Deadly Edge

“You pick somebody famous,” he said. “Like Humphrey Bogart or W. C. Fields or somebody. And then you say, if this person was a car he’d be such-and-such a kind of car. Or such-and-such a color. Or what season this person would be if they were a season. See, not what car would they like, what car would they be. Surrealism, see?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Manny turned his eager face. “Jessup? You wanna play?”

“I’m hungry,” Jessup said. “I want to get something to eat.”

“Why not have her get it?”

“I don’t want her to touch my food. You want anything?”

“What for? You mean to eat? What for?”

Jessup shrugged. “Keep an eye on her,” he said, and walked out of the room.

Manny turned back. “Okay, I got somebody. Ask me a question. You know, like what car would I be or what color, or make up something.”

Claire tried to concentrate her mind. She was distracted by fear and uncertainty, and now she was supposed to think about a game. She rubbed her forehead and said, “What car? I guess, that’s what I want to know. What car would you be?”

“A Datsun,” he said promptly, and from the way he grinned this was a person he had used in this game before. “You tell me when you think you know who it is,” he said. “Give me another question.”

Like she vms dead and all laid out. That sentence of Manny’s circled in her mind now every time she heard his voice. Was he a possible ally to be cultivated against Jessup, or was he the true danger?

“Come on,” he said, a happy impatient child. “Come on.”

“What, uh—what color? What color would you be?”

When the doorbell rang, a little before nine, the three of them were eating dinner at the kitchen table. Jessup had insisted on preparing the meal himself, and then had insisted on Manny and Claire eating it with him, though neither of them had much appetite.

Claire found Manny both fascinating and terrifying. There was a temptation to react to him as though to a willful but charming child, but Manny was no child; he seemed, in fact, to be not human at all, and Claire found she was treating him finally like a charming but unpredictable animal, a pet that might or might not be domesticated. As with an animal, the reasoning processes in Manny’s head seemed both primitive and incomprehensible. And, as with an animal, Claire understood there would be no arguing against him if he should turn on her; as much argue with a leaping mountain lion. The strain of watching his volatile moods and trying to keep out in front of him was fraying her nerves, but distracting her from the large problem of Jessup, who was after all the leader, the mart with the reins of the situation in his hands.

Whatever Manny was high on—and it was clear he’d been taking some sort of drug—the peak had apparently passed during his time in the bedroom, leaving him now in a pleasant cloudy afterglow, his mind turning slowly and coming up with strange materials from the bottom of his skull. The game of Surrealism had been full of a kind of morbid beauty, Manny’s images sometimes being very odd and personal and irrational, but frequently they contained touches of poetry and at times were amazingly indicative of the person he had in mind.

But always dead people. They had taken turns asking the questions, and when Claire had chosen a living woman senator, it had taken Manny a long time to guess who she meant, and then he was angry and upset. “No fair, she’s still alive!”

“You didn’t tell me we were—”

“You can’t use live people! They don’t have any aural So they had remembered only dead people after that.

Jessup had refused to join in the game. Now that his larger game, whatever it was, had moved into a phase of waiting—he expected to have to wait thirty-one hours from Parker’s phone call to Parker’s appearance here— Jessup was surly and uncommunicative. The sparks and flashes of light were deep in his eyes, but they showed as irascibility and bad temper now.

Somehow the meal he’d prepared reflected his mood. It was vaguely Mexican, full of tomatoes and peppers, very hot, and lay in an unappetizing mass on the plate. But Jessup watched the two of them with narrowed eyes, demanding that they eat, and they both ate, Manny making a game out of this too, joking with Jessup about the meal looking like dead people’s stomachs, while Claire mechanically moved the fork from plate to mouth, plate to mouth.

The doorbell both shocked and relieved her; she had no idea who it could be or what it could mean, but it made it possible, at least for the moment, to stop eating. She put the fork down at once, and looked across the table at Jessup.

Jessup was looking twice as irritable as before. He said, low-voiced, “Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t expect anybody?”

“No. Really.”

“If you’re trying something—”

“I’m not,” she insisted. “Really.” She felt she was going to cry; to get away with so many lies, and then to have him about to do something to her for something she hadn’t done—it wasn’t fair.

Jessup got to his feet. “We’ll be close enough to hear,” he said. “Manny, come over here with me.”

The two of them went into the front left corner of the kitchen, where they would be out of sight of anyone outside the doorway. “Answer it,” Jessup said. “If it’s somebody that has to come in, we’re friends, we dropped in for a Mex dinner.”

Claire went to the door and opened it. One of the few things that had bothered her about this house when she’d first seen it was the lack of an entrance foyer, (he main door opening from the driveway directly into the kitchen. She wondered now if that would have made any difference, if a foyer or entranceway would have given her a few seconds in which to whisper a warning to whoever was at the door.

There was no way to tell, and in any case there was nothing but the door. She opened it and a youngish man was standing there, his hair moderately long in what used to be called a pageboy style. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket, his hands were in the jacket pockets, and he was smiling. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Morris. I’m looking for a fellow called Parker.”

Morris. She remembered the name from Parker’s description of the robbery; this was the man who’d stood on watch on the roof. “Mr. Parker isn’t here,” she said, suddenly very nervous, wondering how much Parker had told Morris, wondering if Morris would expose her lies now.

And at the same time she was speaking, she heard Jessup, low-voiced, saying from the corner, “Invite him in.”

“Won’t you come in, Mr. Morris?”

“Well, it’s Parker I’m looking for. He isn’t here?”

“Not right now. Come in, let’s not stand in the doorway.”

“Thanks.” Morris came through the doorway, still smiling, saying, “You expect him back—”

Jessup and Manny were walking forward, both of them smiling. “Hi,” Jessup said. “I’m Jessup. We just stopped in for some Mex dinner.”

Morris kept the smile on his face, but his eyes were suddenly watchful, and his hands came out of his jacket pockets. “Jessup? You a friend of Parker’s?”

“We’re more friends of Mrs. Willis here,” Jessup said.

Morris looked at Claire, who strained to be natural in her appearance and the sound of her voice, saying, “That’s right, they’re old friends of mine. They knew I was all alone here, so they dropped in. That’s Manny.”

Manny grinned happily and said, “Hi, baby. Did you say your name was Morris?”

“That’s right.”

Manny giggled, and poked Jessup. “That’s a coincidence, ain’t it?”

“That’s right,” Jessup said, though he didn’t sound happy about Manny’s saying it. He explained to Morris, “We were looking for a guy by that name a while ago. We were supposed to do a job with him, but we couldn’t find him. Down in Oklahoma, around there.”

“In Oklahoma.” Morris turned his head and said to Claire, “You expect Parker back soon?”

“Well, Mr. Parker doesn’t live here,” she said. If he knew the truth, she hoped he was fast enough to adjust. He looked as though he probably was. “But I do expect to see him—”

“Later tonight,” Jessup said. “In fact, we figured we might play a little cards later on, when he got here.”

“Or Surrealism,” Manny said. To Morris he said, “You ever play Surrealism?”

“Once.”

“Really? Isn’t it great? This lady here is great at it, ain’t you?”

“Not as good as you are,” Claire said. She even managed a smile.

Jessup said, “Hey, why don’t we eat? Morris, you hungry? You like Mex?”

“I could eat.”

“You all sit down,” Claire said. “I’ll set the place.”

She tried to maneuver herself into a position where neither Jessup nor Manny could see her face, so she could signal Morris somehow, but Jessup kept turning around in his chair, watching her, asking brightly if he could help. She saw that Morris watched Jessup and Manny with slightly narrowed eyes, suspicious in a small way, but not at all sure something was wrong.

Food was dished out for Morris, and then they all sat down again, Claire facing Morris, Jessup to her left, Manny to her right.

Jessup said, “How come you’re looking for Parker? Business?”

“In a way,” Morris said.

Jessup gave Claire a brief noncommittal glance, then said to Morris, “I guess everybody knows to come here if they want to see Parker.”

“Not exactly,” Morris said. “I got the address from a friend.”

“A friend?”

“A fellow named Keegan.” Morris looked around pleasantly. “Any of you people know him?”

Claire recognized the name as the man Parker had gone to see, the one who had gotten the phone number here from Handy McKay. The one who had died a painful death.

Jessup was saying, “Keegan? Keegan? I don’t think so.”

Manny said, “I knew a Keeler once.”

Jessup said, “Where’s this guy Keegan live?”

“He doesn’t,” Morris said. “He’s dead. Say, this stuff is pretty good.” Meaning the plate of food in front of him.

Jessup had just taken a big second helping for himself. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “One of my favorites. You say this guy Keegan is dead?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what the situation is,” Morris said, “and maybe you might be able to help me out. See, Keegan and Parker and another fellow and I were together last week, but then we went our separate ways. Then I heard from a friend of mine that Keegan had been asking around for me, trying to find me. So I knew where he was, so I went to see him. And damn if he wasn’t dead. Somebody had nailed him to a wall.”

The phrase was so absurd that it skimmed the surface of Claire’s mind at first, and it was only when Jessup repeated it, in tones of shock, that she really heard what had been said: “Nailed him to a wall!”

“It seemed like a hell of a thing to do,” Morris said. “I always thought Keegan was kind of grumpy myself, but I think that was probably more than he deserved.”

Manny said, “Gee. Nailed him to a wall. How about that?” He wasn’t as good an actor as Jessup, who gave him a hard look to shut him up.

“I searched the place,” Morris said. “Somebody else had searched it, but I did anyway, and I found Parker’s name on a sheet of paper with a phone number in New Jersey. So I took it along, and I went looking for a fellow named Berridge.”

Jessup said, “Berridge? Who’s he?”

“He’s somebody else that’s dead,” Morris said, and looked at Claire. “I hope you don’t know any of these people, Mrs. Willis. I’m sorry to be talking about death so much at your table.”

“No, that’s all right,” she said, stumbling. “I mean, I don’t know them.” She didn’t know Berridge.

Morris said, “Berridge is an old man who was going to work with Parker and Keegan and that other fellow and me, but he decided he was too old, and then he got killed. I figured maybe, since Berridge had been the first one killed, maybe somebody that knew Berridge would know what was going on. So I went and talked to some people who knew Berridge, and I found out Berridge had been having a lot of trouble with a grandson of his. The grandson had been hustling him for money. Apparently he’s an acidhead of some kind.”

The air in the room had suddenly changed. No one was eating, or even pretending to eat. Morris was talking calmly, as though there were no tension in the air at all, but Claire could see in his cheekbones, in the way he moved his eyes, that he too was tense.

