"The thing you want to do most is stay alive."

"I guess I"d give that the number one priority."

"I could trade some time, maybe. I don"t know how much time I"d need with her, or how much time I"d need after I get through with her. If I back off, far enough, and get the car keys to you, you could get away from here. But there"d be the problem of you going straight to a phone and messing me up."

"And you can"t take my word."

"I wouldn"t think so."

"And I can"t take yours, Henry. Stalemate."

"What?"

"It"s a chess term. Neither player has any way to win."

"Oh. By G.o.d, I sure messed up when I tried the idea of using that envelope. I guess I was edgy. I thought you were some dumb-dumb who"d look good to Mister Norm. Lilo told me it was a bad idea, but I told her to do it anyway."

"You left the envelope in the phone book in the booth when you went to deliver the Olds, eh? Then she picked it up and took it to Baither"s place."

"I guess you just fixed it so there"s no way I can leave you go now, McGee. Sure. Lew let her into Frank"s house to see where it happened. Gave her a chance to drop the envelope when Lew wasn"t looking. All she had to do was promise Lew a quick piece. Lew was so hooked on it, he"d have chopped up his old mother and sold her for cat food for a chance to get into Lilo"s pants. She kept that boy on short rations."

Lilo was trying to tell me something with her eyes. Pleading. Working her mouth around. I leaned and got an edge of the tape with my thumbnail and ripped the X off her mouth. She tongued the spitty ma.s.s of Kleenex out and swallowed several times.

She said in a low voice, "I know where a lot of money is. He wants to make me tell him. If you kill him, I"ll tell you. We can take it all and go away."

"Killing is something I charge high for."

"Your end would be four hundred and fifty thousand. Right down the middle. No tricks. I wanted to leave him out because he"s stupid. You"re not. I need somebody like you to help me with it."

"No tricks."

She smiled her happy smile, her pretty and disarming urchin grin. "No tricks, honey. Ever."

"So tell me right now where it is. You know. Give me a motivation."

"Afterward. I promise. Get this tape off, huh?"

Henry shouted from a new position outside the trailer, "Having a little talk, are you? She trying to sell you something, McGee?"

"She"s trying to sell me you, Henry."

I saw her face contort, and I put my fingers to my lips before she could join the conversation. I reached and heeled her jaw shut and put the old X of tape back on, tore some more strips and sealed her off, and once again she tried the bonds, in a convulsion so violent it seemed possible she might break bones in the effort.

"You know what she is?" Henry called.

"I"ve got a pretty good idea."

"What she was doing to Frank kept making me sick to my stomach, McGee. I was over at the window, gagging, when he finally told her, his voice so weak I couldn"t hear it. She had that ice pick into his heart before I could take half a step. She wanted to make sure he wouldn"t say it twice. You want to trust her?"

"I don"t want to trust either one of you."

Again he had changed his position. He was moving quietly. "It"s that word you said before. Stalemate?"

He was back near the pile of block under the window above the bunk bed. I could guess the chance he was thinking of taking. Crouch on the block then come erect and fire through the screen. The window was three feet square, and the bottom sill was about twenty inches above the level of the bed. I debated the idea of backing off and then taking a dive out the window. The unhooked screen would swing out. But I would have to hit it hard enough to carry all the way through, to get my legs high enough to clear the sill. I would overshoot him and land sprawling and rolling away from him, giving him the perfect shot, because he would have time to recover from surprise before I could reverse direction and get back to him. If I waited until his silhouette popped up in the window, I"d give him a wing shot.

The last thing he would expect would be for me to come back outside where he had the considerable edge. I slipped my shoes off and leaned closer to the window. "Henry, if you are thinking of taking a pot shot through the window, I"ve got her right in front of me. Think it over."

I gathered my four oyster knives and went toward the door as quickly and as quietly as I could. He would think it over for a few seconds, and realize his best move would be to suddenly yank the screen off and stand up and cover me and the girl at close range. He could come in over the sill and have it all his own way, because he could get so close I couldn"t use her for cover. She was too small.

