Absolute rage

14

Lucy drove the Land Cruiser down the Heeneys' long drive, smiled and waved at the state trooper, rolled slowly through the gauntlet of newsies, who pointed cameras and microphones at her and yelled questions. Does he think his brother did it? How does he feel? That's what they always asked. How do you feel now that your kid's been eaten by the bear, your mother hacked to pieces by a maniac? She thought it was because everyone felt dead inside and thought they could jumpstart their own withered hearts by some transfusion of pain from the victims of a catastrophe. Surely they felt something. It was a kind of vampirism; maybe that's why tales and movies about vampires were so popular just now.

Past the media encampment she gave it the gas, and once the vans and cars had vanished in the rearview, she called, "You can come out now." The boys were clapping and giggling as Dan climbed out from the rear compartment, where he had been concealed by a beach blanket and Magog the dog. He sat in the rear, next to Giancarlo.

"How far to the border?" Dan asked.

Lucy met his eyes in her mirror. "Not far but the Nazis are everywhere."

Giancarlo said, "You have dog slime in your hair."

Dan touched his head, examined his wet finger, and touched it to the boy's nose, provoking a giggling battle.

Lucy said, "If you two can't behave back there, there's going to be no ice cream."

"He started," whined Dan.

"Are we there yet?" whined Giancarlo.

"Where are we going anyway," Zak asked.

"To see Mom and Dad," said Lucy, to a chorus of boos.

"We want to go to Six Flags," said Dan.

"She never takes us anywhere fun," said Giancarlo. "She's terrifically mean, too. She scratches us with her nails."

"Do you like her?" asked Zak.

"Yeah," said his brother, "you kissed her on the mouth."

"I did," said Dan, "but it was yucky. I'm never going to do that again."

"If you get married, you have to," Giancarlo said knowledgeably. "Girls love it."

"Well, if that's so, I'm never getting married," said Dan.

This nonsense continued during the entire drive to Four Oaks, which lay west of McCullensburg. The traffic leading into town was still heavy, although it seemed to be flowing smoothly again. News vans were still in evidence around the courthouse.

Outside of town, the countryside was rolling hills, and more of what Lucy thought of as country. They passed fields with black-and-white cows in them, cud-chewing and stupid in the shade of big trees, and once a roan horse running across a green meadow.

"Pretty area," Lucy remarked. "I didn't expect this."

"South county," Dan said. "The seam gets thin here and it's still mostly agricultural. It's where the richer folks live."

He leaned forward and placed a hand on her shoulder, near her neck. "You're looking for a big sign on the right."

This was nice, she thought, a tiny sliver of normality: driving along a country road, a man with a warm hand on your shoulder, a couple of kids, going to visit Mom and Dad in the country. An exotic treat, like smoking opium would be to regular people. She wished he would keep his hand there, she wished she had the nerve to raise her own hand and cover his.

Which then removed itself and pointed. "There it is."

A certain chaos then ensued: greetings, fond looks, stern looks, arrangements made for sleeping quarters for the new arrivals. Gog came bounding out to sniff Lucy and the boys, and especially Magog, who curled her lip at him. He was twice her size, but the strange politics of dogland made her dominant, except when in heat. Lucy found that Four Oaks had more or less been taken over by the murder investigation, and it was agreed that Dan should stay there until things settled down, and Emmett, too, after he was released on bail. Marlene was cool to Lucy, while doting on the boys, which Lucy did not much mind. She saw the eye play that transpired when Marlene saw Dan and her together, and Lucy could see the wheels spin. Her mother did not like plots, except when she was in charge of them. Beneath the surface jollity the atmosphere was tense at the lodge because, Lucy suspected, of the difficulty of guarding the secret that now lay at the heart of the investigation. Her father greeted her distractedly and soon went off to confer with the cop, Hendricks.

There was a pool with a slide and a couple of diving boards there, and they all went swimming. Lucy discovered the delights of horsing around in the water with a young man, with its many opportunities for little touches on naked or nearly naked skin. Marlene was stretched on a lounger, supposedly reading, with her sunglasses on. Lucy could not therefore tell where her mother's eyes were and so felt them upon her constantly.

