“There is no one better.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. What’re my options?”

Paul Lescroix leaned back in the old oak chair and glanced down at the arm, picking at a piece of varnish the shape of Illinois. “You ever pray?” his baritone voice asked in response.

The shackles rattled as Jerry Pilsett lifted his hands and flicked his earlobe. Lescroix had known the young man all of four hours and Pilsett must’ve tapped that right earlobe a dozen times. “Nup,” said the skinny young man with the crooked teeth. “Don’t pray.”

“Well, you ought to take it up. And thank the good Lord that I’ve any options, Jerry. You’re at the end of the road.”

“I have Mr. Goodwin...”

A twenty-nine-year-old public defender. Unwitting co-conspirator — with the local judges — in getting his clients sentenced to terms two or three times longer than they deserved. A rube among rubes.

“Keep Goodwin, you want.” Lescroix planted his chestnut-brown Milanese shoes on the concrete floor and scooted the chair back. “I could care.”

“Wait. Just that he’s been my lawyer since I was arrested.”

He added significantly, “Five months.”

“I’ve read the documents, Jerry,” Lescroix said drily. “I know how long you two’ve been in bed together.”

Pilsett blinked. When he couldn’t digest that expression he asked, “You’re saying you’re better’n him? That it?” He stopped looking shifty-eyed and took in Lescroix’s perfect silver hair, trim waist, and wise, jowly face.

“You really don’t know who I am, do you?” Lescroix, who would otherwise have been outraged by this lapse, could hardly be surprised. Here he was, after all, in Hamilton, a hick-filled county whose entire population was less than Lescroix’s home neighborhood, the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“All’s I know is Harry, he’s the head jailor today, comes in and tells me to shut off Regis ’n’ Kathie Lee an’ get the hell down to the conference rooms, there’s this lawyer wants to see me, and now here you are telling me you want to take my case and I’m supposed to fire Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Goodwin, who’s been decent to me all along.”

“Well, see, Jerry, from what I’ve heard, Goodwin’s decent to everybody. He’s decent to the judge, he’s decent to the prosecution, he’s decent to the prosecution witnesses. That’s why he’s one bad lawyer and why you’re in real deep trouble.”

Pilsett was feeling punched into a corner, which was what sitting with Lescroix for more than five minutes made you feel. So he decided to hit back. (Probably, Lescroix reflected, just what had happened on June third.) “Who ’xactly says you’re any good? Answer me that.”

Should I eviscerate him with my resume? Lescroix wondered. Rattle off my role in the Menendez brothers’ first trial? Last year’s acquittal of the Sacramento wife for the premeditated arson murder of her husband with a novel abuse defense (embarrassment in front of friends being abuse too)? The luscious not-guilty awarded to Fred Johnson, the petty thief from Cabrini-Green in Chicago who was brainwashed, yes brainwashed, ladies and gentlemen, into helping a militant cell, no not a gang, a revolutionary cell, murder three customers in a Southside check-cashing store. The infamous Time magazine profile? The Hard Copy piece?

But Lescroix merely repeated, “There is no one better than me, Jerry.” And let the sizzling lasers of his eyes seal the argument.

“The trial’s tomorrow. Whatta you know ’bout the case? Can we get it, you know, continued?” The three syllables sounded smooth in his mouth, too smooth; he’d taken a long time to learn what the word meant and how it was pronounced.

“Don’t need to. I’ve read the entire file. Spent the last three days on it.”

“Three days.” Another blink. An earlobe tweak. This was their first meeting; why would Lescroix have been reviewing the file for the past three days?

But Lescroix didn’t explain. He never explained anything to anyone unless he absolutely had to. Especially clients.

“But didn’t you say you was from New York or something? Can you just do a trial here?”

“Goodwin’ll let me ‘do’ the trial. No problem.”

Because he’s a decent fellow.

And a spineless wimp.

“But he don’t charge me nothing. You gonna handle the case for freer?”

He really doesn’t know anything about me. Amazing. “No, Jerry. I never work for free. People don’t respect you when you work for free.”

“Mr. Goodwin—”

“People don’t respect Goodwin.”

“I do.”

“Your respect doesn’t count, Jerry. Anyway, your uncle’s picking up the tab.”

“Uncle James?”

Lescroix nodded.

“He’s a good man. Hope he didn’t hock his farm.”

He’s not a good man, Jerry, Lescroix thought. He’s a fool. Because he thinks there’s still some hope for you. And I don’t give a rat’s ass whether he mortgaged the farm or not. “So, what do you say, Jerry?”

“Well, I guess. Only there’s something you have to know.” Scooting closer, shackles rattling. The young, stubbly face leaned forward and the thin lips leveraged into a lopsided smile.

But Lescroix held up an index finger that ended in a snappy, manicured nail. “Now, you’re going to tell me a big secret, right. That you didn’t kill Patricia Cabot. That you’re completely innocent. That you’ve been framed. That this’s all a terrible mistake. That you just happened to be at the crime scene.”

“I—”

“Well, Jerry, no, it’s not a mistake.”

Pilsett looked uneasily at Lescroix, which was just the way the lawyer loved to be looked at. He was a force, he was a phenomenon. No prosecutor ever beat him, no client ever upstaged him.

“Two months ago — on June second — you were hired by Charles Arnold Cabot to mow his lawn and cart off a stack of rotten firewood near his house in Bentana, the ritziest neighborhood in Hamilton. He’d hired you before a few times and you didn’t really like him — Cabot’s a country club sort of guy — but of course you did the work and you took the fifty dollars he agreed to pay you. He didn’t give you a tip. You got drunk that night and the more you drank, the madder you got ’cause you remembered that he never paid you enough — even though you never bargained with him and you kept coming back when he called you.

“The next day, when Cabot and his wife were gone, you were still drunk and still mad. You broke into the house and while you were cutting the wires that connected their two-thousand-dollar stereo receiver to the speakers, Patricia Cabot came back home unexpectedly. She scared the hell out of you and you hit her with the hammer you’d used to break open the door from the garage to the kitchen. You knocked her out. But didn’t kill her. You tied her up, thinking maybe you’d rape her later... Ah ah ah — let me finish. Thinking maybe you’d rape her later. Don’t gimme that look, Jerry. She was thirty-four, beautiful, and unconscious. And look at you. You even have a girlfriend? I don’t think so.

“Then you got spooked. The woman came to and started to scream. You finished things up with the hammer and started to run out the door. The husband saw you in the doorway with the bloody hammer and the stereo and their CD collection under your arm. He called the cops and they nailed you. A fair representation of events?”

“Wasn’t all their CDs. I didn’t take the Michael Bolton.”

“Don’t ever try to be funny with me.”

Pilsett flicked his earlobe again. “Was pretty much what happened.”

“All right, Jerry. Listen. This’s a small town and people here’re plenty stupid. I consider myself the best defense lawyer in the country but this case is open and shut. You did it, everyone knows you did it, and the evidence is completely against you. They don’t have the death penalty in this state but they’re damn generous when it comes to handing out life terms with no chance for parole. So. That’s the future you’re facing.”

“Yup. And know what it tells me? Tells me you’re the one can’t lose on this here situation.” Pilsett grinned.

Maybe they weren’t as dumb in Hamilton as he thought.

The young man continued, “You come all the way here from New York. You do the trial and you leave. If you get me off, you’re a celebrity and you get paid and on Geraldo or Oprah or some such for winning a hopeless case. And if you lose, you get paid and nobody gives a damn because I got put away like I oughta.”

Lescroix had to grin. “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. That’s one thing I just love about this line of work. No charades between us.”

“What’s charades?”

“Come on, you gonna hire me and boot that Goodwin back to the law library, where he belongs?”

He flicked his earlobe again. The chains clinked. “Guess I will.”

“Then let’s get to work.”

The Tate, like every other gallery I can think of, has considerably less wall space than it has works in its collection. These days, we do not like to cram our paintings together (though when well done, the effect can be breathtaking). One large canvas may have a whole wall to itself, and praise be that Bacon’s triptychs did not start a revolution, or there’d be precious little work on display in our galleries of modern art. For every display of gigantism, it is blessed relief, is it not, to turn to a miniaturist? Not that there are many miniatures in the Tate’s storerooms. I was there with an acquaintance of mine, the dealer Gregory Jance.

Jance worked out of Zurich for years, for no other reason, according to interviews, than that “they couldn’t touch me there.” There had always been rumours about Jance, rumours which started to make sense when you tried to balance his few premier-league sales (and therefore commissions) against his lavish lifestyle. These days, he had homes in Belgravia, Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and Moscow, as well as a sprawling compound on the outskirts of Zurich. The Moscow home seemed curious until one recalled stories of ikons smuggled out of the old Soviet Union and of art treasures taken from the Nazis, treasures which had ended up in the hands of Politburo chiefs desperate for such things as hard dollars and new passports.

Yes, if even half the tales were true, then Gregory Jance had sailed pretty close to the wind. I was counting on it.

“What a waste,” he said as I gave him a short tour of the storerooms. The place was cool and hushed, except for the occasional click of the machines which monitored air temperature, light, and humidity. On the walls of the Tate proper, paintings such as those we passed now would be pored over, passed by with reverence. Here, they were stacked one against the other, mostly shrouded in white sheeting like corpses or Hamlet’s ghost in some shoddy student production. Identifier tags hung from the sheets like so many items in a lost-property office.

“Such a waste,” Jance sighed, with just a touch of melodrama. His dress sense did not lack drama either: crumpled cream linen suit, white brogues, screaming red shirt, and white silk cravat. He shuffled along like an old man, running the rim of his panama hat through his fingers. It was a nice performance, but if I knew my man, then beneath it he was like bronze.

Our meeting — en principe — was to discuss his latest crop of “world-renowned artists.” Like most other gallery owners — those who act as agents for certain artists — Jance was keen to sell to the Tate, or to any other “national” gallery. He wanted the price hike that came with it, along with the kudos. But mostly the price hike.

He had Polaroids and slides with him. In my office, I placed the slides on a lightbox and took my magnifier to them. A pitiful array of semi-talent dulled my eyes and my senses. Huge graffiti-style whorls which had been “in” the previous summer in New York (mainly, in my view, because the practitioners tended to die young). Some neo-cubist stuff by a Swiss artist whose previous work was familiar to me. He had been growing in stature, but this present direction seemed to me an alley with a brick wall at the end, and I told Jance as much. At least he had a nice sense of colour and juxtaposition. But there was worse to come: combine paintings which Rauschenberg could have constructed in kindergarten; some not very clever geometric paintings, too clearly based on Stella’s “Protractor” series, and “found” sculptures that looked like Nam June Paik on a very bad day.

Throughout, Jance was giving me his pitch, though without much enthusiasm. Where did he collect these people? (The unkind said he sought out the least popular exhibits at art-school graduation shows.) More to the point, where did he sell them? I hadn’t heard of him making any impact at all as an agent. What money he made, he seemed to make by other means.

Finally, he lifted a handful of Polaroids from his pocket. “My latest find,” he confided. “Scottish. Great future.”

I looked through them. “How old?”

He shrugged. “Twenty-six, twenty-seven.”

I deducted five or six years and handed the photos back. “Gregory,” I said, “she’s still at college. These are derivative — evidence she’s learning from those who have gone before — and stylised, such as students often produce. She has talent, and I like the humour, even if that too is borrowed from other Scottish artists.”

He seemed to be looking in vain for the humour in the photos.

“Bruce McLean,” I said helpfully, “Paolozzi, John Bellany’s fish. Look closely and you’ll see.” I paused. “Bring her back in five or ten years, if she’s kept hard at it, if she’s matured, and if she has that nose for the difference between genius and sham....”

He pocketed the photos and gathered up his slides, his eyes glinting as though there might be some moisture there.

“You’re a hard man,” he told me.

“But a fair one, I hope. And to prove it, let me buy you a drink.”

I didn’t put my proposition to him quite then, of course, not over coffee and sticky cakes in the Tate cafeteria. We met a few weeks later — casually, as it were. We dined at a small place in a part of town neither of us frequented. I asked him about his young coterie of artists. They seemed, I said, quite skilled in impersonation.

“Impersonation?”

“They have studied the greats,” I explained, “and can reproduce them with a fair degree of skill.”

“Reproduce them,” he echoed quietly.

“Reproduce them,” I said. “I mean, the influences are there.” I paused. “I’m not saying they copy.”

“No, not that.” Jance looked up from his untouched food. “Are you coming to some point?”

I smiled. “A lot of paintings in the storerooms, Gregory. They so seldom see the light of day.”

“Yes, pity that. Such a waste.”

“When people could be savouring them.”

He nodded, poured some wine for both of us. “I think I begin to see,” he said. “I think I begin to see.”

That was the start of our little enterprise. You know what it was, of course. You have a keen mind. You are shrewd and discerning. Perhaps you pride yourself on these things, on always being one step ahead, on knowing things before those around you have perceived them. Perhaps you, too, think yourself capable of the perfect crime, a crime where there is no crime.

There was no crime, because nothing was missing from the quarterly inventory. First, I would photograph the work. Indeed, on a couple of occasions I even took one of Jance’s young artists down to the storerooms and showed her the painting she’d be copying. She’d been chosen because she had studied the minimalists, and this was to be a minimalist commission.

Minimalism, interestingly, proved the most difficult style to reproduce faithfully. In a busy picture, there’s so much to look at that one can miss a wrong shade or the fingers of a hand which have failed to curl to the right degree. But with a couple of black lines and some pink waves... well, fakes were easier to spot. So it was that Jance’s artist saw the work she was to replicate face-to-face. Then we did the measurements, took the Polaroids, and she drew some preliminary sketches. Jance was in charge of finding the right quality of canvas, the correct frame. My job was to remove the real canvas, smuggle it from the gallery, and replace it with the copy, reframing the finished work afterwards.

