Текст книги "On the Other Hand, Death"

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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I said, "Actually, rudeness is one of Detective Bowman's finer points, Dot. Don't knock it entirely. He has a foul mouth, but he's no hypocrite. There's a genuineness to his malice that some of us find intermittently refreshing in a city government full of burnt-out phonies."

Bowman glowered but just shifted about nervously. He would have liked to issue me a couple of obscene threats but didn't want to be called rude again by an old lady bent over a kitchen sink.

"Sorry, ma'am," he muttered to Dot. "When I talk like that, I certainly don't mean you, or your ... or Mrs. Stout."

"I don't care who you mean. That talk is discourteous and insensitive and unbecoming of a public servant. Also, I might add, it betrays a narrowmindedness that is certainly discouraging to behold in this day and age. So much of the time, Mr. Bowman, you just seem to be so . . . so . . . full of baloney!"

I would have phrased it a little differently, but probably to less good effect.

Bowman actually blushed. "Well, I have to admit, Mrs. Fisher, that I'm . . . still learning." He was crimson now, looking as if he feared Dot might have him write "No More Fag Jokes" five hundred times on the blackboard.

"We're all still learning," Dot said. "And I congratulate you on being big enough to admit it."

Bowman relaxed a little, no longer worried that he might get sent to the principal's office.

The phone rang. Bowman, relieved, lunged for it. "Let me get that!"

Dot glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

"For you, Strachey. It's your– It's Mr. Callahan." He handed me the sweat-drenched receiver.

"I found out about Wilson," Timmy said.

"This line is not private," I told him quickly. "I'll call you back in fifteen minutes. Where are you?"

"At the . . . you know. On Delaware."

"Fifteen minutes."

I hung up and asked Bowman to accompany me outside. We stood under a pear tree and I told him about Joey Deem.

"I figured that," he said. "One of my men stopped by the Deem place earlier, and the kid took off with a friend when my man arrived. Out the back door, zip-zip. The kid's mother was defensive when asked about her boy's state of mind and activities, but in due course she allowed as how her son might conceivably be capable of criminal matters on a limited scale. We'll pay the lad a visit tomorrow morning and squeeze him. He'll own up."

"I don't doubt it, Ned. Not with irresistible you conducting the interview. Or have you mellowed after getting roughed up in there by Mrs. Fisher? 'Rude.' That's the word, all right. Dot put her finger on it."

His little eyes narrowed like those of the Ned Bowman I'd known five minutes earlier. "Don't you push my face in it, Strachey, I'm warning you! I've got a list and you're at the head of it. Sure, I'll lay off the informal talk when I'm around Mrs. Fisher from now on. Hell, I've got nothing against two broads doing it, even a couple of old dames like those two. I'm broad-minded. I've never disapproved of that. In fact, the idea of it has always kind of turned me on. But two men? That is sicko stuff, Strachey, and you'll never convince me otherwise."

Bowman the Bunny Hutch philosophe.

"Glad to hear you talk that way again, Ned. You had me worried for a minute. I was afraid word of your newly benign outlook might get around and your career in Albany city government would be jeopardized."

"Thanks for the sentiment."

"Tell me, are all those bushes out there in the dark full of your guys?"

"They will be by midnight. The go team is gathering now in my office."

"I'll be behind a bush too. You might want to alert your people. Just how crowded is it going to get out there?"

"Crowded enough. If they drop off the Greco guy, twenty men will be on top of them in nothing flat. If they just snatch the ransom and take off, there'll be unmarked radio cars doing relays a block behind them till they get where they're going. Just to be on the safe side, we've got a homing transmitter sewn into the bottom of the money case. When they get to where they've got Greco, we'll move in fast. They'll never know what hit 'em."

"Sounds close to being foolproof. It'd better be. Here's the rest of the cash."

I tugged Trefusis's envelope out of my back pocket and shoved it toward Bowman. He grinned.