She shifted her gaze without turning her head— she was almost afraid to turn her head—and saw Manny looking sullenly at Morris, his head down like a bull when frustration is about to make it charge.

Jessup, his voice flat, said, “You think this grandson had something to do with what happened to Berridge and Keegan?”

Morris said, “I think Berridge had promised the grandson money out of this work he was going to do with the rest of us. But then the old man lost his nerve or his wind or something, and the grandson was stuck. So I think the grandson decided to take the money away from the other guys, from me and Parker and Keegan and the other fellow. And I think Berridge was going to warn us about it, and the grandson killed him. But Berridge had told the grandson where we were going to be at one certain point, so the grandson hung around until we left that place, and’ then picked one of us to follow, and it happened to be Keegan.”

Jessup said, “To rob him, you mean.”

“That’s right. And to find out from him how to reach the rest of us. What I don’t understand is the torture, though.”

Claire said, “Torture?” She hadn’t known she was going to say anything at all, and the sound of the word in her own voice startled and frightened her. Vague images of torture—fire, pinching things, whips, electricity—flickered like bits of a silent movie in her mind.

Morris looked at her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Willis. I won’t describe it. But what I don’t understand is why it was done.”

Jessup said, “Maybe this fellow Keegan wanted to keep some of the money for himself. Maybe he wouldn’t tell the grandson where it all was, just one little part of it.”

Morris shook his head. “Keegan wasn’t crazy. He’d rather be alive and poor than dead and rich. Besides, there wasn’t that much money to give over.”

Jessup said, “How much?”

“I suppose Keegan would have gotten home with about sixteen thousand,” Morris said.

Manny made a sudden startled sound, and Jessup said, quickly, “That little? For the kind of thing he was doing?”

“When you figure it was one night’s ticket receipts, and it was split four ways, and the financing had to come out of it, there wasn’t that much left.” Morris looked appraisingly at Jessup, and said, “Do you suppose that’s what happened? Do you suppose Keegan gave the sixteen thousand to the grandson and he wouldn’t believe that was all of it? Do you suppose they tortured Keegan to death trying to get him to give them something he didn’t have?”

Claire said, “That’s awful. He wouldn’t have any way to make them stop.”

“He could die,” Jessup said. Though he was answering Claire, he kept looking at Morris. He said, “So what now?”

“I came here,” Morris said. “The phone number got me the address. I figured Parker ought to know what was going on, and maybe I’d run into the grandson around here someplace.”

“Well, he hasn’t showed up yet,” Jessup said. “Maybe because Parker isn’t here, or because he saw Mrs. Willis had friends with her.”

“To protect her,” Manny said. The words had a curious leaden quality to them, as though he didn’t understand English but was reading a prepared speech written down phonetically.

Jessup said, “What’s the grandson’s name?”

“Berridge, like his grandfather.” Morris grinned at him and said, “Your name’s Jessup.”

“That’s right.”

Morris turned his head and looked at Manny. “And your name’s Manny. That’s your first name, isn’t it?”

What happened next was very fast and very confusing. Morris’ hands moved and there was a quick glimpse of a gun coming out from under the sheepskin jacket, but at the same time Jessup flung his plate of food into Morris’ face, and Manny grabbed up the steak knife they’d been cutting the Italian bread with and lunged forward to jab it into Morris’ left side just above his belt.

Then everyone was standing, and Morris’ and Claire’s chairs had tipped over backward. The gun was no longer in Morris’ hand, which now was clutched around the wooden handle of the steak knife; his other hand was wiping frantically at the food smeared on his face, trying to get it out of his eyes.

Claire was backing away, her mouth open wide, grimacing with the pressure of trying not to scream. Jessup had gone down on one knee for the gun, but Manny had grabbed up his fork and was poking it at the food on Morris’ face and then into his own mouth, at Morris’ face and into his mouth, fast hard movements, and at the same time laughing and shouting, “Look! I’m eating! Look at this! I’m eating!” Morris was trying to keep away from the fork, and not fall over the chair lying down behind him, and get the food—it must be stinging him—out of his eyes, and do something about the knife in his side, and stay alive, and none of it was going to happen.

Jessup came up with the gun, and Morris went crashing backward over the chair, and Manny yelled with laughter and lunged after him, and Claire turned and ran full-tilt for the bedroom.

“Come out of there, honey,” Jessup called, and tapped on the bedroom door.

The last five minutes had been full of pointless frantic activity. She’d run in here and locked the door and pulled the dresser over in front of it to block it. And then there was the door to the bathroom—they could get into the bathroom from the kitchen, and then through this other door into here—and she jammed a chair-back under the door handle of that. And there was the glass door to the porch and the outside. And flanking it were windows.

Parker had been right. There was no way to lock yourself safely into this house. Too many doors, too many windows.

And now, too late, she realized she should have left the house at once, when she’d run in here. She should have kept on going, through the bedroom and out the door to the porch and across the yard and away from here.

There’d been a scream, just one, very hoarse, less than a minute after she’d come in here, while she was still barricading the first door, but there hadn’t been another sound since then. Where were they now, what were they doing?

It was too late to run now. She’d been mindless and frantic when she’d run into this room, and because of that she’d thrown away her chance, while they were both concerned with Morris.

But why hadn’t they come after her? She turned and stared hard at the windows, half-expecting to see Manny’s moon face grinning at her there, but the porch was empty.

Was there still time? Or were they playing cat and mouse with her, making believe they weren’t thinking about her, waiting for her to make the jump and try to get away? That would be like them, that would be their style. „ Let her think she still had a chance, and then do something really awful to her.

Once before, since the start of her involvement with Parker, people from his world had intruded into hers, bringing discomfort and danger with them, but that time the people involved had been rational and businesslike. They’d wanted Parker to do something, he hadn’t wanted to do it, they’d tried to use her for leverage against him. She had been afraid, but not the way she was afraid now, because that time she’d been dealing with sane human beings who wouldn’t do anything pointless. But Jessup and Manny weren’t sane, and they were barely human beings. It was as she’d thought before, like having a mountain lion loose in the house; no way to talk to him, no way to guess what he’ll do next, no way to reason with or about him at all.

She stood blinking and immobile in the middle of the bedroom, the two doors barricaded, the third door and the windows still unblocked, and for a minute she was incapable of any kind of movement at all. And then Jessup called, and tapped on the hall door, and she .took a fast aimless step to nowhere.

The porch door. Out, or block it? How barricade a glass door? How barricade the windows flanking it?

Jessup, sounding bored and irritable, called a second time, “Don’t make it tough on yourself, honey. Open the door and come out.”

What if she were to hide? What if she hid, and led them to believe she already bad escaped from the house?

But where? Where, in this small and simple bedroom? The closet, no good. Behind the drapes, no good. Under the bed, no good.

Under the bed.

The doorknob rattled. Jessup called, “I hate physical labor, bitch! You better open this door!”

Was it still there? She dropped to her knees and looked wildly under the bed, and the rifle was lying there where she’d left it, slender, long. She started to reach for it, and then suddenly became aware of the light in the room and the darkness outside, and how this room was now like a stage set. And was there an audience, outside the windows, in the darkness on the porch?

To have Jessup hammer and threaten at the hall door, and Manny waiting and grinning outside on the porch, hoping she would try to make a run for it—that was their style.

She left the rifle where it was, and got again to her feet. She moved awkwardly now, self-consciously, convinced that eyes were watching her.

The night-table lamp on her side of the bed was the only source of light. She moved to it, cumbersome, uneasy, blinking, and bent suddenly to switch it off. In the new darkness she dropped to the floor again, felt along the bed, reached her hand underneath and slapped at the floor till she felt the cold metal of the rifle barrel. And all the time wincing from the expected sound of breaking glass, sure that Manny would crash into the room now from the porch.

But nothing happened. She pulled the rifle out, sat up, and leaned her back against the side of the bed. She sat cross-legged, tailor fashion, with the rifle across her lap; the barricaded hall door was to her left, the vulnerable porch door to her right.

Nothing happened.

Was that voices, was that movement?

Jessup’s voice, low and threatening, sounded from against the blocked door: “Manny says you’ve turned out the light. You goin’ to bed now? But you got to finish your dinner.”

So she’d been right. Manny had been watching the porch door, that was the only way he could know the light had been turned off.

She thought of shouting to them that she was armed, that they should go away, but she was afraid that would simply make them meaner and more difficult to deal with. It was the mountain lion again; you can’t scare off a mountain lion by telling him you have a gun.

Jessup called, “Honey, you can come out now and cverything’ll be okay, no trouble at all. But you stay in there and you’ll be sorry.”

It was such a temptation to believe him. It would be so much easier that way, to hide the rifle again under the bed, pull the dresser away from the door, and just walk out there. If she could believe him.

She didn’t move.

Nothing happened then for a long while. She continued to sit there, straining to hear a sound that would tell her what they were doing, what they were planning to do.

Where was Parker? Five hours since he’d called.

Noises. Bumping and thumping in the living room, Manny and Jessup saying things to one another. She couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded as though they were doing some sort of work together and were giving one another instructions and comments.

Her eyes had grown more used to the darkness. It was an overcast night, with intermittent starshine; the rectangles of door and windows were paler blurs in the darkness, and at intervals she could make out the light-reflecting restless water of the lake.

The thumping noises were coming closer, moving now across the porch from the direction of the living-room door. Were they bringing something heavy to batter their way through this door? I can’t faint, she told herself, insisting on it because she was afraid she might faint; her arms were trembling, her stomach was light and queasy, and the blinking was back again, worse than ever.

What were they doing? Vaguely she saw movement outside, on the porch. They were out there, or one of them was out there.

Should she shoot at them through the glass? But they were so vaguely seen, and it was probably only one of them anyway, and the chances were she wouldn’t hit them at all, not under these conditions. And afterward they would know she had a gun.

Dragging sounds, rustling movements, half-seen busyness out there on the porch. And then nothing. There still seemed to be someone or something there, a vague shape bulky outside the glass door, but she couldn’t make out what it was.

Turn on the light? But that would illuminate her much more than it.

There were porch lights, two of them, operated by a pair of switches, one beside the door in here and one beside the door in the living room. Either switch operated both lights. She could crawl over to the door—standing up and walking was beyond her now—and reach up and turn on the porch lights, and then she would know what it was out there. But did she really want to know?

She shifted position, turning half-around on the floor so as to put her left side toward the porch. She raised the rifle and pointed it at the bulky thing beyond the door.

Nothing happened. She waited, and nothing happened.

And then the porch lights came on, suddenly, unexpectedly, and she screamed at what was outside the door, looking in at her.

