No Such Creature

ELEVEN

Sabrina sat in front while Owen drove and Max took his siesta in the back bedroom. It was unlawful to be out of the seats while the vehicle was travelling down a highway at sixty miles an hour, but it was useless to try and talk Max out of it. The afternoon nap, according to Max, was just one of many things he and the great Winston Churchill had in common.

The desert rolled by on either side. They passed the turn-off to Laughlin, and the huge letter C that marked the town of Chloride. They sailed by Kingman, and then it was miles and miles of cactus.

“They look fake,” Sabrina said. “They look just like the plastic ones, except they’re all different sizes.”

The temperature gauge said it was 104 Fahrenheit outside; the air conditioner was working overtime. Owen became acutely aware of the scent Sabrina was wearing, something incomparably fresh and clean that increased his desire to bury his face in her graceful neck.

“Those are the Hualapai Mountains,” he said, just for something to say.

“So that’s what the Hualapai Mountains look like.”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you.”

“Why, yes, Owen. I am.”

He tried to find a music station that wasn’t playing country, and finally gave up. Sabrina pulled out an iPod with an FM attachment, so for the next stretch they listened to Dido.

“I like her,” Sabrina said. “She’s a bitch, but vulnerable-like me, I guess.”

“Don’t say that.” Owen pulled out to pass a spavined Buick that was belching black smoke. “You may be vulnerable, but-”

“Tell me something, Owen.” She turned her whole body round to face him. “What’s a grown boy like you doing travelling around the desert for the summer with his uncle?”

Owen smiled and pulled back into the slow lane. “Pretty weird, huh?”

“Tell me, though. Isn’t he too old to be your uncle?”

“He’s my great-uncle. But really he’s more like my stepdad.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“It’s kind of like what you went through, only I was younger. I was ten.” Owen told her the story of the car crash, and his brush with foster care.

“God,” Sabrina said. “I don’t think I would have recovered from something like that.”

“It turned out Max was the only relative I had. When he heard about my situation, he applied for guardianship and I’ve been with him ever since.”

“Pretty eccentric guy.”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

“Well, if he loves my dad, he’s got to be a crook. Made you part of the life, right?”

Owen looked at her, her green eyes bright, daring him to admit it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You’re forgetting how I grew up.” She touched his knee, warm palm through denim, quickly gone. “It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend around me. You do these, uh, road trips every year?”

“This is the last one. I mean, I like to see the country and all-it’s been a real education-but I’d like to spend at least one summer just hanging out.”

“Listen, don’t you have a girlfriend back in New York? She must hate it when you take off like this.”

“No girlfriend. Not at the moment. What about you? You said Bill was not a boyfriend.”

“Nope. Haven’t had one of those in years, and I don’t want one. Boys are just too … too everything. Personally, I find females a lot easier to take. Which is why I’m a total lesbian.”

“Get outta here,” Owen said. “You are not.”

“How the hell would you know?” A sudden deep furrow between her eyebrows hinted at an as yet unexpressed temper.

“Because there’s nothing about you that says lesbian. Everything about you says guys, guys, guys.”

“Oh, really. Here you are driving across country in a trailer with an old man who’s not your father, you want to be onstage, and you’ve got no girlfriend. Do you ever have just the tiniest suspicion that you might be gay?”

“No, actually, I don’t.”

“Uh-huh. And tell me how exactly it is you know you’re not gay?”

“Very simple.” Owen sat up straight and looked out at the highway. He cleared his throat, thinking how best to put this. Finally he said, “I know I’m not gay, Sabrina, and I’ll tell you exactly why: if you were to disappear right now, this instant-if I was to never see you again for the rest of my life, never hear from you, never again have any contact with you whatsoever-no matter how many girls-women-I might meet and be friends with over the years, no matter how pretty they might be, how smart or how sexy, I will never, ever forget how you look in that red tank top right now.”

Sabrina looked down and shook her head slowly from side to side, but Owen could see the dimple of a smile in her cheek.

