Pistol Poets

twenty-five

Deke Stubbs knocked on Timothy Lancaster’s door. He smelled like a six-pack of Busch. He swallowed a belch.

Lancaster opened the door a crack, eyed the detective. Lancaster looked a little annoyed and also worried. A nervous bookworm type, custom-made to cave under pressure. Stubbs liked it when they were worried. He could lean on them good and stiff and get them to talk. He hadn’t had to do that with Annie Walsh’s mousy roommate, but he wouldn’t mind with this guy.

They stared at each other a long second.

Finally Lancaster said, “Yes?” The word slipped meekly through the crack in the door like an apology.

“Lancaster?”

Another long pause from the kid. “Yes.”

“Can I ask you some questions?”

The pause was really long this time. “About what?”

“About Annie Walsh,” Stubbs said. “And about drugs.” Stubbs threw the part in about drugs at the last second. Sure. Shake the kid up. He looked nervous already, so why not push the envelope?

The kid paled. “Are you the police?”

“Drug Enforcement Administration.” Stubbs flipped his wallet open and closed again at light-speed before shoving it back into his jacket. “I think you better let me in.”

Lancaster stepped back, eyes steady on Stubbs.

Stubbs closed the door behind him, looked around the apartment. The kid had about a thousand books stacked along the walls. He read the title of one at eye level, “The Spanish Tragedy.”

Lancaster didn’t say anything.

“We had a Spanish tragedy ourselves a few months ago. Buncha wetbacks coming across near Juarez, and we knew some of them were mules, carting a wad of smack across the river. So we figured what the heck, shoot ’em all and let God sort ’em out.” Stubbs mimed sighting a rifle. “We picked ’em off as they hit the American side. That’s how we handle drug dealers in the DEA.”

Lancaster looked like he was about to puke or faint.

“Listen, kid. I think you know why I’m here. I need you to talk and I need you to talk right now and real loud about what you know.”

“About what?”

“Everything. All of it.” This wasn’t the approach Stubbs had in mind when he came to talk to Lancaster, but it was obvious the kid was right on the edge. If Stubbs could just nudge him over, he might spill his guts big-time. There was some shit going on here and it was all tangled together, drugs and Annie Walsh and this kid Lancaster. A lot of dumb shits thought detective work was all fingerprints and looking at cigar ash under a magnifying glass like Sherlock fucking Holmes. Bullshit. It was asking the right questions and squeezing out useful answers.

Lancaster started to shrug and talk and stammer all at the same time.

“Hey, take it easy,” Stubbs said. “I’m here to save your ass if you cooperate. You got any beer?”

Lancaster raised an eyebrow. “Uh… I have a Grolsch in the refrigerator.”

“And that’s beer?”

Lancaster nodded.

“Bring it.”

Lancaster went to the kitchen, came back with a big green bottle, and handed it to Stubbs. His hands shook.

Stubbs tried to open the bottle. But the cap wouldn’t twist.

“Sorry,” Lancaster said. He went to the kitchen again and came back with a church key. He popped open the beer for Stubbs.

Stubbs drank. “This some foreign shit?”

“From Denmark.”

Stubbs took another slug. “Not bad.”

“I haven’t seen Annie Walsh in weeks,” Lancaster said.

Good. The kid was ready to talk. The suspense was eating him alive.

“To hell with Walsh, kid,” Stubbs said. “Talk to me about the drugs.”

“I really don’t know anything about that.” Lancaster’s voice was weaker than dishwater. He wouldn’t meet Stubbs’s eyes.

“Talk, kid.”

“I–I don’t know anything.”

“Talk, you little shit. I’ll put you in jail and you’ll get butt-raped by a nigger the size of Mike Tyson.”

“I don’t know-”

“Talk!”

“Please, I-”

“You little prick.” Stubbs shook the beer bottle at him. It foamed, dripped on the carpet. “I’ll shove this bottle up your ass and break it off. You don’t fuck with the Drug Enforcement Agency.” He put his nose an inch from Lancaster’s, yelled, beer spit flying.

Lancaster backed up, eyes wide. Terror.

“Come back here.” Stubbs grabbed Lancaster’s arm at the elbow, dug into a pressure point with his thumb.

Lancaster winced, tried to twist away. Stubbs held him one-handed.

The detective finished the beer, tossed the bottle onto the floor. It rolled up against a stack of books. “This way.” Stubbs pulled Lancaster into the kitchen.

“Hey.”

“Shut up.”

Stubbs shoved the kid up against the kitchen cabinets. “Stay put.”

Lancaster obeyed.

The kitchen was dim and yellow, paint chipping on the cabinets. The linoleum needed a good scrub.

Stubbs opened the refrigerator, took out another Grolsch, opened it. He smacked his lips, stood examining Lancaster’s open refrigerator. “Holy shit, kid. How do you live?” There were two more beers, a jar of pickle brine, a soy sauce packet, and a defeated length of sagging celery.

He closed the refrigerator again, gulped the beer as he opened random kitchen cabinets.

“Don’t you need a warrant or something?” Lancaster asked.

Stubbs tapped his chest with a fat finger. Hard. “You a lawyer, kid?”

“What department did you say you were with?”

“Drug Enforcement Agency, so don’t yank me off, okay?”

Lancaster said, “When you first came in you said you were with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Not Agency.”

Stubbs froze. “What?”

“I think you’d better go,” Lancaster said. He was wary, but the tables were slowly turning. “Or maybe I should call the local authorities, and we could all discuss this together.” Lancaster was testing the waters. He had a piece of something and was pushing it now.

“Now hold on, kid. Wait a minute.” Stubbs was losing control of the situation, scrambling to get the upper hand again was making it worse. “Dammit, I’m with the Drug Enforcement- The DEA goddammit!”

Lancaster lifted the phone off the hook. It was an old rotary dial model on the kitchen wall. “Let’s get a few deputies over here.”

“Kid, don’t-”

“I’m sure impersonating an officer of the law is some kind of serious offense,” Lancaster said. He had a full smug going. He didn’t believe in Stubbs anymore.

“Kid, I swear, you’re making a mistake.”

Lancaster dialed.

Stubbs grabbed the phone with two meaty hands and ripped it off the wall. Dropped it on the floor and kicked it. Lancaster was already running. He pushed past Stubbs, through the living room, making for the front door.

Stubbs ran after him, dove at the kid’s legs, and tangled him up. Both on the floor. Lancaster tried to kick Stubbs away, the heel of his shoe digging sharply into the top of Stubbs’s head. Stubbs yanked his legs, climbed on top of them so he couldn’t kick, punched Lancaster hard once in the gut.

Lancaster whuffed air. His eyes bulged.

Stubbs shifted up, sat on Lancaster’s chest. Stubbs was huffing hard at the sudden exertion. Slick beer sweat under his arms and on his forehead. He felt the distant tug of nausea.

“Drugs,” Stubbs barked.

“It wasn’t me. I–It was Ellis.” Lancaster gulped air. Tears streaming from the sides of his eyes.

Stubbs slapped him loud across the face. “Who the fuck’s Ellis?”

“Sherman Ellis. A student in my class with Professor Morgan. He had a whole bag of cocaine. I only even looked at it once.”

A whole bag of coke? How much? Stubbs wondered.

“Please, I can’t breathe.” Lancaster writhed beneath Stubbs’s mass.

Stubbs took Lancaster’s throat in his hands. “You’ll get worse than that. How much coke? Did the Ellis kid say?”

“Like a hundred thousand bucks’ worth. Maybe more. I don’t know. He was going to dump it off for twenty and give me and Wayne a thousand just to go with him.”

“Wayne?”

“Another student.”

A hundred thousand in coke. Stubbs knew some contacts in OK City. He could maybe unload the stuff for fifty or sixty easy. He felt his hands close on Lancaster’s throat. Stubbs’s own breath came hot with beer stink. His heart hammered in his head.

Lancaster gagged, pulled at Stubbs’s thick fingers.

Stubbs could make a lot more on the coke than he could tracking down Annie for the Walshes. This was just the kind of opportunity he always kept an eye peeled for. His hands tightened again on Lancaster.

But this kid. This damn-smart-ass, know-it-all kid. He couldn’t let him call the cops. They’d pull his license and slap a charge on him for sure. He couldn’t let the kid talk. No way.

Lancaster bucked, scratched at Stubbs’s hands, turned blue, mouth working noiselessly.

Always some smart-ass college punk making life hard for Stubbs.

But who had the drugs? This Ellis kid? Annie’s journal had mentioned something about a drug connection. He’d ask Lancaster. He’d make the kid talk. He needed more information.

“Kid?”

But Timothy Lancaster lay stone-still, eyes open to the dull, cracked ceiling.

Stubbs drove fast, hands shaking and knuckle white on the steering wheel. Lancaster’s last bottle of Grolsch nestled cold between his legs. He paged through Annie Walsh’s journal on the seat next to him. He flipped to the last entry, read it.

Tonight I see Professor Morgan.

Not much help, but it was the last entry. This Morgan guy might’ve been the last person to see her. He flipped back through the journal. A car honked loud. Stubbs had slipped over into the other lane. He jerked the wheel back, kept thumbing in the journal.

He was breathing heavy, still seeing Lancaster’s face. Damn, snotty, know-it-all kid. He gulped beer. Wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The window was down, cold air blowing, but Stubbs felt hot. Around his neck. His ears. Sweat.

Jay Morgan.

Okay, Professor Egghead. Let’s see what you have for old Deke.

twenty-six

Morgan tried to get Ellis on the phone, but the kid was nowhere, hadn’t shown for class. The dean would probably go ape-shit. Whittaker wanted Ellis.

Okay, screw it. He’d try calling again later, perhaps call some of Ellis’s other professors. Maybe they knew where he was keeping himself. In the meantime, Morgan could get some work done.

He spread a blank sheet of lined paper on his desk, stared at it. Today he would write one good poem. Only one. He looked at the paper. It was still blank. He’d cleared his day, no tutoring, no grading. Nothing. Only the poem.

He got up, went into the kitchen, and put on a pot of coffee. He watched it brew. He looked over his shoulder at the relentlessly blank sheet of paper on his desk.

Poetry was hard.

He watched the pot fill, then poured a mug, walked slowly back to his desk, sipping. He eased back into the chair. Morgan had not one idea in his empty head, not even the seed of an idea rattling in his hollow, freshly swept cranium.

