Absolute rage

11

"Why don't we, " Marlene said, " Find that gun?"

"What gun is that?" asked Poole without much interest. They were dining at Rosie's in the courthouse square, McCullensburg. Rosie's served what Marlene always thought of as mom food, although Marlene's actual mom had not served the sort of food Rosie served, or rather Gus served, Gus being the current Rosie. Gus's meat loaf on Thursday was famous throughout the county, as was the fried chicken on Wednesday and the batter-dipped catfish on Friday. Sugar was the major condiment in Gus's cuisine, and grease the prevailing flavor. The food was, however, always served very hot, and in large quantities, which seemed to meet the needs of the locale, and Marlene's needs, too, as it was a welcome relief from the food fascismo prevalent at the time in lower-Manhattan upper-bourgeois circles. The place was friendly, the service was swift, the atmosphere was full of the good-natured joshing that passes for wit in the provinces, where everyone knows all the jokes and everyone else's foibles. Tonight, Marlene was going with the chicken-fried steak and mashed pot., w/peas; her partner had the open roast-beef sandwich, w/fries.

"The murder weapon," she said. "I think I know where it is."

A fork of Rosie's grayish roast beef was poised halfway to his mouth and stopped there when she said this. "Excuse me, but I thought we had agreed to leave all that to the pros from now on." He ate the morsel. He was eating better since Marlene had arrived. He wondered whether he would go back to being a nonfunctional drunk when she left.

"Yes," she said, "but this is practically a gimme."

"A gimme?"

"Yeah. It was the boots, and something Swett said this afternoon. He said the killers would've tossed the incriminating stuff down an old mine shaft, the gun, I mean. He suggested that Mose did just that. But they didn't, the actual killers didn't do that at all. They threw the bloody sneakers into the laurel and the bloody boots off the 130 bridge. Why? Because besides not being criminal geniuses in the first place, they were drunk. One of them tosses his sneakers in the laurel when he gets back to the car. The other one doesn't notice his boots are blood-covered until later, and he throws them off the bridge as they pass by, and at that point he remembers, oh, the gun, the pistol, they can trace that, so the pistol goes in there, too."

Poole looked at her narrowly, still chewing slowly. "If you're serious, I think our pollution is starting to affect your brain. That's not only a stupid idea, it's a McCullensburg-stupid idea."

"Oh? And why is it stupid?"

"It's pure speculation based on associating facts that have no logical association, like our fella who thought the weather had something to do with the moon shot. Shoes in the laurel, shoes in the river, hence gun in the river. Why not gun in the laurel? Or shoes in the river but gun down the mine. Or keep the gun. They don't like getting rid of weapons in Robbens County anyway. The people are poor, and they typically have so little to fear from the law. Plus, everyone in the county knows that Dummy Welch goes frogging under that bridge and sleeps there from time to time. Maybe the boots were a crude attempt to frame our client. Which worked, as it turned out."

"You never mentioned that before," said Marlene accusingly.

"The greatest legal mind in Robbens County is more functional than it was a short while ago."

"I think it's worth a look, anyway," said Marlene, deflated somewhat. "There's hardly any water in there this time of year, I'm told. Two, three feet at the most."

"And opaque. What were you planning to do, feel for the gun with your toes? And what if you find it? How is that going to help our client? You expect to find prints on it after weeks in the sort of corrosive water that flows through the lovely Guyandotte? You'd be lucky to find more than a rusted frame."

Marlene shrugged. "Maybe. It's always nice to have the murder weapon." She turned her attention to her steak, although her appetite had faded in the face of the resentment she now felt welling up in her. Now she was getting legal lectures from a man she was recently hosing down in a bathtub to get him sober enough to walk. It was unbearable, especially as the idea she had germinated was revealed as a stupid one, a typical bit of girl-detective nonsense. On the other hand, she had experienced odd ideas in the past that had paid off. She had figured out cases, including ones far more complex than this one, against far smarter criminals than these appeared to be. It was all very well for Poole to dismiss her smugly like that, like a man…

Marlene was by no means a doctrinaire feminist. She had never had many problems competing with men, and the one area where she admitted some inferiority was nicely evened up by a two-hundred-pound guard dog and, where necessary, a pistol. But just now, with Karp coming to take the whole thing away from her, and Poole acting as if he just had, some darker mud had been stirred up, thick and toxic like the sludge below the Guyandotte, and she started to obsess.

