moved a few steps forward and saw the woman still plodding across the bedroom. Mr. X plunged on into the newaddition. "Michael Anscombe's" corpse bent over its knees in a widening pool of blood. Frank Sinatra was making clear his intention to kiss those lips that he adored. Ned looked across the living room and, on the other side of the half partition that separated it from the kitchen, saw Robert glaring at him. He raced out of the hallway.

•Robert couldn't believe it. His brother—his brother'sreplica— was gawking like a tourist at the Grand Canyon. Just when Robert had begun to think he would have to throw the toaster at the kid to get his attention, Ned looked into the kitchen and saw him.Come on, Robert urged, and his brother started to move at last. Robert went to the sink, squatted down, pushed aside bottles of cleaning supplies, and opened a secret compartment some previous owner had installed to hide his wife's jewelry. His hand closed around the edges of a metal box.

•Ned couldn't believe what he was seeing. With his back to the opening in the wall, his double was kneeling in front of the sink and rooting around in the washing supplies. In about a second and a half, either the woman or Mr. X, or both of them, would come into the living room.

"Stop messing around," he whispered.

"Shhh," the double whispered back.

Ned moved into an alcove for a washer and dryer next to the back door and watched Robert emerge from the sink cabinet holding a flat metal box. He opened the lid and took out two stacks of bills. He reached into the box again, and his body tensed. His head snapped to the side.

They were going to die. That was it. The double's greed had killed them.

•Robert watched "Alice Anscombe" stumble into view and swing her head toward the kitchen. Her eyes went flat with shock. "Shit on a shingle," she said.

"Alice" dreamily turned her head to the hallway, smiled, and said, "Who the hell are you, Bob Hope?"

•Robert and Ned felt the atmosphere about them intensify and mysteriously seem to brighten. The only other living being in the house had heard "Alice Anscombe's" words.

•A voice in Ned's mind said,Ican't be killed, I'm not here, but he can, and he stepped out of the alcove. The instant he did so, Ned at last understood his baffling double to be precisely that which he had missed and yearned for all his life. He was looking at his brother.

•Robert jumped to his feet, thrusting wads of bills into his pockets. "Alice" waded into the lake of blood, came bemused to a halt, and looked down. Robert thought he saw the corners of her mouth lift when she took in her husband's body, but the smile, if it was a smile, faded. The book fell from her hands, and blood splashed over the tops of her feet. "Alice" turned her head to the empty hallway.

• Frank Sinatra sang:

Fight...

fight. . .

fight it with aaall of your might...

and Ned felt himself begin to fade out of existence with the abruptness of a raindrop on a hot sidewalk. He held out his hands and through their hazy, lightly tinted fabric saw the tiles of the kitchen floor.

•The madwoman in the living room shouted, "Why are you doing this? Don't you understand I'm already in hell?"

A dry male voice said, "Don't worry, Mrs. Anscombe. You will be taken care of soon enough."

•Robert and Ned stared into their identical faces and seemed to glide toward each other without any sort of conscious movement. Ned's being trembled with the awareness that his brother's survival, and in some sense his own, depended upon an extraordinary act of surrender.

•They heard the woman shout,Shit, I really am in hell, only the son of a bitch isn't RED, it's BLUE!

•Gliding toward Robert, Ned experienced a new sort of terror, which was focused on the awareness that he was on the threshold of a change that he could neither control nor foresee. The terrorbecame exquisite when he realized that part of his being was already stretching out its arms in yearning.

•A rational, self-protective portion of Robert also welcomed the coming mystery, for it recognized a chance of survival. The part of Robert that was chaotic and irrational resisted in a terror greater than Ned's. He felt despair and revulsion at having been swindled into a destructive bargain.

•Irresistibly, Robert and Ned sailed toward each other, met, and melted together, each with his own fears, doubts, and resentments, and for a moment their psyches tangled and rebelled, one aghast at the other's depth of rage and violence, the other repelled by what seemed the unbearable narrowness and smallness of his confinement, therefore burning tomutiny, tolay waste—

•No sooner than registered, this ambivalence dissolved into a resolution and harmony, a wholeness shot through with the perception of an even greater, more roomy wholeness, equal to the possession of a kind of magnificence, withheld from them only by the fact of Ned's actualabsence. Such depth of personal surrender accompanied this sense of possibility that both instantly drew back, but in one mind and body they soared together through the kitchen wall with what their Ned-half experienced from his inextricable other self as an acknowledgment of a compounding sweetness and satisfaction equal to his own.

•Together they fled into the fir-scented night, and their Robert-half seized control and sped them away. Ned felt as though pedaling uphill on a leaden bicycle, then as though swimming underwater against a strong current. His muscles ached, his lungs strained for oxygen. Mile after blurry mile slipped by. With no transition, they came to rest in a vacant lot where Queen Anne's face trembled about them. Robert peeled him off like a dirty shirt. Millions of stars gleamed down from the night sky.It's too much, Ned thought,way too much.

"Where are we?"

“I'm somewhere in Wisconsin," Robert said. "You're in Edgerton, with Mom."

Ned pulled his knees to his chest as a spike drove into his head.

•80

•“And I was you," said Robert. "Long enough to get us out ofBoulder, anyhow."

“I can't believe I forgot what we did," I said. “I saved your life." “I've saved yours a couple of times," Robert said. "Can you stay alive until our birthday? I can't protect you every minute of the day." "We have more to talk about," I said, but he was gone.

81 • Mr. X

•O You Hoverers, You Smoke Ravening from the Cannon, Your Son is wondering if in Your Triumphant Millennium what used to be called "the servant problem" still exists. Do you, in Your Exalted Realms, employ the services of humbler beings, no doubt enslaved, no doubt from Conquered Territories? If so, you know what I'm talking about. A slave is no different from a servant, except for being an even greater responsibility. The patron saint of servants is Judas. My earthly parents suffered the depredations of disloyal maids and housekeepers, and I, too, have had my Judases, the first of them one Clothhead Spelvin, whose betrayal I answered with a summary visit to his jail cell. And now, that twitchy collection of street-sweepings, Frenchy La Chapelle, has failed me.

This morning I snatched sans payment a copy of theEdgerton Echo from the newsstand and nipped up Chester Street, scanning the front page. The editors had been allowed time enough only to insert a paragraph reporting the destruction by fire of a "modest rooming house." A single fatality was considered a possibility. Tomorrow's rag would supply photographs and complete details.

I strolled to the scene of the happy event in the guise of an ordinary mortal. My visible, daytime self possesses the dignity of a retired statesman or diplomat, with perhaps a hint of a general's authority. In a weathered manner, I am still handsome, if I say so myself. (To complete these details of my mundane existence, I employ a false or assumed name, which contains a revelatory joke no one is likely to perceive, and I have recently retired from an executive position.)

One matter niggled as I neared the site. I should haveknown of my son's death, as I hadknown of his mother's. Yet this was the weakling offspring, whose share of my legacy may have been too insignificant to permit telepathic transmission.

The "modest rooming house" had been reduced to a heap of rubble. Within a network of red tape declaringDO NOT CROSS HAZARDOUS AREA DO NOT CROSS HAZARDOUS AREA, investigators in orange space suits prowled through the mess. A collection of dimwits and ghouls had assembled across the street.

I circulated through them and picked up what I could. Several blamed the fire on faulty wiring. Many considered Helen Janette, the landlady, an ill-tempered harridan. I nearly went mad with impatience:What about the fatality?

At last I buttonholed a wheezing wreck.Didn't one of the tenants perish?

"Say what?"

Some guy died.

"Oh, yeah. Otto. Damn shame. Did you know him?"

Notto speak to.

The wreck nodded. “It shakes you up more than you want to let on."

Oh, it does shake me up.

I hastened back to the sty and fastened onto the news broadcasts. An unidentified body had been removed from the scene. An hour later, identity was suspected but unconfirmed. Identity had been confirmed but withheld. Not until noon was the victim named as Otto Bremen, a seventy-year-old crossing guard at Carl Sandburg Elementary School.

By evening, the broadcasters were exercising their internally amplified voices to announce that investigators and fire specialists in the pay of Edgerton's Departments of Fire and Police had concluded that the fire was of suspicious origin.

You understand my complaints about the servant problem.

•Truth be told, Frenchys are hard to come by. I have decided to give the snake a second chance. Frenchy is not so stupid as to boast of his crime. (Except to Cassie Little.)

Frenchy's life shall be spared, as long as he can repair the damage and look up some old acquaintances to discover if they have been unwise. Star would never have divulged the name "Edward Rinehart": she was good at secrets. Clearly, she never told the weakling that he had a brother. Blast him. Blast his brother, too.Ithought there was only one of them—

Years back, I nearlyhad the boy—the atmosphere electric—my excitement profound—I sensed thepresence— yet the quivering shadow slipped from me—the singularity of the occasion troubled & intrigued—now I understand.

I believe the twoconnected—joined together. The Dangerous Son was close to hand—Resolutionnigh. My failures had a single cause—Ignorance.I thought there was but One—not Two—I believed theShadow the image of my Prey—not the helplessShadow of his brother.

I object! You People got things wrong!

But no more complaint. During her lifetime, the cow apparently exerted a protective influence. Understanding strengthens me, as does blessed Recognition—success in maturity—in what some may call old age—is sweeter than in youth.

82 • Mr. X

•Six hours later. I require sleep. Unpleasant dreams beset my brief doze, and I tossed and turned for yet another hour. However.

The morning's edition of theEdgerton Echo informs all and sundry that the Chester Street fire resulted from an act of arson. Below the fold, two elegiac columns accompany a photographic representation of Crossing Guard Bremen's bloated visage. PLUS!—the mind reels— in devotion to the memory of Mr. My Mustache Is Bigger Than Yours, Carl Sandburg Elementary School has announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the arsonist.

I am on the verge of palpitations. If I were found incinerated, would anyone fork out $10,000 for the name of the incinerator? Besides that, Cassie Little would slit her mother's throat for a handful of nickels, much less $10,000.

Before the sun travels another five feet of sky, Frenchy receives his marching orders.

•83

•Before Ashleigh's flight the next morning, I walked over to Merchants Hotel to pick up the satchel and tell her about the fire and Captain Mullan while we had breakfast.

"Laurie called earlier. I told her I managed to get some useful information. I didn't say how, and she didn't ask."

"Good."

Ashleigh jabbed her spoon into her granola. "Mullan checked you for a wire? It sounds like he's being investigated. Or is afraid he will be. I bet he's worried about what's going to come out if Hatch is indicted. About two days from now, these guys will be sweating bullets."

"Not Mullan," I said.

"You've been here no longer than I have, and you know that. You're an interesting man, Ned."

"You don't know the half of it."

"Ned?" She put down her spoon. "Why are you laughing?"

•Toby Kraft came from behind his counter and wrapped his arms around me. "Heard the news this morning, couldn't believe my ears! You okay? What happened?"

I said that I had moved to the Brazen Head after his friend had evicted me. “I guess you knew her when her name was Hazel Jansky."

"We did some business together about a million years ago. The lady got in trouble, and I helped her out. I do favors for my friends." Toby was not even faintly uneasy. "What did she do, tell you her life story?"

"Part of it. I hope you had that building insured."

"Bet your ass. Do your aunts know you're all right?"

“I didn't tell them where I was, but I should call them anyhow," I said.

Toby looked at the satchel, and I asked him if he would keep it in his safe for a while. He caressed the soft leather. "Touch an item like that, you feel like J. P. Morgan."

He shoved the bag on top of the jumble of files and loose papers in his safe and grunted back onto his feet. "Helen chewed me out for telling you her old name. But you didn't get that here."

“I saw some old articles from theEcho," Isaid. "Toby, was that why you went to Greenhaven?"

"Sit clown."

The same piles of papers flowed across the top of his desk; the same women in the same sad, blunt poses covered the walls. Toby folded his hands on his belly. "Want to know the truth of that deal? Certain people have problems with the adoption process. Other people, they don't want the babies God gave them. I can't defend the legality of what I did, but I do defend its morality."

"The morality of selling babies," I said.

"Adoption agencies don't take fees?"

"They don't abduct babies and tell their mothers they died."

"A child deserves a good home." Toby spread his arms. "Me, I am a guy who takes care of people. I took care of your grandmother, I took care of your mother, and I'm going to take care of you. The day I am dragged kicking and screaming from the face of the earth, and I hope at the time I am in the sack with a good-looking dame, you are going to hear from the greatest lawyer ever lived, Mr. C. Clayton Creech, and it will be your duty to get your ass back to Edgerton. No fooling around." His magnified eyes made sure I got the message. "Understood?"

"Understood," I said.

“I should give you his particulars." Toby snapped a business card out of his wallet.

C. Clayton Creech, LLP Attorney at Law 7 Paddlewheel Road Edgerton, Illinois

A telephone number was printed on the lower left corner, and on the lower right,Available at All Times.

"Get into any kind of trouble around here, you call this guy first. Promise me?"

"Greatest lawyer that ever lived."

"You have no idea."

"On the day you die, he's going to read your will? What's the rush?"

"You let things slide, funny shit can happen. Know the basic principle?"

I shook my head.

"Take 'em by surprise," he said. I laughed out loud. "Listen, why not start working for me now? You got nothing else to do, and I can explain the whole job in fifteen minutes. The hours are eighta.m. to live-thirtyp.m. A little time off for lunch. Ready?"

"Take 'em by surprise," I said. “I guess so, sure, but it can only be for a couple of days. Let me call Nettie first."

"Be my guest," Toby said.

Nettie wasted no time on an exchange of greetings. “I thought we were going to be seeing you, but all you do is call on the telephone."

"How did you know it was me?"

“I heard your ring. Come over for dinner around six. And if you still don't have a piece, the best thing is, get one from old Toby Kraft. You want a piece with no registration on it. The time comes when you have to use it, wipe it off, drop it, and walk away. You'll be cleaner than the Board of Health. May will be here, too, so show up on time."

Toby tilted back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. "The old warhorse had some words of advice?"

"You know what she's like," I said. "How about giving me a lesson in pawnbroking?"

"You're gonna be great at this. It's in your blood." He pushed himself away from the desk.

•He explained the procedure for writing out the tickets and storing the goods. Cameras went on one set of shelves, watches on another, musical instruments in a display case, arranged in the order of the numbers on the ticket stubs. He put flatware in wrapped bundles lined up in drawers, stemware and china in cabinets, paintings against the wall, rugs and furniture at the side of the back room. Pledges were charged at 3 percent interest, weekly. I asked him about the money given for the pledges.

"Generally, you know by looking at the customer. It's in their eyes. You'll see. When you know what they hope they're gonna get, offer half, and they go away happy. Anything suspicious, like a guy with a shopping cart full of computer monitors, pick up the phone and tell him you're calling the cops. That shit catches up with you."

"What about guns?"

"Paperwork up the keester. The firearms are in a locked cabinet on the other side of the shelves. A guy wants a handgun, go to the cabinet, slide out a tray, put it in front of him. Prices are all tagged. When he makes his choice, he signs the forms here in the drawer. We send copies to the State Police, and he comes back in five days. Rifles, shotguns, no problem, he gets it that day. No assault weapons, on account of I'm not running an armory."

"Nettie thinks I should carry an unregistered gun," I said.

"She wants you to get into the stickup business?"