I drove over to Central and went into a Grandma's Pie Shop. Grandma wasn't there that night, but the cashier, a comely grandson whom I'd seen around, directed me to a pay phone. I dialed the apartment.

"Hello?" His voice was scratchy, distant.

"It's me. I love you."

"Don't be manipulative. I'm in no mood for it. This will be a non-personal conversation. I obtained the information you requested regarding William Wilson."

"I apologize. Really. It'll rarely happen again. Hardly ever. Not often at all."

"Do you want this information or don't you?"

"Once every three months, about. That'd be it. And only in other cities. Never in Albany or any contiguous municipality. Doesn't that sound reasonable? Short of storing my nuts in a jar of vinegar, which you would keep locked in your desk drawer, that's the best I can do. I think you'll have to agree that it's fair, given certain chemical imbalances in my frontal lobe. So. Are we friends again? Lovers, at least?"

Cutesy sniveling got me nowhere. He didn't even pause. "Here is what I have learned. Are you listening?"

"Sure. Yeah. I'm listening."

"I talked to Gary Moyes out at the Drexon Company. The word is, Bill Wilson runs the plant baseball pool. Except there's some scam going on and nobody ever seems to collect any winnings. They're all 'reinvested' in the following week's pool—which is not the way the players understood the pool would operate. There's a lot of grumbling, and Wilson's time may be running out.

"Moyes guesses that as soon as one of the more impatient employees comes up a winner, Wilson will either have to pay everybody off or suffer dire consequences. If he's getting rich in a small way, it looks as if he'll need every dime of it for a new set of teeth and maybe a neck brace. Wilson definitely is in bad trouble, or soon will be."

"Nnn. Yeah. That explains Wilson's bragging to his wife about soon making her a rich woman, I guess. But it also looks as if he's in need of even more cash and must be fairly desperate to come up with it. This might lead Wilson to behave irrationally, criminally. Unless he's got all the pool money stashed somewhere, which he might. He doesn't appear to be spending it on anything or anybody at home. Can you check his bank records and the plant credit union?"

"On a Saturday night? Neither of us has those kinds of contacts."

"Yeah. Crap. It looks as if we're back to square one with Wilson. Not that I'm all that much interested in him anymore. Maybe Bowman will come up with something on him. His guys are checking too."

"I have now fulfilled my obligation to you. Goodbye."

"Hey wait. I want to talk to you! We've really got to sort things out. You know and I know that we've got too much going for us to let—"

"I just want to say one last thing to you, Don. Listen to this. Listen carefully. I was thumbing through your Proust a while ago and came upon a line that jumped right out at me. It seemed so apt, so perfect. It was Swann talking to Odette, but it could as easily have been me to you. He says to her, Swann says, 'You are a formless water that will trickle down any slope that offers itself.' How about that? 'A formless water that will trickle down any slope that offers itself"

He waited.

I said, "Yeah. How about that? Quite a phrasemaker, Proust. The man was a genius, no doubt about it."

"He summed you up in fourteen words. Goodbye."

"Actually, it's probably less harsh in the original French, and– Hello? Timmy? Hello?"

With a phone company click he was gone.

"A formless water." I'd done it.

I ate a slice of pie, got change for a dollar from grandson, went back and piled some dimes by the phone. I dialed the apartment. No answer. I dialed my service. No messages.

Later. For sure.

Back in my booth I went over the Trefusis-Greco-McWhirter-Deem-Wilson-Fisher situation in my mind yet again. I had my coffee cup refilled twice. My head buzzed with heat, fatigue, and caffeine, and I swiped at flies that weren't there. One dropped into my coffee cup.

I couldn't figure any of it out. I still was nagged by the idea that I had not picked up on something crucial, but I didn't know what. I had been preoccupied, and that had been my fault, mostly.

I remembered my meeting with Lyle Barner. I got out my address book, went back to the phone, and made a credit card call to San Francisco. It was nine-thirty-five in Albany, three hours earlier in California. He'd probably be home.

