Absolute rage

17

Having been married to Marlene Ciampi for a long time, Karp had been exposed to more small-arms fire than the average attorney. Thus he had known instantly that it was the popping not of fireworks coming from the direction of the jail but of automatic weapons; hence the sound of a jailbreak. Halfway down the stairway, this impression was confirmed by an explosion that shook the courthouse and brought a blizzard of plaster dust upon him as he raced along. When he arrived at the door that led from the courthouse to the jail proper, he paused. No shots. A sound of flowing water. Shouts. A thin cry for help. He went through, down the flight of stairs, and into the dark and smoky wreckage of what had once been the jail's front desk and reception area. A figure approached through the gloom. Karp saw that it was a man wearing a blackened and torn county deputy's uniform, one of the jail guards. Peagram?

"Peagram! What happened?"

The man stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Sheriff's dead. They shot him dead."

The man swayed. Karp grabbed him before he fell and helped him sit against the wall.

"Who shot him?"

"They had machine guns. Sheriff come out with his pistol, told 'em to get outa his jail, and they just blew him away." The man put his face in his hands and started to sob.

Crashing noises. Through the murk poked a shotgun, followed by the comforting form of Trooper Blake, accompanied by a pair of McCullensburg volunteer firemen in yellow reefer coats. They moved around, looking for survivors, making a lot of noise.

"What the hell happened?" Karp asked the trooper.

"We don't exactly know, sir. Some folks out there said it was the Cades. Three truckloads of them. I guess the prisoners are gone."

"That would be my bet. Where's Captain Hendricks?"

"Chasing a couple of their trucks, I think. I was in my cruiser when I heard the shots and the explosion, so I just took a look and headed for the smoke. One of the deputies told me that Captain grabbed up all the men he could find, troopers and detectives and all, and went off after two of the trucks. They were headed north out of town on 130, probably making for Burnt Peak."

Karp felt his gut wrench. "The other truck went east on 119, didn't it?"

"Yessir, but I don't think anyone went after them. Almost all of our people are back on regular duty. We put it out on the radio-"

"They're after my daughter. Come on!"

Karp ran out of the jail, sidestepping and stumbling over wreckage, passing a stream of firemen and paramedics coming in. When he reached the street entry, he was happy to find Blake right behind him, shotgun at high port. They pushed through the growing crowd to Blake's cruiser and got in. Blake hit the lights and siren. In two minutes they were at the junction of 130 and 119, and Blake was screeching into a tight left turn, accelerating to ninety on the two-lane blacktop. Karp looked at his hands. They were filthy with plaster and soot. Blood, too, from Peagram's uniform. They were shaking. From somewhere ahead came the boom of an explosion.

They could see the column of dust and smoke through the trees as they sped up the access road in a shower of gravel. Karp leaped from the car while it was still rolling and ran toward the house. Half of it was gone, a tumble of smoking wreckage. The kitchen range sat scorched in a flower bed. The front door was lying flat on the porch. A piece of paper fluttered from a splinter of the shattered doorframe. Karp snatched it up and read: "Dad: We're going to the hospital. All safe except GC, badly shot. Earl, Wayne, another Cade, first two wounded. L."

He read it twice more, but it kept saying the same thing.

Two pictures on the wall of the waiting room, one a print of a kitten hanging by its claws ("Hang in There, Baby!") and the other the familiar Rockwell of a boy getting a needle in the butt. Cheery, but Karp was not cheered. The room was small, carpeted in blood-colored industrial, and furnished with plastic chairs, orange and white, a white couch in tatty vinyl, and a white Formica table, with two ragged People and a week-old local paper strewn on it. It was lit by three long fluorescents, one dim, one flickering. Karp was not a great believer in hell, but thought that, if it existed, hell might be like this.

Zak was asleep in his arms, a fitful sleep from which he awoke often with a cry and looked wildly about. Then Karp tried to comfort him, unsuccessfully he knew, because the only real comfort would be to tell him that it had been a bad dream, that his brother was not being operated upon by unknown doctors in this mingy little hospital. Karp shifted his burden and looked at his watch. Eight thirty-five. The last time he'd looked, about an hour ago, it had been 8:28.