We were judicious, Jance and I. We chose our works with care. One or two a year — we never got greedy. The choice would depend on a combination of factors. We didn’t want artists who were too well known, but we wanted them dead if possible. (I had a fear of an artist coming to inspect his work at the Tate and finding a copy instead.) There had to be a buyer — a private collector — who would keep the work private. We couldn’t have a painting being loaned to some collection or exhibition when it was supposed to be safely tucked away in the vaults of the Tate. Thankfully, as I’d expected, Jance seemed to know his market. We never had any problems on that score. But there was another factor. Every now and then there would be requests from exhibitions for the loan of a painting — one we’d copied. But as the curator, I would find reasons why the work in question had to remain at the Tate, and might offer, by way of consolation, some other work instead.

Then there was the matter of rotation. Now and again — as had to be the case, or suspicion might grow — one of the copies would have to grace the walls of the gallery proper. Those were worrying times, and I was careful to position the works in the least flattering, most shadowy locations, usually with a much more interesting picture nearby, to lure the spectator away. I would watch the browsers. Once or twice, an art student would come along and sketch the copied work. No one ever showed a moment’s doubt, and my confidence grew.

But then... then...

We had loaned works out before, of course — I’d told the dinner party as much. This or that cabinet minister might want something for the office, something to impress visitors. There would be discussions about a suitable work. It was the same with particular benefactors. They could be loaned a painting for weeks or even months. But I was always careful to steer prospective borrowers away from the twenty or so copies. It wasn’t as though there was any lack of choice! For each copy, there were fifty other paintings they could have. The odds, as Jance had assured me more than once, were distinctly in our favour.

Until the day the prime minister came to call.

This is a man who knows as much about art as I do home brewing. There is almost a glee about his studious ignorance — and not merely of art. But he was walking around the Tate, for all the world like a dowager around a department store, and not seeing what he wanted.

“Voore,” he said at last. I thought I’d misheard him. “Ronny Voore. I thought you had a couple.”

My eyes took in his entourage, not one of whom would know a Ronny Voore if it blackballed them at the Garrick. But my superior was there, nodding slightly, so I nodded with him.

“They’re not out at the moment,” I told the PM.

“You mean they’re in?” He smiled, provoking a few fawning laughs.

“In storage,” I explained, trying out my own smile.

“I’d like one for Number Ten.”

I tried to form some argument — they were being cleaned, restored, loaned to Philadelphia — but my superior was nodding again. And after all, what did the PM know about art? Besides, only one of our Voores was a fake.

“Certainly, Prime Minister. I’ll arrange for it to be sent over.”

“Which one?”

I licked my lips. “Did you have one in mind?”

He considered, lips puckered. “Maybe I should just have a little look...”

Normally, there were no visitors to the storerooms. But that morning, there were a dozen of us posed in front of the two Ronny Voores, Shrew Reclining and Herbert in Motion. Voore was very good with titles. I’ll swear, if you look at them long enough, you really can see — beyond the gobbets of oil, the pasted-on photographs and cinema stubs, the splash of emulsion and explosion of colour — the figures of a large murine creature and a man running.

The prime minister gazed at them in something short of thrall. “Is it ‘shrew’ as in Shakespeare?”

“No, sir, I think it’s the rodent.”

He thought about this. “Vibrant colours,” he decided.

“Extraordinary,” my superior agreed.

“One can’t help feeling the influence of pop art,” one of the minions drawled. I managed not to choke; it was like saying one could see in Beryl Cook the influence of Picasso.

The PM turned to the senior minion. “I don’t know, Charles. What do you think?”

“The shrew, I think.”

My heart leapt. The prime minister nodded, then pointed to Herbert in Motion. “That one, I think.”

Charles looked put out, while those around him tried to hide smiles. It was a calculated put-down, a piece of politics on the PM’s part. Politics had decided: A fake Ronny Voore would grace the walls of Number 10 Downing Street.

I supervised the packing and transportation. It was a busy week for me: I was negotiating the loan of several Rothkos for an exhibition of early works. Faxes and insurance appraisals were flying. American institutions were very touchy about lending stuff. I’d had to promise a Braque to one museum — and for three months at that — in exchange for one of Rothko’s less inspired creations. Anyway, despite headaches, when the Voore went to its new home, I went with it.

I’d discussed the loan with Jance. He’d told me to switch the copy for some other painting, insisting that “no one would know.”

“He’ll know,” I’d said. “He wanted a Voore. He knew what he wanted.”

“But why?”

Good question, and I’d yet to find the answer. I’d hoped for a first-floor landing, or some nook or cranny out of the general view, but the staff seemed to know exactly where the painting was to hang — something else had been removed so that it could take pride of place in the dining room. (Or one of the dining rooms; I couldn’t be sure how many there were. I’d thought I’d be entering a house, but Number 10 was a warren, a veritable Tardis, with more passageways and offices than I could count.)

I was asked if I wanted a tour of the premises, so as to view the other works of art, but by that time my head really did ache, and I decided to walk back to the Tate, making it as far as Millbank before I had to rest beside the river, staring down at its sludgy flow. The question had yet to be answered: Why did the PM want a Ronny Voore? Who in their right mind wanted a Voore these days?

The answer, of course, came with the telephone call.

Joe Hefferwhite was an important man. He had been a senator at one time. He was now regarded as a “senior statesman,” and the American president sent him on the occasional high-profile, high-publicity spot of troubleshooting and conscience-salving. At one point in his life, he’d been mooted for president himself, but of course his personal history had counted against him. In younger days, Hefferwhite had been a bohemian. He’d spent time in Paris, trying to be a poet. He’d walked a railway line with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Then he’d come into enough money to buy his way into politics and had prospered there.

I knew a bit about him from some background reading I’d done in the recent past. Not that I’d been interested in Joseph Hefferwhite... but I’d been very interested in Ronny Voore.

The two men had met at Stanford initially, then later on met again in Paris. They’d kept in touch thereafter, drifting apart only after “Heff” had decided on a political career. There had been arguments about the hippie culture, dropping out, Vietnam, radical chic — the usual ’60s U.S. issues. Then in 1974 Ronny Voore had lain down on a fresh white canvas, stuck a gun in his mouth, and gifted the world his final work. His reputation, which had vacillated in life, was given a boost by the manner of his suicide. I wondered if I could make the same dramatic exit. But no, I was not the dramatic type. I foresaw sleeping pills and a bottle of decent brandy.

After the party.

I was wearing my green Armani, hoping it would disguise the condemned look in my eyes. Joe Hefferwhite had known Voore, had seen his style and working practice at first hand. That was why the PM had wanted a Voore: to impress the American. Or perhaps to honour his presence in some way. A political move, as far from aesthetics as one could wander. The situation was not without irony: A man with no artistic sensibility, a man who couldn’t tell his Warhol from his Whistler... this man was to be my downfall.

I hadn’t dared tell Jance. Let him find out for himself afterwards, once I’d made my exit. I’d left a letter on my desk. It was sealed, marked Personal, and addressed to my superior. I didn’t owe Gregory Jance anything, but hadn’t mentioned him in the letter. I hadn’t even listed the copied works — let them set other experts on them. It would be interesting to see if any other fakes had found their way into the permanent collection.

Only of course I wouldn’t be around for that.

Number 10 sparkled. Every surface was gleaming, and the place seemed nicely undersized for the scale of the event. The PM moved amongst his guests, dispensing a word here and there, guided by the man he’d called Charles. Charles would whisper a brief to the PM as they approached a group, so the PM would know who was who and how to treat them. I was way down the list apparently, standing on my own (though a minion had attempted to engage me in conversation: It seemed a rule that no guest was to be allowed solitude) pretending to examine a work by someone eighteenth century and Flemish — not my sort of thing at all.

The PM shook my hand. “I’ve someone I’d like you to meet,” he said, looking back over his shoulder to where Joe Hefferwhite was standing, rocking back on his heels as he told some apparently hilarious story to two grinning civil servants who had doubtless been given their doting orders.

“Joseph Hefferwhite,” the PM said.

As if I didn’t know; as if I hadn’t been avoiding the man for the past twenty-eight minutes. I knew I couldn’t leave — would be reminded of that should I try — until the PM had said hello. This was all that had kept me from leaving. But now I was determined to escape. The PM, however, had other plans. He waved to Joe Hefferwhite like they were old friends, and Hefferwhite broke short his story — not noticing the relief on his listeners’ faces — and swaggered towards us. The PM was leading me by the shoulder — gently, though it seemed to me that his grip burned — over towards where the Voore hung. A table separated us from it, but it was an occasional table, and we weren’t too far from the canvas. Serving staff moved around with salvers of canapés and bottles of fizz, and I took a refill as Hefferwhite approached.

“Joe, this is our man from the Tate.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Hefferwhite said, pumping my free hand. He winked at the PM. “Don’t think I hadn’t noticed the painting. It’s a nice touch.”

“We have to make our guests feel welcome. The Tate has another Voore, you know.”

“Is that so?”

Charles was whispering in the PM’s ear. “Sorry, have to go,” the PM said. “I’ll leave you two to it then.” And with a smile he was gone, drifting towards his next encounter.

Joe Hefferwhite smiled at me. He was in his seventies, but extraordinarily well preserved, with thick dark hair that could have been a weave or a transplant. I wondered if anyone had ever mentioned to him his resemblance to Blake Carrington...

He leaned towards me. “This place bugged?”

I blinked, decided I’d heard him correctly, and said I wouldn’t know.

“Well, hell, doesn’t matter to me if it is. Listen,” he nodded towards the painting, “that is some kind of sick joke, don’t you think?”

I swallowed. “I’m not sure I follow.”

Hefferwhite took my arm and led me around the table, so we were directly in front of the painting. “Ronny was my friend. He blew his brains out. Your prime minister thinks I want to be reminded of that? I think this is supposed to tell me something.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure. It’ll take some thinking. You British are devious bastards.”

“I feel I should object to that.”

Hefferwhite ignored me. “Ronny painted the first version of Herbert in Paris in forty-nine or fifty.” He frowned. “Must’ve been fifty. Know who Herbert was?” He was studying the painting now. At first, his eyes flicked over it. Then he stared a little harder, picking out that section and this, concentrating.

“Who?” The champagne flute shook in my hand. Death, I thought, would come as some relief. And not a moment too soon.

“Some guy we shared rooms with, never knew his second name. He said second names were shackles. Not like Malcolm X and all that; Herbert was white, nicely brought up. Wanted to study Sartre, wanted to write plays and films and I don’t know what. Jesus, I’ve often wondered what happened to him. I know Ronny did, too.” He sniffed, lifted a canapé from a passing tray, and shoved it into his mouth. “Anyway,” he said through the crumbs, “Herbert — he didn’t like us calling him Herb — he used to go out running. Healthy body, healthy mind, that was his creed. He’d go out before dawn, usually just as we were going to bed. Always wanted us to go with him, said we’d see the world differently after a run.” He smiled at the memory, looked at the painting again. “That’s him running along the Seine, only the river’s filled with philosophers and their books, all drowning.”

He kept looking at the painting, and I could feel the memories welling in him. I let him look. I wanted him to look. It was more his painting than anyone’s. I could see that now. I knew I should say something... like “that’s very interesting,” or “that explains so much.” But I didn’t. I stared at the painting, too, and it was as though we were alone in that crowded, noisy room. We might have been on a desert island, or in a time machine. I saw Herbert running, saw his hunger. I saw his passion for questions and the seeking out of answers. I saw why philosophers always failed, and why they went on trying despite the fact. I saw the whole bloody story. And the colours: They were elemental, but they were of the city, too. They were Paris, not long after the war, the recuperating city. Blood and sweat and the simple feral need to go on living.

To go on living.

My eyes were filling with water. I was about to say something crass, something like “thank you,” but Hefferwhite beat me to it, leaned towards me so his voice could drop to a whisper.

“It’s a hell of a fake.”

And with that, and a pat on my shoulder, he drifted back into the party.

“I could have died,” I told Jance. It was straight afterwards. I was still wearing the Armani, pacing the floor of my flat. It’s not much — third floor, two bedrooms, Maida Vale — but I was happy to see it. I could hardly get the tears out of my eyes. The telephone was in my hand... I just had to tell somebody, and who could I tell but Jance?

“Well,” he said, “you’ve never asked about the clients.”

“I didn’t want to know.”

“Maybe I should have told you anyway. It would save this happening again.”

“Jance, I swear to God, I nearly died.”

Jance chuckled, not really understanding. He was in Zurich, sounded further away still. “I knew Joe already had a couple of Voores,” he said. “He’s got some other stuff too — but he doesn’t broadcast the fact. That’s why he was perfect for Herbert in Motion.”

“But he was talking about not wanting to be reminded of the suicide.”

“He was talking about why the painting was there.”

“He thought it must be a message.”

Jance sighed. “Politics. Who understands politics?”

I sighed. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Don’t blame you. I never understood why you started in the first place.”

“Let’s say I lost faith.”

“Me, I never had much to start with. Listen, you haven’t told anyone else?”

“Who would I tell?” My mouth dropped open. “But I left a note.”

“A note?”

“In my office.”

“Might I suggest you go retrieve it?”

Beginning to tremble all over again, I went out in search of a taxi.

The night security people knew who I was, and let me into the building. I’d worked there before at night — it was the only time I could strip and replace the canvases.

“Busy tonight, eh?” the guard said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Busy tonight,” he repeated. “Your boss is already in.”