"Let's go somewhere else," she said into Dan's ear as they drifted together.

Hendricks came into the room with an expression on his face that Karp assumed was what passed for excited, which meant that Hendricks had for the moment stopped looking like Lincoln contemplating the slavery question.

"They been spotted," he declared.

"Where?"

"Someone called it in from a gas station on 712. That's north of Burnt Peak."

"All three of them?"

"They didn't say. But they were driving that monster truck Earl Cade's got, and there was someone sitting in the bed of it. So figure one in the shotgun and the driver. That's three, and it's likely it's them."

"What're we doing?"

"I've got cars moving to plug the main roads back up there and a couple cruising on 130 north of town. That's the best I can do. I'll move the car I've got at the Heeney place now that the boys're going to stay here, but we're still short. I'd hate to ask a single trooper to take on all three of them. Anyway, it looks like your plan worked all right." A twist of the mouth that might have been a smile appeared on the captain's face.

"Where are we going?" Lucy asked. They had slipped away in the Land Cruiser, Lucy with a pair of shorts over her Speedo suit, Dan in a T-shirt and his cutoffs. Dan was driving north out of town. He drove the clumsy vehicle accurately and at speed, without a belt. No one in this part of the state wore seat belts, and the highway code apparently demanded that the dotted centerline on the blacktop be aligned with the hood ornament, especially on hills. She admired this sort of driving, as she admired the golden curls flapping around his face. The mastiff was curled up asleep in the back.

"First Forge," he said. "It's a kind of park near Ponowon. There's a carousel and rides, and a lake, and a reproduction of a colonial ironworks. I thought you were the kind of girl who would enjoy seeing a guy in a wig bending red-hot bars."

"It's something I've always dreamed of. What I really hope, though, is that they'll have a dim room full of glass cases and wall boards with yellowing labels, and a lot of old, dusty machinery."

"Well, you're gonna get your wish, little lady. I don't think there's a better collection of hand-cut screws and carriage bolts anywhere in West Virginia."

"Be still my heart!"

"Yeah, but really it's nice, in a tacky way. Sincere. Dad used to take us there all the time, and that's where they always held the Labor Day picnic, the great event of Dad's… um… calendar… no, what's that church word?"

"Liturgical year."

"Right, that. My mom would always roll her eyes at me when he wasn't looking. Anytime she could, she'd grab us up and zoom into D.C. for a day of tromping through art museums, and we'd go to a concert in that room at the National Gallery with the fountain, and zoom home again to cook supper."

"Did you like it?"

"We liked the Natural History and the Air and Space all right, not the art so much. Lizzie liked the art." He was silent for a long interval. She watched his face. He is transparent as the air, she thought. You can see what his heart is feeling. Without thinking she moved closer to him and put her hand around his neck. He jumped and shuddered.

"Wow. Shit, I was about to bust out crying there for a minute. What a drag."

"It's not a drag," she said. "It's grief. You're supposed to feel that way."

"You're not going to tell me they're all having fun in heaven and I shouldn't worry?"

"Of course not! 'Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.' Even Jesus wept."

That was interesting, she thought, he can pull down a screen over his face, but it takes an effort. He doesn't want to hear any of that stuff. She regretted her outburst.

More silence and then he switched the radio on, found a country station. "You don't mind? It's the onlyiest kand of music we get here in beeootiful southwestern West Virginia."

She smiled and shook her head. They drove, they listened. Dolly sang about the coat of many colors my mother made for me. He took her hand. This is not happening, she thought. I am not out on a date with a gorgeous boy who likes me. She rolled the words date and boy around in her mind like a baby playing with something shiny and new. To test whether it was really happening, she reviewed the modal suffixes of Korean in her head. I want to go: ka-go shipsumnida; I must go: kaya huminida; I ought to go: kaya haeya hadda…

"What are you thinking?"

She started and turned toward him. He was smiling. "You were someplace else. What were you thinking?"