He thought fleetingly about smoking the cigar for the old man. The idea danced just over the horizon of his imagination.

He picked up his pen. He made the point of his pen touch the paper. It left a black dot. Soon he’d make the pen move. It would be the start of a word. He felt it coming, the word forming. Potential energy built in his thumb and forefinger. Here came the first word. The poem was beginning.

The phone rang.

“Cocksuckers!”

Morgan threw down the pen, grabbed the phone. “What?”

“Hey now, Morgan. Get up on the wrong side of the bed?”

“I was working, Reams.”

“Listen, how about you come over this afternoon and help me with a project? I’m building a gazebo. Just got back from Sears with quite an impressive assortment of tools. The lumber’s piled high as an elephant’s eye.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“How hard can it be?” Reams said. “Hammer nails, saw wood, nothing to it.”

“I told you I was working.”

“So you did. What on?”

“Trying to write a poem.”

“Is that all? Dash it out quick, then head over to my place. The sun’s out and the beer is in the cooler. Be a good change of pace. Work with your hands for a change.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ll love it,” Reams said. “We’ll let our pants sag low until our butt cracks are showing. Sweat and everything like real handymen.”

Morgan sighed. “I appreciate the call, Reams, but really I need to get in some writing.”

“Well, okay then.” A pout in Reams’s voice. “Maybe next time.” He hung up.

Morgan looked at his piece of paper. There was a jagged ink mark where his hand had jerked at the sound of the telephone. He crumpled the paper and tossed it over his shoulder. He spread a fresh sheet. This time he got a word out. The. He looked at it, shook his head, crossed it out, and replaced it with A. He crossed that out and wrote The again.

Good. This was progress. He began writing in earnest. Sweat broke out across his forehead. It came properly now, a line or two at a time. He crossed out a line, replaced it, switched lines around.

Finally Morgan had four good lines. The first stanza. He felt exhausted. He looked at the clock. Eighty-two minutes. Not bad. His coffee had cooled. He took his mug into the kitchen, dumped it into the sink, and poured a fresh cup.

Back at his desk.

The next stanza was crucial. He needed a good transition. He wanted the poem to make a turn in thought, but it needed to be subtle. His pen stalled again. He should never have gotten up for coffee. His rhythm had broken and he’d lost momentum. He frowned at the paper, tried to conjure the mood again.

A knock at the door.

“Goddammit!”

He looked out the front door’s peephole. Ginny Conrad stood on his porch. She’d done something with her hair. It was pulled back, highlighted with garish burgundy streaks. She wore only a light jacket. Reams was right. It was a nice day, sun brilliant in the wide sky. Perhaps winter was fading at last.

She knocked again, and he opened the door.

“I was writing,” Morgan told her. He wanted to preempt any ideas she might have about shucking her clothes and crawling into his bed.

She seemed not to hear, pushing her way in. “I thought we could have lunch.”

“Lunch.” Morgan tasted the word, rolled it around on his tongue. His concentration had broken anyway, and a bite would be good.

They ate at the same pizza joint Morgan had gone to with Annette Grayson. This time the meal was more relaxed. He wasn’t on the make. No pressure. They talked of unimportant things and laughed.

Once, a silence between them stretched, and Ginny leaned slightly across the table and asked, “Do you wonder what it might be like if I were a little older and you were a little younger?”

“No, not really,” Morgan said.

A grin tickled the corners of Ginny’s mouth. “Neither do I.”

“Good. Better this way.”

“Better what way?” Ginny asked.

“Like this,” Morgan said, but he really didn’t know what he meant.

“I guess,” Ginny said. “I don’t know what I want.”

“I don’t know either.”

“What?” Ginny asked. “You mean you don’t know what I want or you don’t know what you want?”

“I don’t know.”

And that about summed it up.

Back at the house, Ginny already had her blouse off before Morgan could decide to protest or not. He didn’t want her. He felt guilty about not writing, and he was full of pizza.

He was, however, beginning to develop some sort of friendly feeling toward her, like for a distant niece or a cat. But he didn’t want to sleep with her again, not now. It just wasn’t in him. Even when she stripped completely, running her stiff fingers down between her furry folds, he couldn’t quite imagine taking her in broad daylight after a heavy meal. It had been different during the driving rainstorm. Or maybe it was different now. Maybe everything was changing. Maybe he’d changed.

The phone rang.

She’d already slipped into his bed. “Let it ring.”

“It might be important.” He grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Jay Morgan?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“This is Nurse Benneton at County General Hospital. We have a Louis Reams here. He’s been injured, and he listed you as a contact name. Can you possibly come down and pick him up?”

“He listed me?”

“Yes, sir. Can you come down in the next twenty minutes or so?”

“But why would he list me?”

A pause. “Sir?”

“I don’t want to pick him up.”

Another pause. “He really shouldn’t drive himself.”

“How bad is he? What happened?”

“I’m afraid I can’t release patient-”

“But you called me to pick him up, right? Doesn’t that entitle me to know what happened?”

Ginny came to the bedroom doorway, holding a sheet over her but failing to cover up any of the important parts. She mouthed the words “what’s wrong?”

Morgan waved her quiet. To the nurse he said, “Never mind. I’ll be down as soon as I can.” He hung up.

Ginny asked, “What is it?”

“I have to pick up a friend from the hospital,” Morgan said. “Sorry, but I have to go.”

“Is he hurt bad?”

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Morgan said.

“I’ll wait here for you,” Ginny said.

Morgan sighed. “Sure.” He closed the door behind him.

Reams sat in the passenger seat of Morgan’s car with his left hand in the air and his head down between his knees. A thick white bandage was tightly wrapped around his middle finger. Reams breathlessly related the story.

He’d been sawing wood with a particularly wicked little saw which had neatly sliced off the top half inch of the finger. Blood had spurted, and Reams had run in circles for a bit before calling an ambulance.

Morgan said Reams could probably have wrapped the finger in a towel and driven himself to the hospital.

“Too light-headed,” Reams had explained. “I saw stars. I never believed that about seeing stars before, but I do now. I felt I was spiraling down into a long black hole, slipping right out of the daylight, swimming toward a long cottony sleep.”

It sounded like something Reams had read in a Raymond Chandler novel.

Morgan turned onto Reams’s road. “I’m taking you home. You need to stop anywhere first, get a prescription or anything?”

Reams shook a little bottle of pills in the other hand. “These will get me by for a day or two. Doctor had some samples. For pain.” Reams still had his head between his legs.

“Jesus, will you sit up?” Morgan said.

“I need to sit like this. Isn’t this what you’re supposed to do?”

“That’s for airline crashes. That’s crash position you’re in.”

Reams said, “I thought I was supposed to let the blood flow to my head, or out of my head, or something.”

“I’ll have you home in a few minutes and you can stick your head in a bucket if you want.”

“Dammit all, Morgan, have a heart why don’t you? I’ve been mortally wounded.”

“It’s just your finger.”

“I think I sliced an artery,” Reams said. “If I’d passed out before I made it to the phone, I most likely would have bled to death.”

Morgan doubted that.

“I’m feeling a little ill even now. I’ve had a shock to the system. That’s how these seemingly little injuries can sometimes be serious. They shock the system.”

“Don’t puke in my car,” Morgan said.

Morgan parked in Reams’s driveway. Sluggishly, Reams climbed out, still holding his hand over his head. It looked like he was flipping the bird to the whole neighborhood. He fished his keys out of his pocket with the other hand.

“Thanks, Morgan. I didn’t know who else to call, but I knew you said you’d be home all day.”

“Go take one of your pills,” Morgan said.

“Right.” Reams closed the car door, took two steps toward his house, and stopped. He swayed. A pause. Reams tumbled, wilted facefirst into the front lawn.

Morgan watched for a few seconds, but Reams didn’t get back up.

“Hell.” Morgan shut off the car, climbed out, and picked Reams up from the grass. “You okay?”

“Hmm? What?” Reams rubbed his head. “See, I told you. I asked the doctor for a transfusion, but he wouldn’t do it. Damn quack.”

“Uh-huh.” Morgan dragged Reams to the front door, took his keys, and unlocked it. They went in. Morgan draped Reams on the sofa.

“Thanks, Morgan. I really owe you even more now.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, really. First that craziness with Pritcher and now this. I think you ought to come down to Houston with me. I know I can put in a word with that guy I know, get you a job lined up for fall.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” Reams squirmed on the sofa, arranged it so his hand was elevated above his head. “What’s it like?”

Morgan sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair across from Reams. “What’s what like?”

“The gypsy prof gig, moving around all the time?”

Morgan thought about it. “I used to like it, or thought I did. Changing scenery all the time helped me not think about other things. But I think I’m getting tired of it. I think maybe I need some roots. It’s time to start putting my energies back into my work, you know? Hard to accomplish anything when you’re always worried about your next paycheck.”

But Reams didn’t hear. He snored lightly, middle finger over his head, blazing white to the world.

twenty-seven

While waiting for Morgan to return, Ginny Conrad went through all the professor’s cabinets, closets, and drawers. She realized, even as she was doing it, that her actions were the result of a minor, quirky character flaw. She hated to be left out of anything, hated the thought that something was going on and she wasn’t in on it.

Once, when she was eleven years old, she’d painted a Magic Marker moustache on herself and taken her father’s Dodge. She’d picked up two friends and went to see an R-rated movie in which there was rumored to be nudity. The policeman who brought her home warned her father he’d better keep an eye on her.

The incident had only strengthened her resolve to get away with things. She made up her own rules as she went along, and damn the consequences.

Screwing Professor Jay Morgan was a thrill. He was older (a teacher!) and a writer. He hung out with dangerous criminals! Helping Professor Morgan stash the body of the dead girl had been one of the most exciting things she’d ever done. She’d been so horny in the peach orchard, she’d been unable to keep her hands off him.

But Morgan had been a bit of a dud since. He seemed timid, almost frightened, that he was going to be caught or that something would go wrong. Oh, the sex was halfway good, but she could get sex anywhere. And rummaging Morgan’s closets was dullsville. Pale blue Hanes boxer shorts, a half-used tube of BENGAY, and a clip-on tie from Sears were the highlights.

She thought about putting her clothes on, leaving a note for Morgan.

No, she’d wait. One more roll in the hay before cutting him loose.

Deke Stubbs screeched into the parking space in front of the convenience store. He shut off the engine, went in, hands shaking as he pulled crumpled bills from his pants pocket. He bought another six-pack of beer and a pack of cigarettes.