“I’m not exaggerating, Sabrina. You and your red tank top are in my head for all eternity.”

“And that’s how you know you’re not gay.”

“That’s how I know I’m not gay.”

“Well,” Sabrina said, “despite how I may or may not look to you, I personally find women a whole lot more attractive than men. Men are such lunks, so completely insensitive. All they want to do is drink beer and watch sports. And let me tell you, despite what the movies might have you believe, they are perfectly terrible in bed.”

“And how’d old Preacher Bill take the lesbian news? Bible-thumpers aren’t usually too forgiving when it comes to loving your gay neighbour.”

“I never discussed my sexual preferences with Bill.”

“Good choice. Not worth getting stoned to death.”

“The reason I didn’t tell him was because he was so obsessed with me, and obsession just gets worse the more obstacles you put in the way-or didn’t you ever notice that?”

“I have to tell you the honest truth,” he said.

“What’s the honest truth, Owen?”

“I’ve always had a real soft spot for lesbians.”

“Yes, sir,” Sabrina said. “I bet you have.”

Bill Bullard stood in the dining room of his compact little bungalow and read the note for the fourteenth time.Dear Bill,I’m sorry to leave you like this, especially with such a nasty bump on your head, but it’s time for me to go. You’ve been kind, but you’re just too nuts about me, too nuts in general, and too fond of hitting people.Please don’t try to find me. Let’s just remember the good times, okay?I wish you nothing but the best,Sabrina

Bill set the note down on the dining room table. He was a security man, for Pete’s sake, he carried a gun, he was good at hitting people, he used to be a cop. In short, he wasn’t supposed to cry. But he wanted to, he wanted to bawl like a baby. He rubbed a hand over his scalp and felt the gauze taped around his skull. In the mirror he didn’t look as bad as he felt. The bandage sat at an almost jaunty angle, and it made his eyes look bigger and more sensitive. Noble even. The total effect was kind of war veteran, though he had never been in the armed forces.

Feeling dizzy, he went over to his blue leather couch and lay down, the TV remote digging into his back until he pulled it out and tossed it onto a matching blue leather armchair. His head throbbed and a wave of nausea travelled up to his throat; the room, blue and white as a china plate, spun around him until the white bits stretched and thinned into cirrus. Lying on his back provided no comfort. He turned, ever so slowly, onto his side and curled up with his hands pressed between his knees like a child.

That reminded him to pray. He hoped that Jesus would forgive his not getting onto his knees in his current state. He wanted to avoid the likely blasphemy of vomiting in mid-prayer.

“Oh, Jesus, who suffered for my sins and the sins of mankind and who bought with your blood our everlasting redemption and salvation, I beg you, please bring Sabrina back unto me. Please bring her back, and I will do anything, anything at all, you may see fit to demand of your lowliest, most miserable servant.”

Servant.

He was so tired of being a servant. Fifteen years a cop, five of those a detective with the LVPD, and he was still a servant. He’d been working for Baxter Secure Solutions for four years now, making hardly more than half what he had earned as a detective. Between alimony and child support for kids he got to see twice a year, his financial future filled him with dread.

His plan had been to stay a cop for twenty years, then take his pension and open a private business-possibly as a PI, possibly in security-and hire a bunch of guys to do the actual dirty work. But the chief and the mayor had apparently had different plans for him. They didn’t like his methods, even though his methods got results-great results, in fact.

There is an essential truth about working Robbery: you can’t be a nice guy. Nice guyism is a definite no-no. You work Robbery, you’re trucking with scum from daybreak to nightfall. Yes, there are victims to deal with, and yes, they are upset, but once you’ve extracted descriptions of the stolen items and ruled out insurance fraud, an investigator doesn’t have a lot to do with the victims. In Homicide you have to hold hands, you have to walk on eggs, you have to be half social worker. Not in Robbery.