"Yyyyeh-lo."

"Hi, Buel. Don Strachey. You sound chipper enough."

"Don, you old faggot pissant! Son of a bee! You in town, I hope?"

"Albany. Grandma's Pie Shop on Central. We shared a Bavarian cream here once."

"Ah, so we did. And if my rapidly deteriorating memory serves me, the pie that night was the least of it."

"If Grandma had known."

"Well, shithouse mouse! If this doesn't beat all! An old trick calls me up from three thousand miles away six years later, when last Tuesday's passes me on the street today and looks right through me. Son of a bee."

"You sound as if you're in good shape, Buel. Still out there organizing the masses for the socialist judgment day?"

"Oh, yeah. In a manner of speaking, I am. To tell you the truth, Don, I am now actually gainfully employed. Can you believe that? I work at an S and L."

"You into that too? When I knew you, your sexual tastes were more or less conventional."

"That's a savings and loan. Hercules S and L. It's all gay. No more rude tellers and huffy loan officers for the brothers and sisters. It's a new day, Don. I love it. And we're growing like crazy. B of A's gonna have to either come out of the closet or move to Kansas."

"B of A, what's that? Belle of Amherst? Basket of apples? What?"

"Bank of America. Owns half the city, and the suburbs all the way to Denver. But not for long. Hercules is flexing its mighty muscle."

"I can't wait to see your logo."

"So, how you doing back there in Depressoville? How's Timmy?"

"Oh, Timmy's fine, fine. The reason I called was I know a gay cop here who needs to make a move. Is San Francisco still recruiting among the brethren?"

"In a small, halfhearted way, yes. You want a name? I'll get you one if you want to hang on."

I said I did. He came back on the line a minute later with a name and phone number. I wrote them down.

"Thanks, Buel. This might help. As you can guess, the

revolution has not yet reached the Albany Police Department. Speaking of which, one of your city's most notorious troublemakers is with us in Albany this weekend. Do you know Fenton McWhirter?"

"Oh, sure. Everybody knows Fenton. We worked together on the first Harvey Milk campaign. Fenton rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I always thought he was okay. There's nobody more dedicated to the movement, that's for sure. And, I suppose, nobody more ruthless. Fenton can be counted on to make some noise at least, one way or another."

"Ruthless? How so?"

"Oh, let's see. Let me count the ways. Do you remember the story that went around about how Harvey had a brick thrown through his own window to get more press attention and public support? I happen to know that Harvey didn't do it at all. He might have known about it, but it was Fenton's idea, and Fenton tossed the brick. And it worked."

"Is that so?"

"Another time ol' Fenton got pissed off at some cop who'd roughed him up a little at a street demonstration but didn't leave any marks to speak of. Fenton went out and found some deranged hustler over on Turk Street and paid him ten bucks to break Fenton's nose with a pipe. Then he tried to pin it on the cop. Naturally it didn't stick though. You can hardly get them on the real stuff. Say, is Fenton back there recruiting for his famous gay national strike?"

"He's trying. But he's having his troubles."

"The last I heard, he and his lover—what's-his-name—were thinking of calling the whole campaign off. Fenton's so wacky that none of the fat cats will bankroll the drive, and he's practically flat out, I hear. No dough for rallies, nothing. It's too bad, in a way. Fenton has all of

Harvey's cosmic idealism, but none of his personality or political savvy. We're still making headway, Don, but it's just not the same anymore, without the heroes."

"Yeah. That's true. You know, Buel, this is some fascinating information you've given me."

"Fascinating? How so?"

"Well, I've run into Fenton a number of times in the last thirty-six hours. And now I have this whole new perspective on the man. It's . . . fascinating. Depressing too. Look, Buel, I have to run. Gotta see a man about a finger."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Take care now, Don. See you at Christmastime, maybe, if I get back there to visit the folks."

