Blossom

I was inside the gull's mind. Knowing what he knew. Waiting for humans to hurt him. Wanting only to get one good rip in with that beak before they took him down.

Something crackled in my chest. My hand shot inside my jacket. Found only my pounding heart. I jammed the Lincoln into low, stomped the gas and stormed between the gull and the prancing cars.

When I hit the apex I jammed the brakes, flinging the Lincoln's rear end around, blocking off the gull.

I jumped out, hands empty, too much inside the gull to care. Sun bounced off the windshields of the other cars— I couldn't see the drivers.

The Camaro revved its engine, its nose aimed at where I stood. I heard the Lincoln's door slam behind me. I didn't look back. Spread my legs. Shook my hands at the wrists, breathing through my nose, watching the car doors. If they came out together, I knew what I had to do. Drop the closest one, jump in the car he left behind. And see how the others liked being chased.

Rubber fought with pavement as all three cars shot out of the lot, leaving me standing there. I watched, expecting them to regroup and come back at me. Taillights winked as they hit the brakes at the end of the lot, but they pulled onto the highway. I turned back to the Lincoln. Blossom was bent at the waist over the Lincoln's fender, her hands inside the big canvas purse.

The gull hadn't moved. I dropped into a squat, started toward him.

"Wait!" Blossom's voice. She came up behind me, handed me a pair of thick leather gloves. "Use these. That boy's got a beak like a razor."

I slipped on the gloves, wondering how she knew what I had to do.

I moved in again. Duck-walking. One slow step at a time. Feeling the blacktop through the soles of my shoes. Talking softly to the gull.

"It's okay, pal. The punks took off. We faced them down. You're a hell of a gull. Boss bull of the flock you'll be when we get you fixed up. Everything's okay now. Easy…easy, boy."

He let me get to about ten feet away, flapped his good wing, and faked a run to his right. I was already moving to my right when the beak lashed out at me. I moved just out of his way, talking to him. He centered himself, watched. I let him have my eyes, willing him to feel the calm. "We're not all alike," my mind called to him.

My legs were starting to cramp when he moved. Toward me. Dragging the broken wing, eyes stabbing into mine. He was out of gas. Coming to trust or to die. I held out a gloved hand. He took it in his beak, experimentally. I felt the pressure, didn't move. Rubbed the back of his neck. His head bowed, eyes blinked. I reached back for the good wing, pinning it to his body as he flapped the broken one, shrieked his battle cry, and ripped at my gloved hand. I pinned the beak closed, stepped over and smothered the bad wing, holding him close, crooning to him.

Blossom. She snapped open a roll of Ace bandage. Left it on the ground as she manipulated the gull's bad wing, carefully folding it against his body. I got what she was doing, held him as she wound the bandage around his body. He had most of the leather glove ripped open when Blossom slipped a heavy rubber band around his beak.

"Hold him— I'll be right back," she said.

She came trotting out of the drugstore with a carton. It said Pampers on the sides. "Give him to me." I handed her the gull. She cradled it against her. "Take off your shirt— he needs a bed inside the box before we close him up."

I dropped my jacket to the pavement, unbuttoned my shirt, piled it into a soft cushion on the bottom of the box. Blossom slowly lowered the gull inside, closed the top, leaving him in peaceful darkness.

She held the box on her lap as I drove. Told me to turn on McCook Avenue, off 173rd. "The gray house, the one with the shingles…see it?"

I pulled into the pebbled driveway, up to a closed single-car garage. Followed Blossom around to the back door.

She put the box on the kitchen table. Left me standing there. Came back with a leather satchel. Filled a copper-bottomed pot with water and put it on to boil.

"Let's take a look at him," she said, opening the top of the box. I lifted the gull out, carried him to the counter next to the sink. Sound of metal being tossed into the pot. Blossom deftly made a circle of white surgical tape, fastened cotton balls on the inside, and slipped the soft hood over the bird's beak to cover his eyes. She poured off the boiling water. I glanced in the sink. Gleaming surgical tools: scalpel, scissors, probes.

"I'm going to cut the bandage loose on his bad side. Hold the other wing in place— I need to spread him out, see what the damage is."

The broken wing covered a good piece of the counter. Blossom talked to the gull as she worked, hands and eyes one perfect unit. "Take it easy, boy. We'll have you chasing girl gulls in a short piece. Let me take a look, now. Don't fuss."

More probing. "Here it is. A clean break. I can set it after I cut away these little fragments. There!"

She wrapped the wings together again, tip of her tongue peeking out between her lips as she concentrated. "There's some old birdcage in the basement. Big enough for a parrot or something. In the left corner off the stairs."

I found the cage. The handle came almost to my chest. I carried it upstairs. "Put it out on the back porch— we'll have to hose it down."

I did that while Blossom shredded newspapers for the flooring. She handed me a pair of pliers. "Take out all that other stuff— give him some room."

I removed the perches until the cage was an empty shell. The door wasn't big enough for the gull— I pried the bars apart to make room. Blossom gently lowered him inside. He made no move to fight. Watched us.

"There's some salmon in the cupboard. Open a can for him while I get him some cover."

I opened a can, dumped the salmon inside the cage. Filled the empty can with water and put that inside too. Blossom came back with an army blanket. Cut it into strips with the surgical scissors and draped it over the top of the cage.

"Have yourself a nice rest, boy," she said. "In a couple of weeks, you'll be back to work."

69

I SAT AT THE kitchen table. Blossom stood next to me. "Let's have a look at that hand."

Blood across the knuckles, one finger sliced cleanly. "Wash it off in the sink. Cold water, no soap. Make sure the blood runs clean."

She dried off the hand, spraying some stinging stuff across the open cut, put a butterfly bandage in place. "Won't even leave a scar," she said.

"You were a nurse once?"

Her turquoise eyes searched my face, a smile rippling across her wide mouth. "No. No more than you're a real estate speculator. Be right back."

70

WHEN I HEARD the rush of the shower, I knew she'd be a while. I cracked a wooden match into fire, lit a smoke. No ashtray on the kitchen table. I went looking. Four small clay pots on the windowsill, clogged with thick greenery. Looked like parsley. A twig planted in each one, standing tall and clean above the growth. Looked closer. Thick-bodied black-and-white-striped caterpillars, one in each pot.

I opened the dishwasher. No ashtrays, but I found a drinking glass. Opened the tap, poured a half inch of water inside. It'd do.

Blossom came back inside, wearing a tightly belted pink terry-cloth robe, a towel wrapped around her head.

"You want some coffee?"

"No, thanks."

"A beer?"

"No."

She busied herself with making coffee, pouring ground beans into a filter. The beans came from a plain white bag, no brand name. Somebody had handwritten Kenya AA on the side.

A motorcycle snarled in the street. Mother calling her kids inside for dinner. Dogs barked conversationally. Safe sounds.

She sat across from me, cradling her heavy white coffee mug in both hands, unselfconsciously plucking at the opening of her robe. At home, unhurried.

Maybe I couldn't mend a broken wing, but I could outwait a stone. Tossed my cigarette into the water glass and settled down into myself.

"You're not curious?"

"About what?"

"About why I asked you to come and talk to me. About what I said about you not being a real estate speculator."

"Curious enough to take the ride."

"But…"

"I can't play a hand until it's dealt."

She tapped long fingernails on the tabletop. "I've been here six weeks. Summer's almost over. Then I'll have to go."

I watched her. Laugh-lines around her wide mouth. Trace of crow's-feet next to her eyes. Harder lines. Her skin was as clean and clear and glowing as a young girl's, but she was older than I first thought. Even at ease, her back was straight, shoulders squared.

"I'm not a nurse. Never was. I'm a doctor. Just finished school. I start my internship in late September. Back home. In West Virginia. Pediatrics."

I lit another smoke.

"You're not surprised or…".

"Or I was raised in places where you don't show much on your face."

"Yes. I saw that the first time you came in the diner."

"And ex-cons don't put together real estate deals?"

"That's not how I know. How I knew. I wasn't sure why you were here until I saw you with that boy. Lloyd. That's his name, isn't it? The boy they thought did those killings?"

"They were wrong."

"I know. His name was in the papers. People only remember killers, never who they killed."

I dragged deep on my cigarette. Her face was contrasts: huge eyes, a tiny nose, that broad slash of a mouth. So different from the way she looked in the diner. I locked on her eyes, my voice gentle, like reading a menu I wasn't trying to sell. "Merrilee Marshall, Tommy Deacon, Rose Joanne Lynch, George Borden."

Two fingers stroked her cheek. "Why?"

"There's a dead sheep in the meadow. All cut to pieces. Wolves make different marks than mountain lions. And humans, they make their own marks."

"Sherwood told me. Told me you were looking for the sniper."

"He questioned you? The people at the diner?"

"No. Rose is…was my sister. My baby sister. There's three of us. Mama said we were her garden. Violet, me, and Rose. She was seventeen years old. Came up here to spend the summer with some of our kin before she started college. Just to have some fun, see someplace new. When we heard she was killed, we thought they had the killer. But then…things changed. Couldn't be sure. So I came up here myself. To look around. The way my mother would have wanted."

"Why the waitress job?"

"I just followed the pipeline. The migrant pipeline. My people have been coming out of the hills into the steel mills forever. I didn't want to work in an office, didn't have much time. The diner was the first job I saw open, close to the ground."

I thought about how the diner was at the nerve center of everything that had happened, a checkpoint in the human traffic pattern. Wondered about accidents, coincidence. "But Sherwood, he knows?" I asked her.

"He knows Rose was my sister. He knows how blood runs, that man. He said he'd keep me in the picture, tell me what's going on."

"He think Lloyd did it?"

"No. I don't think he ever did. After the boy first got arrested, he told me it would be a tough case to make. But then he got scared."

"Scared?"

"That I'd fix it myself. Make it right if the jury wouldn't." Shrugging like that was ridiculous. "Anyway, I think he told me about you to kind of settle me down. He said you were a private investigator."

I nodded.

She smiled.

I imitated her shrug, watching close.

"But you're in it?" she asked, a trace of metal in her voice.

"I'm in it."

"And you can find him?"

"I don't know. I don't know where to look. That's where my brother comes in. But I know who I'm looking for."

She regarded me steadily, her eyes doing a diagnosis she never learned in medical school.

"I believe you do."

71

WE TALKED AS soft darkness filled Blossom's kitchen, night filtering in slow, not dropping like a New York curtain.