He had made the call earlier. After he had passed the doleful news, blurted it out, there had been no curse, no cry of alarm, from his wife, just a silence so long that he thought that the line had gone dead. I'll be there as soon as I can, she had said, and then the line really had gone dead. He wondered vaguely how long that would be, even if she left the Island immediately. The surgeon's name was Small. Karp knew nothing about him; for example, that Small had lost his license for drunken slicing in another state. There wasn't any time to find out. No one had come to talk to him or tell him what was going on. Not a Jewish doctor, either. Bigotry, he knew, but there it was. Lucy was gone, he did not know where; she had run out of the place after they had watched the draped, still, intubated figure of Giancarlo being wheeled out of the ER toward the elevator. But he could guess.

Every time the brushed-steel doors of the elevator across the hall slid open, he looked up. Those doors had swallowed his son and they were taking their time about giving him back, or producing some messenger from the medical gods in whose hands he lay; that would be good, too.

He checked again. Eight thirty-seven.

Lucy was running along the street, Third Street, wiping the tears away every few strides. It was twelve blocks, she had been told, from the medical center to Holy Family. She didn't trust herself to drive. Also her Toyota was smeared with blood, as she was herself; it was all over her hands and arms, and on her shirt and shorts. She'd never worn shorts into church before, a mark of respect, although she knew people came to church in anything nowadays. What does God care what you're wearing? But they'd howl if the priest wore a skirt.

Here was the church, a squat, sooty-brick building in an eclectic style, a little Gothic, a little Romanesque, a little Baroque, ill-assorted and ugly as nearly all Catholic parish churches in America were. It always made her a little sad that the organization that had sponsored the greatest architecture in Europe had given up on beauty in that department. The great front doors were for show, but a side entrance was open. She crossed herself with the water from the font and went inside.

Dark and empty, lit by small sconces on the walls and by evening light coming through stained-glass windows, crudely done in sentimental nineteenth-century style. The Good Shepherd. The eponymous Family. A crucifixion, Christ taking a little nap in a somewhat uncomfortable position. It had been Vatican Two'd, however: the altar, a carved wooden table that looked as if it had been made for a coal baron's dining room, was squarely in the center, with dark wooden chairs arranged around it on four sides. A Mary chapel; a St. Joseph chapel; a glass case with a dusty doll in it-the Infant of Prague. The sanctuary was where the old altar had been, in a deep niche in the east wall. She went there, bowing to the altar as she crossed the aisle.

Prie-dieux in four rows faced a cylindrical brass tabernacle, highly polished, with late-Victorian embellishments of angels. She knelt, pulled a jet rosary from her bag, and cranked it up. Praying at God, this was called, letting the familiar automatic words send you into a kind of trance, pushing out the distractions of the selfish self, opening the heart. You were supposed to contemplate the words as well, envision the various mysteries, although Lucy did not do that now. She wanted only to clear the page so that she could inscribe on a virgin surface a message, or receive one.

The outgoing message was simple. Whatever you want, take it all; stupid to say that really, it's all from you anyway, but take it back. The languages, poetry, music, sex, not that I've ever had any really, but take that too. Dan and any other Dans lurking in the future, happiness… wrap it up and ship it out, make me mute, stupid, paralyzed, I'm already ugly, take it, but just, and I know you don't like bargaining, we're supposed to love whatever you do to us because you're good, that's the whole point, isn't it? But this is too much, even you'll agree, this good and sweet little kid, have mercy, have mercy.

Talking to God, this is called. Lucy had been doing it for as long as she could remember, and for as long as she could remember, God had talked back. There had been actual visions, voices, to the extent that her priest, a sensible and pragmatic fellow, had become a little concerned, for the Church has never been entirely comfortable with that sort of thing. But he had thought it would fade with age, and it had. Two years and more had now passed without Lucy's receiving what is technically known as a consolation. Now, instead, she was receiving a desolation. To those serious about religion, these are even more to be prized than the gaudier epiphanies, and Lucy knew this very well, but her present pain had pushed this knowledge from her mind. She wanted comfort; she had always had comfort; she was getting none now, and she was beginning to grow cross. She was quite terribly spoiled, in fact, and when one is spoiled by Omnipotence, one is spoiled indeed.

She threw claims into the scales: her time on her knees, her many good works, her self-denial, her faith… Nothing. She felt nothing, except the muscle stiffness and a stuffiness in her head. She was talking to someone who wasn't there; from this commonplace it was only a short jump to thinking: talking to someone who doesn't exist. She felt a chill. An explanation presented itself: she was crazy, just like Mom, a fanatic, always had been. There was no one there. Maybe there had been once-who knew?-but it was gone. Giancarlo would die or not, according to chance and the skill of his doctors. That tabernacle was remarkably ugly. I've lost my faith, she said to herself, amazed. It was just here in my purse and now it's gone. Her chest felt tight. She had to… what? Hide? From God? But there wasn't any.