After I had explained my history with Joe Staggers and his friends, he gave me a long, careful look. “I got a couple pieces here for use in emergencies. Don't let anyone see it unless you have to, and never say where you got it."

Toby disappeared into the rear of the shop and came back with a small, black pistol and a holster that looked like a glove. "This here's a twenty-five-caliber Beretta automatic. I put a clip in for you. To chamber a round, pull back this slide. This is the safety—see the red dot? That means the safety is on, and you can't pull the trigger. Push it down with your thumb, you're ready to fire." He put the pistol in the holster. "Clip it to your belt in the small of your back, no one'll know it's there. Give it back the day you leave."

"This probably won't happen, but what if I have to use it?"

"Throw it in the river. A gun with no paper on it, you only use once." He watched me clip the holster to my belt and asked me to turn around. "Now forget you're carrying it. Don't keep on reaching around to fiddle with the thing."

We went into his office. "Your job is to stick behind the counter. If I'm out or in here by myself, bring in copies of the slips every couple of hours and record the transactions in the journal on my desk. You'll see how—put down the number, the customer's name, a description, and the amount. When you get to the amount, record it at half value. Then take the other journal out of my bottom left-hand drawer and write down everything all over again, but with the right numbers. At the end of the day, that one goes in the safe."

I laughed.

"You want to keep your head above water, you need an edge. Is this concept new to you?"

"Toby," I said, “I'm a Dunstan."

He stuck out his furry paw, and in the light of a sudden recognition I surrendered my hand to be tenderized. Toby Kraft's loyalty to my aunts, by extension to me, would forever overlook the petty cruelties they wished upon him, because Nettie and May represented his only surviving connection to the wife whose extraordinary talents had delighted him beyond measure.

•84

•I spent the rest of the day in the doze of the pawnshop. Separately, two men who looked as though they had never pawned anything in their lives came in and proceeded to the office. On his way to lunch, Toby introduced me to the second of these visitors, "Mr. Profitt," who brushed his manicured hand against mine and said, all in one word, "Goodameetchakiddonledimdownawright?"

“I hear you," I said.

Toby came back alone and handed me a brown bag containing a tuna-fish sandwich, a packet of potato chips, and a Coca-Cola. He apologized for not giving me a lunch break and said I was doing a great job. To my surprise, the customers I dealt with during the day bore out his promise that I would know how much to offer for a pledge: by a flick of the eyes, a hesitation of speech, a wayward gesture, each had communicated the hoped-for amount. When I named half of the sum, they accepted on the spot.

At 5:00p.m., Toby patted me on the back and told me I could get "spruced up" for the aunts. He gave me a set of keys. "Let yourself in a half hour early tomorrow, okay? We're going to rearrange the storage room. When you leave, lock up in front and show theclosed sign. I don't want no more customers today."

After I locked the gates, I went to an agency on Commercial Avenue, checked the boxes for all the insurance I could get, and rented a Ford Taurus painted the saturated green of a Spanish olive.

•85

•The map in Hugh Coventry's old journal put the entrance to Buxton Place, where Edward Rinehart had occupied two cottages purchased under the names of characters from H. P. Lovecraft, near the top of Fairground Road, not far from the campus. I pulled into a parking space in front of a coffee shop. Two blocks ahead, Fairground Road came to an end at a deep swath of green intersected by paths leading to red brick, neo-Georgian buildings. I glanced backward and saw the bus stop where I had gotten off to visit Suki Teeter. Buxton Place lay ahead and on the other side of Fairground Road. I walked past the gilded window of an Irish bar called Brennan's, then stepped between the parked cars and jogged across the street.

Storefronts lined the sidewalk all the way to the intersection. Buxton Place had to be in the last block before the university. I went past an unbroken row of comic-book stores, clothing outlets, student restaurants, and candy shops. My memory had tricked me, and the cul-de-sac came into Fairground Road further south, maybe a block past Suki's corner.

I walked past the same storefronts I had seen on the way up. When I came parallel to Brennan's, I glanced through the window at an aproned bartender aiming a remote control at a television set I could not see. I glanced to my right and between a Canadian pancake house and a Middle Eastern restaurant saw a cobbled alley no wider than my rented car. If the alley had a name, the City of Edgerton had seen no reason to put up a sign. I stepped down onto the cobbles and peered into the gloom. Past the rear of the shops on either side, the alley widened out. I made out the double doors of old stables and, at the far end, two small cottages.

Thick padlocks hung from the doors of the old stables. Beneath their dusty windows, stenciled letters spelled out ALBERTUS UNIVERSITY STORAGE FACILITY. Edward Rinehart's houses stood side by side, separated by a common wall. Each had two windows up and down and a fanlight over an arched doorway. Narrow chimneys pierced the slanting tiled roofs, and iron crestings ran along the gutters. They looked distorted, diminished, as if squeezed down from some larger, original size. The windows reflected my cupped hands and the dark, indistinct oval of my face. I hurried back into the sunlight.

With eight minutes in which to accomplish a fifteen-minute drive, I whirled into an illegal U-turn and sped south on Fairground Road. A traffic light flashed yellow, and I bumped the accelerator and shot through the intersection a moment before it turned red. Robert, who had abruptly appeared next to me in the passenger seat, applauded. "Dash! Verve!"

I almost drove into a parked car.

"Did I startle you? Please accept my apologies. I trust that our documents are now in Toby Kraft's safe."

"Go to hell. Yes, they're in Toby's safe."

"Do we have plans for the evening?"

“I'm having dinner with Nettie and May."

"Do you know, I have never enjoyed a meal in the company of our great-aunts?"

"You wouldn't like it," I said. "Their conversation tends to be repetitious."

"Let me relieve you of the tedium. I'll take your place."

"No."

"After the tedious dinner, were you thinking of driving to Ellendale?"

"Stay away from Laurie Hatch," I said.

“If you insist. For the time being, anyhow."

"Robert," I said, but I was talking to an empty seat.

•86

•From her station in the window, Aunt Joy pointed at Nettie's house, then herself, telling me that I was to come over after dinner. I nodded. Joy and I had a lot to talk about.

The aunts smiled up from the sofa as I came into the living room. Clark granted me the indulgent sneer of a man fresh from an appearance at the Speedway Lounge. He was arrayed in pearl-gray trousers, the jacket of a purple suit, and a wide necktie with yellow polka dots on a red background. “I guess you got a vehicle now."

"Just a rental," I said. I kissed my aunts, and May handed me a brown paper bag.

“I hope I got the sizes right."

In the bag were two three-packs of Calvin Klein briefs, size 34, and six pairs of black over-the-calf wool socks, size 10—12. After the aunts had divided up the loot from the ICU, I had jokingly asked May to get me underwear and socks, and she had taken me at my word. "The sizes are perfect," I said. “I don't really approve of this, but thanks, Aunt May. I can use them."

“Is that blazer your only coat, Neddie? I can get you a new one from Lyall's. They have some beautiful coats in their men's department."

"No, no," I said hurriedly, “I have all the jackets I need."

"Have any this color?" Clark asked, almost belligerently.

"No, but it's very pretty."

"What would you call this particular color?"

"Purple?"

“I hate to see a young man make a fool of himself."

"Midnight purple?"

"The true name for this shade is aubergine. Now you don't have to walk around in ignorance."

"Good," I said. “I've been walking around in ignorance most of my life."

Nettie said, “I think we had better get into the kitchen. Do you still like fried chicken, Ned?"

"Do I ever."

The table had been set with bowls of mashed potatoes and string beans and a pitcher of iced tea. Nettie peeled aluminum foil off the top of a platter of fried chicken. May hobbled up to distribute the chicken onto our plates. Uncle Clark lowered himself into a chair, and I poured him a glass of iced tea. "How's your friend Cassie?"

He took in just enough liquid to extinguish a match. "The girl didn't show up for work today. Bruce McMicken was rough around the edges."

May settled into the chair across from me while Nettie brought out gravy and biscuits. I poured iced tea into the other three glasses. Nettie thanked me, formally. In silence, we helped ourselves to the potatoes and beans.

"This is a wonderful dinner, Aunt Nettie," I said.

"When you were a child, you were fond of fried chicken."

"Nobody makes it better than you," I said.

Silence descended again. My remark about being raised in ignorance had spoiled the fun.

Nettie, for whom even a pointed silence was an unendurable challenge, said, "What have you been doing all this time? Touring the town in your new car?"

"Or playing cards?" May asked. "Mountry trash is on the lookout for you. And one of them is dead. That is no great loss to the world."

Nettie sent me one of her thousand-pound glances. “I guess the police didn't give you much trouble." She paused. "Unless you're not saying."

"They let me go right away," I said. “It's a strange thing, but there's a man in town who looks a lot like me."

"So that's your story," Clark said, maneuvering a tiny portion of mashed potato into the gravy.

“It's not a story," I said. "Yesterday, when I was coming out of City Hall, he was standing at the far end of Town Square. I tried to follow him, but he got away."

Clark fixed me with a disapproving glare. "City Hall gets locked up on Sundays. What business would you have there, anyhow?"

"A friend of Laurie Hatch's volunteers at City Hall on the weekends. He's been giving me some help."

"Mrs. Hatch introduces you to her friends?" Nettie asked.

I explained about meeting Laurie at Le Madrigal. “I wanted to get some information about Edward Rinehart, and she introduced me to Hugh Coventry, her friend who helps out at City Hall."

"Hugh Coventry?" Nettie asked. "He's the man who lost our pictures. If Mrs. Hatch is such a good friend of yours, she could help us get them back."

"There's no need to trouble Mrs. Hatch with our affairs."

"You already involved Mrs. Hatch in our personal affairs," Nettie said.

“In mine, yes," I said. “If it makes you feel better, I didn't learn much about Rinehart at City Hall. He bought two little alleyway houses in College Park. And he was a criminal. Supposedly, he died in prison."

"Then stop rooting in the dirt," Nettie said.

Rooting in the dirt. I saw myself kneeling on the carpet of grass behind Howard Dunstan's ruined house—I remembered falling through a trap door and hearing a theatrical phantom say,Once your father had been created, I decided to amuse myself by driving him mad. . . . Perhaps you will destroy him instead. The outcome of the game no longer matters to me.

Sudden, stupendous understanding took my breath away.

All three of them were looking at me as if they had seen my understanding come into being, but they really had seen no more than the expression on my face at the moment of comprehension. Howard had told me what I most needed to know. Telling me what I needed to know helped to keep him amused.

"But Edward Rinehart didn't die at Greenhaven," I said. "He's living in Edgerton. From what I hear, he sounds a lot like a Dunstan."

Nettie's chin sank to her chest, and May found a need to gaze at the stove. Clark dissected a string bean.

"Never in all my life," Nettie finally said.

"A lot of things about our family were hidden from me."

Nettie glared. "You've been listening to gossip."

“If you wanted me to think that the Dunstans were a normal family, you should have kept me away from Aunt Joy," I said.

"Joy lives in a world of her own," Nettie said. "Put it out of your mind."

"You want me to forget the way she waggled a finger at Uncle Clarence and floated him through the air?"

"Joy was never a happy person like you and me, Nettie," May said. "She blamed Daddy for her troubles."

"We're not talking about her troubles," Nettie growled. "We're talking about what shedid."

"We're talking about the Dunstans," I said. "Aunt Nettie, you're not all that different from Joy, are you?"

She cast me another thunder-and-lightning glare. “I'm aDunstan, if that's what you mean. Would you like to see proof of that?"

Before I could answer, Nettie tucked her hands into her armpits and frowned at the table. The pitcher of tea rose up and wafted down the table to refill my glass. It coasted to May, who said, "No, thank you, I've had enough." The pitcher landed with a tinkling of ice cubes.

Nettie turned her head to Clark. An alarmed look crossed his face. "No! I don't—"

He ascended three feet above his chair and sailed toward the stove like a man on a magic carpet. "Put me down, Nettie!"

She spun him around and brought him back to his chair. Clark put his hands on his chest and took a couple of noisy breaths. "You know I don't like it when you do that."

"You married me," Nettie said.

“Ilike it," May chirped. “Ialways liked it."

Nettie wiped her forehead and stared at her sister. Giggling, May shot out of her chair, made a circuit of the table, and came to rest.

Nettie looked angrily at me. "You want some, too?"

What came out of my mouth was "Yes."

She beetled her brows, gazing not so much at me as at my position in the room. A drop of sweat rolled out of her hairline. The tingle that predicted my "attacks" bloomed in my chest. I felt my being grasped up and held within a firmly accommodating restraint precisely like Mr. X's confinement. With the same sense of powerlessness before an irresistible pressure, I lifted off my chair. A great wall of wind pushed me into the living room. The wind shifted on its axis, hurtled me back into the kitchen, and tumbled me head over heels a moment before I struck the wall. A shout of glee burst from my throat. I floated to the table and saw Nellie gazing at nothing, her eyebrows contracted and her face damp with sweat. I moved over my chair, swayed right-left, then left-right, and, like a helicopter, settled back on earth.

"You like that more than I do," Clark said.

"Ned's aDunstan." Nettie wiped her face with a napkin. "You get old, your batteries run down."

"Nettie," I said, “I drove out to your old house yesterday. Something happened to me there. I can't explain it, but I can tell you what it was. I got dizzy, and pretty soon I was standing in a room with a stuffed fox next to a brass clock on the mantelpiece."

My eyes on Nettie, I only dimly saw May lean forward and clasp her hands before her chest. Nettie touched the napkin to her temple.

"Your father was in that room," I said. "He was wearing a velvet smoking jacket, and he had a cigar in one hand."

"How did our father look?" May asked me.

"Tired. But like he was acting, too."

“I don't recognize that description," May said. "My father was all too energetic."

“I recognize it," Nettie said. "Joy would, too."

"He spoke to me," I said.

"Joy used to say Daddy talked to her, out at our old house." May looked warmly at me. “It seems your Dunstan share came out strong late in life, to make up for lost time."

"What did he say when he spoke to you?" Nettie demanded.

"That he created my father. I think his son called himself Edward Rinehart when he came back to Edgerton from wherever he was in the meantime. What I'm wondering is, who was his mother?"

"You're looking for a woman who might have fooled around with Howard?" Clark said. "There is no shortage of candidates."

"Our mother used to say, some of those fine ladies are not what they pretend to be," May said. "Daddy told her, None of them are."

"Fine ladies," I said.

"Those people sent their sons to boarding schools," Nettie said. "To make the right connections. And you know, May, we seldom got into town when we were little girls. Out tutors came to us."

"There were many things our daddy did not wish us to encounter."

I said, "He didn't protect you from whatever made you blow out windshields and power lines up and down Wagon Road."

May stiffened in her chair. “I got mad. That's all that happened. Our father was very angry, but I couldn't help what I did, I justdid it."

"You saw two girls making fun of you?"

"Mainly, I remember Daddy shouting at me in his big, loud voice. I cried all the way home."

"Let's talk about something pleasant, for a change," Nettie said. "Our grandnephew's birthday is the day after our niece's funeral. Would you like to have a party on your birthday, Ned? I could make a sweet-potato pie."

"That's very generous," I said. "But you know what happens on my birthdays. I wouldn't want to spoil all the fun."

"Your fits?" May asked. "We've seenthat before."

Nettie said, "We'll have the party early in the day. If you feel your trouble coming on, go to your mother's old room until it passes. You know how to handle it after all this time, don't you?"