Bill Bullard modelled his detective work after the foreign policy of the presidents he loved, Reagan, Bush I and the much-misunderstood, much-maligned George Bush II. You are merciless with your enemies, generous to your allies, and if you have to befriend a bad guy to get a worse guy, you do it. And so he had developed a stable of very dependable, very helpful hard cases as his CIs. You didn’t want to have dinner with them, you didn’t necessarily want them in your home, but you did want them on your side when it came to catching bigger fish. That entailed ignoring a lot of crimes not directly relevant to your investigation. You don’t nail the guy for what you have on him-you get him to give you information on other, badder asses, guys on whom you had nothing, nada, zip.

Thus it was that Bill had cultivated certain relationships that in the cold light of civilian life looked pretty questionable. In the course of trying to bring down Sammy Gibbons-an evil bastard who had been running a team of kids who robbed patrons of ATMs-he had relied on one Artie Doyle, known as Conan, who had a history of rape, robbery and aggravated assault. When it came out in court that he had let Conan get away with numerous frightening activities in order to bring down Gibbons, not only did the case against Gibbons go up in smoke, but Bill lost his job.

Five years later he still couldn’t believe it. Conan was not that bad an actor, not compared to Gibbons, but this is the justice system we are stuck with-a system that sees fit to dispense with the services of its finest investigators.

Oh, the blackness of the pit into which he tumbled after that! Looking back, it was amazing to Bill that he survived it. Then his wife had left him-for weeks he had stayed in his house with the shades pulled, hardly getting out of bed, barely able to eat. No one came knocking on his door to see if he was all right, and several guys from work wouldn’t even return his calls.

If daytime television had been any better, he might still be lying in bed to this day, but finally Oprah and Dr. Phil just drove him out of the house. He began to look for things to do, physical things, like painting his porch and repairing the picket fence that ran around the perimeter of his property.

But the fence was hardly worth painting, the way it kept tilting closer and closer to the ground. The gate was totally unusable and had to remain open at all times as an additional prop. So he set about repairing the thing-a big mistake, since he’d never worked on a fence before and was unprepared for certain difficulties. Just removing the old fence posts proved a formidable task, involving the digging of holes even bigger than the concrete base of the posts. Then you had to haul them out of there.

The result was he had to dig all new postholes, and that proved all but impossible, the desert soil was so rocky. One day he was toiling away at this in ninety-degree heat, blinded by sweat and rage, when a cheerful voice said from behind, “Looks like you’ve got kind of a tough job there.”

Bill rubbed the sweat from his eyes and looked at the bleary image before him: a diminutive man in a short-sleeved shirt and necktie wearing the kind of glasses that had gone out of style sometime in the sixties.

“Ronnie Deist,” he said, pointing to the east. “I live half a block up.”

Bill introduced himself, leaning on his posthole digger.

“I could help you with that. I used to be a contractor and I still have the tools.”

“Oh, yeah? And how much would that cost?”

“Nothing,” Deist said. “I’m a neighbour. I’d be happy to help.”

“Well, if you know how to dig a posthole and set a fence, I could sure use you.”

First Deist told him where to rent a gas-powered posthole digger. Bill hadn’t even realized such things existed. When he got back from the rental place, Deist had returned dressed in serious contractor’s clothes and with a pickup full of tools. They spent the rest of that morning pulling out the old posts using the truck, and then Deist produced a picnic hamper packed with sandwiches and lemonade.

“Man, you come prepared, don’t you?” Bill said.

“Oh, that’s my wife. She’s one of those people who always makes sure other people eat. I’d probably forget lunch myself, or grab a McDonald’s or something. I’m not as smart as she is.”

Bill found he simultaneously really liked Deist and didn’t trust him. He was the most cheerfully self-denigrating person he had ever met. Also the most relentlessly happy. Deist whistled, he told dumb jokes, he commented on anything that passed by, always in a positive way. As they sat in the shade eating turkey sandwiches, he praised Bill’s choice of house and location, admired Bill’s strength in how he handled the posts. You couldn’t get him to say a bad word about anybody-the Congress, the mayor, you name it, he had a kind word for them all.