"Sure thing. And thanks again, Buel."

"Good talkin' to you."

I went back to my booth, shoved the plates and cups aside, and laid my head on the table. I slept soundly for five minutes and had very bad dreams. One of them woke me up, and I ordered a fifth cup of coffee.

Oh, Fenton, I thought. Say it isn't so, Fenton.

15

• Bowman was seated in the driver's

seat of his car, which was backed around to the rear of the barn. The young plainclothesman sat at his side. I walked up to the open window and barked, "Gotcha!"

He gave me his city hall gargoyle look. "What the fuck you talkin' about, Strachey? Geddada here!" "Where's McWhirter? He still holding up?" "Still asleep, far as I know. Mrs. Fisher and her lady friend are upstairs with the air conditioner running. My

men won't get into place until after midnight, so as to not disturb the ladies. I've got a man inside the house who'll be there all night to reassure the gals—they still don't know about this army I've got deployed—and to keep McWhirter under control. My only concern is, who's going to keep you under control, Strachey? I do not want you gumming up this operation. You understand that? You screw this up, and you are kaput in the state of New York. Capeesh?"

"Check, Ned. Capeesh, kaput. Where's the ransom money?"

"Already out there in the mailbox. A man's in the woods across the road keeping an eye on it."

"I hope he's one of your best."

He chortled. The underling alongside him chortled too. I walked on into the house.

The kitchen light was on. A uniformed cop sat at the kitchen table gravely considering the Times Union sports section. He looked up. "Who are you?"

"Inspector Maigret," I said, and walked on down the hall.

I opened the door to the guest room where McWhirter was staying and went in. I snapped on a table lamp and shut the door. McWhirter did not awaken. He lay atop the flowered sheets, stretched out on his back in a pair of jockey briefs with a frayed waistband. The shorts barely contained a healthy erection. I averted my eyes somewhat.

I rummaged through a canvas traveling bag that lay open on the floor. It contained a pair of Army surplus fatigues, jeans, T-shirts, a reeking sweatshirt, socks, toilet articles. Underneath these was a recent copy of Gay Community News and assorted letters and postcards. I read McWhirter's mail, all of it communications from various contacts around the country, gay organizations or individuals he planned on visiting, or had visited, during the gay national strike campaign. I found no mention in any of this of an untoward or criminal plot.

I opened a beat-up old L. L. Bean backpack that contained more clothing, of a smaller size. Greco's.

McWhirter stirred. His right arm flopped twice against the sheet. His erection throbbed. I got one too. I looked away and pretended to myself that I was Buffalo Bob Smith. After a moment, McWhirter's breathing ,

evened out again, as did mine. Above me I could hear the snapping and fretting of TV voices and the distant whirr of an air conditioner.

Under the crumpled clothing in Greco's pack I found a bound volume, Moonbites: Poems by Peter Greco. I read two, and they were Greco: simple-hearted, avid, appealing. Yet the craft and originality just weren't there. It was, as Richard Wilbur had cruelly put it, "the young passing notes to one another." Greco was less young than he used to be, and maybe there was other recent more accomplished work. I hoped so. I wished that Greco were a fine poet, the kind that gives you the shakes, turns you upside down in your chair. I feared that he wasn't. I wondered if he knew it. I guessed he would. I wanted to find him– actually kidnapped, and not involved in some idiotic scam with McWhirter—and spend some time with him again.

I thought of Timmy. I figured he'd probably end up in some dumb orgy somewhere that night, and the next day enter the priesthood, a dry-cleaning order, no doubt. And I would find Greco, set him free, and run off with him. To Morocco, maybe, where I could do consulting work with Interpol while Peter reclined on a veranda by the sea and wrote—mediocre poetry. That's what I'd do.

I laid my head against the side of the bed where McWhirter slept and realized how utterly bone-weary I was. I yawned, then made myself think startlingly wakeful thoughts. It wasn't hard.