“I guess I do," I said. "Sure, let's celebrate everything we can."

•I escorted May down the steps. “Is that your car, Neddie? Did it cost a lot of money?"

“It's a rental," I said.

"Little thing like that wouldn't be hard to appropriate." Sudden inspiration brought her to a halt. She turned to me with a brilliant smile. "Would you like a new car for your birthday?"

"No, thank you, Aunt May. It's too hard to find a parking space in New York."

"A parking space is something that cannot be stolen," she said. “I'll get you something else. But seeing that car . . ." She shook her head. "You mentioned Wagon Road? Daddy was so mad at me, that day. I knew why, too. He was mad because I was mad. Athim."

Joy raised a silhouetted hand, and I waved back. May saw nothing butWagon Road. "You mentioned those girls—you know, I remember them! They werelaughing at us. I wanted to die. So I turned my head, pretending I was too proud to notice, and . . ." She shook her head. "The upshot was, I did something I didn't know Icould do! I had as much Dunstan in me as my sisters, no matter what they thought. You never saw such a hubbub! Glass exploding all over everywhere, wires falling, the poor horses so frightened. And that wasme! Scared me worse than Daddy's yelling."

We reached the other side of the street and moved toward her house. "The girls were laughing at you, and you turned away. That was when you got angry. It wasn't the girls, was it? You saw something else."

"A little girl has eyes, too, that's all I can say." She tightened her grip on my arm, and we went up the steps to her porch.

"What was it? What did you see?"

May released my arm and opened her door. "Oh, Neddie, you don't know anything at all."

•87

•Joy's hunched figure toiled down a lightless tunnel and through the entrance to a cave. As the living room took shape around me, the stench increased. Clarence had been teleported elsewhere.

“I want to talk to you! Would you like a glass of sherry?"

"Thank you. Where is Clarence?"

"He's sleeping in the closet." Joy moved back and regarded me, her eyes gleaming. "You saw Daddy, didn't you? He told me you would. I bet my sisters are so jealous they could spit.They could never see him. Nettie and May think they know everything, but they don't, not by a long shot." She put the tips of her fingers to her mouth, almost dancing in her glee. She waved me toward a chair. “I'll be back in a second."

Faint rustles and thuds came from another region of the house. Clarence had awakened, I thought, and he objected to the closet. Joy returned with two glasses the size of thimbles. I took one of them and said, "Maybe Clarence wants to be let out."

"He's sound asleep. That noise is the wind in the attic." She perched on the other chair and tilted the contents of the thimble into her mouth. I did the same. The sherry, which was not sherry, burned down my throat like kerosene.

"Homemade," Joy said. "According to my bad, mad daddy's recipe. I don't have but a little bit left, but I wanted you to have some."

"The ambrosia of the Dunstans," I said. “I guess you've seen him, too."

"So what did my sisters say? That I made it all up? I didn't, though. My daddy, Howard Dunstan, stood right in front of me, same as he did with you. Wasn't hefunny?Wasn't he allimpressive andunhappy?"

"He didn't seem to think he had any reason to go on living," I said.

"According to Daddy, we were washed up a long lime ago. He appeared to me because I was a true Dunstan, like him, but he didn't enjoy the condition. He wanted us all to go away."

"He told you I would see him, too?"

"Because you were avrai Dunstan, like me. He didn't like you, though. Daddy didn't like anybody, especially Dunstans. He didn't even like his daughters, because they reminded him of his futility. That is the conclusion I have come to."

"Aunt Joy," I said, "how could you and I talk to your father? It wasn't like seeing a ghost, it was like being there with him."

"My daddy couldn't be aghost," Joy said, amused. "Someone like that could never be an ordinaryold fantome. Time made that happen."

"Time?"

“It's all around us. You can use time, if you're able. I don't see why you're sostupide about it. According to my daddy, you keep on bothering him over and over. That's what hesaid."

“I don't understand," I said. "What do you mean, use it?"

"You saw my daddy, didn't you? You were in his study, and he was alive, he had to be alive, because he could talk to you."

I realized what she meant. "Oh."

"You went into his time, that's all," Joy said."C'est simple."

I stared at her for a moment, trying to reconcile the memory of what I had experienced with my instinct to deny Joy's version of the simple.

“I had this feeling of . . ."

"Of what?" Her voice had an impatient edge.

"Falling."

"Well, of course.C'est normal. I don't know why I should have toexplain it to you. When you gobackwards, it feels likeyou're falling. How else could it feel? I hope you know how lucky you are. Hardly anybody can ever do that. Some can do it once but never again. Queenie couldn't, and Nettie can't do it, and for sureMay never could. There was Daddy, and then me, when I had the strength, and now there's you. You know what Daddy used to say?"

I shook my head.

"He used to say heate time. He didn't like it, but he ate it anyhow, because an ability like that has a reason behind it, and if you have the ability, you have to find the reason. He said once he saw Omar and Sylvan Dunstan robbing dead soldiers on a battlefield, and he thought maybe that was the reason he had the ability."

"What's the reason you had it?"

"Maybe so Howard Dunstan could make me unhappy. Maybe so I could talk to you. I hope your reason is better than mine."

"Howard made your mother unhappy," I said.

"Yes." Joy nodded. “Ina great many ways."

"He had other women."

"Didn't he, though! Up and down, and hither and yon, and there's the car, I'll be going, don't wait up."

"Did he have children by any of his other women?"

She looked at me with a show of interest. "Would you care to hear a funny story?"

I nodded.

"One day, I finished my lesson with our French tutor, which I had alone because I was gifted in French, and Queenie and Nettie, who were not, came in for their lesson. May was sick in bed. She wouldn'teat, you see, my sister May hardly ate a speck all through her childhood. I was all alone with nothing to do. Well, I got up the courage to slip into my father's study, which was a room I loved but was not supposed to entersans permission. Can you guess what especially fascinated me in that room?"

"The fox," I said.

Joy clapped her hands. “I loved that fox! I thought if I looked at him long enough, old Reynard would forget I was there and finish that step he was taking. I wanted to see him moveune fois seulement. I was kneeling in front of the fireplace, and the telephone rang. Oh! I nearly fainted. Daddy came walking to the study door, boom, boom, boom. I ran around the back of his couch. In he marched, boom, boom. Slammed the door. I saw the bottom of his legs going toward his desk. He picked up the receiver and did not speak for quite a while. Then it was 'Ellie. Please calm down.' Iknew he was talking toune autre femme. He said, 'All will be well. He will think it's his.' When he hung up, he said, 'An excess of cannon smoke.' Then he walked out, not stamping at all."

"You never knew who Ellie was?"

"We never met any Ellies," Joy said. "We never met anybody."

She peered at the dark hallway. “I should be attending to my duties." Joy showed me out with more dispatch than I would have thought her capable.

•88

•A metal brick pushed into the small of my back when I got behind the wheel. I undipped the holster and put Toby's pistol on the passenger seat. It was about 9:30 on a Monday night in June. The lamps cast yellow circles like spotlights on the sidewalk. Cherry Street looked improbably beautiful, and the world seemed motionless. All I had to do was get to the Brazen Head and catch up on my sleep. This schedule felt almost sinfully luxurious. I decided to drive along the streets I had walked after my first visit with Joy, to erase the impressions made when I had seen them through a veil of grief and rage.

I turned left at the end of the block, and a pair of headlights sped toward me from down the street. The cab of a pickup flew past in a gray blur. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the truck swerve into Cherry Street.

I took the next right and saw green light shining above the intersection of Pine Street and Cordwainer Avenue, three blocks ahead. I didn't care if I got there before it changed; I was enjoying the journey. Frame houses like Nettie's rolled past my windows. As I coasted down another block, the light stayed green, and I nudged the foot pedal. A white dazzle of light burst in my mirror. I looked up and saw, half a block away, the gray pickup speeding toward me with its beams on high.

My stomach jumped into my throat. Mountry had come again to Cherry Street. I flattened the accelerator. The pickup's lights doubled in size while my little car swam forward. With a clank that shook the chassis like a wet dog, it dropped into a lower gear and shot ahead.

The light changed to yellow when I was about thirty feet from the intersection. It was still on yellow as I blasted my horn and barreled out into Cordwainer Avenue. In my rearview mirror, the headlights of the pickup kept coming.

On the far side of the median, two cars jolted to a halt a moment before I flew past them. In the mirror, I saw the pickup run the red light. It slammed into an oncoming car and sent it skidding across the road. The dazzle in my mirror wobbled and swung back.

Ahead lay the chain-link fences and one-story brick buildings of Pine Street. I glanced into the mirror and saw the pickup fly out of the intersection.

Looking for a way out, I benttoward the windshield. A massive figure was standing under a street lamp. The warrior in the red and green dashiki whom I had encountered on the day my mother died turned his head to watch me flash by.

The dazzle filled the rearview mirror. I slammed the brake pedal. The Taurus's back end spun to the right, and I cranked the wheel the same way. The landscape revolved around me. The pistol sailed off the passenger seat. When the car stopped moving, I was looking into the lights of the pickup. I released the brake and stamped on the accelerator. The car jolted forward, shuddered, stalled. I smelled burning rubber and frying circuits. The dashboard lights went off.

The doors of the pickup opened on a burst of hoarse laughter. Joe Staggers jumped out of the cab. A heavyset man lumbered toward me from the other side of the truck. He was carrying a baseball bat. Staggers hitched up his belt. "Looks like Mr. Dunstan's car quit on him. Isn't that a damn shame?"

His friend laughed,yuk, yuk, yuk.

I turned the key, and the Taurus muttered. Joe Staggers slapped its hood. "Hey, don't you want to talk to us?"

Yuk, yuk, yuk.

I groped under the dash without touching anything but the floor mat.

Joe Staggers's face filled the window like a Halloween pumpkin. "Coming out to play?" He reached for the door handle.

I was going to have to fight two men. No matter how well I fought, they were going to kill me. I was minutes from a miserable, painful death. Suddenly, Aunt Joy's voice spoke to me with absolute clarity.He used to say he atetime.

You can use time, if you're able.

My stomach knotted. I closed my eyes and dropped into darkness.

When I opened my eyes again, I knew that I had eaten time. I was still in the car. Staggers had disappeared. The lights of his pickup were gone. Nothing around me resembled the Pine Street I had left. Tar-paper shacks grew from a muddy field ending at a wooden fence with ano trespassing sign. Far back from the road, flames from a trash barrel in front of a ramshackle wooden structure illuminated a dozen men in clothing like layers of dried mud. It could have been a photograph from the Depression. My head cleared enough for me to realize that it was the Depression. I had fallen through nearly sixty years.

At first cautiously, then with a kind of surly boldness, the men moved toward me. Suspicion and hostility came from them like an odor.

I turned the key. The ignition growled.

One of them shouted, "You spyin' on us, Fancy Dan? What's that you're drivin'?"

Uncertain, intimidated, they gathered at the side of the road. The man who had shouted drew a knife from his pocket and stepped forward. The others shuffled along behind him.

I tried to remember what I had done a moment before. Footsteps plodded toward me. I thought of Joe Staggers; I remembered walking over a grass carpet into the wreckage on New Providence Road. For the first time, I grasped the means I had used twice before. I wish I could describe it, but it would be like trying to explain a color. The bolt once more passed through my forehead. I ate time, although it felt as though I were the one being eaten.

Headlights streamed through the darkness, and someone yelped. I swallowed vomit.

Staggers was beside his pickup, his brutal face turned to look over his shoulder. Four feet away, Yuk Yuk stared at me in utter terror.

"Get in the truck, Shorty," Staggers ordered. Yuk Yuk let go of the bat and blundered around the front of the truck.

I twisted the key. The dash lights glowed, and the engine came to life.

•89

•Numbly, I went through the usual night-time rituals and got into bed. I would never understand what was happening to me. All the familiar definitions had disappeared. I would never be able to go back to writing computer programs, because I was no longer the person who had done that. I lost myself in a mystery novel until I turned off the light.

At 6:00a.m., I woke damp with sweat and forced myself out of bed, showered, and pulled on a blue polo shirt and my last pair of fresh jeans. I picked up the Beretta. Six-thirtya.m. was a ridiculous hour to wear a pistol. I put it down again. Joe Staggers had been humiliated, and he wasgoing to come After me again, but not in the daytime. I stashed the gun behind the minibar and went to a diner for scrambled eggs and coffee.

On my way to the pawnshop, I bought a copy of theEcho at a newsstand. The mayor of Edgerton had introduced his good friend Stewart Hatch to a gathering of the local press. The mayor's good friend had announced the construction of an arts center and convention facility on the banks of the Mississippi immediately north of St. Ann's Community Hospital, at the cost of no more than half of the hospital's extensive parking space.

A smaller headline at the bottom of the front page reportedmurder in old town. Cassandra Little, thirty-two, a bartender at the Speedway Lounge, had been brutally slain in herLow Street apartment. When she failed to come to work, the Speedway's manager, Bruce McMicken, had gone to Little's residence and discovered her body. A Police Department source speculated that Ms. Little had surprised a burglar.

On Chester Street, charred beams and incinerated wreckage had settled into the basement of the rooming house. The walls on either side looked like burnt toast.

I turned into Lanyard Street. Toby was probably still in bed. I let myself in and spent about twenty minutes straightening the shelves and sweeping the floor. Then I arranged the papers on the counter and discovered two slips tucked under a paperweight. I took them toward the office and saw light shining through the crack at the bottom of the door.

“I wondered where you were," I said, and went in. Toby Kraft looked at me moodily from behind his desk. "Didn't you ..." My question vaporized.

From the neck down, a sheet of blood painted his chest. The white filaments drifting across the top of his head made his hair look like a wig. His eyes were colored stones, and his cottage-cheese face looked grumpy. For a moment, I thought Toby was going to jump up and laugh at my shock. I took a step forward and saw the gash in his neck. Abruptly, the smell of blood bloomed in the air.

Robert?

I wanted to walk out and keep traveling until I got somewhere only the waiters and street vendors spoke English. Then I went back into the shop and called the police.

The moment I hung up, I remembered the lawyer with the funny name and dug his card out of my wallet.

C. Clayton Creech said, "Murdered? I low?"

"Someone cut his throat."

“Is the safe closed?"

"Yes."

"Have you called the police?"

"Yes."

"Do two things right now. Take the ledger out of his bottom desk drawer and hide it in the storeroom. When you're done, I'll tell you the second."

His dry, unemphatic voice was without any resonance. I thought this was not the first time C. Clayton Creech had been told of the murder of a client. I tried not to look at Toby's body when I took the ledger out of the drawer, and after I wedged it between two boxes in the storeroom, I returned to the telephone.

"We are entering into an agreement, Mr. Dunstan. For the sum of one dollar, I have been hired as your legal representative. I'll be there in ten minutes."

“I don't need a legal representative," I said.

"You will. In accordance with Mr. Kraft's wishes, I want to meet you and the other surviving members of his late wife's family at two o'clock this afternoon. At that time, you will understand why I prefer not to speak of this matter in the presence of the police. Keep your trap shut until I get there."

I put down the receiver and waited for Lieutenant Rowley.

•9O

•A police car followed by a dark blue sedan came whooping down Lanyard Street and pulled up in front of the shop. Two men in uniforms left the squad car and watched Rowley climb out of the sedan. He charged up to the door, saw me coming, and banged his fist against the glass. Rowley kept on banging until I opened up. "What the hell are you doing here, Dunstan?"