The mayor had just been convicted of influence peddling, and all Deist said was, “I’ve done things I’ve been ashamed of. I’m sure the mayor has done lots of good things, and he’ll find ways to do more.”

By the end of the afternoon the fence was fixed.

“Are you sure I can’t pay you something?” Bill said. “I’ve taken your whole day, and I now have a good-looking fence, thanks to you.”

“You don’t owe me a thing,” Deist said. He mopped at his brow delicately, and wiped sweat from his glasses. “I enjoyed working with you.”

“But why’d you do it?”

Deist shrugged. “It was quite selfish, actually. I knew it would be good for me.”

“I gotta say, you strike me as about the happiest guy I ever met, short of a retard or two.”

“I’ll try to take that as a compliment.”

“How do you do it? Are you on tranks or something?”

“No, no. It’s Jesus who makes me happy. Some years ago I put my life in the care of the Lord, and nothing but good has flowed to me from that decision.”

“You’re kidding. You’re born again?”

“I don’t use that expression myself-it has political overtones I’d rather not be associated with. But I am a Christian, yes. I believe that Jesus Christ was God made man, and I should model my life in all ways possible after him.”

“I don’t recall any fence-fixing in the Bible.”

“Jesus was kind. I try to be kind. But I didn’t come here to convert you, I just couldn’t stand to see a man wrestle with a fence post all alone on such a hot day.” Deist grinned. He had a sizable gap between his front teeth. “And now I better skedaddle or my wife will have my hide.”

Bill wiped his hand on his pants and put it out to shake. “Ronnie, I can’t thank you enough.”

“You’re welcome. I enjoyed it.”

“You’re weird, you know that, right?”

Deist smiled, flashing that gap again. “My wife says the same thing.” He climbed into his truck and backed out onto the street.

“Hey, Ronnie,” Bill called out. “Which church you go to?”

And that was how he’d turned his life around. He attended the local Baptist church that weekend, had himself dunked a couple of weeks later, and he had never wavered in his faith since. It didn’t take him long to realize that most born-again Christians were not as cheerful as Ronnie Deist. But they were solid people, they had a fallback position, they had a bedrock belief in God’s wisdom that could not be shaken, and once Bill introduced that belief into his own life, that life began to improve.

He got the job with Baxter Secure Solutions, he started taking night courses in computer security and forensics, and the Bible became his constant solace. Now that he knew there was a purpose to every little bit of suffering he had to go through, it became easier to endure. Being fired, being alone, well, God wanted him that way, obviously. Being fired was what had led him to God in the first place, and being alone was what left room in his heart for God to take up residence there.

And then He had brought him Sabrina. All right, it was not a conventional romance. A wedding date had never looked in the least likely. And physical comforts? Well, God didn’t want you to be plucking that particular fruit unless you were married, so clearly right now he wanted Bill Bullard celibate for reasons that might or might not become clear in time.

But poor Sabrina. That girl was so lost. She’d had such disadvantages. Raised by a criminal, for one-hard to imagine a bigger handicap than that. How could you develop a moral code when your old man was a professional thief?

They had met at work. Bill was covering the day shift at the Flamingo, and he’d caught her coming out of a twelfth-floor corner suite in a maid’s outfit. It was only a matter of luck, really. He’d been up on the floor because a female guest was complaining that one of her many suitcases had been stolen. It had taken Bill all of about five minutes to determine the real story. She had complained the previous day about elevator noise in her tenth-floor room, so they’d moved her. Somehow they missed a suitcase that had been tucked in the back of her closet, and it had remained behind in the other room.

As Bill was coming out of her room, he saw this very attractive maid emerging from the suite at the end of the hall. Bill happened to know that the twelfth floor had already been cleaned, so he went to ask her a thing or two.

“Sorry,” she’d said. “I’m new here.”

He’d then asked for her hotel ID, which was clipped to her belt. It turned out to belong to someone else entirely. The only thing she had in common with the photo was dark hair. He cuffed her right there in the hall while he looked through her maid’s cart.

“Well, if that don’t beat all,” he’d said, pulling two purses out of the cart. “You always wheel cash and valuables around in a cleaning trolley?”