Out the door and down, and quickly around the front of the thing. Heard the tinny clatter of the falling screen as I rounded the last corner. Henry leaning in the window, fifteen feet away. Miguel"s voice from long ago, speaking inside my head. "The elbow, amigo, should point toward the target, and it should not move until after the release. At the release the arm is straight, then it moves down so the hand ends up to the rear of the right calf of the leg. Throw strong, but never hurry it. The left foot is ahead of the right, both knees bent. The knife is close to the right ear before the throw. The wrist, it is locked. It does not move. The aim is to the center of the body. If it is an armed man, finish the throw with a dive to the ground, and then roll to the right, if it is a right-handed man, because he must then swing the gun to fire across his body, which is more difficult, no?"

So, squinting in the dazzle of sunlight against bright aluminum, I threw strong, and plucked the second blade from my left hand and threw strong again, and dived forward and rolled hard to the right, found the third blade as I came up, heard the close-range shot, felt the sting of gravel against my thigh, knew as I released the third that I had hurried it too much and was off target. Nearly dropped the fourth, fumbling for it, snapped it back into position, and held it there as Henry in a crooked crouch showed me his white grin, fired directly down into the ground, and tumbled off the block lifting his arms to break the fall. He rolled onto his back and over onto his face, an arm pinned under him. Both legs quivered and kicked and leaped about, like a dog asleep in a dream of running. Then he flattened against the packed earth in that unmistakable stillness, that death-look which changes the clothes into something stuffed with cold ground meat.

I had a sudden chill which chattered my teeth. I approached him. His left arm was flexed, hand over his head. Right hand and gun were somewhere under him. The first one had to be the one socketed into the left armpit, hitting when he was still leaning in the window. Another lay on the ground by the blocks, unstained. A third was hanging by the tip from a long groove it had sliced in the aluminum side, under the window. There wasn"t much blood on the coveralls near the protruding steel handle. It had to have done a mortal damage in there, in the arteries above the heart.

"So a knife is ogly Travees? I know. And a gun is ogly and death is ogly. Sometimes there is only a knife to use. And the difference is the knowing how to do it. We are here for a time. So? Why not learn from one who knows, to pa.s.s the time?"

Thank you, Miguel. Thanks for the lessons. Without them both of us would be dead, instead of only you. Sleep well.

Eighteen I WENT BACK into the increasing oven temperature of the trailer. She had wormed herself around so she could watch the door, sweating so heavily in the heat she looked oiled. I could see the momentary astonishment in the lift of black brows. She had no reason to believe the shots had not gone into me.

And if I could walk in, the stepdaddy had to be dead. The upper half of her face changed, showing that she was trying to smile under the black tape. If I took it off, she would tell me that all is well, lover. We bury Henry in the marsh. Half the money is yours. We"ll be a great team.

I sat on the corner of the bed and looked at her. Making someone dead is a game for the unimaginative, for someone who cannot ever really believe they, too, can die. The curse of empathy is to see yourself in every death, and to see the child hidden in the body of every corpse. The local box score was sick-making. Hutch, Orville, Baither, Lew Arnstead, Betsy Kapp, Henry Perris. Might as well add Linda Featherman. Meyer came close to being on the list.

I don"t know what she read in my face, but it took the smile-try away. Her eyes turned watchful. Glossy black hair was sweat-matted, and droplets slid down her cheeks, her ribs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly, darkening the faded blue spread.

I got up and opened the other windows so some breeze could come through. Her eyes followed me. I stopped by the bed and said, "Somebody will come after you, Lillian."

Violent negative shake of the head. Grunting attempts at speech. She doubled further, grinding her mouth against her round knees, trying to wipe the tape off.

I took a last long look at her. "I wouldn"t want to hear anything you could say. I wouldn"t want the whole score, if you were part of the deal. Or double the score."

I put the screen back on and went inside and hooked it. I made sure the other screens were all hooked. I locked the trailer and put the keys in my pocket, sat on the low step outside and tied my shoes. I had to touch Henry"s body to get the keys to the Buick.

After a quarter mile I rolled the windows up and turned the air on full, aiming the outlets at me. My shirt was unb.u.t.toned, and the chill air dried my sweaty chest. I found my way out to Sh.e.l.l Ridge Road, and turned back on it, heading northeast.

When I came to the Perris place, I turned in and went to the door. An elderly woman, tall and stringy, opened the door and looked at me without expression. She was saffron-brown, the racial mix of Seminole and black in her face.

"Are you Nulia?"

"Yem."