She felt herself blushing. "I was reviewing the modal verb modifiers of Korean."

"Really. Are you having a test in Korean tomorrow?"

"No, it's a habit, like picking cuticles."

"Uh-huh. You realize you are an extremely peculiar person. I kind of resent that."

"You do?"

"Yes. I used to be the most peculiar person in Robbens County, and now you butt in. I'll have to think of something really weird."

And more of this kind of silly, delightful talk, until they pulled into the parking lot at First Forge. It was full of families and smelled of fried things and burnt sugars and the stink of burning coal from the actual forge. They watched a fat, red-faced man in a wig make a shovel blade. They walked giggling through the dim room and got glared at by the guardian. They ate fried chicken. Then they took a ride on the Tunnel of Love.

"Gosh, this is a first for me," said Lucy as their little craft, pink and spattered with hearts and crudely figured cupids, was yanked through the heart-shaped entryway.

"Oh, you're just saying that to make me feel good."

"No, really. I didn't think they had them anymore. I figured the sexual revolution had put them all out of business."

"They had a sexual revolution? No one told me."

"I bet you've been on Tunnels of Love with lots of girls."

"Oh, yeah, hundreds. Miles and miles in the dark with 'Moon River' playing on cracked speakers. There's no detail of tunnel of loving I haven't plumbed…"

After saying this, he kissed her neck, her ear, drawing her to him, mouth on her mouth. His hand slipped around her shoulder, wiggled under her arm, fingers slid under the stretchy fabric of her suit and settled on her nipple. Time became stretchy, too, as the love pod moved for hours up a minor tributary of the Orinoco.

Suddenly she pulled away. "Whoa! My gosh!"

"What?"

"Whew! Nothing, I was being overcome by lust."

"What's wrong with that?"

"I just didn't expect it, is all. My experience in these things is fairly limited. Approaching zero, as a matter of fact."

"Now must be the time, then."

"No, I don't think so. If we keep this up, I'll want to drag you into the bushes for purposes of fornication."

"That sounds like a good plan," he breathed into her ear. The hand snaked again.

"No, it's not," she whispered against his cheek. What an absolutely remarkable smell he had.

"And why?"

In a whisper, too: "Because it's a sin."

"You're joking."

"I am not."

He pulled an arm's distance away from her and looked at her. His eyes had adjusted to the dimness and he could make out her face, its expression woeful, vulnerable, mouth slightly open, the thin lips fatter than they had been with all the kissing, her eyes almost reflectant, like an animal's.

"I don't understand."

"You'll laugh if I tell you."

"I won't, honest."

"It's connected. My gift. I mean the languages. I have to abjure sex until I'm married, I mean if I ever get married. Otherwise, it'll be taken away from me."

"You mean… like that thing with the girl and the unicorn?"

"Yes, pretty nearly."

"Lucy, that's insane. You have a… a rare genetic variation, that's all. Like people who can extract ten-digit primes in their heads or tell you the day of any date, or become chess grand masters. You can't lose it because you think you're violating some medieval rule."

"Yes, that's what Morrie Shadkin says."

"Does he want to get you into bed, too?"

"No, although he does want to marry me. I pointed out to him that he's already married and has two kids. He says, 'Lucy, that's such a technicality!' He hates to let me out of his sight. He'd go nuts if he knew I was in dangerous, uncivilized West VA."

"She drags me into the Tunnel of Love to boast about her other boyfriends."

"Oh, Morrie's not a boyfriend. He's the neuroscientist who's trying to figure out how my brain works. Anyway, about your rare genetic variation-the experts of the whole world have looked into my head, CAT scans, fMRI, PET scans, and, yeah, there are small variations, but not explanatory variations. Physically, I'm the same as anyone else, but I can do stuff that no one else can do, except another freak, a fifteen-year-old boy in Russia. So forgive me if I regard it as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Look, what if you knew that if you did something, it would mean that after you couldn't tell a quark from a lipton?"

"Lepton."

"Lepton. How would you feel?"

"I'm prepared to risk that."

"Well, I'm not. And besides, it's wrong. Do you love me?"