"You want something to eat?"

I looked at my watch. "Can't. I have to meet some people. Get to work."

"It'll only take me a minute to get dressed."

"These people…I can't bring a guest, you understand?"

She leaned forward, elbows on the kitchen table. Her robe billowed open. My eyes never left her face.

"I understand. Be sure you do. I told you some things, but there's a lot you don't know. About me. Ways I could help. Places I could go."

"I'm not cutting you out. Whoever this guy is, he comes out at night. Before I go where he is, I have to do some day work."

"I'll give Leon notice."

"Why don't you just walk out? You don't need the money, right?"

"That's not the way I was raised. I'll give him notice. Then we'll go around together, you and me."

72

I PULLED INTO Virgil's block, feeling the eyes. A safe neighborhood, if you were a neighbor.

The house was built in Indiana working-class style— the back door opened into the kitchen. Virginia came to the door when I knocked— I saw Rebecca fussing over the stove over her shoulder.

"Hello," the child said gravely.

"Hello, Virginia. Is your mother at home?"

She looked at me the way women have been looking at me for years. Stepped aside to let me in.

"You want some supper, Burke?" Rebecca asked, not turning around.

"If it's not too much trouble."

"Already cooked. You like chicken and dumplings?"

"Sure."

"Coming up. Virginia, go tell Daddy his brother is here."

Virginia ignored her, rummaging in the refrigerator.

"What did I tell you?" Rebecca asked, her voice sharp.

"Daddy will want a beer anyway.

"Is that right, Miss Know-It-All?"

"Oh, Mama. You know Daddy likes it when I bring him a beer."

"Daddy'd like it just as much you brought him a nice glass of apple juice."

The kid giggled, pulled a can of Pabst from the shelf, expertly poured it into a tall glass, creating a perfect head. Marched off to the living room.

Rebecca put a plate of steaming food in front of me. Glass of ginger ale. "Virgil said you don't drink…"

"It's true. Thank you. Your daughter is beautiful."

"That's her mother's blood," Virgil said, coming into the kitchen, a beer in one hand. His son at his side. Looked like the boy grew another couple of inches since I saw him last. Sat down across from me.

"Where's Lloyd?" I asked him.

"Out in the garage. I set up a heavy bag for him. The boy's turning into King Kong."

"He rescue any more waitresses lately?"

"Not that I know of."

Junior stood at his father's shoulder, eyes wide. Watching the stranger.

"Was he always such a big boy?"

"Nine pounds and change at birth. The baby doctor we take him to, he's the team physician for the junior high over to Hobart. Said we ought to move there before Junior turns ten. Says we got a natural-born linebacker here."

"Looks like it to me too. You want him to play ball?"

Virgil lit a smoke, blew a puff at the ceiling. Talking to me with words meant for his son. "He wants to play ball, that's okay with me. But he don't have to. Back home, there wasn't but two ways— the mines or the mills. Football, basketball…that was a way out for some. You know the other ways. But my son, he's not gonna need that. He wants to play ball, his old man'll come out, watch him crack some heads. He wants to be an actor, I'll watch him up on the stage. Don't matter. Whatever he does, we'll be proud of him. Right, Reba?"

Rebecca walked over, kissed the boy on the top of his head. "Of course."

The kid squirmed, turned red. His father gave him a look, telling him it was just one of those things he'd have to put up with. Virginia watched both of them intently.

Virgil saw her watching. Laughed. "Virginia, your little boy's growing up, huh, darlin'?"

The girl frowned. "Oh, Daddy!"

Virgil turned to me. "Virginia, she about raised Junior when he was a baby. Couldn't do enough for him. Used to dress him up, take him for walks in the stroller. The boy's getting his growth now. He don't want to mind his sister like he used to."

Virginia stalked off into the living room, stopping only to plant a kiss on top of the little boy's head just like her mother had done.

Tinkle of piano keys. Warming up. Then the concert started. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" was her opening selection.

"Who taught her to play?"

"She just picked it up somehow. Used to sit next to me on the bench when I was playing. One day, she just starting hitting those keys."

"Virgil, you're not fooling nobody," Rebecca said. "You notice how his chest just went out about a foot, Burke? Virgil used to play the piano for that child when I was still carrying her. Music was the first thing she heard in this world."

I ate my chicken and dumplings, sipped my ginger ale, listened to their love. Wondered what it would be like…me.

Then I remembered why I was there. Visiting Day.

73

LATER THAT NIGHT, I stood in the yard with Virgil. The house quiet and dark behind us.

"You know that waitress? The blonde one Lloyd jumped in to protect?"

"Yeah."

"She's kin of one of the little girls who got killed. Came up here looking for the shooter."

"She think Lloyd's the one?"

"No. Says even Sherwood never thought so."

"Sure acted like he did."

"He's a cop. That's the way they play. The good ones, they don't let their instincts get in the way."

"How come you know about this woman?"

"She told me."

Virgil grunted, waiting.

"I need a gun," I told him.

"Figured you might."

"You got some?"

"Not what you want. Some of 'em even registered."

I gave him a look.

"Reba, she ain't no ex-con. All nice and legal. Where we come from, people're raised on guns. No big thing. Ain't a house in this neighborhood you won't find at least a deer rifle, shotgun, something like that."

"The shooter, it all goes right, he won't even see me coming, but…"

"I got it, brother. I'm not much for that psychology crap you was always studying in the joint, but I know two things for sure about this boy. He's one sick puppy. And he's got him some serious firepower."

I worked it around in my head. When I was hijacking, I had guns stashed all over the country. In safe-deposit boxes. Paid ten years' rent in advance. That's when I lived in hotels, went South for the winter. Before I had a home. It wasn't worth going back.

"I need a pistol," I told Virgil. "A cold one. I use it, I'm gonna lose it."

"Tomorrow night, I'm playing with my band. Over in Chicago. You come along, okay? Your kind of music." He dragged on his smoke. "Reba's coming with me tomorrow. Virginia can take care of Junior. You come along. I'll make a phone call. After my set, we'll step out to the back, meet a man. Get you what you want, okay?"

"Can I bring a date?" I asked him.

74

WE PICKED UP Blossom at her house, paid the tolls through Hammond, and took the Skyway into Chicago. Virgil directed me past Rush Street until I found a parking place right around the corner from his club.

It was a big joint for a blues bar, but not enough seating capacity for the high-dollar acts. Still, Chicago's a blues town and sometimes you get lucky— Virgil said he caught Buddy Guy and Junior Wells there once and they weren't even on the bill.

Virgil went out back to get ready. Rebecca, Blossom, and I found a little round table near the back. The waitress was wearing a black body-stocking with an apron tied in front.

"There's about a half hour before the next set. You all want something to eat?"

I ordered a roast beef sandwich and ginger ale. Blossom asked for a plate of sliced red cabbage, radishes, carrots, and two hard-boiled eggs. The waitress gave her a strange look. "Anything to drink?"

"You have bottled water?"

"We don't even have bottled beer."

"Just a glass of seltzer, then."

Rebecca had a hamburger and a glass of red wine.

The waitress was just clearing the table when they started to set up on the little stage. I watched the musicians, wondering what this was going to be. A strange collection. Tall man with a gospel singer's face was hooking up an electric fiddle, like Sugarcane Harris used to play. Steel guitar, Virgil at his piano, drums. A rail-thin black man who looked old enough to be a runaway slave sat on a stool cradling a slide guitar on his lap. Fresh-faced chubby kid wearing dark glasses stood to the far side, a cartridge belt of harmonicas around his waist. It took the front man a while to make it to the microphone. He had a chest big enough to play solitaire on, a head the size of a basketball, thick long hair swept back from his forehead in crashing waves. He was standing on metal crutches, the kind that angle about halfway up. A massive upper body on useless legs.

They never announced the name of the band. The electric-fiddle player cranked up a low floating scream. The drummer laid down a hard sharp track underneath as the harp player barked his way in, waiting for the piano man to travel along the high keys. The chesty guy on crutches took them through a gambler's version of "Mary Lou." Like the way Ronnie Hawkins used to do it, but with the harp man doing the backup voices. He gave us "Suzy Q" and a nasty twist on "Change in the Weather." I couldn't put any name to it but the blues. Virgil's piano was a magic thing— sweet water flowing over crystal rocks, breaking and falling, spooling out a ribbon of purity across the bottom, climbing again. He and the fiddle player laid down a carpet of neon smoke, the slide guitar man lancing through, long fingers high up on the neck, counterpointing the harp, bending unreal notes between them like playing jump-rope with metallic strands. The steel guitar cried to itself.

Rebecca's voice: "My Virgil can play, can't he?"

Blossom: "You couldn't get closer to the Lord in church."

Then the band went into its own stuff. Telling the truth. Nightclub women and working girls, cocaine and do-without pain. Hell's hounds, jailhouse-bound. Dice players and pimps. Cheating wives and gunfights. Don't mind dying. Hard times and hard people.

The baby spot hit the players as they each took a solo, the singer saying each man's name for the crowd as they played.

They finished the last number. The slide guitar worked the bass notes, with only Virgil's piano helping him along. The man on crutches talked to us.

"Men, you ever have a good woman? I mean a gooood woman…the kind of woman who'll stand up when she has to and stand by while you do time? You know what I mean. A woman who can give that good love, that real love? Answer me if I'm telling the truth!"

They answered him. Tapped their whiskey glasses together, yelled "That's right!" up at the stage, groaned their encouragement.

"And you threw her away, didn't you? You let her go. You gave up a used Cadillac for a new Ford, you know what I'm saying?"

They knew.

"You ever want just one more chance? Well, listen to me now. The electric fiddle worked under the harp this time, the chubby kid welding the notes into new shapes. The man on crutches came through the music like a fist punching through a door, his cobalt voice nailing the crowd.

I've done you wrong

So many times

Treated you cruel

Played with your mind

I know you're leaving

And I'll miss your loving touch

But won't you listen just one more time?

Woman, don't you owe me that much?

I drank and I gambled

But you always let me come home

Yes, I drank and I gambled

But you always let me come home

You always forgave me

Till you heard that little girl on the phone

A woman in the crowd screamed something up at the stage. The singer bowed in her direction and went back to work.