Morris. Dead and naked and cut all over his body and tied upright in a kitchen chair. Just sitting there, with his arms hanging down at his sides, his head dangling to the right, his eyes looking at her.

She emptied the rifle into him, and the laughing kept on anyway, and she was squeezing the trigger to make click sounds against emptiness when Jessup and Manny punched their way in through the bathroom door.

PART FOUR

The plane circled Newark for fifteen minutes, and had been late getting there in any event. It was nearly eight o’clock before they landed and the passengers could get off.

At night, Newark Airport looks like Newark: underilluminated, squat, dirty. The terminal building seemed to be full of short people speaking Spanish, all of them excited about one thing or another. Parker went through them like a panther through geese, and trotted across the blacktop street out front to the parking lot and the Pontiac.

He had major highway to drive on most of the way, with country blacktop for only the last ten miles or so. He drove by the turnoff to the road that circled the lake, knowing that just over a mile farther on, the other end of the same road came around to intersect with the one he was on.

There’d been a lot of traffic coming the other way, eastbound, weekenders on their way back to the city, and a car was waiting to come out at the second turnoff. Parker steered around it, and met two others coming out while he drove in. He would have preferred a week night, when there’d be a lot less activity around the lake.

He picked a likely-looking house on the lake side of the road, one that showed no lights or any sign of recent activity, but which didn’t have its windows boarded up for the winter. He left the Pontiac in the driveway, looked through one of the windows in the garage door, and saw a fairly large outboard motorboat in there, on a wheeled carrier. So the owner hadn’t started coming up yet this year at all, or the boat would be in the water and room would have been left in the garage for their car.

Parker walked around the side of the house and down the slope of weedy lawn at the back to the water’s edge, and looked out across the lake. There were maybe fifteen houses showing light over there; one of them would be Claire’s. He was too far away now to make out anything but light and darkness.

The house here was built on land that sloped pretty steeply down toward the water, so that what was the first floor on the road side was a good eight feet above the ground back here, held up by a series of metal posts. Part of the underneath section had been closed off to form a sort of workshop, and the rest was left open and used for storage of various things: a lawnmower, jerry cans, an oildrum-and-wood-platform float, and two aluminum rowboats.

Parker wrestled one of the rowboats out of the storage space, turned it right side up, and dragged it down to the water’s edge. Then he went back and found several wooden oars, their green paint flaking off, leaning against the rear of the storage space. He brought them down to the rowboat, fit them into the oarlocks, and pushed the boat into the water.

It was a cloudy night, with occasional spaces of starry sky but no moon. Parker set off in the rowboat, and twenty feet from shore he could no longer clearly make out the house he’d started from.

It was a cool evening, but the rowing was warm work. The boat moved well enough so long as he kept at the oars, but it never built up any momentum; the instant he would stop to rest, the boat would sag to a halt in the water.

Out in the middle, he stopped for a minute to study the far shore, trying to figure out which house was Claire’s. But it still wasn’t possible, the lights were anonymous, not giving a clear enough indication of the shape of any of the buildings, and he was still much too far away to make out the rooms inside any of those lit windows.

He saw that his tendency while rowing was to veer slightly to the left, probably because his right arm was the stronger. When he started again now, he picked one of the lights back on the shore he’d left, and tried to keep that light on a direct line with the rear of the rowboat. When he looked over his shoulder at the shore he was approaching, it seemed to be working; so far as he could tell he was now traveling in a straight line.

Glimpses of the main road could be seen far away to the left, beyond the end of the lake; a steady stream of headlights made a broken white line marking the route. Parker knew approximately how far in from that road (Zaire’s house stood, and there were four or five houses Knowing light in the right area. He was aiming for the one furthest to the left, and when he got close enough to make out details he would turn and parallel the shore until he got to the right house.

The first one wasn’t it. It had no boathouse, and the porch was a different shape.

Sound travels across the water. There were two young boys fishing off a wooden dock at the second house, and though he was well out from shore he could hear every word they said to one another. They were arguing, quietly and dispassionately, about which one of them had lost a missing lure. Parker rowed past, out beyond the reach of the lightspill from the house behind the boys, and at one point the right oarlock made a metallic creaking sound, not very loud. At once the boys stopped talking, and he could see their silhouettes as they gazed out in this direction. He kept rowing, now making no sound other than the dip of oar blades in and out of the water.

One of the boys said, “There’s somebody out there in a rowboat.”

“He’ll hear you.”

“That’s all right. Maybe he’s got that Big Red, since you don’t have it.” And they went back to their reasonable bickering about the lure.

There were five dark houses before the next lit one. Out in the middle of the lake there’d been a little breeze-chop making wavelets that had slowed the boat some, but in closer to shore the water was almost completely flat, with only a slight ripple from the breeze, and the boat cut through it faster and more smoothly.

He recognized the boathouse first, even though this was the only time he’d seen it from this direction. But he knew it was the right house before he could see it clearly, and he rowed more cautiously, shipping the oars at last and letting the boat drift the short distance in to the boathouse.

The living room was lit, the bedroom was dark. He could see no one through the living-room windows. Lightspill on the side of the house told him the kitchen lights were on.

He took out the automatic from under his arm and held it in his right hand while with his left he maneuvered the boat around the front of the boathouse and along the wooden dock on the side. The shore was finished with a concrete patio, so he kept the boat from drifting all the way in; he didn’t want the clatter of aluminum on concrete.

The boat had its own frayed rope, one end tied to a ring at the prow. There were several rings set at intervals along the outer edge of the dock, and Parker put the automatic down on the dock while he made the boat fast. Then he picked up the gun again and stepped up cautiously onto the dock.

Was that movement on the porch? He stood on the dock, against the boathouse’s side wall, and watched and waited. Nothing happened, and then a figure—two figures —moved past the lit windows from left to right. The door between the living room and the porch opened and closed.

Parker waited. Nothing else happened. He had the vague impression of people moving in the living room, but the angle was wrong to make out what they were doing.

He moved out away from the boathouse wall and came cautiously in off the dock, moving at an angle that would take him eventually to the lightless bedroom. The tail skinny trees spaced around the lawn obscured his view of the house slightly without giving him any cover. He moved up through them, eyes scanning the house, automatic ready in his right hand.

The porch lights snapped on, and a second later the night erupted in rifle shots and screaming and the clatter of breaking glass. There was something on the porch in front of the bedroom door, Parker couldn’t see what; he crouched low and ran forward, now aiming more to the right, toward the living room.

Claire had said she’d bought a rifle.

The noise ended as abruptly as it had started: first the scream, then the glass, and finally the flurry of shots. None of the rifle fire seemed to have been aimed in Parker’s direction.

In the new silence, Parker moved along the edge of the screened-in porch toward the stoop and the screen door. Looking back to his left, he could see now what was in front of the bedroom door: a chair, facing the bedroom, with somebody sitting in it. Tied to it. Unconscious, or dead. The chair was turned away so that Parker couldn’t see who it was or anything else about him.

The porch lights were a nuisance, but the screaming had given him a greater sense of urgency. He went up the stoop, crouching, looking every way at once, and another scream sounded from the bedroom; louder, more shrill and hopeless than before.

Parker pushed at the screen door and the latch was on. He kicked the sole of his foot against the wood of the door just above the knob, and the door popped wide open, as though in invitation. He jumped through, looked to the right and ran left, toward the bedroom. He stopped behind the chair, looked over the shoulder of the thing sitting in it, and saw Claire sitting in the middle of the floor, clutching a rifle in both hands. Behind her, the hall door was barricaded with the dresser. To the left, the bathroom door had been locked, but had now been broken open, and two shaggy-looking men were standing just inside the doorway. One of them, moon-faced and grinning, started toward Claire as though he were a child and she a piece of randy. The other one, more hawklike, stood back with the small smile of the spectator on his mouth.

Parker lifted the hand with the automatic in it. The hawklike one saw the movement, saw him standing there, and yelled, “Manny! Back!”

Manny? Parker fired at him, but Manny was already turning and the bullet didn’t hit him right; it caught him in the upper left arm and knocked him sprawling on his face on the floor in front of the bed.

Claire had flung the rifle away and lunged for the side of the bed, to press herself against the floor there.

The hawklike one had suddenly developed a gun. He fired twice, both bullets going wide, and shouted, “Manny, for Christ’s sake, get up!”

It was tough, from outside the room, to get a good shot at either of them. Having already wounded Manny, Parker tried for the other one, but the shot missed, and after it the guy ducked back through the doorway. And Manny had gotten his feet under him; in a scrabbling lunge, half-run and half-crawl, he catapulted himself across the open space and through the bathroom door and out of light.

Parker knocked over the chair with the dead man in it, to get it out of his way. The glass door was locked; he reached through the broken part and unlocked it, then slid it open and stepped inside.

Claire was still cowering on the floor beside the bed. Parker left her there for now, and followed the two men.

He was slowed down because he couldn’t go through any doorway or around any corner without first bring sure they weren’t waiting for him on the other side. Hut when he got to the kitchen he saw the outside door standing open, and heard the roar of a car starting up. The kitchen was a mess, chairs overturned and slop everywhere; he saw it without thinking about it yet, and ran to the front door.

The light switch on the wall beside the door turned on two outside lights, an ornamental fixture beside the door and a floodlight mounted over the garage doors. Parker hit that switch on the way by, and where there had been darkness outside the doorway there was now the gravel driveway and two cars: a white Plymouth and a dark blue Corvette. They had been parked side by side in front of the door, the ‘Vette nearest the house, and it was the ‘Vette that was now in motion, backing fast and curving to put its taillights against the garage doors and point its nose down the driveway toward the road.

Parker got one shot at it while it was broadside to him over there, the driver shifting out of reverse.He didn’t bother to try for the driver, who was in any case crouched low in the seat and was a chancy target in this light. He shot the left front tire, and when the ‘Vette surged forward, spraying gravel back onto the garage doors, Parker fired a second time and put out the left rear tire. The ‘Vette slued badly, but kept moving. Parker ran forward three strides, turned sideways to the fleeing car, and tried to plant a bullet in the right rear tire, but apparently missed. As the ‘Vette was grinding through the turn onto the road, swaying and bumping badly with both left tires out, Parker made a try for the gas tank, firing two shots into the car’s body. Then it was out of range of the floodlight, though for a few seconds longer he could still hear it.

He half-turned and ran to the garage to get out Claire’s Buick, but there were padlocks on the doors that hadn’t been there thirty-six hours ago.

The Plymouth? He went to it and opened it and the keys weren’t in the ignition. He hadn’t really expected them to be, but it was worth a try.