"Miss Perris asked me to stop and tell you that she won"t be back tonight, and neither will Mr. Perris."

"Fixing to go on home now, back to keer for my own. No way I can stay on. She know that."

I found one of Lennie Sibelius"s fifty-dollar bills, damp with my exertions. I handed it to her and said, "Please stay on and look after Mrs. Perris, Nulia."

She looked at it and would not let herself be impressed. "Some bad thing going on, cap"n?"

"You could say that."

"I pray to the Lord ever living day of my lifetime for the devil to come a-crawlin" up out of h.e.l.l, huffin" fire and stompin" his clove hoofsies, and claim his own, and s.n.a.t.c.h her back down to the black pit and the eternal fire." She put the fifty in her ap.r.o.n pocket. "I"ll stay take keer, but working for you, cap"n, not her, til you come tell me stop. Much obliged."

Twenty after five by the bank clock when I got to the center of town. Temperature: ninety-two degrees.

Parked beyond the patrol cars. Went inside. Business as usual. One of the brisk ones behind the high counter said that the sheriff was busy. I said I wanted to see him right now. It did not sound like my own voice. He looked at me and read something in my face that made him go into a point like a good bird dog.

A few minutes later he took me to Hyzer"s office and stood behind me. I said, "I want to tell you some things. You ought to have your tape rolling. I would like to have King Sturnevan here to listen to it."

"He"s off duty."

"Can you call him in?"

Hyzer found a number on a list under the gla.s.s on his desk, dialed it, and in the silence I could hear the burr of the rings at the other end. He hung up after the eighth. "Will Billy Cable do?"

I thought it over. It had to be one or the other of them. It couldn"t be both. I nodded. Hyzer told the desk man to tell communications to call Billy in.

I sat in a chair six feet from the desk and waited. Sheriff Norman Hyzer continued with his desk work in faultless concentration. In seven minutes by the wall clock, Billy Cable knocked and came in. He looked at me with hard-faced antagonism.

"Can you have him sit over there beside the desk, so I can watch his face, Sheriff?"

"What kind of s.h.i.t is this?" Billy said.

"Sit over here, Cable," Hyzer ordered. "The tape is on, McGee."

"Sheriff, did you ever hear how one of the planets, one way way out from the sun, was discovered? n.o.body had ever seen it because not enough light hit it, and they didn"t know it was there and didn"t know where to look."

"You called me in off patrol to listen to-?"

"Keep your mouth shut, Billy."

"They measured the pattern of orbit of all the other planets, and they found out that the pattern wasn"t quite right, that there had to be some gravitational attraction they hadn"t found yet. So they worked up the math and figured out where to look and found it. I know the patterns aren"t right. I can"t make them fit. So somebody else has to be in this. Somebody has exerted force and pressure to distort the patterns, Sheriff."

"What sort of things have impressed you as being... a divergence from the norm, Mr. McGee."

"You diverge a little, Sheriff. You have this great air of efficiency and high moral rect.i.tude. People seem to believe that you know everything that goes on in your county. Yet you let one of your deputies run a call-girl operation right under your nose, using his badge to muscle them into the operation."

"Sherf, do you want me to-"

"You are going to listen to this with your mouth shut, Cable, if I have to have you bound and gagged."

"Yes, sir."

Hyzer was looking at me attentively. I said, "You also took the risk of demoralizing your own troops, Sheriff, by letting Arnstead get away with acts which would have gotten another deputy tossed out. When you finally did bring charges against him and threw him out, it surprised him."

"Go on, please."

"And I cannot understand your appraisal of Lilo Perris. There are enough people in this county who know that she is a sick, vicious, twisted, dangerous, rotten animal so that somehow some of the information should have filtered back to you. You did a nice job of reconstructing the money-truck job as being Baither"s project. You must have known the previous relationship between Baither and the Perris girl. She would be the logical one to have played the part of the young waitress in a blond wig. But you either have a blind spot, or you want to sell others that blind spot by calling her just a healthy, high-spirited young lady. So that either puts you into the middle of the scene, Sheriff, or it means that somebody has a kind of leverage they can use on you which can prevent you from doing the kind of job you pretend to do."