The girl behind the counter looked scared of him. Stubbs caught his reflection in the fish-eye mirror behind the girl. He looked distorted and evil, eyes red, skin waxen and moist. I’m a villain, thought Stubbs, like in a creepy foreign film or a Stephen King novel. Stubbs didn’t watch foreign films or read much beyond the sports page, but he knew he’d crossed some line and couldn’t get back.

On his way out to the car he ripped a phone book out of a booth. He sat in the front seat, flipped through the residential listings until he found Jay Morgan’s address.

He popped a beer, gulped half, lit a cigarette, and sucked it slowly. He let out a long gray breath.

There was nothing to do now but see this through. He nodded to himself, pleased with the grim finality of his decision. Yeah, he’d have to go all the way. The Lancaster kid wasn’t coming back, and it wasn’t like Stubbs planned to turn himself in and say he was sorry. Rage and craziness had killed the kid. Stubbs would have to get his shit together from there on out. It was all or nothing.

Tracking down the cocaine was his first priority. He’d look for Annie Walsh still, and he’d send the parents a bill of course. But following Annie’s trail might lead him to the drugs. He was way too deep into this shit not to get some kind of payoff.

Stubbs finished the cigarette, started the engine, and pointed the car toward Morgan’s house. No more kid gloves. He’d find out what Morgan knew about this the hard way or the easy way. It didn’t matter.

Stubbs was committed.

He found Morgan’s house and parked across from it on the street. He watched for ten minutes, but didn’t see anybody in the windows. He drank one more beer while he thumbed through the Hustler again.

When he finished the beer, he crushed the can and tossed it into the backseat. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out his.45 automatic. No spare clip or extra bullets. He hardly used the thing. But now it was a sign he meant business. All the way. He shoved it into his coat pocket and climbed out of the car.

The sudden cool air on his sweaty face was a shock. He woke up a little bit. Breathed deep. His chest burned with beer and too much smoking. He belched, tasted acid.

He spit and started up the short walkway to the house.

He knocked, waited. Nobody.

This might even be better if the guy wasn’t home. He could break in through the back maybe and poke around.

He knocked again. This time he heard movement. Somebody was coming to the door. One hand fell into his coat pocket, clutched the grip of the automatic. He heard locks turning.

The door opened a crack. A girl on the other side, hair tousled. Broad shoulders and a nice face. A hand holding up a bedsheet to her neck. Soft, round breasts floated underneath. They swung interestingly as the girl shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tried to get a better hold on the sheet. “Yes?” She looked through the crack at Stubbs.

“I’m looking for Morgan.”

“He’s not here. Can I take a message or something?”

“Who are you?”

A little frown from the girl, and Stubbs guessed what she might be thinking. She was young. Shouldn’t answer the door naked, honey. Not even in a sheet. Stubbs’s private-eye instinct kicked in, and he ran the possible scenarios through his brain. Maybe Morgan was married, had a little thing going with a student on the side. Anyway, she didn’t like being asked who she was.

“I’m just a friend of his,” she said. “He’s letting me stay here for a while.”

“Uh-huh.”

Stubbs pushed his way in. She didn’t know what to do, stepped aside for him. He looked around, gave the place the once-over. Not a lot of personal stuff, like maybe Morgan hadn’t lived there too long. “I need to see him. Maybe I’ll wait.”

The girl didn’t like that. “He didn’t say anything about when he might be back. Better maybe if you just left a message.”

“Where did he go?” Stubbs was still looking around the house, craned his neck to see back into the kitchen. He didn’t look at her. He bent over the coffee table, spread the magazines around and looked at the titles. “Paris Review. What’s that? From France?”

“No, it’s- Look, I don’t think you should wait,” she said. “He might not be back for a while.”

Now Stubbs turned his gaze on her, red-eyed, dark bags underneath. “Oh yeah?”

The girl realized her mistake. “I mean he might be back any minute. Just that you shouldn’t wait. In case he’s a little late.” She trembled now. She was talking herself into being scared. “But he might come through the door any minute.”

“I asked who you were.”

“Ginny.”

Stubbs stepped toward her, and she eased away from him, the sheet dragging on the floor. Stubbs stepped on it. She tugged gently, and Stubbs grinned. He breathed loudly through his mouth. Licked his lips.

“Please.” She tugged at the sheet again. Her voice was calm, but her hand shook worse where the sheet was bunched in her fist. “I’m stuck. You’re on the sheet.”

“Yeah.” Stubbs liked the soft, half-seen curves of her under the sheet. Big tits, round hips. He liked it when they were afraid.

He stepped on the sheet with his other foot. It pulled tight, and Ginny gasped, used both hands to pull back and keep herself covered. “Don’t.” She meant to shout it, but it came out plaintive. She couldn’t find breath, couldn’t raise her voice. A cold, paralyzing chill ran through her. “Don’t,” she said again, and she could only stare at him, feebly holding on to the sheet.

He moved close, grabbed the sheet in his free hand, and yanked it away. He still had the other hand in his gun pocket.

A scream rose up but caught in Ginny’s throat. She only made a sick, strangled bleating sound. She felt like lead, sank back against the wall. Stubbs crowded her, breathed his stink on her neck.

“So I think you’re ready to talk to me now, right?”

Stubbs touched her hip and she jumped.

“Yeah, you’re ready. I want to know about Annie Walsh.”

So that’s it, thought Ginny. He knows. He found out about the peach orchard. Ginny’s mouth fell open, and she sucked for air. She closed her eyes tight and shook her head. She couldn’t breathe. The leaden feeling on her chest worsened, knees turning to cold jelly.

“And the cocaine. All of it. I know all about it so tell me. Start talking.”

Stubbs slapped her on the hip, not hard, but enough to make a loud smack.

That snapped her out of it. A hoarse scream. Eyes wide. Startled, even amid the terror, at the sudden slap. She pushed past Stubbs, started to run for the door. He grabbed her hair, yanked her back. She yelled again, high-pitched and panicked.

Stubbs grabbed her by the upper arm, fingers sinking in soft flesh. He let go of the.45 in his pocket, used the hand to slap her face. Hard. Tears in her eyes. She kicked, twisted, pulled away.

Two more slaps. Bells in her ears, flashes of light drowning her vision. Ginny shook her head, and her sight came back. She was on the floor, curling into a ball.

Stubbs stood over her, straddling. “Little slut.” But Stubbs wasn’t talking to her, only muttering to himself. He tugged his belt loose, unbuttoned his pants.

Ginny shook her head. No. Please. But the words wouldn’t come. The weight was back on her chest, no breath. The horror of the world pinned her naked to the cold floor, the unreal thought that this was actually happening to her. She watched Stubbs reach for her, her tears turning him into a blurry apparition.

Morgan froze when he saw his front door halfway open. The house was quiet, dark.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

He ran in, paused in the living room at the crumpled sheet on the floor. He picked it up, looked at it, looked around the room, dropped it again. “Ginny?”

Dread sprang up in his gut. “Ginny!”

He ran to the kitchen and back, then into the bedroom. When he tried the bathroom door it was locked. He knocked, tried the knob again.

No reply.

He banged with his fist. “Ginny! You in there?”

Morgan backed up three steps then threw his shoulder into the door. It made a cracking sound but didn’t give. Pain lanced through his shoulder.

“Fucking shit.” He rubbed the sore spot, gritted his teeth.

He backed up for another go at the door when he heard the voice. Weak, tentative.

He put his ear against the wood. “Ginny? Open up. It’s me.”

“Professor?”

“It’s me, Ginny.”

Shuffling on the other side, scratching. “Professor?” Dazed.

“It’s Professor Morgan.”

He heard the lock work. He pushed at the door. It opened an inch then stopped. He looked in. Ginny leaned against it naked.

“Ginny, now, come on. Back up and let me in. I’m going to help, just back up a bit, okay?”

Her head flopped. She reached, draped her arms around the toilet bowl, pulled herself out of the way.

Morgan went in, knelt next to her. “It’s okay. I’m here.” He took her in his arms, eased her down onto the tile. Her faced turned to his.

Morgan’s eyes grew wide. He stifled a gasp. Both her eyes were swollen and purple. Dried blood from her nose and the corners of her mouth.

“Professor…”

“I’m here. It’ll be okay.” Dear God. Morgan’s eyes misted. He forced his voice not to choke. “I’ve got you.”

“I think I need some… a doctor.”

“Yes. I’ll take care of it.”

Ginny struggled to talk. Only half her mouth seemed to work. “I screamed, and he… he went away. I screamed and screamed.”

“Don’t talk, Ginny. Take it easy.”

“He said he knew about the… drugs…” She tried to pick her head up, neck limp, eyes unfocused.

“Take it easy. Just be still.”

Morgan ran to the bedside phone. He had to dial three times with shaking hands before he got the 911 operator.

The paramedics seemed to take forever but finally found them in the bathroom, Morgan cradling Ginny’s head in his lap.

By the time Morgan got to the hospital, they’d already taken Ginny back for X rays.

He paced.

Finally, a nurse came and told him that Ginny might have a concussion. The nurse was short with him. Cold.

She thinks I did that to her. Morgan felt sick in the pit of his belly. This must happen all the time. Violent parents, abusive spouses. He fell down the stairs. She ran into a doorknob. Isn’t that how it is in TV movies?

Morgan went to the men’s room, splashed water on his cheeks and in his eyes. The memory of Ginny’s swollen face was still too vivid, the bruises on her upper arms, the deep red welts on her legs and backside.

He went back to the nurses’ station, tried to appear benign. “Will I be able to see her soon?”

“It will be a while yet.” The nurse was tight-lipped, didn’t look at him. Shuffled papers into charts as she spoke. “I’ll notify you if she wants visitors.”

Morgan noted the if.

He sat at the end of a line of hard, molded plastic chairs. The sick and injured passed before him, two hours dragging his eyelids down into a doze.

“Mr. Morgan.”

His head jerked up, eyes focusing on the nurse.

She said, “You can go back and see her, but she’s still a little groggy. The doctor gave her a mild sedative.”

“Thank you.”

He followed the nurse back, and she pointed behind a plastic curtain. Ginny lay on the other side, curled on an examination table. A stool nearby. Morgan sat, reached to stroke her hair but pulled his hand back. She’d been bandaged, put in a hospital gown, a light blue blanket pulled up to her shoulders.