"Love you? Christ, I just met you."

"Yes, but you're willing to use me to slake your lust. So say I want to slake my lust, too, and so we slake them, and slake them, and then we get bored with it after a while, or find someone who's more attractive or more interesting, and the whole thing starts over again with someone else."

"All right, fine!" he snapped.

After some silence, she said, "You're pouting now."

He was inclined to pout. He was horny as the devil and he was attracted to her without really understanding why. He had never been attracted to such a girl before this, and it irked him a little. He was a modern kid and had enjoyed plenty of sex from an early age. While it was true that he tended to go for girls who wanted a different sort of boy, he had never had much trouble scoring. His high school had, of course, been full of girls who were born-again and self-consciously Christian, and he had mocked them along with the rest of the bright crowd he had hung out with. This one, however, was not like any of them. He found now, somewhat to his surprise, that he did not want to pout, did not want to push her away, wanted… something, he didn't quite know what. Without thinking about it, he flung his arm around her again and gave her a squeeze. "Oh, well, so we'll be pure. I can't believe this. This is like 1903."

She relaxed against him. "Or 1403. Look, we're emerging." There was brightness ahead around a curve, and then a heart-shaped slice of the real world, glowing and making them squint their eyes.

"Where's Lucy?" asked Karp.

Marlene blinked awake and looked around. "Isn't she in the pool?" She sat up and saw that Lucy was not. The twins were there, playing with a ball and a net set up at the side of the pool. "I must have dozed off. The sun got to me." She sat up, rubbed her face, looked around. "Mm, I don't know. She was with the Heeney boy. They're probably off in the bushes somewhere, playing doctor."

"Yeah, psychiatrist, maybe. I just wanted to tell you I'm going out with Hendricks."

"Anything going on?"

"We had another sighting. They bought a case of beer at a grocery in Selden. That's north of here at the junction of 712 and 11. They look like they're getting ready to liquor up and come to town. Wade is gathering the forces. Also, Hawes called. Bledsoe sprung Emmett on a hundred grand bail. He's coming here, but it looks like it might be over by the end of the day, if Wade does his job."

"You want to be in on the kill, do you?"

"Yeah, I do. I deserve it." He sat on the edge of the lounger. "Speaking of which, are you going to tell me how you psyched Ernie Poole up from Death of a Salesman to Clarence Darrow?"

"Oh, that. You know, womanly wiles, tee-hee."

"Really."

"I went to his office, where he was trying to climb into a bottle, but had only got a leg in so far, and I told him I knew he had got Amos Jonson to drag me into that shack with his story, and then I expatiated on how you were going to cream Emmett Heeney in court. And he cursed out Hawes for a corrupt fuck, and you and me for fools. He was pretty eloquent, and I said Hawes wouldn't be a factor, you'd be running the case, and you were ten times the lawyer he was, even when he was cold sober, and I walked out."

"That was it?"

"Yes. It came down to a penis-measuring contest between you and him, as I find most litigation does in the end. He's nuts about me, the poor sap, and I manipulated him shamelessly. It's going to break his heart not to be able to beat you up in court."

"He couldn't beat me up in court on his best day and my worst," said Karp, winking John Waynesque.

"Right. I rest my case."

"Now that we've done the cultural riches of the greater McCullensburg area," Dan said, "how about looking into the lowlife?"

They were walking with their arms around one another by the side of a little lake, on a kind of sandy promenade. There was a bathing beach full of shouting children, and the smell of barbecue fires, broiling meat, and charcoal starter fluid. Lucy had never done this with a boy before, but thought she could get to like it. Small town, girl and boy, summer, a lakeside carnival, the hallucination of innocence. She understood that it was hallucinatory, America having given up innocence along with unleaded gas, but she was enjoying it nonetheless. And the badinage.

"There's lowlife in McCullensburg?" she said, miming wonderment. "I'm shocked! Shocked!"

"Yep. There's a roadhouse on Route 11 just outside of Selden. They got a pool table and a jukebox with all country favorites. A couple of pinball machines, too."