“When did he arrive?”

“Not five minutes ago. He was running.”

“Running?”

“Said he needed a pee.”

I ran too, ran as fast as I could through the galleries and towards the offices, the paintings a blur either side of me. There was a light in my superior’s office, and the door was ajar. But the room itself was empty. I walked to the desk and saw my note there. It was still in its sealed envelope. I picked it up and stuffed it into my jacket, just as my superior came into the room.

“Oh, good man,” he said, rubbing his hands to dry them. “You got the message.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to still my breathing. Message: I hadn’t checked my machine.

“Thought if we did a couple of evenings it would sort out the Rothko.”

“Absolutely.”

“No need to be so formal, though.”

I stared at him.

“The suit,” he said.

“Drinks at Number Ten,” I explained.

“How did it go?”

“Fine.”

“PM happy with his Voore?”

“Oh yes.”

“You know he only wanted it to impress some American? One of his aides told me.”

“Joseph Hefferwhite,” I said.

“And was he impressed?”

“I think so.”

“Well, it keeps us sweet with the PM, and we all know who holds the purse strings.” My superior made himself comfortable in his chair and looked at his desk. “Where’s that envelope?”

“What?”

“There was an envelope here.” He looked down at the floor.

I swallowed, dry-mouthed. “I’ve got it,” I said. He looked startled, but I managed a smile. “It was from me, proposing we spend an evening or two on Rothko.”

My superior beamed. “Great minds, eh?”

“Absolutely.”

“Sit down then, let’s get started.” I pulled over a chair. “Can I let you into a secret? I detest Rothko.”

I smiled again. “I’m not too keen myself.”

“Sometimes I think a student could do his stuff just as well, maybe even better.”

“But then it wouldn’t be his, would it?”

“Ah, there’s the rub.”

But I thought of the Voore fake, and Joe Hefferwhite’s story, and my own reactions to the painting — to what was, when all’s said and done, a copy — and I began to wonder...

As the A train pulled into the West Fourth Street station, Veil Kendry heard the wail of a human over the scream of machinery, and he turned to his left to see a knot of people gathering around someone lying in their midst on the subway platform. He pushed through a wall of startled and curious commuters and came upon a frail young Chinese woman giving birth.

“Get back and give her room to breathe!” he said sharply, raising and loosening her dress as he knelt beside her in a pool of her burst water. It turned out to be a needless request, for the harried New Yorkers were already surging around them in a rush to get on the train. He shouted to no one in particular, “Tell the motor-man to call the paramedics!”

The train pulled out of the station, and the few people who had gotten off glanced nervously at the tableau of a man and woman, blood and water on the concrete, and walked quickly away. In a few moments they were alone on the platform. Veil positioned himself between the woman’s legs and gently cradled the tiny, bloody head that was emerging from the birth canal. Between gasps and cries the woman spoke to him rapidly in what Veil recognized as Chinese. He spoke, or at least understood, a number of Asian languages, but not Chinese, and so he spoke to her softly and soothingly in English. When the baby emerged Veil wiped away the placenta, bit through the umbilical cord and knotted it, then gently laid the newborn infant on the mother’s heaving chest. “Here you are, Mama,” he said quietly, caressing her cheek. “Calm down, now. It’s all right. People will be here soon to take care of you.”

The woman’s reaction startled him. Still speaking rapidly and obviously distressed, she picked up her baby and held it out to him, urgently and repeatedly gesturing for him to take it. “I don’t want your baby, Mama,” he said, shaking his head as he pressed the infant back down on her chest, noticing as he did so the rope burns on her wrists. “She’s yours. Take it easy. Everything’s going to be fine.”

There was a clattering sound behind him, and Veil looked over his shoulder as two paramedics who had just come down the stairway, a Sikh and a Hispanic, unfolded the collapsible stretcher they carried and hurried up the platform, followed close behind by a black patrolman who was speaking into a crackling walkie-talkie.

“Not too trashy, pal,” the Sikh said, nodding his approval as he gazed down at the woman and her baby. “You a doctor?”

Veil started to rise, but the woman would not release her tight grip on his wrist, and so he eased himself back down beside her. “An observer,” he replied. “I’ve seen a few babies delivered.”

“You work in a hospital?”

“I used to work in a jungle.”

The Hispanic grunted as he handed Veil a towel to wipe the blood from his hands. “This is the seventy-fifth subway delivery this year. That puts us a little bit ahead of schedule. The birth rate down here is nice and steady. We’ll take care of her now.”

The woman looked around, gasped, then renewed her urgent efforts to hand Veil her baby. Veil turned in the direction the woman had looked and saw that three scowling Chinese youths, one an albino, had suddenly appeared on the platform and were standing just behind the paramedics. They were identically dressed in jeans, black sneakers, and black satin jackets embroidered with red dragons. The policeman cursed under his breath.

“She is our sister,” the Chinese in the middle, a husky youth with a tiny spider tattooed on his forehead, said in unaccented English, his tone low and menacing as he glanced in turn at the paramedics, the policeman, and Veil. “We became separated. We will take her now.”

The Hispanic said hesitantly, “Your sister’s just had a baby here on the platform, mister. It’s October, and it’s cold. They both need to be taken to a hospital, cleaned up, and looked after.”

“She doesn’t need a hospital,” the albino said, stepping around the gurney and reaching down to take the trembling woman’s baby. “We’ll take care of her.”

“I think not,” Veil said in a flat tone, blocking the youth’s movement by reaching out and planting his left palm firmly on the husky man’s chest. He gently but firmly twisted his right wrist free of the woman’s grip, then straightened up, keeping his left palm on the Chinese youth’s chest. The Chinese was pressing forward with all his weight as he glared at Veil, baring his clenched teeth and making low, guttural sounds in his throat. The albino and the third youth, a man in his late teens or early twenties with a pockmarked face, were moving to flank and press him toward the edge of the subway platform.

The policeman moved closer to Veil, said quietly, “These guys are Shadow Dragons, buddy, and we’re right on the border of their turf. As a rule of thumb it generally works out best for everybody if the Chinese are left to take care of their own affairs. They say this woman is their sister, maybe we should let them take her and the baby.”

“I think not,” Veil repeated in the same even tone, meeting the hate-filled gaze of the Chinese pressing against his hand at the same time as he tracked the movements of the other two with his peripheral vision. “They’re not her brothers. Look at her; she’s terrified. We’ll get her and her baby to a hospital, then find an interpreter to tell us what she wants.”

Suddenly the youth in front of Veil reached into the right pocket of his satin jacket and withdrew a box cutter, which he used to slash at Veil’s exposed wrist. But Veil’s left arm was no longer in the space between them, and the razor sliced nothing but air. The sudden and violent movement caused the youth to lose his balance and lurch sideways. Veil stepped behind him, grabbed the back of the youth’s jacket and his belt, whirled him around once, and then released his grip, sending the Chinese hurtling through the air like some unwieldy human discus. The youth landed on his face and chest, skidded a few feet, then lay still.

The policeman reached for his gun as nunchaku sticks and a knife suddenly appeared in the hands of the other two youths.

“You won’t need that,” Veil said to the policeman as he quickly stepped away from the woman and out into the center of the platform to give himself more room. “This is just a friendly discussion about proper health care.”

The youth with the nunchaku attacked first, the two hardwood sticks connected by a chain a blur as he whirled them in intricate patterns in front of his body and over his shoulders. Veil spun away from the first strike, at the same time slipping out of his leather jacket, shifting his weight, and delivering a side kick to the solar plexus of the knife-wielding albino, who had rushed in on his left flank. The breath came out of the albino in a great whoosh before he doubled over, grabbed at his stomach, sank to his knees, and began to retch.

Obviously startled by Veil’s quickness and skill, the pockmark-faced youth hesitated just long enough to lose his rhythm. Veil darted forward, swinging his leather jacket over his head and snagging the connecting chain between the nunchaku sticks. He yanked, pulling the sticks from the youth’s hands and catching them in the air. He tossed aside his jacket, then began to twirl the sticks as he slowly advanced on the Chinese, whose face had gone ashen. Veil stopped next to a support pillar, beat out an intricate tattoo on the steel, then casually tossed the sticks to the Chinese, who made no move to catch them. The deadly weapon fell at the youth’s feet, then clattered away on the concrete. Then the youth bolted, darting in a wide circle around Veil and going to the albino, who was still on his knees and clutching at his stomach. The pockmark-faced youth pulled the albino to his feet, and together they went up the platform to help the Chinese with the spider tattoo, who was just regaining consciousness. The three of them disappeared up a stairway at the opposite end of the platform.

“It looks like we’ll be using my health plan,” Veil said as he walked casually back to where the policeman, paramedics, and woman were all staring at him, wide-eyed.

“The Shadow Dragons are a particularly nasty gang,” the policeman said to Veil. “They’re likely to come looking for you.” Veil shrugged as he helped the paramedics lift the woman and her newborn baby onto the gurney. “I’m easy enough to find.”

The policeman narrowed his eyes as he studied the rangy but solidly built man with the glacial blue eyes and shoulder-length, gray-streaked yellow hair. “Your name Veil Kendry?”

Veil glanced at the man, replied evenly, “That’s right.”

“I’ve heard of you.”

“I hope it was good.”

“It depends on who you talk to. You’re a friend of the crazy dwarf, aren’t you?”

Veil laughed, but abruptly reached out and grabbed the end of the gurney when the paramedics started to wheel it away. The woman was still staring at him, a naked plea for help in her limpid almond eyes. “Where are you taking her?”

The two men glanced at each other, and the Sikh answered, “You may have a health plan, mister, but it doesn’t look like she does. She doesn’t even have a purse. We’ll take her to the clinic at Bellevue.”

“Take her to St. Vincent’s. It’s closer.”

“We don’t have a contract with St. Vincent’s. They won’t—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll pay.”

The paramedics looked at the policeman, who nodded. “He’s a hotshot artist with big bucks. He’s good for it.”

The Hispanic asked, “How are you going to pay, mister?”

“Plastic. What else?”

“What are we supposed to tell them when—?”

“I’ll tell them myself. I’m coming with you.”

The Hispanic nervously cleared his throat, said, “We’re not running a taxi service, mister. It’s against company policy to transport civilians who aren’t relatives of a patient.”

Veil took his wallet from his pocket, removed the money from it. “I’ve got eight dollars and change. I’ll get you more if you stop at an ATM machine.”

“Big bucks, huh?” the Hispanic said wryly, glancing at his partner, then down at the woman, who continued to gaze imploringly at Veil. Finally the man shrugged. “Come on, buddy. Keep your money. Mama here obviously wants your company, and I guess you’ve earned the right.”

Throughout the short ride to the hospital the woman gripped Veil’s wrist with her free hand while Veil spoke to her soothingly in English. At the hospital, where he was known, he arranged to have the woman and her child admitted for postnatal care and observation. He left a credit card at the desk, walked to another part of the building, then used an electronically coded key card to gain entrance to a private elevator that took him to the top floor. He exited, walked to his right and through a swinging door marked Sleep Research Laboratories. In a small, dimly lighted office on the right a woman with long blond hair and dressed in a white lab coat sat with her back to him as she monitored an array of instruments on a console before her and made notes on a yellow legal pad. Beyond her, behind a glass panel, three men and a woman lay sleeping on cots, wire leads running from their heads, arms, and chests.

“Good day, Dr. Solow,” Veil said quietly, moving up behind the woman and placing his hands gently on her shoulders.

“Veil!” Sharon Solow said without looking around. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the Whitney to supervise the hanging of your show.”

“Something came up — or out, actually — and I had to take a detour. Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d drop in and say hello.”

“I’m glad. I’ll be right with you. I want to notate this data while it’s fresh. I think I may have resonance here; all four subjects went into REM at virtually the same time.”

“How’s the kid with the night terrors doing?”

“Much better, thanks to you. He’s using the techniques you taught him to simply roll away from the dream and go back to Stage Two sleep, or dream himself someplace else. Most of the time he goes someplace else, because he knows you do that. He idolizes you.”

“Where does he go?”

“Disneyland, mostly.”

“Sounds like a good choice to me. Free admission, and he doesn’t have to wait in line for the rides.”

“Veil, what’s that smell?”

“Probably blood and placenta.”

Now Sharon Solow spun around in her chair, and her mouth dropped open when she saw the stains on his shirt front and jeans. “Veil, what happened?!”

He grinned. “I delivered a baby on the subway platform a little while ago. Mother and baby doing very well downstairs, thank you. But I need to get cleaned up before I go to the museum. I could have gone home, but I seemed to remember I have a change of clothes here.”

“You always have a change of clothes here, love,” Sharon said, squeezing his hand. “You go wash, and I’ll join you when I finish here.”

Veil showered in the locker room reserved for the laboratory’s test subjects, then toweled off and started to dress in clean clothes. Sharon appeared in the doorway as he was slipping on a denim shirt. She came over and helped him button it, then kissed him. “Thank you, love,” she said softly.

“For what?”

“Just for being you. For being our baseline research subject and authority on vivid dreaming, and for helping all the other vivid dreamers who come here looking for help because they can’t handle it like you do. And, of course, for coming through the Lazarus Gate to save my life.”

Veil smiled thinly. “It took me a long time to find a way to bring you back; you were in a coma for almost three years. To my knowledge, you and I are the only two people who have actually gone through it and come back. And you can never do it again. I couldn’t help you. You’d stay dead.”

Sharon whispered, “I’m aware of that, Veil. No more machines and drugs. Ever.”

“You miss the CIA funding?”

“Do roosters crow in the morning? Of course I miss the CIA funding. But I don’t miss the CIA. We make do.”