So they’d made it. For now.

Parker went back into the house, shutting the door behind himself and switching off the lights again. He kept the automatic in his hand and walked back through the bathroom into the bedroom.

Claire was sitting on the bed. She looked weary, but not hysterical. She lifted her head when he walked into the room, and said, “They got away?”

“For now. How are you?”

“A nervous wreck. I’m glad you got here.”

He went over and stood in front of her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I came as fast as I could.”

“I know you did.” She patted his hand. “It was very scary, waiting. I’m going to have nightmares for a while.”

“Can you tell me about them? Can you talk yet?”

“Not till you get rid of that.” She moved her head slightly, without turning it, the gesture indicating the porch.

He glanced that way and saw the overturned chair with the body tied to it. He still hadn’t seen the face, still knew only that it was male and naked and dead and messy. He said, “Was that one of them?” Thinking there might have been a falling-out among them.

But she shook her head. She was looking straight ahead, at his belt buckle, as though she had to have a very tight rein on herself right now. She said, “Morris. From the robbery.”

“Morris? He came here with them?”

“I’ll tell you about it,” she said, and now there was more vibrato in her voice, more trembling. “But first you have to get rid of it. You have to.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll get rid of it.”

It was simplest, despite the chill in the air, to do the job naked. It was going to be messy, and this way there’d be no clothing to be cleaned afterward.

But first there were preparations to be made. Parker found Morris’ clothes in the kitchen, ripped and torn and bloodied and strewn around the floor. He searched them for the keys to the white Plymouth outside, then bundled them up and carried them around the outside of the house to leave them temporarily with the body. He took the long way so as not to carry the bundle past Claire, and saw through the shattered glass door that she was no longer in the bedroom. He could hear water running in the tub.

He drove the Plymouth around the lake, taking the opposite direction from that of the Corvette, which meant he would follow the loop of road around the lake without coming out on the main road, with all its citybound traffic.

He knew it was a risk, leaving the house again, but it was one he had to take. The two in the Corvette wouldn’t get very far with a pair of tires gone, so they’d still be in the neighborhood for a while, but it was unlikely they’d choose to come back to Claire’s house, knowing it was now occupied by a man with a gun.

He passed the house where he’d borrowed the rowboat; his Pontiac still sat quietly in the driveway. And about half a dozen houses beyond that, where he had noticed on the way in a family loading their car, there was now no car, and the house was in darkness. Parker turned the Plymouth in at that driveway, left it, and went around to the boathouse, which was locked. Wood near water doesn’t last long; it took two kicks to spring the screws loose holding the hasp, and the door sagged open.

The boat inside was a fiberglass outboard with a forty-horsepower Johnson motor. Parker raised the overhead door at the lake end of the boathouse, untied the motorboat from its three moorings, stepped in, and started the motor. He backed out through the wide doorway, turned the boat around, and headed at open throttle across the lake.

Fewer houses were lit now, and with the porch lights still glowing, it was easier to recognize Claire’s place. Parker eased the motorboat in toward shore, nestled it between the rowboat and the concrete, and tied it to another of the rings along the edge of the dock.

Claire was in the tub.-She looked up when he came in, and her face seemed simultaneously drawn and puffy, a contradiction that made her look almost as though she’d been partying too much for several nights in a row. She said, “Is it gone yet?”

“Soon. You still want to stay here?”

She looked wary. “Why?”

“I shot out their tires, they’ll still be around the lake someplace. After I’m done here I’ll go look for them, but in the meantime they might come back. While I’m gone.”

“They won’t come back.” She sounded grim, but sure of herself.

“I don’t think so either. But they might. I wounded one of them.”

“That’s why they won’t come back. They’re cowards, you’ll see. They’ll hide in a hole someplace.”

“I think so, too. But just in case.”

“I’m too tired to go anywhere,” she said. “Too tired and too scared and too nervous. You were right before, I should have gone to a hotel. But now I can’t, I can’t do anything.”

“I’ll be as fast as I can.”

His first move was to switch off the bedroom and porch lights, and then to strip down. He stuffed his clothing in a pillowcase and took it down across the backyard and put it on the seat of the motorboat. Then he went back up to the darkened porch and put the chair back up on its legs and dragged it backward over to the door.

It was simplest to just push it through the doorway and let it bounce down the stoop. Then he dragged it across the lawn, detouring around tree trunks, and out over the wooden dock.

The rowboat was out perpendicular to the dock. Parker pulled it closer with the rope, then pulled on the side until it lay along the edge of the dock. He eased the chair backward until it was lying on its back on the dock, and then tipped it sideways off the edge and into the rowboat. It hit face down, which meant the body hit rather than the wooden chair, which muffled the sound.

Claire’s boathouse had a small-wattage bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the ceiling. Parker switched it on and padded around the concrete edging, gathering up things to weight the body: a length of rusty chain, a broken piece of concrete block, an old metal pulley. He took them all back outside and fixed them around the chair and the body, then tied the rowboat to the rear of the motorboat, and got in the motorboat to tow it out to the middle of the lake.

The toughest part was getting the chair and the body out of the boat. The rowboat bounced and jounced, but wouldn’t tip over, and Parker finally had to climb into it and lift the chair over the side. But then it dropped down into the water at once, and disappeared.

The main thing was, if this area was going to be home base, it had to be kept clean. No sudden unsolved murders, no crime wave of any kind; crooked doings would show up around a rural section like this like a thumbtack under a coat of paint. Which was why replacing the divots took precedence over finding the two in the Corvette.

The rest went pretty fast now, after he sank the body. He towed the rowboat back to the house where he’d borrowed it, and used the bailing can from the motorboat to splash away the bloodstains Morris had left behind. Then he stepped into the cold water himself and scrubbed his body clean, and stood after that by the water’s edge while he put his clothes on again over his wet skin.

It was impossible to get the rowboat back into its original position without help from a second man; Parker dragged it close as he could, and left it there. Then he went back to steer the motorboat along to the left, close to shore, and return it to the boathouse he’d taken it from. The kicked-in door was simple vandalism, the normal kind of petty crime in this area and nothing to worry about.

Morris’ Plymouth was waiting in the driveway. Parker got in it and drove the long way back to Claire’s house, avoiding the highway.

Claire had a mop and a bucket and was doing the kitchen floor. She’d dressed in slacks and sweater and sandals, she’d tied her hair up in a cloth, and she had the fixed look of a woman who is going to make it by will power alone. The table and chairs had already been cleaned and set right, the dishwasher was buzzing, and the few stains that had been along one wall were gone.

Parker came in and said, “No trouble?”

“No trouble.” The rifle was lying on the kitchen table. Claire saw Parker looking at it, and she said, “Next time I’ll know what to do with that. I learn fast, when I have to.”

“It’s loaded again?”

“Of course.”

Parker sat down at the table, pushing the rifle slightly away. “Tell me about them now. Who they are, what their game is, what their connection is, anything they told you.”

“Morris told most of it. For my benefit, I think. He already knew who they were.”

“What was Morris doing here?”

“He was doing the same thing you were. He’d heard that your friend Keegan was looking for him, so he went to Keegan to find out why. He found this phone number there, so he came here to find out if you knew what was going on.”

“What about the other two?”

“One of them is named Manny Berridge.

He’

“Berridge?”

“You didn’t tell me about the man who was killed. He was supposed to do the robbery with you, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right. Manny’s his son?” That was the one Parker had wounded, the one called Manny.

“Grandson.” She went on to tell him what Morris had said, and he sat and listened to it, frowning at the rifle in front of him on the table.

When she was done, he said, “What about the other one? Jessup, you say? What’s his connection?”

“I don’t know. I suppose he’s just Manny’s friend. He’s the brains of the two, but Manny can be much meaner. He’s like an insane little child.”

“All right.” He got to his feet, pushing the chair back from the table.

She looked at him, her expression apprehensive. “You’re going after them? But they won’t bother us any more, will they?”

“Yes. They strike me as the kind to hold grudges. In the meantime, I want you to do something for me.”

She had finished with the mop, had emptied the bucket into the sink and put mop and bucket both away in the narrow closet in the corner. Now she’d started cleaning the sink. Holding the cleanser in her hand, she said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Take Morris’ Plymouth to New York and lose it.”

“No.” She turned her back and sprinkled cleanser into the sink.

“It’s not to get you away from here.”

“It is.” She started scrubbing the sink.

“Partly. The rest is, we can’t have the car found around here. In New York it won’t raise any questions, but here it would.”

“I’ll take it tomorrow.”

“It would be best to do it now, at night.”

She faced him again, leaning against the sink. “I suppose you’re right,” she said, “but I’m not going to do it. I have something else I have to do first. When I’m finished I’ll take the car in, if I’m not too tired.”

“What do you have to do?”

“Get my house back. When I finish here, I have some things to do in the bedroom and the bathroom, and then the porch floor has to be mopped. And then I want to make a list of the people I have to call tomorrow. Someone to fix the glass in the door. Someone to fix the bathroom door.”

He looked at her, and understood vaguely that there was something in her head about the idea of borne that wasn’t in his head and never would be. The world could go to hell if it wanted, but she would put her home in order again before thinking about anything else.

He tried to find something in his own mind to relate that to, so he could understand it better, and the only thing he came up with was betrayal. If someone double-crossed him in a job, tried to take Parker’s share of the split or betray him to the law, everything else became unimportant until he had evened the score. And like the two tonight, Manny and Jessup; there was no way that Parker was not going to settle with them for the insult of their attack. In some way, what Claire was into now had to be something like that, with a sense of home instead of a sense of identity.

“All right,” he said. “Just keep the rifle in the same room with you.”

“I will. And this time I won’t shoot until I know what I’m shooting at.”

“Good. When I come back, I’ll knock twice before I come in. If anybody else walks in without knocking don’t think about it. Just shoot his head off.”

“I will,” she said.

The Corvette was parked on a gravel strip beside a small white clapboard house across the road from the lake, less than half a mile from Claire’s place. Damp blood was on the seat-back on the passenger side.

Parker was on foot, the automatic in his right hand. He was traveling without any kind of light. He circled the house beside the Corvette and found it locked up tight, no sign of entry.

A wooded area stretched away uphill behind the house. Parker considered it, and rejected it, for three reasons: Manny was wounded. Manny and Jessup were both city boys. Jessup would want another car, so he would prefer to stay near houses.