“I have no idea how that stuff got in there,” she said.

He took her down in the freight elevator to the security office, sending his junior to go work the lobby. The normal routine was to get a name and take a photograph, and then call the police to send a car. A security man was essentially just a witness. She had told him her name-phony as it turned out-and he had taken the picture. He had even had his hand on the phone, ready to dial.

Then she said, “Please don’t call the cops.” Normally, of course, he would have ignored such a request. He had arrested more than a few women in his time on the force, most of whom broke down in tears right away, and he had always found it easy to ignore. Some had hinted at the possibility of sexual favours in exchange for freedom, and he’d ignored that too. He booked them all. But that was before Jesus had come into his life.

Sabrina hadn’t burst into tears. She had just explained, pretty accurately, how things would go if she was arraigned on a break-and-enter charge: the bail, the trial, the last-minute guilty plea and-since this was a first offence-the suspended sentence. “I just don’t see it doing me or the owners of that property any good, do you?”

“And where in creation did you get the idea that I’m here to do you good, young lady?”

“I don’t know. Something in your face, I guess. Something tells me there’s more to you than your job.”

He knew, despite the evident sincerity in those green eyes, that this girl was fast-talking him, but somehow it didn’t matter. Las Vegas was full of beautiful women, and sex was readily available; it wasn’t that. Something about Sabrina got to him in a way that was new, and for the first time he sensed what Ronnie Deist called “the touch of the Lord’s guiding hand.” Bill Bullard was being called off the bench to help with the Lord’s game plan.

“If I were to let you go, there would be certain conditions,” he had said, amazed at himself even as the words left his lips.

“Such as?”

“Well, you’d have to come to church with me for one.”

“Are you serious?”

“And not just once. You’d have to come once a week for a couple of months.”

“That’s possible. I’m not saying I’ll do it yet. What else?”

“You’d have to let me help you.”

“What, you’re a priest now? A social worker?”

“No, I’m just a man who sees a person in trouble. You tell me you got no money and your landlord’s kicking you out end of the month. You’d have to let me help you find a job and a place to stay.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “But if you think I’m going to sleep with you, you can dial the cops right now.”

So Bill set about trying to bring Jesus into Sabrina’s life. He put his all into behaving the way Ronnie Deist would have-cheerful, helpful, relentlessly correct-a gentleman from morning till night, protective of the weaker vessel. And oh, what a vessel: that smile, those eyes, that obviously divinely crafted shape. Sabrina was so pretty she made his knees wobble. But here she was in Las Vegas, where she’d had some idea of becoming a croupier. Her daddy’s rap sheet hadn’t helped her there. Then she’d been working as a waitress at Bistro Monty, and the manager had harassed her so much she’d had to quit.

First thing Bill did was contact Luigi Monticello, the eponymous owner of Luigi’s. When he was still on the force, Bill had gotten a crooked health inspector off Luigi’s back, and the old spaghetti slinger had never forgotten it. Sabrina aced her tryout shift, and was soon working a couple of nights a week. Score one for the Lord.

On the apartment front, he had not been so lucky. He had gone over the papers and the Internet ads relentlessly, but the studio apartments they looked at were either uninhabitable or too expensive for her ever to save any money. After three weeks he’d suggested she move in with him. Strictly platonic, he’d promised, and he’d meant it. Lord knows he’d meant it.

Sabrina kept her part of the bargain by going to church with him every Sunday. Although she was always polite about it, it was obviously not “taking.” He’d ask what she thought about the sermon and she’d just smile and shake her head. “Not for me,” she’d say. “Sorry, Bill. Not for me.”

When she finally had to move out of her apartment, she did agree to come and stay with him. “But let’s get this straight,” she had said. “The minute you put a hand on me, or come into my room, or make the least sexual suggestion, I am out of there, is that understood?”

“I have no problem with that,” Bill said. “You see, Sabrina, my faith has taught me to be grateful for all I have, and you’d just be doing me a favour in letting me share some of that happiness. No cost to you whatsoever. Except the church. The church deal stays the same.”

