Everybody Dies

George Wister had turned up, she told me, but this time she'd said I was out and refused to let him in. He came back with a partner and a warrant, but she'd spoken to Ray Gruliow, who was waiting with her when Wister showed up. She let them in, and after Wister had satisfied himself that I wasn't there he traded threats with Ray and then left.

"They were looking for a gun," she said, "and I knew you wouldn't have tried to take yours through a metal detector. I looked all over before I found it in your sock drawer. I took it to the basement and locked it in our storage bin, and after they left I went down and retrieved it, holster and all. It's back with your socks."

"There's another gun," I said. "A little one, it must be in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing the other night."

I looked in the closet, and it was still there. I put it in my pocket, and got the magnum from my sock drawer and donned the holster. I'd felt oddly vulnerable all day, walking around unarmed, which was odd in light of the fact that, up until less than a week ago, I went unarmed all the time.

She said the charge on the warrant was hindering prosecution, which Ray said was bullshit, and just meant that Wister had a tame judge on hand. He was planning to squash it, or quash it, or something.

I said I'd call him, and took a step toward the phone, but she caught my arm. "Don't call anybody yet," she said. "First there's a message you should hear."

We went in and she played it. A voice I'd never heard before said, "Scudder? Look, I got no quarrel with you. Just back out of this thing and you got nothing more to worry about."

She played it a second time, and I listened to it. "The call came in around three-thirty," she said. "After I heard it I took the phone off the hook."

"To keep him from calling back."

"No, so you could call him back. If you hit star-69- "

"It calls back the last person who called. You wanted to make sure he was the last person."

I picked up the receiver, pressed the disconnect button, and hit *69. The phone rang twelve times before I gave up and broke the connection.

"Shit," she said.

I hit redial and let it ring another twelve times. "It's ringing its brains out," I said. "Now if only there was some way to find out where."

"Isn't there? Aren't all calls logged automatically?"

"Only the completed ones."

"How about the call we received? That was completed."

"And if I had a good friend at the phone company I could get at the data. The Kongs managed something similar once, but I don't have them on tap and the phone company computers are harder to hack than they used to be. And you know how it would turn out, don't you?"

"How?"

"It'll be a pay phone that they called from, and what help is that?"

"Rats," she said. "I thought I did good."

"What you did was good. It just didn't lead anywhere. But it still might. We can try it again later."

"And leave the phone off the hook until then?"

"No, we just won't make any calls out. That way anytime you hit redial you'll get that number again. And if you really have to make a call, do it and don't worry about it, because I don't have high hopes that we're going to get him this way."

"Rats." She pressed a button, played the message another time. "You know what?" she said. "He's lying."

"I know."

"He wants you to stop pressing, which is a good sign, isn't it? It means you're getting close. And he wants to make you lower your guard. But he still intends to kill you."

"Tough," I said.

I didn't want to stay for dinner. I'd just eaten in Buffalo, and I didn't want to hang around if Wister decided to come over again, with or without his chickenshit warrant. Elaine wondered if they'd have our building staked out. I didn't think they'd waste the manpower, but I'd continue to use the service entrance. I'd come in that way just now, probably out of habit, and it was a habit I'd stay with.

I had a cup of coffee, and told her what I'd learned in the small town of Attica, where the state penitentiary was the principal industry. Gary Allen Dowling, who had in fact used the names Gary Farrelly and Pat Farrelly as occasional aliases, had been released in early June after having served just over twelve years of a twenty-to-life sentence for second-degree murder. He and an accomplice had held up a convenience store in Irondequoit, a suburb of Rochester. According to the accomplice, who rolled over on Dowling and pleaded to a lesser charge of robbery and manslaughter, it had been Dowling who herded two employees and a customer into a back room, made them lie face down on the floor, and executed them all with two rounds each to the head.

I remembered the case. I hadn't paid much attention to it at the time because it happened a couple of hundred miles away upstate, and the city has always provided crime enough to keep my mind occupied. But I'd read about it, and it had been fodder for the pols in Albany who'd been trying to get a death penalty bill through the governor's office. It turned out to be easier to get a new governor.

Dowling had been twenty-four when he shot those people, twenty-five when he went away. He'd be thirty-seven now.

He went to Attica, and his traitorous partner in crime was sent to Sing Sing, in Ossining. Within a matter of months the partner turned up dead in the exercise yard. He was doing bench presses, and the bar he was supposed to be lifting had over five hundred pounds of iron on it. His chest was crushed, and nobody seemed to know how it had happened, or who might have had a hand in it.

Dowling let all of Attica know he'd arranged it. Revenge was sweet, he said. It would have been even sweeter if he could have been there to see it go down, but it was sweet all the same.

Later the same year an inmate he'd had words with was knifed to death, and it was like so many murders inside the walls, you knew who did it but you couldn't hope to prove it. Dowling did his first bit in solitary as a result. You didn't need evidence to put a man in the hole.

His mother was the only person who visited him, and she drove down from Rochester once a month to see him. Her visits were less frequent in recent years because she was ill, and got so she needed to get someone to drive her. It was cancer, and she died of it during the final winter of his confinement. He might have been released to attend her funeral, but he was in solitary at the time. It was funny, he'd learned to behave himself in prison, but he lost it when he learned of her death and choked a guard half to death before they pulled him off. You wanted to make allowances for someone who'd just had that kind of news, but it was the kind of incident you couldn't overlook, and he was in the hole while his mother went in a hole of her own.

June 5 they'd let him out. No question, really, with the good time he'd accumulated. He'd have been odds-on for the death penalty if it had been on the books at the time, but even without it you'd expect someone who'd done what he'd done to serve straight life without parole. Not how it worked, though.

The official I talked to didn't have much faith in the system he served. It didn't seem to him that there was a whole lot of rehabilitation going on. You had some men who never did a bad thing until the night they got drunk and killed their wife or their best friend, and most of them would probably be all right after their release, but he wasn't sure the prison system could take the credit. And there were the sex offenders, and you'd be better believing in the tooth fairy than in the possibility of straightening out those monsters. When it came to your hardened criminals, well, some got old and just couldn't cut it anymore, but could you call that rehabilitation? All you did was warehouse 'em until they were past their expiration date.

One thing he was sure of, he told me. Gary Allen Dowling would be back. If not in Attica, then in some other joint. He was positive of that.

I hoped he was wrong.

That's what I learned in Attica. I don't think I could have told her all of it, not then, over one cup of coffee. I told her the greater portion of it, though, and I told the rest to Mick a little later.

The phone rang while I was trying to decide if I wanted a second cup. I went to listen to the machine and picked up when I heard Mick's voice. "By Jesus," he said, "have you spent the whole evening on the telephone?"

"The evening's young," I said. "And I haven't been on the phone at all. Elaine took it off the hook, and I'll tell you why some other time."

"I've been going half mad," he said. "I can't reach anybody. Have you heard from Andy or Tom?"

"No, but the phone's been off the hook, so- "

"So they couldn't call you if they wanted to, nor could they call me as they haven't the number. Twice I've called Andy and twice his mother's told me he's out and she doesn't know where. And there's no one at all answering at Tom's house."

"Maybe they're out having a beer somewhere."

"Maybe they are," he said. "Have you any plans yourself?"

It was Friday. I always went to the step meeting at St. Paul's on Friday night. Then I always had coffee afterward with Jim. I'd thought I might do the first, even if I couldn't do the second.

But I had a lot to tell him. I'd found out quite a bit since I'd talked to him last.

"No plans," I said.

"I'll come by for you. Fifteen minutes?"

"Make it twenty," I said, "and don't come around the front. In fact why don't you pull up in front of Ralph's Restaurant at Fifty-sixth and Ninth?"

I kissed Elaine and told her I didn't know when I'd be back. "And go ahead and make phone calls if you want," I said.

"I was thinking," she said. "If I make outgoing calls from another extension, it won't change the redial mechanism on that phone. Or am I forgetting something?"

"No," I said, "I think you're right, and I should have thought of that."

"Then you wouldn't need me."

"Yes I would. But I think I'll try it once more before I go."

I punched redial, and *69 appeared in the little window, and after a moment someone's phone rang. I was wondering how long to give it, and then in the middle of the fourth or fifth ring it was picked up. There was silence at first, and then a soft voice, a man's, said, "Hello?'

The voice was curiously familiar. I willed it to say more, but when it spoke again the words were much fainter, as if he was talking to someone else and not into the phone. "There's no one there," he said, and there was another silence, and then the connection was broken.

"Bingo," I told Elaine.

"It worked, huh?"

"Like a charm. That was brilliant, taking the phone off the hook. You're a genius."

"That's what my father always said," she said. "And my mother always told him he was crazy."

I made a note of the time. In the morning I'd have to find someone at the phone company who could pull the LUDS on my phone, and I could find out who it was I'd just called. Because I didn't think that was a pay phone. And if I could find out where it was located, I could find them when they thought they couldn't be found.

I think a subscriber's entitled to a record of his own calls, if you can find the right person to ask. I know a cop can get that kind of information in a hurry, and if I couldn't find a cop who'd help me out I could always impersonate one myself. That's against the law, but lately it seemed as though everything I did was against the law.

I rode down to the basement and went out the service entrance. Wister could have two teams watching the building, one in back and one in front, but I didn't think he even had one. I took a look around, just to make sure, and then I went over and stood in a darkened doorway alongside of Ralph's He didn't keep me waiting long.

"A son to avenge him," Mick said. "That's more than the likes of Paddy Farrelly ever deserved."

"He's a son who hasn't exactly covered himself with glory in the course of his young life."

"A true son of the father, then. Say the mother's name again."

"Elizabeth Dowling."

"I've known a share of Dowlings over the years, but I don't recall an Elizabeth."

"The woman in the Bronx called her Betty Ann. She was living there when the baby was born, and she may have been living there or nearby all along."

"I wonder how Paddy met her. It could have been at a dance. That was how you used to meet Irish girls, at a dance on a Saturday night." He had a faraway look in his eye. "I never knew her, and I doubt she ever knew me. But she must have known of me, and known it was myself put Paddy out of her life and his own. If the cow'd had any sense she'd have thanked God for the favor I did her. Instead she made a hero out of him and a villain out of me, and brought the boy up to kill me."

"I guess he always liked killing," I said. "He had no practical reason to kill those people in the store. All that did was turn up the heat. It pretty much guaranteed he'd get caught and do substantial time. He killed them because he wanted to."

"The same with Kenny and McCartney."

"And the same when the Vietnamese he met in prison sprayed bullets all over your bar, and his other prison buddy tossed a bomb. Moon's name is Virgil Gafter, incidentally, suspected of a couple of felony-related homicides, but it was an assault charge that put him in Attica."

"You learned a lot in that prison."

"Everybody does," I said. "Some of them learn to live within the laws, and the rest learn to be better at breaking them."

"I think the cops know Chilton Purvis did the shooting at the Chinese restaurant," I said. "They'd have found out the same way I did. Word got around, and somebody with a badge heard it from one of his snitches. And I think they went looking for Purvis and found him dead in his room on Tapscott Street, unless he'd already been picked up and they found him in the morgue."

"And that's why they came looking for you?"

"That's why," I said. "If they don't know Purvis was the shooter, his death is just another homicide, presumably black-on-black, presumably drug related. Two men shoot each other and one walks away from it. But now they've got someone with a motive to kill Purvis."