“And they still don’t know what happened?”

“Not a clue. And they’ll never know — unless either you or I tell somebody, and I’m no more likely to do that than you are.”

“Good.”

“There,” Sharon said, helping Veil put on his sports jacket and plucking off an imaginary piece of lint. “That’s a great artist’s costume. Are we still on for dinner?”

“For sure.”

“See you later, love.”

Owen went out to the rock as soon as he had word Magda was back. She sat on the bench beneath the serpent, mending a shoe. Without looking up, she said, “Magda knows the worst.”

He sank down beside her. “I failed you. I’ll make no excuses.”

“Thou wert there to protect the innocent fool, Bird-eye.”

“But the bones are gone. Sold by now, no doubt.”

Magda chuckled. “If only Magda might have seen the thief s face at dawn, when he took out the bones and saw his treasure. Or woke to its smell.” She was overtaken by a bout of mirth.

Owen had a sinking feeling. How many people had fooled him? “What were they?”

“The bones of an old goat that strayed onto the mud flats and died.”

“And the bones for the bone man?”

“He came before Magda left.” She patted Owen’s knee. “Magda is not disappointed in thee. Thou hast done as Magda had hoped. John will heal, and he has seen the folly of his search for a miracle. The thief is gone, no more spying on Magda.”

“No doubt I’ve learned something, too, though I cannot see it. Why did you have me here?”

“If he had felt no danger, the thief would have examined the bones, Bird-eye, and spoiled Magda’s fun.”

“But what of poor John?”

“Fortescue respects thee. He will not wish to appear a fool to thee again, so he will behave now. So.” She snipped the thread, squinted up at Owen. “How dost thou like working for Magda? A nice change from politics?”

Owen rubbed his scar. “In truth, I’d rather a month on the road for the archbishop than another night in your hut.”

Magda turned the mended shoe inside out, tugged it on, stood up, hopped, nodded. “Suit thyself, Bird-eye,” she said with a shrug and went inside.

Owen did not leave at once, but sat there, staring down at the rising tide, trying to remember what it had been like to be able to see upstream as well as down. At last he gave up. A useless exercise. That had been another life. He headed for home.

The beat was steady and low-pitched. Mr. Chance suspected that he must have heard it long before he became consciously aware of it. How long before — days or even weeks — he had no idea. Nor could he be sure where it came from. It seemed sometimes to rise out of the marshes, sometimes from the scrub woods beyond the old sawmill; at other times it seemed to float down from Great Hill, a rise of land that overlooked the country club.

Mr. Chance had thought at first that it came from a construction job, but he realized it didn’t have any of the whine or stutter or boom of cutting or digging equipment, and it kept on going, day in and day out. He even heard it at night. It didn’t annoy him; actually, he found its regularity somewhat soothing.

He mentioned it to his friends around town, but no one else seemed to be aware of it, except for Jake Stolles, the druggist, who said he thought he heard it now and then. L. B. Knowles, the police chief, who was deaf in one ear, said he hadn’t noticed it, but from Mr. Chance’s description he said it might be drumming.

“Could be a couple of Indian boys out there,” he said. “Got their drum going. You know — practicing. I haven’t heard that in years, though.”

Mr. Stolles said he doubted it was drumming because there were hardly any Indians left in town, and most of them were old-timers. Besides, he said, there wasn’t any singing, and didn’t Indians drum and sing at the same time?

The only Indian John Chance knew personally was Charley Bartlett, who worked part-time at the post office and had been chief some years ago when the tribe had lost its land suit against the town. One day Mr. Chance asked him about the drumming.

“What drumming?” Mr. Bartlett said.

Mr. Chance got him to come out from behind the counter and through the little lobby to the walkway outside. “Now you can hear it,” he said. “That sound out there. That’s a beat like a drumbeat.”

“I don’t hear it,” Mr. Bartlett said.

“Well, it’s not very loud,” Mr. Chance said, thinking that the old man was probably hard of hearing, “but who’s out there drumming? You know who’d be doing that?”

Mr. Bartlett shook his head. “Not us,” he said. He was a big man with a heavy, solemn face, deeply wrinkled. “We don’t drum anymore,” he said, and he went back in the post office.

Mr. Chance, who was the town’s leading realtor, had plenty of things to think about besides the drumming (if that’s what it was). Business had been slumping for months.

More people were moving out of town than were coming in, which meant residential prices were falling, and many properties were sitting around unsold. Mr. Chance had made a small fortune in the town in the past fifteen years, but he was holding too much property himself right now, principally the Great Hill development, and he was starting to worry.

He drove up Great Hill later in the afternoon. The autumn sun was hot there. He left his jacket in the car and walked around the place in his shirtsleeves, glancing at the unsold houses on empty streets where weeds crowded the edges of the asphalt. The view was fine — the country club with its golf greens and fairways down below, and the creek that meandered toward the town beyond, with the Beetleback range of hills in the distance. The view, yes, but water and sewage problems had jacked up costs — and now the only three buyers were moving out, anxious to sell at almost any price.

Mr. Chance was a thick man, with a bulldog face and meaty hands that by habit he clenched and opened as he walked around, wondering what to do. Cut prices some more? Wait for an upturn in land value?

It was quiet up there. Not a sound — except the drumming. A soft, steady beat, like wings on air, like waves against the shore.

Nothing moved. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not even a bird. Just these hollow houses, empty streets. Turning, Mr. Chance saw someone at the edge of a thicket of pine trees that sat on the crown of the hill. A man was standing there. Mr. Chance thought of calling out something — a greeting, an inquiry — but did not. He paused to draw his sleeve across his face to wipe the sweat away. When he looked again, the figure was nowhere to be seen.

“He was a tall fellow,” Mr. Chance told his wife at supper that evening, “and his hair was kind of long. Dark hair, pulled back and tied behind his neck. Like an Indian, come to think of it.”

“They used to live up there. That’s what Mrs. Worthy told me.”

“I don’t think they lived there. They hunted up there or used it for their ceremonies, but Lord, that’s twenty years ago or more, when this town was just a wide spot in the road.”

“This must have been a pretty place,” said Mrs. Chance, “before the trees were cut down.”

“We didn’t cut all the trees, Shirley. There are some left. Anyway, you’ve got to utilize your resources.”

Mrs. Chance, having heard her husband’s views many times, listened with a patient smile.

“Why, when this was a mostly Indian town,” Mr. Chance went on, “they had a one-room schoolhouse and one paved road and a tumbledown general store, and the whole shebang wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. But we’ve got a solid tax base now. We’ve got value and we’ve got conveniences. You can’t live without conveniences.”

“They did.”

“Ha,” said Mr. Chance. “You think they were better off? Why, they were selling beaded stuff to the tourists then. That’s all they had for income. And we brought in service industries and the sawmill and the textile mill—”

“That didn’t last long.”

“All right, we lost the textile mill, but you can’t win ’em all.”

“The Dixons are going to Cleveland,” said Mrs. Chance. “Naomi told me today.”

“Moving away? They’re leaving?”

“And Estelle Faber. She said she and George have about decided to go to Florida.”

“That can’t be,” said Mr. Chance. “George would never leave.”

“Estelle said he says the fishing’s about gone, and that’s what he cares about. He says it’s all the runoff from the lawns and golf greens, it’s poisoned the marsh and got the bay shore choked with weeds and done something to the bottom so the fish can’t feed.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Chance. “There are plenty of fish.” Then he cocked his head. “Hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That drumming. Hear it?”

“I don’t hear anything,” said Mrs. Chance.

She was easy to find. At one o’clock on the following afternoon, Millman walked down Spaulding to the corner of Santa Monica. Compared to his tree-lined neighborhood, this was another world. The retired schoolteacher found it stimulating. They were showing Bimbo Bowlers at the Pussycat Theater. Cars raced past pedestrians frozen between painted lines at a crosswalk. The kid who sold drugs slouched in baggy clothes against the stucco wall of the liquor store.

Holly came out of Beano’s Coffee Shop carrying a plastic cup. She hunkered down with her back against the wall. Millman came over to her and said, “I’m sorry about Mickey.”

“Who are you?”

He had encountered suspicion like this when he taught school. “My name is Millman.”

She squinted up at him. “I saw you on the news.”

“That guy stopping and killing your friend — it wasn’t right.”

“Can you lend me five dollars? I didn’t eat yet today.”

Millman led her into the coffee shop where she ordered the turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and a rounded scoop of stuffing. He drank coffee while the girl did most of the talking.

“Mickey came from a place outside Reno. His mother took off when he was four. His father couldn’t cope. He’d knock the kid around when he was drunk. Then he’d sober up and cry all over him. When Mickey was six, the old man killed himself. After that, Mickey went to live with his grandmother. He made trouble at school. Dropped out. Drugs and alcohol. He came to L.A. a couple of years ago, when he was twenty-one.”

“I taught school,” Millman said. “I saw a lot of troubled kids.”

Holly was slowing down, the plate nearly empty. “I haven’t said I’m sorry.” She looked at him, seeing him clearly for the first time. “You didn’t do anything except get jumped on. You know something, Mr...?”

“Call me Zeke.”

“Zeke, wow! If Mickey was alive, you know what he’d say? He’d say if he’d known what a decent person you are, he would never have tried to rob you.”

Millman went along with his companion on the cherry pie with ice cream. Memory can kick in at times and take your breath away. For a fleeting moment, he was dating in his teens, settled in at a diner in Balboa Beach. It was late at night after the concert, and they were intoxicated by the music of a young band led by somebody named Stan Kenton.

“Are you married, Zeke?”

“To a good woman named Yolande.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Feel safer?”

She looked mischievous. “I’ve had people out searching for me. My father sent a detective once. The guy wanted to keep me in a motel room for a few days.”

“Father in Malibu?”

“How do you know that?”

“They said last night on TV.”

“He writes screenplays. He does three a year. They never get produced, they’re all ‘in development.’ It has something to do with tax write-offs. It’s good money, but you should see his face.”

“Is the street better?”

“It has nothing to do with better,” Holly said. “My father has his way of having a miserable life. This is my way.”

A busboy filled their coffee mugs. Millman asked, “Is your mother alive?”

“Sort of. She’s alcoholic and anorexic. She mostly watches aerobics programs on TV.” The girl’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Mickey was neat. I understood where he was coming from.”

“He was coming from behind me.”

“He never really hurt you.”

“That’s true.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He didn’t.”

Every wedding makes someone unhappy.

Stan Odysek, sheriff of Bloomsville, figured this one would make plenty of people unhappy. The bride was Polish; the groom, Irish. A prescription for trouble in Bloomsville, PA.

Still, Stan entered Pulaski Hall hoping for a good time. He needed one. He’d been keeping watch for the FBI on two rackets men who had come up from Harrisburg to Bloomsville four days ago, possibly, the authorities thought, to launder some money, possibly after someone who owed them drug money. The rackets men had visited a jewelry store, nosed around a few neighborhoods, spent half an hour in a bar with Stan’s own black-sheep cousin Walter, and left. They’d done nothing illegal as far as Stan could tell.

He pulled open the double glass doors of Pulaski Hall. Plenty of people had made it before him up to the hall from St. Casimir’s Church. They’d taken their places: the McGuires seated at the tables on the left side of the hall and the Korskis on the right. The scene reminded Stan of the basketball games in his high school days. St. Casimir kids lined up on the right bleachers yelling, “Polish, Polish,” and the St. Patrick kids lined up on the left yelling, “Irish, Irish.” Not one had any idea why they were supposed to hate each other. The days of the Irish foremen in the mines wielding what little power they had over the newly arrived Polish immigrants and the days of the Irish bishops in the Catholic churches blocking the appointment of Polish clergy had passed two generations ago. But the tensions remained. Today, they swirled around the head of the bride: Carolyn Korski, now Mrs. William McGuire.

Stan smiled with avuncular pride at Carolyn, seated in the middle of the main table behind a spread of gardenias, looking gorgeous with her delicate blond beauty. She also looked very nervous. Her fingers tugged at a blue brooch pinned to the bodice of her white gown. She had reason to be nervous. Her new mother-in-law looked as if her son were being shipped out to some remote military hotspot where the army’s acceptable loss rate was about seventy-five percent.

Stan walked toward table sixteen, his assigned place, and winced when Cousin Walter crossed his path. If anyone would confirm for Carolyn’s mother-in-law that her son had married into a horde of Eastern European barbarians, it would be Cousin Walter. Walter had had sticky fingers since the second grade, when he’d stolen five boxes of Necco Wafers from Uncle Larry’s penny-candy store. Later, continuing in his way, he’d indulged in some crude embezzlement and lost his job as school transportation director. Now, Walter was headed straight for the bridal table.

Stan’s right hand strayed to where his holster normally rested against his hip when he was on duty. “Hello, Walter,” he said. “Surprised to see you. Family affairs don’t usually hold much interest for you.”

“Well, this one does,” Walter said.

“Hope you didn’t bring along any of your Harrisburg buddies?” Stan hadn’t bothered questioning Walter about the rackets men. Stan would be lucky to get the time of day from Cousin Walter.

The left side of Walter’s mouth twitched. He tugged on the too-short sleeves of his tux, but they sprang back up over his skinny wrists. “Now look, Sheriff, I was on my way to remind the groom I’d bring his car up here for him tonight. Made the arrangements with him and Carolyn a few days ago.” Walter’s self-importance had moved into high gear. “You’re not going to spoil this nice affair by rattling on about parking violations and crap games, are you? You’re not wearing your sheriffs badge, are you?” Walter turned over Stan’s lapels.