"Can I get you folks some dessert?" asked Mamie, the waitress. Unlike waitpersons in more civilized places, she did not describe what was on the menu, since nearly everything was displayed in cake stands on the lunch counter, and what Rosie's had on offer had not changed in twenty years.

Poole wanted blackberry pie. Marlene laid some money on the table and stood up. "I just remembered something I have to do," she said, and left.

She drove back to the Heeney place. "What do you think, huh?" she said to her companion. "Don't you ever have instincts where you know you're right? Of course you do. That's all you do have, is instincts. If you were half the dog you should be, you could dive into that river and come out with the goddamn gun between your teeth."

And more of the same. The dog let her rant and licked the fragrance of chicken-fried steak from her hand.

"Dan, have you got a magnet?" He was watching a Yankees-Orioles game on the TV, with a thick text on his lap and a beer at hand.

"What kind of magnet?"

"You know, a big, strong one, for dropping in water and pulling stuff out. Magnetic stuff."

"Yes, magnets don't work on nonmagnetic stuff. I speak as a professional physicist here. How about that one?" He gestured to the door to the dining room. At its foot was a black object the size and shape of a small brick, with an eyebolt growing from its center.

"The doorstop?"

"Yeah, we got it from mail order when we were kids. We used to use it to find stuff underwater."

"That's what I want it for. Can I borrow it, and some strong rope?"

"May I ask?"

"You may, but I'd be embarrassed to tell you. Did you ever get an idea that you knew was dumb, but you had to go ahead and try it or you couldn't get any peace?"

Dan felt himself blushing. His idea of that category was to get on a plane and drop in on Lucy Karp, unexpected and uninvited. "Yeah, most of my ideas are like that. You're looking for the gun, right?"

"You got it. Oh, also, do you have, like, waders?"

"Emmett had a pair. I think they're still in the cellar." Dan got out of the bed. "Come on, we'll fix you up."

An hour later, Marlene found herself on the muddy banks of the Guyandotte River, in the shadow of a green-painted steel-and-concrete bridge. The river here was not more than a hundred feet wide, at this season running sluggish and shallow between high, slaty banks. The water itself was red-ocher with an uninviting sheen on it like beetles' wings, and it smelled faintly like the cabinet under her mother's sink. Gog the dog was wisely not splashing about in it but patrolling the bank, investigating holes and sprinkling the shrubbery.

She knew that she now stood on the spot where Moses Welch had found the boots. Assuming they were flung at approximately the same time from a moving car… She swung the magnet around her head a couple of times and heaved it out into the river. Nothing. Then: a can; another can; nothing; a muffler; something too heavy to move; a piece of angle iron; a Delco alternator.

The light was starting to fade, as were Marlene's expectations that this project was anything but what it had initially seemed, a stupid waste of time. No, the murder weapon was not going to magically appear on your magnet, you silly girl.

The dog barked sharply, twice. Marlene looked around. A boy was standing ten yards away, at the head of the little trail that led down from the road. He was about twelve, Marlene estimated, thin, and weirdly pale, like a mushroom. He was dressed in worn bib overalls on top of bare skin, and his feet were in old sneakers with the toes ripped off. His hair was the color of dead grass, and like grass on a hummock it stuck up in all directions. The dog bounded up to him and gave him a sniff-over. He neither flinched nor tried to pet.

"Does he bite?" He had a thin, nasal voice.

"Yes, but only bad people."

"Does he mind?"

"Yes. Come here, Gog." The dog came down the trail and stood by Marlene. She flung the magnet into the water again, telling herself it would be the last one.

"What're y'doin'?" the boy asked after the magnet came back with a piece of auto chrome.

"Looking for something. Want to help?"

"It ain't there."

"What isn't there?"

"What all you're lookin' fer. It ain't there."

"How do you know what I'm looking for, and how do you know it isn't there?"

"He says," said the boy confidently. " He says, tell her she ain't gonna find nothing in that river. He says to take you up the holler and he'll tell you who killed them and how it was done."

Marlene felt the thrill sweat pop out on her forehead and her lip. "Who are you?"

"Darl."

"Darl? Okay, Darl, you got a last name?"

"I cain't say. You come on with me now. He said." Darl turned and walked up the bank. At the top he stopped and made a beckoning gesture. Marlene gathered up her magnet and line and tromped out of the waders. At the truck, she parked Gog in the back and let the boy into the passenger seat. When she was in herself, she asked, "Where to?"

"Just straight." He pointed. It was full dusk now; she turned on her lights.