She stood up, feeling light-headed. Dan Heeney was standing outside the sanctuary.

"I thought you'd be here. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine. Just, you know, praying." For the very first time she felt embarrassment at saying this.

"Uh-huh. I stopped by the hospital. He's still in the OR." She looked different, he thought, diminished in some way. He attributed it to the catastrophe. She was not looking at him. "What's that thing?" he asked, pointing to the tabernacle. "It looks like an espresso machine."

"It is an espresso machine," said Lucy, sliding toward hysteria. "It's the very espresso machine that Saint Paul got a double tall latte out of just before he hit the road to Damascus. You're very fortunate to have it here in McCullensburg." She had to get out of the church or she was going to do something awful. She walked rapidly out, not pausing at the altar as she always did. In the small lobby she stopped with the feeling that she had forgotten something. Wallet, bag, sunglasses, keys, all there, what was it?

"You okay, Lucy?"

"Yeah, just a little…"

"You have dirt and blood on your face."

"Do I?" She checked her image in the glass of the church notice board. Then she pulled out a bandanna, dipped it in the font, and wiped the stains from her face.

"Can you do that? I thought that was holy."

"It doesn't matter." She walked out of the church.

He had a motorcycle, a canary-colored Suzuki dirt bike. "Get on. I'll take you back to the hospital."

"I didn't know you had a bike."

"I don't. It's Emmett's. After you left, he picked me up at the hospital and drove me back to the house. We took some of the good stuff out of the ruins. The garage fell on my mom's car. I guess it's my car now. Or was. This was out behind the garage. Not a scratch on it." He threw a leg over the machine and started it, the sound startling on the quiet street. Crows flew from the neighboring trees, complaining.

Suddenly she felt deep shame. "You've lost everything. Oh, Danny, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well, what can you do? Cry? I didn't lose my computer, though. And I still have the family pictures. They threw the dynamite into the kitchen, and the appliances and the sink took a lot of the blast. Get on now and hold tight."

She did and did, pressing the side of her face flat against his back. She thought she could hear his heart beat over the roar of the engine. He was real at least. No, don't stop at the hospital, just drive, just drive, we'll give up everything for love, have a life together, we'll worship each other, like pagans, like Americans… no, she thought, I'm not good enough for him.

As they rode up the drive to the hospital parking lot, they heard a roaring that nearly drowned out the sound of the motorcycle. A small helicopter was coming in for a landing atop the six-story building's roof. Dan switched off his engine and they watched it land.

"That'll be Mom," said Lucy, and felt a peculiar and perverse pride. I'm like her, now. Took a while. Will she be pleased? Lucy found she didn't much care.

"Should I come in?" Dan asked.

"No, I don't think…" She saw his face fall. "No, I need to…" She had lost the ability to talk to him. She wanted him to go away now. He saw this. He shrugged, nodded, turned away.

Zak was now stretched full-length on a vinyl-covered couch with his face on Karp's jacket. A number of people had come by to see Karp. The lawyer Poole, to express his condolences. Cheryl Oggert, to express the governor's. Besides that, Oggert wanted Karp to talk about the legal situation regarding Floyd and Weames, angling to see if something could be pulled out of this disaster. Karp was polite, monosyllabic; she soon left.

Hendricks came by later with a number of other state troopers. He had not, as it turned out, come just to offer comfort, but when he spotted Karp, he walked over, shook his hand, and did so. Karp thought Hendricks looked uncharacteristically rumpled, bleary. His eyes were red-rimmed. He sat down heavily in a chair next to Karp.

"You get them?" Karp asked, more out of sympathy than because he still cared.

"No. I'm sorry to say we didn't. We only got one roadblock out ahead of them and they blew right through that. They had a five-ton truck they stole from a coal company lot. Then we followed them up Burnt Peak, on that road, and they dropped the side of the hill there with dynamite right in front of my lead car. Road's full of big rocks. So that was that. Two of my boys're dead and two are here. Pruitt and Vogelsang are the ones didn't make it. I got to go call their families, I guess. Never happened before, never had to make that kind of call."

Hendricks seemed dazed. Karp, however, although normally a sympathetic sort, was not inclined to be so just then.

"Meanwhile, could you tell me how the fuck this was allowed to happen? A jailbreak in broad daylight?"