Stan balled his fists. One good shot, a couple of teeth on the floor, a bloody lip. He stayed cool. “Nope. Promised Carolyn’s mother I’d ignore the lowlife she had to invite. She thinks anybody can be useful at a wedding.”

Walter adjusted his bow tie and rubbed his golfball nose, a habit that he’d had from the first grade and indulged in whenever he was nervous or angry. “I might be a little more useful than you think. I have my connections.”

“Yeah,” Stan said. Even as a teenager, Walter had had connections. He’d always waved around tickets to the harness-racing track. Half of Walter’s present connections were with State Senator Dan McGuire. Stan suspected Dan McGuire of having a hand in every racket game in the state of Pennsylvania, but neither he nor any other authority had been able to get anywhere near to a real piece of evidence. Dan covered his tracks well, and Walter’s too. For the life of him, Stan couldn’t see why the family should be so sensitive about Walter when the McGuires had Dan. But then, Dan was a crook with status. Walter was just a crook.

Stan looked round. “McGuire here?” he asked.

“Dan’s mighty sorry he couldn’t make it up from Harrisburg for the wedding,” Walter said.

“Missing his nephew’s wedding, is he? Even you couldn’t persuade him to come? Haven’t had a falling-out with Dan, have you?”

Walter stiffened. “You just try to enjoy yourself, Sheriff,” he said. “And stick to what you know best. If I see anyone double-parked outside, I’ll let you know so you can swing right into action and earn your money.” He turned and headed for the bridal table.

Uncle Larry hobbled over to Stan. “If anyone’s missing five of anything,” he said, staring at Walter’s back, “arrest him.” Uncle Larry was long on memory and short on forgiveness. “Know what the creep tried to do a couple of days ago?”

“At the candy store?” Uncle Larry, at age seventy-five, still ran the store, though it didn’t turn the profit it used to.

“Naw. He hasn’t been in for thirty years. Tried to borrow some money from Matilda.”

“She didn’t give any to him, did she?” Stan knew Larry’s wife had a soft heart, and Walter knew it, too.

“Gave him fifty. Could have been worse. He wanted three thousand. Matilda said he sounded pretty desperate. Must be behind on his car payments.” Uncle Larry chuckled. “Might have to sell that fancy new car he’s been sportin’ around in. Can’t figure where he got the money to buy it in the first place.”

Stan balled his fists again. He disapproved of preying on elderly relatives. But he wouldn’t do anything about it today. He just wanted to enjoy himself, even if he couldn’t expect the kind of wedding his sister had had twenty-five years ago, before the Polish-Americans had gone sophisticated with roast beef for the wedding dinners instead of kielbasa, and wine and mixed drinks instead of beer. But there would be a five band, not a deejay spinning rock records, and the band would play a few polkas. He and Aunt Matilda would spin around the hall until they were dizzy. He sat down at table sixteen to await dinner.

Later that afternoon Fletcher came into Leopold’s office and sat down. “I’ve been checking on those addresses Alex Clemmins gave us, Captain.”

Leopold caught the tightness in his voice. “What about it?”

“The movie theater is TorridTown, that porno house on Adams Avenue the city’s been trying to shut down. The bookstores are pretty much the same thing. Sex books and videos.”

“Why didn’t we recognize the name? TorridTown’s been in the news enough. I thought there was a man named Rockson involved.”

“Rockson’s been making the court appearances, but he only leases the property. Clemmins owns it.”

“With a car bomb and ties to pornography, there could be a mob connection. See what you can find out. Meantime, I’ll take a ride out to TorridTown.”

The theater had once been a neighborhood picture palace, in the long-ago era when such things existed. Over the decades every other movie house within the city limits had been torn down but somehow this one survived, its name changed from the Odeum to TorridTown. Leopold remembered visiting it once around 1965 to see The Sound of Music, but he hadn’t been back since they switched to fare like Deep Throat and The Green Door in the 1970s. Now the titles weren’t even listed on the marquee outside.

A slim, brown-bearded man in a turtleneck was selling tickets to occasional customers when Leopold walked up. “Is Mr. Rockson in?”

“He’s busy,” the man responded without looking up.

Leopold flashed his badge and ID. “Police matter. Is Mr. Rockson in?”

The head came up, the eyes sleepy and sad. “What is this, more harassment?”

“Are you Mr. Rockson?”

“Yeah.”

“Could I have a few words with you?”

“About the theater?”

“About three homicides.”

That got his attention. “I’ll close the ticket window. The show’s started anyway. We can talk in my office.”

Leopold followed him inside, with only a quick glance at the screen. Rockson’s office was a tiny room behind the refreshment stand, cluttered with posters going back twenty years. He sat down in a worn swivel chair and asked, “Who’s dead?”

“Frances Clemmins and her two children.”

“Christ!” He pawed at the desktop for a cigarette. “Who did it?”

“It was a car bomb rigged to her husband’s vehicle. We believe he was the intended victim.”

“And you came here because he owns the place?”

“That’s right. Car bombs require a certain amount of skill. It seems more the work of a professional killer — a mob hit. Are there any mob ties to this theater or the other places Clemmins owns?”

Rockson shook his head. “Nothing that I know about.”

“It was all Clemmins’s own money in these businesses? He never had visits from partners in New York?”

“Lately I’ve been busy with court appearances. I don’t know what he’s been doing.”

The bearded man seemed to be avoiding a direct reply. “If you want to stay clear of trouble, you’d better tell me what you know,” Leopold warned.

“Well, sure, he might have had a partner. I just lease the place.”

“Do you book the films or does he?”

Rockson laughed. “This isn’t exactly the Loew’s circuit, you know. Someone phones me and says he has a block of films available, maybe a dozen or more. If they sound good and I’m familiar with the actors or the director I say sure, send them along. It doesn’t take much to please the sort of audiences I get.”

“Does Alex Clemmins ever suggest films or book them for you?”

“No.”

His answer was so short that Leopold pursued it. “You’re sure of that? Never?”

“He never books films. Once in a while someone calls me and says they got my name from him.”

“So he does have some contact with the pornography business, and it’s possible someone in that business might have had a motive for trying to kill him.”

“Hey, anything’s possible.” He glanced at his watch. “I gotta go now, if you’re finished.”

“For the moment.”

“Stay for the show if you want to. On the house.”

“Thanks anyway.”

Awakened fifteen minutes later by the guard from the strip-search, Father Jerome was led into another small room. The white walls practically glowed, awash in fluorescent light. There was a table with chrome legs and a bare metal top. The legs were bolted to the floor. There were two chairs, the lightweight kind with one-piece molded gray plastic seats. At the top of one wall was a clock, a General Electric with a round white face and simple black hands and numbers. Without its dark rim, it would have been impossible to read against the sterile walls. Up near the ceiling in the far corner was a closed-circuit TV camera. There was no red light to indicate it was on, but he supposed it was.

He was just becoming comfortable with the room when the steel door creaked open. Standing in front of two guards was Gary Hoover. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit. Their eyes were level and met instantly. But it was one of the guards who spoke first, motioning to the clock. It was half past midnight.

“You got one hour, Gary,” he said. “Don’t waste it.”

Father Jerome’s eyes dropped to Hoover’s arms, then to his ankles. He was surprised to see there were no handcuffs, no shackles. The guard mistook it for fear. “Don’t worry, Father,” he assured. “He’s harmless.”

“There’s a good reason for that, Lloyd,” Hoover said. “I’m innocent.”

“Oh, yeah,” the guard said, touching his forehead. “How could I forget?”

Father Jerome found it curious that Hoover’s expression hadn’t changed with the challenge. He didn’t even look back at the guard, though he called him by name. Only his lips moved.

“If this is to be a confessional,” Hoover continued, “turn off the camera.”

“It is off,” the guard replied.

“Then unplug it.”

The guard’s face was turning red. “There’s no damn need.”

“A condemned man’s last confession is considered private,” Hoover argued, “by the Catholic Church, the State of Nebraska, and the United States Supreme Court. Do the right thing and unplug it, Lloyd. Please.”

The guard grunted and kicked one of the chairs over to the corner. There was a single screw securing the plug to the wall, enough of an anchor to allow time for the keepers to storm the room, should anyone try to remove it. “Harry,” he said to his partner. “You got a screwdriver?”

Harry shook his head.

“Nail file? A coin or something?”

Harry scrounged in his pockets, producing a nickel and two dimes. Lloyd took one of the dimes from Harry’s outstretched hand and removed the screw, then jerked the plug from the wall.

The guards left the room and double-locked the door. Hoover took the chair at the table. Father Jerome pulled the other from the corner and sat across from him.

With his fingers Hoover traced a cross, first on his forehead, then his lips, then his chest. “Bless me, Father,” he began, “for I have sinned. It has been fourteen years since my last confession. These are my sins.”

Father Jerome took a small purple vestment from his jacket pocket and put it to his lips, then lifted it over his head. “Go on.”

Hoover confessed that he’d cursed, lied, and had lewd thoughts while confined.

“What else?”

Hoover cocked his head to one side. Without knowing it, he glanced to the camera. “Isn’t it true, Father,” he said, “that people have different definitions of sin?”

“What do you mean?”

He shifted his weight and crossed his legs. “Is it true that what one man determines to be a sin,” he said, “may not be that way for his neighbor?”

“Perhaps with venial sins. But I don’t believe that’s true for mortal sins. As far as the Church is concerned, breaking a commandment, after all, is just that.”

“In here, they call them ‘Satan’s Top Ten.’ ”

Father Jerome smiled.

“And for mortal sin, there is absolution?”

“It depends.”

“In cases with extenuating circumstances?”

“Yes, but...”

“Like an execution?”

“Gary. What are you trying so hard not to say?”

“Aren’t you wondering,” Hoover said, staring into the priest’s eyes as though they were tiny mirrors, “why I asked for you?”

Father Jerome looked away, to the floor. “Ever since I answered the phone.”

“Tell me something. When did you first realize you were black?”

He looked up at Hoover. “What?”

“You know.” Hoover was more than staring into his eyes now. He was searching. “When did you first realize the color of your skin made a difference with other people? With white people?”

“I can’t recall.”

“Sure you can. I know I can. It was a Sunday morning, clean blue sky, right after a rain. I was twelve years old, just turned. I wanted to be an altar boy very badly. So I worked up the nerve and went into the sacristy after Mass. I asked the monsignor if I could sign up. Know what that old relic said?”

“No.”

“He told me colored boys couldn’t serve on the altar. He said it was because there was no place for colored people in God’s Kingdom. Not in this world, he said, or in the next. Evidently, to him the Pearly Gates worked like a filter.”

“That is unfortunate, Gary, but things have changed. That monsignor probably died a long time ago. So did his way of thinking.”

“Oh, he’s dead all right. That one didn’t count.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why it was two altar boys who died, Father?”

For the first time, Hoover’s eyes dropped and his expression changed. The look was one of embarrassed admission. Father Jerome recognized it immediately. He’d seen it many times before in his work. It was guilt.

“Sweet Jesus,” he said. “Is this why you asked me here? To tell me you did kill those boys?”

Hoover leaned close to the priest, their knees almost touching. He put his hands on Father Jerome’s shoulders. “Yes, Father,” he said. “Two very young boys and one very old priest.”

“The monsignor? How?”

“Scared him to death, really. Never touched him. That’s why I said that he didn’t count.”

Father Jerome was heartsick.

“What’s my penance?”

“You expect absolution?”

“I expect nothing more than I see.”

“Why tell me this? You could have asked for any priest. Why me?”

“Look at us,” Hoover said. “You and I could be brothers; twins even. Same age. Same height and weight; eyes. Same olive complexion, as though we were born trying to pass. I’ve watched you, followed you ever since I first saw your picture in the local Catholic weekly. A black priest is pretty damn rare, you know. Made everything you did newsworthy. So I had a friend send me one of your old high-school yearbooks. It was like looking in a goddamned mirror. I’m sure you noticed it. I’ll bet white people especially liked to point it out to you. That would explain your moustache.”

Hoover inched closer. “It’s only inside where we’re different, Father. We’ve both seen it, you and I, what hides beneath the surface of a man’s skin. Good may struggle, but evil survives.”

The priest shook his head, tears welling in his eyes. “All along, you’ve said you were innocent. I believed you. People supported you, prayed for you, fought for you. How could you lie to us?”

“Believe me, lying was the easy part.”

Father Jerome couldn’t believe anything. “There are hundreds of people outside who fear that an innocent man is about to be sacrificed to a system.”

For the very first time tonight, Hoover smiled. “Then we can’t disappoint them.”

Without warning, he slammed the top of his skull against the priest’s forehead.

Once was enough.

“Did you know,” asked Marian, “to eat oysters on Saint James’s Day means you’ll never lack for money?”

“Not when I can steal it, no.” Robin Hood winkled open an oyster with his knife, nicked the muscle, plopped white meat in his mouth.

Feet dangling, the two shucked oysters on a rickety pier. Rye was hilly as Romney Marsh was flat. Twin ridges like a swallow’s tail projected into the sea. Each ridge was capped with sandstone and the sister towns of Rye and Winchelsea. Rye was notched into stone, girded by a city wall, and bound by three rivers: Rother, Brede, and Tillingham. All three carrying silt and sewage, they had choked Rye Bay into a long canal. Far out bobbed fat-bellied carracks and fishing boats, sails furled. The channel beyond darkened as the sun set.

Up at dawn, the outlaws had entered by the Postern Gate and spent the day in town. Now Marian reported, “I asked all up and down Mermaid Street. They say the locals are aloof, but I dropped coins and folks were glad to gossip about someone they hate. Yes, Vincent’s a burgher, a merchant.”