They drove north on the highway, which flanked the river and the railroad tracks that stitched the valley. The boy said nothing and ignored Marlene's conversational gambits until: "Turn right here."

She turned onto a county road, whose number she didn't catch, and after a mile or so, the boy turned her right again onto dirt and gravel. It was now quite dark. Every so often, the boy would say "Right up ahead" or "Go left," and she would hump the truck, in four-wheel drive, up some primitive track. Branches whipped against the windshield. The truck rolled and heaved like a small craft in a seaway, its headlight beams sometimes pointing to the heavens.

"Are we almost there yet?" she asked finally.

"It ain't fur now."

She checked her watch. They had been driving for about ninety minutes, and she had no idea where she was, except that it was somewhere on Belo Knob, the northern edge of it. After more driving, once along what seemed to be a rocky creekbed, the boy said, "Slow down here. Turn right."

She looked at him. His face seemed to glow in the dash lights, in a way that ordinary flesh should not. "Turn where? There's no road."

"There is. Just go through them bushes."

She hit the gas and wrestled the wheel around. Branches made shrieking sounds on the metal. It was a track at least, a steep tunnel through rank overgrowth. Then they were clear, and she felt on her cheek the changed air that meant open space. The high beams cast out across a small mowing, the grasses chest-high, and the edge of a structure.

"That's it," said the boy. "You can shut your lights off now."

She did so, and the engine, too. The sound of crickets and the faint breeze in the grasses. A nightbird called. As her vision adjusted, she saw a dim light ahead, a window in a small building. She walked toward it, following the boy.

It was a farmhouse, long disused. Tall grass grew through the sun-bleached steps. There was no door. The boy made an odd gesture, like a headwaiter motioning toward a table. She entered and found that a sheet had been hung from a low ceiling, behind which there was a kerosene lantern, the only source of light. She could make out the silhouette of a seated man.

"Sit down," said a low voice, an old man's voice, rough and rumbling.

A stool had been placed in the center of the floor. She sat.

"I got me a gun here, so don't go a-gettin' no ideas about coming round this cloth. You understand?"

"Yes. Who are you?"

"Never you mind that. I know what I'm talkin' about though, so listen good. I reckon you know that slow Welch boy didn't do those Heeneys."

"Of course he didn't."

"You'd like to know who did do it though."

"Yes, I would."

"It was Earl Cade, and Bo Cade, and Wayne Cade, and George Floyd. They done it on orders from Lester Weames, on account of that union business. Red Heeney was going to get an investigation of the union goin' and Lester couldn't stand that. So he had to go."

"How do you know this?"

"I know what happens on Belo Knob."

"Well, good for you, but so what? I don't know who you are, or where you got your information. Why should I believe you?"

"They was paid, warn't they? Cades'll kill for fun, but this wasn't no fun killin'. They was paid cash money, ten thousand dollars. Earl was boastin' on it. How'd he get that fancy truck of his? No Cade ever could keep a secret."

"But you're not a Cade." Marlene's thoughts went back to the barbecue supper with the Heeneys, back to things Rose had said, things Poole had let slip. The boy's not telling his surname. "You're a Jonson, aren't you? What's your name?"

He ignored this. "Listen. They cain't touch him, the law's no good around here. But you're from away. That's why I'm tellin' you. You check the money, Weames's money, you'll see."

"What about the pistol? The boy said you might know where the pistol is."

"Well, they didn't throw it down a mine. You look around them all, it'll turn up. Now, that's all I got to say."

The shadow moved, growing large, then shrinking as the man approached the lamp. Marlene heard a clink and a hiss of breath. The room went dark, leaving Marlene blinking at the ghostly afterimage of a white rectangle that shrank into nothing. She stood up, knocking over the stool, and fumbled in her pocket for her keys. She pressed the stud on the tiny key-chain light and the room glowed in its beam. No one was behind the sheet. A back door swung loose on a single hinge. She listened for footfalls or the sound of a car engine, but heard nothing more than the eternal crickets and the wind in the grass.

Through this grass she walked then, guided by her light. She found the truck, let the dog into the shotgun seat, slipped behind the wheel, and thought, idly rubbing the dog's ears to improve concentration. The hidden man had seemed to know what he was talking about. At the very least he had confirmed her suspicions. The question was going to be how to prove it in court. Not my department anymore; wait for Butch, and then what? Offer it up and depart? Probably. How did they know I'd be at that bridge? Somebody told them. Who knew? Poole and Dan. Couldn't be Dan, had to be Poole. Ask him, but not now. Now, should she continue her string of stupid moves and try to find her way off this mountain on steep, unmarked trails in the pitch dark, or should she just sit here with her dog and wait for morning light? She put the question to the dog and got the sensible answer she expected.