When she first moved in, she’d stayed in her room all the time. He had to coax her out of there like a stray, talk her into watching a little TV or sitting in the living room over a beer.

Now and again he would indulge in some Bible talk, trying to open her up to the idea that God is not just for Sundays. When the moment seemed apt, he would call up a telling story from the Old or New Testament. Sometimes she listened, nodding thoughtfully. Often she laughed.

“You’re such a wacko, Bill,” she’d say. “You know that, don’t you? You’re a religious wacko.”

“If by that you mean the life and death of Jesus Christ informs my day from morning to night, then yes, I hope I am a religious wacko.”

“See, only a wacko would say something like that.”

Bill remembered the spark in her eye when she’d said that, the rueful way she shook her head, black hair swinging, and it pricked his heart. It was the good things that hurt the most-her smile, her laugh. His life was a gutted hulk without them, even if Jesus was still around.

“The Lord must want something of me,” Bill told himself, sitting up on the couch. “He’s sending me this pain for a reason. He wants me to learn something. He’s telling me it’s not over. There’s more in this particular lesson plan for Bill Bullard.”

From a cluttered desk drawer he pulled out a portable hard drive, plugged it into his computer, and booted up. Bill did not pride himself on a great many things, Lord knew he had his limitations, but he did have a certain gift of foresight. Sabrina was not always gently amused by his efforts to protect-and, all right, correct-her, and this led to arguments and shouting and even a swat or two. And one night, after things had reached a particularly unpleasant pitch and he was certain that Sabrina was planning to catch the next flight out, he had attached a FireWire to her PowerBook and sucked out a copy of her entire hard drive.

He opened it now on his own computer and warmed up by taking a scroll through her music files, recognizing almost none of the so-called artists listed there. Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, that was about it. What the hell was Arcade Fire? Was that a band? A movie? Bjork? Wolf Parade? How could you listen to people with names like that?

Her photos were more interesting, although ultimately disappointing. A more than passing familiarity with online porn had given Bill the notion that young women liked nothing better than to photograph each other masturbating. Sabrina had apparently resisted the temptation. Even when they were blurred and obviously drunk, her friends remained completely clothed. There were lots of pictures of someone called Aunt Rachel-in fact, she had her own folder. And she occurred a lot in another file called Dallas 2007.

Sabrina’s email was more revealing. Between its Sent file and its address book, it contained everything a man on a mission could want.

At Wickenburg, the highway became 60/89, and Max took the wheel. His nap had left him grumpy and uncommunicative, and the three of them travelled in silence. Owen blasted aliens on his laptop for a while, and read some material he had downloaded about Tucson, but he had trouble concentrating-not because of Sabrina this time. He kept seeing Pookie in his mind’s eye, bald head and goofy smile. Why would anyone want to hurt Pookie?

It was late when they arrived in Tucson, and they had trouble finding the trailer park. As soon as they were parked, they couldn’t wait to escape the Rocket, so they unhitched the car and went into town.

“Ugh,” Max kept saying as they passed miles of concrete buildings on eight-lane streets.

They had a late dinner at a Mexican joint called the Poca Cosa, but even a couple of margaritas failed to cheer Max up. He asked Sabrina what her plans were for the next day.

“I guess I’m not sure,” she said.

“You can still stay with us if you don’t have anywhere to go,” Owen said. “I mean, if you want to come along to El Paso and see your dad …”

Sabrina smiled, shook her head. “That’s okay. You two have been great, but I can look after myself.”

Now it was Owen’s turn to be depressed.

When they got back to the trailer, Max went straight to bed. Owen made popcorn, and Sabrina sat beside him on the couch to watch an old Clint Eastwood western. She fell asleep about halfway through, and Owen-he didn’t exactly stare-but he observed her out of the corner of his eye. She was out like a little kid.

She woke immediately when he switched off the TV.

“Why’d you turn it off?”

“You weren’t watching, and I’ve seen it too often.”