"What can I say? They kept it real close. Normally, you get a sense of what them boys are gonna do, and I got informants in the family. You recall I took you to see one of them."

"Russell."

"Him. But there wasn't a peep about this. They blindsided us, that's for damn sure."

"So what happens now?"

"Well, there's no way in hell the governor's gonna keep the feds out of it now. We don't have the resources to put a siege on a whole mountain. I'm not sure anybody does, if you want the truth. I mean Waco, that was a bunch of houses on the flat, in the desert. Ruby Ridge, that's the other big case, you had terrain, but there was only two men with guns, three if you count the kid they shot. Now put them two together. You got a, hell, figure a whole platoon up there, forty men, with all the dynamite they want and heavy automatic weapons. Plus you got the mine shafts. That hill's riddled with 'em, so it's perfect defensive territory. They know the shafts and the good guys don't. If this was a military operation, say in the Pacific or Vietnam, you'd chase them off the surface with artillery and air strikes, and then you'd go in with infantry, at least two hundred men, I'd reckon. If you got any serious resistance, you'd take major casualties: twenty, thirty dead and more wounded. Then you'd just blow the tunnels, seal 'em up inside. But we sure as hell ain't gonna do nothing like that. We ain't gonna take those kind of casualties, not with cops. And we ain't gonna use artillery, not with women and kids involved. You know, when you think on it a little, the gun nuts are right. You get you enough crazies and enough automatic weapons, and if you're in some rough country and you got enough food and water, well, then you got yourself your own country if you want it."

"That's what the Cades have now, their own country?"

"Pretty near. We'll block off the roads, of course, but there's no way on God's green earth we can stop up every rabbit trail off of that mountain. It'd take the whole West VA state police. So they'll keep being able to sell their dope and bring in reinforcements and food. Hell, it ain't much different from the way they live now. They could hold out for years up there if they want to. And I think Ben Cade wants to. He's been easing up to this kind of thing for years. We hear stories, you know. Girls, runaways, picked up and took away up there. For his wives." Here he paused and stared at his dusty shoes.

"So, the truth is, this is our problem, here. We let it grow like a boil for years and now it's time to pop it, come what may. I wanted to say, though, and all the boys think the same, and all the people I been talking to in town, we're all real, real sorry your boy got hurt. It wasn't none of your fight, and you came in and helped us out, and this happened. I guess after what happened to Lizzie Heeney I should've known the Cades were mean enough to gun down a little boy, but I reckon it's still a shock. I had half a dozen men come up to me and say, Captain, if'n you need another gun, just ask. And those that pray are praying for him. I know it don't mean much, but I wanted to say it. I'm sorry." Hendricks's steely blues locked on Karp's eyes. They looked teary. Karp did not think he could hold it together if Gary Cooper went all blubbery on him. He firmed his jaw and said, "Thank you." They shook hands. The captain left.

Karp's daughter and his wife arrived almost simultaneously, Marlene stepping out of the steel doors, Lucy coming down the corridor.

Karp gaped at his wife. "How did you get here so fast?"

"I leased a helicopter." Embraces, brief ones.

"How is he?"

"Still up in surgery the last I heard. They said they would contact us."

She checked her watch. "It's been five hours." She gave him a quick, appraising look. Everyone had a weakness, she knew, even hypercompetent people like her husband, and this happened to be all matters medical as they related to his family. His normally mighty powers of assertion seemed to flee when the kids were sick and the white coats were pontificating. That was why she had moved mountains and spent money like water to speed her way back here.

Marlene now took over. She made a scene, several in fact. People started moving a good deal faster than they were wont to at the Robbens County Medical Center. In short order the commotion arrived at the doctors' lounge, where Edward Small, MD, was taking a brief nap after operating on the kid. He had actually done a good deal of gunshot work in his time, although he usually left the cranial stuff alone. Stick a drain in there and either the patient would live or would die. Of course, it mattered which one-they were not heartless-but either way there would not be consequences for the docs. Robbens County Medical Center was essentially a medicaid/medicare mill, with a sideline servicing the stingy union health plan and telling injured miners they were fit to go back to work and not to bother suing the company. Anyone who could afford to pay got treated in a real hospital in Charleston or D.C.

Small had heard the helicopter land, but assumed it was something to do with the police who were hurt. It never occurred to him that one of his patients would have a relative rich enough to arrive in a private helicopter. Informed that this was the case by a frantic nurse, he hurried downstairs.