“Beholden only to God,” Robin muttered. Independent merchants were something new in England. Outside “God’s Sacred Triangle” of peasants, clergy, and noblemen, they were a whole separate class just feeling their oats.

“Vincent began as a velbrugger, a dealer in sheepskins. Then he found a demand for corn[1] in Bruges’ Grote Markt. Now, a viscount named Spencer is the feudal lord of Romney Marsh, but he’s always campaigning in France with King Richard, so he’s always strapped. So Spencer sells the entire wool and corn crop to Vincent for cash and it’s all exported to Holland!”

“That explains why the mill falls down,” Robin snuffed. “And why the priest fears the village will disappear.”

“The poor peasants shear and harvest, then truck it all here to be sold to foreigners. They get silver instead of a share, but they must buy back wool and corn at higher prices, or else it’s not available. And there’s more. By law, the peasants keep the dykes and ditches in good heart. Vincent gains but contributes nothing, pays almost nothing in taxes. And rather than attend muster-at-arms, he pays deputies to go in his stead.”

“A shield of gold.” Robin shucked and nodded. “He’s become virtual lord of the land, but with no oath of fealty between lord and peasant. No good will come of this mercantile class, I tell you.”

“Aye. God and custom fall by the wayside, and money covers their altar.”

Robin pitched oyster shells to fleabitten cats. Gulls flew off to peck at a skinned horse floating by. “I see why the peasants didn’t rush to his aid. They’ve love for neither Vincent nor Rioch. But he employs two hundred men, I found. He owns three of those car-racks to ship his grain, and the wharves to tie to, including this one we sit on.”

“No one loves him. These merchants are more a brotherhood than rivals, because they depend on each other’s honesty. But Vincent cuts too fine a bargain and won’t make up for errors. When his wife died a few years ago, he built that grand house at Romney and moved. Some say it’s to oversee harvests, but others say he evades taxes and guild restrictions, or else it’s because everyone in Rye hates him so. The only one’s ever profited by him is that scarecrow, who wears his cast-off clothing to protect his crops.”

“So much for the true worth of money. A wife dead, children estranged, no friends. Even his partner’s dead—”

“Aha!” beamed his wife.

Robin Hood hung on her pause. “Keep talking. He didn’t die in bed, did he?”

“No,” Marian trumpeted, “he was stabbed! In his counting house one night! The murderer was never found, nor the money recovered! Vincent inherited his half of the three ships!”

“Lucky Vincent,” mused Robin, “but then, he’s got seven letters in his name — get up!”

Heavy boots clomped fast along the pier. Out of the shadows ran two men, fishermen or sailors in pitch-smeared shirts and knit caps. Each carried a gaff, an oak club topped with a shark hook. The gaffs went up as one rumbled, “You’re to get out of town and stay out!”

Robin and Marian glided across the pier. Marian balanced her slim bow in one hand, drew her Irish knife with the other. Robin Hood only flexed his grip. The sailors paused as their intended victims, rather than cringe, took up fighting stances. But with roars to encourage themselves, they rushed.

Marian flashed her knife in a circle: a ruse. As the sailor’s eyes flicked to the blade, the Vixen of Sherwood lunged. The tip of her bow tagged the charging brute below the Adam’s apple. Gagging, he slammed to a stop. Marian tangled his legs with her bow and toppled him off the pier.

Robin Hood shouted, jabbed the bow at his opponent, snagged the fishhook instead, yanked the gaff to one side. Off balance, unwilling to let go, the sailor lurched. Robin’s knotty fist crashed alongside his head and almost snapped his neck. When he hit the pier with his face, the outlaw trod on both hands to cripple him.

Flushed, Marian peered at the water. “Mine might drown.”

“A fisherman to feed the fish, eh? That closes a neat circle.” Robin blew on his fist and grinned. “I like how your bosom heaves when you’re excited.”

Marian pointed her bow. “There’s more room in the bay, so curb your tongue.”

Smirking, Robin knelt on the sailor’s back to yell in his ear. “Hoy, can you hear? Don’t squirm or I’ll slice your ear off and shout into that! You’re lucky you assaulted me and not the iron maiden there! Talk! Who put you up to this? Or do I know already?”

Dizzy from the blow, a ringing skull, and daft dialogue, the sailor pretended not to understand.

“Ken this!” Robin waggled his Irish knife before one eye, a silver crown before the other. “Which will you have?”

The man’s eyes fixed on the coin. “It was the corn merchant, Vincent, told us to chivvy you out of town.”

Straightening, Robin dropped the coin on the wharf, watched the sailor grope for it. “It’ll wait. Fish out your friend first.” He kicked the sailor in the belly off the pier.

Marian pouted impishly. “ ‘Iron maiden’?”

Robin grinned. “Interesting that Vincent hires brigands for dirty deeds. Men work by habit: if he’s done it once, he’s done it before... Marian, did you ever hear the legend of Romney Marsh, how an offended scarecrow stalks the night for revenge?”

Marian puckered her dark brows. “Never.”

“You will.”

Tea in the parlor as dusk was falling. Flora had taken time to whisk some muffins in the oven while Derek was taking a shower, which Flora had insisted he was more than welcome to do. “Who knows?” she’d said. “If it weren’t for you, I might be in some horrible filthy jail cell right now.”

Later, pouring the tea, she said, “I don’t do it for myself, you know. I’ve never taken a single solitary item for myself. It’s for the children, you see. This is a very poor neighborhood. Such lovable, ragtag little urchins. The shoes are for the Galloway boy.”

Derek Callender drank his tea and ate his muffins without taking his eyes from Flora’s face. “You mean you make a habit of doing this? A nice little old lady like you?”

“I always ask myself, why do I do it? Guess if I knew the answer maybe I wouldn’t.”

Derek asked her if some sort of charity work wouldn’t be safer, to which she replied that in a manner of speaking that’s what it was. Fitting him easily into the role of understanding stranger, Flora thought how wonderful it felt to be able to talk about it.

“I’ll tell you how it all began. After my hubby died I became ill — this was years ago — a severe nervous breakdown. We’d had one child, a little boy, Richard. I’ll spare you the sordid details but I was obliged to give him up. It broke my heart but I had no choice in the matter. I was sick. No money. No one to help. The folks who adopted him took him out of the state. In time I regained my health pretty much. I was able to take on cleaning jobs. Somehow I managed to hang on to this little old house. Then one day, this was a couple of years ago, I was in a store and I saw this adorable little playsuit sewn with teddy bears and I thought how perfect it would have been for little Dickie. I stole it. After that, whenever I was feeling blue, which was most of the time, I’d pick up some little thing for Dickie, a toy, clothing, whatever. And then I started giving them away to youngsters around the neighborhood. They all call me Auntie Flora. I suppose you think I’m awful wicked.”

Derek smiled. “If I did I wouldn’t’ve stopped that mean old guard from collaring you, now would I?”

“But how did you know he was after me?”

“I saw you boost the shoes.”

“You didn’t!” She thought back, trying to recall if she’d seen him in Steinway’s.

“Said to myself, this little lady’s heading for trouble. Better keep an eye on her.”

“My guardian angel.”

“Wrong. I ain’t no angel.”

“So tell me about yourself. Tell me everything.” Flora knew she was doing it again, what she called “making magic,” a form of daydreaming where she’d imagine various situations in which little Dickie returned home to a joyful reunion, never again to leave, although never before had there been a living, breathing image to hang her fantasies upon, and what a warm, delicious thrill it gave her.

“Not much to tell,” he replied, and what there was took only a few minutes. Derek told of bumming around the country for the past three years. He’d been in the merchant marines. He’d tried all sorts of jobs without seeming able to settle down to one thing.

“You meet lots of interesting people, of course,” he said. “Just last week I met this lady over in Cloverdale who hired me to rake up last year’s leaves. She gave me ten bucks and this sweater.” Flora admired the sweater, a pale blue cable-knit, soiled but obviously expensive.

“I’ll pop it in the wash,” said Flora. “It’ll be good as new.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Why not? My stars, look what you’ve done for me. Oh, please. Stay the night at least. Up in Richard’s room. It’ll be such fun having a guest. I’ve never had a guest. I won’t know how to behave.” She looked toward the door. “If someone got my license number the police would have come by now, don’t you think?”

“Most likely.”

Seconds later she gave a little start as the doorbell did indeed ring. Flora rushed to the window and peeped around the curtain, then relaxed with a tinkling laugh.

“It’s only Mrs. Galloway. You stay put.”

Voices in the hall and then Flora returning with a young woman in jeans; a careworn face, pale red hair in a ponytail.

“This is Richard,” said Flora proudly. “I told you about Richard, remember?”

The woman stared at Derek. “Not little Dickie.”

Flora beamed. “Guess I can’t call him little Dickie anymore, can I? He’s come home for a visit. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Great, yeah.”

“He tracked me down after all these years.”

Flora ran to pick up the trainers still lying where she’d flung them on the sofa. “I hope they’re the right size. A special sale, so I can’t return them.”

A smile lightened Mrs. Galloway’s sallow face. “Perfect, I’m sure. But you shouldn’t have bought such expensive ones.”

“I know how hard boys are on shoes. Cup of tea, dear?”

“Thanks, no. Timmy’s watching the baby.”

Soon as the door closed Flora turned to Derek with a whimsical, contrite smile. “I hope you didn’t mind my telling that little fib. It just popped out.”

Derek’s broad grin carved dimples in his cheeks. Enchanting. Just like little Dickie’s.

For dinner there was leftover meatloaf, baked potatoes, and glazed carrots, served by candlelight, something Flora hadn’t done in years. Afterwards, Derek insisted on helping clear up. Flora washed; he wiped. She relished the feeling of warm coziness and deep contentment. It really was as if little Dickie had come home.

Later, Flora brought out the cards. All she’d been able to play for years was solitaire. Derek taught her a game called Spades; the evening seemed to flash by.

“Isn’t it amazing,” she said. “I just this minute realized something. This is the first time in ages I’ve felt really, truly safe. Here in the house, I mean, the neighborhood gone to seed like it has. I used to be such a trusting person, until a few months ago. My old TV set went on the blink and I just never seemed to have the money to get it fixed. I really miss it. Then one day I look out and see these two men carrying a TV set out of the house next door. I ran out on the porch and called to them. ‘Yoo-hoo,’ I said, ‘do you fix TV’s?’ The one man grinned and said, ‘We sure do, lady.’ I asked him to look at mine. They said sure they could fix it but they’d have to take it to the shop. Said it wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg either. One of them spots Mother’s silver tea set on the sideboard. ‘Give us that,’ he says, ‘and it won’t cost you a dime.’ So I did. Well, would you believe it? They were thieves! They were stealing that TV set from next door. In broad daylight! Don’t people do the most awful things nowadays?”

The long, considering smile Derek gave her made her blush like a girl. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “I’m hardly the one to talk, am I?”

“I wasn’t thinking that at all.”

“Well, look at it this way,” she said eagerly, full of the need to talk, to explain, perhaps even to apologize, as if it were Richard she wished to make understand. “Things aren’t all black and white, are they? There’s even shades of gray. Way I see it, there’s a difference between wickedness and evil. I may have my wicked little quirks, sure I do, but I’m not an evil person. I wouldn’t dream of stealing a poor widow lady’s TV set, and her silver tea service to boot. A person would have to be truly evil to pull a stunt like that, don’t you agree? I may occasionally have taking ways, so to speak, but I never have taken anything for myself. Though I don’t suppose God would think that argument held even a drop of water.”

“I guess only God knows what God thinks,” Derek said. “I only know what I think. I think it’s time you found a safer way to get your jollies.”

Wanda pulled the door open furiously, expecting to see Leonard there, back before he left for work for a final shot about the bill she had run up consulting psychic advisers.

“Do you meditate, madam?”

“Meditate!”

Prepared to give as good as she got from Leonard in what promised to be an epic quarrel, one of those that stretched over a week, Wanda was startled by the tall man with the shaven head whose eyes seemed to look inward as much as outward at her.

“So few people do. How old are you?”

“That’s none of your business.” Her hand gripped the door but she found herself unable to slam it in his face.

“You know your age, that’s what’s important. How many years do you suppose you have left?”

He lifted his face, as if expecting an answer from on high. He lowered his eyes to her once more.

“Madam, would you step outside, please?”

“I’m not dressed.”

“That is why you are reluctant to ask me in. We must talk.”

It was a challenge. Of course she would ask him in. It wasn’t as if she were indecent, for pete’s sake. She wore a wrapper over her nightgown, and on her feet were the silly pink slippers with toes the shape of bunny heads that Leonard had bought her during one of the lulls in their long-term argument.

“My name is Alexander,” he said. He wore a business suit, light grey, with a purple shirt buttoned at the neck. The chain with the odd pendant might have been his necktie. He drifted into the living room and looked mournfully around.

“What’s wrong?”

“There is no you here.”

“Are you selling something?”

“Whatever I have is not mine to own. It is yours as much as mine.”

He sat, but as one sits who may leave at any minute. Suddenly she wanted him to stay. She had the sense that this man, Alexander, was someone to whom she could talk, someone who would understand her. A bell sounded insistently from the back of the house and Wanda made an impatient noise.

“Ah,” Alexander said, holding it as if it were a note and he about to chant.

“That’s Mattie. My mother-in-law.”

“And she summons you.”

“Will you excuse me a minute?”

“I will come with you.”

And he did, down the hallway to the kitchen and through the breezeway to the apartment they had made for Mattie in what had once been the garage. The kitchen was a mess, but at this hour of the day what could you expect? Wanda wanted Alexander to see what her life was like, what she had to put up with.