“I was helping out in the shop. This is my second day."

"You found the body?"

"You know I did. I gave my name when I called headquarters."

Rowley pointed at one of the cops. "Nelson, get the preliminaries from Mr. Dunstan and take him to headquarters. Where's the body?"

"Back there," I said.

Rowley stormed into the office. Toby seemed to be looking at me, and I had the crazy impulse to go in and straighten out his hair. Two more police cars swung in front of the shop. Captain Mullan and a detective I had not seen before got out of the second one.

Mullan gave me an arctic glance before going into the office. The detective followed him. I heard Mullan say, "You know, I don't think I really believe this shit."

Two more squad cars and an ambulance screeched up in front of the building. Suddenly, the shop was filled with policemen. Officer Nelson flipped to a clean page of his notebook.

Mullan emerged from the office with Rowley treading on his heels. When Rowley saw the other detective, his jaw snapped shut.

“I thought this was me," said the detective.

"What's Oster doing here?"

Mullan's expression was completely disingenuous. "Don't you have the Little case?"

"You know I do."

"Then go back to headquarters, Lieutenant. Detective Oster's getting this one."

All the policemen in the shop were staring at Rowley. "Fine," he said. A trace of red came into his cheeks. "But Dunstan's already—"

"Already what, Lieutenant?"

Every head in the room turned to a gaunt, pale man in a gray suit who seemed to have appeared at my side through some magical agency, as if from a burst of smoke. He had thin, colorless hair, a narrow, deeply lined face, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a mouth like a mail slot. I recognized his flat, dry voice. "Please, Lieutenant, go on."

"Just what we need," Rowley said. "C. Clayton Creech."

Creech was impervious to Rowley's contempt. He would be impervious to most things. Far past shock or surprise, Creech existed in a state of neutral readiness for whatever might come his way. You could not show him anything he had not already witnessed so often that it was incapable of provoking anything but ironic recognition. He was so far beyond conventional human responses that he might as well have been from another planet. Under the circumstances, his presence made me led more relaxed than I would have thought possible.

"This is your lawyer?" Mullan asked.

"He is."

Rowley made a disgusted noise and pushed his way through the crowd of uniformed policemen. Officer Nelson looked uncertainly at Oster and said, “I was about to question him."

"Do that," Oster said.

As if inquiring about the score of a minor-league baseball game in a distant city, Creech asked, “Is my client to be taken to headquarters?"

"Your client will be invited to assist us in our investigation." Mullan turned wearily to me. "Would you be willing to make out a statement at Police Headquarters?"

Without moving a muscle, Creech encouraged assent.

"Of course," I said.

“I shall be present during the questioning," Creech said. “If my client wishes."

“I'd like Mr. Creech to be present," I said.

A tired-looking man with mushroom-colored skin came in and pronounced Toby dead. The ambulance attendants carried out what looked like a giant loaf of bread hidden under a sheet.

Mullan said, "The counselor won't mind if I tell you we found out who was responsible for last night's fire."

Creech's motionless figure somehow displayed mild curiosity.

"Carl Sandburg Elementary put up a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest."

"Handsome gesture," Creech said.

Mullan smiled. "Late yesterday afternoon, your old friend Frenchy La Chapelle and a miscreant called To Me From Me Blunt decided to unwind over a bottle of bourbon and a crack pipe."

"Toomey Frommey?" I asked.

"ToMe,From Me," Mullan said. "Six years ago, this genius went to the post office to pick up a suitcase full of grass from Humboldt County, California. He used his own name and return address on the shipping label. Luckily for him, he was one of Mr. Creech's clients, and he walked."

"Lamentable negligence on the part of the arresting officers," Creech said.

"After they got high, Frenchy started bragging about the money he got for torching a building on Chester Street. To MeFromMe decided that his obligations as a citizen outweighed his loyalty to a friend. We brought Frenchy in and charged him, and he was put in a cell. Just before four o'clock this morning, a strange thing happened to Mr. La Chapelle."

My scalp tingled.

"Frenchy had nothing on him sharper than his fingernails, but he figured out a way to cut his throat. He looked a lot like Toby back there."

"Oh," I said.

"You mentioned Clothhead Spelvin the other day," Mullan said. "Might you be able to shed a little light here?"

C. Clayton Creech's indifferent gaze at the pawnshop counter recommended silence.

“I wish I could," I said.

Mullan rocked on his heels. "Nelson, take Mr. Dunstan to headquarters. You can give Mr. Creech a ride, too."

"Thank you, Captain, but I believe I will take the opportunity to enjoy the fresh air." Creech interrogated me with a glance directed at the ceiling. I looked over his shoulder in the direction of the storeroom and the hidden ledger.

Twenty minutes later, C. Clayton Creech padded into the interrogation room and communicated by his usual mysterious means that all was well. The stolid Nelson opened his notebook and began asking questions. Creech folded into the chair to my left and stayed there for the next three hours. Now and then he uttered a gentle reproof to whoever was grilling me at the moment. He seemed about as involved in the procedure as a lizard stretched out on a warm rock. Just before 12:30p.m., the Edgerton Police Department released me with instructions to keep in touch.

Creech and I went past the desk sergeant, who conspicuously ignored him. "All is copacetic," Creech said. When we came to the top of the steps down to Grace Street and Town Square, Creech said, "My office at two o'clock?"

“I'll be there," I said, and Creech was gone.

•91

•In an anteroom lined with hunting prints, a woman with the face of a hanging judge looked at me from behind a desk the size of a coffin. "We are Mr. Dunstan?"

"We are," I said.

She picked up a stenographer's notebook and a pen and opened the door to the inner office.

Seated in wooden chairs with high, narrow backs, Clark, Nettie, and May turned their heads when I entered. Hats trimmed with black face perched on top of the aunts' white hair. A scuffed leather couch stood in front of a wall of law books, and brown threads showed here and there through the pattern of the faded Oriental rug. The high windows looking onto the bright park at Creech's back admitted a weak light that died as soon as it entered. In the tenebrous gloom, the lawyer was a faceless outline.

Creech took a paper from a folder on his desk and positioned it in front of him. He placed a fountain pen on top of the paper. "Before you get seated, Mr. Dunstan, please sign this agreement formalizing our relationship in the terms we discussed this morning and give me the sum of one dollar in fulfillment of its terms." To the others, he said, "Mr. Dunstan is merely signing an authorization engaging me in the capacity of legal counsel. This authorization is necessitated by his discovery of the deceased's body and has no bearing on the matter before us now."

I signed the one-paragraph statement and unfolded a dollar bill onto the paper. The dollar disappeared before he put the paper in a drawer, but I never saw him touch it. I went past the chairs and sat on the near end of the leather couch. The secretary perched at the other end. Creech said, "Miss Wick will be taking notes during this conference."

She opened the notebook and held the nib of her pen over an empty page.

"Mr. Dunstan, I have informed your great-aunts and great-uncle of this morning's events on Lanyard Street. I offer my heartfelt condolences. I knew Mr. Kraft only in my capacity as his legal adviser, but I filled that capacity for many years, and Mr. Kraft's personality made a great impression on me."

"Scoundrels will do that," Nettie said. "But I can't say that Toby didn't have his good points. He visited our niece on her deathbed."

"My client had a great fondness for his stepdaughter," Creech said. "However, now that Mr. Dunstan has joined us, we may turn to the business at hand. It was my client's instruction that the contents of his last will and testament be made known in timely fashion upon the occasion of his death, if possible within twenty-four hours of that event, and be it noted that we have assembled in observation of that instruction."

"So noted," said Miss Wick.

"Be it further noted that the parties desired by my client to be present at the reading of said last will and testament are assembled, with the exceptions of Mrs. Joy Dunstan Crothers, who is absent of her own volition, and Mr. Clarence Aaron Crothers, who is absent by reason of ill health."

"So noted," said Miss Wick.

Creech looked up from the folder before him. "My client also instructed that his mortal remains be given a swift burial. Of course, Mr. Kraft did not anticipate that his demise should be the result of homicide. The procedures of the County Coroner's Office and our Police Department may render it impossible to observe the letter of his instructions. Therefore, let it be noted that the spirit of the instructions shall be honored and the aforesaid remains given burial within twenty-four hours of release to the Spaulding Heavenly Rest Funeral Home."

"So noted."

Mr. Creech appeared almost to smile at his audience, although the dim light and the character of his face made it difficult to tell. “I am instructed to inform those present of several matters. My client provided for all arrangements necessary to the disposition of his remains, including the purchases of coffin, headstone with inscription, and burial plot adjacent to that of his late wife. Furthermore, he desired no memorial or funerary service in a house of worship, whether Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or any other faith or creed. Said burial is to be conducted without benefit of clergy, and may be attended by any persons who wish to be present. My client stipulated that any mourners in attendance shall be free to speak in a spontaneous fashion. Let it be noted that these instructions have been read and understood."

"So noted," said Miss Wick.

"Did I hear the word 'inscription'?" Clark asked.

"Let me find the exact wording." Creech turned a few pages. "The inscription on my client's headstone is to read as follows: first line,tobias kraft, in capital letters; second line, the dates of his birth and death; third line,trust in the unexpected, in smaller capital letters, followed by an italicized attribution to Emily Dickinson."

“‘Trust in the unexpected'?" Clark said. "What the devil is that supposed to mean?"

“I gather that my client found it a helpful sentiment." Creech turned the page and looked back up. "We have now reached the reading of Mr. Kraft's last will and testament. May I assume that the parties assembled here are willing to forgo a reading of the introductory paragraphs and move directly to section C, his bequests?"

Nettie leaned over to whisper to May, and Creech said, “I assure you that nothing relevant to your concerns shall be neglected by moving to section C. In any case, copies of the entire document will be distributed at the conclusion of this meeting."

"Skip the mumbo jumbo," Nettie said.

"Be it noted that it has been agreed to begin the reading of the will at section C, Bequests."

Miss Wick uttered her echo.

Creech began reading in his flat, emotionless voice. “I, Tobias Kraft, therefore direct that upon the occasion of my death the entire contents of my estate be distributed in the following manner. (1) The sum of five thousand dollars is to be given anonymously to the Red Cross. (2) The sum of five thousand dollars is to be given anonymously to theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum, located in Washington, D.C. (3) All clothing in my possession at the time of my demise is to be donated to Goodwill Industries. (4) The remainder of my estate, including all funds in checking accounts, money market accounts, stocks and bonds, mutual funds, and real estate held either by me personally or by the legal entity T.K. Holding Corporation, I hereby bequeath to Valerie Dunstan, known as Star Dunstan. Should Valerie Dunstan predecease me, the bequest shall be made to her son, Ned Dunstan."

He looked up from the will. "Let it be noted that Mr. Tobias Kraft's bequests have been read and understood."

Nettie drowned out Miss Wick's response. "Either you left something out, or I didn't hear you right."

"Let me explain it clearly, then, so that there will no misunderstandings. The terms of my client's last will and testament donate ten thousand dollars to charitable causes. His clothing goes to Goodwill. The majority of his estate has been inherited by the young man seated on the couch behind you."

In varying degrees of shock, they swiveled their heads and gaped at me.

Clark looked back at Creech. "What kind of estate are we talking about here?"

“If you will give me a moment . . ." He took another bundle of papers from the folder, scanned the top page, put it aside, and glanced at the second. “In liquid funds, the estate consists of five hundred and twenty-five thousand, four hundred and twenty dollars, not counting interest earned since the last statements. Mr. Kraft also owned the building in which he resided and conducted his business, as well as one multiresidential unit on Chester Street and two commercial properties in downtown Edgerton. Their accumulated value would be approximately eight hundred thousand dollars, taking into account the insurance settlement due on the property recently destroyed by arson."

Nettie and May sat rooted to their chairs.

“In addition," Creech said, turning to another page, "my client held two insurance policies on his life. His wife was the original beneficiary of both policies. Upon her death, he named Valerie Dunstan as his beneficiary or, in the case of her demise, her son, Ned Dunstan. Each policy provides a three-hundred-thousand-dollar death benefit, so the total death benefit is six hundred thousand dollars. I have spoken to Mr. Kraft's insurance agent, and he and I will be handling the forms. With luck and the cooperation of the authorities, the checks from the insurance companies should arrive within three to four weeks."

He may have smiled again, but I could not tell. "Mr. Dunstan, soon you will be a rather well-off young man. If you do not already enjoy the services of a good accountant, I suggest that you find one."

“I didn't hear my name yet," May said.

"You aren't going to," Nettie said. "How much are you getting out of this deal, Creech?"

“I will overlook that remark, Mrs. Rutledge." Creech straightened the papers and closed the folder. "Under stress, people often speak rashly."

"You haven't begun to hear rash," Nettie said. "How much was it?"

"Well, let me think," Creech said. "For the preparation of Mr. Kraft's will, I was compensated at my usual hourly rate. The total fee probably came to something like live thousand dollars, what with the various changes made over time. Mr. Dunstan and I have entered into no prior arrangement, apart from the one executed in front of you, for which I received one dollar. Mr. Dunstan will be invoiced for the time I spent on his behalf earlier today, which had no connection to this matter. Far from colluding with me to change the terms of Mr. Kraft's bequests, I believe it is clear that Mr. Dunstan had no prior knowledge of those terms. I would go so far as to say that Mr. Dunstan is flabbergasted."

Nettie whirled in her chair and sent out storm signals. “I want to hear the truth. Did you know what was going to happen when you came in here?"

“I had no idea," I said. Miss Wick's pen flew across her pad. “I'm flabbergasted, all right. Toby told me he was going to take care of me, but I thought he was talking about a job in the pawnshop."

"Now I see it," Nettie said. "Now I know why you told the old scoundrel he should come to the hospital. I bet you've been paying him social calls."

Creech's emotionless voice was like a splash of cold water. "Mr. Kraft's will was last amended two weeks after the death of his wife. The date was April seventeenth, 1965. At the time, I believe Mr. Dunstan was a few months short of his seventh birthday. I also believe it is clear that Mr. Kraft's intention was to bequest the bulk of his estate to Mr. Dunstan's mother, and that he has inherited by default."

"Nettie," May said, "did the old swindler leave everything to Star?"

"He sure did," said Nettie. "And because she was taken from us, the whole wad comes down to her little boy."

May craned her neck to look at me. "Neddie, you're not going to keep it all, are you? Maybe you haven't gotten very far in life, but you're a good-hearted boy all the same."

Without deigning to turn his head, Clark said, "For a factory hand, you're getting a whole lot of money, boy. I hope you can stay on the straight and narrow."

"Mr. Dunstan," Creech said, "have you any intention of assuming my client's pawnbroker business?"

"No."

“In that case, we can arrange to liquidate the shop and sell the property. If you wish, we can also put the other properties on the market. My client's Will must be probated, a process that customarily takes at least a year to conclude, but it would be advisable to take care of these details now."

"Thank you, yes," I said. "Arrange to sell Toby's properties." I watched Miss Wick's pen dance over her notebook.

"Fast cars," Clark said. "A big house. French champagne and buxom girlfriends. You know what they say about a fool and newfound wealth. If you were to let me handle that money, you might have a chance of coming out of this with a few cents in your pocket."

"Uncle Clark," I said, “I have to think about what I'm going to do, and I wish you'd all shut up for a second."