Small was a pink-faced, heavy, balding man of around sixty. Marlene sized him in a trice as a genial loafer, competent at routine, but not one to take pains, and definitely not good enough for her boy. Small told them how the surgery had gone. He had removed double-aught pellets from Giancarlo's legs and back. The good news was that no vital organs had been struck. The bad news was that he had a pellet lodged in his brain.

"When will you remove it?"

"Well, we don't think that's advisable now," said Small, addressing his answer to Karp. "With these cerebral wounds, we think it's advisable to wait and let nature take her course." A little chuckle here. "You know, despite all our advances, and at my age I've seen an awful lot of them, Mother Nature's still the best healer."

"What tripe," said Marlene. "I want him moved out of here. I intend to fly him to New York."

"He can't be moved," said Small with some satisfaction. "You can't move someone out of ICU. He wouldn't make it to Charleston, much less New York."

They went back and forth about this for a round or two until Karp put his vote down for not moving, after which she demanded to see the CAT scans of her son's brain and looked at them, as did Lucy, who had a lot of experience looking at CAT scans. She pulled her daughter aside.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know, Mom. I'm not a doc, but it looks awful. It's in his occipital lobe and it's all swollen."

"I don't mean the pictures. I just wanted to know he'd at least taken them. I don't buy this crap about not going in and fixing it. I want a second opinion. You know brain surgeons, don't you?"

"I know people who do. I'll call Morrie."

She did. Morrie Shadkin, called at his home, was horrified to hear what had happened and yet more horrified (though he did not mention this) to learn that the precious brain of Lucy Karp was wandering around in range of people shooting bullets.

"Lenny Polanski," he said. "He's the best brain-trauma surgeon in the world, if you believe him. I got him through physio our second year at P and S, absent which he would not be a surgeon at all, but humping refrigerators in his old man's warehouse. He owes me big-time. You say the kid can't be moved?"

"No. We'll fly your guy and his team down here. We have a helicopter."

Shadkin said he would get back to her, and after fervent urgings that she watch out for herself, he hung up.

Then they all trooped into the ICU to look at Giancarlo. At the sight of her son lying still and dead-white in the mesh of tubes and blinking machinery, Marlene lost it, giving way to operatic grief, and frightening the personnel. After this, Karp was back in charge. He made the necessary arrangements with the hospital (Small had heard of Polanski and was awed), getting the helicopter to a parking place, and its pilot housed in a motel, and transporting his family back to Four Oaks. Marlene and the two children, who seemed to have regressed nearly to infancy, were put to bed, the former with half a bottle of Scotch and pills, the latter with meaningless, calming words.

Karp himself did not sleep for a long time. His mind, like a small animal expelled from its accustomed burrow by a flood, sought familiar shelter and found it in legal strategy. Assume the Cade boys were lost indefinitely. Could he still construct a case against Floyd? If yes, could he then involve Weames, if Floyd kept mum? But would Floyd keep mum if such a case could be constructed? As he pondered, bits of data floated into his mind. A chance remark by Harkness, some incidents from the recent past. Toward dawn, as he slipped into exhausted sleep, something like a plan had formed in his mind.

In the morning he awakened from a dream in which the events of the past two days had been a dream. The return to the horror of the reality hit him with the force of a shot to the gut, bringing nausea. Marlene was already gone. He ate a glum breakfast with Lucy and Zak and took them to the hospital, where the staff reported that the boy was stable but comatose. Marlene, to his surprise, was not there. He sat for a while watching his two sons. Zak was staring at his brother with an intensity that Karp found difficult to watch. Something was wrong with Lucy, too, a dullness of spirit that was quite unlike her. To be expected? He didn't know. Of all the people in the family, he had expected his daughter to be the most capable of dealing with tragedy. Wrong again, it seemed.

He freely admitted to himself that he could not. Shameful, but undeniable: he could deal with life or death, but not this shadowland.

"I'm going out for a while," he said to them. "I'll check in."

"Sure, Dad. We'll see you later. Have you heard from Mom at all?"

"No, and that's one thing I want to check on."

Outside, breathing full breaths again, he couldn't help noticing that Marlene's helicopter was gone from its place in the parking lot.

Marlene stood on the lip of an enormous grassy tableland that had once been the south peak of Hogue Mountain, watching her helicopter drop in for a landing. It was a Gazelle SA 341J, an ex-British navy aircraft from the seventies, and still the fastest helicopter in the world. Two and a half hours more or less from Bridgeport to this shithole. Billionaires would have to find another unit to get them to the Hamptons.