I lost my job, even went to jail

And you always stayed by my side

When I lost my job, and I went to jail

You always stood up, right by my side

But you saw me with that other woman

You swore your love had died

First you said you'd kill her

And then you changed your mind

Yeah, you said you'd take her young life

But then you changed your mind

You threw my clothes in the street

And told me to stay with my own kind

He hit us with verse after verse, telling his story. Telling the truth. When he got to the end of the road, he had us with him.

I need you for my woman

I need you for my wife

You know I need you, woman

Lord knows I need my wife

But if you won't send an answer

I guess I don't need my life

He finished the set with a razor-wire version of "She's Nineteen Years Old." In case there were any tourists in the audience.

The crowd wouldn't let him off the stage. A woman in an electric-blue dress stood up, holding a beer glass in one hand, shouted something at him I couldn't hear.

The bandleader's voice came back at her through the mike. "Maybe I can't run the hundred-yard dash, darlin', but I'm still a sixty-minute man."

He owned the crowd. "One more," he said. And meant it. The drummer switched to brushes. Virgil intro'ed off the bass keys. A piano doesn't have special notes inside it like a guitar, but Virgil played them special. The slide guitar stayed low with him.

"God Bless the Child."

The band held the fort as the singer slowly moved himself off the stage. Then it went dark.

75

A TAP ON MY shoulder. Virgil. I got up, followed him through the darkness to the bar. "Wait here. I'll be back for you in a minute."

I ordered a whiskey from the bartender, left it sitting on the counter. A white man was making noise at the end of the bar, drunk, whining to his friends.

"Why can't I sing the blues?" he demanded. "Because I'm white?"

A factory man's dark voice answered his call. "'Cause you can't sing, sucker!"

Virgil took me into a back room. The massive blues shouter was sitting in an armchair big enough for a meeting. "Doc, I want you to meet my brother. Burke," Virgil said, bringing me over.

He held out his hand. I took it, felt a palm leathered from years of holding crutches. "You're the best I ever heard," I told him.

"Thank you, brother."

The harp man was talking on the phone, intensely. The slide-guitar man was smoking a joint. Nobody else around. Virgil moved his head a couple of inches. I followed him to another door.

Inside, an old chrome-and-Formica kitchen table. Four chairs. One of them occupied by a featureless man in a white shirt, balding, bifocals perched on top of his head.

"Arnold, this is my brother. The guy I told you about."

"How ya doin'?" he piped up, in a thin voice younger than his face.

I sat down. Lit a smoke. Bowed my head slightly to greet him. Waiting.

"Virgil said you needed some stuff?"

"A pistol."

"A pistol? What's that supposed to mean, pistol? I got more kinds of pistols than you've had birthdays. Give me the specs. Or give me the job, I'll pick one out for you."

"Revolver. No more than three-inch. Thirty-eight or .357. Blue. Something decent, a Colt or a Smith. Ice-cold."

"You want this for…?"

"Protection. Protection I can carry around with me."

"Look, man, you're talking Stone Age stuff. Take a look at this little piece of perfection." He opened one of the suitcases on the floor next to him. Came out with a dull gray automatic. "This here's a Glock, ever hear of it? Designed by an Austrian. The guy's a genius, not a gunsmith. Started with a blank piece of paper. Plastic undercarriage, metal frame. Takes nine-millimeter ammo. Any nine-millimeter, see?" He held up a bullet, black-tipped. "You know what this is?"

"Uzi."

"Right you are, my friend. You put high-pressure submachine slugs like this in a regular semi-auto, you blow it up in your hand. But not the Glock. Holds sixteen rounds, fast as you can pull them off."

"Automatics jam."

"Bullshit. Some automatics jam. I do all the work myself. Custom. You got my personal guarantee."

I didn't waste time explaining to him how I'd have trouble getting my money back if his toy jammed. "I'm not going to be in a gunfight," I told him.

His eyes shifted but his expression didn't change. "Okay, I understand. I recommend you take the Glock, plus this Wilson suppressor I just happen to have machined for it. Instead of the Uzi ammo, we switch to subsonics. Makes a little pop, that's all. Never draw a crowd."

"I appreciate it, but I got to use what I'm familiar with, okay? You got any revolvers in that case?"

"Three-inch max?"

"Yeah."

He rummaged around. "How about this? Ruger Speed-Six. I modified the trigger pull myself. It's so smooth you won't feel it go home even in double-action."

I took the piece from him. Black rubber handgrips, blue steel. Looked new.

"This been around?"

"Virgil, you tell your brother anything about me or what? The pieces of this weapon, they've been around, you understand what I'm saying to you? This little unit has been hand-assembled from a wide range of similar units. Made it myself, from parts. You finish with this one, you mail it to the ATF, they won't be able to do nothing with it."

"How much?"

"A piece like this, new, maybe four hundred retail."

"But you don't sell retail."

"Sure, I sell retail. I got me an FFL and everything. But over the counter, you know, there's a lot of paperwork. Besides, I got a lot of custom labor in this piece, like I told you."

"So?"

"Seven-fifty. And I'll throw in a box of Plus P, hundred and fifty-eight grain. That's about all you want to load in this baby."

I dragged on my cigarette. Some dealers like the bargaining part. This guy wasn't that kind— all you could do was wait him out.

"Or maybe you'd rather have an assortment. I got a few hand-loaded thirty-eights here. Mercury tips, hollow points, full metal jacket…"

"Got some wad cutters?"

"You got to be very close for those."

"I understand."

"We got a deal?"

I ground out my smoke. "Tell you what. Why don't we make it an even grand. For the pistol, some ammo, and some advice."

"I like it."

I handed over the money in hundreds. He eye-counted it, passed me the pistol, sorted through his collection of shells, filled a box.

I lit another smoke. "You hear anything about those sniper killings over in Indiana? The Lovers' Lane Killer, the papers call him?"

"Yeah." Waiting.

"Let's say, just for a minute, that we know something about the guy who did it, all right? Let's say he's a Rambo freak. Lives at home, don't get out much. Likes to play dress-up in camo gear, that kind of thing. He's not military, not a cop. Not a merc either. Probably no training, no contacts, okay?"

"I'm with you."

"So he's probably buying mail-order. He wouldn't have the cash for a really quality piece. What would he have?"

Arnold's face flickered, computing. "Got to be one of those 'assault rifles,'" he sneered. "Which is just about anything with a Kalashnikov action. The caliber isn't the problem. Damn near has to be .223. Could be Russian, Chinese, even Brazilian. Everybody makes a knockoff of the original. But your guy, he'd want the look, okay?"

"The look?"

"Like high-tech, man. Dark and evil. I figure him for a Mini-14 with all the goodies. Black plastic stock, flash suppressor, maybe even a bipod on the front for prone-position fire. Maybe an AR-15 but…I like the Mini. You can get 'em anywhere, real cheap."

"Through the mail?"

"Hell, yes. Buy all the camo gear he wants too, boots to hats. Underwear, he wants it. The Mini, it'll take anything from twenty rounds up. Up to a hundred, he wants to go with a drum."

"Silencer?"

"Now that's a different game, man. You can buy books on how to make them, but a good one, one that'd work, he'd have to know somebody. That .223 stuff, it pulls a high harmonic. Like a crack, you know? Not a boom."

"Arnold, let me ask you one more question, okay? You sell a rig like the one we're talking about here in the last few months?"

"Oh, man. I don't sell junk."

"But if some guy had only so much cash…?"

"Guy like you're asking about, he wouldn't know where to find me."

76

WHEN WE CAME back to the table, Blossom and Rebecca had their heads together, whispering. We sat down. The waitress brought Virgil a bottle of beer, looking a question at me. I shook my head no.

Virgil looked at his watch. "We need to pull out of here in a few minutes. There's another band coming on— we don't want to walk out in the middle of their set. Wouldn't look right."

Blossom rested her fingertips lightly on my forearm as we walked to the car.

Just before we crossed into Indiana, Rebecca spoke from the back seat. "Want to visit with us a bit, have some coffee?"

"Blossom has to work early tomorrow morning," I told her.

The blonde woman's voice was sweet and soft. "I'm a big girl now. I can get myself up in the morning."

Virgil laughed. "You as smooth as ever, Burke."

I caught his eyes in the mirror. The Prof was right— once a Hoosier, always a Hoosier.

Blossom curled in her seat, looking out the window.

77

A LIGHT SHONE in the kitchen as we walked up the path to the back door. Lloyd was seated at the table, a book propped in front of him. Line of fresh stitches across the bridge of his nose. Saw Blossom. Blushed. Kind of ducked his head, mumbled something that sounded like "Hi."

She gave him a dazzling smile I didn't know she had. "You watching the kids?"

"Sure. They're in bed, fast asleep. I figured…maybe I'd better wait up till you all got back."

Virgil nodded his approval.

"Any calls?" Rebecca asked.

"Just your friend Bette. Said she'd see you tomorrow."

"Okay, honey. Thanks. You want some coffee— we're all having some."

"If it won't…"

He didn't take his eyes off Blossom all the while we sat and talked. About nothing. Soft stuff. Virginia was getting to the age where she cared about the clothes she wore. Junior was starting first grade as soon as summer ended. Lloyd had cut the lawn without being asked.

The pistol felt heavy in my coat pocket. If I was back in New York, I wouldn't have noticed the weight.

78

IT WAS ALMOST one in the morning when I brought Blossom back to her house. I walked her to the door. Stood outside while she put the lights on. Lit a smoke.

She came back onto the front porch. The gull watched us from his cage, waiting his time. "When do we start?" she asked me.

"Start?"

"Looking."

"I've already started. I'll fill you in tomorrow night."

"I told you…there's things I could do. With you. On this."

"If it's still running when you quit your job, then we'll see."

"No night work for me on this job?"

"Maybe. Not yet."

"See you tomorrow night." I turned to go.

"Burke…"

"What?"

"Don't be mad at Virgil. I knew your name wasn't Mitchell Sloane."

"How?"

"Sherwood."

"The man opened right up to you, didn't he?"

"Some men do."

I tossed my cigarette away.

"Come here," she said. Gentle.

She stood on her toes, kissed me lightly on the cheek. "Thanks. I loved hearing your brother play."

"See you tomorrow."

"Okay."

79

I STOPPED AT a pay phone. Dumped in handfuls of quarters.

Called the junkyard. When the phone was picked up, I said, "Tell the Prof to find Vincenzo at the library tomorrow. Bring him over to Mama's. Have him wait between eight and nine. I'll call." The phone went down.