Claire had suggested earlier that Manny and Jessup wouldn’t be coming back because they were cowards, and Parker had seen no reason at that point to disagree with her. But cowardice was irrelevant. Whether they were cowards or not, they wouldn’t make another attack on the house tonight with an armed man inside and a wounded man outside. And whether they were cowards or not, they would eventually come back to repay Parker for routing them; cowardice would simply at that point make them more difficult to deal with.

Parker didn’t know Jessup, had seen him only once and then for only a few seconds of sudden activity, but he felt he understood the man. Jessup was the planner and organizer in his partnership with Manny, just as Parker was the planner and organizer in his own partnerships. So he put himself in Jessup’s place now, and decided that Jessup wanted to do and how he’d go about it.

Jessup wanted to get away from here. For that he would need a car. It was now not yet ten o’clock in the evening, and there was nowhere around here that cars were left parked at the curb; there were no curbs here, just the country roads and the houses. The weekenders would be taking their cars away from here tonight, and the full-time residents wouldn’t start settling down for the night for another hour or two. Jessup, when he stole a car, would have to take one from a garage, or at the best, a driveway. In either case, the car would be very close to the owner’s home, there might be a dog in the house—people out here tended to have dogs—and the only safe thing to do was wait until very late before making the move.

In the meantime, Jessup had Manny to contend with and Parker to watch out for. So his first move would be to abandon the Corvette just far enough away from Claire’s house so that Parker wouldn’t be able to see him do it, assuming Parker to have gone down the driveway to watch the Corvette drive away; that much he had done because here was the Corvette, one road curve away front; Claire’s house.

Next? Next Jessup would want an empty house to hole up in. He would leave Manny here in the car while he scouted around and found a suitable house, and then he would come back and get Manny and the two of them would go to the house he’d found. And that much he’d done, too, as was evidenced by how much bleeding Manny had done into the Corvette seat-back. All of that hadn’t happened in half a mile of driving: one minute, two minutes.

Which meant the empty house had to be nearby. Near enough for Jessup to have gone to it, and come back for Manny, taken Manny to it.

Parker stood beside the Corvette, frowning past the houses across the road at the vaguely seen lake. He was putting himself in Jessup’s place, running Jessup’s race for him.

Which direction? From here, in which direction would Jessup first look for an empty house in which to hole up?

Back. That was what Parker would do, and he was assuming Jessup would do the same. When being chased, having established the direction you’re running in, always double back when you’re going to hole up for a while.

Which side of the road? Having put the Corvette over here, would Jessup now choose one of the houses on the lake side of the road? Parker didn’t think so, both because of the psychological pressure of Claire’s house being on that side and also because Jessup would shy away from resting in a spot where he’d have blocked his own retreat in case of trouble. In this situation Parker would want dry land on all four sides of the place where he was hiding, and he anticipated Jessup would want the same.

It was true that circumstances might have forced Jessup to choose a house somewhere else, but it seemed to Parker that Jessup’s first preference would be back in the direction he had come from, on this side of the road.

Parker nodded. He turned away from the Corvette and walked on up behind the white clapboard house and headed back the way he’d come.

He knew it was the right house the instant he saw it. It was set farther back from the road than most of the other houses along here, which meant it was built higher on the hillside that sloped up from the lake, and it was a large house, with a second floor and a full attic, which meant that it commanded the best view available of the surrounding area. Sheets of clear plastic had been tacked around all the windows and doors, to protect them from the winter, and the fact they were still in place meant the owners hadn’t yet come up to open the house for the summer.

Parker had come along behind the houses, through lawns or gardens or scrub, depending on the ideas of the owner, checking each building out as he had come to it, and this large sprawling stone house was the fifth one from the Corvette, back toward Claire’s place. Parker saw it, and knew it was the right one, and cautiously approached it, making a wide circle so as to come down at it from behind, knowing he would be less visible against the woods than with the road or other houses for a backdrop.

And saw light. He stopped when he saw it, because it didn’t belong; Jessup wouldn’t be stupid enough to turn on lights.

But the other one would. Manny, he would.

The light could very faintly be seen, through a window with plastic sheeting on the outside and a shade pulled all the way down on the inside. Thin lines of yellowish light were revealed where the shade was warped inward away from the window frame.

A very dim light. Parker frowned downslope at it, and then saw that it was flickering, and realized it was a candle. The electricity wouldn’t be on in that house, in any case. There wouldn’t be water, either; people around here drained the water from the pipes when they closed their houses for the winter.

Manny must have wanted light, so he could see what damage had been done to his shoulder or arm by Parker’s bullet. Jessup had given in to him, taking a chance on the very small light of a candle, in a room at the rear of the house.

But if Jessup were really smart, he wouldn’t travel with Manny at all.

Parker moved again, slowly. There was always the chance that the candle was a stunt, that Jessup realized Parker would hunt him down, and had left the candle burning so Parker would move into a position where Jessup could ambush him. It was unlikely, but it was a chance.

A small shedlike addition had been built on at the right rear corner of the house, and that was where Jessup and Manny had gained admission. They had probably tried to neaten up in their wake, to make it impossible to trail them, but there’d been no way for them to reattach the plastic sheeting from the inside, and it sagged crookedly now, open practically all the way up the one side.

Jessup had been more careful with the door; however he had gotten in, he’d left the door unscarred and managed to lock it again behind him.

Which probably meant the kind of bolt lock that can be opened with a knife blade slipped between door and jamb. Parker took out his own knife, opened it, slid it through, found the bolt, and forced it slowly out of the way, at the same time turning the knob and leaning part of his weight against the door.

It popped open, without a sound.

Parker waited half a minute, then eased the door farther inward, until it bumped against something and there was a faint clinking sound. There was about a four-inch opening now. Parker crouched, put his left hand carefully through the opening, and felt around on the other side of the door for what he’d hit. His fingers brushed cardboard; the clinking sounded again, small and close.

Soda bottles. Two six-pack cartons of empty soda bottles. Jessup, after coming in here, had rooted around and come up with these cartons of empty bottles, which he’d stood one atop the other just inside the door he’d breached. So that if Parker did get this far, he would knock the cartons over when he opened the door: burglar alarm.

Moving carefully in the darkness, with just the one arm reaching around the door, Parker removed the top carton and set it to one side, and then slid the lower carton out of the way.

Was that all? He felt around some more, but as far as he could reach, there was nothing else in the way. He straightened, and cautiously pushed the door open, and there were no other obstructions.

But there was another door. This one, which led from the shed-type annex in to the main part of the house, had apparently given Jessup more trouble; it was obviously breached, with gouged wood protruding from the jamb around the area of the lock.

Because of the empty bottles at the first door, Parker was very slow and careful now, but this door hadn’t been booby-trapped at all. Apparently Jessup had placed all his faith in the soda bottles. Or else he’d assumed that a man who would get past them would get past whatever else he might be able to set up at the inner door.

It was two steps up through that inner door, and inside there was unrelieved blackness. Parker moved forward by touch, and could tell he was in a kitchen. Alert for booby traps, planned or inadvertent, he felt his way around the walls till he came to a doorway across from he back entrance, and stepped carefully through there.

Light. Very little, so faint as to be almost nothing at all, and half the time flickering down to be nothing at all. But the faintest light is a beacon against complete darkness, and Parker had no trouble seeing it, or moving toward it.

He was in a hall now, a central corridor that ran from the kitchen to the living room at the front of the house, with other rooms opening off on both sides along the way. It was a doorway on the left that showed the flicker of light. Parker moved forward, and when he reached that doorway the light wasn’t coming from that room, but from another room beyond it, this being lightspill from lightspill. Diagonally across this room—a kind of library-parlor—was a doorway leading to a room that would be next to the kitchen at the rear of the house; the right spot for the window where he’d first seen the light wobbling.

This library-parlor was carpeted, and the reflected candle-glow made it possible to see the bulks of furniture. Parker moved more quickly across this room, and looked through the doorway into the room with the light.

A small bedroom. A single bed against the rear wall, under the window. A dresser to the right, a wooden chair and a portable television set on a stand to the left.

The candle was stuck in a Chianti bottle on the floor, the bottle covered with the drippings of dozens of previous candles of different colors. This one was red, it was about three inches long, and its light was yellow.

Manny was lying on his back on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. He was stripped to the waist. His left side was to Parker, and his right shoulder, the one that had been hit, was swathed in ripped sections of sheet, a bulky and awkward bandage, but apparently the best Jessup could do under the circumstances. Manny didn’t seem to be in any pain; his expression as he gazed at the ceiling was bland, quiet, pleasant, contented, tentatively interested.

On the floor near the candle in the bottle lay a small crumpled piece of paper. It looked like the piece of paper Parker had found in the empty farmhouse where Briley had been lured.

Jessup wasn’t in the room.

Parker squatted on his heels beside the doorway, looking through at Manny, his head just slightly above the level of Manny’s head. Jessup wasn’t here. Out getting a car? This early? Wait for him here?

Something made a noise upstairs. Whatever had caused it, it became an anonymous thump by the time it reached this corner of the house.

Parker frowned. Which one did he want behind him? It all depended how long Manny would be away on his trip. Jessup was more dangerous in the long run, because he was rational, but Manny could have moments when he would be very bad to be around.

What was Jessup doing up there? Parker concentrated on that question, and had trouble with it because he would have known better himself than to trap himself away on the second floor. Just as he would have known better than to split his forces. Just as he would have known better than to let Manny trip out now, no matter how much pain Manny might be in.

But he would have known better than to be with Manny anyway.

There was always the tactic of finishing Manny off now, and then going after Jessup. The arguments in favor of it were strong, but two things stopped him. In the first place, he couldn’t be sure it could be done quietly enough to keep from alerting Jessup. And in the second place, moving into a lighted room with Jessup on the loose somewhere around didn’t appeal to him.

Finally he simply turned away from the lit room and made his way back to the corridor, and then moved cautiously down it looking for the stairs. He was very sensitive to the fact that there was light behind him and none ahead of him; he was outlined for Jessup, if Jessup was in front of him. He stayed as close to the wall as he could get, and moved slowly and silently, straining his eyes to see into the dark. And at the same time, he could feel in his shoulder blades the presence of the man lying on his back in the room with the candle.

The stairs, too, were carpeted. He went up them close to the wall, and on all fours, to distribute his weight and lessen the chance of creaking. There was still a small hint of light from the candle when he started, but halfway to the top he was in total darkness again.

At the top he halted and listened; Jessup had made one noise, he might make another. But there was no sound, and finally it was time to move.

In total darkness, it was impossible to work out the design of rooms and hallways and doors. Parker simply moved left along the first wall he came to, until he reached a door. He turned the knob, inchingly, and pushed the door open, and saw a vague dim rectangle of slightly paler black: a window. Would this be a bedroom? Would he be standing in a hallway of some kind?