"Namely yourself."

"They also found a blood trail," I said, "so the reasoning would be that Purvis and I shot each other and I fled the scene. I'll bet they checked hospitals, and I'll bet when Wister showed up with his warrant he expected to find me in bed and bandaged up. Failing that, he'd have liked to find a.38 that would match the bullets they dug out of Purvis."

"What happens when they catch up with you?"

"I can't worry about that now. The funny thing is the blood might clear me. Because I didn't get so much as a scratch when Purvis and I traded shots, and there's no way they'll get a DNA match between my blood and TJ's. If they try to match the blood to him, well, that's a different story, but they'd have to think of it, and I'm not sure they will."

"I gather we're going to the Bronx."

"That's less remarkable than some of your feats of detection," he said, "as we're nearly there."

"Where are we going?"

"Perry Avenue."

"Where Tom lives."

He nodded. "You'll remember we dropped him there, after the trouble at Grogan's."

Trouble in the Irish sense. In America, trouble is something a kid has learning algebra. In Ireland it can be a bit more dramatic.

I said, "Because you couldn't reach him on the phone?"

"He's a lodger in an old woman's house. Has a room and kitchen privileges, and can watch television in the parlor of an evening. Takes his meals there, breakfast and dinner, if he's there to eat them."

"So?"

"The phone is hers," he said, "and she's always home to answer it. And today it rang unanswered every time I called."

"She couldn't have stepped out?"

"She never does. She has the arthritis, and it's a bad case of it. It keeps her at home."

"And when she needs something from the market…"

"She calls the corner store and they deliver. Or Tom goes for her."

"There's probably an explanation."

"I fear there is," he said, "and I fear I know what it is."

I didn't say anything. He stopped for a red light, looked both ways, and drove on through it. I tried not to imagine what might happen if a cop pulled us over.

He said, "I've a feeling."

"I gathered as much."

"I've surely told you what my mother said."

"That you've got a sixth sense."

"Second sight is what she called it, but I'd say it amounts to the same thing, a sixth sense or the second sight. 'Twas herself I got it from. When my brother Dennis went to Vietnam, we both knew we'd seen him alive for the last time."

"And that's the second sight?"

"I hadn't finished."

"I'm sorry."

"One day she calls me over. Mickey, says she, I saw your baby brother last night, and all robed in white he was. And I turned white myself, for hadn't I heard Dennis's voice in my ear that morning. I'm all right, Mickey, says he. You needn't worry about me, says he. And not that day but the day after she got the telegram."

I felt a chill. I get hunches and feelings, and I've learned to trust them in my work, though I don't let them keep me from getting out and knocking on doors. I believe in intuition, and in ways of knowing the mind knows nothing of. Still, stories like that give me a chill.

"I had a feeling before I called his house. Before the first time that it rang and went unanswered."

"And I gather the feeling persisted."

"It did."

"But you waited until you reached me before heading up here."

"You or Andy. You were the first I reached. But you'd be wondering why I didn't go on my own." He was silent for a moment. "It's an answer does me no credit," he said. "It's for fear of what I might find, of what I know I'll find. I don't want to come upon it alone."

"You've got your gun?"

"You gave me two," I said, "and I've got them both."

"Good job she hid the one where the cops wouldn't find it. In the basement, was it?"

"In our storage bin down there. Even if they'd known it existed, I don't think their warrant would have covered it."

"Ah, she's a smart one," he said. "That was quick thinking."

"You don't know the half of it," I said, and told him about her trick with *69.

"So that's why she took the phone off the hook. And he left you a message? Was it Paddy's boy himself?"

"I don't think so. The voice sounded familiar, and I think it was the fellow I took the gun away from. Donnie Scalzo, that would be."

"From Bensonhurst, wasn't it? Another nationality heard from."

"But I may have heard Dowling's voice," I said, and told him of the last phone call before I left the apartment, with a soft voice saying hello, and then telling someone else that there was no one there.

"You wouldn't think he'd have a soft voice."

"You wouldn't. And his voice seemed familiar to me, and I don't know why it would."

"When would you have heard him before?"

"I don't think I ever did, and I wish this voice had had more to say, because there was something familiar about it and I can't say what or why. Unless it was just that it sounded Irish."

"Irish," he said.

"There was a hint of brogue."

"Well, Farrelly and Dowling, that's Irish on both sides. You could say he came by it honestly. Paddy had nothing you'd call a brogue. I've the Irish way of talking, but that's my mother's doing. Some lose it and some don't, and I never did." His eyes narrowed. "A hint of brogue. A familiar voice, a hint of brogue."

"I'll trace the call tomorrow," I said, "and clear up some of the mystery."

The house on Perry Avenue was self-standing, a little two-story box on a small lot. The lawn in front was brown in spots, but neatly mowed. I suppose a neighborhood kid took care of it for the old woman, or maybe Tom ran a mower over it once or twice a week. It wouldn't take him long. Then he'd go in and have a beer, and she'd thank him for doing such a nice job.

We parked two doors away, right next to a fire hydrant. I pointed it out, and Mick said nobody'd be around to ticket us at that hour, much less to tow the car. And we wouldn't be on the premises for long, anyway.

Nor were we. We went up the walk to the front door and knocked and rang the bell. The door was wood, set with a window divided into four mullioned panes, and he didn't wait long at all before drawing the gun from his belt and using the butt of it to break out one of the panes. He reached through the opening, turned the knob, and let us in.

I'd smelled death through the broken window and walked in the door to see it close up. The old woman, her gray hair thinning and her legs hugely swollen, sat in her wheelchair in the front room, her head hanging to one side, her throat cut. The whole front of her was soaked with her blood, and there were flies buzzing in it.

Mick let out an awful groan at the sight of her, and crossed himself. I hadn't seen him do that before.

We found Tom Heaney in the kitchen, lying on the floor, with gunshot wounds in the chest and temple. There was a heel mark on his face, as if he'd been kicked or stepped on. His eyes were wide open.

So was the refrigerator door. I could picture Tom standing at the open refrigerator, helping himself to a beer or the makings of a sandwich. Or maybe the hard work of murder had built an appetite in one of the killers, and he'd stopped for a snack on the way out.

Mick bent over and closed Tom's eyes. He straightened up and closed his own for a moment. Then he nodded shortly to me and we got out of there.

"Ah, 'tis I again, Mrs. Buckley, disturbing you one more time. Has he returned yet, do you know? Ah, that's good." He covered the cell phone mouthpiece with his hand. "She's getting him," he said.

We were in the car, parked on the opposite side of Bainbridge Avenue from the Buckley house. We'd taken a roundabout route to get here, with Mick turning up one street and down another almost at random, the big Caprice making its way through the Bronx like an elephant lumbering through high grass. Neither of us talked while he drove, and the silence was heavy in the roomy old car, heavy and thick. There'd been too many deaths and it felt as though they were in there with us, all those mean acts of murder, the bodies heaped in the back seat, the souls displacing the air itself.

Now he said, "Andy, good man. Your own car's right across the street from you and us inside it waiting for you."

He folded the phone, put it back in his pocket. "He'll be a minute," he said. "It's a relief to find him at home."

"Yes."

"I'll tell you," he said, "it was relief enough when she answered. His mother. Now that the bastards are after killing old ladies."

I watched the door across the street, and in a matter of minutes Andy came through it, wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans with the cuffs folded up and carrying his leather jacket. At the curb he stopped long enough to put the jacket on, then trotted on across the street. Mick got out and Andy sat behind the wheel. I got out as well and sat in back, and Mick walked around the car and got in front next to Andy.

"Crazy day," Andy said. "I couldn't reach anybody. I tried what numbers I had for you, Mick, and I called a couple of bars looking for you. I didn't really think you'd be there but I didn't know how to get in touch with you."

"I tried you and could never find you in."

"I know, my old lady said you called. I was out all day, I took my cousin's car and drove around. I was going stir crazy, you know? I even went into Manhattan and drove past the bar. You probably already seen what it looks like, all plywood and yellow tape."

"I drove past it myself the other evening."

"And I called you, Matt, but I hung up when the machine answered. And then I called a couple of times and the line was busy. I figured the two of you were talking to each other and that was why I couldn't get through to either of you."

He put the car in gear, and when the traffic thinned he pulled away from the curb. He asked if he should head anywhere in particular. Mick told him to drive where he liked, as one place was no worse than another.

He drove around, coming to full stops at stop signs, keeping well under the speed limit. After a few blocks he asked if either of us had spoken to Tom. "Because I was trying to reach him, too, and nobody answered, and you know the woman he lives with never leaves the house. All I could think of was he took pity on her and took her to a movie, or she had a stroke or something and he took her to the hospital. Or there was something wrong with the phone, so I went over there and leaned on the doorbell."

"When was that?" Mick wondered.

"I don't know, I didn't notice the time. Maybe an hour ago? I rang the bell and knocked on the door, and then I went around and rang the back doorbell and knocked on that door, and when I saw nothing was happening I got back in my car. You want to give him a call? Or even go over there, because I'll admit it, I'm spooked."

"We've just come from there," Mick said, and told him what we'd found.

"Jesus," Andy said. He hit the brake, but not as abruptly as Mick had done when he learned TJ had been shot. He checked the mirror first and braked to a smooth stop, pulled over and parked. "I got to take this in," he said evenly. "Give me a minute, huh?"

"All the time you want, lad."

"Both dead? Tom and the old woman?"

"They shot him dead and cut her throat."

"Jesus Christ. All I can think, that could have just as easy been our house, and me and my mother. Just as easy."

"I was glad just now when she said you were home," Mick said, "but before that I was glad just to hear her voice. For I had the same thought myself."

Andy sat there, nodding to himself. Then he said, "Well, this just adds to it, doesn't it? Reinforces it."

"How's that?"

"Why I was trying to get in touch," he said. "Something I was thinking."

"About what?"

"About them coming after us the way they're doing. Picking us off one by one. I had an idea."

"Let's hear it."

"There's just the three of us left. I think we got to stick together. And I think we got to pick someplace that's safe. I'm out here in the Bronx, and anyone comes for me, all they got to do is kick the door in. Matt, you're in a doorman building, maybe it's a different story, but you can't stay inside with the door locked all the time. And even if you do, what's to stop them from shooting the doorman like they been shooting everybody else, and then going up and kicking your door in?"

"Nothing," I said.

"And Mick, you're holed up and not telling anybody where, and that's smart, but all you got to do is move around like you're moving around right now, riding around in a car, and you're a pretty identifiable guy. All you need is one person to see you and the wrong person to get wind of it, you know what I mean?"

"And what's your answer, then?"

"The farm."

"The farm," Mick said, and thought about it. At length he said, "I told Matt he ought to go to Ireland. He said I should come along and show him the country. Isn't this the same thing?"

"Not exactly."

"Either way I'm running from them."

"You wouldn't be running away, Mick. That's the whole point. You'd be taking a position and, waiting for them to come to you."

"Now you've got my interest," Mick said.

"We go there tonight and settle in. Right away, without giving the bastards another shot at us. We set up our defenses. There's just the one entrance, isn't there? The long drive we took the last time we were there?"

"With the horse chestnut trees."

"If you say so. All I know is Christmas trees and the other kind. They come up that drive when we know they're coming, be like fish in a barrel, wouldn't it?"