80

THE NEXT MORNING, I started to look. The way it works, you draw a blank page in your mind. Fill in everything you know. See what's left. If there's too much left, too much white space, you make some guesses. Test them out.

I had plenty of white space. I slapped the black tiles down, moving them around. Not enough. I switched the tiles, part of my mind seeing the pattern they made.

Pattern.

I played with it.

81

LUNCHTIME, I WENT to the diner. Cyndi was happy to see me. Told me about a new guy she was dating. He worked at the plant.

"But he's going to college at night. Says he doesn't want his kids working in the mill."

"He's got kids?"

"No." She giggled. "The kids he's gonna have."

I saw the police cruiser roll up. Ford Crown Vic, cream-colored, dark brown fenders. Two cops got out. Came inside, stopped at the counter. Talked to Leon.

On the jukebox: Maxine Brown. "It's All in My Mind."

Blossom came up to my table, her canvas bag slung over one shoulder. She leaned over. "Give it to me."

"What?"

"What you picked up last night. Hurry!"

I slid the pistol into her bag. Went back to my tuna on rye. Shadow fell across my plate. Cops. Big heavy one, potbelly looming over his gun belt. Smaller one, narrow all the way up through his eyes.

"How you doing?" the big one asked.

"Just fine, Officer."

"That's good," his partner said.

"Anything I can do for you?"

"Could tell us what you're doing around here."

"Working for Bart Bostick. The lawyer."

"We know who he is. Heard about your little arrangement with him."

"So?"

"So Sherwood don't run the department. Captain does, you understand?"

"Sure."

"Good. This work you're doing for Counselor Bostick…it wouldn't involve carrying concealed weapons, would it?"

"Nope."

"Mind if we take a look? With your consent, of course."

"Look where? For what?"

"In your car. Maybe in your jacket. For a gun."

"And if I don't consent?"

"Then we just…" the smaller one said. The other guy jumped on his lines. "Then we just ask a judge for a search warrant. You understand, we got laws here. About ex-cons carrying firearms."

"You gonna do this every day?"

"This isn't a roust, friend. You're clean now, we figure you're working clean, okay?"

I handed him the car keys. "If the phone rings, take a message, will you?"

The smaller cop's face got tight. "Think I'll just stay here. Keep you company."

"I got a better idea. How about if I go outside to the car with you. Let you take your look. Look at me too, you want."

The big cop nodded.

We went outside. They took a look, patted me down. Carefully. Got back into their cruiser. The big one said "Have a nice day" through the window.

"Same to you," I told him.

82

BACK INSIDE. When Blossom came back around, the canvas bag was gone.

"How'd you know?" I asked her.

"One day, when I was leaving the precinct, one of those cops came up to me. Sort of implied Sherwood and I had been trading something besides information."

"He knew why you were there?"

"No. Guess he asked Sherwood and got blown off. A real philosopher. Had a lot to say about niggers and white girls who didn't know where they belonged."

"Revis?" Remembering the name on the smaller one's badge."

"Yes, that's him."

"Thanks."

"We're partners, right?"

I felt those turquoise eyes on me. It didn't feel like she was talking a fifty-fifty split.

"I'll give it back to you later. Tonight. Today's my last day. I gave Leon notice— he said he had a dozen other girls with applications in, no problem."

"Want me to wait, give you a ride home after work?"

"No, I have to hang around. Cyndi's boyfriend's coming in. She wants me to meet him."

"Check him out? See if he's right for her?"

"You think I can't?"

I nodded a disclaimer. Thinking how good she was at watching people.

83

I DROVE BACK over to Virgil's Picked up Lloyd. Had him take me to where he and the other boys had been prowling when he'd opened his puppy mouth and brought all the trouble down. Went over the ground, getting nothing. I don't know what I expected to find— it wasn't a job for a scientist.

The rest of the time, I drove around, learning the streets. Lloyd at my side, filling in the blanks when I asked him where we were.

84

CALLED BOSTICK. "You entitled to discovery even if Lloyd's not indicted?"

"No. He's got to be charged with something first. What d'you need?"

"Anything the killer might have left at the crime scenes. Blood, hair, shell casings."

"I can probably get that. Anything else?"

"He would've left something. I'll think about it, get back to you. On the meter, okay?"

"You're covered. Your man Davidson's handling a federal matter for me over in New York. We'll work it out."

85

I DUMPED QUARTERS into the pay phone. Dialed Mama's number, expecting the Prof.

"Gardens."

"It's me, Mama. The Prof around?"

"Everybody around. Everybody here except you."

"I'll be back soon."

"Max ask…when?"

"Soon. I told you."

"Any trouble?"

"No trouble."

I heard the phone being put down on the counter.

"Read me a poem, 'home."

"Prof, you bring Vincenzo?"

"I got him, bro'. Go easy. My man gets real strange when he's off his range."

I knew what the Prof meant. Vincenzo lived in the Public Library. Main branch on Forty-second Street. Every day he showed up to do his "research." A tall, gentle-looking man, walking his own road. Carries a knapsack full of notebooks with writing only he can read. Lives on another plane from us. Vincenzo, he's one of the few guys who wouldn't know where to buy cocaine in the city. But he could tell you the precise spot in Colombia where the soil composition and annual rainfall would yield the best coca crop. If it was on paper, he could find it.

"Hello?"

"Vincenzo, my friend. You know who this is?"

"Yes."

"Can you do a research job for me?"

"I'm very busy with my own work. Did you know…?"

"Listen, Vincenzo, I know how important your work is. But this is kind of an emergency. And you're the only one with the ability to do it."

Silence.

"Okay?"

"What do you need?"

"I need anything you can find me on sex-snipers. Like Son of Sam. Or Zodiac, on the Coast. And there was a case in New York, within the last few years. Lovers' lane sniper. Anything, Vincenzo. Anything you can find. Okay?"

"I don't do analysis— I just find facts."

"That's what I need, pal. Facts. The Prof'll take care of you, any costs involved."

"I can give it one research day, that's all. Then I have to get back to my work."

"Okay. So I'll call you tomorrow night."

"You can't call me. There's no phones…"

"I'll call you there, Vincenzo. Right where you are now. The Prof will bring you back again, pick you up at your office tomorrow at closing time. Okay?"

"All right."

The Prof came back on the line. "You find your thrill in the hills yet, man?"

"Still looking. Thanks for t.c.b. on Vincenzo. Can you bring him back tomorrow night? Same time?"

"I say what I mean, I mean what I say, and those who don't listen, they'd better pray."

86

ALMOST TEN when I tapped on Blossom's door. Wearing a T-shirt that reached almost to her knees, feet bare. Her hair was tied in a loose knot on top of her head. I followed her back to the kitchen.

There was a black plastic ashtray on the kitchen table. I lit a smoke while she brewed coffee. One of the caterpillars had formed a cocoon. "What kind are they?" I asked.

"Black swallowtails. Beautiful big things. Long-distance fliers."

"How come you do that…raise butterflies?"

"When I was a kid, I used to try and catch them. The way kittens do. Not to be vicious, just chasing them because they're so pretty. My mother explained it to me. If you love something, you don't crush it. You can't hug a butterfly. She got me some caterpillars. Monarchs, they were. I remember, they only lived on milkweed. I learned patience, watching them eat, get fat, spin their cocoons. When the butterfly comes out, it's never so lovely as it is then. They come out wet. That's when they're most vulnerable. Until the powder dries on their wings and they can take to the sky. You hold them right on your fingers. They trust you then. Let them flap their wings until they're ready. Then you raise your hand and they fly away. I bring the cocoons into the hospital. On the children's ward. It's so good for them to see something get better. Fly away."

"I tried something like that once."

"Butterflies?"

"No. One foster home I was in. Out on Long Island. The old lady who ran the place, she had these rose bushes that she loved. Her pride and joy. All different kinds. That summer, we had this attack of Japanese beetles. What they do is eat rose bushes. Mrs. Jensen, she sprayed and sprayed. Tried everything. But the beetles kept on coming. It was breaking her heart."

She brought her cup to the kitchen table, holding it in two hands, watching.

"I was just a kid. Tried picking off the beetles, one at a time. But it didn't do any good— they just kept coming. So I went to the library. Looked up Japanese beetles. I found out they had what you call a natural enemy. Praying mantis. You ever see one?"

She nodded.

"Anyway, the praying mantis, it makes a cocoon. Like your caterpillars, but much bigger. Heavy strands like fiber, light brownish color. About half the size of a golf ball. I found some in a field near her house. Spent days collecting them. Put each one in a mason jar. I figured, one giant praying mantis would come out of each one. I'd hatch them, put them on the rose bushes. Have them stand guard."

"What happened?"

"When the first one hatched, it wasn't one praying mantis, it was like thousands of them. Little tiny things. So small you could hardly see them. Then I was stuck. See, I knew that birds would eat the little ones. But if I left them in the jar where they'd be safe, they'd starve to death. So I poured the whole jar over the rose bushes. When each one hatched, I did the same."

"Did it work?"

"Oh yeah. I poured out so many of the little suckers that the birds couldn't deal with them all. We had wall-to-wall praying mantises. They whacked every Japanese beetle for miles. When they get their growth, they're huge. Those front paws, hell, you could really feel them when they grabbed. So Mrs. Jensen's rose bushes were safe. But you couldn't go outside without getting dive-bombed by the praying mantises. They were all over the place. On the bushes. In the trees. In the house. All over the cars. The neighbors wanted to murder me."

"Sounds like you went overboard." She chuckled.

"Mrs. Jensen, she stood up for me. Said I meant well. I was only a little boy."

"She sounds like a fine woman."

"She was."

"Did she raise you?"

"No. I was only there for the summer. The State raised me."

"Are your parents dead?"

"I don't know. Never met them."

"Oh."

"You can get that sappy look off your face. You don't miss what you never had."

"You don't know my looks. You don't know what they mean. And folks do miss what they never have. They do it all the time. Now tell me what you found out."

87

LATER, I WAS on the couch in her living room. Blossom was curled up at the other end.

"Why are you in this?" she asked.

"Virgil's my brother."

"I understand that. But you came to help Lloyd, right? I know he's been arrested and all, but nobody thinks he did it. Why don't you go back home?"

"I could never explain it to you. The guy who did this, I know him. Not his name. I was raised with humans like him. I know why he does it."

"You want to stop him before he does it again?"