"You can see my eyes are sparkling, I guess. Did you also hope to get me drunk, so as to make me more pliable?"

"Be honest? Yeah, it had crossed my mind. There's a motel right behind the roadhouse." He hugged her more closely. "Come on. We're young. It's summer. Look at these people." She looked. They seemed to fall into two general classes: parental couples jiggling with fat, mostly lard-pale except for the blue-collar sunburns on the men-face, neck, and lower arms-and rail-thin teens in gaggles and couples, poking and pawing one another. He meant the adults.

"Soon we'll be fat and ugly, too, with mortgages and bratty kids. You want to look back and think you never once did anything just because you had the urge? Seize the day, Lucy!"

To his surprise, she giggled. "Seize the day? My God, you're such a pagan! You should be wearing a helmet with horns on it and a greasy beard. Look, let me explain something. If you believe that you're basically an animal, and you're only going to live a certain little bit of time, and for most of it you're going to be in decline, then 'seize the day' is the right take on life. On the other hand, if you believe that your real destiny is entirely outside of time, and that you were made to be with God forever, then the right take is 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' In other words, forget the crap from the past and what you're plotting for the future, such as, in your case, getting into my pants. Live for eternity, which means, among other things, behaving in a certain way."

"What I can't believe is we're having this conversation. You are honestly, really, not going to have any sex at all until you're married?"

"Uh-huh." She gave him another of those light-filled grins. In the bright sun her tan eyes seemed disks of flashing gold. "At which point, I expect to be completely insatiable. They'll have to pry me off it with a sharp tool. And who can tell, you may be the lucky man."

At these words he felt a thrill go through him, lust mixed with terror.

She added, "But meanwhile I would love a beer in your low dive."

"You would?"

"Uh-huh. I trust you, and also I have a big, ferocious dog with me. And I can outrun you."

With that, she spun around and took off, racing along the edge of the lake, with the black dog at her heels. Dan stood there for a moment, slightly stunned, watching her run, those long legs graceful as birds' wings. She was like something out of a fairy tale, the kind of girl who might, in some shady wood, turn into a deer or summon a unicorn to her lap. Heart thumping, he began to run after her.

The roadhouse was a low, windowless, concrete structure, painted tan, plopped like a discarded brick on a gravel lot. Lucy put Magog under the Land Cruiser with a pan of water and a handful of dog biscuits and followed Dan through the olde-saloon-style swinging doors. Inside it was surprisingly cool, smelling dankly of old beer, the air stirred by ceiling fans, the light dim and colored by several beer signs over the bar and a large TV with the volume off showing a stock-car race. Pinball noises and the click of pool balls came from an adjoining room. In the saloon proper half a dozen country boys and a fat woman in a halter top were engaged in serious drinking. They looked up briefly when Dan and Lucy entered and then went back to their drinks. Dan sat Lucy at one of the eight tables and brought a pair of Coors longnecks from the tired-looking blond woman at the bar.

"So," he said after a long swallow, "do you feel your virtue giving way yet?"

"It's pretty depraved. We don't have anything this bad in New York."

"Just wait. You might get to hear some uncouth language in a while. Someone might even hurl a sexual innuendo."

"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen. I don't want to have to change my underpants again."

"Yes, and you're always making that kind of dirty remark. I mean, if you're going to be a prude, you ought to act like one. How come you're not grim-faced and shockable like the born-againers at McCullensburg High?"

"I'm sorry if I inflame your lusts even more than they are by my preternatural physical beauty…"

"And you keep knocking the way you-"

He stopped abruptly. Something had gone wrong with his face, the expression frozen, the color draining from it so that his lips looked almost blue. He was sitting facing the door. She had her back to it, and he was staring past her shoulder. She turned to look and saw three men walking in, just past the swinging doors.

"Oh, shit!" said Dan under his breath.