"Keep talking."

"I don't even know who knows the farm exists outside of the three of us. But there's probably some that do. But what I was thinking, and you got to remember I had all day long with nothing to do but think about this…"

"You're doing fine, man."

"Well, see, we settle in. And then we get the word to someone with a big mouth. One thing we know about these guys is they've got good sources of information. If the word's on the street they're gonna hear it. And the word'll be that the three of us are holed up where we're sure nobody could ever know about it, and we're drinking like fish and running broads in and out of the place, just partying it up day and night. Do I have to spell it out? You can take it from there, Mick."

"They'd expect to have it easy. But we'd be waiting for them."

"And trap the lot of them, Mick."

"All on the farm," he said. "It'd mean digging, wouldn't it? And we'd need a bigger hole than last time." The corners of his mouth lifted. "But I'll not mind the work. I'd say we can use the exercise."

We'd go right away, we decided. We didn't need anything. There was food enough on the farm to last the winter, between what was growing in the garden and what Mrs. O'Gara had put up in jars. There was a store in Ellenville, and if we were there long enough to need a change of clothing we could buy what we needed there.

And Mick's leather satchel was in the back seat, with guns and ammunition and cash. He even had his father's apron in there, and the old man's cleaver. And there were extra firearms out at the farm, O'Gara's twelve-gauge shotgun and a deer rifle with a scope sight.

"Just one thing," Andy said. "I want to go by my house, tell my mother she won't see me for a few days."

"Call her," Mick said. "Use my cell phone or wait and call her from the farm."

"I'd rather tell her in person," he said. "I've got another box of shells in my room for the gun I'm carrying. I'd just as soon bring them along. And it'll give me a chance to smoke a cigarette. It's a long way out to the farm without a cigarette."

"It's your car you'll be driving," Mick said. "I guess you can smoke in your own car if you have a mind to."

"Makes it hard on a couple of nonsmokers," Andy said. "It's close quarters in a closed car, or even with a window open. I'll just smoke a cigarette at the house before we go. And there's another thing. I'm going to tell her to go visit my uncle Connie north of Boston. She's been saying she hasn't seen her brother in a long time, and what better time for her to go? Because they could come looking for me, Mick, and it might not matter if I was there or not, and I wouldn't want anything to happen to her."

"God, no."

"Who knows if she'll even go, but it won't hurt to suggest it to her. And when I think about Tom and the old lady…"

"Enough said."

It didn't take long before we were back on Bainbridge Avenue and parked in front of Andy's house. He got out of the car and trotted up the walk, used his key, and disappeared inside the house. After a moment Mick got out his cell phone and dialed a number, then almost immediately snapped the thing shut. "I thought I'd call O'Gara," he said, "but I don't want to call on this thing. My luck the wrong person would pick it up."

"On the fillings in his teeth. We can find a pay phone."

"We can just go out there," he said. "It's not that late, and he needn't have advance warning." He was silent for a moment, then sighed heavily. "Change seats with me," he said. "I'll get in back where I can put my feet up. I might even close my eyes and get a little sleep on the drive out."

I got out of the car and we changed seats. He walked around the car and got into the back seat behind the driver, turning so that he could put his legs up on the seat.

A few minutes later Andy emerged. He had a cigarette going, and stopped on the sidewalk to take a long drag on it. He took a final drag as he stood beside the open car door, then flicked the butt out into the street. Sparks danced when it hit the pavement.

He got in the car, turned the key, gunned the motor. He grinned, tapped the steering wheel twice. "We're off," he said. "Everybody watch out."

Andy took the Grand Concourse to the Cross-Bronx, then drove straight west. We crossed the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey and picked up the Palisades Parkway. Mick had been silent until then, and I thought he might have nodded off back there, but now he said, "I've been thinking. This is a grand idea of yours, Andy."

"Well, I had time on my hands, and no dartboard handy to take my mind off of things."

"You're a strategist," Mick said. "You're another Michael Collins."

"Oh, come on now."

"You are indeed."

"I'm his Russian cousin," Andy said. "Vodka Collins."

"We'll lure 'em into a trap," Mick said, "and draw the ends tight, and there they'll be. Ah, I'll want to see the look on his face when he knows I've done for him. He's a Bronx boy, Andy. Did you know that?"

"No."

"He's the long-lost bastard son of Paddy Farrelly, and I'm going to send him to the same place I sent his dirty bastard father. Yes, he's a Bronx boy, though he moved away years ago. Where was it he moved to, Matt? Upstate, was it?"

"He was ten or eleven when he moved from Valentine Avenue," I said, "but I don't know exactly when that was."

"He lived on Valentine Avenue? That's like two blocks over from Bainbridge."

"He was in the eleven hundred block," I said, "so it's not like he was living next door to you. They moved when he was eleven, and he was living in Rochester when he committed the crime he went to prison for, but I don't know what interim moves his mother might have made."

"'Twas in the Bronx he spent his formative years," Mick said, rolling the phrase on his tongue. "His formative years. So we may safely call him a Bronx boy. Well, set a Bronx boy to catch a Bronx boy, eh? While we drove around I found myself thinking what a splendid borough the Bronx is. It became a joke for a while there, didn't it? But there's beautiful parts to it."

"I was thinking that myself."

"Matt lived in the Bronx himself. Or am I misremembering?"

"There's nothing wrong with your memory. But we only lived there for a short time."

"So we can't call you a Bronx boy."

"I don't think so."

"Your father had a store," Mick said. "He sold children's shoes."

"Jesus, how did you remember that?"

"I don't know," he said. "How do we remember some things and forget others? It's certainly not a matter of what's useful to remember and what's not. There's no end of useful things I can't recall to save myself, and yet I remember your father's shoe store."

A little later he said, "Is your mother well, Andy?"

"She is, Mick. Thanks be to God."

"Thanks be to God," he echoed. "When you went to talk to her just now I suppose you found her in the kitchen."

"Matter of fact, she was parked in front of the TV."

"Watching a program, was she?"

"And looking at the paper at the same time. Why, Mick?"

"Ah, just wondering. Looking at the paper. The Irish Echo, was it?"

"I didn't even notice. It could have been the Echo."

"Do you ever read it yourself, Andy?"

"More for the older people, isn't it? Or the green-horns fresh off the boat."

"Off the plane, these days. Well, your people are a great old family, you know. The Buckleys, I'm talking about. Some were what you'd call Castle Irish. Do you know the term? It means they were in with the lot at Dublin Castle, the British crown's representatives in Ireland. But there were other Buckleys that were very republican. Which were yours, I wonder?"

Andy laughed. "I get people asking if I'm related to that guy, you know who I mean, uses all the big words on television? But you're the first person ever asked me what side my people were on back in the old country."

"Has your mother ever gone back?"

"No, she was just a girl when she came over. She's got no interest in going back. It's hard enough to get her to visit her brother in Massachusetts."

"Your uncle Connie, that would be."

"Right."

"And how about yourself? Have you ever been over to the old country?"

"Are you kidding? I've never been anywhere, Mick."

"Ah, you should go. There's nothing like travel for broadening a man. Though I've done little enough of it myself. Ireland, of course, and France. Matt's been to France. And to Italy as well, have you not?"

"Just briefly," I said.

"I've not been there myself. But then the last time I was in Ireland I went over to England as well, just to see if they were the devils I learned them to be at my mother's knee."

"And were they?"

"Not at all," he said. "They couldn't have been nicer. I was treated decently everywhere I went. For all the problems they've had with the Irish, they always made me feel welcome."

"Maybe they didn't know you were Irish," Andy suggested.

"You're entirely right," Mick said. "Most likely they took me for a Chinaman."

As we turned onto 209 he said, "It's a good scheme, Andy. I've been thinking about it these last few miles. The only hard part will be getting the word to them so they don't suspect the source of it. It would help if we knew who's been helping them all along. Have you any ideas yourself, lad?"

Andy considered, shook his head. "There's a lot of guys hang out at Grogan's," he said.

"Not now there's not."

"Well, used to be. People who'd run an errand for you, or lend a hand on the big jobs. I had to guess, I'd say somebody took one of them aside and got a few drinks into him, got him talking."

"You think that's it, do you?"

"Be my guess."

"There's a great Irish tradition of hating the informer," Mick said. "There's that movie, and I can remember about your father's shoe store, Matt, so why can I not recall the name of that actor? I can see his face but can't summon up his name."

"Victor McLaglen," I supplied.

"The very man. Oh, the most hated man in Ireland was the man who bore tales. 'The Patriot's Mother.' Do you know that song?"

Neither of us did. In a surprisingly soft voice he sang:

Alana, alana, the shadow of shame

Has never yet fallen on one of your name

And oh, may the food from my bosom you drew

In your veins turn to poison ere you turn untrue

"It's the mother singing," he explained, "and she's urging her boy to die on the gallows rather than inform on his fellows.

Alana machree, oh, alana machree

Sure, a stag and a traitor you never shall be

"Ah, 'tis a terrible old song, but it gives you an idea how our people felt on the subject. A great tradition of hating the informer. And of course you know what that means."

"What?"

"A great tradition of informing," he said. "For how could you have the one without the other?"

The caprice didn't offer as smooth a ride as the Cadillac. It wasn't as whisper-quiet, either, with more road noise audible and a rattle somewhere in the rear end. But it was comfortable all the same, with Andy and me in front and Mick stretched out in the back and the headlights cutting the darkness in front of us. I half wished we could ride on like that forever.

We'd turned onto the unnumbered road, and Mick said, "'Twas along here we saw the deer."

"I remember," Andy said. "I almost hit him."

"You did not. You stopped in plenty of time."

"A good thing, too. He was a big one. If I'd thought, I'd have counted the points."

"The points?"

"On his antlers, Mick. That's how the hunters rate the bucks, by the number of points on their antlers. He was a big one, but don't ask me how many points he ran to, because I wasn't paying attention."

"Hunters. O'Gara posts the property, keeps the hunters off of it. I don't want the trespassing, you know. And I don't want deer shot on my land. They're terrible predators, you can't keep them out of the orchard, but I won't have men shooting them. I wonder why that is."

"You're getting soft in your old age."

"I must be," he agreed. "Slow down a bit, why don't you?"

"Slow down?"

"There's deer all through here. The big buck was standing in the middle of the road, but sometimes you've no warning at all and they leap out right in front of you."

I thought of Danny Boy and his list, and pictured the deer dashing out from between parked cars.

Andy eased up on the gas and the car slowed some.

"In fact," Mick said, "why don't you pull over altogether?"

"Pull over?"

"Sure, what's our rush? We'll all stretch our legs and you can smoke a cigarette."

"I'd just as soon wait, to tell you the truth. We're almost there."

"Pull over," Mick said.

"Yeah, sure," Andy said, "only I got to find a spot with some room on the shoulder. Should be a place coming up soon."

Mick drew a breath, then leaned forward and hooked an arm around Andy's throat. He said, "Matt, take hold of the wheel, that's a good man. Andy, ease the brake on, and do it gently, boy, or I swear I'll throttle you. Guide us off the road, Matt, that's lovely, and now turn off the ignition. And take his gun, the one in his waistband, and see if he's got another on him."

"This is crazy," Andy said. "Mick, don't do this."

There were two guns, one under his belt in front, the other at the small of his back. I got them both, and Mick motioned for me to set them on the dashboard.