"I'm no hero. That's not it. I told you, I can't explain it."

She slid closer on the couch, voice quiet. "Cyndi tell you what I told her? About you?"

"To stay away from me?"

"Yes. She tell you why?"

"Not exactly."

"You're a trouble-man, Mr. Burke."

"What's that?"

"There's men who walk on the edge because they like the way it feels under their feet. Risk-takers."

"That's not me."

"Yes. Yes, it is. You've got the mark. Clear as a signpost. It's got nothing to do with bravery. But wherever you go, there's trouble. Trouble for somebody."

"You don't know me."

"And you don't know the sniper?"

I dragged on my smoke to have something to do. Thought it through. "I won't be around here long."

She stood up. Held out her hand to me. "You'll be around here till it gets light anyway."

88

IN HER BEDROOM, she pulled the T-shirt over her head and stepped into my chest, tilting her face up. Her lips were full and rich. Swollen. I kissed her softly, my hands trailing down her back. Her skin had a fine sheen of powder and sweat. Her arms came up, linked around my neck. She leaned back, one bare foot on my shoe. Her breasts were small, round perfect things, tiny nipples dark against the milky flesh.

Blossom pushed my jacket off my shoulders, opened the buttons on my shirt with a pickpocket's touch. She sat on the bed while I pulled off the rest of my clothes. Held out her hand again. Pushed me onto my back on the bed. Got to her feet. Hooked thumbs in the waistband of her powder-blue panties and pulled them down to her thighs. Bent at the waist as she stepped out of them. Came onto the bed again, her face in my neck. I gazed down the line of her back. Her ankles were slim, calf muscles standing out strong. A woman who spent a lot of time on her feet. Her buttocks swelled from a tiny waist. I patted her, feeling the firm flesh bounce back against me.

"It's a handful, huh?"

"Bigger than I would've thought."

"I had to learn how to walk to keep it down. Boys used to follow me home from school."

"I would have, I saw all this in motion."

She slid one leg over mine, trailing wetness. Kissed me deep, tongue curling up against the back of my top teeth. Her hand found me. "You left something in your clothes," she whispered. "Go get it."

"What?"

She propped herself up on her elbows, regarding me with those searchlight eyes. "Don't tell me…"

"What?"

"Why do you carry that pistol, trouble-man?"

"For protection."

"Yeah. You wouldn't leave home without it. That the only kind of protection you can think of?"

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh. You have any or not?"

"Not."

Her little fist thumped me lightly on the chest. "Nice work, boy. You get lucky enough to come along when I'm having an estrogen-fit, then you blow it."

"Speaking of which…"

"Forget it. What year do you think this is? I didn't go to medical school to have some strange man playing with my life. I don't know where you've been."

"I…"

"Don't even tell me. A stiff cock's got no conscience."

"Your mother tell you that?"

"Matter of fact, she did. Best time to ask a man for a favor is just before he comes."

"When's the best time for a woman?"

"Just after." A gentle twist to her mouth, playing with a smile.

I cupped my hands behind my head. Looked at the ceiling. "How long do these estrogen-fits of yours last?"

Her full smile bloomed in the darkness. "Not long enough for you to find a drugstore, you dope. You know anything about women?"

"Not much."

A faint coppery smell came off her body. She nuzzled against my neck. Whispered, "Wait here." Like I was going anywhere. I watched her walk out of the bedroom. She didn't bother to keep it down. Cyndi could have taken lessons.

I closed my eyes. Felt her hand on me. Slick and wet. A long fingernail trailed down my shaft. Electricity ran from my spine to the back of my neck.

"You found something?" I asked her.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. A diaphragm, foam…something." Not saying anything about the vasectomy I'd had years ago…like I'd told her too much, somehow.

"Feel this," she said, guiding my fingertips to her upper arm. Five tiny little lines, fan-shaped under the skin.

"What is it?" I asked her.

"Progestin. Best birth-control chemical there is. Each implant is a time-release bar. The whole thing's good for about five years. Unless you weigh more than a hundred and fifty-four pounds. You think I'm a good risk?" Patting her butt, smiling.

"You're well on the safe side."

"You're not exactly a silver-tongued devil, are you, boy? Anyway, this version's called Norplant. It just got FDA approval— I was one of the volunteers they tested it on. No ugly side effects like the Pill."

"So why…?"

"I know how to keep from having babies. Know what to do if that doesn't work too. You never heard about Safe Sex?"

"Sure." I didn't tell her where I first heard about it. From a child molester. Safe for him.

He thought.

Her hand stroked. I opened my eyes a slit. White fluffy bath towel lying on the bed.

"That isn't going to work," I told her. "I haven't gotten off like that since I was a kid."

"Shhh, baby. Close your eyes. I'll tell you a story."

She whispered all I'd missed out on, coming to her house without protection. Whispered and stroked and teased and played and chuckled.

Then she spread the towel over me, curled up against me, and we slept together.

89

I WOKE UP to the sound of the shower. Wrapped the towel around me, went into the kitchen, lit a smoke. Heard the bathroom door open. Found Blossom seated at her dressing table, working some cream into her face. She nodded her head at the bathroom, concentrating.

The place was full of steam, mirror fogged. I took a shower with the liquid soap she left there in a clear push-top bottle. Washed my hair with shampoo I found in a black squeeze tube. Put on last night's clothes.

Blossom was still in the bedroom, still fussing with her face when I came back.

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way," she said, "but I can be saying this only once. I'm not mad at you. There's nothing wrong. But I can't talk to people in the morning when I first get up. I need to be with myself. It's okay if you stay, do what you want. There's food inside. But don't talk to me till I talk to you, okay?"

"Okay."

She was letting me see pieces of her— the ones she wanted held up to the light. No more today. I walked out. It was still before rush hour— it only took me twenty minutes to get back to the motel, even with stopping at a drugstore.

90

I SEPARATED OUT my dry cleaning, stuffed underwear and socks into the laundry bag Rebecca had given me. Showered again, shaved, changed my clothes. Time to work.

Called Sherwood from the car. "Want to meet me someplace?"

"Okay. You know your way around?"

"I can find you."

"The Police Community Relations Outpost. It's on Twenty-fifth, just off Broadway. In about an hour."

"I was hoping for a little more privacy."

His laugh was a bass rumble.

91

I TURNED THE Lincoln onto Broadway, motored past the Y&W Drive-In Theatre. Glanced at the marquee: first-run flicks, no slasher-porn. Still in Merrillville. I crossed the line into Garyat Fifty-third. The stores got closer together, muscling each other for sidewalk room. Package joints, tire stores, BBQ, brick-fronted bars, shoeshine, barbershops. An abandoned gas station. Pizza parlors, law offices, auto body shops. A dozen different dumps with "Lounge" after some name. XXX video stores. Signs: Go-Go Dancers Wanted. Burlesque. Pool-room. Ladies Welcome. Exotic Dancers. Hand-painted, red letters: LIVE GIRLS.

I thought of the Ghost Van.

I crossed into Glen Park, where even the billboards turned Afro. Fast food, ribs and chicken. Sex shops, private booths, a quarter a play. Storefront churches. Check cashing. Pawnshops. Bible Book Center. Tattoo parlor. A closed-front store advertising Swingers' Supplies and Marital Aids.

They probably got the last word right.

At Twenty-sixth a sign: Welcome to Gary. Sherwood's home ground.

I hung a left on Twenty-fifth. The Police Community Relations sign hung limply from a bombed-out ruin, rusted metal gates padlocked across its face. A black unmarked Ford parked in front, conspicuous as a pigeon among peacocks in that neighborhood. The front seat nearly filled with one body.

I pulled in behind him, killed the ignition. He maneuvered his bulk out of the car, light on his feet. Came around to the passenger side. I hit the switch and he climbed in.

"Let's take your ride. Leave this thing on the street around here, it won't be around when you get back."

"Where to?"

"Straight ahead. Past the high school. Over by the Delaney Projects. You know where they are, right?"

I didn't say anything. But Hightower's mother must have.

Sherwood pointed to the curb with a cigar-sized finger and I pulled over.

"You wanted to talk?'

I lit a smoke. "Remember that postal stuff we talked about? There's a few possibilities in there, but I can't be sure. They're for real, I don't want to just roll up on them at their houses, right?"

He didn't even nod, watching close.

"You must have crews around here. I've been checking, asking around." Remembering something Virgil had told me. "That little town, Lake Station, wasn't it once called East Gary?"

"Yep. Sure was."

"And the people there, they wanted a different name. Not be associated with Garyin people's minds."

"That don't make them Nazis."

"Didn't say it did. But you got a Klan in Indiana, at least south of here you do. And what they do is recruit, right? I don't mean hold rallies and stuff. They ask around, see who's interested. They may not call themselves by any special name, but there's no shortage of hate groups around here."

"Black and white."

"Sure. I'm not a sociologist. The guy I'm looking for, he's white."

"Random killings. Sniper fire. What's white about that?"

"Nothing by itself. But this isn't about race. That's not the key. The Zebra killings in Frisco, that was race war."

"You know about that?"

I dragged on my smoke, letting him have my eyes. "Death Angels. With little dark wings drawn on their photographs. Take Five. Carry devil's heads to Mecca. Extra points for kids. The cops never got all of them. The BLA, that was color too. But the color they were hunting was blue. That white guy in Buffalo. He shot random, but only blacks. The shrinks are working on a new word for it: Afrophobia."

His smile was bitter ice. "Yeah, they always know what to call a lynching."

"My man won't be a Nazi. He's alone. Inside himself. But he may have tried. Flirted with the edges. Likes the costumes. So what I need, I need to know where I could maybe find some of these freaks."

"You gonna sign up?"

"I don't do undercover work. Takes too long. It's not them I'm after."

"So how d'you talk to them?"

"I'll offer to sell them some guns."

"Those boys are suspicious. Paranoid. They'll think you're the Man."

"Not if they run my prints. These guys always have friends on the force."

"Could be…I heard rumors on my own job."

"Officer Revis maybe?"

His eyes glinted. "You do get around, don't you? Where d'you hear that?"

"Same place you heard I'd been to the Projects before."

Sherwood fired a smoke of his own. Looked as thin as a chiba joystick in his thick fingers. "There's a truckers' motel out on the Interstate, right across from the power plant. You know it?"

"I can find it."