He held his breath, and leaned forward into the room, listening. Men breathe, and in total silence their breathing can be heard. Parker remained leaning forward, with his head and shoulders past the doorway, doing no breathing of his own, until he was sure the room was empty. Then he straightened again, and left the door slightly ajar, and moved past it to continue along the same wall as before.

He checked a second room the same way. The third door he came to opened toward him, and showed no window-rectangle inside. He felt the black air in front of himself and touched shelves, sheets, towels: the linen closet. He pushed the door to without shutting it entirely, and moved on.

A corner. He turned right, came to another doorway, this one with the door standing open. Again, no rectangle of window. He reached forward into the darkness—it was like reaching into black cotton, and feeling nothing—but this time there were no shelves, there was nothing within arm’s length at all. He touched the wall to the left of the doorway, on the inside, and found a light switch; so this was a room of some kind. He leaned in, holding his breath again, and it was empty.

But what sort of room was it, and did one or more other rooms lead off it? He had to know. Slowly he crossed the threshold, and the floor felt somehow different beneath his feet. He squatted down, holding the doorjamb, and felt the floor, and it was tile. A bathroom. Not a route then to anywhere else. He straightened, backed out of the doorway, moved on.

Another empty room, and then another corner. If he was working the building plan out in his head properly, the rooms on this side would face the road. Then a fourth side to come, and he should wind up back at the stairs. If he didn’t find Jessup first.

Could he be in the attic? Parker hadn’t found the stairs going up there yet.

The first room he came to on the third side was occupied. He leaned in and listened, and out of the normal rustle of silence he gradually culled the sound of breathing, faint and regular and quite far away.

There were two vague rectangles of window in this room, and the one on the left seemed more indistinct at the bottom, it didn’t have the clarity of line that the one beside it had. As though a piece of furniture were in the way. Or a man.

Jessup was sitting at the window, looking out at the road. Waiting for Parker? Watching one side of the house?

There was the faint odor of cigarette in the air. Jessup had been smoking, too.

Parker straightened, and stepped to one side of the doorway, outside the room. The automatic was in his right hand, but he didn’t want to use it unless he had to. The broken door in the kitchen of this house would be vandalism, and cause no unusual concern. Blood in any of the rooms would attract the wrong kind of attention.

Parker inhaled and exhaled. Holding the breath altered the responses of the muscles, just slightly. He leaned against the wall for a minute, breathing normally, and then turned and stepped silently in through the doorway.

The indistinctness at the bottom of the left window was still there. Parker moved toward it, taking small steps on carpeting, feeling in front of himself with one hand at every step.

“Manny? That you?”

The voice seemed very sudden. Parker froze where he was, one arm extended downward and out in front of himself, back bent slightly, right heel lifted.

Some people are very sensitive to the presence of another person in the same room. Jessup’s attention hadn’t been entirely on the nothing happening down below on the road; he had sensed Parker’s presence.

Parker stayed where he was, waiting for Jessup to decide he’d made a mistake. He continued to breathe, but slowly, with long silent intakes and exhalations.

The darkness shifted, at the bottom of the left window. It now matched the right window, squared off bottom and top.

“Manny! He’s up here!” A loud shout, for the benefit of the one downstairs, lying on that bed. And Jessup didn’t sound worried, it was simply a shouted bit of information.

Parker moved during the sound of Jessup’s shout; he backed toward the doorway, holding his left hand out behind him. He stopped when Jessup’s voice stopped.

Silence. And then, belatedly, a sleepy shout back, a query from below, with no intelligible words.

“He’s up here with me!” Parker moved backward. He would not let himself be between Jessup and the windows, he would not be outlined. Jessup wouldn’t have the same reluctance to use a gun.

This time Jessup kept shouting, giving Parker time to get all the way back to the door, and take one step to the left of it, within the room, and stand there with his back to the wall, the doorway just past his right elbow.

Jessup shouted, “Put out the light! Get to the bottom of the stairs and wait for him, in case he gets away from me!”

Would Manny do it? Or would Manny just prop himself on his elbow on the bed and gaze blearily at the doorway in the candlelight, and gradually just sink down again and forget all about it?

There were no more answers from downstairs, only the first muffled question. Jessup didn’t shout any more instructions; either he was sure Manny would do what he was told, or he wanted Parker to think he was. In either case, Manny’s one return shout had told Jessup that Manny was still alive and all right, that Parker had not already taken him out of the play.

Everybody was silent for a while now. Parker had kept his eyes on the smudgy rectangles of the windows. Jessup had been in front of the one on the left, and had disappeared from that one without having gone past the one on the right. Which meant that Jessup was somewhere in the left side of the room. Coming this way? Staying in one spot?

If he were going to get out of the room, he had two choices. He could either work his way around the wall, in which case he would run into Parker just before he reached the door, or he could get down on hands and knees and crawl to the door, in which case there was the slight possibility that he would get by Parker; but it was very slight. And in any case, Parker was getting to know Jessup better now, and he had the feeling Jessup wouldn’t crawl to the door. Just as he wouldn’t have gone up the stairs on all fours, though that was the best way to do it.

Jessup was half-good, which is the other side of being half-assed. He knew how to do some things right, but he wasn’t careful enough, he didn’t follow through on the reasons for doing this or that or the other. He would be one of those people who live their lives as a movie, in which they star and direct and write the story. That kind goes for drama, like traveling with a Manny. Or the way they handled Keegan. Or what they did to Claire with Morris’ body. And a man like that won’t crawl across a floor to a doorway, not if his life depends on it.

That was the edge Parker had; he knew that survival was more important than heroics. It isn’t how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose.

A wristwatch with a radium dial. Parker looked at it, a faint green circle swimming in the darkness over there, and waited for the time it counted to make Jessup do something stupid.

Stupid like the watch.

They had been stalemated for about ten minutes now. Jessup had spoken once, seven or eight minutes ago, saying, “Don’t try to convince me you aren’t here. I know you are.” But at that time he hadn’t shifted so that the radium dial was showing yet, so Parker hadn’t moved while he’d talked, simply,looked at the place the voice was coming from, to know where Jessup was.

It was in the same area that the green circle, two or three minutes after that, swam to the surface. Whatever position Jessup was standing in, it pointed that circle directly at Parker. Occasionally the thing dove back into the darkness, as Jessup moved—silently—one way or another, shifting position, but it always came back again, and Parker watched it, and waited for Jessup to do something stupid.

It would have a sweep second hand, that watch. By now Jessup would be feeling every second.

There had been no further sound or movement from downstairs. Had Manny heard Jessup? Had he done what Jessup wanted, or had he smiled and nodded and stayed lying there on the bed? Or was he coming upstairs, slowly so as not to make any noise, to find out what was going on? Parker’s right elbow extended into the doorway area, to warn him if anyone tried to move in or out.

From the location of the green circle swimming there, Jessup wasn’t against a wall. Unless he had a piece of furniture to lean on, he would be feeling tired by now.

“You still there, Parker? It is Parker, isn’t it?”

Parker took a sliding step forward while Jessup talked. He stopped when Jessup was silent.

The silence this time lasted no more than thirty seconds. “You’re the last one, you know that?” Jessup was trying to sound cocky and humorous, but he was nerved up and the sound of it was in his voice. “Did you see what we did to your friend Keegan? And Morris? Briley’s dead in the woods someplace, did you know that?”

Parker had covered half the distance to the watch; simultaneously, Jessup stopped talking and the watch disappeared. Parker stayed where he was.

The watch came back, disappeared again, came back again. Jessup was gesturing while he talked, making gestures in the dark. “You don’t fool me, I know you’re in this room. I can feel you. What do you think I am, a punk like Manny? A punk like you people?”

Parker was almost close enough to touch him. Another pace. Jessup was silent, and Parker stood there, looking forward into the darkness, knowing Jessup’s head was just there, a few inches beyond arm’s reach. He waited.

Was Jessup finished talking? Parker breathed shallowly through his nose; the automatic was away in its holster under his left arm, but his right hand hovered near it, in case things turned that way.

“You want to wait till daylight. That’s okay with—”

Parker’s left hand touched shirt, snaked upward, the fingers closed around throat. His right hand came around, closed, and when he hit he felt Jessup’s teeth against his knuckles.

Jessup was making a high gargling sound, and thrashing like a spider stuck through with a pin. Parker hit him again, holding him in place with the left hand around Jessup’s neck, hitting at the face in the darkness.

Fingers crawled along Parker’s left arm, hurrying toward his head. Parker stepped in close and brought his knee up and felt it hit. But Jessup wrapped his arms around Parker’s waist and lunged forward, and his weight forced Parker to take a backward step. His shin hit something, a chair or table or part of a bed, and his balance was gone, and the two of them toppled over through darkness and hit the floor.

Parker’s first grip was lost. He couldn’t let Jessup get free, he had to know where he was. He slapped outward, and touched cloth, and clung to it. Hands punched at him, they both shifted and rolled on the floor, their feet kicking at anonymous pieces of furniture, and suddenly they rolled directly into one another and both grabbed for leverage and control.

It was weight that made the difference. Parker was a little heavier, a little stronger, a little more sure of himself. He had Jessup’s throat again with one hand, and one of Jessup’s wrists with the other, and he was slowly forcing Jessup onto his back, pushing him backward and over and down. Jessup’s free hand punched out, the punches growing both wilder and frailer, and Parker tucked his head down to protect his face and bore Jessup steadily backward, and down, and flattened him on the floor. Then knelt on the wrist he’d been holding, freeing his other hand. But this time didn’t waste effort with fists; he put the second hand with the first, on Jessup’s throat, and clamped them there, and wouldn’t move.

Jessup kicked, and clawed with his free hand at the fingers around his throat, and scratched at Parker’s face and neck and arms. Parker knelt over him, one knee on Jessup’s wrist, the other leg stretched out behind himself for balance, and leaned his weight on his arms, outstretched, a straight line from his shoulders to Jessup’s throat, the weight of his body and the tightness of his grip pinning Jessup in place and holding the breath from his lungs.

Light. Orange-gray, faint, flickering. Parker saw it reflected in Jessup’s bulging eyes, and looked up to see the doorway framed with orange-yellow light, and then Manny padded forward into the doorway, barefoot, wearing only his slacks, carrying in his unwounded left hand the Chianti bottle with the candle in it, and in his right hand—despite the wound in that shoulder—a small pistol; it looked like a .22, a ladies’ purse gun.