All of them were packed into the black Ford Explorer: Lucy, the twins, Tran, and two young Vietnamese men, part of a shifting crew that Lucy had started to call privately the Lost Boys. Freddy Phat drove. Where were they going? A surprise, said Tran. They drove briefly on the highway and then turned off into what looked like an extensive industrial district, a reminder of Bridgeport's glory days as the national machine shop and instrument maker. Most of the factories were vacant, their yards weed-grown, their windows staring, glassless. They stopped before a chained gate in a long chain-link fence around what seemed to be a large, derelict industrial property. One of the boys jumped out and unlocked the chain.

"What is this place, Uncle?" Lucy asked.

"It is a cement plant. I own it."

"I thought you were in the restaurant business."

"Yes, but one must diversify." He used the English word. "Or so I have read. Besides, you know, I am a gangster, and all gangsters must have a cement plant."

"Are we going to observe you constructing a concrete canoe for a squealer?"

"Of course not. Such an event would not be suitable for your brothers. No, we are going to shoot."

The property was extensive. They passed a row of gray, peak-roofed buildings equipped with silos and smokestacks and came to a huge sandpit. A crude plywood table was at the lip of the pit and an old wooden swivel chair. Out in the pit against a mound of sand some twenty-five yards away stood a structure of two-by-fours like a giant easel. The Lost Boys got out of the SUV with a brown duffel bag and laid it clanking on the table. Then they went into the pit and stapled a number of silhouette targets to the two-by-four frame.

Freddy Phat lined up the weapons on the table, with stacks of clips and magazines, like cakes at a bake sale. There was an AK-47 assault rifle, a Skorpion submachine gun, a Beretta 9mm pistol, and a Colt.45 Gold Cup. Everyone put earplugs in. The two Lost Boys fired first, then Freddy Phat. Tran sat in the swivel chair and made comments in Vietnamese, mostly to do with not wasting ammunition, firing shorter bursts, keeping control. He did not seem all that concerned with the marksmanship of his staff. The twins and Lucy stood back and watched. The Lost Boys stopped firing and replaced all the shredded targets.

Then it was the twins' turn. Lucy watched Tran showing Zak how to fire the Beretta, placing his feet, arranging his hands on the weapon. Tran's horrible scarred hands against the smooth flesh of the boy's hand. She recalled Tran teaching her to shoot in the same way, when they were in the city. She was younger then than the boys were now, and mad for shooting.

Tran took Zak through all the weapons, crouching behind him supporting his arms when necessary. Zak's face was shining with joy. Then Giancarlo, just the pistol and the Skorpion, and then he said he had a headache and withdrew.

Tran turned to Lucy with an inquiring look. "No, thank you, Uncle, not today."

"You used to enjoy it so much."

"Yes. But now I don't think it's good for me to shoot, especially not at man targets. I can't not think about what the bullets are meant to do, to people's bodies. It makes me too sad."

He nodded and looked sad himself.

"But aren't you going to shoot?" she asked.

In answer he removed a small weapon from his jacket pocket.

"Oh, you still have the Stechkin," she said.

"Yes. You remember you were always plaguing me to let you fire it, and I would not. Would you like to now?"

"I don't think so," she answered, smiling. "I missed my chance, I think."

He turned toward the firing line, hefting the little weapon.

Zak asked, "What is that? Another pistol?"

"Yes, but a machine pistol. It's very rare. Most people can't shoot one very well."

"But he can."

"Yes," Lucy said. "Tran does most things very well."

Tran shot. In an instant the center of the target vanished into flapping rags.

After the shooting party, they all went to one of Tran's restaurants and in a private room had stuffed squid and garlic quails. Lucy was glad the boys had been trained from an early age to eat everything, and they did not disgrace her in the American fashion by demanding hamburger. After the meal they returned to Tran's house, where their host and his minions departed for their regular evening round of inspection, collection, and terrorization. Lucy took her brothers, who were hyped and restless, on a walk through the parklike neighborhood. They found a playground, a basketball court, and three kids of around fourteen playing horse in the fading light. Did they want to have a game, Lucy asked them, and after some nervous hesitation, they agreed. They had expected a walkover, a girl and two little kids, but the Karps had been playing b-ball together for a long time, and Lucy was as good a player as you were likely to find outside of a top-flight college team. Zak was an excellent shot and aggressive even against kids twice his weight, although he shot whenever he had the ball. Giancarlo was a born point guard and had inherited from his father an almost preternatural sense of what everyone on the court was likely to do next. They played until they couldn't see anymore, winning two, losing one.