"Out of the car," Mick said. "Come on now. Here's our spy, Matt. Here's our informer. Stand still, Andy. And don't even think about running. You wouldn't make ten yards. I'd shoot the legs out from under you, you know I would."

"I'm not going anywhere," Andy said. "You've got this all wrong. Matt, tell him, will you? He's got this all wrong."

"I'm not so sure of that," I said.

To me Mick said, "You knew, didn't you?"

"Not as early as you did. I had a sense of where you were going but I thought you were just fishing. But then I caught on when he said his mother was watching television."

"And reading the newspaper."

"Right."

"Are you guys both nuts? I'm a spy because my ma's watching the TV?"

"That call you made," I said, "a minute or two after Andy went into the house. You passed it off as a call to O'Gara and hung up before he could answer. But you didn't call the farm, did you? You called Andy's number."

"I did."

"And you got a busy signal," I said. "So you knew he was on the phone, calling Dowling and letting him know we were on our way."

Andy said, "Let me get this straight. You called my house, Mick? While I was in there talking to my mother?"

"But you weren't talking to her," Mick said. "You were talking to Paddy Farrelly's son. A pity you didn't talk to her instead. She might have sung you a verse or two of that song. 'The Patriot's Mother,' and I trust you can remember it as I haven't the heart to sing it again for you."

"The line was busy," Andy said. "That's what this is all about? The line was busy?"

"It was."

"Jesus, I was in the john. Maybe she made a call while I was taking a leak. Why don't you call her right now and ask her?"

Mick let out a sigh, then reached to lay a hand on Andy's shoulder. "Andy," he said gently, "why do you think people have been going to Confession for all these centuries? They feel better afterward. And don't tell me you've nothing to confess. Andy, look at me. Andy, I know it's you."

"Aaah, Jesus, Mick."

"Suggesting we go to the farm, all of us, and lay a trap for them. That set the alarm bells ringing. You'd have done better to let me come up with the idea myself, with maybe the least bit of a hint from yourself to steer me in that direction.

"And you'd no way of knowing I'd be wary the instant the farm was mentioned. You see, your murderous friend fell into a wee trap himself. He called Matt's house, and Matt pressed the numbers you press to call the person back. The person who answered didn't say much. But didn't you say he sounded Irish? And had a soft voice?"

I nodded.

"O'Gara, it must have been. They kept him alive in case I called, so that he could answer the phone. 'There's no one there,' he told them, and they broke the connection. Do you suppose he and his wife are still alive, Andy? Or have they killed them already, now that you called to say we were on our way?"

"Jesus, Mick."

"Were you there when they killed Tom, Andy? And the old woman in the wheelchair?"

"They never said they were going to do that."

"And what did you think they were going to do with her? Put her on a bus to Atlantic City, with a bag of quarters for the slot machines?"

"Oh, God," he said. He had his face in his bands, and his shoulders were heaving.

Gently Mick said, "How did he get to you, Andy? Did he remember you from school?"

"He was a year behind me at St. Ignatius."

"And you knew him well, did you?"

"Not well at all, but when he turned up I knew him right away. He had the same face when he was a kid."

"And he turned you. Turned you against me."

Andy's arms hung at his sides. His jaw was slack and his eyes glassy. He said, "I don't know what happened, I swear I don't I guess it was the carrot and the stick both at once. He said I got table scraps from you, that there'd be a lot of money if I threw in with him. And he said I'd be dead if I didn't. And her with me."

"Your mother."

"Yes."

"You should have come straight to me, Andy."

"I know. God, I know. I never thought…"

"What?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know what I thought. What difference does it make? You're gonna kill me. Well, hell, go ahead. I can't say I don't deserve it."

"Ah, Andy," he said. "Why would I kill you?"

"We both know why. God knows I gave you cause."

"Didn't I tell you we've a great national tradition of informing? You made your bed, but why lie in it if you can make it again?"

"What do you mean?"

Mick clapped him on the shoulder. "You changed sides," he said, "and now you'll change 'em again and come back where you belong. They've set a trap for us, have they? We'll have at them, the three of us, and see them caught in their own trap."

"You'd let me come back?"

"And why not? Jesus, you've been with me for years and against me for days. We need each other, Andy."

"Mick, I'm a bastard. You're a good man and I'm nothing but a bastard."

"Forget that for now."

"Mick, we can do it. They're expecting us to drive in like we own the place. Then I park the car where I always park it and I hang back and smoke a cigarette while you and Matt go up to the house. And they come out of the house with guns in their hands."

"It was a good plan. Would they have a sentry posted, do you think? Someone to spot us when we turn into the drive?"

"They might."

"I would," he said, "in their place. I'd put someone where he could see the headlights. What about O'Gara? Have they killed him yet?"

"I don't know. They didn't tell me much. Tom Heaney's landlady, that took me by surprise. I didn't think they would do that, I really didn't."

"And it bothers you, but is it worse than killing poor Tom? Ah, let it go. Talk won't bring him back, or any of the others. John Kenny and Barry McCartney. You knew they were going to the storage place. You went along with Dowling, didn't you?"

"I stayed outside," he said, "So they wouldn't see me. It was supposed to be a straight hijack, and I was going to drive the truck. Then I heard the shots." He took a breath. "I didn't know there was going to be any killing, Mick. It started out as a way to steal from you. They were going to grab the liquor and sell it and I was going to get a cut."

"And no one was going to get hurt."

"Not the way I heard it. And then Barry and John were dead and I was in the middle of it And then it just fucking grew."

"Out of control," Mick said. "Like wildfire."

"Worse."

"Worse. Peter Rooney, and Burke, and all those that died at Grogan's. And Matt's friend, that went to retreat with the Zen Buddhists. And myself saved for last. Didn't they try to get you to do it, Andy? It would have been easy for you. A bullet in the back of the head when I was looking the other way. Easier than setting up at the farm and luring me there."

"I could never do it, Mick."

"No, I didn't think you could."

"And he wants to do it himself. He hates you."

"He does."

"He says you killed his father. I don't know if he ever saw the man, and what's it matter anyway? It's ancient fucking history, for Christ's sake."

"So's the Battle of the Boyne," Mick said, "and yet there's some that never got over it. Ah, Andy. It had to be you or Tom, and once I saw Tom dead that left only yourself. It broke my heart, knowing that."

"Mick…"

"But you're back, and that's what counts. It's good to have you back, Andy."

"Jesus, Mick. You'll never have to worry about me again. I swear to God, Mick."

"Ah, don't I know it?" he said, and rested a cupped hand at the back of Andy's head, and put his other hand beneath Andy's chin, and moved both hands, and broke Andy Buckley's neck.

"What choice did I have? What else could I do?"

I didn't have an answer. He got the keys from the ignition, walked around to the trunk, unlocked it. He came back and picked up Andy's corpse without any apparent effort and carried him on his shoulder, then laid him gently in the trunk and slammed the lid. The noise when it swung shut was sharp and sudden on that dark and silent country road.

"No choice at all," he said, "and I swear I didn't want to do it."

"I didn't think you were going to," I said. "Not then, at any rate. You took me by surprise."

"And him as well, I shouldn't wonder. I wanted to give him a bit of hope, you know, and put him at his ease. It's fear that's hardest on a man, and I wanted to spare him that. As it was, there must have been an instant when he knew what was happening, and then it was over. Ah, Christ, it's a bad old world."

"It's that, all right."

"A hard life in a bad old world. He was as close as I'll ever come to having a son. Paddy Farrelly got himself a son, as like as not by forcing himself on the Dowling bitch, and his boy's painting the city with blood to avenge his father's memory. And my son's helping him do it." He steadied himself, drew a breath. "Except he's not my son and never was. Just a decent lad who never added up to much. A good steady hand, with a dart or a steering wheel. Do you think I should have let him live?"

"I can't answer that."

"What would you have done yourself? You can answer that, can't you?"

"You could never trust him," I said.

"No."

"Or rest easy, knowing what he'd done. All those people, all that blood. Being the man you are, I don't see how you could have acted differently."

"Being the man I am."

"Well, you've never been one to forgive and forget."

"No," he said. "I never have. And too old to learn new tricks, I'd have to say." He bent down, picked up a pack of Marlboros Andy had dropped. "A clue," he said ironically, "and now it's got my prints on it. And who gives a fuck, anyway?" He flung the pack across the road bent down again and came up with Andy's Zippo lighter. I thought he was going to throw that as well but he frowned at it and stuck it in his pocket. Then he reached to scoop up a handful of gravel and hurled that after the cigarettes.

I waited while he leaned against the side of the car and let the fury drain out of him. Then in an entirely different tone of voice he said, "What they don't know is there's another way onto the property. It backs up against state land, you know. And there's a back road goes into the state land, and then you can walk through a few acres of woods and you're on my land out behind the old orchard. They'll only know to watch the driveway, and they'll be waiting for three men in a car, not two men on foot."

"That gives us a little bit of an edge."

"And we'll need it, as there's two of us and who knows how many of them. I should have asked him how many they had, but would he even have known?"

"There were the two who mugged me. Donnie Scalzo and the one whose face I never did see. The Vietnamese is dead, but his partner Moon Gafter's still around, and he'll probably be on hand for the finale. That's three, and Dowling makes four, but there could be one or two others we don't know about."

"Four at a minimum," he said. "Very likely five, and possibly six. All arrayed against the two of us. They're defending and we're on the attack, which is to their advantage, but we know the ground better than they do. We've a bit of the home field advantage."

"And the element of surprise."

"And that," he agreed. "But, you know, I'm presuming something, and I've no right to. Because you don't have to be a part of the rest of it. You can go home."

I just shook my head. "It's too late for that," I said. "Unless we both go home. They set a trap and you figured it out and walked away from it, and took out the man who set it. You could walk away and let them figure out what to do next."

"I'd rather deal with them now, while I've got them all bottled up in there."

"I agree. And I'll be there with you."

We got in the car. He started it up. I found myself trying to determine if the car felt any lighter now that we didn't have Andy with us anymore, and then I remembered that the weight was the same. He'd been behind the wheel before, and now he was in the trunk.

"I had a feeling, you know."

"About Andy."

"From early on, it must have been. After the trouble at the bar, I made sure I dropped him off and kept the car. I didn't want him to know where I was staying. And I didn't let him have the cell phone number."

"I don't know about the second sight," I said, "but I'd say you have good instincts."

"And that may be all it is," he said, "but I don't know. Let me concentrate now, we've got our turn coming up and it's an easy one to miss. Ah, will you look at that!"

Ahead of us, a whole herd of deer bounded one after another across the narrow road. I counted eight of them, and I may have missed one.

"They're hard on crops and shrubbery," he said, "and a fucking menace on the highway, but what a beautiful sight they are. Why the hell would anybody want to shoot them?"

"I've got a friend in Ohio, a cop named Havlicek, who's always trying to get me to go out there and hunt deer with him. He can't understand why I'm not interested, and I can't understand why he is."

"It's enough of a strain killing people," he said. "I've no time to waste on deer."

He found the back road he was looking for and we made our turn. Half a mile in there was a chain across the road with a sign on it announcing that access was forbidden except to authorized personnel. I got out and unhooked the chain. He drove through and I replaced the chain and got back in the car.