It landed and Tran Do Vinh got out, crouching as everyone always did under the spinning rotors. He greeted her with the traditional cheek kisses and expressed again, as he had on the phone earlier that day, his profound regrets about what had befallen her son. He spoke to her in French. "You know, I have never before been in a helicopter, though I have seen many and shot down a good few. That hill on which your adversaries are emplaced seems a formidable position. The pilot flew quite low and we received fire, though fortunately took no hits. How can I assist you?"

He was thoughtful when she told him what she wanted done. "Marie-Helene, I personally am at your complete disposal," he said, "but an operation of the type you describe, an almost, one might say, military operation, will require many men, expensive weapons, logistical supplies…"

"I'll advance whatever you need."

"Yes, of course, but the men… these are no longer soldiers fighting for a cause. And the young ones I am afraid are mere gangsters. They will not wish to endure casualties without some tangible-"

"There is gold," she said. "A good deal of it, I'm informed. Ben Cade has been a criminal for decades, as was his father before him. They put their profits into gold because they believe that soon all paper money will become worthless."

"Oh, gold!" He laughed. "Oh, well, that's a different story entirely. With gold all things are possible. We Asians love gold. We also fear the ephemeral nature of paper, with rather more reason than M. Cade, I think. Given gold, I should have little trouble organizing the necessary people and equipment. What I do not have and need are maps, detailed maps, including maps of all local mining operations, at least one to ten thousand in scale."

"I can get you those. Are you familiar with computers?"

"Alas, not I myself, but I have people. They operate a pornography site, 'Asian Teens XXX.' You will send the maps to me in this way?"

She nodded.

"And I assume this operation will require a certain settlement with these fearsome Cades, besides relieving them of their gold. Escorting them to the authorities, perhaps?"

"No. I want them killed."

He was not quite sure he had heard her, for a strong breeze was whipping the grasses.

"Pardon?"

"Kill them," she said more clearly. "Kill them all."

Lenny Polanski arrived on Marlene's helicopter the following day with two others, an oriental man and a striking blond woman, all three wearing Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses. The great surgeon seemed like a cross between a retired middleweight prizefighter and a stand-up comedian. He was blocky, tanned, foulmouthed, crop-haired, and athletic in stride and gesture. Karp loathed him on sight. In the dingy waiting room (Dr. Small having hovered and having been curtly dismissed), Polanski introduced to the Karp family Dr. Chao, who will be passing gas at this party, and Ms. Vava Voom, the world's hottest scrub nurse, who will be cooling my brow, so to speak.

Polanski focused on Lucy. "You're that kid, Morrie's superstar with the languages. Say something in Lithuanian."

"Do you speak Lithuanian?" asked Lucy.

"I don't know, I never tried, ha, ha, ha!"

"If you don't make my brother better, you ape," said Lucy, smiling, "I will have you killed in a particularly unpleasant fashion," in Lithuanian.

Ms. Voom held out her hand to Marlene, who shook it. "I'm Anne Rasmussen. He's a horse's ass, but he really is the best brain surgeon in the country. We can't take him anywhere." Lenny cracked up at this.

Karp was not amused. "You know, maybe this isn't a good idea. I mean, this is a child's life we're talking about and I don't appreciate it being treated as a joke."

"Hey, listen, dad," said the doctor, "do I come into your courtroom or whatever and tell you how to act? Ever since I saw M*A*S*H, I wanted to be the pros from Dover-you know that scene? Where the two docs barge in wearing Hawaiian shirts, cure the congressman's kid, and leave? No? Hey, check it out, a great scene! So the first thing you folks have got to do is lighten up. I know you're worried. I'd be, too, if I was in the shit-bag hospital. But I took a look at the kid's snaps-"

"Giancarlo," said Marlene.

"Right, Giancarlo, his snaps, and it's a no-brainer, so to speak, ha ha. I mean, first of all it's a pellet, obviously at longish range, not the usual shot to the head from a pistol at point-blank, so there's less damage generally. We have minimal penetration, not much bleeding, there's no major circulatory damage-"

"Why is he still in a coma, then?" asked Marlene.

"Brain swelling. What do you want? He got shot in the head, okay? A couple of days being knocked out is absolutely normal here. Okay, we go in, we take out the pellet, we repair the good stuff, we snip the bad stuff, we sew him up. These guys here could have done it if they weren't such patzers. Kid's going to be fine, you'll see." Polanski beamed, and it was hard for the Karps not to share his bravado.