Later, as Lucy tucked them into their sleeping bags in the guest room, Zak said, "This was the best day of my whole life."

"I'm glad you liked it," said his sister. "What about you, GC?"

Giancarlo and Lucy exchanged a look. "Oh, definitely the best day, superterrific," lied Giancarlo out of love for his brother. Only Lucy knew how much he disliked shooting.

She mooched around the house for a while after that, made herself some tea, smoked a cigarette in the garden. Then she went into the house and, like the good girl she was, called her mom.

But was not surprised, nor disappointed, when Dan Heeney answered the phone.

"Oh, I was thinking about you," she said.

"Really?" This was actually the first time that a girl had said that to him. "How come?"

"I was out with the boys and a bunch of gangsters shooting machine guns today and I thought, 'Oh, I'll probably talk to Dan when I call Mom tonight and he'll ask me what I was doing and I'll say that, and he'll say, "No, really." ' "

"You're making this up." He laughed.

"Yeah, or, 'You're making this up.' No, really. My strange life. What's hopping in McCullensburg?"

"Oh, well, I don't know where to start. There's so much to do. We caught B.B. King's concert at Amos's roadhouse and brothel. Pavarotti's at the VFW hall. Most nights I just drop in at Rosie's to check out the wits and glitterati who assemble there nightly-Woody, Jay, Leo. It's like People magazine."

She laughed. "I mean really. "

"Oh, really? I'm studying matrix algebra and astrophysics. Working on my world-famous pyramid of Iron City beer cans. Waiting for this damn thing to resolve."

"My dad'll fix it."

"Yeah, that's what my dad thought," Dan snapped bitterly, "and look what it got him."

Lucy thought that between the two dads, hers struck her as the more competent fixer. She let the thought pass, but the mere mention of the case strummed the ever-tuned strings of responsibility in her, and she said, "Well, it'll work out somehow. Is my mom there?"

"No, as a matter of fact, she's out."

"Out? Where is she? It's pretty late."

"Oh, you know-McCullensburg, the city that never sleeps. I don't know where she is exactly. She had some whacked-out idea about using a big magnet to troll the river for the murder weapon. She thought she'd figured out exactly where it is. I thought it was kind of dumb, myself."

"It probably was. She can go off on an idea sometimes. That's how she lost her eye, you know."

"I didn't. What happened?"

"This was before they got married. She started obsessing about my dad's ex. She thought they were getting back together. Then she found an envelope addressed to him, from the city where the ex was living, and she opened it to see whether anything was really going on, and it was a letter bomb, meant for my dad, from this maniac. The funny thing was, she was the DA's expert on letter bombs at the time."

"Weird. She's sort of a strange woman, if you don't mind me saying so."

"Not at all. Which makes it odd that she has such perfectly normal children. Look, I'd like to chat more, but I hear my host is arriving. Would you do me a favor? Have her call me when she gets in-it doesn't matter how late it is. Okay?" She gave him the house number.

"Sure. Fine. By the way, you said you'd work on us getting together this summer. Any progress?"

"I promised my dad I would stay away until they catch the bad guys. Because of the twins."

"Uh-huh. Well, I guess it's going to have to be back at school."

"Oh, I don't know," said Lucy, "two Karps on the case, those guys're doomed."

Midnight. Lucy sat cross-legged on a cushion in the plain finished basement of Tran's house, using yenhok needles to prepare a pill of black Chinese opium for her host, who was reclining on a couch. She manipulated the tarry mass over the blue flame from a brass alcohol lamp, shaping and heating it all the way through, as he had taught her. It was curiously relaxing work. The lamp provided the room's only light.

She placed the pill in a long, carved pipe, brass-bound bone with an amber mouthpiece, and handed it to him. He took two long sucks from it and fell back against a cushion.

"You are good at this," he said after a while. "An opium chef as we call it. Do you feel corrupted?"

"Not at all. It seems a very innocent pleasure. And I like to see you relaxed."

"You're a good girl."

Another long pause. "And I am a very bad man. But when I take nha phien with you, I seem to float into another world, as if I am living a story different from the actual story of my life. As in the Tale of Kieu, the story of Kieu and the bandit chieftain. Do you remember that?"