We followed the one-lane road through the woods. I couldn't say how far we drove. We crept along slowly, rarely going over ten miles an hour. I kept waiting for more deer to explode out of cover in front of us, and God knows the woods were full of them, but we didn't see any others.

Eventually the road ran out in a small clearing. There was a little cabin there, and a canvas-topped 4WD utility vehicle parked not far from it. Mick reached into the back of the Chevy and went through the leather satchel, selecting some of its contents and adding them to a dun-gray canvas sack. He took mostly guns and extra ammunition, and left behind the money and papers from the safe. He'd already grabbed up a red plastic flashlight from the glove box, and on a hunch I checked the utility vehicle. It was unlocked, as I'd figured it would be, and it had a flashlight mounted on a clamp above the passenger door, encased in hard black rubber and twice as bright as the one from the Caprice.

"Good man," Mick said.

I didn't see any way out but the way we'd come in, but Mick struck off to the left, and the beam of his flashlight revealed a path. He had the canvas sack in one hand and the flashlight in the other, and I was carrying the second flashlight and had my other hand free. I had the revolver he'd given me in my shoulder holster, and the little.22 automatic in my pocket. And I'd kept one of the guns I'd taken from Andy, another automatic, this one a 9mm. I was carrying it as he'd carried it, under my waistband in the small of my back.

The air was cool, and I was glad of the Kevlar vest if only for the warmth it provided. The ground was soft underfoot, the path narrow. Our own footfalls were the only sound I could hear, and it seemed to me we were making a lot of noise, although I couldn't see how it mattered. We were well out of earshot of anybody at the farm.

After a long silence he said, "He didn't have a priest. I wonder if it matters. We used to think it did, but there's much that's changed with the years. I doubt he cared whether he had a priest or not. Priest or no priest, he'll be seeing it now."

"Seeing…"

"The picture of his life. If that's what happens. But who knows what happens? Though I suspect I'll find out soon enough."

"We both may."

"No," he said. "You'll be all right."

"Is that a promise?"

"It's the next thing to it," he said. "You'll be home soon enough, sitting in your kitchen drinking coffee with your good woman. I've a strong feeling about that."

"Another feeling."

"And there's a twin feeling alongside of it," he said. "About myself."

I didn't say anything.

"'You've the second sight,' my mother said, 'and right now it's a wonder to you, Mickey, but you'll find it's as much a curse as ever it was a blessing, for it will show you things you'd sooner not see.' There were things she was wrong about, by God, but that was never one of them. I don't think I'll live to see the sun up, man."

"If you really believe that," I said, "why don't we turn around and go home?"

"We'll go on."

"Why?"

"Because we must. Because I'd have it no other way. Because if I'm not afraid of the men and their guns, whyever should I be fearful of my own thoughts? And I have to tell you this. I don't mind dying."

"Oh?"

"Whoever would have thought I'd last this long? You'd think someone would have killed me by now, or I'd have died of my own recklessness. Oh, I had a good old run of it. There's things I did and wish I hadn't, and there's others I wished I'd done and never will, but I wouldn't change the whole of it if I could. And just as well, because you never can, can you?"

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it…

"No," I said. "You never can."

"I'm lucky to have had what I've had, and if it's over then it's over. And I've seen too many men die to fear the act of dying. If there's pain, well, there's pain enough in life. I'm not afraid of it."

"When you were in Ireland that time," I remembered, "I had to trade a suitcase full of money for a kidnapped child, and I had to walk right up to a couple of guns in order to do it. The men with the guns were unstable, and one of them was crazy as a shit-house rat. I figured there was a very good chance I'd die then and there. But I honestly wasn't afraid. I know I must have told you that, but did I ever tell you why?"

"Tell me."

"It was a thought I had. I realized I'd lived too long to die young. And I don't know why the hell I found that reassuring, but I did. And I wasn't afraid."

"And that was a few years ago," he said, "and I'm a couple of years older than yourself." He cleared his throat. "I won't have a priest myself," he said. "You know, I have to say that bothers me."

"Does it?"

"Not the lack of some whey-faced lad in a dog collar to touch me on the forehead and send me fluttering off to Jesus," he said. "I don't care about that. But I always had it in the back of my mind that I'd get a chance to make a full confession before I died. I thought I'd die easier with the weight of the sins off me."

"I see."

"Do you? You probably don't, not being brought up in the Faith. It's hard to explain Confession to someone who's not Catholic. What it is, and what it does for you."

"We have something like it in AA."

"Do you?" He stopped dead in his tracks. "But I never heard that. You have a sacrament of Confession? You go to priests and bare your souls?"

"Not exactly," I said, "but I think it amounts to essentially the same thing. There's a program of suggested steps."

"Twelve of them, isn't it?"

"That's right. Not everybody pays attention to them, especially at first, when it's hard enough just staying away from the first drink. But people who work the steps seem to have a better chance of staying sober in the long run, so most people get to them sooner or later."

"And confession's a part of it?"

"The fifth step," I said. "The precise language of it- but do you really want to hear all this?"

"Indeed I do."

"What you're supposed to do is admit to God, to yourself, and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs."

"Your sins," he said. "But how do you decide what's a sin?"

"You figure it out for yourself," I said. "There's no authority in AA. Nobody's in charge."

"The lunatics are running the asylum."

"That's about it. And how you approach the step is open to interpretation. The advice I got was to write down everything I ever did in my life that bothered me."

"By God, wouldn't your hand be cramped up by the time you were done?"

"That's exactly what happened. Then I sat down with my notes in front of me and talked it all out with another person."

"A priest?"

"Some people do it with a clergyman. In the early days that was the usual way. Nowadays most people take the step with their sponsor."

"Is that what you did?"

"Yes."

"And that was the Buddhist fellow? Why can I never remember the poor man's name?"

"Jim Faber."

"And you told him every bad thing you ever did."

"Pretty much. There were a few things that I didn't think of until later on, but I told him everything I could remember at the time."

"And then what? He gave you absolution?"

"No, he just listened."

"Ah."

"And then he said, 'Well, that's it. How do you feel now?' And I said I thought I felt about the same. And he said why don't we go get some coffee, and we did, and that was that. But later I felt…"

"Relieved?"

"I think so, yes."

He nodded. "I'd no idea your lot did any of that," he said. "It's a good bit like Confession, but there's more ritual and formality our way. No surprise, eh? There's more ritual and formality to everything we do. You've never done it our way, have you?"

"No, of course not."

"'No, of course not.' There's no 'of course' about it with you, is there? You've been to Mass with me. More than that, you took Holy Communion. Do ye even remember that?"

"I wouldn't be likely to forget it."

"Nor I myself! By God, what a strange fucking time that was. The two of us fresh from Maspeth with blood on our hands, and there we were at St. Bernard's at the Butchers' Mass, staying put as we always did while the others went up to take the wafer. And all of a sudden there you are, on your feet and on your way to the altar rail, and I a step behind you. I with decades of sins unconfessed, and you an unbaptized heathen altogether, and we took Communion!"

"I don't know why I did it."

"And I never knew why I followed you! And yet I felt wonderful afterwards. I couldn't tell you why, but I did."

"So did I. I never did anything like that again."

"I should hope not," he said. "Neither did I, you may rest assured of that."

We walked a little ways in silence, and then he said, "Ritual and formality, as I was saying. 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,' is what I'd say as a way of starting. 'It has been forty years and more since my last confession.' Sweet Jesus, forty years!"

I didn't say anything.

"And then I don't know what I'd say. I don't think there's a commandment I've not broken. Oh, I've kept my hands off the altar boys, and that's more I guess than some of the priests can say for themselves, but I can take no credit for that as it's been lack of inclination that's spared them. I suppose I could go through the list, commandment by commandment."

"Some people do the Fifth Step by going through the list of deadly sins. You know, pride, greed, anger, gluttony…"

"It might be easier. There's seven sins, and that's three fewer than the commandments. I like your way, though. Just saying the sins that are weighing on your soul. Well, I've enough of those. I've lived a bad life and done bad things."

A twig snapped underfoot, and I heard something scurry in the brush, some small animal we'd startled. Off in the distance I heard what must have been the hooting of an owl. I don't think I ever heard one before. He stopped walking, leaned his back against a tree.

"One time," he said, "I was trying to get this man to talk. He had money hidden and he wouldn't say where it was. Hurting him only seemed to strengthen his will. And so I reached in and took his eye out, plucked it right out of his head, and I held it in the palm of my hand and showed it to him. 'Your eye is looking at you,' I said, 'and it can see right into your soul. Now shall I take the other one as well?' And he talked, and we got the money, and I put the barrel of my gun to his empty eye socket and blew out his brains."

He fell silent, and his words hung in the air around us, until the breeze could waft them away.

"And then there was another time," he said…

I've forgotten almost everything he said.

I can't explain how that happened. It's not as though I wasn't paying attention. How could I have done otherwise? The wedding guest could have more easily ignored the Ancient Mariner.

Even so, the words he spoke passed through my consciousness and flew off somewhere. It was as if I was a channel, a conduit for his confession. Maybe that's how it is for priests and psychiatrists, who hear such revelations regularly. Or maybe not. I couldn't say.

We walked and he talked, sometimes at great length, sometimes quite tersely. There was a point when we reached a clearing and sat on the ground, and he went on talking and I went on listening.

And then there was a point when he was done.

"A longer walk than I remembered it," he said. "It's slower going at night, and we stopped now and then along the way, didn't we? The stream's my property line. It's just a dry ditch in the heat of summer, and a regular torrent when the snows melt in the spring. Let's find a place to cross it where we won't get our feet wet."

And we managed, stepping on a couple of rocks.

"After he heard you out, your Buddhist friend," he began, and caught himself. "Jim Faber, that is to say."

"You remembered his name."

"There's hope for me yet. After he heard you out, was that the end of it? He didn't absolve you of your sins. Did he at least give you any penance? Any Aves to say? Any Our Fathers?"

"No."

"He just left it at that?"

"The rest was up to me. The way we do it, we have to forgive ourselves."

"How, for God's sake?"

"Well, there are other steps. It's not penance, exactly, but maybe it works the same way. Making amends for the harm you've done."

"However would a man know where to begin?"

"And self-acceptance," I said. "That's a big part of it, and don't ask me how you do it. It's not exactly my own area of expertise."

He thought about it and nodded slowly. The corners of his mouth turned up the slightest bit. "So you won't grant me absolution," he said.

"I would if I could."

"Ah, what kind of a priest are you? The wrong kind entirely. Knowing you, you'd probably change wine into water."

"The miracle of Insubstantiation," I said.

"Wine into Perrier," he said. "With all the tiny bubbles."

We were on his land from the moment we'd forded the little stream, and we had another five minutes in the woods before we came to a cleared patch of ground. At the high ground on the other side of the clearing was the orchard, to the side of which we'd buried Kenny and McCartney. Beyond the orchard were the gardens and the hogpen and the hen coop, and a ways past that was the old farmhouse.

"Now we'd best be quiet," he murmured, "for voices carry. They'd never hear us this far off, but the animals might. In fact 'twill be the devil's own trick getting past the hog lot without the beasts knowing it. Even if we're dead quiet they'll catch our scent, though how they can smell anything at all beyond their own raw stench is a great puzzle to me."