Manny was smiling. His face seemed to flicker like the candlelight, his eyes grew larger and smaller, and moisture on his chin reflected the light like chrome.

If he’d been feeling anything at all, he wouldn’t have been able to hold the gun like that, or bend his arm like that.

His voice was very gentle, lamblike, the sweet child: “Let him go.”

At first, Parker didn’t move. Jessup was weakening beneath him, it would be a help to have at least one of them out of the play. He looked back at Manny, standing there in the doorway, and from the corners of his eyes he tried to find something to throw. To get rid of the light. In the darkness, they’d be more equal.

But there was nothing. This was a teenager’s bedroom—from the walls, rock posters gyrated in the candlelight—and the center of the floor was empty. A chair and small table that had been nearby were now kicked away into the corner by the bed, leaving nothing close enough to reach in a single lunge.

“Bang bang,” said Manny gently. He made a small lifting motion with the gun barrel. Get up, he was saying, or be shot where you are.

Parker moved, very slowly, shifting his weight back to his knees from his hands, but keeping the fingers clamped tight around Jessup’s throat till the last second. Jessup’s eyes were rounding out from his head, filming over. His hands had fallen to the floor on either side of his head. His legs were moving, but without purpose, like a dog when he dreams in his sleep.

Parker released him at last, and leaned back on his haunches. He kept watching Manny, because Manny was the danger now, but he remained aware of Jessup, who at first didn’t change his position, just continued to lie there on his back with his legs twitching. Then Jessup made a loud harsh grinding noise in his throat, and his whole body flopped like a fish: air, finding its way back into his body again.

Manny smiled sweetly at Jessup, as though Jessup had just done something cute and clever for his benefit. “There we are,” he said. “You’re all right now.”

But Jessup wasn’t all right. His own hands were at his throat now, and his mouth was open wide. His eyes still bulged, and his face was still mottled dark, and his tongue was still too thick in his mouth. Parker’s weight leaning on him like that had done him some damage; the regular channel for air was at least partially blocked.

Parker slowly moved the leg on the side opposite Manny, lifting the knee and getting his foot under himself, so he’d have more impetus if he had to make a sudden movement anywhere. Manny was concentrating most of his attention on Jessup now, and Parker kept the rest of his body still, his face turned toward Manny, his arms hanging down at his sides.

Manny’s expression, dulled and stupid-looking and childish, was gradually shifting from the smile of happiness to a puzzled frown. He said, “Jessup? You are okay, aren’t you?”

Jessup went on making the sounds. They were like dry heaves, only worse.

“We’d better get you a doctor,” Manny said. He was the follower, and the idea of losing his leader terrified him. “We’d better get you a doctor right away.”

Parker’s left foot was on the floor now, and he lifted his left hand and rested it on his knee.

Manny frowned at Parker. “I ought to shoot you,” he said poutingly. “I ought to shoot you in the balls.”

“You couldn’t carry him,” Parker said. “And he can’t walk. And you want to get him to a doctor.”

Manny’s frown deepened; he was working his way through the brambles of what Parker had said. ” You carry him,” he said. “That’s better, you can help fix things again. You pick him up and carry him.”

Parker reached down and slid one arm under Jessup’s shoulders and one under his knees.

Manny said, “And you be careful with him. If you hurt him, I’ll hurt you.”

Parker lifted Jessup into his arms, and then got to his feet. Jessup was still making the noises, but with long dry spaces of silence between them; then another grinding rasping intake of breath, and silence, and another tearing abrasive exhalation.

Manny backed out of the doorway as Parker approached him. Parker turned sideways to get Jessup through the doorway, and Manny moved back and to his left and gestured for Parker to go first down the stairs.

Jessup’s breathing started to get easier on the way down. With Manny three or four steps behind him, with no light but the candle, it was possible for Parker to reach his left hand around and close it over Jessup’s windpipe again. But this time he,didn’t want Jessup dead, not yet.

Jessup’s life was protecting his own right now. He simply didn’t want Jessup improving.

Manny was cautious and alert, within his limitations, but his limitations were severe. Parker had three chances at him before they left the house, going out the same back door they’d all entered by, but he didn’t want to take over from Manny yet. Manny didn’t know it, but he was helping Parker solve his problems.

The next step Manny came to on his own, without suggestions: “We’ll take your car,” he said when they’d gone outside. He blew out the candle and threw the Chianti bottle away; it hit grass, and didn’t break. “You’re the son of a bitch, this is all your fault, we can take your car.

Parker led the way, carrying Jessup, and Manny followed. It was less dark out here, and only sporadically could Parker close off Jessup’s air supply. But it was enough; whatever damage had been done, Parker could do enough now to keep it from correcting itself.

There was a driveway beside the house. They walked down it to the road and turned right. There were no houses showing light along this stretch, and looking between houses and out across the lake, Parker saw only two or three lights from over there. It was around eleven now; most of the weekenders had already gone, and the locals were starting to bed down for the night.

The only lights, they saw on this side of the lake were those at Claire’s house, when they’d walked around the curve. Manny was keeping ten or fifteen feet back, and his feet scuffed when he walked. Parker didn’t know exactly what he’d taken, but it seemed to serve mostly as a sort of super-tranquilizer. It wasn’t LSD, which was simply a sledgehammer that took you away and brought you back again, but it was a chemical of a similar kind. In any case, it was taken in a similar way, injected into a sugar cube and then the sugar cube sucked and swallowed. Some kind of speed, maybe, STP, the stuff that does permanent brain damage; Speed Kills, the warnings had said in the underground press. In any case, it was a stuff that didn’t take him away completely, and didn’t bring him back complete. It put an erratic cog in the engine of his brain; it would soon burn the engine out, but in the meantime its running would be wild and unpredictable.

At Claire’s house, a light showed in the kitchen window. If Manny wanted to go in there again, Parker would have to take care of him here; he would prefer to take it all away from this neighborhood first.

The kitchen light glinted on the Plymouth, Morris’ car. Parker headed for it, and behind him Manny said, “That’s yours?”

“I have the keys to it.”

Parker opened the rear door and laid Jessup across the back seat. He got out again and closed the door and turned to look at Manny.

Manny said, “Goodbye.”

“You can’t drive with that arm,” Parker said.

Manny frowned, and glanced down at his arm. He looked back at Parker, and his expression was uncertain again.

Parker said, “And Jessup wouldn’t want you to kill me yet. Or let me go.”

Manny grinned disbelievingly, though his larger puzzlement still showed through. “You think I’m going to let you drive?”

“You can’t. And I know where to find a doctor.”

“How come you’re so eager?”

“I want to stay alive a while longer.”

Manny frowned deeply, thinking about it. He glanced at the house, and Parker saw him thinking about phoning a doctor from here. Then he glanced at the Plymouth, and Parker knew he was imagining Jessup giving him orders. He wasn’t used to doing the planning himself.

Parker said, “You’re wasting time. But he’s your friend, not mine.”

It was being used to taking orders, having somebody else do the thinking, that decided it. Manny looked at him and said, “I’ll be in the back seat. I’ll be right behind you. You do anything funny, I’ll shoot you in the back of the head.”

“I know that.”

“All right,” Manny said.

The eastbound traffic was as heavy as ever, moving along bumper to bumper at a steady thirty-five miles an hour. Parker forced his way between a Ford station wagon and a Rambler sedan, and settled down to drive.

He couldn’t see Manny in the rear-view mirror, but he could sense him back there, in the left side of the rear seat. He had Jessup’s head in his lap, his wounded right arm was draped down across Jessup’s chest, and the .22 was in his left hand.

The incredible thing was, he hadn’t disarmed Parker. Probably because Parker had been using his hands instead of a gun, Manny must have decided there wasn’t any gun in it at all. Parker felt it, against his left side, and drove steadily along behind the Ford, the Rambler’s headlights in his rear-view mirror.

He didn’t know exactly how he was going work all this out with Manny and Jessup, only that he wanted to get the two of them—and this car—as far as possible from Colliver Pond. The Plymouth had Ohio plates; ten or fifteen miles should be far enough away.

And after that there’d be nothing to take care of but the Corvette. Buy one new tire, use the spare for the other, and Claire could drive it to New York tomorrow and leave it there. Parker’s own car, the Pontiac, had to be picked up from the other side of the lake. Then everything would be neat again.

But first Manny and Jessup had to be taken care of. In one way Manny was better to operate against, because he could be conned and dazzled, but Manny wasn’t entirely rational, his reactions couldn’t be counted on as Jessup’s could. Parker knew that at any second it might enter Manny’s head to start shooting, regardless of the fact that Parker was at the wheel and they were traveling at thirty-five miles an hour in all this traffic, regardless of any reasonable consideration at all. He couldn’t help it, his shoulders remained hunched, he felt he was holding his head stiffly, as though if he tensed sufficiently, the bullets would bounce off him.

Jessup had grown quiet again, and that might complicate matters, too, if he recovered sufficiently to take over giving the orders. He would want Parker disposed of right away, and he wouldn’t want a doctor.

Parker glanced at the speedometer. They’d come four miles from the turnoff. He would go ten miles, and then take the first likely-looking side road.

“How far to this doctor?” Manny sounded more irritable, less tranquilized. The nervousness in the situation must be counteracting the acid.

“Five or six more miles,” Parker said. “It won’t be long.”

“He’s the closest doctor?”

“He’s the closest safe doctor,” Parker said. “You want a doctor that’ll call the cops?”

“Don’t worry, nobody’s gonna call the cops. You go to the nearest doctor.”

“That means finding a phone book somewhere and looking it up. This is the only doctor I know. We’ll be there in ten minutes, maybe less.”

“Why don’t you pass some of these people?” Manny was getting increasingly irritable. He was coming down off his high, and his wounded arm was probably bothering him, particularly because of the way he’d been overworking it.

“After this curve,” Parker said. He too was impatient. They’d come seven miles now.

In the next two miles, he managed to pass three cars. It made no difference in the timing, three car lengths wasn’t any great distance, but it made Manny feel better to think they were hurrying.

Nine miles. In the back seat, Jessup had started moaning, and moving around. Parker listened, his head back a bit so he could hear better, his eyes frequently on the rear-view mirror.

Ten miles. Motion in the mirror; Manny’s head lowering. They were whispering together back there, either because Jessup had no voice now or because he was telling Manny how to handle the killing of Parker.

Parker’s right hand moved nearer the gun under his left arm.

Again, motion in the mirror, this time Manny’s head coming back up. Parker tensed, waiting. There was no traffic coming the other way right now; if necessary, he would throw the car into a swerve to the left and ram a pole or a tree or a house on the other side, and finish them in the confusion. But that was the riskiest way, other ways would be better.