Mattie was propped up in the La-Z-Boy chair she preferred to her bed, forever readjusting it in search of some angle of restfulness that would make life tolerable. Her hair stood on her scalp as if she had her finger in the light socket. She cocked her head and looked at Alexander.

“Who are you?”

“You are in the vestibule of the beyond, Martha. This is no time to ask childish questions. How is your soul?”

The old woman looked up at him pop-eyed and then, incredibly, burst into tears. Her scrawny veined hand reached for him, clawing at the air, until he took it, enveloping hers in his own two large hands. He turned to Wanda.

“Leave us alone.”

Wanda turned and went back through the breeze way to the kitchen, where she began to clean up. She felt excitement. Something very important was happening. For five years, Wanda had been little more than her mother-in-law’s keeper, waiting on her hand and foot, on edge all day, forever expecting that damned bell to ring. Whenever she hid the bell, the old woman would begin to whimper, a penetrating sound that crept through the house and found her no matter where she hid from it.

“Wanda, in a little while, it will all be ours.”

That was Leonard’s argument. They had moved in here with his mother, selling their house at a loss, but what the hell, they were through paying rent or mortgage installments. Wanda had calculated that they had sunk more money into Mattie’s house than they would have paid staying in their own over that five-year period. Leonard did not want to bill his mother for improvements — the new drive, fencing along the back of the yard, the roof, and the redesign of the garage that was meant to give them a little breathing space from Mattie.

“You’ll have your privacy this way, Mom.”

“Why don’t you just put me out with the trash?”

“Stop talking like that.”

“This is a garage.”

“Not anymore.”

Leonard actually suggested that they move into the remodeled garage and let the old woman have the rest of the house.

“Over my dead body.”

“You sound like her.”

“I’m going to look like her before...”

“Before what?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You want her dead, don’t you? Well, say it: I wish Martha Bertie were dead.”

“Don’t your?”

That shut him up. Wasn’t he something, trying to make her feel guilty? This idea had been a conspiracy from the beginning. They would ingratiate themselves with Mattie. His sister in Seattle sent a Christmas card that wasn’t even signed, just Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Pringle, printed. Once the legend had been from Pringle Pharmacy. Laura obviously considered her mother already dead and gone. If Mattie could be made to realize that the only one who cared for her was Leonard, and Wanda, of course, well, then...

“We get this house?”

“That’s not the half of it.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ve seen the bankbook.”

“Where would I see her bankbook?”

“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t trust banks. Except insofar as they rent safe-deposit boxes.”

“Does she have a safe-deposit box?”

Leonard adopted a sly smile and nodded slowly. It turned out he had never seen what was in it. He got angry when she suggested it was empty. That was the first quarrel that lasted more than two days. When the clouds cleared and the sun shone once more, Leonard said they had to get a look into that safety-deposit box.

After a month of discreet searching in the garage apartment, Wanda found the little envelope with the key to the safety-deposit box. Like a fool, she let Leonard talk her into going down to the bank and asking to open the box.

“Don’t let on you’re not the right Mrs. Bertie.”

So Wanda showed the young man the key and he asked her to sign a little slip. That was when she sensed this wasn’t going to work. He took the slip and riffled through a card index from which eventually he plucked a card. He laid her slip alongside the card. He frowned.

“You’re Mrs. Bertie?”

“That’s right.”

“The signatures don’t match.”

“That’s my mother-in-law’s.”

“This is her safety-deposit box?”

“She asked me to get something for her.” Wanda leaned forward. “She’s quite helpless now.”

This posed a problem. The young man rose and crossed the floor as if he had a gun in his back and consulted with a woman whose hair was an artful mess. Her head began to sway negatively as she listened. The two came to where Wanda was sitting.

The woman nodded to the young man, who narrated what had happened to this point in time.

“Our Mrs. Bertie is your mother-in-law, Mrs. Bertie?” the woman asked.

“Yes.”

“And you want to open her safety-deposit box?” She said this as if she were recounting an attempt at sacrilege. “The bank enters into the most solemn of arrangements with the holders of safety-deposit boxes, Mrs. Bertie.”

She preached on, unctuously. Wanda felt as if she were the blackest of sinners.

“You must obtain power of attorney. Then and only then can we let you see Mrs. Bertie’s box.”

This and the many other annoying, aggravating, infuriating, humiliating episodes that had characterized her life since she and Leonard had moved in with Mattie went past Wanda’s mind as she tidied up the kitchen. She realized that Alexander was standing in the doorway. When their eyes met she was certain he knew every secret of her life, that he had been inside her mind and memory while she had reviewed her dreadful life with Mattie.

“She will soon be dead,” Alexander said.

“Mattie?”

He nodded, his eyes reading her soul.

“But she’s strong as a horse.”

“You are going to speed her on her way.”

Trying to laugh it off did not work, not with his hypnotic eyes on her. He suggested that they return to the living room. There he spoke in a soft musical voice about the swiftness with which life passes, how the vast majority of human beings are so caught up in the trivia of everyday tasks that they never seriously ask themselves the only important question. He fell silent.

“What is the question?”

He nodded, as if they were already in agreement. “What does it all mean?”

He elaborated. Moments become minutes which become hours, and the hours turn into days, the earth spins clockwise round the sun, its orbit altering into seasons, and the years follow one another, but from a cosmic perspective earthly millennia are insignificant. Think of the light year.

Wanda realized she hadn’t thought of much of anything since she quit work to stay home with Mattie, and before that what she had thought about was her work at the bank. College? A four-year blur. Listening to Alexander, Wanda felt her mind stir from slumber and begin to operate in uncustomary but pleasant ways. The thought emerged that it was a very bad waste of the few winks of time she had on earth to be fretting over Mattie.

“She too longs for this to be over.”

“Did you talk with her about it?”

“Of course.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

It was laughably simple. Alexander knew of the sealed can in the basement containing the stuff Leonard put on his roses. She felt that Alexander knew everything. Bring the container upstairs, add a spoonful to the tea she made for Mattie, sit with her while she drank it, making her last moments pleasant. That was all there was to it.

“She doesn’t want to do it herself?”

“Of course she wants to. But when is the last time she made the tea?”

At any other time that question could have started her on a litany of complaints. There was no physical reason for Mattie to sit atrophying in her chair day and night. It was sheer stubborn meanness. But Alexander was right. She was too mean even to poison herself. She would want Wanda to do it.

“I’ll talk it over with Leonard tonight.”

Alexander shook his head. “No. She doesn’t want him to know. Besides, by tonight it will all be over.”

“She wants me to do it today?”

“She longs for it.”

“Talk to me some more.”

“I have talked enough. Now you must meditate.”

And it was over. He rose, went to the door, and was outside before she could move. When she looked down the drive, there was no sign of him. On the other side of the street, a car moved off.

Wanda went back to the living room, sat, and shut her eyes, intent on meditating. But the image of the sealed can in the basement formed in her mind and wouldn’t go away. First she would bring it upstairs. She put it on the kitchen counter and sat on a stool. Her mind refused to concentrate on anything. She went back to see how Mattie was doing.

Her chair was upright, her hair brushed; she looked neat as a pin. “I liked him.”

“Alexander?”

“He understands the situation here.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve needed someone to talk with.”

“So have I.”

“You’re no good at it, talk.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This whole thing was a mistake, I knew that from the beginning.” Mattie sighed. “Well, it is time I got out of it.”

She put back her head and closed her eyes. How happy she looked, and expectant. Wanda felt almost holy at the thought that she would help Mattie go on to a better place. Alexander spoke of it as far out beyond the galaxies, a place toward which one moved with incredible swiftness, yet it required an eternity to get there.

“Where the big bang took place,” he whispered.

“Did he speak to you of the big bang?” Wanda asked the old woman.

But Mattie had drifted off, the sweetest smile on her dry thin lips.

Wanda thought of telephoning Leonard, to give him some indication of what his mother had decided, but Alexander’s warning that she not tell him kept her from the phone. It was Leonard who called her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, without preamble.

“Me too.”

“I know how hard it is on you to live the way we do.”

“It’s not forever.”

“That’s right. We have to remember that.”

“Your mother has been such an angel today.”

“Angel?”

And soon she would be among the angels, hair brushed, brighteyed, ready for that long long journey toward the place where the big bang had taken place. Leonard said he would be late and she urged him to come as soon as he could. What lay before her was vague but inevitable.

She took a sandwich in to Mattie at noon.

“I hate chicken salad.”

“That’s tuna.”

“Did you make tea?”

“We’ll have that later. The two of us.”

“I want it now.”

Well, she ought to have it when she wanted it. Wanda leaned toward the old woman, seeking in her expression some sign of the secret they shared, but Mattie turned away.

“You’re blocking the sun.”

How easy it was to tolerate the cranky old woman now. It would all be over soon. She made her a simple cup of tea to have with her sandwich. She and Mattie would have high tea at the usual time. It seemed wrong to break the routine on this last day.

Mattie sipped the tea suspiciously and wrinkled her nose. “It always tastes the same.”

It was the only hint she gave of what they were going to do. Had she expected her luncheon tea to contain the fatal dose? She napped again after Wanda took away her tray. Wanda lay down for her nap but she could not sleep. She went back in with Mattie and sat there, watching the old woman sleep, imagining that she had already made tea in the way Alexander had told her the old woman wanted and Mattie had already begun her long astral journey to the beginning of it all...

“What are you doing here?”

Wanda snapped awake at the angry sound of Mattie’s voice. It was nearly three o’clock.

“I fell asleep.”

“I could see that.”

Anger flared up in Wanda until she remembered. While she slept she had dreamed of Alexander, of his commanding presence, and of his soothing voice coming musically to her out of infinite space and time. She had read of people who claimed to have visions, heavenly visitations, who had been snatched up in alien spacecraft and taken on strange flights. Such stories no longer seemed incredible. If she had to describe Alexander, it would be difficult to make him sound like an earth person. Of course it was Mattie he had come for, not her. She was merely the instrument of the plan Alexander had drawn forth from deep inside Mattie’s soul. She was ready to go now and she wanted a little help to put her on her way.

“I’m hungry.”

“It hasn’t been two hours since we had lunch.”

“Let’s have our tea.”

“Be patient, Mattie. We’ll have it at four, as we always do.”

“I can’t wait till four.”

“Yes, you can.”

They both could. Wanda went solemnly into the main house, leaving Mattie alone with her thoughts. The bell jangled as it usually did, but Wanda ignored it, not out of anger, as she might have before, but wanting Mattie to think of what lay ahead. To meditate. They could talk when it came time for tea.

In the kitchen she took a measuring cup and put into it two tablespoonfuls of the stuff from the can she had brought up from the basement. The odor when she pried open the lid was the odor of earth, of death, of a tomb sealed for centuries but opened now. She put the measuring cup by the tea kettle and pressed the lid down tight on the can. She returned it to its place on the basement shelf. It was 3:45 when she came up to the kitchen again.

She put on the water and went into the breezeway and strained her ear. Mattie was talking to herself. It seemed almost as good as meditation.

She put tea in the pot and then poured the contents of the measuring cup in as well. The whistle on the kettle began its shrill sound and she took it from the fire. The sound of Mattie’s voice died away. She would know that tea was on its way.

Wanda added the boiling water to the pot, replaced the top, and slipped a cozy over it. She would let it steep a few minutes before taking it in. The tea cart was one Mattie had had for years and it meant much to her to have her tea rolled in to her on it. Wanda made little sandwiches and petits fours and then put the teapot on the cart.

“Tea time,” she sang out, and started toward the garage apartment.

She rolled the cart up next to Mattie’s chair, in case she wanted to pour. But the old woman sat with folded hands, an expectant look on her face as she surveyed the goodies on the cart. Wanda poured a cup and handed it to her mother-in-law. It was a solemn moment. Mattie waited while she added milk and sugar, she liked lots of sugar, then stirred vigorously. How eager she looked.

Wanda poured another cup and took a chair. Mattie sipped, pursed her lips against the heat, then sipped again. She took a sandwich from the cart and nibbled delicately on it, then drank more tea.

“Mmmmmm,” she said.

She drank it down and held out her cup for more. Wanda poured again. Mattie would want a third cup, she always did, and usually Wanda discouraged it since it meant several trips to the bathroom, but today she gladly poured the third cup.

And waited. She brought her own cup to her lips, then stopped. Dear God, she was not ready for any trip through the stars, not yet, not when finally her long agony was coming to an end. She and Leonard would be alone, the cause of their quarrels would be gone, the future would lie bright ahead of them again.

Mattie’s grip on her cup loosened and it rolled down her lap and onto the floor. The old woman’s head had snapped back and she was gasping for air. Wanda had not been prepared for this. She had expected Mattie simply to drift into sleep. But instead the old woman fought against going, scratching at her throat, fixing Wanda with her bright angry eyes until her eyelids fluttered, her eyes rolled upward, and she slumped forward.

Wanda straightened the old woman in her chair and tried to smooth away the awful expression on her face. The doorbell rang.

She stood, feeling panic at first, and then, remembering Alexander’s visit earlier, hurried through the house to the front door, pulling it open with a great smile.

“Nine-one-one,” a man said, pushing past her. He was followed by another. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

“The woman who’s been poisoned.”

She managed to point and they sped through the house. She followed. They reached the breezeway and went right on, as if they knew now where they were going. Wanda couldn’t watch while they worked over Mattie. Before she left, she saw one of the paramedics shrug at the other. She was seated at the kitchen table when they came in.

“She’s dead.”

“I know.”

“We came as quickly as we could.”

“Who called you? Alexander?”

“I think it was your husband.”

“My husband.”

They checked and it was true, Leonard had phoned 911 to report that his mother had just been given poison and would they get over there as quickly as they could.