And there were a few guinea fowl penned in with his hens, he said. Pretty creatures, that roosted in the trees and made a racket when you went near them. O'Gara liked having them, liked the way they looked, and assured him they were a delicacy and much prized on the fanciest table, but he found them stringier than chicken and not as tasty. They were splendid for raising an alarm, though, true watchdogs with wings, and there'd be a little noise from them, a little grunting from the hogs, no matter how carefully we got by them. But these were city boys we were coming after, and what would they make of a bit of cawing and oinking from the livestock?

We switched off our flashlights. There was enough moonlight for us to make our way over cleared ground. We walked slowly, picked up our feet deliberately and set them down softly. When we cleared the orchard I could see lights on in the farmhouse. The only sound I could hear was my own breathing.

We walked on. There was a graveled path but we kept to the side of it, where the grass and weeds made a quieter surface underfoot than the loose gravel. A lighted window in the farmhouse kept drawing my eyes. I could picture them in there, sitting around a table, eating and drinking things from the big old refrigerator, opening Ball jars and spooning out preserves that Mrs. O'Gara had put up. I didn't want to imagine all this, I wanted to concentrate on what I was doing, but the images filled my head anyway.

He stopped in his tracks, caught my arm.

"Listen," he whispered.

"To what?"

"That's it," he said. "As close as we are, we should hear them."

"In the house?"

"The animals," he said. "They can hear us. They should be stirring, and we should be hearing them."

"I can't hear them," I whispered back, "but I can certainly smell them."

He nodded and sniffed the air, sniffed it again. "I don't care of it," he said.

"Would anybody?"

He frowned. He was picking up something on the night air that I couldn't make out. I guess he was used to smelling his hogs and chickens, and knew when something didn't smell as it should.

He touched a finger to his lips, then led the way. The smell got stronger as we neared the fenced hogpen. He went right up next to the fence, leaned his forearms on the topmost rail. Not a sound came from within, and now I smelled it, too, a stale top note to the usual reek of the animals' waste.

He switched on his flashlight, played it around the pen, stopped the beam when it lit up a dead hog. The animal lay on its side in its own blood, its great white flank stitched with bullet holes. He moved the light here and there, and I could make out others.

He switched off the light, nodded to himself, and started walking to the hen coop. It was the same story there, but a little more vivid, with blood and feathers everywhere. He stood there and looked at the carnage and breathed deeply, in and out, in and out. Then he switched off his light and turned on his heel and began walking back the way we'd come.

My first thought was that he was going to walk away from it, from all of it, that we'd go back across the stream and through the woods to where we'd left the Chevy. But I knew that couldn't be, and realized he was heading for the little toolshed, the one that looked like an outhouse. I knew there was a shovel in there, and another inane thought came unbidden, that he was going to bury the slain animals. But that couldn't be, either.

He said, "When a mink or a weasel gets into a henhouse, why, it will kill like that. You'll find every hen dead and none of them eaten. Wanton savagery you'd call it, but, don't you see, the weasel has a reason. It wants the blood. It drinks the blood from each of them, and leaves the flesh. So if you said it was bloodthirsty, why, you'd only be saying the simple truth. It's thirsty for the blood."

He turned to me. "What they wanted," he said, "was target practice. A chance to test their guns and show off for each other. And the job of shooting the animal and watching it stagger around, blood spouting from it, and then shooting it again. And again."

I thought about what he'd said. I nodded.

"In a way," he said, "it makes it easier."

"How do you mean?"

"I was trying to think how to get the O'Garas out of there. On the small chance that they were still alive. But I know now there's no chance at all. Was it O'Gara answered the phone when you called?"

"I couldn't swear to it. But I think it probably was, yes."

"That's what they kept him alive for," he said. "Not for you to call, for they'd never have thought that might happen. But in case I called. I might have called before I came out, and they'd have had him there to answer, with a gun to his head and a gun to his wife's, and no way for him to do anything but whatever they told him to do."

"Couldn't they still be alive?"

"No," he said, "and you can blame me for that, if you've a mind to. 'Twas Andy's call that killed them. If I'd stopped him from going back to his house, he'd have had no chance to make that call. And they'd have kept O'Gara alive, him and his wife both, and they'd still be alive now. I thought of that, you see, but I thought of it too late. I thought of it when I called Andy's number and got the busy signal. Now they'll know we're on our way, I thought, and then it struck me what the immediate consequences of knowing would be, and I saw my mistake."

"You can't blame yourself for that."

"I could," he said, "but I won't waste a great lot of feeling on it. Call or no call, they might have killed them anyway by now. Out of boredom, for lack of anything else to kill. And even if they were alive now there's little enough chance they'd still be breathing an hour from now. We've a hard enough task ahead of us without having to get two people out of that house alive." He sighed. "It's a blameless life they led, both of them. They got to heaven a few hours early, that's all. They're up there now, wouldn't you say? While we're down here in hell."

"We've another great advantage," he said. "They're stupid."

He was half in and half out of the little toolshed, making his preparations, filling jars and bottles from a five-gallon can, stuffing rages into their mouths as stoppers. I squatted nearby, holding the light for him. The toolshed was way in back near the orchard, not far from where we'd dug the two-man grave. The ground had settled some since we mounded the earth over it, but you could still see the convexity of it.

The farmhouse was a couple of hundred yards away. They couldn't possibly hear us from that distance, but even so he kept his voice down.

"Stupid," he said again. "'Twas worse than stupidity that led to the slaughter of the hogs and chickens, but it was stupid all the same. Supposed we drove straight back there. Suppose I'd insisted to Andy that he drive all the way back, because I wanted to inspect the grave site, or have a look at the animals, or for any damn reason at all? He'd have done it, and I'd have seen the carnage, and their great surprise would have been no surprise at all. It's a good sign, that stupidity. If they're stupid in one thing they may well be stupid in another. Give me a hand with these, but take no more than you know you can carry. You don't want to be dropping them, or making any noise with them at all. Better to make two trips."

We made three in all, carrying the stoppered jars and bottles, carrying the can itself, half empty now, carrying the cloth sack of guns and extra ammunition. We stashed everything in the high grass at the edge of the chicken yard. When we were done Mick leaned back against a fence post and caught his breath, then reached for the silver flask in his hip pocket. He took it out and looked at it, then put it back in his pocket unopened.

He brought his head close to mine, spoke in a soft whisper. "As stupid as they are," he said, "they might not have posted a sentry. But we've got to make sure, and I almost hope they have. We can take him out and shorten the odds."

We left our flashlights with the bottles and jars and extra guns. Mick reached into the cloth sack and came out with a suppressor. He made sure it fit his pistol, then took it off and put it in his pocket and the pistol back in his waistband.

We approached the house, picking our feet up and setting them down soundlessly, keeping in the deep shadows, taking a few steps, then waiting and listening, then taking a few steps more. When we drew even with the house I could hear sounds coming through an open window. What I was hearing was a conversation, and one of the speakers had the higher voice of a woman. I thought for an instant that it was Mrs. O'Gara, and then an instant later I realized that it was a television program. They'd taken possession of the farm, they'd killed all the people and animals, they'd set their trap, and now they were watching TV.

Once we were twenty yards or so past the house, I let out a breath and realized I'd been half holding it for a long time, limiting myself to very shallow breaths, as if for fear of disturbing the air. I took a deep breath now. We were past the stretch where they were most likely to hear a stray sound from us, but the task right ahead of us was trickier. We had to look for a sentry without knowing where he'd be posted, or if he was even there at all.

Mick led the way, keeping just to the left of the graveled driveway, and I stayed on the right side, and five yards or so behind. I advanced when he did, stopped when he stopped. It was a long driveway, curving gently to the left as we made our way down it, and following the downward slope of the land itself. It was well shaded, too, by trees and brush, and I had to put my feet down without seeing exactly where I was placing them. My progress was quiet, but not as dead silent as I would have liked it to be.

Ahead of me, Mick stopped dead in his tracks. I wondered why, and then I heard it myself, faint but unmistakable. Dead ahead of us, soft music was playing.

He moved on, cautiously, and I kept apace. The music's volume increased as we got closer to it Then Mick held up a hand to stop me, and brought a finger to his lips. He reached into his pocket with one hand and drew the gun from his belt with the other, and I could tell he was fitting the suppressor to the weapon.

Then he moved ahead, and deeper into the shadows, and I couldn't see him clearly. I drew the revolver from my shoulder holster and held on to it. I listened carefully and all I heard was the radio, playing a country and western song. It sounded familiar but I couldn't make out the words.

I caught a whiff of something and sniffed the air. It was smoke I smelled, cigarette smoke.

Then I heard what must have been gunshots. I wouldn't have heard them if I hadn't been listening for them, wouldn't have recognized them if I hadn't known what to expect. They were soft popping sounds, the kind you get when you break a bubble from a piece of bubble wrap.

Mick stepped out of the shadows, motioned me forward. I walked without making noise, although we'd gone far enough from the house that they wouldn't be able to hear footsteps. Still, there was no point in making unnecessary noise.

At the side of the drive, a man lay sprawled in a canvas sling chair. He was wearing a Chicago Bulls warm-up jacket and a pair of Levi's, and on his feet he wore black Dr. Martens and white athletic socks. There was a gun in his lap, one of those 9mm's that come with an oversized clip holding ten or a dozen rounds. He'd never get to use them, though, because his days as a gunman were over. He'd been shot twice, once in the center of the chest and once in the middle of the forehead, and if Danny Boy knew the son of a bitch he could put his name on the list.

There was a little portable radio playing on the ground alongside, and next to the radio was a half gallon jug of wine about two-thirds full. There was a cell phone on the ground, also, and a few feet away was the cigarette he'd been smoking. Mick stuck out a foot and stepped on it, hesitated, then stepped on the cell phone, too.

He had Andy's Zippo in his hand, and he spun the wheel and held the flame in front of the man's face. I took a good look and shook my head. He was nobody I'd ever seen before.

"I suppose he could have been one of the muggers," I whispered. "Not Scalzo but the one I never got a good look at. Of course he was wearing soft shoes that night, not Dr. Martens."

"Mayhaps he learned his lesson."

"You taught him a better lesson than I did. Flick the light again, will you? Once in the heart and once in the head, and they're big wounds with hardly any blood from either of them. Whichever shot hit him first, it must have been instantly fatal."

"Jesus," he said, "you needn't investigate the fucking case. We know who killed this one." He closed the lighter, put it away, took the suppressor from the gun, put it in a pocket, then removed the clip from the gun and replaced the two bullets he'd fired. He picked up the casings his gun had ejected, started to pocket them, changed his mind and wiped them on his shirttail, then tossed them on the dead man's lap.

We left him there, the gun and the casings on his lap, the radio playing.

I stood at the rear of the house. There was a big metal box mounted on it, its door hanging open now. I had a grip on the handle of the main circuit breaker, and I leaned as far as I could to my left, looking around the corner of the house to where Mick was standing. He was wearing his father's apron. I'd tried to talk him out of it, it would make him too visible a target, but he wouldn't hear it. Now his hand moved in signal, and I thrust the handle down and cut off all electrical power to the farmhouse.

The house went instantly dark, of course, and silent. The silence only lasted for a second or two, but Mick was already in motion. Lighting the wick of one of his bottles, heaving it, racing a dozen years to his right to light another wick and hurl another bottle.