“Stop the car.” Manny’s voice, nervousness very plain in it now.

Eleven miles. Parker said, “The turnoffs just ahead.”

A harshly whispered sentence from Jessup. Manny said, “All right. Stop after you make the turn.”

It was nearly a mile farther before a road appeared on the right. Parker made the turn, and accelerated hard.

“Stop now.”

“The doctor’s just ahead.”

Parker drove at the top speed the road would allow. It was narrow and winding and hilly, a blacktop county road through alternating stretches of woods and cleared farmland. Parker slued around curves and floored the accelerator on the straightaways. Manny might be the kind of fool who didn’t think about consequences, but Jessup wasn’t, and would know better than to have the driver killed at this kind of speed on this kind of road.

“What the hell you doing? Slow down!” Manny sounded startled and angry, but not really afraid.

“I want to get you to the doctor.” Parker had the high beams on, and he kept staring ahead for a useful place. He knew that Jessup was conscious back there now, he knew that Jessup didn’t want any doctor, and he knew that Manny had been told to put a bullet in Parker’s head the second the car came to a stop. So it couldn’t be done quietly after all.

And there it was. The Plymouth topped a rise and started down the other side, and ahead was a long straightaway, sloping down, with a sharp right at the bottom. And at the curve, directly ahead of the Plymouth, was a broad low concrete-block building painted white, with several plate-glass windows across the front, and with a large sign running the width of the building above the windows, white letters on red: sussex county tractor sales, inc. On the stretch of gravel between the front of the building and the road stood several pieces of farm or construction machinery, all painted yellow: tractors, backhoes, bulldozers. At both front corners of the graveled area, on high poles, floodlights glared down on the face of the building and the squatting bulky machinery.

The Plymouth hit ninety going down the straight stretch. In the mirror, Parker saw Jessup struggling upward, his face twisted with strain. Jessup knew something was going to happen, and he wanted to be able to stop it. His voice creaked without intelligible words, and Parker saw the curve coming; he braced his forearms across the steering wheel, pressed his back into the seat back, and slammed his foot down hard on the brakes.

The car bucked, nose down, and squealed forward along the road, the tail swerving bumpily to the left, the rear tires leaving broad stripes of burned-off rubber on the blacktop. Jessup and Manny were flung forward off the seat, and Parker was pressed flat to the steering wheel.

The curve. Parker’s left hand was on the door handle; his right foot lifted from the brake, his right hand spun the wheel to the left. The car shook itself and straightened out, pointing at all that yellow machinery. There was a narrow ditch straight ahead; the driveway entrance was farther to the left. Parker pushed down on the door handle, and as the front tires left the road, sailing into the air out over the ditch, he shoved the door open and lunged out, pushing back with his right foot on the accelerator uk he went.

The car leaped away, hurdling the ditch. The door slammed behind him, missing his right foot by an inch. The Plymouth bounced on the gravel, sideswiped a backhoe, and ran head-on into the side of a tractor.

Parker’s legs hit a tractor tire while he was still rolling; his momentum slued him halfway around before he stopped, on his back in front of the tractor, his legs twisted sideways and knees bent around the tire.

The final crash of the car happened after that, a second or two later. It sounded very loud, and various, as though a dozen cars were involved instead of just one, and the noise seemed to come from everywhere and not from any particular point.

Parker straightened his legs, and felt pain in both of them. He sat up and stroked his palms down over his shins and felt nothing broken, but both would be bruised and aching for a while.

He didn’t mind using the automatic here. He took it out, and used the grill of the tractor to help him get up. The legs didn’t hurt any more or less when he put weight on them.

The car wasn’t burning. That was all right, but he would have preferred a fire. He moved through the machinery toward it, watching. Both headlights were out, and the engine had stopped running.

Parker came around the side of a bulldozer, with the Plymouth directly in front of him, broadside, and the rear door on this side swung open and Jessup fell out, his arm stretched out in front of him, his finger squeezing the trigger of the gun he had pointed at Parker. Ricochets twanged from the yellow metal of the bulldozer, and Parker fired once, then ducked back out of sight, crouching behind a foot-wide tire as high as his shoulder. From high to the right came the glaring light of the floodlights.

“God damn you! God damn you!” It sounded like a frog croaking in words, not like a human voice at all.

Parker moved forward just enough to see. Jessup was kneeling beside the car, gun in his fist, head turning back and forth as he looked for Parker. Behind him, Manny crouched on the floor of the Plymouth, peering out. His face was bloody, and his wounded right arm hung motionless at his side.

Jessup said something in his new raspy voice, speaking to Manny, whose response was sluggish and dull; he backed away deeper into the car, hunching backward without the help of his hurt arm, and Jessup reached out with his free hand and slammed the door. Parker leaned forward to try a shot at him, but Jessup was keyed up now, his senses hyper-alert, and he saw the movement and fired at it, and Parker ducked back again.

Parker was too impatient to live with a stalemate. In front of the tire on the bulldozer was a metal plate, a step for the operator getting up into the seat. Parker stepped up on that, and leaned forward with his elbows on the seat, and looked down over the back of the bulldozer at the Plymouth. At first he could only see the top of the car, but when he hunched farther forward he could see Jessup.

And Jessup saw him. His head and gun-hand flashed up, his eyes staring, and Parker leaned back again, hearing the musical note as the bullet bounced off the machine, feeling the vibration run through the metal.

Was it going to be stalemate after all? Parker stepped back down to the gravel, and headed around the front of the bulldozer to the other side, moving fast despite the troubles in his legs.

Jessup was gone. Parker stepped out into the open, and the Plymouth stood there silent and alone. Manny must still be inside, crouched on the floor in back, but Jessup was somewhere in all this floodlit yellow machinery.

Manny could wait, again. It was Jessup that had to be taken care of first.

Parker stepped back beside the bulldozer and got down awkwardly onto the ground, his legs bothering him. He lay flat on his stomach and turned his head slowly back and forth, looking under all the vehicles, his view obstructed here and there by tires, but most of the graveled area open to him.

Nothing. Either Jessup was standing where a tire was between him and Parker, or he was up on one of the machines.

Parker got up again, having more trouble than before—his legs were tightening up on him, soon he wouldn’t be able to travel at more than a limping walk at all—and climbed heavily up onto the bulldozer once more. He looked out across the tops of the machines, and still saw nothing.

Jessup had to be around. From here Parker could see the road, and the fields on both sides of the floodlit area, and the front of the building. Jessup hadn’t had time to get fully away, even if he’d wanted to leave. And he wouldn’t want to get away. He’d want to stay near his partner, and he’d want to kill Parker.

Parker waited, up on the bulldozer step, scanning all the machinery under the lights. He’d out waited Jessup before, he could do it again. Or had Jessup learned from that?

A wailing sound rose and fell. A banshee sound, a noise for something in a swamp to make when it’s near death.

Parker stayed where he was, on the side of the bulldozer, aching right foot on the step, left forearm on the seat, right hand with the gun in it resting on the yellow metal hood. He looked around, and the sound came again, louder than before, and when he looked to his left, the Plymouth was moving. It rocked slightly on its springs, and when it did, the smashed front end scraped against the tractor it had rammed. Small pieces of glass fell to the gravel.

Manny? Was that sound coming from him? Parker leaned over the seat and waited and watched.

After the two wails, there was silence for about a minute, and then a sudden huge shriek, violent and explosive and drawn out. Then silence, this time for less than a minute, and another shriek, and silence again.

Jessup’s new voice called, “Parker! Parker, listen to me!”

Manny shrieked again, and the Plymouth rocked back and forth, the metal of the car squealing against the metal of the tractor.

Jessup called, “Give me a truce! I’ve got to help him! Parker?”

There was a little silence, and then Manny yelled, “No!” And then, “No, I can’t!”

“Parker, for Christ’s sake, he took too much, I have to help him!”

” No!” Manny yelled. ‘Wo, I can’t do that, I can’t do that, no no no, I can do that, the wings, I can V do that, no! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do that, NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!”

“Parker! I’ve got to trust you, I can’t let him stay there like that!”

Parker waited, and Jessup came out from the yellow machines, looking this way and that, the gun still in his hand as he hurried toward the Plymouth, where Manny was shrieking again without words.

And that was the difference. Parker shot him twice.

Manny was lunging around on his back inside the car, arching his body, slamming himself into the floor and the door handles, breaking himself to pieces. Four sugar wrappers lay on the seat.

Parker reached his arm in through the open side window, close enough to leave powder marks, and pulled the trigger. Manny fell still, his broken arms dropping onto his chest. Parker smeared his palms over the automatic and dropped it in on top of the body. The law could work out whatever theory it wanted: a car with Ohio plates, two dead bodies and one of them broken up and full of acid, both shot with the same gun and the gun in the car with one of the corpses, the other one carrying a second gun which had also been fired. They could work out whatever theory they wanted, but none of it would involve Mrs. Claire Willis at Colliver’s Pond.

Parker turned and walked away. From the knees down, his legs felt like logs, heavy and unresponsive and aching. He limped badly as he walked back toward the main road.

About a mile up the main road, he remembered, there was a roadside snack bar, on the westbound side of the road, across from all the traffic. He would walk up to there and call Claire to come down and pick him up.

Except he didn’t have to. He limped out to the main road, trotted awkwardly across at a break in the traffic, and had walked about a quarter-mile when one of the few westbound vehicles, a farmer’s pickup truck, came to a stop beside him, and a gnarled old man with huge-knuckled hands on the steering wheel called out to him, “You want a lift?”

Parker climbed into the truck, and the farmer started off again, saying, “You don’t want to walk with legs like that.”

“No, I don’t. Thanks.”

“Shrapnel? You get it in the war?”

“No,” Parker said. “I had an accident.”

“I got a bullet in the leg myself,” the old man said. “During World War One, you know. Still bothers me in the spring.”

Claire was putting a log on the fire. Parker walked into the living room and she looked at him and said, “What happened to your legs?”

“I banged them up. They’ll be okay.”

She straightened from the fireplace and stood looking at him, wiping her hands together. “Is it finished?”

“They won’t be back,” he said. There were no lamps lit in the room, only the fire for illumination; it made Parker think of candlelight, and the muscles in his back tensed. He thought of switching on the lights, but he knew she’d done this for the romantic effect, and he didn’t want to spoil it for her. It was easier for him to get over things than for her.

She went over and sat on the sofa and waved to him to join her, saying, “It is a nice house, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” He sat beside her and slowly stretched out his legs, and looked into the fire.

The end.

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