"Yes. The bandit chieftain was really a decent man, forced by necessity into a cruel life. I always thought of you when I read it."

"Our sorrowful national epic. We Vietnamese are connoisseurs of sorrow, you know. We make the Russians look like the French. Or the happy Americans, the fortunate people. My hope is that the boys I bring over will in time learn something about this."

"Who are they?"

"Sons of my old comrades. Southerners, of the NLF. I find as many of them as I can, and whoever remains of the people I served with, and their families. We were all disgraced after the war. Insufficiently grateful to our northern comrades, too many bourgeois tendencies, our grandfathers could read, perhaps. We had imagined we were fighting for a better life, so we all had to be reeducated. It turned out that what we were fighting for was to give absolute power to a bunch of fat bastards who sat out the war in Hanoi bunkers. Imagine our surprise!"

"How can you get them out?"

"Oh, in Vietnam now anything can be arranged with money. The country is one great bazaar. The granddaughters of the Vietcong are selling themselves to fat Germans in Saigon hotels. Nothing changed. All the wars, twenty years of them, so that the pimps can be Vietnamese instead of French. Or Americans. You should have dropped dollars from your bombers instead of bombs; it would have been cheaper." He took another long drag and closed his eyes.

"You don't have to continue in this life," she said. "You could go anywhere. Start over."

"I do start over, my dear. Every night when I smoke my pipe I have a beautiful and quite different life."

"And then you kill more people."

"In fact, the last time I killed anyone it was rescuing you, do you recall? From those Chinese in that shop by the beach."

She felt a flush of shame. "I'm sorry, Uncle. I was being a prig. Who am I to judge you?"

He said nothing for several minutes. "No, I am far from offended. I believe that had I not met you and your mother, I would not have been a real person anymore. As it is, my goal is to keep violence"-he drifted for a moment-"to a minimum. If I died before I had to kill another person, I would be happy."

At this he fell silent. She stayed with him, drifting off herself into a semisleep, touched a little by the drug fumes, a state that provided just a taste of the famous silky dreams.

From which she was startled by a ringing phone. She climbed the stairs to the kitchen and picked up the receiver.

"Hai ba ba, nam sau bon bay."

"Lucy?"

"Yeah. Dan?"

"Uh-huh. What was that?"

"The number in Vietnamese. Is my mom okay?"

"Yeah, well, that's why I'm calling. It's two-thirty and she's not back. I called Poole's and she's not there either. I checked the cops and the hospital, too. I'm a little worried and you said to call…"

"Yes. Thank you. Do you know where she went?"

"She said something about the bridge on Route 130, north of town."

"Okay, good, I'll take it from here. You should get some sleep."

"You'll take it…?" he exclaimed, disturbed by the coldness in her tone. "What're you going to do?"

"Call my dad, for starters. Don't worry about it."

"Aren't you worried?"

He heard a long sigh over the wires. "Of course I'm worried. But I'm used to this. In my family we don't get all upset when someone goes missing. My dad calls it Karp Disaster Mode. I have to go now."

Karp had the answering machine on, so Lucy had to call six times before the accumulated disturbance penetrated her father's sleep.

"What happened?" No preambles at 3 A.M. He could feel his heart thump.

"I don't know. I'm at Tran's with the boys. Dan just called. Mom went out looking for a piece of evidence and hasn't come back."

"Oh, crap!" Karp knuckled his face, took a couple of deep breaths. "Okay, I'll get something organized. You have your cell phone?"

"Yeah. We were planning to go to Boston tomorrow. Should we come back home?"

"No, there's no reason for that yet. I hope. Just keep the phone up. You okay?"

"Fine. You'll call me as soon as you know something?"

"Right. Take care."

He punched off and found the number Hendricks had given him. A machine answered. Karp spoke to it, trying to control the urgency in his tone, so that he did not sound like a hysterical husband. He took a shower, then dressed and called airlines. He found a Continental flight to Cleveland out of La Guardia at six-thirty with a connection to Charleston that would have him there at ten thirty-eight. Only first class was open. He took the seat, one way. It cost about the same as a roundtrip to Buenos Aires, coach.

The phone rang as he was putting on his jacket. He told Hendricks what had happened, and his travel plans.

"Okay, I'll have you met at the airport," said Hendricks, "and I'll get a team down there. You say she was headed for the bridge over the Guyandotte?"