The three men went to the bar and loudly demanded beer. They were obviously already drunk: two big ones-one rawboned with an ugly weasel-sneering face, the other huge, neckless, gut hanging over the broad belt of his jeans-and one smaller with a pretty-boy face bleared by drink, with sleepy, sly eyes. Some altercation at the bar. The woman didn't want to serve them. The pretty boy vaulted the bar and extracted a double handful of beers from the cooler. They leaned against the bar and drank, glowering at the occupants. The other drinkers had fallen silent.

The no-neck said, "Hey, Bo. Go put some music on. This place is fuckin' dead."

Bo went to the jukebox. It started to play Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee."

Lucy knew who the men were without being told. She had more acquaintance with killers than most girls her age, and she understood what she was looking at. Next to her, Dan sat frozen, staring at them.

They must have felt the stare, or else their eyes had now adjusted to the gloom of the barroom, for the ugly one said, "Hey, Wayne, ain't that Dan Heeney sittin' there?"

The big one stared and showed brownish teeth, a gap-toothed grin. "Yeah, Earl, I believe it is. How're you doin', Heeney? I hear your brother's in trouble. Hey, boys, let's go cheer old Dan up."

They clumped over to the table and hovered. Wayne said, "Now, Heeney, I want to know why Emmett'd do a mean thing like that? I mean, killin' his folks and his pore little sister. You all must've had a piss poor upbringin', what d'you think, boys?"

Earl said, "Yeah, and his brother's sittin' in the jail, and he's out drinkin' with some damn ugly girl. Heeney, you must be getting some kinda fierce pussy, to go out with a girl that plain."

Wayne said, "Yeah, now that you mention it, Earl, I don't believe I ever have seen a girl that flat-chested. You need to put them things back in the oven for a while, honey, get a little more rise outen 'em."

Then, to everyone's surprise, Lucy said, in a loud, clear voice, audible throughout the bar, over the music. "Yes, I used to worry about it myself. 'Oh, why don't I grow breasts?' I cried about it for years. Now I've come to accept it as my fate. And isn't that the real secret of happiness? To love your fate? Amor fati, as we say in Latin. How much happier you would be, for example," she added, looking directly at Earl, "if you truly accepted your ugliness and lack of intelligence. You would not feel impelled to take out your rage by doing sadistic and cruel acts."

Someone sniggered at one of the back tables. Lucy now looked carefully at Bo Cade. There was something off about him that she found interesting, something that distinguished him from the other two. He had composed his face into a contemptuous sneer, but it had no depth. "It's true," she said in the same tone, "what you feel is real. You're not like them. It's hard to go against your own blood, but sometimes you have to. Drinking doesn't help, really."

Bo opened his mouth in shock and then shut it with a snap. The others seemed not to have heard any of what she said, although Earl was conscious of having been insulted, and his slow brain was contemplating revenge. Wayne understood only that this little bitch who should have been quaking in terror was not, and it made him cranky. He was a good deal quicker than his cousin Earl, however, quick enough to see something pass between Bo and her, although not to understand it.

"Hey, little Bo, she likes you," Wayne said. "Why'nt you ask her to dance? I bet she's a real good dancer. Lady, you touch that fuckin' phone and I'll rip it off the wall and shove it up your sloppy old cunt." This last shouted to the bartender, who had been edging toward the pay phone on the far wall.

Wayne resumed, "Yeah, I want to see some dancing. Bo, go play that song again, and we'll see if Miss Smart here'll dance for us. Go do like I said, Bo."

Bo hesitated and then went and put another quarter in the slot.

When the music started again, Wayne said to Lucy, "Now, get up and dance!"

"I don't care to, thanks," said Lucy.

"Well, I don't give a shit what you care to, honey. Just for being pert, you can dance nekkid. We'll see if you got no hair on your pussy like you got no titties."

When Lucy didn't move, Wayne grabbed her left arm and jerked her to her feet. Dan came out of his chair with a bottle in his hand, but Earl was ready for him and landed a solid punch on the side of Dan's head that knocked him sprawling. He got to his knees, and Earl kicked him in the ribs.

"Don't you ever watch movies?" Lucy asked. They all stared at her. "Every single movie you ever saw, a bunch of thugs goes into a place and abuses respectable people, and every time, something terrible happens to them. You're those guys now, and something terrible will happen to you if you don't stop this right now."