“I have to speak from my heart," Nettie said, not to me but to the air in front of her, like Clark. “I have to say one little, tiny thing, or it will magnify itself into a great burden and weigh on me forever. Mr. Toby Kraft married our beloved sister. Although he took Queenie from us, we never failed to welcome him into our homes. When our sister passed away, Mr. Toby Kraft remained a member of our family circle. You could say, he even became a pest. Toby Kraft was in the habit of dropping in uninvited and staying for dinner, and for the sake of my dear sister's memory I prepared a whole lot more meals for that man than I ever felt like cooking, and the same is true of my sister May. If you were to add up the costs of all the times Toby had the pleasure of a home-cooked dinner, it would come into the thousands of dollars, all out of Christian charity. That old crook never gave any signs of having a fortune squirreled away, did he, May?"

"He did not," May said.

"To look at the man, he barely had two nickels to rub together. Wore the ugliest clothes you ever saw in your life. He was a drinker, as we knew, and a scoundrel, on top of all that whiskey. But we gave him our love, because we knew no other way. That is the kind of people we are."

C. Clayton Creech looked at her in undisguised admiration.

"Neddie," May said, "think what your mother would do."

“I am thinking of what my mother would have done," I said. "Mr. Creech, I'd like you to draw up an agreement dividing Mr. Kraft's estate into four equal parts. One for Aunt Nettie, one for Aunt May, another for my Aunt Joy, and the last for me."

"Do you want to sleep on it for a night?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Are the death benefits from the insurance policies to be included in the division of the estate?"

"Yes," I said. "How much would each share come to?"

Creech took a notebook from a desk drawer and lit a Lucky Strike from the pack on his desk. "Are we keeping up with these developments, Miss Wick?"

Miss Wick assured him that the developments were being entered into the record.

Creech bent over the notebook and exhaled a substantial plume of smoke. "We have five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash on hand. Add to that the probable value of the real estate holdings and the insurance benefits, and we have one million, nine hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. A one-quarter share of Mr. Dunstan's inheritance comes to four hundred and eighty-one thousand dollars, more or less."

"Draw up the papers," I said. "Toby left the money to my mother, and I know she would have shared it with her aunts."

"Your decision is final," Creech said.

"You heard the boy, Creech," Clark said. "Get hopping."

May looked at me again. "You know, Joy doesn't need all that money. And Neddie, four hundred and eighty-one thousand dollars sounds like an awful lot to give to a young fellow who has his whole life in front of him."

I smiled at her. "You're right. Mr. Creech, I want to donate twenty thousand dollars from my share of the insurance benefits to a woman named Suki Teeter."

"Could you spell that name for me?" Miss Wick asked.

I spelled Suki's name. "She's at the Riverrun gallery on Archer Street, in College Park."

"That's all I require," Creech said. "Would you like me to inform Ms. Teeter of her good fortune?"

"Please."

Nettie glared. "You're giving money to that Suki?"

"Star would have," I said. “I saw Suki Teeter the other day, and she needs the money. If you think I shouldn't do things like that, I could always keep everything for myself. Which would be . . . ?" I glanced at C. Clayton Creech.

"One million, nine hundred twenty-five thousand dollars." His delivery made it sound like what you would spend to get into a movie and pick up a medium-sized container of popcorn.

"Suki was a dear friend to Star," Nettie said. "Your mother would be proud of you. I knew you had a good heart."

Creech suggested attaching to my gifts the condition that all funds remaining be returned to me upon the death of the recipients, and Nettie said, “I don't plan on leaving any money to the Red Cross or museums about Nazis. Draw it up and get probate cracking. I want a gas range with two ovens and a griddle, the kind they have in restaurants, and I'd like to get it before they plant me in the ground." When we all stood up, Creech asked me to come back at 5:30 to sign the papers.

Downstairs, I opened the front door of the townhouse onto a burst of sunlight and a shimmer of green.

Clark wobbled down the steps with the hint of a strut. Nettie and May filed out into the brightness of Paddlewheel Road, and I came down behind them. The Buick gleamed from a parking meter two spaces from Commercial Avenue. A feeling of unreality clung to me. I had given away about a million and a half dollars.

Clark inspected the sleeves of his jacket. "Seems to me I'm in danger of falling a little bit behind the current styles. How much are we supposed to get from Toby?"

"Four hundred and eighty thousand," Nettie said.

“It isn't that much, considered in the cold light of day. You couldn't say that a man with four hundred and eighty thousand dollars in the bank is a man of wealth, so don't start putting us in that category."

“I want a big gas range with a griddle," Nettie said. "And I'm going to get one, no matter what category we're in."

"Do you know what I'd like?" May said. "A home entertainment center and a satellite dish, instead of my no-good little TV that only gets three stations."

"We can both have one," Nettie said. "But I can't get over the idea it's wrong to pay for a frivolity like that."

"We don't have topay for our home entertainment centers," May said. “I'd just like one, that's all."

"New clothes," Clark said. "The day we get that first check, I'm going into Lyall's and coming outclean. Then I'll stroll over to the Speedway and buy Cassie a double Johnnie Walker Black in honor of old Toby, God rest his soul."

"Clark," I said. "There's something you should know."

"Toby Kraft will rest easier now," May said. “I have always said that in spite of his faults, Toby was a very loyal man."

I said, "Clark, this morning—"

Nettie broke in. "Since he did not wish us to aggravate our grief, we should honor his wishes and let him have the dignified burial he requested. Reverend Swing is officiating at Star's burial, Neddie. Reverend Swing is famous for his funerals."

“I'm sure I'll love Reverend Swing," I said. "But I have to tell Clark—"

"You don't want to go against the last wishes of a dying man," Clark broke in.

"Clark,"I said, too loudly. "You won't be buying any drinks for Cassie Little."

Irritated, he said, "And why is that, pray tell?"

"She's dead."

"You're mistaken. She had a little cold the other day, but otherwise that girl's in the pink."

“I'm sorry, Uncle Clark." It was too late to go back and do this the right way. Ashen shock was already moving into his face. "Cassie was killed in her apartment last night. Her boyfriend, Frenchy, was killed too, in a cell at Police Headquarters."

May said, "They were in that Clyde Prentiss gang. Killed to keep them quiet, that's what they were."

Clark's eyes looked glazed.

"Bruce McMicken found her body. It was in the paper this morning."

Clarkclosed his mouth, opened it, closed it again. "That's cold, boy. Cold. You should have broken the news a little easier."

“I tried," I said, "but everybody kept interrupting."

"You should have more respect for a man's grief." He sneered ferociously at the sidewalk. "That Frenchy murdered her to keep her away from other men, and then he killed himself in remorse. I hope I can get my new clothes in time for her funeral rites."

"Here we are, baking on the sidewalk," Nettie said. "Time to get home."

I said, “I'll see you at Little Ridge, ten o'clock tomorrow morning."

"They can't put her in the ground all that fast," Clark wailed.

“It's Star's funeral tomorrow, not your girlfriend's. Open up that car, so it airs out." Nettie brought a slip of paper from her bag. "You had calls this morning, Ned, from Mrs. Rachel Milton and your friend

Mrs. Hatch. We had a nice conversation. I wrote down their numbers." She thrust the slip at me.

•92

•I felt as though I were no longer quite anchored in reality, or in what I had assumed to be reality. In Merchants Park the grass flared brilliant green. Hard, white-gold light shattered across the tops of the cars. I alternated between gliding above the pavement and slogging against a heavy current. Toby Kraft's blood-soaked body and disgruntled face kept swimming into view.

Glittering darkness beckoned from the entrances to the lanes along Word Street. Bruce McMicken barreled head-down across the sidewalk and yanked open the door of the Speedway. The ghost of Frenchy La Chapelle jittered along behind him. A blue neon sign above a narrow window saidpeep inn, and when I peeped in I saw a man stroking the bare arm of the young woman whose head blocked his face. She lifted her profile and exposed a slender neck. The man leaned forward to say something that made her laugh. My heart stuttered and turned cold.

Robert put a cigarette to his lips. His mouth tightened as he inhaled, and hot, acrid smoke poured into my lungs. I turned from the window and stumbled ahead, coughing. I raised my hand to wipe my forehead and found I could see through it, as if through a smeary, hand-shaped piece of glass, to the buildings along Word Street.

I held the other beside it, my fingers spread. Indistinctly, the pavement was visible through both of them. I rushed to a shop window to see if my entire body was disappearing. The window reflected a thoroughly visible face. Normal, nontransparent hands emerged from my sleeves. I started to breathe again. When I looked back at the shop window, the reflection of the giant in the dashiki who had spoken to me on Pine Street was disapprovingly regarding me from three feet away.

"What's wrong with you now?" he asked.

I laughed. “I hardly know where to begin."

"Give it a try."

"This morning, I found a dead man covered in blood. This afternoon, I discovered that the dead man had left me about two million dollars in his will. I gave three-fourths of the money away. And about five seconds ago, I started to disappear."

The giant threw back his head and boomed out spacious laughter. I couldn't help responding any more than I had been able to do with Stewart Hatch, and I laughed along with the giant until I had to wipe my eyes.

"Well," said the giant, still emitting subterranean rumbles, “If you can laugh at your own foolishness, at least you're not crazy. But you're a study, Ned Dunstan, I have to say that."

"How do you know my name?"

"There could be a lot of reasons why a man might start to disappear. People disappear all the time, for reasons good and bad. But getting a boatload of money is the worst one I ever heard." He shook his head, grinning.

"How do you know my name?" I asked again.

"Ned." He looked down at me with an expression critical only to the extent that it remarked what I had failed to notice. "How do you think I know your name?"

I moved back to take in all of him. He was about six foot eight and 275 pounds, with a chiseled face, gleaming eyes, and teeth white enough for toothpaste commercials. A woven African cap covered his scalp from hairline to the inch of gray above his ears. He wore black, sharply creased silk trousers and black, polished loafers no smaller than size 13. The dashiki, darker and subtler than the one I had seen Friday on Pine Street, combined deep greens and blues with widely spaced crimson stripes. His skin shone like burnished mahogany. He looked like the culmination of an ancient line of African royalty. His dazzling grin widened.

No, I thought,he doesn't look like a king, he looks like a—

A wave of compacted light and warmth rolled out from the center of his being, and my thoughts died before the recognition that, whatever this man might have been, he was mysteriously of my own kind, not a Dunstan butakin to the Dunstans. A sense of protectiveness and security accompanied the surge of warmth, and I wanted to clasp his hand and ask for his help.

I heard myself say, "What's your name?"

"Walter," the giant said. "Pay attention. Walter, not Wally. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's being called Wally,"

"Do you have a last name, Walter?"

"Bernstein. If I happened to be a little guy, I suppose I'd have to put up with some snickering, but I never hear anyone laugh."

"Was your father . . . ?"

"My father was a shade or two lighter than me. I don't see any reason to be so all-fired curious."

"But I am curious," I said. “I feel sobaffled. Every time I think I finally understand something, I have to start all over again at the beginning." I stopped talking. I did not want to whine in front of Walter Bernstein,

"You're still taking baby steps," he said. "On top of that, you're a goddamned Dunstan. Dunstans never focus on the big picture, they run around stirring up trouble and leaving their messes behind them. The same things happen over and over again, understand? You can make a difference, if you watch your back and do your best."

"At what?"

"There's more to you than you know. Keep that in mind, not howbaffled you are. Why shouldn't you be baffled? Did you think life was supposed to be simple?"

"Why do you care? What makes youpop up?"

"Maybe I'm sick of watching the Dunstans screw up over and over. You're not the only ones who got left behind, you know. Ever listen to Wagner? Read any Norse mythology, Icelandic mythology? Celtic? The Mediterranean isn't the whole damn world. I look at Goat Gridwell, I want to puke. You want to talk about disappearing, there it is. Makes me sick."

"But what can—"

"Take care of business, that's what you can do." Walter Bernstein moved around me and strode on. Then, as at our first encounter, he stopped and looked back. "You got a chance, if you use yourhead." He gave me a searching look and marched off down Word Street through the blazing sunlight. No one saw him but me.

•93

•Rachel Milton picked up a moment after her maid put me on hold. "Ned, I'm so relieved you got back to me. Suki told me about your mother. How are you doing?"

“I seem to be a little disconnected," I said.

“I could kick myself for not putting everything else aside and running down to the hospital. Did you get my flowers?"

"Thank you. That was very thoughtful." I stretched out on my bed and watched two heavyweight flies circling between the ceiling and the window. Every second or third time, one of them flew into the glass, dropped under the table, and buzzed back up two or three seconds later.

“I hear you and Laurie Hatch have gotten to know each other."

"A little bit."

"She and I used to be good friends until a silly misunderstanding came between us. The next time you talk to Laurie, would you tell her that I would like to repair our friendship?"

“I'll mention it," I said.

Rachel Milton asked about the funeral, and I gave her the details.

“I have to say goodbye to Star, and I want to see you. I remember when you were born!" She paused for a purposeful beat. "And I knew your father. We were all so jealous when he decided that your mother was the one for him." Another meaningful pause. "Suki told me you were interested in Edward Rinehart."

“I'd like to hear anything you could tell me," I said.

"After the funeral, we'll go somewhere for lunch."

A fly struck the window with the sound of a tennis ball hitting a concrete wall and dropped to the floor. I wondered what was buzzing around in Rachel Milton's brain and decided to postpone speculation until after the funeral. Then I succumbed and called Laurie Hatch.

"Where are you?" Her voice sounded like music. “I was so, I don't know what I was, but I didn't know where to find you, and I called your aunt. Did she tell you?"

“It took her a while," I said. “I'm at the Brazen Head."

"The Brazen Head? Where's that?"

I gave her my number. "All this stuff has been going on, I hardly know where to begin."

"Start with the fire."

I told her about the fire and Toby Kraft. “In another part of the forest, these goons who mistook me for someone else nearly jammed me up, but I got away. Compared to Edgerton, Manhattan is like a tropical island."

"So come to my tropical island."

“I have to go to a lawyer's office and sign some papers. After that I should probably just crash here."

She paused for a second. “I gather that you and Stewart had a long conversation."

"Nothing he said made any difference to me, Laurie."

"Did Ashleigh call you? An amazing thing happened."

“I seem to be out of the Ashleigh loop," I said. "Good news?"

“I don't know how, but she found exactly what she needed. Did you have anything to do with that?"

"How could I?" I asked.

"Ashleigh wouldn't tell me how she got the papers, so I was wondering. . . . Forget it. The best part is, Stewart still thinks he's in the clear. He's sickeningly pleased with himself, especially since he's certain that you'll never talk to me again."

I said that I had understood Stewart's motives.

"But I told you those dumb stories I made up fifteen years ago because the real one was so ugly. I appalled myself." I thought I heard ice ringing in a glass. "He must have had a field day when he came to Teddy Wainwright."

“I didn't pay attention. Oh! I almost forgot. Rachel Milton tried to get in touch with me, and when I called her back, she asked me to tell you that she wants to be friends again. Anyway, she's eager to talk to you."

"While we're on the subject of astonishing tales ..." Laurie's voice had fallen into its old, easy amusement. "Grennie has a thirty-five-year-old girlfriend from Hong Kong who's a financial genius. He met her when she came to his office to set up a charitable foundation, and he's been seeing her on the sly for months. She's extraordinarily pretty—Ming-Hwa Sullivan. She got married to a guy from Edgerton named Bill Sullivan when they were at Harvard Business School. They came back here because he got a job at First Illinois. She went into business for herself and became a huge success, and they split up. Grennie wants to marry her."