"Is that on 130?"

"Yeah. We call it the green bridge."

A pause. "What do you think? Should I worry? I mean, it's only one night…"

"No, you did good calling me. It pays to be worried if the Cades start messing with you."

The plane was delayed, as planes always are at La Guardia. Fortunately the turboprop was delayed at Cleveland, too, so that Karp, at the end of a desperate sprint to the gate, was allowed to stumble sweating out onto the tarmac and climb into the little plane.

They were waiting for him at Yeager Airport in Charleston, three Broncos with state markings and their engines running, and a dark sedan with Hendricks, in full uniform and dark Ray•Bans, leaning against the fender.

They shook hands. Karp tossed his bag in the trunk and jumped in the back with Hendricks.

"Any news?"

"I got the barracks at Logan working on it. She was there. Someone saw a red truck go by yesterday evening, headed north on 130. We've got troopers looking, but no luck so far."

The motorcade took off with sirens and lights. Forty-five minutes later they were at the state police barracks in Logan, just over the border from Robbens. There Karp observed that two of the Broncos were full of men in black jumpsuits and baseball hats.

"You expecting a war?" Karp asked.

"Something like that," said Hendricks. He left Karp in an office while he ordered his troops, Karp feeling useless and starting to feel stupid as well. From a distance he heard the thump of a helicopter, which added to the impression of a major, semimilitary operation.

Cheryl Oggert came in, looking crisp as a saltine in a tan shirtwaist dress. She had a paper bag in hand, containing coffee and sweet rolls.

"I wouldn't impose state police coffee on you," she said. "How're you doing?"

"I'm fine. What're you doing here?"

"Public relations."

"And spying for the governor."

"That, too. Are you worried?"

"Hendricks thinks I should be. On the other hand, Marlene is pretty resourceful."

"I hope she is. Are you going out with the search?"

"I'd like to. I haven't wanted to be a pain in the ass, though. Hendricks seems like he's fairly busy."

"You should go. I'll take care of it, if you want." She smiled and patted his hand.

Marlene had forgotten about the mosquitoes. She had no repellent, and even though she rolled all the windows up, they got in, attacking in squadrons. Sleep came in unsatisfying dribbles. She awoke stiff and itching to thin, silvery light coming through windows made opaque by condensation. Cursing, she staggered out of the truck into a heavy morning fog that had swallowed the farmhouse she had been in the previous night. Gog circled around her, sniffing. She found a clean rag in the truck and wiped the windows, using the soaked fabric also for a face wash. Inside, she cranked up the engine and wiped the rearview mirror, during which exercise she caught sight of her face and yelped in dismay. It was like a contour map drawn in scarlet, welts upon welts.

After driving slowly around the little clearing for some time, she found what she thought was the track up which they had come in the night. It was more like a tunnel than a road, but the sight of broken branches and deep tire tracks convinced her that she was going the right way. She had, of course, completely forgotten the directions of Darl, but this did not seem to be an insurmountable problem.

"It stands to reason," she explained to the dog, "if I pick the road that tends downward every time we meet another trail, then eventually we'll hit the river valley and the main roads, or if not, we'll still get off the mountain and reach the land of baths, whiskey, and Lanacane. And dog food. See, that's the advantage of partnering with a species that has higher mental functions. You could never have figured that out on your own, could you?"

After an hour or so of driving, during which the fog burned off considerably, she found herself on a steep, rocky road, little more than two ruts, with rank growth and even small trees growing up between them.

"This is what they call a divided highway in West Virginia," she said. "The ruts are divided by lovely ornamental sumacs. But lucky us, it's dropping real steep and I have a good feeling that just around this curve we will be able to see…"

She hit the brakes a little too late, just after she had become aware that the road had disappeared. What lay ahead was a great tangle of sunken, disturbed earth and fallen trees, as if a giant had pressed his foot down hard upon the earth. The truck tilted; Marlene screamed; the dog whined. Metal screeched upon rock, a heavy branch smashed against the windshield, as the truck skidded at a terrifying angle, down, off the road and into the churned-up area.

And stopped with a bone-jarring thump, nosed into the upended root ball of a toppled hickory. After she had stopped shaking, she got out to inspect the damage. The rear differential housing was wedged upon a boulder, leaving the rear wheels clear of the ground. The front wheels were buried to their upper rims in mud.