Within the house, noise erupted. Men shouted, called to each other, pushed back chairs, bumped into walls and tables in the darkness. I ran back a few yards to where I'd left my stash of jars and bottles, scratched a match, lit the scrap of cloth that served as a wick, and threw it at a ground-floor window. Glass broke and the bottle disappeared inside, and then there was an explosion and I could see flames leaping behind what was left of the window.

There were other explosions in the front of the house. Inside, men were screaming at each other. I lit and tossed my two remaining jars of gasoline, lofting one at a second-floor window, heaving the other at the back door just as someone struggled to open it. It burst on impact and flames blossomed in the doorway.

I got down on the ground. I heard gunfire from the front of the house, and now a shape appeared at a window in the back. I fired at it, and the person I shot at snapped off a couple of rounds in my direction, then drew back from the window.

I got up into a crouch and ran to a position where I could see what was going on in front while still keeping the back door covered. A bullet whined overhead and I hit the dirt, then swung around and returned fire. I didn't hit anything, unless you want to count the house itself.

It was burning briskly now, with flames visible on both floors and at all corners. There was a great explosion. Or implosion, as a side window burst on the second floor. A man ran out onto the porch, and I hurried around the side of the house, and fired at him. He fired back at me and vaulted over the porch railing and hit the ground running. He was favoring one leg, and I wondered if he and not the dead sentry had been one of the two who'd mugged me. Or had he hurt his leg just now leaping from the porch?

I held the gun in both hands and squeezed the trigger, but the hammer clicked on an empty cartridge. I dropped the gun and yanked Andy's niner from behind my back. He saw me now and fired twice, and one bullet struck me on the right side just below the collarbone. The vest stopped it but the impact knocked me off-balance. I righted myself and aimed and squeezed the trigger, and nothing happened, and I found the safety with my thumb and cleared it and aimed and fired, and he clutched his chest and took a step and fell to the ground. I waited a moment, and when he didn't move I ran up to him and shot him in the head.

I'd left the revolver where it lay. I went back and found it, broke it open, spilled out the empty cartridges and fumbled others from my jacket pocket. I jammed them into the chambers and snapped the cylinder back in place, and the back door of the house flew open and a man burst out of the flame-shrouded doorway.

Donnie Scalzo. He had some kind of automatic weapon in his hands and he triggered off a burst, but he didn't see me and the bullets didn't come anywhere close. I aimed at him, fired, missed. He let out a yell and swung the gun around toward me. He fired and missed high, and I steadied the gun and shot him in the shoulder. He cried out and turned as if to run back into the house, but the doorway was a sheet of flame now. He spun around again, one arm hanging, clutching the gun awkwardly in his left hand now, and I fired and missed, and fired again and got him in the gut, halfway between the navel and the groin. He roared and fell and clutched himself, and I remembered how I'd left him alive the last time. I ran over to him and he looked at me and I shot him twice and he died.

There was no point covering the rear of the house because there was no way anybody would be coming through the back door. I circled around to the right and looked around for Mick. The white butcher's apron made him easy to spot. We were both in front of the burning farmhouse now, but at opposite ends of it.

Gunfire came from a window, and he fired back at its source. There was a loud noise that seemed to come from the second floor, a roof beam giving way, a part of the ceiling falling, something like that. Then there was a brief silence, and then two men appeared on the porch within seconds of each other. One burst through the front door while the other smashed out what remained of the window and stepped nimbly over the sill.

One was a man I'd never seen before. He had a pompadour like an old-fashioned country singer and a mustache like a riverboat gambler, and he held a pistol in each hand and was firing them in turn. I don't know what he was shooting at and I'm not even sure his eyes were open. He stood there flat-footed, blasting away with his two guns. I shot at him and missed, and Mick shot him twice and hit him and he fell back through the window into the burning house.

The other man was Moon Gafter.

I'd never seen him before, but that didn't keep me from recognizing him. He was tall, at least six-five, with a rawboned frame and that big white moon face. With his long wiry arms and that oversized head he looked like a creature from another planet, or a giant praying mantis.

He looked right at me but I don't think he saw me. He saw Mick, and swung his gun toward the stained white apron. I took aim and got off a shot at him, and the bullet struck him on the left side of the rib cage. He didn't seem to notice it, and I thought he must be wearing a vest himself, but then I saw blood flowing, streaming over his belt and down his trouser leg. But he was still standing, paying no attention to the wound, and he began firing at Mick.

I steadied the gun, aiming for his heart, but when I fired I hit him high on the shoulder. This wound bled, too, but if he felt it he gave no sign. He was shooting at Mick, and now he dashed down the porch steps and ran toward Mick, firing as he ran.

Mick shot back at him and hit him in the chest, and that slowed him down a little, but he kept on coming. I ran toward the two of them and trained the big automatic on Gafter and squeezed off three shots as I ran, and one missed but two struck home, one at the belt line and the other in the small of the back, but they didn't seem to have any effect on him.

Then Mick took a step toward him and fired, and Gafter stopped in his tracks and the gun fell from his fingers. And Mick ran up and stuck the gun in the man's wide open mouth and blew the back of his head off.

"Jesus," he said. "By God, he takes a fucking lot of killing."

I stood there, trying to catch my breath, and there was a burst of gunfire behind me and I threw myself to the ground. I spun around and there stood Dowling himself, the bastard son of Paddy Farrelly, silhouetted against the burning house. He had an automatic rifle like the one Nguyen Tran Bao had used to shoot up Grogan's, and he looked at me, and our eyes locked for an instant just as they had that first night at the bar. Then I fired and missed, and he fired at me just as I threw myself to the ground. That burst was high. Then he overcorrected and the next burst dug up the lawn in front of me.

I looked up. Mick was on his feet facing Dowling, aiming his pistol. He fired twice and missed. Dowling triggered a burst, but it was a short one because the clip was empty. He'd used up too many rounds on pigs and chickens.

I fired at him and missed, and Mick aimed and shot and missed, and Dowling threw his gun aside and vaulted the porch rail and took off, running flat out toward the hogpen and the chicken yard and the orchard beyond.

Mick shot at him and missed, and tried again. There was a click and he threw down the empty gun. Then he was up and moving, running hard, running after Dowling. My revolver was empty. I thought I might have a round or two left in the automatic, but I couldn't get a clear shot. I don't think I could have hit a moving target at that range anyway, but with Mick between me and Dowling I didn't dare try.

I thought Dowling would run away from him. He had twenty-five years on Mick and he must have been fifty pounds lighter, but Mick ran him down and launched himself through the air at the younger man. Then they were both down and I couldn't see what was going on. I saw Mick's arm raised high overhead, and moonlight glinted off something in his hand. The arm descended, and there was a scream, shrill and piercing in the night Mick's arm rose and fell, and the scream died abruptly. And again the arm rose and fell, rose and fell.

I was on my feet, my breathing ragged, a useless gun in each hand. For a long moment all was still except the sounds of the fire behind me. Then Mick got to his feet. He kicked at something, then walked toward me, pausing long enough to give whatever it was another hearty kick. He kicked it a third time, and of course by now I knew what it was.

It rolled on in front of him like a misshapen soccer ball, and this time when he reached it he bent over and snatched it up, carrying it out in front of him at arm's length. He walked right up to me, gripping Dowling's severed head by the hair. The eyes were wide open.

"Look at the fucker!" he cried. "And isn't he spit and image of his father now, eh? Have ye a leather bag, man? And shall we take young Paddy here round the bars, so all can admire him and stand him a drink?"

I didn't say anything. The only answer came from the house, where a roof beam gave way with a great crack. I turned at the noise and saw the roof sag and sparks erupt outward.

"Ah, Christ!" Mick roared. And he drew his arm back, and, like a basketball player winging one from half court at the buzzer, he hurled the head in a great high arc. It sailed in through a wide-open window and disappeared in the flames.

He stared after it, and then he drew his silver flask from his hip pocket. He uncapped it and tilted his head back and drank until the flask was empty. It was the first drink he'd taken since we found the bodies at Tom Heaney's house.

He screwed the cap back on the empty flask, and for a moment I had the sense that he was going to throw it where he'd thrown Dowling's head. But all he did was put it back in his pocket.

We threw our guns into the burning house, and the gas can, and the cloth sack of extra guns and bullets. We turned, then, and walked back the way we'd come, up the long drive, past the slaughtered hogs and chickens, past the toolshed, and into the orchard.

"Back through the woods," he said. "It's shorter than taking the road, though slower going. But we wouldn't want to meet anybody now, would we?"

"No."

"Not that there'll be many on the road this late. I doubt the firemen will come at all. The nearest neighbor's half a mile away, and it's good odds no one's even caught sight of the fire yet. By the time anybody gets here 'twill have long since burned to the foundation."

"It was a nice house," I said.

"A sound one. 'Twas built before the Civil War, or at least that's what they told me. The central portion of the house, that is. The porch was a later addition, and the one-story section on the left-hand side."

"I guess that was the best way to get them out. Burning the house."

"I'd say it was," he said, "but if I could have clapped my hands, and if that would have brought them all out in a row, their hands folded in front of them, just waiting to be shot, well, I'd still have had the chore of burning the house down afterward."

"You wanted it to burn."

"I did. I'm only regretful that I didn't hold back a bit of gasoline for the hog house and the hen coop. I'd see them in flames as well if I could. You think it strange of me?"

"I don't know what's strange anymore."

"How could I ever go there again? How could I ever look at the fucking place again? All I'd ever see would be the great corpses of the hogs raked with bullets, and the hens blown apart, and bloody feathers all over everything. And the O'Garas dead as well, and thank God I didn't have to see their bodies. Let the fire have them, eh?" He shook his head. "'Twas O'Gara's farm, you know. 'Twas his name on the deed. Well, let someone else figure out what to do with it. Let the state sort it out, and take it for back taxes in a couple of years. They can add it onto the adjoining lot, and it can all be state land then. And the hell with it, the hell with all of it."

We'd lost the flashlight from Andy's glove compartment, but he'd kept the better one, the black rubber flash I'd taken from the utility vehicle. He switched it on and lighted the way, and we made our way to the stream and crossed it, but this time we didn't bother finding rocks to step on. We just waded right through it.

He was still wearing his father's apron, and he'd taken the flashlight from one of its pockets. The other pocket was weighed down with his father's old cleaver, evidently sharp enough still for the work he'd put it to.

There was a lot of fresh blood on the apron.

The car was where we'd left it, in the clearing across from the little cabin. The 4WD vehicle was still parked in the same spot, too, and Mick watched in amusement as I took a moment to put the flashlight back where I'd found it. We got into the Caprice and the engine turned over as soon. as he keyed the ignition.

We rode in silence all the way to the chain with the restricted access sign, winch I lowered and replaced as before. As we turned onto the road he said, "There were more of them than we thought."

"Six," I said. "Dowling and Scalzo and Gafter. And the sentry, and that one with the mop of hair like Jerry Lee Lewis. Hard to guess how he fit in with that crowd."

"Hard to say how any of them did."

"And another one. He jumped off the side of the porch, and either he hurt his leg doing it or he was still limping from when I stomped on his foot. I don't know which one it was, him or the sentry because neither of them looked familiar."

"And you shot him."

"We shot each other," I said. "His bullet glanced off the vest."

"God, did it save you again? You'll be wearing it to bed after all this."

"I'm getting fond of it," I admitted. "You were the perfect target, with that big white apron"

"Less white now."