I replaced the poetry book in the backpack and came up with another volume, a hardbound book whose final pages were blank, but which otherwise had been filled in with handwritten dated short paragraphs. It was Greco's journal. A private matter ordinarily, but under the special circumstances I began to read the recent entries.

July 30—Staying at Mike Calabria's in Providence. Air heavy, hot, suffocating. Mike big, noisy, generous, funny. Fenton heartsick at reception in Rhode Island. Newspaper refers to him as "Frisco Minority Activist." What that? Eleven men sign on; $12 raised.

Aug. 2—New Haven hot, Yalies cool. No students, but two cafeteria workers sign pledge. Stayed with Tom Bittner, here for a year researching colonial anti-gay laws. Great seeing Tom. Cicely still with him; I slept on porch.

Aug. 5—The Big Apple. Gay men everywhere—and nowhere. Temperature inversion over city produces vomit-green cloud. Could barely breathe. Fenton went unannounced to office of New York Times editor, but ...

McWhirter groaned, raised his head, blinked at me. I let the journal fall back into the knapsack.

I said, "Just the man I want to talk to."

"What? What the fuck are you doing in here? Where's—? Oh, God."

"That wasn't Peter's finger in the package. You would have seen that. You said nothing. Why?"

He did a double take, then bridled. "What the fuck is going on? What time is it?" He grabbed at a wristwatch on the bedside table, glared at it, then wrapped it around the circle of white flesh on his wrist. "Christ, it's not even eleven yet."

"You ignored my question."

He lay back against the headboard and examined me

sullenly. Suddenly he snapped, "Of course I knew it wasn't Peter's finger! Of course I would know that!"

"You didn't mention it to anybody. That strikes me as odd. It gets me to thinking."

He blinked, looked alarmed. "Jesus! Do the cops know?"

"Know what, Fenton?"

"The finger—that it wasn't—"

"Where did you get it? I've been wondering. Men's fingers are hard to come by. Not as rare as . . . hens' teeth. But rare."

"Where did I get it?"

"Or whoever."

He sat up with a jerk and Hung his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet stank. I backed away and eased onto a desk chair.

McWhirter's face had reddened. He sputtered, "I know what you think."

"What do I think?"

"That I set this up."

"Why would I think that?"

"Because I—You must have found out that I play the game by rules I didn't make. Rules that I don't like but that somebody else made, and for now they are the rules."

"Your nose is a little cockeyed. I hadn't noticed it before, but now I do. How come?"

In his confusion, he couldn't help grinning daffily. "You heard that story? Great. Well, so what? It's true. Other people had been bloodied by the cops that night, the fucking savages. But those cops had taped over their badge numbers. The one who hit me hadn't. And I had his number. Simple justice."

"Simpleminded justice. You became one of them."

"Ho, Jesus!" He shook his head, looked at me as if I were a bivalve. "The same old liberal bullshit. You should

be a judge, Strachey, or write newspaper editorials."

I said, "You're digging your own grave."

"What?"

"This so-called kidnapping is right in character for you. You stage the abduction, stir up lots of attention and sympathy for the strike campaign—and collect a hundred grand to finance the rest of the drive. I'll bet Dot Fisher doesn't know about it though, does she? Dot's unconventional, but still a bit old-fashioned in certain inconvenient respects, right?"

He stared at me open-mouthed. "You think that? You think I'd do that to Dot?"

"So, where did the finger come from? Explain."

"Look . . . I . . ." He was sweating, fidgeting, balling up little wads of chest hair between his fingers. "Look, it is true that I knew it wasn't Peter's finger in that box. Of course I knew. But the reason I kept my mouth shut about it was not the reason you think. I just thought—I figured that the kidnappers—cops probably—were using the finger to scare us. To scare Dot especially, and impress on all of us just how vicious they could be.