"What about impairment?" Karp asked.

Polanski made an elaborate shrug. "That I can't tell you. I've seen people lose a chunk of brain the size of a Big Mac and live a perfectly normal life, and other people just get a tap on the skull and they never move again." He pointed upward. "That's not my department. Your kid's going to get the best surgical care available, but what happens after that, with the brain… if you believe in God, he's in charge of that part, not me."

At that, Lucy burst into tears and fled the room.

"Hey, what'd I say?" asked Dr. Polanski in dismay.

Everyone was being extremely nice to Karp. He had not had so many strangers so solicitous toward him since his senior year in high school, when the basketball coaches had come around. He went back to the Burroughs Building two days after the New York team had operated and departed. Giancarlo was as well as could be expected. He looked like he was sleeping peacefully. His color was good, his breathing regular. But he would not awake.

The Burroughs Building had been transformed in Karp's absence, for Captain Hendricks and Cheryl Oggert had lent most of it to the FBI, who had over a hundred agents on the scene now, under the command of a bullnecked person named Ron Morrisey. Morrisey treated Karp like an invalid, or someone with a contagious disease, leprosy, for example. He was not invited to the big-time strategy meetings Morrisey held with the state boys.

Still, Karp tried to show at the office in between bouts of watching at Giancarlo's bedside. Once there, he mostly sat at his desk with his feet up and tapped on his teeth with a pencil. Sometimes he tapped on the desk with two pencils. The plan he had come up with, he now saw, was absurd. It was based on George Floyd having a credible fear that he was going to be convicted of murder, and Karp had to admit that inculcating such a fear would require not just a paper confession, but the prospect of an actual live Cade sitting on the witness stand, pointing a skinny white finger at the defendant. Which Cade he did not have. Which Cade was sitting up on Burnt Peak, thumbing its nose, or noses, at the legions of troopers and agents below. Karp had tried to find out whether Morrisey was planning an assault, and if so, whether he had some way of extracting Karp's two confessors, but Karp did not, it seemed, have a need to know these plans. Cheryl Oggert was not helpful, either. The governor would not apply pressure here; the governor was starting to distance himself from the whole mess.

On Thursday (and it was hard to believe that only three days had passed since the raid), Karp and Marlene and the town's notables attended the funeral of Sheriff J. J. Swett. A surprising number of non-notable townspeople also showed for the event. Several people, including Lester Weames and the mayor, stood up and lied about Swett's character and achievement. Karp noted substantial negative murmurings among the crowd during Weames's presentation, which made him feel a little better. Ernie Poole, who was there and drunk, seemed to sum up the general feeling when he said in a loud enough voice, "He was a corrupt old bastard, but he did the right thing in the end, God rest his soul."

After the funeral, the Karps went back to the hospital. Marlene took over the watch from Lucy. Zak, who had hardly eaten a bite in three days, refused to leave his brother's bedside. Karp obtained a chocolate milk shake and threatened to send the boy to a distant state if he did not consume it.

After an almost silent meal with Lucy (What's wrong? Nothing.), Karp went back to his office in the Burroughs Building. Needing to pretend to himself that he was doing something productive, he called Raymond Guma in New York.

"You're still alive?"

"Yeah, barely," said Guma. "I'm smoking dope now."

"How is it?"

"Eh. I don't get what the kids see in it, to tell you the truth. It helps me eat, though. I get it off this Jamaican from that place on Third. Jerked Chicken, we deliver. What's happening in Podunk?"

Karp told him. Guma said, "Jesus, Butch, that's awful. Terrible! Poor little kid! The bastards escaped, huh?"

"For now. Look, Goom, failing something better, I got a little idea you might be able to help me with."

"Anything."

After Karp had finished the exposition, Guma said, "Well, this end maybe I could help with. It could work. We'd have to get the locals involved, probably not a problem, you being you and me being me."

"What about Eddie Bent?"

"Eh, maybe a little sticky there, but Eddie owes me some big ones over the years. Your big problem is gonna be convincing Lester that what's-his-face is going to roll on him, which is going to be hard to do at this point. Absent the hillbillies."

"I know. I'm working on that. But could you set things up in the City, just in case?"

"Will do, buddy," said Guma, "unless I die first. Or unless I come down off this high and decide it's horseshit. I'll let you know."

That night Karp awakened at three-forty. He looked at the little vial on Marlene's bedstand and contemplated, for the first time in his life, taking a downer. He rejected the idea. He got out of bed, slipped the lodge's terry-cloth robe on, and began to pace the room.