Again, they seemed not to hear what she said. Wayne said, "You better shuck out've them clothes, honey. Or do you want old Bo to take 'em off for you?" Wayne gave her arm a shake to make his point.

Lucy sighed, raised her fingers to her mouth, and produced a piercing, three-toned whistle.

Magog entered the barroom at a dead run, at which point Lucy shouted a command in a language only she and the dog understood. She also pulled against Wayne's grip, at which the man instinctively jerked back. This improved Magog's target picture. Without breaking stride, the dog hit Wayne Cade in the groin with a mouthful of teeth. Wayne went over backward, his mouth open wide enough to swallow a grapefruit. The dog gave a sharp jerk of her massive head, like the jerk a terrier makes to kill a rat, producing the sound of tearing cloth and a high-pitched scream.

Magog then backed off a few steps and dropped on the floor a sodden mass of denim, Jockey-short stuff, blood, and tissue. Wayne writhed with his hands against his crotch, making the sort of sounds he had not made since he was weaned.

Earl reached under his shirt, brought out a revolver, and took careful aim at Magog. Lucy shouted something. Magog started to move and Earl fired. Dan Heeney rose slowly to his feet.

It is extremely hard even when cold sober to hit a black dog moving toward you at speed in a dim room, and Earl's bullet did not connect. His second shot also went wide, into the ceiling in fact, because Dan hit him over the head with a chair, and Magog launched her 110 pounds through the air and landed mouth-first on his forearm. Earl screamed and dropped the gun.

"Magog, off!" cried Lucy. "Heel! Dan, come on!"

After a second's hesitation, because he really wanted to hit Earl again with the chair, he ran after her, shaking his head to clear it.

Outside, they both stopped short, blinking. Four state police cars were lined up head to tail, forming a barricade across the parking lot. Helmeted troopers crouched behind them, pistols and shotguns at the ready. One of the troopers was making frantic "come here" motions. Looking wildly around her, Lucy saw that a team of police in helmets and flak jackets, carrying short-version M16s, were flattened against the walls of the bar on either side of the door.

Lucy and Dan did what the trooper wanted them to do and went behind the line of cars. At that moment, Earl Cade came running out, clutching his revolver in his left hand, his right hanging loose and bloody. Twenty voices started yelling at him to drop it, to get down, get down! Slowly, it seemed, it dawned on Earl that they were addressing him and not someone else with a gun in his hand, and also that enough firepower was pointing at him to stop a battalion. He let the gun fall and lay down on the gravel. Some troopers rushed forward and grabbed him.

"What'd I do? I ain't done nothin'," wailed Earl.

The assault team rushed into the saloon and soon emerged with Bo Cade, in handcuffs. Shortly thereafter, a paramedic van pulled into the lot; two paramedics pulled a gurney out of it and went in.

"Hi, Dad," said Lucy.

"Are you all right?" Karp asked. She saw how pale his face was and ran to embrace him.

"I'm fine. How did you know I was in there?"

"We didn't, until I saw your truck in the parking lot. I almost had a heart attack."

"You were following the Cades?"

"A trooper saw their truck and called it in. What were you doing in that place? I thought you were at Four Oaks."

"Dan took me. He's been showing me the McCullensburg sights."

Karp turned on Dan a paint-scorching look. "You think that was smart, zooming around the county with a bunch of killers on the loose?"

Before Dan could answer, the paramedics emerged from the building with Wayne Cade on their gurney. They stopped to talk to a tall trooper with gold glinting on his shoulders, then packed the man away in their van, with a trooper for company.

Hendricks walked over to the Karps and asked, "What happened in there?"

Lucy answered, "That big one, Wayne I think his name is, tried to sexually assault me, and Magog bit him." A child of two lawyers, she was ever alert for torts.

"Bit him, eh? I'll say!"

"Is he badly hurt?" asked Lucy with real concern. "I called her off right away."