She stretched, revealing a good deal of midriff. “What’s Max so upset about? It’s not because of me, is it?”

“Max is just moody.”

“But he seems different from yesterday. Did something happen in Vegas?”

“We had some bad news. Family news. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I thought all your relatives were in England.”

“I really can’t talk about it.”

“Okay.”

She reached out and touched his cheek, which made him wince.

“You have a nasty bruise,” she said.

“Yeah. Preacher Bill has a wicked jab.”

Sabrina shifted on the couch and planted a kiss, feather-light, on his cheek. “You’ve been really good to me.”

He turned his face slightly, and this time she kissed him on the mouth. She gave it just a second, then sat back.

“It’s too bad you’re not a girl,” she said. “I’d probably rip your pants right off.”

“How about if I put on one of your dresses? Would that help?”

“I don’t own any dresses. And I don’t ever want to see you in one, either. Even though you are pretty cute.”

“Yeah?”

“Now he’s digging for compliments. That’s it, I’m going to crash.”

Owen lay on the couch staring at the blank television while she got ready for bed. He tried not to listen for the sound of her clothes coming off.

Max woke up in a better mood and was pom-poming and tiddle-tiddle-tiddling under his breath as he fussed around the Rocket’s galley. He sprinkled raisins into the oatmeal, whipping the porridge around the pot as if he were baking a cake. Owen always sat with his back to this, because it gave him a terrible urge to yank the pot from Max’s hand and bonk him over the head with it. Sabrina sat sleepy-eyed over her coffee, not a morning person, apparently.

“We have some time to play tourist today,” Max said. “I trust our navigator has made plans?”

“There’s a couple of options I’m considering.”

He was looking at Sabrina across the table. Even with her eyes all puffy and her hair messed up, she looked great. Especially with her eyes all puffy and her hair messed up. Owen began to understand an advantage of marriage: getting to know a person backstage, so to speak.

Max set bowls of oatmeal before them. “Where are we going, then, my prince?”

“I have the perfect spot for our criminal history theme.”

Owen drove them all to Tombstone, where they walked the wooden sidewalks among locals dressed up in period costumes. They saw a horse-drawn hearse once owned by Wyatt Earp, and in the window of the Tombstone Epitaph a real-estate ad informed them that “the mild year-round climate and low humidity make Tombstone an attractive place for retirement.”

“Hey, Max. Maybe you could retire here.”

“Please do not mention that word to me again. I have no wish to be buried in Boot Hill.”

They watched an animatronic re-enactment of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, jerky robots playing Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

“Appalling wigs,” Max said. “I don’t see why you go to the trouble and expense of building a robot and then ruin it by making the wig out of horsehair.”

Afterwards they sat in the shade at an outdoor cafe and had sandwiches and lemonade. Beyond the storefronts, the Dragoon and Whetstone mountains loomed. A quiet descended on the three of them, and Owen knew that Max was worrying about Pookie and what it might mean for the rest of the trip.

When they got back to Tucson, Sabrina insisted on moving to a hotel. “Don’t worry,” she said, seeing their reaction, “I’ve managed to save a little bit, thanks to Bill, so I’ll be okay.” She went over to Max and thanked him for everything.

Max rose to his feet with much huffing and exclamation to receive a hug. “Sweet Lady,” he said, “I hope we shall meet again. When I visit your sainted father in Texas, I hope to hear from him that you have fulfilled your filial duty.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sabrina said, but her smile was faint.

Owen drove her to the Delta. He wrote out his cellphone number and handed it to her as the doorman took her suitcase.

“Um, listen,” he said. “I don’t know how you feel, but I’d really like to see you again.”

“You mean in New York?” Sabrina looked up at the tower of the hotel as if consulting it. “Owen, I’ve pretty much decided to leave crime and criminals in the past.”

“I told you,” Owen said, “this is our last road trip. Max is going to retire, and I’m going to be at school full-time.”

“Let me think about it, okay?”

“You have my number. Just think ‘yes,’ okay? Yes is good.”