"She may have foolishly placed herself in a position where-"

"Sheriff! Here is a letter I have been carrying around with me. I had it hidden in the car. Betsy Kapp wrote it a few months ago to Lew Arnstead. As a practicing student of human nature, I think you will agree that it has that perfect ring of truth. It ill.u.s.trates one of those... positions she foolishly placed herself in." I leaned and flipped it onto the desk, saying, "I suppose you could bring in Roddy Barramore and get a confirmation."

He read it to himself, and it made the skull-shape show through the flesh and skin. His face seemed to shrink and dwindle. He cleared his throat and, in a flat voice, read it into the record. I could see that it cost him, but I could not understand why.

He said, "When Mrs. Kapp is located, I will want to get further confirmation from her that she wrote this letter."

"Mrs. Kapp was wired to a tree sometime Sunday evening. The wire was around her throat, and she is very very dead."

Hyzer picked his hat up and stood up. "You"ll take us there right now."

"When I"m through. A little delay won"t make a d.a.m.ned bit of difference to her."

After a long hesitation he sat down. "Where did you get this letter?"

"I found one of Lew"s little hidey-holes." I reached into the front of my shirt and heard Billy"s hand slap at his holster, and I quickly pulled out the packet of pictures. I tossed them onto the desk. "Arnstead"s sample case. Arnstead"s Rent-a-Broad. I know who some of them are. Lilo Perris, for example. Geraldine Kimmey. Linda Featherman."

Billy hitched his chair closer, leaning to peer at the photographs as Hyzer examined them.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Billy said.

I said, "Don"t act as if you never knew he was in the business, Billy."

"h.e.l.l, I knew he had some hustlers working. But Miss Kimmey! And the Featherman girl? h.e.l.l, no!"

"Sheriff, Betsy Kapp"s body is not far from the place where Lew Arnstead had his number-one storage place. Somebody tore the place up and found his barrel safe under the fire brick on the hearth and tore it open and had a bonfire. I think that"s where he hid the items that gave him the most leverage over the women. Special pictures, written confessions, a.s.signment lists, date, time, price, and place. So somebody very interested in removing all evidence regarding some specific girl could have gone there and burned the records on all of them, and taken the money he kept there. They could have known or suspected Lew was dead, and wanted to keep somebody else from picking up where he left off. Or they could have thought he was still living, and wanted to put him out of business, or get one specific girl off the hook. Or maybe they didn"t want anybody to ever be able to prove that one of Mister Norm"s deputies had been running a string of women."

"Lots of possibilities, Mr. MCGee."

"Try another one, too. Lew and Betsy Kapp had a special relationship that was different from the setup he had with his other women. He could have told her about that place, and she could have gone there at the wrong time, when somebody was cleaning it out."

"Shall we go now?"

"After some more possibilities and some things I know are true, Sheriff. Five people on the truck job. Baither, Perris, Hutch, Orville, and Lilo. Hutch and Orville came into the area, probably quite a while back. I think I know where you should look for the bodies. About that envelope. Lilo got into the Baither house before she let Lew take her into the pump house. The previous night she worked on Baither until he told her where to find the money. Henry was there. But it had made him sick and he had walked away from it and didn"t hear it. So she put the ice pick into Baither so he wouldn"t tell it twice."

Hyzer folded his hands and rested them on the edge of the desk and sat with his eyes closed. The phone rang. He picked it up. "Sheriff Hyzer. Yes, King. Go ahead. What! All right. Go back there and stay there. We"ll be along."

He hung up and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, scowling. At last he looked at me and said, "McGee, as long as we"re putting the cards face up, I"ll tell you that Sturnevan wasn"t off duty. I got permission to let him work in the county to the south of us. I"m the only one who knows that. The call I made to his home was just some misdirection. I had him put a beeper on Henry Perris"s Rambler and hook up the directional equipment in his own private car. He just phoned in to say Perris got away from him, and he had to spend a lot of time cruising back roads until he found the one that would finally take him in the right direction to locate the car. He found Perris and the girl. They"re dead."

I hadn"t worried about the fingerprints, or the tire prints of the Buick. And Nulia would talk about her fifty dollars. "The girl was all right when I left the trailer," I said. "But Henry wasn"t. He was dead. I killed him. I came here from there."

Cop eyes. Suddenly you are on the other side of an invisible fence, and they stare across the fence at you, like a rancher would stare at a sick steer.