"Well, this truck needs a nice rest. It's not going anywhere without a wrecker. What we need, Gog, is a colorful Neapolitan dogcart, to which I would hitch you, and you would pull me in a leisurely fashion back to civilization. But you forgot your colorful Neapolitan dogcart, didn't you? You always forget your goddamn dogcart. What kind of best friend are you? A piss poor one. This is absolutely the last time I am taking you on a fun trip like this."

And so on as she labored up the slope. At the top she continued downward on what had been the shoulder of the putative road. Gradually, however, the ruts became fainter, the growth between them became more mature, until she found herself facing a twenty-foot-high mountain ash growing between the vague traces of wheel marks.

"Excuse me," she said to the tree, "could you tell me where I could catch the downtown D train?" Turning to the dog, she said, "This is entirely your fault. I will never listen to your stupid ideas again!"

Hendricks came into the office. "I'm going to go talk to someone who might know something about this. You want to come along?"

Karp did. They got in a Bronco with three of the black-clad officers. Hendricks drove.

"Where are we going?" asked Karp.

"See a fella I know." That was all Karp got during the forty-minute drive. They passed the green bridge and then headed west up increasingly primitive roads. Karp tried to recall his airborne geography lesson.

"We're on Burnt Peak, yes?"

Hendricks looked at him. "You got it." He turned into an overgrown driveway.

In a clearing stood a double-wide mobile home, painted pale green. A mud-covered white Mazda pickup sat in the yard, beside a scatter of toys, an inflatable pool, some bikes, a yellow mutt dog, and a towheaded boy of about seven, wearing swim shorts.

The dog barked. Hendricks got out of the Bronco and allowed the dog to sniff at him. To the boy he said, "Your papaw in there?"

A nod.

"Well, whyn't you go on in there and tell him Wade Hendricks wants to talk to him."

The boy ran into the trailer. A few minutes later a large-gutted man in an undershirt and stained green workpants stepped barefoot out onto the mobile home's concrete apron.

Hendricks advanced and shook the man's hand. "Russell. How you keepin'?"

"Pretty fair," said the man, not smiling. His chin indicated the Bronco. "I guess you ain't visiting."

"No, I'm not. This's police business. We're looking for a woman gone missing. Her name's Marlene Ciampi. She was Mose Welch's lawyer. The one from away."

"I heard about her. She's gone missing, you say?"

"Went out last night to the green bridge and didn't come back."

"Uh-huh. Well, how about that. She's got that Dodge four-by, ain't she? Red?"

"That's right. You seen it?"

"No, I ain't. I worked the late at Majestic last night. I'm just now getting up. You're here because of her runnin' the Cade boys off."

"That's right. You heard anything about maybe they was plannin' some get-even?"

"Tell you the truth, them boys is always running their mouths. I don't pay them much mind. They was red up, though. Earl, mostly. That lady needs to watch her step, I guess. But I didn't hear of no actual what you might call a plan."

Some polite talk about people Karp didn't know followed this exchange, and then Hendricks returned to the car and they rode off.

"What was that all about?"

"Oh, Russell is a good fella to talk to if the Cades have got up to any mischief."

"He's a Cade?"

"Related to them. It's good news, though. We're probably not dealing with foul play. On the other hand, if she decided to go cruising around these hills at night… well."

"An accident?"

"Maybe. More like she got stuck. Some of those roads peter out to nothing, or they're busted up by landslides or fall-ins."

"Fall-ins?"

"Yes, sir. All these hills are riddled with mine shafts. The pit props rot out and the shafts collapse and the land kind of sags. And there are fires. We got underground fires burning for years up here. They hollow out a whole rise and then the land just collapses like a rotten pumpkin. Then you got your sloughs. A slide blocks a creek and the water pools up and makes a little swamp. You go into one of those, and you might have a worry getting out. And there's rock slides-"

A squawk from the radio interrupted this dire catalog. Hendricks picked up the mouthpiece and talked and listened to what to Karp was incomprehensible garble.

Hendricks hung up the instrument. "They spotted the truck. It was stuck in a fall-in, but there was no sign of her. Up on Belo, the north side."

Three hours later, Karp, now in sodden shirtsleeves, tieless, his city shoes covered with mud, was leaning against the side of a Bronco, drinking from a plastic water bottle, when he saw his wife, or what seemed like his wife, striding down the dirt road, trailed by her dog and a couple of uncomfortable-looking troopers. Her face was mottled red and she was covered in stinking black mud from shoe (she had but one) to crown.

She spotted him. "One laugh and you're dead," she snapped, "and you probably forgot to bring bagels."