"Yeah. Like you said before. Anyway, there's a bar just down the road. Freestanding, big parking lot. Sign out front says they have fashion shows there."

"Fashion shows?"

"You'll see. Look for a white Chevy Blazer, little Confederate flag on the antenna. White Power bumper sticker." He pulled out a notebook, wrote something, tore out the page, handed it to me. "License number. David Matson is the owner. In his forties, about six one, about half bald, always wears some kind of cap, even indoors. He's the head of the local chapter."

"Of…"

"Of whatever they call themselves this week. But it don't matter, Matson'll be the boss."

"Thanks."

I dropped him back at his cruiser. He turned to me, getting out of the car. "You said this wasn't about race. What is it about?"

"Sex."

"People get those mixed up around here, my friend."

After he left, I called Blossom from the car. "You want some company?"

"I want yours."

92

LUNCH WAS a salad, all red and green.

"You'd rather have meat, wouldn't you?"

"I guess."

"This is better for you."

"I'm sure"— wondering when it was coming.

"You take vitamins?"

"Ginseng."

"That's not a vitamin, it's an herb. You're going to smoke, you should take nine, ten thousand milligrams of Vitamin C a day. And fifty thousand IU of beta-carotene."

"IU?" I asked, pretending like I was listening.

"International Units."

"Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, boss."

Her laugh was throaty. "You never had a boss in your life."

"I've had cottage leaders, counselors, directors, superintendents, wardens…you name it."

"No employers?"

"No."

"Didn't think so."

"You think you know me, girl? You talked to Sherwood, maybe got a look at my rap sheet. Watched me around the diner. Drove around in my car…"

"Held you in my hands."

"That too. Think you know me?"

"Yes."

"Why am I here? Right now."

"You want to see if I'm still having an estrogen-fit."

I locked her eyes, voice serious, just the edge of a chill. The same voice that's backed up punks all through the underground. "I'm here because I got work to do… we got work to do. The cops think they got a pattern to the killings, but there might be more. Random shootings. Not deaths. Shootings. Maybe this freak dipped it, got it wet before he plunged in. We could get it out of the newspapers, but it might take weeks of work, go back a couple of years. So what we need is a reporter. Every paper's got at least one real one. Some hungry guy, wants to know what's going on. That's why he's in the journalism racket, to know things. We find one, get his nose open. Make him a deal. Tell him why we're looking, get him to go through the clips. Attempted murders, shootings. Drive-bys would be the best. Or sniper-shooting into some woman s window. See? Give us a few more pieces.

"I…"

"I'm not finished, Blossom. This pattern thing, it could lead to nothing. I don't know where the flower is, but I know the root. Like a preacher knows the devil. But where I have to look, it'll take a scam. And a doctor, now she'd be just perfect for it." I lit a smoke, pushing my salad plate away. "Now you understand what I came here for?"

She got up, walked around behind my chair, put her hands on my shoulders, her lips against my ear. "I'll carry your gun in my purse, in case you get stopped again. Besides, you probably got no room in your pocket, all those rubbers you brought with you.

93

IT TOOK ALMOST an hour for her to come out of the bedroom. I looked up from the newspaper. Blinked.

Blossom in a teal-blue silk sheath cut an inch or two above the knee, thin black belt at the waist, black spike heels with ankle straps, tiny black-faced watch on her wrist. A pair of black gloves in her hand.

"Like it?" she said, twirling a full spin, looking at me over one shoulder. Showing me another side of her, promising more. Her lemon-blonde hair was swept off her face, done up in a thick French braid. A touch of soft blue eyeliner, lips glossy and full. Seamed stockings caught the afternoon sunlight.

"You're a doctor…I look dead to you?"

She let me hear a grown-up girl's giggle, smoothed the sheath over her hips. "I'm lucky I can still get into this one."

"How come…I mean, why'd you…?"

"You said something about getting a man's nose open, last I heard."

94

BL0SSOM CROSSED her lovely legs, arched her back. Reached for the car phone, punched in a number. I told her we'd start with the reporter who'd done the feature story on the family of one of the dead kids. She got him on the line.

"Mr. Slater, my name is Blossom Lynch. I wonder if I could talk to you about one of the stories you wrote…about those lovers' lane murders?"

…

"I've got a special interest. A personal interest."

…

"Well, I'm on my way to Gary right now. Could I just stop in, maybe take a few minutes of your time?"

…

"Thank you so much."

She sat back in her seat. "He'll be a good reporter."

"How could you tell from that?"

"He knew I was a beauty even over the phone. And don't be asking me how I could tell that."

95

WE CROSSED THE railroad tracks on Broadway, stopped in front of the Post-Tribune. Blossom gave her name to the guard at the desk. We took seats, Blossom frowning as I lit a smoke.

Slater came into the waiting room. Took one look at Blossom and thanked God for sending him to journalism school. A medium-built youngish man with an honest, open face, shirt coming out of his suit pants, needed a haircut.

"Miss Lynch?" he said, walking over.

"Doctor Lynch," I told him, getting up before she did.

The same reporter who'd been in the courtroom when Lloyd was bailed out. He must have recognized me, but he didn't miss a beat. "And you're…"

"Sloane. Mitchell Sloane. Private investigator."

"Come on with me," he said, moving his arm for Blossom to step in front of him. He was young, not stupid.

We took seats in the conference room. Slater took out a reporter's notepad. I lit another smoke.

"What Mr. Sloane told you is true, Mr. Slater. I'm a doctor. But that's not why I'm here. One of the girls who was killed, Rose, she was my sister. It seems the police don't have a viable suspect, just this young kid they arrested. So I retained Mr. Sloane to help me look into the situation. He had some ideas he wanted to check out, and I thought we'd come to you about one of them."

"Which one?"

My cue. "Maybe this sniper worked up to what he eventually did. Maybe he tried out the weapon on some other people first. Not killing, just shooting at them. Or maybe he tried a different gun. But, I figure, maybe there's been some other shootings in the past few months, maybe back a year or so. Unsolved shootings."

"This is Gary, Indiana, friend. You think every time somebody fires a shot on the street it makes the papers?"

"If somebody's hit they would. Hell, they even do that in Detroit."

"Okay. Why come to me?"

Blossom leaned forward, flashed a smile, promised more. "This isn't a job for a thug, Mr. Slater." Excluding me from the conversation. "It's a job for an investigative reporter. You help us look, you'll be the first one to know if it works out."

"What if I look and there's nothing?"

"I'm going to look other places. Maybe you will too…and we can compare notes, maybe come up with something that will help."

"How can I reach you?"

Blossom gave him her phone number. I smoked my cigarette. They talked some more. I tuned them out.

I followed behind them as Slater walked Blossom to the car.

96

"WHAT'S THE SCAM ?" she asked on the drive back.

"Scam?"

"The one you said I'd be needed for."

"It's too early for it. Have to wait. See if Slater comes up with anything. And there's a man I have to see."

"What can I do now?"

"You got a car of your own?"

"Sure."

"We could use some detailed street maps. And I need you to learn how the Child Abuse Registry works out here. Where they keep the central records, what the access level of authority is. Especially if the records are on computer storage."

"Why?"

"Just do it, okay?"

"You mad at me?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I listened to you when you knew what you were talking about. Like about the vitamins, right? I know about this."

"Didn't I do well with the reporter?"

"You did great."

"Then…okay. Where're we going?"

"I'm looking for somebody."

She sat in silence while I rolled down the Interstate past the motel Sherwood told me about. Cars in the lot. No Chevy Blazers.

I stopped the car outside Blossom's house.

"You're not coming in?"

"I got work to do."

"When will you be finished?"

"Maybe eleven."

"Toss a pebble against my window," she said. "You know where it is."

97

"ARE YOU GOING to live with us?" Virginia asked me at dinner that night. Flat out, the way a kid asks. Wanting to know, not playing with it.

"Child, where did you put your manners?"

"She don't mean nothing, Reba. You like folks to live with us, don't you, honey?"

"Not everybody, Daddy. Just my family. That's how I got my Lloyd, when he came to live with us."

Lloyd sat up straighter in his chair.

98

WE WENT RIDING that night. Looking. It was just after eight when I pulled into a gas station. Virgil filled the tank while I reached out for Vincenzo. The Prof put him on the phone.

"The kind of person you want is a piquerist," he told me.

"A what?"

"Piquerist." He spelled it for me. Explained how the word came from the French, meaning to penetrate. I didn't interrupt him— Vincenzo flies down the track when he's got a full head of steam, but he derails easily.

"That sounds right to me," I told him.

"It wasn't in the DSM-III, not even in the latest revised edition. It's a pathological condition: it means the realization of sexual satisfaction from penetrating a victim by sniper activity. Or stab wounds, or even bites. And I found that case you wanted. People v. Drake. The defendant went to the city dump late at night. He fired nineteen rounds from a semi-automatic rifle into a car parked there. Two people were killed. He said that he didn't know anybody was in the car— he was just taking target practice. When the police examined the bodies, they found the female victim had bite marks on her and a bruised rectum. The female was dead before the bite marks were inflicted. Do you want the citation?"

I knew better than to say no.

"The official designation is 129 A.D.2d 966, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, decided April 3, 1987."

"Perfect job, Vincenzo. Can I ask you some questions about the case?"

"I have a copy with me."

"Okay. Was the shooter wearing camo gear?"

"Camo gear? It says…he was dressed in battle fatigues."

"Yeah, right. The weapon, do you have any specifics?"

"It says .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle, plus a high-powered 5.69-millimeter rifle and two large hunting knives. That's all."

"Just one more, Vincenzo. It was a psychiatrist who said this guy was a…piquerist, right?"

"Yes."

"Did he testify for the defense or the prosecution?"

"For the prosecution. The defendant said the whole thing was an accident. He was just practicing."

"You're the world's best researcher, Vincenzo."

"Thank you. I have a lot of notes, should I…?"

"Hang on to them for me, okay? Let me speak to the Prof."

"I'll bet a dime my man was on time."

"Right on time. I'm in the picture now."

"They got freaks everywhere, bro'. You should know."

99

BACK IN THE CAR, dark all around. Moving slow. Watching. I told Virgil about the call.

"Sounds like our man."

"Yeah. Sounds like the way Bundy worked. I knew it, just didn't know what to call it."

"Man like that, he wouldn't stop?"

"Not stop for good. He could hold up for a while. Until the pressure starts to pop his valves."

"Think he'd have a record?"