"I noticed. They couldn't hit you, could they?"

"It wasn't for lack of trying. They were bad shots, the lot of them. Six of the fuckers, though, good shots or not, and we killed them all."

"And got off without a scratch," I said. "Second sight notwithstanding."

"Ah," he said. "I was waiting for you to bring that up."

"I held off as long as I could."

"'Twas my mother said I had the second sight, and it's not the only thing she was ever wrong about. She never in her life had a decent word for the English, and didn't I tell you how nice they were to me the time I was over there?"

"That's a point."

"I'll give you the straight of it, though. I honestly thought I was going to die."

"I know you did."

"And a damned good thing I was mistaken, with no better priest than yourself to hear my confession. By Jesus, didn't I find a rare lot of bad old things to tell you!"

"You went on for a while."

"I have to say I don't regret it. Oh, there's more than a few of the deeds I regret. A man would have to. But I don't regret telling them all to you.

"I'm glad to hear it."

"And you still stood with me and saw the night through, even after all I said."

"To tell you the truth," I said, "I don't remember very much of what you told me."

"What, were you not paying attention?"

"Close attention. I hung on every word. But they didn't stay with me. They passed through me and I don't know where they went. Wherever such things go, I guess."

"In one ear and out the other."

"Something like that," I agreed. "All I really remember is the first thing you mentioned. About taking out the man's eye and showing it to him."

"Ah," he said. 'Well, that would be a difficult one to forget, wouldn't it?"

Later he said, "I've been thinking of what I might do next."

"I was wondering about that."

"You know, we had a good laugh about the feeling I had."

"The premonition."

He nodded. "It may not have been altogether wrong. There are different ways of dying, and of being reborn. I'm unscratched, but hasn't my whole life gone and died around me? Grogan's in ruins, and the farm in ashes. Kenny and McCartney gone, and Burke and Peter Rooney. And Tom Heaney. And Andy.

"Gone, all of them. And O'Gara and his wife. And the pigs and the chickens, all gone." He smacked the steering wheel. "Gone," he said.

I didn't say anything.

"I was thinking," he said, "that I've no place to go. But it's not true. I have a place to go."

"Where's that?"

"Staten Island."

"The monastery," I said.

"The Thessalonian Brothers. They'll take me in. They do that, you see. You go there and they take you in."

"How long will you stay?"

"As long as they'll have me."

"Do they allow that? Can people stay for a long time?"

"For a lifetime, if you want."

"Oh," I said. "You mean to stay there."

"Isn't that what I said?"

"What'll you do, exactly? Will you become a monk?"

"I don't know that I could do that. I'd be a lay brother, most likely. But 'twill be for them to tell me what I ought to do and when I ought to do it. The first step is to go there, and the second is to get one of them to hear my confession." He smiled. "Now that I've tried it out on you," he said. "Now that I've learned it won't kill me."

"Brother Mick," I said.

As we were crossing the George Washington Bridge I said, "There's something we're forgetting."

"And what would that be?"

"Well, I'm not sure I should mention this to a future servant of God," I said, "but we've got a dead body in the trunk."

"I've been thinking of it," he said, "ever since we got in the car."

"Well, I haven't. It slipped my mind entirely. What the hell are we going to do with him?"

"It would have been best to leave him on the farm. To bury him there. He'd not have lacked for company. Or even to lay him out there on the lawn with the other dead. He threw in with them, he could lie with them, in the bed he made."

"It's too late for that now."

"Ah, it was too late throughout, for how could we carry him through two or three miles of woods? And I didn't want to leave him where we parked the car, and even if we'd found a shovel and buried him there somebody could have come upon the grave. I'll tell you, the man's as difficult to contend with dead as he was alive."

"We have to do something," I said. "We can't just leave him in the trunk."

"Now I was wondering about that. Isn't it his car? And who has more right to be in its trunk than the man himself?"

"I suppose you've got a point."

"I thought of leaving it on the street," he said, "in his beloved Bronx, with the doors unlocked and the key in the ignition. How long do you think it would take before somebody took it for a ride?"

"Not long."

"And they might keep it for a good long while, especially if we took care to leave it with a full tank of gas. Of course if they had a flat tire, and went looking for the spare…"

"God, what a thought."

"Ah, it's a hard old world if you can't laugh, and even if you can. Do you know what I think I'll do? I'll wipe the fucker free of prints, as it's full of mine after all the use I've given it this past week. And then I'll take it over to the piers and run it into the river, with the windows rolled down so it'll sink and stay sunk. Can they get fingerprints off a car hauled out of the water?"

"There was a time when they couldn't," I said, "but they probably can by now. I think they can just about lift them off motes of dust dancing in a beam of light."

"I'll wipe it good," he said, "before I shove it off the edge. Just to be sure."

After a moment I said, "What'll you tell his mother?"

"That he had to go away," he said without hesitation, "on a dangerous mission, and that it might be awhile before she heard from him. That should hold her for the few years she's got left in the world. She has cancer, you know."

"I didn't."

"Poor thing. I'll pray for her, and him too, once they've taught me how."

"Pray for all of us," I said.

I rode up in the elevator, used my key in the lock. By the time I had the door open she was standing in front of me, wearing a black robe I'd bought for her. It had white and yellow flowers on it, and tiny butterflies.

"You're all right," she said. "Thank God."

"I'm fine."

"TJ's sleeping on the couch," she said. "I was going to bring dinner over to him but he insisted he could come over for it, and then I wouldn't let him go home. I was afraid, but I don't know who I was afraid for, him or me."

"Either way, you're both all right."

"And you're all right, and thank God. It's over, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's over."

"Thank God. And what about Mick? Is Mick all right?"

"He had a premonition," I said, "and that's a story in itself, but it turns out he's got a touch of astigmatism in his third eye, because he's fine. In fact you could say he's never been better."

"And everybody else?"

I said, "Everybody else? Everybody else is dead."

"I'll remind you," Ray Gruliow said, "that Mr. Scudder is here of his own volition, and that he'll answer only those questions I'm willing for him to answer."

"Which means he won't say a goddamn thing," George Wister said.

And that turned out to be pretty close to the truth. There were half a dozen cops in the room, Joe Durkin and George Wister and two guys from Brooklyn Homicide and two others whose function was never explained to me. I didn't much care who they were, because all they could do was sit there while I said essentially nothing.

They had no end of questions, though. They wanted to know what I knew about Chilton Purvis, whom they'd linked to the murder of Jim Faber as a result of information received, which meant that somebody's snitch had indeed come up with the news. They didn't have any evidence to support the snitch's word, however, and so far they hadn't been able to find an eyewitness to the Lucky Panda shooting who would look at Purvis's body and ID him as the shooter.

I couldn't help them out. Anyway, I figured it was their own fault. If they'd coached their witness properly he'd have given them what they wanted.

Maybe one or both of the unidentified men in the room were from the Bronx, because there were questions about Tom Heaney and Mary Eileen Rafferty, which turned out to be the name of Tom's landlady. Tom, I learned, had been shot with bullets from two different guns, and none of the slugs matched any of the bullets retrieved in any of the other homicides in question, although one matched up to a bullet dug out of a corpse in SoHo in 1995. Since most of the players had spent that year in Attica, I figured the gun had some old history attached to it.

All in all, I didn't really give them anything, and I didn't pay close attention, either. I just sat there and watched Ray, and I didn't open my mouth unless he gave me a nod. And he didn't do that very often.

I suppose we were there for about an hour, and then Wister lost it a little and said something nasty, and Ray had been waiting for that. "That's it," he said, getting to his feet "We're out of here."

"You can't do that," Joe said.

"Oh, really? Just watch us."

"And kiss your license goodbye," Wister said. "I got papers on my desk, formal request for the state to pull your ticket, with all the reasons laid out to make it real easy for them. You walk out of here and I fill out the rest of it and toss it right in the mail."

"And there'll be a hearing," Ray said, "and you'll be subpoenaed, which I know you fellows just love. And by the time the dust settles he'll have his license back, along with a whole lot of newspaper coverage to make him look like a hero."

"He won't look like a hero," Joe said. "He'll look like a fucking criminal is all he'll look like. Which more and more is what he's been looking like anyway."

"That's enough," Ray said.

"No it's not, it's nowhere near enough. Matt, what the hell's the matter with you? You'll lose your license."

I said, "You know something? I don't care if I do."

"Don't say another word," Ray said.

"No," I said, "I'll say this much, and I'm saying it to you as much as to them. They can do what they want, and if the state rescinds my license that's fine. You could fight it, and maybe we'd win, but it's not worth the bother."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Joe said.

"I know I got along fine without a license for over twenty years," I said. "I don't know what the hell made me ever think I needed it. Maybe I make a few more dollars with it than without it, but I always made enough. I never missed a meal, and back when I drank I never lacked the price of the next drink. You want to pull my license? Go right ahead. What the hell do I care?"

We walked out of the station house and down the steps, and when we were out of earshot Ray said, "They'll get your license pulled, and I'll get it back. Not a problem."

"No," I said. "Thanks, but I wasn't just sounding off. I mean what I said. We'll let it go, and the hell with it."

"You never needed it in the first place," Elaine assured me. "What, so you can work for a few more lawyers? And they can bill a little higher for your services? The hell with that."

"Exactly my point."

"Besides," she said, "we know the real reason you got the license. You wanted to be respectable. And it's like all those folks on the Yellow Brick Road, baby. You were respectable all along."

"No," I said. "I wasn't, and I'm still not. But the license didn't change anything."

And that would be a good place to leave it, except there's a little more to the story. Like everything else, it's not over till it's over.

That was in September, and in mid-December we got a Christmas card with a return address on Staten Island. It said Season's Greetings instead of Merry Christmas, no doubt in deference to the Jewish vegetarian he'd once given a ham to, and inside, beneath an unexceptionable printed message, he'd written God's love to you both and signed it Mick.

Elaine said she was sure he'd sign it Fr. Michael F. Ballou, S. J. I said he was with the Thessalonians, not the Jesuits, and she said goyim is goyim.

Then in late April TJ mentioned that he'd passed Grogan's and had seen a Dumpster at the curb and a construction crew hard at work. I said evidently there'd be a Korean greengrocer in there before long.

And then a week later the phone rang, and Elaine answered it and came to tell me I'd never guess who it was.

"I bet it's Father Mick," I said.

"Ah, Jaysus," she said, "and get along with ye, and haven't the wee folk gifted ye with the second sight your own self?"

"Begorrah," I said.

I picked up the phone and he invited me to come down and see how the work was progressing. "Of course it's impossible to get it so it looks old," he said, "and there are bullet holes they want to cover up, and they ought to be left as they are. There's history to them."

I went over there, and for all of that they seemed to be doing a good job, and getting it more right than not. I said I gathered this meant he was back in business.

"I am," he said.

"You said you'd stay there until they kicked you out."

"Ah. Well, they didn't do that. They'd never do that." He took a drink from his silver flask. "They're lovely men," he said. "The nicest men I've ever met in my life. And they were so good as to let me take my time to realize for myself that I didn't belong there. I half wish I did, but I don't, and they allowed me to see as much."

"And here you are."

"And here I am," he agreed. "And glad to be back, and are you glad to have me?"

"Damn glad," I said, "and so's Elaine. We missed you."

His story, as I said early on, his story far more than mine. But how could you ever get him to tell it?