"And since we were already having a hard enough time getting that Bowman asshole to believe us, to take Peter's disappearance seriously, it seemed better if I just . . . kept my mouth shut. And also—Well, shit, I was afraid somebody like you would have heard about—about my reputation. And that you'd think Peter and I set the whole thing up. Just like you do now. God, that's the truth!"

"Uh-huh. That's what I thought too, Fenton. At first. When I saw that the finger wasn't Peter's, and knew that you must have known it wasn't, I guessed that you were keeping mum in order to feed Bowman's sense of urgency. But I didn't know so much about you then. Now I do. And I have become skeptical. Highly so."

"How did you know it wasn't Peter's finger?"

"Dunno. Guess I'm just one of those people who once he's seen a finger never forgets it."

"Do the cops know this? What you think?"

"Not yet."

"Don't tell them. Please. It's not true! You'll just put Peter in more danger!"

I said, "Fenton, you're a self-avowed ruthlessly devious liar and con man. All for the larger cause. Wicked means to a just end. Pulling a stunt like this would be right in character for you. It fits the pattern."

"That is not true. You're talking like Bowman now. Use friends like that? Brothers and sisters? Never!"

"It's not your friends you're using. It's me. Strachey, the Millpond flack. I'm the one who came up with the hundred grand."

"Yes, but—I wouldn't have known it would work out that way, would I? When the ransom note came—and the finger—it was sent to Dot. Obviously by someone who knew that she would be able to get hold of a lot of money from Millpond if she absolutely had to. Somebody so rotten he didn't care at all if Dot lost her home. Do you think I would do that?"

"Nnn. I don't know."

"Or Peter? You've seen what kind of person Peter is. Would he do a thing like that to Dot? Or to anybody?"

"No. I expect not. Unless . . . unless he didn't know. You could have gotten rid of Peter for a few days on some pretext while you pulled off this elaborate heist to raise money to finance the rest of your bankrupt campaign. Sent him off to do advance work in the next town or something. And arrange for some other cohorts, up from the city or wherever, to stage the abduction at the Green Room last night."

He peered at me with disgust. "Oh, yes. I have this troupe of actors—McWhirter's Old Vic—constantly at my disposal. Sheeeit. And when Peter finds out how I've all

of a sudden gotten hold of a hundred thousand dollars? Then what?"

"Nnn. Yeah. Peter would probably give it back."

He continued to stare at me with the nauseated condescension that was his most natural attitude. What did Greco see in this creep? Was demented single-mindedness Greco's idea of toughness, substantiality, strength of character? My estimation of Greco had begun to fall. I thought of Timmy. Where was he? Why weren't we together?

On the other hand, what McWhirter had just told me made sense. He was ruthless, but I'd heard no evidence that he had ever betrayed his friends. He was devious and cunning, but Greco, whatever his weaknesses, was not. On the one hand this, on the other hand that.

I said, "All right, Fenton. I'm more or less convinced. Pretty much. For now."

"And you won't mention any of this crap you were thinking to Bowman?"

"Not now. No."

He collapsed against the headboard. "Thank you. Now, just get Peter away from . . . those people. That's all I care about. And then you can say anything about me that you want. Just get Peter back."

"Right. That's what we're all trying to do."

"Is the money in the mailbox?"

"Yes."

"I'll pay it back. Wherever it came from, I'll pay it back."

Watching him carefully, I said, "Dot and Edith don't know this, but when the pickup is made tonight, the kidnappers' car will be followed. Very, very discreetly. No arrest will be made until Peter is free. But we're all reasonably certain that whoever has done this will be in the lockup by dawn."

He flinched and sat up again, breathing heavily. "You

told me you weren't going to do anything like that. You and the cops. You agreed it was too dangerous."

"We lied. We all concluded from experience that Peter's chances are better this way."

He stared at me with hard, bitter eyes. "Lying for the higher cause, huh? Wicked means to a just end."

"Something like that. Yes. To save a life. Nothing terribly abstract or arguable about that."