Her eyes flickered open. “Professor?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice flat, eyes dark.

Morgan couldn’t imagine what she was sorry about. “How are you?” The dumbest question in the world.

She told him, her voice small, each word precise like she was reading the ingredients to a complex recipe. They’d x-rayed her skull, nothing busted. No concussion. One cracked rib. Two stitches below her left ear. One tooth knocked loose. An orthodontist would have to be called in, but no complications were expected.

“What happened?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t have to talk. Rest.”

“He was looking for you,” Ginny said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. He was crazy, asking about drugs and Annie.”

A chill crept over Morgan. “What else?”

“I thought he’d ask about the peach orchard, but he never did. He thought we had some drugs, I think. Maybe hidden. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted. I’d have told him anything, but I just couldn’t understand what he wanted to know.”

Tears welled in Ginny’s eyes, spilled down her cheeks, but her voice was flat. She was detached, huddled somewhere far away. Morgan felt crushed listening to the young girl. She must’ve thought the world her giant playground when they buried Annie in the orchard. Maybe she didn’t think of Annie as a person then, only an elaborate prop in the big-budget movie of her life. Now Ginny’s relationship with the world had dramatically changed. Her life was no longer a bright plaything. It was hard and real and had knocked the light of youth from her face. Maybe she’d never get it back.

Now she would only be scared all the time. Like him.

“Did he… did he make you…” The words eluded him. No will to speak them.

“He tried to,” she said. “He couldn’t get hard. He already had his belt in his hand, so he used it to whip me. When he bent down I kicked him in the… down there.”

Morgan felt a ghost pang in his balls, winced.

“I got away and locked myself in the bathroom,” she said. “He tried to get in, but I kept screaming. He must’ve worried about the noise and the neighbors and went away.”

Morgan couldn’t look at her, couldn’t stand it. He wished he’d never come to Oklahoma, wished he hadn’t been a teacher, that he didn’t have to see this young girl have the love of life beat out of her. He taught poetry. What the hell was that? What the fuck good did poetry do anybody?

He said, “I’ll take you home. You can stay with me for a while.”

“No.”

He opened his mouth to object, shut it again.

“I had the nurse call my parents,” Ginny said. “They’ll be here soon. Don’t worry. I won’t tell them anything.”

“Oh, I didn’t think- Okay.”

“You’ve got to be careful.”

He blinked. Did she mean about her parents?

She said, “It’s not me he’s after, Professor. He wants you. I just happened to be there.”

He nodded, bit his lower lip. Of course. He hadn’t thought beyond what to do with Ginny. The guy had something to do with Annie and drugs. It was all too much. Morgan didn’t want to go back to his house. Didn’t want to wait there for the guy to return.

“Professor, I think I need to sleep now.”

“Do you want me to wait until-”

“My parents will be here soon.”

“Okay.” Morgan swallowed a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Ginny. This shouldn’t have happened.”

But she was already asleep.

twenty-eight

Morgan left the hospital numb and scared. He drove his car, automatically heading back to his little house. Halfway there he thought, I can’t stay at home. That guy’ll come back.

He turned the car around, headed for the Best Western at the edge of town. Halfway to the motel he turned around again. He hadn’t any luggage, not even a toothbrush. He’d have to risk his house for twenty minutes, long enough to grab some clothes and his toilet kit.

His thoughts tumbled, wouldn’t line up straight. He couldn’t hide out at the Best Western the rest of the semester. Another thought. If the guy knew where he lived, he’d probably be able to track Morgan to his campus office. A night at a motel wouldn’t solve anything.

Fuck it.

One night at a time. That was all he could manage.

He parked in front of his house and ran up to the porch. The front door still stood open. He looked in, crept around the house, searching for intruders. Empty.

He ran to the bedroom, yanked a gym bag out of the closet. Two shirts, three pairs of boxer shorts, a fistful of socks. Into the bathroom next. He couldn’t find his leather toilet bag, so he swept his toothbrush and razor off the sink and into the gym bag. He already wore his coat. What else? He always forgot something.

“Professor Morgan?”

Morgan froze. The voice was male and deep, came from the front porch.

“Hello? Professor Morgan?”

Morgan made himself calm down. A killer wouldn’t call out. He’d just barge in. Still…

“It’s Sergeant Hightower from the police, Professor Morgan.”

Morgan realized he was holding his breath. He let it out. He walked slowly into the living room, clutching the gym bag to his chest. “Yes?”

Sergeant Hightower wore his straw hat back on his head. Big country-boy smile. Heavy brown jacket over a khaki uniform. Gun slung low. “Morgan, right?”

“Yes.”

Hightower still stood on the porch, leaned into the living room without actually stepping over the threshold. “I just came from the hospital.”

“Yes?”

Hightower pulled a pen and notepad from his jacket pocket. He flipped open the notepad. “I just need to ask a few questions.” He gestured into the house. “Uh… you mind?”

“Please come in.” Go away.

Hightower eased into the living room. He looked infuriatingly comfortable with himself. He looked the place over, took off his hat, and dropped it on the sofa. His pen hovered over the notepad. “How do you know Miss Conrad, sir?”

“She’s a student.”

He nodded. “So you have her in a class then.”

“No. She is a student in the department, but not actually in one of my classes.”

Hightower raised an eyebrow. “Oh.” He wrote in his little notebook.

What are you writing? Stop that.

“Were you tutoring her?” asked Hightower.

“No.”

Hightower smiled again, wide and self-satisfied. “This isn’t like Twenty Questions, Professor Morgan. You’re allowed to volunteer anything that might speed this along.”

“We were friends. She was interested in writing.”

“Uh-huh.” He scribbled in the notebook again.

Son of a bitch.

Hightower scratched his chin with his thumb, squinted at Morgan. “Taking a trip, Professor?”

“No.” He looked down at the gym bag. “I mean yes. But not until tomorrow. I was just packing.”

“Where you going?”

Good question. “I’m going to Houston. There’s a conference. I’m attending with another professor.”

“Right.” The information went into Hightower’s notebook. “Do you know anyone who might want to hurt Miss Conrad?”

“Of course not.”

“Anyone gunning for you?” Hightower asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Hightower shrugged. “Something don’t jibe. Nothing stolen, not a burglary. If it’s a rapist, he didn’t rape.”

“I talked to Ginny,” Morgan said. “She told me she kicked him in the balls and locked herself in the bathroom.”

“Maybe. But she don’t live here. You do.”

“So the rapist happened to see her come in. Then he saw me leave and figured… hell, I don’t know.”

“Sure, sure.” Hightower nodded. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Professor.” That goddamn smug grin again. “Us country cops are slow, but once we get our teeth into something we don’t let go. This don’t seem like a normal rape attempt, but we’ll figure it.”

“And what is it exactly you figure?”

A shrug. Morgan couldn’t quite understand the cop. It was almost like he was lazily working the Sunday crossword puzzle rather than trying to solve a violent crime. “Can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“Maybe you’d better talk to Ginny,” Morgan said. Anything to get the cop on his way. Morgan couldn’t stand talking to him much longer.

“Yeah, well, I talked to her already.” He shook his head, tsked. “Her story’s about like yours. Too many gaps. But I figure she’s maybe still in shock. I’ll talk to her again when she comes around.”

Morgan cleared his throat. “Is there anything else?”

Hightower shook his head. “Nope.” He flipped his notebook closed, shoved it back into his jacket. “When you coming back from Houston?”

“Monday.”

“Right.” He put his hat back on and gave Morgan a two-fingered salute. “We’ll be in touch.”

Five seconds after Hightower left, Morgan collapsed onto his sofa. His sweaty shirt clung to him. His hands shook, knees like water. Had the cop seen how nervous he was? God, I need a drink.

Not yet.

He locked up, got in his car, and drove to Professor Reams’s house.

Morgan woke up late the next morning on Reams’s couch. He felt sore, unhappy, desperate. His life was out of control, and the only solution he could come up with was to run away and hide in Houston for the weekend. At least it would give him time to think.

Reams had been childishly overjoyed that Morgan had decided to make the conference. All Morgan had wanted to do was escape into sleep, but in his dreams, he saw Ginny’s battered face. It became Annie’s, all the guilt and bad decisions mixed up together. He’d woken in the middle of the night, his pillow damp with sweat, a feeling of deep anxiety over him like a heavy blanket. He’d finally drifted off again about 4 A.M.

Morgan heaved himself off the sofa, rubbed his back. He called out to Reams but didn’t get an answer. He found a note near the coffeepot. Reams had gone out to gas up the car.

Morgan showered, dressed.

He drank coffee and stared a long time at the phone. He wanted to call Ginny. But not to check on her, and that made him feel guilty. He wanted to get his story straight with her, didn’t want Hightower to find little details to pick at. Morgan was already a wreck. He couldn’t take another go around with the hick cop.

Okay, forget it. He drank coffee. Ginny was smart. She wouldn’t get him or herself into trouble. All Morgan needed to do was lie low for a day or two while he figured things out. And he’d been laying off the booze, trying to get healthy. The first thing Morgan wanted to do in Houston was hop off the wagon long enough for a stiff drink.

A car horn blared outside. Five seconds later, Reams stuck his head in the door. “Let’s go, buddy. Train’s leaving the station.” His finger was still wrapped, but he wasn’t sickly anymore. Reams had the energy of a kid on his way to summer camp.

“Okay.” Morgan dumped his coffee in the sink, grabbed his gym bag.

On the way out to the car, Reams said, “I had to put the Volvo in the shop. Transmission trouble. But I got us this for the drive.”

Morgan stopped on the passenger side of the brand-new Mercedes. It looked nice, long and black, tinted windows. Expensive.

He opened the back door, and the sharp stench of bourbon slapped him in the face. Dirk Jakes stuck his head out. “Hey there, Morgo-man. Ready for a road trip?”

Morgan’s jaw dropped. “What the hell’s he doing here?”

“It’s his car,” Reams said.

Jakes held up a hip flask, swirled it around. “How about a little eye-opener, Morgan?”

It was actually tempting. “No thanks.” He tossed his gym bag into the backseat next to Jakes. Jakes opened his yap to say something, but Morgan shut the door on him. To Reams he said, “You didn’t tell me he was coming.”

“Oh, take it easy.”

Morgan shook his head. Reams’s steadfast enthusiasm for the trip was not contagious. Morgan second-guessed his own decision to hide out in Houston at the academic conference.