"And Rachel wants to cry on your shoulder," I said.

Her voice changed again. “I told you a stupid lie, and Stewart poisoned your mind. I have to explain what really happened." "The real story," I said. "Should I pick you up?" I told her that I'd renteda car. "Get inside the thing and drive it to my house." “I'll be there around six," I said.

•94

•Laurie and I carried our glasses and the remainder of the bottle into the living room and sat on the sofa near the fireplace and the big Tamara de Lempicka. She set the bottle on the carpet and leaned back into the cushions, cupping the glass in her hands. “I'm so embarrassed, I can hardly speak."

"You don't have to," I said.

"This enormous lie is right in front of us. This stupid habit! I thought no one could accept me if they knew my real story. I could hardly accept myself. It was soshameful." Tears rose to the surface of her eyes. "We were sopoor. My father was killed holding up aliquor store. Is this the kind of person you want to have dinner with?"

“It's no disgrace to have a tough start," I said.

Laurie fixed me with a burning glance. “I grew up with the idea that the world . . . Okay. There was no safetyanywhere. You didn't know if there was going to be food for dinner, and we were always getting evicted because my mother couldn't pay the rent. Every time we moved, I went to a different school, so I never had any friends. Not that I would have had friends anyhow. My clothes were from secondhand stores, not the cool ones, the ratty places. I was a laughingstock. Every day, I thought a big hole was going to open up in front of me, and I'd fall in and just keep on falling. I thought we were going to wind up on the street. Or that I'd be taken away to some kind ofprison, and my mother woulddie."

She wiped her eyes. "Anyhow, when she got married to this cameraman at Warner Brothers, Morry Burger, it was like being rescued from drowning. He had a job and a house in Studio City. For a while, everything was okay. But good old Morry drank a bottle of gin a day, and he started heating up my mother when he came home from work. I hid in my room, and I listened to him hitting her, and her crying, and him yelling at her to stop crying, and it was like . . . the hole opened up, and I fell in. I stopped feeling anything at all, I was like a zombie. Which was just as well, as it turned out. Here we get to the first of the good parts."

Laurie sank back again, holding her glass in front of her face. "When I was eleven, Morry started climbing into my bed at night. My mother was passed out. She would have killed me if she knew. Well, maybe she did know, but she never admitted it.

"Then Morry got fired from Warners. He managed to find some work, but the jobs never lasted more than a couple of weeks. I ran away from home about a dozen times, but the cops always brought me back. We lost the house in Studio City, which Morry found really depressing, I might add. For about six months, we moved from one dump to another, mainly on the edges of Hancock Park. And then, one night my mother went out and someone killed her in back of a drugstore. They never found the guy.

“I was already smoking a lot of grass. After my mother got killed, I met this girl named Esther Gold. Esther Gold was a rich screwup who gave me amphetamines and 'ludes, and we got tight. One night, Morry grabbed my bag and found some pills, which gave him the brilliant idea that I was so depraved he might as well make money and influence people by selling me to his friends. Which he did, once or twice a month. But even though having to get into bed with Morry's friends as well as Morry was vile, disgusting, hideous, Esther Gold started scoring Percodans and Dilaudids, and whenever one of Morry's pals came over, I zoned out."

She wiped tears off her cheeks and smiled at the other side of the room. "We have gone through childhood, such as it was, which means we come to the next really good part, adolescence. Esther went to Fairfax, and I went to L.A. High, so I never saw her again, but L.A. High was full of dopers, you could get anything you wanted. One day in English class, I said to the teacher, 'I'm the Queen of Heaven, and you're a pimple on the ass of God.' My exact words. She threw me out of class. I started walking home. But home wasn'thome, it was just the dump where I lived with Morry. I stood right where I was for about four hours. When a cop drove up and asked me my name, I told him I was the Queen of Heaven."

Laurie started giggling, and more tears spilled from her eyes. I brushed them off with the tips of my fingers. "Thank you. I wound up in the hospital. At least I told the cops about Morry, and Morry went to the slammer, three cheers for the L.A. child-welfare system.

"There isn't much to say about the hospital except I started getting a little more clarity. A wonderful man named Dr. Deering, a psychiatrist who was about sixty years old, told me I had a placement in a halfway house, but he and his wife would take me in, if I liked the idea. Dr. Deering was the only man in the world I trusted, and I only trusted him a little bit, but I said I'd give it a try. And after that, everything was different. No matter how paranoid and suspicious I got, they were always patient. I understood the deal, you know? I said to myself,These are nice people, and they're probably your last chance to have a decent life. Don't mess up."

Laurie drank some wine, and her face filled with resentment. "To Stewart Hatch, of course, this means I was some kind of parasite. But I loved the Deerings. I was this person I can hardly remember anymore, and they took care of me. They hired tutors. They suffered through dinners when I screamed at them. Theytalked to me. When I learned how to act like a normal person, they put me in a private school and helped with my homework. College seemed completely remote, so when I graduated, they found me a job as a receptionist at a medical center in San Francisco. David and Patsy Deering. God bless them."

We clinked glasses.

"Did Stewart tell you I ran away? He did, didn't he?"

I said I didn't remember.

"Dr. Deering drove me to San Francisco. We found an apartment. I called them at least once a week for the next year, when I guess God decided to drop me into the hole again. David and Patsy were killed in an automobile accident, driving home from a party. It was terrible. When I came back from their funeral, I was so depressed I hardly got out of bed for a month. No more job, of course. So there I was, feeling like something the cat threw up, but I stumbled into a job in an art gallery, and one night at an opening I happened to meet Teddy Wainwright.

"Stewart undoubtedly implied that I took advantage of Teddy. There's no point in going over the whole thing, but I realized later,of course I fell in love with an older man, I couldn't have fallen in love with anythingbut an older man. Teddy was a father figure, so what? He loved me. Oh, God, Teddy did, he did love me. I think . . . Teddy helped me put myself together just by being such a great guy. I wish he was still alive, so I could introduce you to him. You would have liked each other."

"Back when you first met Stewart, did he remind you of Teddy Wainwright?"

Laurie slid closer and collapsed against my shoulder. "Wasn't that dumb? Hmm. On second thought, I don't like this. You're too perceptive."

"You don't dislike it that much."

She put her hand on my thigh. "The guy was from this town in the middle of nowhere. He seemed sort of square, but I thought that was almost charming, in a way. Little did I know how sick he was. He is sick, he likes hurting people." Laurie swung her arm across my chest and pressed her face against mine. Her body felt as hot as a feverish child's.

•95

•After midnight, I rolled over and noticed a shape beside the bed.Stewart, I thought, and shot upright. Stewart Hatch moved toward me and bent down to reveal Robert's grinning face.

"Want to change places?" he whispered.

"Get out. No, don't. I have to talk to you."

Laurie mumbled, "Whuzz?"

“I'm going downstairs for a glass of milk," I said, and she lapsed back into sleep.

I slipped into my shirt and pants. The gun, which I had hidden beneath my trousers, went into one of the blazer's pockets. Robert kept grinning at me. My limitations amused him.

We padded past Posy's and Cobbie's bedrooms and down the stairs. I switched on the light over the butcher-block counter and took a glass to the liquor cabinet, where I found a half-empty liter of Johnnie Walker Black.

Robert eased into one of the chairs in the alcove. "Does our Laurie have a tendency to hit the bottle? You're putting away more than usual, too."

"Maybe a little. It's beena hell of a week." I lifted the glass. "Anyhow, to Toby Kraft. I guess he was a crook, but he sure did his best for Star. And me, come to think of it."

"Certainly looks that way," Robert said.

A little belligerently, I took the chair opposite his. "That's interesting. I want to explore what you mean by that remark, but first you have to keep your mouth shut and listen to me. Last night, you were waiting for me in my room, looking at Rinehart's book. You said something like, 'Old Dad was a lousy writer, wasn't he?' How did you know Rinehart was our father? I didn't tell you."

"Am I allowed to talk now? How did I learn about Rinehart? The same way you did, I suppose. From Star. You're not her only son, after all."

"You're lying."

"Don't forget, you had dinner up in the lounge with Nettie and May."

"And you came to the hospital?"

"How do you think the poker money wound up in your pocket? Maybe I shouldn't have done that, but I couldn't resist. Then I went in and said goodbye to Star, and she told me about Rinehart. Obviously, she was going to tell you the same thing. I was sure I could count on you to take it from there. For all your flaws, you're a dependable lad."

I could only stare at him. "You knew you could count on me."

"To take the next step. I'll shut up again, and you can fill me in."

"Oh, I'll fill you in," I said. "Edward Rinehart was Howard Dunstan's son. I'm pretty sure he was illegitimate. He's been looking for us most of our lives." I described what Howard Dunstan had said to me by pretending that I had heard it from Joy. I told him about meeting Max Edison at the V.A. Hospital with Laurie. "Edison was still afraid of Rinehart, and so was Toby. Toby didn't want me to mention his name. I'll never say this to Laurie, but I think we got him killed. She said his name."

Robert absorbed it all. "You don't know that Rinehart killed Toby Kraft, and you shouldn't blame yourself. You thought Rinehart was dead. Besides, Toby was in a dangerous profession, and I don't mean pawnbroking. Concentrate on being grateful for the money he left you."

"How do you know about that, I wonder?"

“I went into his safe, remember? When I took out Hatch's papers,

I came across Toby's will and his insurance policies. With the real estate, it must come to about two million. Think of it as your dowry."

"Too bad I gave most of it away," I said.

Robert looked at me in genuine dismay. Then his eyes narrowed and his mouth lifted ina smile. "You're joking."

I told him about asking Creech to divide the money.

"What possessed you to do a ridiculous thing like that?"

I explained and said, "After all, Star should have inherited the money, not me."

“I wish I didn't believe it. Did the lawyer suggest that the money revert to you when the old girls kick the bucket?"

"C. Clayton Creech doesn't miss a trick."

"Could be another twenty years."

"The aunts don't spend money," I said. "They use a one-way barter system."

"Once they get their hands on a few hundred thousand, they might turn into model citizens. I can see Clark buying the biggest car in sight. Joy will put Clarence in a nursing home. Eventually, all three are going to wind up in nursing homes."

"Good," I said. “If they need nursing homes, they'll be able to afford decent ones. That's what the money is for."

“It was supposed to be yours. Ours."

“I hope you're not thinking of killing them for it," I said. What I thought was a joke earned me a sizzling glance of disgust. Robert shook his head and looked away.

"Robert, you didn't kill Toby, did you?"

He sighed and shook his head again. “I should give up on you."

"Tell me you didn't murder him because you knew I would inherit his money."

“It would get you off the hook, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have any reason to wallow in guilt, or to blame Laurie."

I thought about the timing of Toby's death, and the world seemed to stop moving.

"But to answer your question, no. I did not murder Toby Kraft. Sorry, you'll have to live with your guilt."

"When I found him, he was sitting at his desk. Which means that he was killed before he went upstairs to his apartment. He was already dead by the time you got there."

"Not a pretty sight. But then, Toby never was much to look at. I wish you hadn't given away three-fourths of his estate."

"A shadow doesn't need money," I said.

“I low would you know? I'm getting tired of being on the edges. I'd like more stability, more continuity. You're my retirement plan. My pension fund."

"You could go into any bank in the world and walk out with a fortune. Why bother setting me up with Ashleigh Ashton and Laurie Hatch?"

“I promised Star I'd look out for you. She didn't warn you aboutme, did she? Once we get past our birthday, we can carry on, apart and together, together and apart, for the rest of our lives."

I did notbelieve Robert. "This afternoon, I walked past a bar called the Peep Inn and saw you talking to a girl. Something happened to me. I started to disappear."

“I disappear all the time. How far did it get?"

“I could see through my hands."

"No one ever prepared you for certain aspects of Dunstan life. Probably means you're getting a little stronger."

"Did it have anything to do with seeing you?"

"You're seeing me now. More to the point, I can also see you."

"The day I came here, you were in bed with a woman, and I felt everything you did. I was making love to a woman who wasn't there."

Robert's eyebrows shot up. "Really?" He was not unhappy to have this information.

"You didn't know you were doing it."

"No." He smiled. "That's an interesting phenomenon." The whites of his eyes seemed whiter, and his teeth shone as if they came to points. When he noticed my unease, he moved out of the chair. "Don't plan on seeing me at the funeral, but I'll be there. Tomorrow night we'll discuss our birthday. In the meantime, please try to stay alive."

"Don't underestimate me, Robert," I said.

“I'm not sure I could." He gave me an ironic smile and faded through the door like a phantom.

I regarded the back door. It consisted of a tall wooden panel separated into two equal portions by a recessed horizontal division. I stood up, walked around the table, and aimed my index finger at the center of the upper panel. My finger met solid wood. Telling myself I was a Dunstan, I tried to will my finger through the surface of the door. My fingertip flattened and bent upward.

•96

•I sat at Laurie's table, staring at my glass and thinking about my brother, my shadow, whose absence had shaped the entire course of my life. He had known what would happen to me at Middlemount and saved me from death by starvation or exposure—it was Robert who had flirted with Horst while I was drinking myself into a stupor. He had set up my encounter with Ashleigh because he knew it would lead to dinner with Laurie Hatch at Le Madrigal. Yet he had not known that I would give away three-quarters of what had come to me from Toby Kraft, and he had been surprised to hear of my visit to New Providence Road. Robert wanted me to think that he knew everything about me, but he had not known about my semi-disappearance on Word Street or my new ability to eat time.

Robert seemed blind to the moments when I acted in accordance with my Dunstan legacy, especially what had come directly from Star. Virtually everything I had learned since arriving in Edgerton distanced me from his unseen claim on my being. The parts of myself least familiar to me were out of his range.

But Robert had been delighted to hear that I'd participated in his sexual adventures and had watched my hands disappear on Word Street—maybe he wanted me to disappear altogether. For thirty-five years, Robert had lived on the fringes of human existence like a starving wolf: what could be more natural than that he demand more? Did I think he intended to marry Laurie Hatch, get his hands on Stewart's family trust, and then dispose of both Laurie and Cobbie? A final sip of whiskey made this far-fetched idea almost entirely implausible. Yet enough of it lingered so that I could not spend the night in Laurie's bed.

•97

•I put on the rest of my clothes in the dark. In a sleepy voice, Laurie said, "You're always going somewhere." “I have to be ready for the funeral."

She raised her head for a kiss.

“I'll call you tomorrow."

"That's what the guy last night said."

I drove on past dark houses to the highway. Eighteen-wheelers loomed up from behind like yellow-eyed monsters and swung out to wash by before sailing ahead to become red dots poised at the edge of infinity. A handful of cars ghosted along the streets of Edgerton. I found a parking place in front of the Speedway, crossed the street, and entered Turnip Lane.

In my haste, I nearly stumbled over a figure like a heap of discarded clothes. I bent down, thinking that if he was Piney Woods, I would give him the price of a bed at the Hotel Paris. The odors of unwashed flesh and alcohol floated up from a stranger with matted hair and scabs on his cheeks. His eyelids twitched, as if he sensed me looking at him. Somewhere near, a man snored in bursts like the starting and stopping of a chain saw.