"But it's still just your opinion."

"An informed opinion."

He started to speak, then just laughed once, harshly. At both of us, I thought charitably.

I said, "The phone here has been tapped by the police. If you call anyone, you'll be overheard. Did you know that?"

"No. But why should I care?" He turned away from me onto his side, and lay still except for his breathing, which came and went in deep sighs.

I left him there in the sticky heat and shut the door as I walked out. I passed the cop in the kitchen and went outside again. I sat on the veranda under the stars and tried very hard to rethink the whole bloody mess. I was sure I had been conned by a master. But I couldn't decide who he was.

16

• I walked down Moon Road toward

Central in the hazy starlight. A quarter-moon hung above the western horizon with three stars inside its crook, like an astrological sign. It was Saturday night on Central Avenue.

"Hi, bet you're a Taurus, aren't you, big guy?"

"No, but you're close. I'm a Presbyterian—born under the sign of a golf ball on a tee. I'm surprised you couldn't tell from the alignment of the divots on my skull."

"Well, you're certainly a weird one. Huh! Guess I'll just go dance some more. Last call's in ten minutes, but I could just dance forever."

"For sure."

The air was still, wet, black. I passed the Deems' house. The living room was lighted behind closed drapes in the picture window. The screen door was open and I could hear raised voices.

"I don't care! I don't care! I don't care!"

"Get back here, I'm not finished with you!"

More distant: "Jerry, not so loud!"

"No one in this family has ever broken the law! Joseph, if your grandfather—"

"I don't care! I'm sick of you! I'm sick of this place! I'm sick of all of you!"

"Go to your room!"

"Jerry!"

"I'm going! I'm going!"

"Jerry, don't hit him!"

"You selfish miser! I know you! I know you!"

The wooden door was eased shut. The voices became muffled. I stood in the shadows and waited. The wooden door flew open again, then the screen door. Joey Deem burst out into the night, charged across the lawn, flung open the driver's door of the T-bird, then banged it shut. The lock clicked.

Sandra Deem stepped out in a bathrobe and hair curlers and stood for a moment on the low stoop. She pressed her fingers across her cheek several times. Then she turned and went inside, closing both doors behind her.

I walked on down the road.

A light burned in the Wilson living room, and I crept up to a window in the darkness. Wilson was seated in an easy chair, a row of Pabst empties lined up on the table beside him. His gaze was fixed on a noisy spot across the room. "And as we move into the top half of the eleventh, inning, it's still all tied up, Yankees six, Brewers six." I could see Kay's immense bare legs hanging over the end of the couch.

I backtracked onto Moon Road and walked the remaining fifty yards down to Central. The Saturday night revelers traffic was heavy, but in the car dealer's lot across the avenue I could make out two figures seated in the front of a blue Dodge. It was the only Chrysler product in three acres of Hondas. I shot them a two armed Nixonesque victory sign, then turned and walked back toward Dot's.

Just after one-thirty I chose my spot. I brought an old Army blanket from the back of my car and placed it under the curtaining arch of a group of forsythia bushes, the kind of cool, secret bushy cave where I'd hidden from the world when I was eight. I stuffed one end of the blanket up into the thicket of branches to form a lumpy, scratchy backrest. The mammoth clump of bushes grew atop a slight rise halfway between a rear corner of the barn and the pear orchard, and I had an unobstructed view of the house, the mailbox, and, off in the other direction to my right, the farm pond.

I settled back and listened to the peepers, and the muted roar of traffic back on Central and from the interstate beyond the woods on the other side of Dot's house. A couple of times I heard rustling in the bushes down at the other end of the barn, and once I watched four men in flak jackets emerge from the barn and stumble into the foliage across Moon Road.

I smeared myself with insect repellant, which had little effect, though my constant scratching and slapping at the gnats and mosquitoes kept me from dozing off. The air was as heavy and tepid as a night in Panama. The fields smelled sweet.