Morgan climbed into the front passenger seat and Reams got behind the wheel. Reams went through a complex series of checks: headlights, windshield wipers, turn signals. He turned on the heat and set the thermostat. He was especially concerned with getting the volume exactly right on the radio.

“For Christ’s sake,” Jakes yelled from the backseat. “It ain’t the goddamn space shuttle. Just start driving.”

Morgan fastened his seat belt.

“Wagons ho, gentlemen.” Reams put the Mercedes into gear and headed for the highway.

Jakes leaned forward between Morgan and Reams. “Remember, guys. What happens on the road stays on the road.”

“Exactly,” Reams said. “Just a trio of stout lads out for a good time.”

“What actually do you think you’re going to do?” asked Morgan.

Jakes said, “First thing is we brace ourselves with a few drinky-poos, then we round up some tail.”

Reams didn’t look so gung ho anymore. “Uh… maybe that’s not the best idea, Dirk.”

“Oh, put a sock in it, you sissy.” Jakes grabbed the crotch of his pants. “Damn, I got to take a piss. Pull into that Chevron, will you?”

“We’ve only been on the road three minutes,” Reams said.

“Dammit, Reams, I’m not going to let you fuck up a perfectly good road trip with your bullshit rules and schedules. Now pull into that gas station so I can tap a kidney.”

Morgan sank low in his seat. It was going to be a long drive.

Deke Stubbs let the Mercedes get a head start, then followed. An expensive car. Maybe it was the drug dealer making the buy. Maybe this Morgan character had the cocaine after all. Maybe they had some kind of racket going. The kid had said a hundred thousand dollars’ worth. Hell, maybe more.

Stubbs was red-eyed, queasy, tired. He’d had a very, very bad couple of days, but it would all pay off when he found the drugs and the money. He could turn things around pretty quick then.

What he really needed was sleep. But not now. Not yet. He had to see where Morgan was going in that big black Mercedes. He leaned over, popped open the glove box, and found the half-empty bottle of caffeine pills. They came in handy when Stubbs was on all-night stakeouts.

He rubbed his balls. They still ached. That bitch had kicked him good, but he’d fixed her.

He popped two of the caffeine pills, washed them down with his last beer. Okay, Professor Morgan, you lead. Deke Stubbs is on your ass like shit on a shoe.

twenty-nine

On a hard-packed dirt road under a gray sky just north of Fumbee, Red Zach cursed an underling on his tiny cell phone. Zach wanted answers and he wanted them yesterday.

“I asked you who was in charge of this one-horse shithole,” Zach yelled. “I got to know who to deal with.”

Red Zach had been around long enough to know the score. You don’t go deep-sixing motherfuckers on somebody else’s turf without permission, and you don’t go poking your nose into the local drug economy without paying respects to the chief. It was like a franchise thing. He could kill Jenks. That was okay. Jenks was one of his boys run amok. But shit was getting out of hand, and he needed to speak to the local boss, whoever the fuck that was.

“I told you,” Zach yelled into the cell phone. “If Jenks is going to unload my merchandise around here, I got to know where he’s going.”

“Okay, boss,” said the voice on the other end. “But Fumbee, Oklahoma, ain’t even on the damn map. It’s in some kinda fucking no-man’s-land between Tulsa and Fayetteville. I don’t think it’s anybody’s turf.”

“I don’t want to hear that shit,” Zach said. “You call back with a name.” He slapped the phone shut and looked at his boys down from St. Louis.

When Red Zach had called for reinforcements, he’d asked for a dozen of the meanest, bad-ass motherfuckers available. It had been a long time since he’d gathered this much muscle together in one place, but he was dog-determined to finish this shit quick.

He hadn’t been this pissed in a long damn time, and it was all because of Harold Jenks. He’d looked out for the boy, brought him along, gave him all the breaks. Zach had plans to make something out of him. But Jenks stabbed him in the back. Nobody but nobody fucked with Red Zach. The fact it was somebody he trusted made it double-worse.

Zach looked at the razor-thin man directly across from him. Maurice Arnold. He was a light-skinned black man, shaved head, bright, straight teeth, alert brown eyes. He wore a simple gray suit and a muted red tie. He looked like somebody’s tax attorney, but Zach knew Maurice was the baddest, cruelest motherfucker this side of the Mississippi. He’d led the pack of reinforcements down from St. Louis. He was the guy Zach called whenever he wanted to turn a problem into a violent, screaming, smoking mess. Maurice didn’t just make problems go away. He made them sorry they’d ever decided to be problems.

“Maurice, I want Jenks and any motherfuckers with him to pay the price. You catch my drift?”

Maurice sat with his hands folded in his lap. He nodded politely. “I understand, sir. Leave them to me.”

“I got a man watching that redneck’s trailer, but they ain’t been back,” Zach said.

Zach’s cell phone rang, and he flipped it open. “Talk.”

“I got a name for you, boss.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Moses Duncan.”

“Affiliated?”

“Nope. Freelance. Buys out of Tulsa for resale around Fumbee, especially the campus, but he don’t answer to nobody.”

“We’ll see about that,” Zach said. “Where is he?”

The voice on the other end gave him directions. “A farm outside town.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“He’s a white guy.”

“You think I give a shit?” Zach said. “What, you think I’m a racist?”

“No, boss.”

“Damn straight. I’ll own his shit if he’s black, white, green, or polka-dot. I’m an equal opportunity motherfucker.”

The fifth floor of Albatross Hall was pissing off Harold Jenks.

He’d been going stir-crazy stuck up there with DelPrego and the whacked-out old professor, so he’d risked sneaking across campus to the student union for a milk shake and a newspaper.

Jenks had gone through the local section and the police blotter, but apparently nobody had found the dead body at DelPrego’s trailer. Jenks didn’t know if that was good news or not.

At least the milk shake had been good.

But upon climbing back up to the fifth floor of Albatross Hall, he’d found himself completely turned around. He’d listened for the music like DelPrego had instructed, but all was quiet. Jenks had concluded some crack-head architect son of a bitch was having a big laugh somewhere. Jenks was all turned around.

He stood, scratched his head, cursed again.

Then he heard it.

Slow footsteps and metal dragging. A peculiar rhythm. Step, step, drag. Step, step, drag. Jenks froze. What the hell was that? He strained to listen, tried to determine from which direction it was coming. That shit’s creeping me out. It reminded him of this Frankenstein movie he’d seen as a kid. It had scared the shit out of him. No matter where the people ran, the Frankenstein kept coming. And he dragged one foot behind him, made that scraping noise.

Except this dragging was harsh and metallic.

So Jenks stood there, waited for the metal robot Frankenstein of Albatross Hall to come eat his lunch.

It was the custodian.

Jenks exhaled relief. What was that janitor dude’s name again? Valentine had introduced them. Brad Eubanks. Valentine seemed to have some kind of arrangement with the man. Jenks didn’t pretend to understand completely, but he thought the relationship between the old professor and the custodian might somehow be symbiotic.

Symbiotic. Where the hell had he picked up that word? Jenks’s face twisted with a wry smile. Maybe college was rubbing off.

Eubanks saw him from the other end of the hall, waved him over. “Hey, now.” A deep country accent, voice harsh with the twang. “Come gimmee a hand with this, young feller.” Eubanks was dragging a long, thick metal pipe. Gleaming brass.

“What is that?” Jenks called.

“Fireman’s pole. Come help.”

Jenks jogged down to him, grabbed the other end of the twenty-foot pole. It was heavier than he’d thought. He grunted, tucked it up under his arm. “What’s this for?”

Eubanks’s laughter segued into a wheezing grunt. “A little project for the professor.”

They waddled down the hall. Jenks started to sweat. He asked, “What’s his deal anyway?”

“Valentine?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s crazy,” Eubanks said. “Oh, not in a bad way. Not dangerous-like. I think he just likes it on campus. I think he’s unhappy with the rest of the world. Here on campus he’s an important genius.”

“How’s that?”

“Pulitzer Prize.”

“Oh.” Jenks had heard of that one.

“Personally, I can’t see it,” Eubanks said. “I borrowed some of his poetry books, ones he’d wrote hisself. Do you know them poems he wrote don’t even rhyme?”

Jenks started to say something, bit his tongue.

“I mean, hell now, I may not be college educated, but I know poems should rhyme. Any first-grader knows that.”

The custodian kept yakking about it. But the more Eubanks talked, the more Jenks didn’t want to listen, the more he felt the distance.

thirty

The black Mercedes devoured the miles, State Highway 75 leading them over the line and into Dallas, where they picked up Interstate 45 south. Night fell. They’d run through Jakes’s CD collection: Stones, John Prine, Willie Nelson, Freakwater, Steely Dan, the sound track to Footloose, and Tony Orlando’s Greatest Hits. At Reams’s insistence, they’d taken only one short break from the music to listen to All Things Considered on NPR.

Jakes had a little routine. He’d doze in the backseat awhile, start awake, launch into a story about some girl he’d fucked in college, take a slug from his flask (refilled periodically from a bottle in the trunk), then drop off to sleep again.

Morgan drove now, had the cruise control set to eighty-five.

Reams couldn’t leave the dome light alone. “Why won’t this infernal thing shut off?” He reached above his head, thumbed the switch without success, clicked his tongue.

“Leave it alone,” Morgan said.

“It’s bothering me.”

“You’ve been screwing with it for an hour. Forget it.”

Reams reached around the wheel, fussed with the switches on the steering column. The wipers came on.

Morgan slapped his hand. “Knock it off. I’m trying to drive.”

“I know the button’s over there somewhere for the interior lights,” Reams said. “Try that switch over by that dial wheel thingy.”

“No. I’ve tried them all already. Just leave it. And don’t mess with the speakers or the radio. The balance is fine. The bass is fine. The treble is fine. Everything is fine. The heat is fine. Your seat is fine.”

Jakes stirred in the backseat.

“Great.” Morgan forced himself to unclench his teeth.

Jakes sat up, fumbled off the cap of his flask, and took a big slug. He belched, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He rubbed his eyes with a knuckle, took another short drink.

Morgan and Reams braced themselves.

Jakes cleared his throat. “Did I ever tell you guys about this red-haired chick I knew at UCLA? Man she had tits-”

“White as snow with nipples like dark raspberries,” Morgan and Reams said together.

Jakes blinked. “Yeah.”

“You told us,” Reams said. “This is the third time.”