On Leather Lane, a man reeled out of a doorway and collapsed facedown on the cobbles. A woman's voice rose from a basement room, saying, It'salways the same, always the same. It is always the same, exact story, and I'm sick of it. Somewhere a toilet flushed. Under the feeble illumination of an iron street lamp, I turned into Fish.

I had gone about thirty feet between the huddled buildings when, in a signal as old as childhood, someone whistled two notes, the second an octave down from the first. I turned around and saw an empty lane. I turned back. About twenty feet away, Joe Staggers was lurching into Fish out of Lavender Lane. He laughed, steadied himself, and planted his feet.

"Well. Well, now. Looks like party time." With the fluidity of practice, Staggers drew a knife from his back pocket and snapped his wrist. The blade locked into place with a heavy metallicclunk.

I looked over my shoulder. Yuk Yuk—Shorty—stood beneath the light at the other end.

"Are you ready, Dunstan? Are you, little pal?" Staggers said. "No fancy bullshit tonight." He stepped forward.

I yanked the pistol out of the holster, pushed down the safety, and aimed at Staggers. "Stop right there." I looked at Shorty, who had not moved, and chambered the first bullet. "Drop the knife."

"Whoa, boy. Are you gonna shoot me?"

“If I have to." I swung the pistol across the front of my body and pointed it at Shorty. "Get out of here. Now."

"He won't shoot," Staggers said. "That's Gospel."

"He busted in Minor's head," Shorty said.

"This guy never fired a gun in his life. But he cheated us out of our money, in case you forgot."

"Not enough money to get killed for."

I swung the barrel back to Staggers. He had advanced a couple of feet.

"Forget the money, think about being a man for a change," Staggers said. “If he shoots anybody, it'll be me."

I looked at Shorty without taking the gun off Staggers. When I glanced back at Staggers, he was in a crouch, his arms at his sides, smiling at me. "Shorty," I said, "take off while you can."

Staggers said, "Fancy boy ain't gonna hit anything. Come ahead."

I heard Shorty take a hesitant step forward, rotated, and aimed at his chest. Then I sighted an inch to the left and pulled the trigger. A red flare came from the barrel, and the explosion kicked the pistol upward. The bullet smacked into a brick wall, ricocheted across the lane, and struck a boarded window. Shorty lumbered off. I chambered another round and heard the shell case ping offa cobble.

Still crouching, Joe Staggers was within four yards of me, the knife edge-up in his lightly extended hand. "Missed him on purpose, you dipshit."

“I won't miss you," I said.

"Suppose I drop the knife and you drop the gun. Suppose we take it from there."

"Suppose you get out of here before I put a bullet in your head," I said.

A crablike step brought him closer.

I aimed the pistol at his forehead. "Put it down."

"Guess I'll do that."

Staggers lowered his knife hand, glanced up at me, and vaulted forward, like a frog. I aimed at the big plaid shape speeding over the cobbles. There was a flash of red, an explosion, the sound of a bullet pinging off a stone. Staggers rammed into my legs and knocked me onto my back.

Now, I thought,do it now!

My stomach cramped. Pain blossomed in my head. The fabric of the world melted into yielding softness, and I fell through sixty years, more or less, with Joe Staggers clinging to my legs.

There came the familiar sense ofwrongness, of dislocation. In amiasma of horse dung, beer, and sewage. Fish Lane tilted up and down like a seesaw. When my vision cleared, I was lying on my back a few yards beyond the entrance to a tavern. About twice the usual number of stars blanketed the night sky. I lifted my head and saw Joe Staggers struggling onto his hands and knees. I knew what I was going to do to him even before the tavern door opened upon a grim knot of men in worn jackets and thick caps. An amazed and sinister chuckle spread through them. One of the men came toward us, and two or three others followed. Staggers sank onto his heels and raised his knife.

It would never have occurred to him that his clean shirt, his sturdy yellow Timberlands, his fresh haircut denied him sympathy from the men before us. He did not look rich, but he looked richer than they were. Waving his knife made it worse. He swiveled his head to look at me, and the pain and confusion in his eyes nearly made me pity him. "Where the hell are we?" Most of the men standing at the entrance to the bar pulled out knives of their own.

One of the men moved away from the others. The ripped pockets of his jacket flopped like rabbit ears. A rough voice said,You got that one, Bumpy.

I threw the pistol down the lane and heard it skittering over the cobbles. Bumpy took another step, and I did what I had to do.

Darkness stretched out on either side. My head pounded, and sweat ran down my face. Abandoned buildings and boarded windows looked down in calm silence. I pushed myself upright and smelled cordite. Down at the crossing of the lanes, two drunks goggled at me from beneath a street lamp. A siren wailed on Word Street. "He ran down there," I shouted, pointing to the far end of Fish Lane. The drunks turned unsteadily around, and I raced into the darkness.

•98

•Mr. Spaulding's hearse preceded Clark's gleaming Buick on the way to Little Ridge, and I followed both, headlights on. Through the gates we went and over the crunching gravel to a narrow drive that ribboned past orderly headstones. The hearse glided to a stop beside a little rise, and Clark and I swung in behind it. We all got out of our vehicles. It was a fine, sunny morning without too much humidity.

In their dark print dresses and face collars, Nettie and May could have been a pair of deacons' wives. In his eggplant-colored suit, white shirt with a Mr. B collar, black necktie, and a chocolate brown, wide-brimmed fedora, Clark looked more elegant than I had ever seen him. A carpet of artificial grass the bright green of Astroturf lay over the mound of earth soon to be muscled back into the ground by the yellow bulldozer parked further along the asphalt ribbon. On the other side of the open grave stood a device like a forklift with metal uprights and protruding braces. Two cemetery employees squatted in the shade of the bulldozer.

Clark adjusted the angle of his fedora. “I've been thinking about your mother day and night, son. I'm happy I lived long enough to pay her my respects."

"Uncle Clark," I said, “It wouldn't be the same without you."

Mr. Spaulding and three black-suited assistants slid the coffin out of the hearse and carried it up the hill. In the sunlight, the coffin gleamed an odd yellow-bronze. The smooth contours and rounded edges made it look like an object meant to be shot into outer space.

"Those brass handles will last forever," Clark said.

I helped May uphill as she muttered about the heat. Spaulding's assistants eased the coffin onto the armature over the rectangular space in the ground. A stocky man in a black robe and gold-rimmed glasses unfolded his hands from the leather-bound Bible on his belly and introduced himself as the Reverend Gerald Swing.

"Are other mourners expected?" he asked.

"Here's one now," I said. A dented old Volvo wagon was pulling up behind my car. Reverend Swing strolled to the head of the open grave and went into a contemplative trance.

May said, “I told Joy about that money Toby left us. It seems she feels that Clarence should be placed in a nursing home."

“I'll try to find a place for him before I leave, but if I can't, you and Aunt Nettie will have to do it."

"Son," May said, "when are we supposed to get those checks?"

"Maybe three weeks," I said.

"This outfit looks pretty smart, if I say so myself," Clark said. His voice trembled. "Your mother held the opinion that I was a handsome man." I peered under the brim of his hat and saw tears leaking from his eyes.

Suki Teeter came swinging uphill in a voluminous black pants suit, sunglasses, and a black hat the size of a sombrero.

"There's that girl who came to the hospital," May said.

"Nod gave her a fortune, but I will never understand why," Nettie said.

“It was a lot less than I gave you and May," I said.

"Neddie," May asked, "what in the world did you giveus?"

Suki silenced whatever I might have said by wrapping her arms around me and bringing the golden haze of her face to mine. "Thank you, thank you,thank you. I'm stunned!"

I kissed her cheek. “I'm glad I could help," I said.

"Let's get together afterward."

Clark raised the brim of his hat a quarter of an inch and lowered it again. "Nice of you to pay your respects, Miss. I compliment you on your appearance, which is most attractive."

“I could say the same for yours, kind sir."

Clark displayed a magnificent sneer and crowned his glory by removing from his breast pocket a pair of oversized, black-framed sunglasses I thought I had seen on Mr. Spaulding's desk that morning, snapping out the temples with the same wrist-flick the late Joseph Staggers had used to open his knife, then mounting them on his nose. He looked a bit like an ancient Tonton Macoute.

In a close-fitting black suit that made the most of her legs, Rachel Milton emerged from a white BMW. Her sunglasses surpassed even Clark's or, as I suspected, Mr. Spaulding's. Rachel moved gracefully up the rise and embraced me. "Dear Ned, I'm so sorry. We'll get together later?"

I introduced her to the aunts and to Clark, who tipped his hat with a lady-killer's polished charm.

Nettie scowled at me. “I don't know how we can get your Uncle Clarence into a decent nursing home. We're two old ladies almost in need of one ourselves."

Rachel took the hint and moved away. I said something reassuring to Nettie, watching Rachel Milton's uncertain approach to Suki. After a moment of suspicion, Suki swept forward, and the two women fell into each other's arms.

Lurking at the head of the grave, Reverend Swing questioned me with a glance. I nodded. The reverend coughed forcefully into his fist and opened his Bible to gaze at the text as if for spiritual refreshment. Then he slammed it shut.

"We gather here today to mark the passing from this earthly realm of Valerie Dunstan, known to her beloved family and friends as Star, and to commend hersoul to the Lord." It wasas though he had flipped a switch and brought into play a bass-baritone richer, more vibrant, and louder than his normal speaking voice.

I looked along the rise to a grove of maple trees, then behind us, but did not see Robert.

Although Reverend Swing had been denied the honor of personal acquaintanceship with Valerie Dunstan, these few minutes with the bereaved family had proved to him that Star Dunstan—to use that sweet sobriquet—had been a loving mother, a loving daughter to her mother, and a devoted niece to her aunts and uncles. Reverend Swing knew that Star Dunstan had packed thousands of nourishing peanut-butter-and-jelly, tuna-fish, and egg salad sandwiches into the lunch box her son Ned carried to school. Reverend Swing knew that she had spent many nights by little Ned's bedside while he ran temperatures and suffered childhood's illnesses. She spent hours washing and ironing his school clothes. Star had assisted her son's struggles with multiplication and long division; she had aided his research into historical periods for his little papers; he could not help but wonder if together they had investigated the glories of Jerusalem and the Holy Lands, which the Reverend Swing had been privileged to visit in the company of his wife and helpmeet, Mrs. Violetta Puce Swing.

Nettie and May were nodding away like robots, and I managed to keep from laughing. I wondered if Star had ever seen a lunch box. She had never made a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in her life, and the only clothes she ever ironed were the dresses she wore onstage. I looked down the ridge and saw Robert, in a blue suit identical to mine, leaning against a maple in the grove. The white-hot memory of our encounter in the Anscombe house and our union into one being shivered through me. Tears burned in my eyes.

Reverend Swing intoned, "This young man's mother, the niece of the noble women I see before me, sought daily inspiration in the pages of a book that had a special place in her good and simple heart."

In spite of the absurdity of Swing's portrait of Star, somehow also because of that absurdity, the emotions evoked by Robert's appearance flowed into my grief for my mother, ripping in half a thick wall of matter extending from breastbone to spine in the middle of my chest. I began to sob. Everyone present, including the reverend, stared at me, but instead of embarrassment, I felt the deep, two-sided current of human life at work in me again; I felt more than ever like my mother's son.

The next time I looked at the maple grove, Robert was gone.

Reverend Swing commended Valerie "Star" Dunstan to the earth from whence she had come and invited us to rejoice in the ascent of her soul. I liked the first half of that sentence. I liked it a lot. Let us commend Star Dunstan to the earth, if that was from whence she had come. It was certainly where she was going, so let us commend her to it anyway, adorned in her best black dress and her good pearl earrings, unless the aunts had twinkled them away on the grounds that pearls served the living better than the dead. Let us hope that the earth might treat her with its customary kindly regard, let us trust that whatever was not to be buried within Mr. Spaulding's gleaming space capsule would find the peace it deserved, whether in the paradise recommended by Reverend Swing or in realms unknown to him.

Swing crooned a beautiful bass-baritone prayer. One of Mr. Spaulding's assistants pulled cosmetic sheets of Astroturf from the grave, and another glided to the machine and pushed a button. Star's coffin sank into the trench and almost soundlessly came to rest.

Clark said, "Gerry Swing tells the people what they want to hear."

He and the aunts moved a short way down the slope. The atmosphere had loosened and relaxed as it widened out to include the rest of the landscape. The concentrated group of mourners separated again into individuals. The bulldozer cleared its throat. I started walking toward Suki Teeter and Rachel Milton, and a large figure in gold-rimmed spectacles and a black robe appeared beside me.

In his vibrant sermon voice, Reverend Swing said, “I felt I knew your dear mother as well as if she had been a member of my congregation."

"Thank you, Reverend." I gave him a fifty-dollar bill, which sailed beneath his robe.

"You were moved by my evocation of your mother's spirit."

"Reverend, my mother would have laughed her head off at the part about the sandwiches, but it was lovely anyhow."

Still pressing on the organ pedals, Swing said, “I know your mother was a good Christian."

"She loved Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and she sang in clubs," I said. "Does that count? In her own way, she was a fantastic mother."

Swing clapped his hand on my back and laughed. In his real voice, hesaid, "Know the trouble with gigs like this? They never give you enough information. If Will Spaulding had told me your mother was a singer, I could have done live minutes on Billie and Ella to make the people bawl their eyes out. Would have been a memorable funeral."

“It was probably just as memorable this way," I said.

He wandered down the slope, uttering benedictions. Nettie instantly sailed in front of me, May at her side. "The reverend has a beautiful speaking voice," said Nettie, "but I would not choose to listen to it night and day. And he did not know beans about Star, although he was very complimentary to May and me."

“I expect the reverend brought Violetta Puce to the Holy Land in hopes of losing her over there," said May. "Are you coming home with us, Neddie?"

“I'll drop in later," I said.

"Going off with the ladies, I expect," said Clark, sauntering up. "The reverend did us proud, but Star would have wanted him to mention her devotion to me, too. The apple of her eye, I was."

•99

•Suki glowed at me from beside the BMW, and Rachel said, "Star and I used to get together at our old place, Brennan's. GrennieMilton certainly wasn't going to walk in. I know it's a little early for lunch, but all I've had today was a cup of yogurt at seven-thirty."

“I never had breakfast at all," I said.

“I just got up," Suki said. "Brennan's is right around the corner from me, and I haven't been there in centuries. It'll be like going back in time."

"They still have that picture," Rachel said.

"Ned, you have no idea what you're in for. Do you know how to find it? Doesn't matter, just follow us."

“I know Brennan's," I said. "But I'll follow you anyhow."

Suki wafted up to her car. Rachel said, “Is one of Star's aunts worried about placing someone in a nursing home?"

"Aunt Joy's husband, Clarence Crothers," I said. "He's in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's."

"Grenville put me on the board of Mount Baldwin, the best eldercare facility in southern Illinois. I could call Liz Fanteen, the director, this afternoon and settle the whole thing in five minutes. Is Clarence ready to be admitted?"

"He has ripened on the vine, if that's what you mean."

“I'll take care of it after lunch. That's a promise."

•10O

•Rachel parked in front of the Irish bar on Fairground Road, and Suki and I found spaces around the corner. When I got out of my car, she was standing on the sidewalk, looking at me a little shyly. “I haven't thanked you enough for your generosity. It's amazing, Ned. You don't even really know me."