"Oh, he'll live. But I guess it'll be a while before Wayne's interested in that sort of thing." To Karp, Hendricks said, "You'll want to see them right away."

"Yeah. You know the drill. Keep them separate, and the Miranda stuff. Let's have that gun tested. Make sure they're comfortable and take care of their medical needs. We'll talk to Wayne later in the hospital."

"I guess my wife won't be leaving me now," said Stan Hawes to Karp as soon as Karp walked into his office. "And I can take my kid to Little League again."

"Was it that bad?"

"Pretty near. Anyhow, it worked. I guess we need to talk to those boys."

"Whenever you want." Karp hesitated, then said carefully, "You know, I've done this a lot. Maybe I should take the lead interviewing the first one."

"I got no problem with that. On the other hand, I think I got more experience with boys like the Cades than you do. I guess you don't have many like them in New York City."

"Good point.We'll feel our way. You want to go downstairs now?"

"You know, as a matter of fact, I'd like to get something to eat first." Hawes stood up and slipped on his suit jacket. "I haven't been eating all that well since I became a corrupt son of a bitch. Christine's been flinging a frozen dinner at my head and calling it supper. Let's go down to Rosie's. The Cades'll keep for a while."

The restaurant was crowded, much to Karp's surprise. There was no velvet rope, but they had to hang around in the entryway for a table to be cleared.

"It's Friday," Hawes explained as they took their seats, "catfish on the menu. Gus's catfish is famous. He's got a tank in the back he keeps them in. He brings them up from a farm in North Carolina."

"Well, I do love a mess o'catfish."

"I bet you do, country boy like yourself."

"What's with all the old guys?" asked Karp, surveying the room.

"Pension day today. They're all old miners. Basis of the economy, besides coal itself. Another one of our local traditions. There's your Lester Weames fan club. The union's been screwing them for generations and they love it, because he hands them a cheap pension every month. Plus occasional odd jobs. A great and generous man, Lester. Another reason I brought you here. Look over there, those fellas at that big round table in the corner."

Karp looked. He did not recognize any of the eight men at the table, but he thought instantly of Marlene and her flash of deja vu. He had seen tables like that in Italian restaurants in his neighborhood at home. The men were dressed a little better, and a little more formally than the other diners, and they had a sleek, confident look as they dug into the greasy fried fish and downed bottles of beer. Three of them were larger men than average, with hard, stupid faces. The table was making a good deal of happy, aggressive noise.

"Man in the yellow golf shirt with the little round glasses, that's Lester himself. Over one to his right is George Floyd. The others are his buddies in the union management, and his goons. I guess you can tell which ones are the goons."

Karp inspected them for a moment. "They seem to be having a good time. I guess us arresting the Cade boys isn't affecting their appetites. I assume they know?"

"Oh, yeah. Swett must've been on the horn to them five minutes after we brought them in."

George Floyd said something and everyone laughed heartily. Karp imagined that this was not an infrequent occurrence when Floyd made a joke. Weames seemed quieter, almost studious; perhaps it was the glasses. He looked like the sort of nondescript accountant who turns out to have forty-three dismembered women in his basement. Weames glanced up from his fish. His glasses glinted. He said something to Floyd, who raised his head and stared over at Karp. Their eyes met. Floyd said something to Weames and laughed, and then their whole table laughed and turned to look at Karp and Hawes.

The waitress cut off their view. Hawes said, "Don't need no menus, Maggie. We'll have the catfish specials. That all right with you, Butch?"

"Sure, why not." Karp smiled at the waitress.

The fish was extremely tasty, he had to agree. He could not help noticing that, as the various tables of pensioners finished their meals, they would go up to Weames's table for a word or two. Paying homage. George Floyd stood, pulled a fat roll of currency out of his pocket, and peeled off a half dozen bills, licking his thumb and snapping it down to pull each one off. Karp had seen the gesture a hundred times on Mulberry Street in Little Italy.

"In the event that Lester ever becomes a defendant here," Karp observed, "it's not going to be easy assembling a jury, is it?"

Hawes grinned at him, a satisfied grin. "Ah, finally, the penny drops."