“She was the best one. I looked her name up on the Internet and got her phone number. Sometimes I think about giving her a call.” He finished the flask, upended it again like he couldn’t believe it was empty. “But I don’t call. It’s been maybe twelve years.”

Jakes hiccuped. “Jesus, I don’t feel so good.”

“Lay off the bourbon,” Morgan said.

“It’s empty.” Jakes tossed the flask onto the floor of the backseat. It clanged harshly. “What the hell is this?” He bent, looked. “Some kind of drill thing and a hammer. What is this shit, Reams?”

Reams twisted, looked over his shoulder. “Blast. I meant to take all that back to Sears when I was out gassing the car. The tools for the gazebo.”

“You’re cluttering up my brand-new Kraut car with this shit.”

“Sorry.”

Jakes threw his head back with sloppy laughter. Loud. “Hey, Morgo, you hear about Bob Vila? Almost chopped himself in half.”

“I heard,” Morgan said.

Jakes squinted at the ceiling. “Why the hell’s the dome light on?”

Morgan muttered.

“We can’t figure how to turn it off,” Reams said.

“It’s one of them fucking buttons on the steering column,” Jakes said.

“We tried them,” Morgan said.

Jakes snorted. “Well, try them again, dammit. It’s a brand-new car. I know the buttons work.”

“They don’t.”

“Hell.” He grabbed the hammer from the floor. “I’ll fix it.” He flicked his wrist, and the claw part of the hammer shattered the dome light with a loud pop. Glass rained, peppered Morgan and Reams. Reams covered his eyes, turned away.

Morgan jumped. “Shit!” He jerked the wheel, spilled into the next lane, nearly smacking a Honda Civic. It blared its horn, flashed its lights.

Morgan pulled back into his lane, heart thumping. “Christ, Jakes!”

“It’s out.”

“Idiot.” Morgan gulped breath, held it, let it trickle out slowly.

“I don’t think that was necessary,” Reams told Jakes. “I could have taken the bulb out.”

A lapse into angry silence.

But it was good to have the light out. Morgan could see better now. The road was nearly deserted, only a single set of headlights several car lengths behind, and the Honda, which had elected to speed up and put some distance between itself and the carload of morons.

Morgan included himself as one of the morons. How could he have thought a road trip with these two was a good idea? God was punishing him.

“Guys.” It was Jakes.

Nobody spoke.

“Guys, I think I’m going to be sick.”

Great. Morgan wondered if he should pull over. This stretch of road was very, very dark. I don’t want to die in Texas.

“Try taking deep breaths,” suggested Reams.

“Fuck the breaths, I’m… Jesus, I don’t feel good.”

“Take it easy,” Morgan said. “We’ll find someplace. Maybe drink some water. We’ll stop and get some water.”

“Oh, shit.” Jakes groaned. “My stomach. Rough seas.”

“Hang on,” Morgan said. “Just take it easy.”

Morgan prayed for an exit. Let Jakes puke all over an Amoco station.

“Jesus, here it comes. Oh, shit.” He bent over, gagged, coughed. His gut heaved, and he spewed liquid, sprayed a good portion of the backseat.

“Not on the tools!” Reams yelled.

Too late. Jakes heaved again, coated the tools with gunk. The smell filled the car, acidic and boozy. Morgan almost puked too when it hit his nose. “Oh, my God.” He hit the window buttons, lowered all four of them. At eighty-five miles per hour, the wind washed through the car quickly.

A blue sign ahead. Morgan squinted at it, crossed his fingers. It was a rest area.

“Yes!” Morgan mashed the accelerator.

Jakes lay in the fetal position, a thick strand of scummy saliva draped from his lower lip to the edge of the seat.

Reams said, “He doesn’t look well at all.”

Morgan flew down the off-ramp, skidded into a parking space near the rest rooms. The rest area was deserted except for the headlights that had been following. The other car pulled into the rest area too, parked on the far side. Shut off the lights.

Morgan shut off the Mercedes, flung the door open, and leapt out. He took a dozen quick steps before gulping clean, cold air.

“I think he’s passed out,” Reams called from the car.

Good, thought Morgan. Let’s dump him in the bushes and leave.

Morgan walked into the men’s room, unzipped at the first urinal. He finished, washed his hands.

Reams walked in, grabbed two fistfuls of paper towels, and left again without saying anything.

Morgan splashed water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. Bags under his eyes. He started laughing. Shook his head and laughed more. He looked at himself like a stranger. Poor dumb bastard. He was still chuckling when he left the rest room.

He stood in the lit doorway of the rest room, hands in pockets. He let the cold wash over him. Winter had started to ease these last few days, but at two in the morning, it was sharply cold. Damp. Refreshing, but it would get cold soon if he stood outside for very long.

Reams approached with an armload of something wrapped in newspaper. He frowned, eyes hard, his enthusiasm for the trip apparently spent.

“What’s that?” Morgan asked.

“The drill, the saw, and the chisels,” Reams said. “How am I supposed to return these goddamn things when they’re covered in Jakes’s vomit? It’s revolting.”

“Throw them away,” Morgan said.

“They were expensive,” Reams said. “Keep an eye on that idiot, will you? I left the doors open to air out, and I don’t want him stumbling off. I’m going to try to clean these.”

Morgan eyed the saw. “Please be careful.”

“Give me some credit.”

“Reams,” Morgan said. “Be careful.”

Reams frowned, walked past with the armload of pukey tools.

Morgan stood, looked at the night, heard the night sounds, the occasional car on the interstate. He rocked heel to toe with hands in pockets, the night air cloying on his face, damp on his ears, the back of his neck. His thin ponytail hung loose and limp. The cold air stung his throat and lungs.

He checked the Mercedes. Jakes hadn’t budged. Morgan cast about for something else to look at.

Across the lot sat the car that had followed them into the rest area. Strange, thought Morgan. The driver hadn’t got out to use the rest room. Morgan thought he could just see the outline of the driver’s body behind the wheel. He watched for a moment. There. The red-orange pinpoint of a cigarette flaring in the front seat. The guy had pulled off to have a smoke.

The bright glow of the cigarette went out. It came back a second later, hovered in the implacable darkness a moment, then faded.

Morgan’s gut grew heavy. Worry crawled up his spine, found a home in his brain. He hadn’t thought about Ginny’s attacker for hours. The endless string of minor annoyances perpetrated by his traveling companions had distracted him.

Ginny said he was after me, Morgan thought. This dangerous fucking freak wants something from me, and I don’t even know what. Something to do with Annie? Morgan’s eyes shifted nervously. Jakes’s Mercedes and the other car were the only ones in the rest area.

Morgan kept his eyes on the strange car, reached behind him, and knocked on the men’s room door, which was propped open. “Let’s speed it up, okay, Reams? I want to get back on the road.”

“Just a moment.”

Morgan heard the water running, the tools clanking in the sink.

“I’ll be in the car.” Morgan fast-walked back to the Mercedes, took the keys out of his coat pocket with trembling hands. It’s just cold. That’s all.

He climbed in, cranked it. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror at the other car. No movement. Not even the glow of the cigarette. The back door was still open, but the dome light wasn’t on since Jakes had smashed it. The car was still thick with the reek of vomit.

Reams returned and startled Morgan. Morgan had been watching the rearview mirror and hadn’t seen the professor coming. Reams shoved Jakes’s head back into the car. He dumped the tools onto the floor of the backseat, then slammed the door. He climbed into the front next to Morgan.

Reams’s hand was wrapped in multiple layers of rest room paper towels. A little red spot forming where the blood seeped through.

“What happened?” Morgan asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did you cut yourself again?”

“Never mind,” Reams said. “Just drive.”

Morgan backed the Mercedes out of the space, then took the on-ramp back to the interstate. He kept one eye on the other car in the mirror. It didn’t turn its lights on, didn’t follow. Morgan drove ten minutes. The interstate was long and dark and quiet. No other cars.

Maybe he was being paranoid. It was natural he’d be nervous, overcautious. He eased into the driver’s seat, relaxed his grip on the wheel. Reams was quiet, Jakes passed out. Maybe the rest of the trip south would pass in relative peace.

He glanced at the mirror again, and his breath caught.

Distantly, a pair of headlights, two dots of light hugging the road behind.

This is a major interstate, Morgan told himself. Even at this hour there’ll be lots of people traveling. That doesn’t have to be the car from the rest area.

But deep in the pit of Morgan’s belly, he knew it was.

Deke Stubbs kept his distance.

He figured the professor had almost made him back at the rest stop, but now he wasn’t sure. He’d stay well behind them for a while. Creep up slowly with the daylight, mix in with the other cars as the morning traffic increased. No problem.

Stubbs unzipped himself and pulled out his pecker, he leaned, reached, grabbed an empty beer can off the passenger-side floor. He brought it to his pecker and pissed. He’d already filled two other cans. It sure would have been nice to use the pisser back at that rest stop, but Stubbs couldn’t risk Morgan getting a look at him. Stubbs might want to get closer later on, and he wouldn’t want the guy to recognize him.

Stubbs rolled down his window, tossed out the nearly full can, rolled his window back up.

The detective was tired and half-hungover and sick of driving. How far were these sons of bitches going? He thought about popping another couple of caffeine pills, but his stomach was already burning.

When he sold the drugs, maybe he’d set himself up in some other line of work. Being a private detective sucked.

thirty-one

The Houston Santa Anna Sheraton was nice, expensive, full-service, four stars. Morgan had been to several regional conferences where he’d stayed at whatever budget motel had been near the campus.

But the Thirteenth Annual International Interdisciplinary Conference of the Humanities & Fine Arts was something special. Scholars and writers from all fifty states and twenty-two countries stampeded like hypercaffeinated lemmings to the host city, where they delivered mind-numbingly complex papers on obscure subjects in their desperate bids to rack up points toward tenure. Morgan had been to more than one panel where the panelists outnumbered the audience.

Morgan had never stayed at a hotel nicer than the Holiday Inn Express. So he stood next to the Mercedes in the valet roundabout with his bag in his hand and waited for somebody to tell him what to do. Reams rummaged the trunk for his own bags.

The parking valet’s red uniform reminded Morgan of a cartoon. The valet hovered, waited for somebody to hand him a set of keys.

The back door of the Mercedes swung open. Jake’s empty bourbon bottle fell out, clanked alarmingly on the cement but didn’t break. It rolled underneath the car.