Given poison. That phrase was the beginning of her realization that something was wrong. She tried to tell the paramedics about Alexander and how he had talked to Mattie, but their eyes kept moving away. More police arrived. She asked them to call Leonard and the phone was pushed toward her. Leonard was not in his office.

He had said he would be late tonight. He was not yet home when a detective advised her to call a lawyer. “My husband is my lawyer.”

“You’ll want someone else, ma’am. After all, he made the call.”

Leonard had not come home when she was taken downtown and he did not come to see her. The lawyer she eventually got was named Sawyer. He just looked at her when she told him about Alexander but later, as the trial approached, he wanted to hear all about it.

“That’s our only defense,” he said.

“Nobody will believe it.”

“That’s the idea.”

Leonard still had not come to see her. How could she complain? After all, she was accused of killing his mother. In the end, she pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. She had never been so humiliated in her life. When she stood for sentencing, she turned and looked at the few curious people in the courtroom. Leonard was there. He was talking to the man beside him, a tall man with a crew cut. And then Leonard looked toward her and their eyes met. But it was the face of the man beside him Wanda saw, the great staring eyes, the look of serenity.

“Alexander!” she screamed. “There he is.”

She was wrestled into her chair by the matron but she continued to call out. They had to listen. The man who was responsible was there in the courtroom with her husband. Two more matrons were required to remove her from the courtroom. Sawyer came to tell her what her sentence was.

“As soon as the doctors say you’re okay, you go free.”

She nodded. In the interim since being removed from the courtroom, she had begun to understand.

“A piece of advice,” Sawyer said. “Forget about Alexander. As long as you talk about him, they’re going to keep you locked up.”

I said he’d better tell me the worst of it and get it over. On that cold March afternoon, at two o’clock, the victoria was drawn up and waiting at the front door. Mrs. Haslem came down the steps. Behind her Miss Thorn, holding the Haslems’ eight-year-old son by the hand. The boy, she said, wanted to see his mother driving away. The coachman settled Mrs. Haslem in the victoria, positioning the foot warmer for her, tucking a blanket round her. While this was going on, the boy was on one side, talking to his mother, Miss Thorn on the other.

“The coachman’s just getting up on the box, ready to drive off, when Mrs. Haslem says, quite sharply, ‘Have you taken my flask, Miss Thorn?’ At first the governess looks as if she wants to deny it, but Mrs. Haslem says, ‘Don’t try to lie to me. You’ve got it there behind your back.’ ”

“And had she?”

“She had. So she has to hand it over, looking shamefaced.”

“What sort of flask?”

“Flat silver one. The sort a gentleman would carry in his pocket out hunting.”

“Did the coachman see Miss Thorn put anything into it?”

“No.”

“She’d have had a chance, though, wouldn’t she, while Mrs. Haslem was talking to the boy?”

“She’d have had to be quick about it, but yes, I suppose she would.”

“What did Mrs. Haslem have in the flask? I suppose it would be something to keep out the cold on a long journey.”

“Short or long journey, summer or winter, it was all the same to her. Brandy.”

“In other words, Mrs. Haslem was a habitual drinker?”

“Habitual! She drank the way a horse eats grass. That time I had that argument with her, I could smell the brandy coming off her breath.”

“Did anybody else touch the flask?”

“There was only the boy and the coachman there. The coachman says he didn’t, and I don’t suppose the boy would poison his mother.”

“And you’ve told me they didn’t stop on the journey. Where did the brandy in the flask come from?”

“Mrs. Haslem’s own bottle she kept in her room. She’d sent her maid to buy a couple of bottles the day before.”

“Why did she have to do that? Surely her husband would keep brandy in the house.”

“Only under lock and key. He was driven distracted by her drinking.”

“You say she had lunch in her room?”

“Chicken in aspic, bread and butter, China tea. And in case you’re thinking the poison might be in that, she didn’t finish her lunch so the maid did after she’d gone and she was as fit as a flea.”

“It looks like an open-and-shut case against Miss Thorn. What happened at the inquest?”

“Open verdict.”

“Astounding! Didn’t it come out about Mrs. Haslem accusing the governess?”

“Oh yes, it came out, in a manner of speaking. Only everybody round here knew the wicked tongue she had when the drink was in her. They felt sorry for her husband and anybody else who had to do with her.”

“What about the symptoms? What did the doctor say?”

“That she’d been very sick, had convulsions, and her heart had stopped — which it tends to do when you die.”

“Is this whole countryside in a conspiracy to protect the governess? It can only be a matter of time before she’s under lock and key.”

“You could think of something, though, couldn’t you, a gentleman of your experience? Just enough to give everyone an excuse for pretending to think she didn’t do it.”

His tone, soft as any sucking dove, was the one he used to get scared colts to come to his hand.

“Where is this paragon of a poisoner?”

“Still up at the hall.”

“What!”

“Mr. Haslem has kept her on. After all, someone has to look after the boy.”

I sat and thought for a while.

“If you want me to take any part in this, you must arrange for me to speak to the governess. Can you do that?”

“Yes. Give me a few hours.”

“Mr. Haslem too.”

“He’s not seeing people. Hasn’t been out of the house or had anyone calling since the inquest.”

“What about the doctor and the maid?”

“Dr. Gaynor’s easy enough, he’s just up the road. The maid’s gone back to her parents ten miles away.”

“Didn’t Mr. Haslem keep her on?”

“The fact is, she bolted straight after the funeral. The gossip from the hall is that some of Mrs. Haslem’s diamonds had gone missing.”

“Is the maid suspected of stealing them?”

“I don’t know, because Mr. Haslem wouldn’t have any inquiries made. I had that from the solicitor’s clerk.”

“But this is incomprehensible. The man’s wife is poisoned and he keeps the woman suspected of it in his household. Her jewellery’s stolen, he does nothing to recover it and lets the maid run away. Isn’t it more likely that the maid poisoned Mrs. Haslem to save herself from being found out about the jewellery?”

“It wasn’t the maid she accused.”

“Accused or not, I want to speak to the maid before anyone else.”

He lent me a cob to ride and a boy on a pony to show me the way. As we trotted along together under the green leaves I thought it was a poor thing if I could only lift the noose from one young woman’s neck to drop it round another’s, but Harry as usual had me caught and bitted whether I liked it or not.

The bones were unearthed on a July afternoon so hot that nothing alive moved if it didn’t have to. Even trees drooped, stoic, waiting for a breeze that might or might not come.

Sheriff Carroll Farmer slid gingerly onto the vinyl-covered seat of his county car, cursing softly at the need to haul himself out into the open. But one of the honchos brought in to run the new automobile assembly plant was putting in a swimming pool, and the excavation crew had uncovered human bones. Resigned, Farmer adjusted his sunglasses and kicked the A/C into high.

The small town of Wayside cooked under its blue metal sky. Its rolling southern fringe, where the new upscale development lay, looked deceptively green and cool under tall old trees. The house in question was an imposing white brick, and near the foot of its sweeping back lawn was a large raw hole. The sheriff recognized all the work crew lounging in the shade. Laid out carefully on a tarp in the grass was a display of yellowish bones. Farmer and the crew foreman, Don Anderson, squatted beside them, wiping sweat.

“Well, they’re not recent, they’re old,” Farmer observed with some relief.

Anderson grunted assent. “Been there for years, looks like. Didn’t find any clothing. Prob’ly rotted away.”

Without touching it, the sheriff studied a skull crusted with dirt. “Not a whole body here.”

“I shut down soon as the scoop brought these up,” Anderson said. “Called you right away.”

“You did the right thing.”

“You suppose we’ve hit on an old cemetery?”

“I tend to doubt it,” Farmer said. “This was all King land out here. They’re buried in town.”

He took a pen from his shirt pocket and inserted it into an eyehole, tipping the skull slightly on its side. There was a round opening near its base.

“I’m going to call the coroner, Don. See that hole? What do you think?”

Anderson squinted. He whistled softly. “I think it looks like a bullet hole.”

“I think so, too. We’d better get Doc Ebenshaw out here before we do anything else.”

He radioed the coroner’s office from his car. Then he walked across the back lawn to introduce himself to the woman watching anxiously from the patio. Her name was Thorne, Virginia Thorne, she told him. She was his age, fortyish, a soft blonde with a worried frown.

“The county coroner’s on his way, Mrs. Thorne. I’ll know more once he takes a look. We haven’t got a complete body yet so we may have to do more digging. I hope you understand this is police business now.”

She sighed. “Just so it doesn’t take too long. My husband will be disappointed if he doesn’t get his pool in as soon as possible.”

Farmer gave her a smile. “We’ll try not to inconvenience you more than we have to.”

“I understand,” she said, trying to look like she meant it. “I guess I’ll just have to get used to the Midwest. We don’t usually find bodies in our backyards where I come from.”

The sheriff expanded his smile and made it kindly. “Well, ma’am, I’ve lived here all my life and this is the first I’ve found. I don’t expect it to happen again.”

Doc Ebenshaw arrived, pushing his barrel belly before him as he strolled across the lawn to the pool site, pungently assessing the weather with every step. He examined the bones for several long minutes.

“I’d say fifty years, maybe longer, they’ve been in the ground,” he announced finally. “I’ll have to have them tested before I can venture more. But that’s a bullet hole in the back of the skull for sure, so we’re talking murder. You’re not going to try to solve it, are you?”

“Pretty late in the day, I guess,” Farmer agreed. “But I’ll have to take a crack at it, won’t I? That’s my job.”

Ebenshaw snorted. “It’ll be interesting to see how you plan to go about it.” He wrapped the bones carefully in the tarp and tucked them under his arm. “I’m off. I’ll let you tell the lady of the house that we’ll be digging up most of her backyard.”

Farmer glanced across at Virginia Thorne waiting impatiently on her patio. No more kindly smiles. It was time to put on his law enforcement hat.

The man standing before a floor-to-ceiling window of an eighty-first-floor apartment in the Prudential Tower was lean, almost handsome, but at the moment wearing an expression that was worn, weary. It was almost dawn in Chicago, a wet, misty April morning. As he looked out over Lake Michigan, watching the day’s first light break grayly on the black expanse of water, his eyes reflected perplexity. A single thought plagued him.

How much longer, he wondered, can it go on?

A voice behind him asked, “Is that it for tonight, Mr. Harvard?”

James Harvard turned from the window. He was in a large, luxuriously appointed living room, in one corner of which was a custom-built octagonal poker table with an array of leather chips and playing cards on the green felt top. Four men, in various stages of weariness, sat at the table. Three of the men looked, respectively, incredulous, victorious, and embarrassed. The fourth, a professional gambler, was merely inscrutable. It was this man who had asked the question.

“Yes, I think that’s it for tonight,” Harvard answered. “What’s my tab?”

“One hundred fifty-six thousand,” said the gambler.

Harvard gestured to one of two room stewards who worked for the professional gambler, and the steward brought him his suit coat and held it for Harvard to put on. From an inside pocket, Harvard produced a checkbook and a Mont Blanc and stepped over to the room’s serving bar to write the check. As usual, he left the payee line blank.

“I’ve never seen a run of bad luck like that in my life,” he heard the incredulous player say from the table. You don’t know the half of it, Harvard thought wryly.

“We never should have let the betting get so high,” said the embarrassed player.

“Forget it,” said Harvard, turning from the bar with the check. “In every game of chance, there has to be at least one loser. It just so happens that in this particular game, I was the only loser. Fortunes of poker.”

“That’s the spirit, Jim,” said the third player, who had the most chips in front of him. He laughed a little too loudly, adding, “Hell, if I had your money, I’d throw mine away!”

Harvard handed the check to the gambler, who ran the game and would be paying off the winners. The gambler studied it for a moment with pursed lips. “I hope there won’t be any problem with this, Mr. Harvard,” he said quietly. “It’s a rather large check—”

“Would you like me to write you a dozen small ones?” Harvard asked drily.

“That’s what I like about you, Jim,” said the victorious player. “No matter how much you lose, you can still joke about it.”

“Next to my ability at cards, I’m most noted for my sense of humor,” Harvard replied with a slight, sardonic smile. He slipped his arms into a tan London Fog the steward was holding. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, and left.

On the way down in the elevator, Harvard said to the uniformed operator, “I’ll bet you twenty dollars that we stop at least twice before we reach the garage.”

The operator, a black man with processed hair and knowing eyes, glanced at his wrist watch and said, “All right, sir, I’ll take that bet.” Smiling, he added, “There’ll be a blond hooker leaving about now, on fifty. After that, it should be nonstop to the garage.”

At fifty, the car stopped and the blonde got on. She was one of those soft blondes, smart-looking in an Antonio Fusco cashmere suit, carrying a Prada shoulder bag. She smiled briefly at Harvard but did not flirt.

After the elevator reached the parking garage without another stop, Harvard waited until the blonde got off, then peeled a twenty from the money-clipped fold of currency in his pocket and handed it to the operator, saying, “Thanks for the action.”

“My pleasure, sir,” the operator replied.

By the time Harvard got to his gun-metal gray Jaguar, the blonde was already driving out in a white Mercedes. Harvard got into the Jag, but before starting the engine, he took a moment to rest his head back against the cold leather seat and wondered, How did it get this bad? How did it go this far? He thought of the racetracks, the billiard matches, the lottery tickets, the trips to Atlantic City, the football and baseball and basketball and hockey games, the boxing matches that the wrong fighter won. And the illegal poker and dice games played in plush apartments high above the city. Four million, he thought, in less than a year. Almost his entire inheritance. It was unreal.

Finally starting the car, he drove up to street level, exited into a misting rain, and turned onto Lake Shore Drive, heading north toward the wealthy suburbs.