Click.

He stopped, startled. Something had struck the sliding glass doors.

Clack.

Someone throwing pebbles against the glass. He slipped behind the curtains and looked out. Beyond the little concrete apron and its plastic chairs a sloping lawn dropped to a line of bushes. In front of the bushes stood a slim figure, glowing like marble in the light of a gibbous moon. Karp slid the door aside and stepped out on the apron. The figure made a beckoning motion, silently. Karp felt a chill; it was like something out of a fairy tale. A scatter of rubber zori lay at his feet, his family's, one large, two medium, two small. An extra pair of zori? Image of giving away little clothes. No, don't think about that now. He slipped into the largest ones and headed toward the figure.

As he came closer, he saw it was a boy, an incredibly pale, wheathaired boy, dressed in bib overalls and a white T-shirt.

"You're Darryl," Karp said. "You talked to my wife one time."

"Uhn-huh. You foller me, now. He wants to say sompin' to you."

Karp followed the boy down a dark pebbled path through the bushes, to a picnic area: a lawn, some tables and grills, a duck pond. Seated at one of the tables was an old man.

Karp sat down. The boy stood behind the old man.

"I'm Amos Jonson," said the man.

"I guessed you were. You spoke to my wife."

"Yessir, that was me. I wanted to talk to you. Startin' off, I want to say I'm sorry for your trouble. I hope your son's all right. I lost two of mine, so I know what that's like."

"We have hopes for a recovery, but he's not out of the woods yet."

The man nodded. "Since I heard, I been considerin' what to do, and I come up with this. I been hiding for a long time, with Darryl here. In an old shaller mine on Belo. Afeared every minute the Cades were gonna send someone to get me, or Darryl. And I got to thinkin', here's this feller comes from away, to help get those Cades, all legal, like nobody ever tried to do before, not since eighteen and fity-six anyways. And then they shoot down his little boy. I considered and I contemplated and I said to myself, 'Amos Jonson, are you still a man, or are you a slug worm crawlin' in the dark?' It got so I couldn't hardly stand myself. So I come here tonight."

"What have you got to tell me, Mr. Jonson?" said Karp out of a cracker-dry throat.

"I seen it all. Me and Darryl here. We was frog-jiggin' under the green bridge. Two cars come over the bridge and stop on the crown of it. We hid oursels. I seen it was George Floyd's big Chrysler car and a Ford pickup. George gets out of the car and goes over to the pickup. He has words with a man in the pickup. The man gets out. I see it's Wayne Cade. They have more words, cussin' and arguin'. Finally, I seen Wade give George a pistol. Then George goes over to the winder of the pickup and talks some to whoever's in there. I couldn't see that feller at all. But the feller passes out a pair of yeller boots. George throws the boots and the pistol into the river. The pistol goes in the water, but the boots land on a little spit that's there when it's low water. Well, sir, then they go off. Me and Darryl look at the boots, but we don't touch 'em, 'cause we can see they're covered in blood. Then Darryl goes in and feels around with his bar feet and fishes out the pistol. We seen where it fell by the splash. Then I thought, well, George dropped his gun in the river, we ought to do him the favor of giving it back to him."

"So you hid it under the birdbath."

"Darryl done it," said the man. "Tell him, Darryl."

Darryl bobbed his head. "Uhn-huh. Next night I went down to his house. I got me a Bi-Lo bag from the trash and put the gun in it, and then I calculated, where should I lay it? I saw that old birdbath he got there, and I said, that's the place, 'cause I'd alus know where it was, do you see? And then I stopped and said, I should ought to have a memorial in it."

"A memorial?"

"Yessir. So no man could say, no, that ain't the gun he throwed in the river, it was some other gun look jest the same. So, I took my clasp knife and screwed the handle plate off'n it, and I took this small piece of paper that was in the bag, like the Bi-Lo gives out when you trade?"

"A receipt."

"Uhn-huh. Well, sir, I wrote it with a pencil on that little small piece of paper: 'This gun throwed in the river at the green bridge by George Floyd and I pulled it out,' and under I put my name, Darryl Mark Jonson, and what the date was, which I got from a newspaper that was in the trash, too, and then I screed it up small as small and put it in the handle and screwed the plate back on. And then I buried it under the birdbath."

Karp said, "Darryl, would you like me to give you a great big kiss?"

"Nosir," said Darryl coolly, "but thank you kindly anyhow."