Jakes stumbled out. “Jesus Christ.” He rubbed his eyes, belched. He looked like death in a sports jacket, skin slick and ashen, hair matted, eyes dark.

Then Jakes took charge.

He dipped into his pocket, came out with a wad of ten-dollar bills big enough to choke a bison. “Morgan, give Junior the keys.”

Morgan handed the keys to the valet.

Jakes gave the kid twenty bucks. “Don’t park it next to any shit-mobiles.” He peeled off two more bills and gave them to the valet. “Some kind of stench in the car. See what you can do.”

“Yes, sir.” He hopped into the driver’s seat and drove away.

“Let’s go, fellas,” Jakes said. “Chop-chop.”

A brace of bellboys leapt into action. They’d been unclear if Morgan and Reams were worth fawning over, but clearly Jakes was a man used to first-class service. They scooped up the luggage in a heartbeat. One took Morgan’s bag away from him like Morgan had no business touching it.

The professors followed the luggage into the lobby. Jakes identified the bell captain and waved him over.

“I’m going to need a cold six-pack waiting in the room,” Jakes said. “Also a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and whatever fruit is fresh. I don’t know the room number yet, but you’ll find that out. Name’s Dirk Jakes.” He shoved a wad of cash at the bell captain.

“Very good, Mr. Jakes. What kind of beer?”

“Does the bar have Red Stripe?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Find some.”

“Yes, sir.” The bell captain sped away with his orders.

Morgan could only stand with his hands in his pockets and wonder where his bag had been taken.

It was only 7 A.M., and the desk clerk was sorry to inform Jakes that check-in wasn’t for several hours.

Jakes gave the man hell.

Nine minutes later Morgan stood in the room he was sharing with Reams. The luggage had been waiting for them. Jakes had his own room down the hall.

“I’m going to the conference rooms to check in, get my badge, and all that,” Reams said.

“Uh-huh.”

After Reams left, Morgan stripped down to his boxers and crawled into bed. His head hit the pillow, and he was out.

Morgan dreamed.

It was the updated version of a recurring dream he’d had in high school. In the high school version he drove his father’s Pontiac. The steering was noodle loose, his arm muscles wouldn’t work. The Pontiac was barely in control, all over the road, the fifteen-year-old Morgan paralyzed with cold-sweat fear. Not for his life. He feared what his old man would do to him when he wrecked the car. The brakes wouldn’t work.

Inevitably, he’d be heading for a tree, a mailbox, another car, and his eyes would pop open right before impact. He’d awake with a strangled cry caught in his throat, heart pounding out of his chest.

The new version of the dream was similar but more terrifying. He was behind the wheel of the Mercedes, trying to turn it around, so he could get back to Fumbee.

But when he tried to pull off the highway, the car refused to obey. He couldn’t control the steering, kept missing the exits. Jakes yelled unintelligibly from the backseat. Reams wouldn’t help.

Finally, Morgan wrenched the wheel. The Mercedes spun into an unreal blur. He pulled out of the spin, headed back the wrong way on the dark interstate.

He headed straight for a pair of headlights. Strangely, Morgan had control of the car now. He beeped his horn, flashed the high beams. The oncoming headlights remained on course, arrow-straight and fast. Morgan wouldn’t budge either, but this time he had control of the car. He was committed to the deadly collision.

The headlights grew enormous in the windshield.

Reams grabbed his arm. “Morgan. Morgan.”

Morgan wouldn’t swerve, hands clenched to the wheel, teeth grinding. The engines roared, the monstrous headlights only a dozen feet away.

Reams screamed, “Morgan!”

“Morgan.” Reams kicked the side of Morgan’s bed. “Come on, now. It’s noon. Let’s grab a bite and catch the first session.”

Morgan sat up in bed. He felt cold and not much rested.

Reams had showered, slipped into a pair of khakis and a navy polo shirt. A badge hung from the collar. It had his name and the name of the conference on it.

“I checked you in as well.” Reams held up Morgan’s badge then dropped it on the dresser. “It’s 150 bucks for the whole weekend.” Reams waited, looked expectantly at Morgan.

“I’ll pay you back. Thanks.”

Reams smiled relief. “Oh, I knew you would. We’re supposed to meet Jakes in twenty minutes. Better snap to it.”

“Right.”

In the shower, Morgan leaned heavily against the tiles, let the hot water pelt him. Memory of the dream was already fading, but the sick feeling of worry stayed. And he hadn’t forgotten about the man at the rest area or the headlights that dogged him until dawn. After sunrise, traffic had picked up, and he couldn’t tell if he was being followed or not.

He tried to explain to himself rationally that he was being paranoid-a bit timid and pathetic, in fact. But the worry clung to him. He thought about Ginny’s bruised face. He thought about the old man and Sherman Ellis and the upcoming poetry reading. He thought about the whole long, bad list of things he didn’t want to think about. Annie and the peach orchard.

For the hundredth time, Morgan thought, It’s time to come clean. Time to explain it all to the police, tell them I panicked. It was all a series of bad mistakes.

But could he do that now? He hadn’t detected any sign of sympathy or understanding in Officer Hightower. The cop had seemed only smug, like he resented Morgan for some reason. And how would it look now to go to the police, when Hightower had been right there in his living room? That had been the time. It would have been so easy. Look here, Officer Hightower, here’s the whole story.

And Ginny. If he went to the police now, he’d have to drag her into it, and she’d suffered enough. Worse, she might turn on him, blame him for everything.

The hot water ran out and Morgan shut off the shower. He dried himself, dressed in jeans and a green-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on surfboards. The conference was in the hotel, so he wouldn’t need his jacket.

In the elevator on the way down, Reams said, “I’ve narrowed it down to two panels that start at the one o’clock session. Either one sounds interesting.”

“You pick,” Morgan said.

“No, no. Wait and hear the choices.” Reams thumbed through the program. “We can either see Homosexual Transmogrification in Androgynous Eighties Techno-Pop or we can go to Pimple and Blemish Imagery in Victorian Fiction.”

The elevator opened and saved Morgan from deciding. They stepped out into the lobby. It writhed with activity. Conferencegoers with dangling clip-on badges swarmed the place. It was like a tweed bomb had exploded in the Sheraton.

“This way,” Reams said. “Jakes said he’d meet us in the lounge.”

The lounge was crammed with scholars bracing themselves for the upcoming sessions. Jakes perched at the bar, chatted up a busty woman with her coppery hair piled in a tight bun. Morgan and Reams stood behind him.

“So I go out to the mailbox one day, and there’s this check for 132,000 bucks,” Jakes told her. “I didn’t know what the hell it was for, so I called my agent. Turns out they’d sold the Asian rights to my last three novels. That’s when I ran out and got the Mercedes.”

The woman looked bored. She wore a pair of old-fashioned, black-framed glasses, which reminded Morgan of Ginny. Morgan thought he should maybe call her, but discarded the idea again. Her parents would be with her.

“So what do you do?” Jakes asked her.

“I compile bibliographies for Restoration drama criticism,” she said.

Jakes broke into barking laughter, wiped his chin where he’d dribbled some beer. “Jesus, is there any money in that?”

“Not much.” She stood, put money on the bar. “I have to get ready for my panel.” Not a lot of warmth in her voice. She left, and Morgan took her stool.

Jakes looked like a new man, hair combed, close shave. He wore an expensive checkered sports coat and creased trousers with cuffs. He ordered another beer. “Lots of tail at these conferences.” He winked, sipped his beer.

“Right.”

“I got a program for you.” Reams handed it to Jakes.

“Thanks.” Jakes threw it on the floor.

The bartender came over, indicated that the lounge was too crowded just to lounge. Reams ordered a draft beer. Morgan desperately wanted a giant, double vodka martini but ordered coffee instead.

“Big cocktail reception tonight,” Jakes said. “Good place to snag some snatch.”

“Let’s talk about which panels to see,” Reams suggested.

Jakes frowned. “Stuff that idea.”

Morgan stood, tossed money on the bar for the coffee. He couldn’t stand it, not if these two were going to start in again. “I’ll catch up with you guys later. I’m not feeling so well.”

Reams looked hurt, opened his mouth to say something, but Morgan was already making his escape. He eased his way through the bar crowd and headed for the elevators. He felt a tap on his shoulder.

If it were Reams, he’d tell the man as firmly as possible that he was not going to attend a panel on Victorian zits. He turned.

And looked into the smiling eyes of Annette Grayson.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Did you come to see my presentation?”

thirty-two

Morgan confessed he didn’t know Grayson was going to be there. He told her that Reams had badgered him into attending.

Annette Grayson seemed glad to see him. Her eyes glittered, and Morgan soaked her in. He’d forgotten how pleasant she was to look at. Smile big, radiating, reaching her eyes, and lifting her whole face. Her hair was golden silk, loose about her shoulders. Skin tan and glowing. Annette Grayson was the brightest thing in the lobby of the Sheraton, and the sight of her hit Morgan in the gut. Took the wind from his lungs.

“Let me get you a drink,” Morgan said.

“I can’t,” she said. “My old roommate from Bennington is giving a paper in a few minutes, and I’d promised I’d go.”

“Later then?”

She bit her thumbnail, looked at Morgan, squinting her eyes. “Well…”

Morgan smiled. “What happens on the road, stays on the road. Besides, I feel I owe you an apology drink.”

“Maybe you do,” she said. “After dinner. Call my room.” She told him the number.

“Okay.”

She turned, headed through the crowd. She glanced back once, smiled over her shoulder, and was gone.

Morgan felt light. On some level, he knew his problems hadn’t gone away. But they all seemed distant. Annette’s scent still hung in the air where he stood. It wasn’t a heavy perfume, not sickly sweet. More like a body splash. He sniffed the air. Citrus.

He chewed up the rest of the afternoon. Anticipation. Fluttering stomach. The look in Annette’s eyes had promised something. Morgan wasn’t sure what. Maybe another chance.

He ate dinner with Reams. The professor had launched into a tedious summary of the panels he’d attended. It went on all through dinner, but Morgan was in better spirits and tolerated Reams fairly well, even managed to contribute a few comments that made him seem interested. They’d gone to a steakhouse about a block from the hotel. A good porterhouse.

Once or twice Morgan’s brain tried to remind him about Ginny and the headlights that had followed him to Houston and all the stone-hard troubles that awaited him beyond the out-of-focus, fuzzy-soft unreality of the conference. He beat the bad thoughts down, kicked them into the corner. Not tonight. Tonight he was having a drink with Annette Grayson.