"No. Maybe some juvenile thing we couldn't find out about. It's a young man's crime."

We did a long, slow figure eight around the area. Merrillville, Glen Park, Miller, Gary, Lake Station. I didn't know the way in yet, working on the different ways out.

"Virgil, I got something from Sherwood. You ever hear of a guy named Matson?"

"No."

"One of those Nazi types. Got some little group. You know: white power, save the race, kill the Commies and the niggers."

"Yeah."

"If our boy ever tried to link up, that's the place he'd go. Where he could wear his gear, carry his weapons, be part of something. I figure, maybe I'll try and talk to this Matson. Tell him I'm selling guns. Maybe he saw this freak."

"Those boys're not wrapped too tight."

"I know. I don't have an address for him. Just a place he hangs out. On the Interstate, a strip joint."

The windshield reflected Virgil's face, Cherokee cast to his features. "There's a number you can call at the mill. Pay phone. Anyone answering, you just tell them to get me. I can be anywhere around here in maybe fifteen minutes."

100

IT WAS WELL past eleven when I tossed a handful of pebbles and dirt in a gentle arc against Blossom's bedroom window. A light blinked on. I went around to the back door, an airline bag in my hand. She was wearing the terry-cloth robe, her face puffy with sleep.

She grabbed the sleeve of my jacket, turned around, and went back to her room, tugging me behind her.

101

IT WAS AFTER three in the morning when I felt her hands on my shoulders.

"Why are you sitting out here by yourself, baby?"

"I wanted to smoke a cigarette. Figured you didn't want the smell in your bedroom."

"Come on back with me. Bring your damn cigarettes."

102

THE PHONE rang in her bedroom. She didn't stir. Voice of an answering machine picking up. Man's voice. A hard man. "Nobody's available to talk to you right now. Leave a message and one of us will get back to you."

The machine beeped. Hang-up tone.

"Working at the diner, you meet all kinds of folks. It's not hard to get a phone number. They call, hear that voice, they figure I'm not living alone. It wouldn't bother anyone with a real message for me."

"Who made the tape for you?"

"An old friend."

"You know a lot of tricks for a country girl."

She propped herself on one elbow, eyes luminous. Leaned across my chest, found the cigarettes. Stuck one in her mouth, snapped a match alive, took a drag. Handed it to me.

"My mother ran a bawdy house. That's what they called them then. I was raised with working girls. My mother was one herself, before she went into management. You know West Virginia?"

"A little bit. I worked the riverfront once. Both sides. Steubenville in Ohio, Weirton in West Virginia."

"That's the spot. Mama started with a little crib on Water Street, back in the sixties."

I remembered. Only place I'd ever been where you could buy moonshine and heroin on the same block. Made Detroit look like Disneyland.

The red tip of the cigarette pulled highlights from her hair, flowing loose around her shoulders.

"My mother got left with a baby. Pregnant prostitute, you heard all the jokes. That was my sister Violet. She made it by herself, did what she knew how to do."

"You were never…"

Blossom laughed. "I never went to church. Mama wasn't enough of a hypocrite for that. And the kids at school, they knew. I learned how to fight real young. But turn a trick? She would've taken the skin right off my backside. Same for the other girls…the girls in the house, I mean. Some were silly, some were mean. But most, they were real sweet and loving to me, like family. I used to have to take four baths a day, scrub off all that perfume and powder they'd put on me when I was a little girl."

Two girls. How many faces? I turned to her. "And you went to medical school…"

"Yes."

"Those houses were rough joints. How'd your mother keep things quiet?"

"She always had a boyfriend. And we had a manager. House man. He wasn't for the girls, Mama did that. He'd work the door, handle things. She had the same one, J.B., long as I can remember. Boyfriends, they'd come and go, but J.B. was always there."

"Never got busted?"

"Oh, sure. Once in a while. It was never much of anything. Pay a fine, pay the sheriff, Mama said it was all the same. It was a sweet house. Blue light. No rough stuff. You could gamble downstairs, but it was no house game. Just the boys playing cards among themselves. No dice, no wheels. You give a man a card table, some good whiskey, let him smoke his cigars, have some pretty girls walk around in high heels and fishnet stockings, serve the drinks, light their smokes, they'll stay all night. Mama used to tell them, you set aside enough cash to spend an hour upstairs, and you go home a winner, no matter what."

"She knows how it works."

"She died five years ago. When I was almost twenty-four. Lung cancer."

"That's why you went to medical school?"

"Partly. Funny, I was always the one Mama worried about the most. Violet was wild, but she settled right down. And Rose, she was quiet. Everybody's pet. I spoiled her rotten my ownself."

"Why'd she worry about you?"

"Mama used to say, a girl who's got a taste for a trouble-man once, she keeps it forever."

"And you did?"

"Chandler Wells. God. Used to be I could just write his name in my school notebook and get trembly right above the tops of my nylons thinking about him. He was a wild boy. Not bad, not evil like some. But wild. He ran 'shine just for the kick of it. Gambled away all the money he made. Folks said he'd be a stock-car champion, he could ever settle down long enough, get him a good ride at the track. He even tried it a couple of times. Told me it wasn't much of a thrill going round in circles."

"What happened to him?"

She wasn't listening. Her long nails absently scratching my chest. Back there, then.

"Mama ran him off a dozen times. She couldn't get mad at him, not real mad. He'd come around to the back. And the girls, they'd help me sneak out, be with him. One time, the troopers chased us. Just for speeding, but Chandler, he wanted to play. He had this old Mercury he put back together from a stock car and there wasn't a car in the county could catch him when he was flying. The troopers had the road blocked off at one end. They used to leave just enough space between the cars to let one through. Just enough. Like a challenge: that opening looked like a slit when you were going fast enough. They played it square: you got through, they wouldn't chase you anymore that night. But if you didn't, they'd call the meat wagon. Chandler was smoking down this old dirt road when we saw it. 'You want me to stop?' he asked me. 'Go on through, honey,' I told him. Holding on. 'I love you, Blossom.' It was the first time he said that to me. Like he did then. We shot through the roadblock like it was a mile wide. Weeks after that, folks would come to see Chandler's Mercury…there was paint streaks down both sides from where he passed so close. When he finally brought me home that night, Mama grabbed a strap, chased me all around the place. The girls had to sit on her, hold her down, she was so mad. Later, when she was calm, she sat me down. Told me what Chandler was. A trouble-man. She said some men are rogues and ramblers, and some women are just drawn to them. After a while, the good ones, they settle down. But a trouble-man, he never gets quiet."

"Chandler never got quiet?"

"Got real quiet. Dead quiet." A tear tracked her face. "He got into an argument with another boy in one of the riverfront joints. Chandler asked him to step outside. The other boy had a knife. Chandler didn't. He was twenty-two. I was still in high school then. Thought I'd never stop crying."

I lit another smoke. "Some people, they never get to find their love."

"You ever love a woman, Burke?"

"Two."

"Where are they?"

"One's dead. One's gone."

"The girl's who's gone…why'd she go?"

I dragged on the smoke. "The woman who died, Belle, it was my fault. It didn't have to be. I used to think all the time about the woman who's gone, Flood. Why she left. Now, maybe I know. Maybe she knew what you know. Didn't know what to call it, but she knew."

"Trouble-man," she whispered, coming to me.

103

LIGHT WAS BREAKING across the bedroom window. Blossom lying on top of me, wetness still holding us together below the waist.

"Trouble-man," she said. "Troubled man, you are. What did you go to prison for?"

I looked into the center of her eyes— the way you do with a parole officer. "For something I didn't do."

"And what was that— what was it you didn't do?"

"Get away," I told her.

Her body trembled against me, giggling. "You want a cigarette?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She lit one for me, supporting herself on her elbows, holding it to my mouth.

"Cigarettes are an addiction."

"Bullshit."

"You could stop anytime you wanted?"

"Sure."

"I know how to do a lot of tricks I never actually did myself. Listening to the girls. You want to see?"

"Un-huh."

"Close your eyes."

I put my cigarette in the ashtray, felt her eyelashes flutter on my cheek. "That's a butterfly kiss. You ever have one before?"

"No."

"You like it?"

"Do it some more."

"Keep your eyes closed." A wet slab sliding across my face. I opened my eyes. Blossom was licking her lips, smiling. Licked me again. "That was a cow kiss."

"Ugh! Save that one for the farmers."

"I told you, baby"— her voice play-sexy— "I never tried these tricks before." Her voice turned quiet, little-girl serious. "You could really stop smoking?" Raising herself higher on her elbows, rolling her shoulders so the tips of her breasts brushed my chest.

"That's what I said."

"Why don't you?"

"Why should I?"

"I'll make you a deal, trouble-man. The best deal you ever had in your hard life. You stop smoking for one week. Seven days. You do that, I'll do whatever you want. For one night. Whatever you want to do, whatever you want me to do. Show you some of those tricks I never got to try. Her eyes were wide, mocking. "What d'you say?"

I put the cigarette in my mouth, took a long, deep drag. Ground it out.

104

BLOSSOM WAS all in black and white the next morning. White wool jacket over a black silk blouse, white pleated skirt, plain black pumps. Black pillbox hat, white gloves. She'd worked the makeup expertly around her eyes so she looked older.

"You going to need your car today?"

"Sure."

"Not a car, your car. You could take mine. I figure, the Lincoln, it'd make a better impression if anyone's looking."

"Where?"

"At the hospital. I'm up here for the summer, visiting my relatives. Thinking about doing a paper on medical responses to child abuse emergencies. So I figured, I'd stop by the hospital, make some friends. Get some questions answered. Your questions."

I handed her the keys.

"Is it hard?" she asked, pulling on her gloves.

"You mean still?"

"I mean giving up smoking, you dope," she said over her shoulder, walking out.

105

I WAS IN THE back in the prison yard, walking the perimeter with my eyes, checking the gun towers. The Prof materialized next to me. Like he'd always been there. He didn't have to ask what I was doing.

"First place to look is inside your head, schoolboy. Over the wall don't get it all."

I took out a smoke. Fired a match. Remembered. Blew out the match. Started to look for the sniper. Inside my head.

I've known a few. A nameless Irishman working in Biafra— a big, unsmiling man who got his training on the rooftops of Belfast under the blanket of blood-smog. A desert-burned Israeli, part of a hunter-killer team meeting at the Mole's junkyard. El Cañonero. The FBI said he was a terrorist. And Wesley. Terror itself.