“It was supposed to be Star's money. She would have done exactly the same."

Suki put her arm through mine. "That's the only thing that makes me feel right about accepting the money, even though I can't afford to turn it down. I just want you to know how grateful I am."

We filed into a long, dark interior with a polished mahogany bar on one side and wooden booths on the other, which opened into a dining room. A big man with graying temples smiled at us from behind the bar.

"Mrs. Milton," he said. "Haven't seen you in a long time." His eyes met mine for a moment before he glanced at Suki and returned to Rachel. "Would you and your friends like a table in the back?" He gave Suki another glance, and his eyes softened. His entire face opened into a smile. "What do you know, Suki Teeter has come back to Brennan's. As beautiful as ever, too."

"Bob Brennan, you're just like your father," she said.

"You were a great crowd. Will Star Dunstan be joining you?"

A needle traveling at the speed of light went through my heart.

Rachel said, "We just came from her funeral. This is her son, Ned."

"No," Brennan said, shocked. "That's terrible. I'm sorry for your loss, Ned." He reached across the bar and engulfed my hand. "My dad always liked having your mother in the place, and I did, too. Let's set you up in back, and we'll get you anything you like."

He seated us and handed out menus. "The first drink is on the house."

“I'll have a Manhattan, please, and thank you, Bob."

"Same here," said Suki.

“Is that what she used to drink here?" I asked.

"One Manhattan, light on the vermouth, straight up," Brennan said. I ordered one, and he went back into the bar.

Suki examined the walls. "This is spooky. Bob looks just like his father."

"We have to show Ned the picture," Rachel said.

“If you can stand it, I can," Suki said. "Come on. Time for your history lesson." She led me to the back wall.

Rachel said, "God, would youlook at us?"

Just above eye level hung a picture of ten young women and two young men ranged along the bar in summery clothing. Unforced happiness shone from their faces. Radiantly beautiful, Star smiled out from between a stunning young Suki Teeter and an equally stunning young Rachel Newborn.

"Wow," I said.Wow pretty much summed up my response. "This was your group?"

"Most of us." Rachel named the girls in the photograph: "Sarah Birch,Nanette Bridge, Tammy Wackford, Avis Albright, Zelda Davis. Mei-Liu Chang, next to Sammie Schwartz. And that girl who got high on Benzedrine inhalers and talked in rhymes."

"Georgy-Porgy," Suki said. "She just published her second novel, she's got two kids, no husband, and she's the most satisfied person you ever saw in your life. I hate her guts."

I asked what had happened to some of the others. Zelda Davis won a fellowship to Harvard and worked for the State Department. Sammie Schwartz had run off with a Hell's Angel and now taught third grade in Arizona. Nanette Bridge was a partner in a Wall Street law firm. Moongirl Thompson had disappeared, literally, after telling her boyfriend she was going to take a walk up the beach.

Brennan brought in the drinks and took our orders: a salad for Rachel, hamburgers and fries for Suki and me.

"Remember Sujit? Remember the Big Indian?"

"Could I forget them?" Suki said. "When Sujit went back to Bombay, she created a huge national scandal. Two or three cabinet members had to resign. The Big Indian makes avant-garde films. Her real name is Bertha Snowbird."

“I've seen some of Bertha Snowbird's films," I said. "She's really good. Which one is she?"

We returned to the back wall, where Suki pointed out a fierce young woman with straight, center-parted black hair, athletic shoulders, and lioness eyes. A man of twenty-five or twenty-six with matinee-idol cheekbones and close-cut blond hair had his arm draped around her neck.

"Who's the guy?" I asked.

"Don Messmer," Suki said.

Messmer smiled at the camera with the self-consciousness of a man who knows that he is simultaneously out of his depth and onto a good thing. At the other end of the group, a dark-haired man with a cigarette in his mouth leaned against Sammie Schwartz. "Who's the other guy?"

"He taught English at Albertus," Rachel said. She raised her half-empty glass to her mouth and drained it. "His name was Erwin Leake."

I saw Piney Woods sitting on a bench in Merchants Park.Follow a shadow, it still flies you; / Seem to fly it, it will pursue.

•“Why isn't Edward Rinehart in that picture?"

Rachel said, "Edward hated having his picture taken. Suki, remember that time—"

Around a mouthful of hamburger, Suki said, "Sure do." She held up a finger and swallowed. "The other time, too."

"Why were we sostupid? Someone takes his picture, and he smashes the camera. Three months later, Sujit takes his picture on the street, and he grabs her camera and rips out the film. Shouldn't we have been suspicious?"

"We thought suspicion was bourgeois," Suki said. "How are you doing, Rachel?"

Rachel Milton finished her second Manhattan. "Not all that well, actually. It'srotten that Star died. And my husband decided that he needed something new in his life, namely a thirty-five-year-old iceberg who is a whiz at estate planning. He has his heart set on marrying this iceberg."

"How old is the guy?" Suki asked.

"Seventy-two, but that doesn't bother him. He's in love. If Grennie hadn't fallen in love, he'd be selfish, but of course this way everything's all right. Have you ever been married?"

"Officially, once," Suki said. "Unofficially, two and a half times. Rachel, you forgot I married Roger Lathrop!"

"The harpsichordist who wiggled his fanny when he played. I remembered as soon as you told me. I want another drink, but not a Manhattan. A glass of white wine."

“I'll have another Manhattan."

I waved at Bob Brennan.

Suki turned to me. “I told you about Roger. We went to Popham College, and six years later the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor made him artist in residence. Both of us were happy to get out of Popham, believe me. And then."

"Fatal words," Rachel said.

"And then,Roger told me I was inhibiting his artistic progress, although I was not to take it personally."

"What was the bitch's name?" Rachel asked. “I bet she was a student."

"His prize pupil, Sonia Skeffington. She went to Michigan instead of me, and I came back here. I'd rather not talk about the unofficial husbands. One of them was really great, but he died while he was out on his daily five-mile run, and the other two turned out to be human fortune cookies."

•Twenty minutes later, Suki said, "When I saw Star in the hospital, I thought my heart was going to break in half."

"Me, too," Rachel said.

"You didn't go to the hospital, Rachel."

"Oh! You're right. I was horrible that day. I was nasty to everyone." She did her best to focus on me. “I was nasty to you, too, wasn't I?"

"Semi-nasty," I said.

"Grennie had just reminded me that my services would no longer be required. Suki, I have a tremendous idea. We should both get married to Ned."

"That would be adventurous," I said.

"He maybe looks too much like Edward," said Suki. "He's much nicer, though."

"Edward wasn't nice at all. That's what we liked about him."

"Edward didn't care about anybody. Not even Star. But you know who did? Don Messmer."

"Forgethim," Rachel said. "You know how some men are too handsome for their own good? Because all they have todois coast along? Don Messmer."

“I wonder what Don is doing now," Suki said.

"He owns a bar in Mountry," I said.

They burst into laughter.

"Rachel, that means . . ." Suki dissolved again. "That means he has to steal fromhimself."

"We should probably get going," I said.

"You have to forgive us," Rachel said. "Suki and I haven't seen each other in a long time. We're in a funny state of mind."

"You were right," Suki said. "Let's marry Ned."

"Before we get married, let me take the two of you home," I said.

“In a minute," Rachel said. "Two questions. The first one is ... do you still want your uncle to get into Mount Baldwin?"

"Yes," I said.

“I'll take care of it. Write down his name for me, or I'll forget." She fumbled in her bag and came out with a notebook and a pen. I wrote Clarence's name and Star'suncle, placement in Mount Baldwin and added Nettie's telephone number.

Rachel squinted at the page and put the notebook and pen back in her bag. "Question number two. No, it isn't a question. Was I going to tell you something?"

"Take your time," I said.

“I have to go home," Suki said. "Ned, will you drive me?"

“I'll drive both of you," I said.

“If I decide to tell you anything," Rachel said, “I didn't. Understood?"

"Understood."

Rachel put on her sunglasses. I had the feeling she thought she was disguising herself. "My husband is ditching me for a thirty-five-year-old Hong Kong vampire, have I made that clear?"

"Afemale Hong Kong vampire," said Suki. "Question for our studio audience: Does she blow, or does she suck?"

"Grennie thinks he can get away with anything. So does his best friend. Who is that, do you know? Don't say his name, just his initials."

"S.H."

"Good. Suki, guess what this best friend used to do when he followed me into the kitchen in the middle of a party?"

"Grab your boobs and rub your hand on his dick," Suki said. "That was easy."

"What a pig. Grenville and his friend do business together, right?"

"So I gather," I said.

"And all of a sudden this best friend gets accused of this and that."

"Okay," I said.

"And the best friend's friend isundoubtedly in trouble if Stewart gets into trouble. We're not using any names here, are we?"

“I heard two so far," Suki said.

“I'm not talking to you. Now suppose the wife of the friend's friend decided that both of them deserved whatever they got. Suppose she managed to protect herself financially while her husband still cared enough about her to put her on theoperating table for her birthday."

"Attaway," Suki said.

"Now we get to Mr. Edward Rinehart."

"How?" Suki asked. "Oh, I forgot. You're not talking to me."

"Do you think that was his real name?"

"No," I said.

"Huh?" Suki said.

“I'm co—vice chairperson of the Sesquicentennial Committee. Laurie was the other one before Stewart kicked her off. Listen to me. You have to see the pictures."

"What pictures?" I asked.

"Thephotographs."

"They lost some photographs of my family," I said, and realized what she was telling me. "Photographs of Edward Rinehart. You saw them at the library, and you recognized him."

“I never never said that. Did I, Suki?"

“I have to go home now," Suki said. "Really."

I asked Rachel if her maid was working that day.

"Lulu's working today, yes. If you can call that work."

“I'll drive you home in your car, and Lulu can ride back with me while I take care of Suki."

"You think I'm not going to remember what I said about your uncle," Rachel said. "But I made a promise."

I helped Suki get up from her chair. On our way out, I grabbed a matchbook off the bar, thinking I would call Bob Brennan later that afternoon.

•101

•Rachel's housekeeper, Lulu White, helped me coax Suki out of the BMW and into the Riverrun gallery, where one of her young assistants promised to get her to bed. I walked back to my car and drove to Grace Street.

A woman behind the checkout desk indicated a door at the back of the reading room. In a gray, institutional hallway I found the wordsassistant head librarian on a gray, institutional door. I knocked, and Hugh Coventry told me to come in.

Metal shelves crammed with books and folders filled the walls of an office the size of a dormitory room. Half-visible behind the heaps of files and papers on his desk, his eyes squeezed shut and his back to a window, Coventry pressed a telephone to his ear. “I know, I know. I understand that." He opened his eyes to see who had walked in, and his nice, descendant-of-the-Mayflower complexion pinkened. Hugh waved a greeting and pointed to a chair. Then he made a loose, twirling gesture with his hand, communicating helplessness in the face of unexpected difficulty.

“I wish Icould explain it." He squeezed his eyes shut again. "With all respect, the problem isnot my organization. After all, I did get this library into. . . . No, sir, weare talking about the library. All of that material is here now."

I sat down and tried to look as though I were not listening.

"Mr. Hatch, I have a visitor. . . . Yes, I am responsible for the actions of my staff. . . . Well, there has been one other instance. ... I think one of the volunteers misplaced a couple of files."

Coventry craned his neck and placed his free hand over his eyes. "Yes. Mrs. Hatch was here yesterday morning. . . . No, only for a minute. . . . Yes, if need be. . . . All right."

He put down the receiver, lowered his head, and flattened his hands on his temples. "This is crazy." He groaned. Then he raised his head, stood up, and extended his hand over the desk. "Hello, Ned. Nice of you to drop in. It's been like Dunstan Central around here."

"You met my aunts," I said.

"Charming women. They came here with Laurie, though I didn't see any point in saying that to Mr. Hatch. Mrs. Rutledge and Mrs. Huggins seemed impressed with our systems, but they would have been more impressed had I located their photographs. We're losing family heirlooms right and left."

"Tell me about your selection process," I said.

Administrative details made him feel more comfortable. "Your aunts submitted exactly what the committee was looking for. A few studio portraits of each generation, snapshots, a marvelous photograph of Merchants Hotel under construction. What I did not intend to use I returned, and the rest went into a labeled box file for final selection. We were flooded with submissions around that time, and I wanted to guarantee everything could be accounted for. This was when we were still working in City Hall."

"Who makes the final selections?"

"Then, the co—vice chairmen, or chairpersons, I should say, Laurie and Mrs. Milton. Twice a week, I sent my choices down the hall to their office. They approved my choice of the Dunstan photographs, and Mrs. Rutledge's pictures were replaced in the box file. Late in September, we ran out of space, and I had everything moved out of City Hall and into the basement here. When I wanted to check the Dunstan file, I found the box, but not the file. And now, as you must have gathered, the same thing has happened to the Hatch file."

"How long has it been missing?"

“I don't know! Mr. Hatch sent in his submissions last February. Yesterday morning, he called to say that he wanted to make some changes in his family's portion of the exhibition, and I made a note to send the file back to him. He called again around noon today, asking for his file.Immediately. I went downstairs, and . . . you know what happened. He was furious. Stewart Hatch doesn't have any trouble getting in touch with his anger, let me put it that way."

"Of all the files to lose," I said.

"Precisely. Of course, it can't really be lost. One of the volunteers must have put it in the wrong box during the move. I'll find it, and I'll find your family's material, too, but it's going to be a tedious job." He uttered a nearly inaudible sigh. Then his natural courtesy erased the wrinkles from his forehead and brought him upright in his chair. "Why don't I show you our operation?"

He led me down a metal staircase to what had been a staff cafeteria. Gray tracks on the cement floor marked the locations of the old counters and display cases. The former dining tables had been arranged into a giant U in the middle of the room. Two white-haired women, one in a Greenpeace T-shirt, the other a light blue running suit, and a boy of sixteen or seventeen with pink hair, a nose ring, and black eyeliner were sorting through slacks of manila envelopes.

"Hello, people," Coventry said. "Let me introduce you to Ned,a friend of Mrs. Hatch's. Ned, this is Leona Burton, Marjorie Rattazzi, and Spike Lundgren. I have to say that Mr. Hatch is not happy with us."

“It'll take a while," said Spike. He looked at me indignantly and waved a skinny arm at three walls lined with files in boxes. "See all that stuff?"

“I know it won't be easy, Spike," said Coventry. "Ned, let me show you where they should have been."

From a shelf on the inner wall, Coventry pulled down a black archival box.D —Ehad been typed on the white card in its metal bracket. Beneath the letters, the card read,Dunstan (Mrs. Annette Rutledge), Dorman (Mr. Donald Dorman, Mrs. George Dorman), Eames (Miss Alice Eames, Miss Violet Eames).

He set the box on the table and removed the top. Handwritten letters and computer-printed pages half-filled the box. "This is Mrs. Rutledge's initial letter to us, along with my reply. Then comes a list of the photographs we retained, and a separate sheet coding the photographs to the time-line chart."

Coventry gestured at a blackboard ruled into sections, some headed by the names of years, others with slogans like "Steamboat Traffic," "Urban Growth," and “Increasing Prosperity." Lists of names and numbers filled three-fourths of most sections. "The Dunstan photographic file should be beneath this material. Unfortunately, it isn't, so we have to find it."