Faceless men, with interchangeable eyes.

Even in wartime, they stood apart from the soldiers.

Wesley once told me, you don't shoot people, you shoot targets.

But the freak who stalked the lovers' lanes— he hunted humans.

106

I TRIED THE Interstate joint. No sign of the Blazer. When I swung past Blossom's house, the Lincoln was out front.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, still in her black-and-white outfit, a bound sheaf of computer printouts in front of her, drinking her coffee.

I stepped behind her, put my hand on her shoulder. She reached up, brought it to her face. Sniffed deeply. "You're not smoking," she said, not looking up. Kissed my hand, put it back on her shoulder.

"What'd you get?"

"This is a sample," she said, all business. "They gave it to me. For my research." Accenting the last word, sneering at someone being naive. Maybe not them. "Here's the way it works, Burke. There's an 800 number. State-wide. Where you call if you have a case of suspected child abuse. Everyone calls the same number: social workers, ER nurses, schoolteachers, next-door neighbors. The call goes to Indianapolis, where they keep the Central Registry. Then the call gets dispatched back out to a local agency. That agency sends someone out to investigate. Then they make a report: it's real or it's not. Either way, the report goes back to Indianapolis. Every report's in their computer."

"How long do they keep the records?"

"Near as I could tell, they never get rid of them. They have records go back a couple of generations anyway. But the computer, it only has data for about the past fifteen, twenty years.

"They break it down by county?"

"Yes. This is Lake County. All the records for the region are in the DPW Building."

"On the computer too?"

"Yes. But all the computer has is the information that's on this form," she said, pushing a dull green piece of paper across to me. It looked like a police pedigree: name, age, date of birth, address, check-places for type of suspected abuse or neglect.

I scanned the paper. I'd seen it before. They all use the same form. "You actually see the computer?"

"The central data-bank's not there. But there's terminals all over the place."

"On-line access? Twenty-four hours a day?" She nodded.

"They segregate the local data?"

Blossom nodded again, watching closely now.

"Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Just okay. See you later tonight?"

"I'll be here."

"Blossom…"

"What?"

"Give me my pistol."

107

THE RAIN STARTED about ten. The building was dark, lights burning on the third floor. Rebecca was at the wheel, me next to her in the front seat, Virgil in the back. They both smoked in silence, waiting for me.

B&E. Back to myself, back to crime. Started to think like myself then. Working with what I knew. Knowing when a woman spreads her legs, it's not the same thing as opening up. Blossom was compartmentalized, and I hadn't looked inside all the boxes.

It was eleven before the lights went off. Almost midnight when we heard the back door open, close. A dark-colored compact came down the driveway, braked, took off slowly to the left.

"Cleaning lady," I said. "She must work six to midnight."

We gave it another two hours. A police cruiser went by in the darkness. Didn't stop. No foot patrols.

"Nothing anybody'd want in there," Virgil said. My birth certificate told how right he was.

108

THE RAIN was pounding harder as I drove back to Hammond. A light flicked on as I turned off the engine. Blossom was in her robe in the kitchen, no sleep-signs on her face.

"You want something to eat?"

"No, thanks."

"Have just some dry toast. You don't want to take this stuff on an empty stomach."

"What stuff?"

"What's it look like to you?" Moving her shoulder to indicate the kitchen table.

"It looks like three fat gray coffins and a red dot," I told her, sitting down.

"The big ones are Vitamin C. The red one's the beta-carotene."

"You bought this stuff?"

"This afternoon. While you were out prowling around."

"Thanks."

"It was the least I could do. You've been a good boy."

My eyes went up to her face, voice soft, wanting her to understand. "I'm not a boy."

She brought the toast over to the table, a glass of cold water in her other hand. Put them down. Smoothed her robe over her hips and sat on my lap, primly, one hand on the back of my neck for balance.

"All men are boys. Different kinds of boys. You're a bad boy."

"Blossom…"

"A bad boy. Not a mean one. Eat your toast. Take your vitamins."

I ate slowly, feeling her warm, solid weight on me. Only her feet and a piece of her calves showed under the hem of the robe. Dark nylon stocking on one leg, the other bare.

I swallowed the last vitamin. She bounced sweetly in my lap. "Let's go see," she said.

109

LATER. The rain slapped the house. Blossom's cheek against my chest, blonde hair trailing halfway down her back. Legs slightly parted, one sheathed in the dark stocking, the other bare.

"Tell me about him," she asked, a tiny tremor in her voice.

I didn't answer her, translating inside my head, putting it in a package.

"You know what DNA is?"

"Yes."

"One thing you'll always find around any lovers' lane, discarded condoms. The cops didn't collect them from the murder scene. They'd done that, maybe they'd have his fingerprints."

"You mean…"

"Yeah. He's not a mass murderer, he's a serial killer."

"What's the difference?"

"A mass murderer, he straps down, walks out the door to do his work. Hunting for humans. He's not coming back. Like that maniac who strolled into McDonald's, turned it into a splatter film. Those kind, they walk, understand? When they hear the music, they march. Like a Geiger counter. The ticks start to run close together, it's a hum in their head. They pull the trigger, make it stop. Leave a lot of bodies around."

"Like that girl who killed all those schoolkids? Just outside of Chicago?"

"Just like her. She had to do her work. Her work was done, she was too. That's why so many of them kill themselves. Right after their work is done. Not because they can't face going to jail. It's just…over. The humming stops. What they need is a lot of humans in the same place. Doesn't matter which ones."

"The one who killed my sister…"

"That's not him. He's the other side of the moon. The human-hunters, they kill to stop the humming in the head. This guy, he looks for it. Only way he can get it is kill. Then it starts. He wants to hear it again. That special song. The one only he hears. So he goes again."

"So he wouldn't kill himself?"

"Never."

"It was just…random, wasn't it, Burke? You don't think he was tracking anyone in particular…like my sister?"

"No. He's no man-stalker. I think he looked a long time before he did this. Started slow. They have trigger-signals. It's different for every one. Like a message, only for them. I talked to a guy once. Slasher-rapist. He told me, the women, they asked him to do it. Sent him a message. Not every woman, just some."

"What was the message…his message?"

"He said, if he could see the panty-line under their skirts, that was it."

"God."

"If there's a God, someone needs to sue him for malpractice."

She shuddered against me.

110

JUST BEFORE LIGHT. "Burke, do you know what his signal is?"

"I think so. Some of it anyway. It's his way of having sex. The only way that works for him. He knows he's a beast. A lonely beast, the only one of his species. He can't find a mate. He sees the mating act, sees sex. It's like they're laughing at him. Waving it in his face. When he started shooting, the first time, maybe it was rage. Like he was being mocked. Then one time, he fired, saw someone go down. And he got off. Came. Released. He went over the line then— now it's the only place where it can happen for him. He wouldn't go back if he could."

She shifted her weight against me, listening with her whole body. "One thing Mama always said— the most dangerous thing a working girl could do was laugh at a trick."

"She knew, your mother. This guy, I think he's rooted. Close to home. His base. He doesn't live in a furnished room, out of the back of an old car. Most serial killers, they're drivers. Nomads. Cover a lot of territory. Not this one. He's hit at least twice. Close by, each time. We'll check those news clips, maybe we'll know more. One thing I know already— he's not a team. He's more alone than anyone in the world."

"You sound like you feel sorry for him."

"I'm trying to feel him, Blossom. Be him, in my mind. Get close. It's the only way."

"You can do that?"

"Yeah."

"How can you be sure?" She felt the chill from me. "I'm just playing devil's advocate," defensive sound in her voice.

I remembered something the Prof told me once. "The devil don't need advocates, Blossom. I know because they taught me. We're all branches from the same root."

"All men…all people?"

"No. Not all." I closed my eyes. Saw a sturdy little boy, big eyes almost hidden under a thick thatch of hair. Standing in the corner of Lily's office, face a mottled patch of red and white pain. Holding the arm of a teddy bear doll in one tiny fist, the stuffing coming out the end. The battered doll lying in the corner where he'd thrown it. "I hate Teddy!" he cried. "I told him what they did. I asked him to make it stop. He was my friend. And he wouldn't. He wouldn't make it stop." Lily held him on her lap, telling him it wasn't Teddy's fault. Teddy did his best. Teddy loved him. And so did she. He was safe now. The child cried against her chest, still clutching Teddy's ripped-out arm. Lily looked over at me. Her Madonna's face was composed, watching me. I caught the fire-dots in her reflective eyes. Then I went out to do Teddy's work.

"It's a Zen exercise," I told Blossom. "Dark Zen. You have to cross over the line to where he is, you want to find him. I can do that."

She nestled against me, half asleep. Murmured something that sounded like agreement.

I didn't tell her the rest— getting over the line is the easy part.

111

I WATCHED BLOSSOM dress in the morning. Not talking, not moving. Sweet smells, soft motions. Round-top little chair at her dressing table, padded seat like a piano stool. Blossom in her slip, walking to it, humming to herself. Her shoulders moved in line with the stool, knees bent as she swung her hips onto it. Hips moving a microsecond slower than the rest of her, after-image of the rounded swelling touching down.

"You can talk to me now, trouble-man."

I watched her in the mirror, blonde head bent forward, working on her nails. Said nothing.

"You miss your cigarettes?" she asked.

I didn't tell her. How you give up cigarettes every time they lock you up. How guys throw the Miranda decision out the window when the cop offers his pack in a friendly gesture. How you don't borrow anything inside the walls. Sooner or later, you make your own connections. Stopping isn't quitting.

"Come over here. Give me a kiss, tell me I look nice."

I got off the bed. Blossom slipped a wine-red light wool dress over her shoulders, cinched it with a wide black belt. She held out her hands to me. Clear lacquer on her nails except for the index finger. That was the same red as her dress.

I took her hand. "How come?" I asked her.

"Remember last night? When I was sitting on your lap, feeding you your vitamins? Remember when you noticed I only had one stocking on?"

"Yeah."

"Remember how bad you wanted to see? Remember how I looked, lying on the bed, one dark stocking?"

I did.

She put one hand on my shoulder, steadied herself as she slipped a spike heel on her foot. "I'm going to see the reporter this morning."

112

I HIT PAYDIRT just past noon. Car phone conversations aren't private— I found a booth a short piece away. Called Virgil.

"He's here. Everything set?"