Morgan shook loose of Reams back at the hotel, told him he wanted to go back up to the room for a while.

“You sure?” Reams asked. “I was going to that cocktail reception. The one Jakes was talking about.”

“I might catch up later,” Morgan said.

Morgan took the elevator up, let himself in the room with the plastic swipe-card. He went to the phone, grabbed it, put it down again. Too soon. He felt nervous about calling her and liked it. He hadn’t felt nervous about a woman in a long time.

He went to the window and pushed the curtains back. It was just getting dark, and Houston was flickering to life.

He picked up the phone and dialed Annette.

One ring. “Hello?” Her voice was warm milk.

“It’s Jay.”

“Give me an hour,” she said. “Down in the lounge.”

“Okay.”

He hung up and jumped in the shower. He got out and dressed, a clean blue shirt. He ironed a pair of tan slacks. He thought about cologne and wondered if it would be too much. All he had was Old Spice. He was embarrassed but liked the smell.

He combed his hair four times. There wasn’t too much to comb. He tied his little ponytail fresh and tight.

He went down the elevator, stepped into the lobby. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes early. He clasped his hands behind his back and strolled the hotel.

A little shop. He went in.

Gifts. Cigarettes, toothpaste, aspirin, postcards of glorious Texas. Morgan spotted a wood-and-glass cabinet behind the counter. He looked through the glass at cigars. He was feeling sporty and whimsical and called over the smarmy cashier.

The cashier lifted an eyebrow, the rest of his vanilla pudding face sagging with disinterest. “Sir?”

“I’m looking for a type of cigar.” He tried to remember what Fred Jones had given him the day they broke out the Wallace Stevens. “It’s Mac something.”

“Macanudo?” The cashier said the word through his nose.

“That’s it. I’ll take three.”

“They’re twelve dollars each, sir. Do you still want them?”

“Of course.” Little bastard. “I said I’ll take three.” He handed over his Visa card.

Was it Morgan’s clothes? Something about the way he carried himself that suggested he couldn’t-or wouldn’t-shell out for a good cigar?

The little man rang him up and Morgan left the shop. He took the cigars out of the bag and smelled one. Nice. It was as long as the one the old man had given him, but thinner. He looked at the band. Same kind. Same rich, earthy smell. He put one in his mouth without lighting it. He didn’t have any matches. He thought about going back to the shop but decided against it. The cashier’s inexplicably superior attitude was strangely unnerving. That happened to Morgan sometimes. A waiter or barber or movie usher or some other underling would be rude to him, and Morgan would be intimidated because he couldn’t figure out if he’d done or said something wrong.

It was only much later in such situations that Morgan always wished he’d had a sharp comeback. Or a quick slap with a dueling glove. Or maybe if he’d just spit on their shoes. He was getting tired of letting life roll over him.

He went straight to the lounge and ordered a vodka martini. He drank it in three gulps and ordered another. Only then did he glance around for Annette. She hadn’t arrived yet.

That little prick at the gift shop had spoiled his mood. He half thought it would be a good idea to take Dirk Jakes back with him to rip the guy a new asshole. Jakes would do it too, just for laughs.

And then Morgan was mad because a guy like Jakes could handle himself in those situations and Morgan couldn’t. He finished the martini and ordered another one. The voice in his head told him to slow down, but it wasn’t very convincing.

“What in the world’s wrong with you?”

Morgan spun on his stool, looked into Annette’s soft eyes. They cast their warm light on him. He realized his face had been frozen in a deep scowl. He sat up straight, forced his jaw muscles to unclench. He cleared his throat.

“You don’t want to sit at the bar,” he said. “There’s a table over there.”

“That’s fine.”

He bought her a white wine and took it to the corner table. Soft light. Quiet. The lounge was pleasantly deserted, most of the conferencegoers at the big reception.

Morgan asked if she were enjoying the conference.

She said she was.

And had her friend’s panel gone well?

It had.

Thus concluded Morgan’s cache of small talk. He was bone dry.

The martinis took over.

“So what’s wrong with me, huh?” Morgan asked it with a smile.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Then what’s wrong with you?”

She laughed. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with anybody.”

“Afraid of me?”

“Not of you. That things won’t work out like we want. That life will backfire.”

“What’s the solution?”

“Stick your head out of your hole once in a while,” she said. “If it’s clear, run out, grab a chunk of life, chew it up quick, and get back into your hole. A little at a time when the coast is clear.”

“At Valentine’s party, and when we had pizza, that was you coming out of the hole for a little look-see?” Morgan threw back his drink, waved at the bartender for another.

“That’s right,” Annette said. “I had a two-day hangover after Valentine’s party, and I had to ride the stationary bicycle three hours to work off the pizza. Imagine living life that big all the time. Imagine the toll. It’s like looking at God. You can’t look directly at Him. You have to avert your eyes or look at a burning bush or something.”

“What about Dirk Jakes?” Morgan asked. “Seems like he’s going full blast all the time.”

“He’s an anomaly.” She shrugged. “Or maybe a prophet. Cautionary example.”

Morgan said, “This isn’t your first glass of wine, is it?”

“I’m out of my hole for a look-see,” she said. “I split a bottle of Chablis with my friend.”

When the bartender brought the martini, Annette sent him back for more wine.

“What happened to you?” Morgan wasn’t laughing now. He thought Annette’s worldview sad and gray.

“I looked at life too directly the first time around. Good husband, good life, good everything, then I got the rug yanked. I’m lighter on my feet now. It won’t happen again.”

Morgan thought he understood, knew what it was like to have your guard up all the time.

The drinks came. Annette drank hers in two gulps. “Let’s go upstairs and screw.”

“Okay,” Morgan said.

They leaned against each other in the elevator, her fingers light on his back. His heart fluttered, pumped hot blood to all the appropriate areas. His head swam. They went to her room.

Morgan had seen this before. There was something erotic and hypnotic about hotel lounges and hotel rooms. Maybe it was being away from home. Maybe it was the little soaps and shower caps and one-use shampoo bottles and everything that hinted how temporary it all was. You didn’t even have to make the bed.

Or maybe it was the ultracold air-conditioning. Annette’s tan, smooth skin broke out in gooseflesh when Morgan slipped her dress off her shoulders. It shrunk to the floor around her ankles. The bra was easy to unsnap. He took a nipple into his warm mouth, and she threw her head back, moaned, grabbed the back of his head, twirled his ponytail in her fingers.

They stumbled to the bed, and her hands went to his belt. She unfastened him. Soon both were naked. He entered her quickly, and her ankles locked behind his back. He found a rhythm, sped up. She thrust back against his hips, grunting, panting, all the pent-up frustration heaving out with each slam of him against her.

She screamed her orgasm. He shook, released, went limp on top of her.

The whole thing had taken about ninety seconds.

“I think you’d better go,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s just… I feel embarrassed.” She scooted out from under him and ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Morgan crawled off the bed, schlong dangling wet. He was dazed, bewildered. He gathered up his clothes, cradled them. He noticed absently he still wore his socks.

Annette came back wearing a white robe. “It’s not right. We work together.”

“But-”

“We got carried away.” She pushed his shoulder gently, herded him toward the door.

“Let me get dressed!”

She paused, let him get into his boxers and trousers, then opened the door. She pushed him out. He opened his mouth but couldn’t get a word out.

“I’m sorry,” Annette said. “But we let the moment overcome our good judgment.”

And the door was closed.

He put his shirt on, started down the hall, mouth still hanging open. Stunned.

Just that quickly Annette Grayson had scurried back to her hole. She’d been out for only a glimpse, grabbed herself a chunk of Jay Morgan, and was gone again. Would she pay for it like the cheese pizza? Could she work off the memory of him on the stationary bicycle?

He stopped walking, looked down at his feet. He’d forgotten his shoes.

thirty-three

One-thirty in the morning, and Morgan had painted himself into the corner of the hotel lounge. He knew he was in for an apocalyptic hangover but couldn’t make himself care. He was maxing his Visa card on Sheraton martinis.

After Annette had kicked him out, he’d waited in his room for an hour in case she regained sanity and wanted to call. No call. He’d gone down to the bar in his socks. He’d kept drinking, hunched over the table, eyes going glassy and unfocused.

He stumbled to the house phone, dialed his room.

Reams answered, sleepy, mumbled something that might have been “hello.”

“Reams, buddy. Any calls for me?” Morgan heard his own voice loud in his ears. Good. A time to be loud. Let the trumpets sound.

“Morgan?”

“Morgan.”

“Glad you phoned.” Reams woke up, spoke more clearly. “I scheduled a breakfast with a Professor Klein. That one-year job I told you about. Klein runs things over at San Gabriel College. He can get you on the short list.”

“I didn’t ask you about that,” Morgan said.

“What?”

“Did I have any calls?”

“What? Here in the room? No, no calls.”

“Not from-” He almost said her name. That might not be good. They all had to work together in the same department. “Not from a woman? Did a woman call?”

“I told you. No calls.”

“Goddammit.” Morgan hung up. He almost dialed Annette’s room but knew it was a bad idea.

He went back to his table in the lounge. Somebody was sitting there. A man.

“Hey,” Morgan said.

The man looked up. A crooked smile. Jowls. A cheap suit, polyester and wrinkled. Red eyes. “Your table?” he said.

“Yes.”

He stood. “Sorry.” He rubbed his chin stubble with hairy knuckles. “Nobody around this time of night. Nobody to talk to. How about I sit down, buy you a drink.”

“Sure.” Morgan sat.

“I’m Deke.”

Morgan gave his name, and they shook hands.

“Here for the conference?” Morgan asked.

Deke Stubbs shook his head. “Other business.”

Stubbs bought Morgan a martini. He drank beer from a big, green bottle. Morgan asked about it.

“Grolsch,” Stubbs said. “It’s foreign. Somebody put me onto it recently.”

“That’s good. You’ve got to try new things,” Morgan said. “You’ve got to come out of your groundhog hole.”

“How’s that?”

“We all live in little holes,” Morgan said. He slurred his words, swayed in his seat. He took a swig of the martini. Most of it ran down his chin. “Got to come out of our holes and screw and drink foreign beer and run back in before anybody sees us.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stubbs said.

“Something to do with God and life and stationary bicycles.”

“Maybe you’ve had enough.”

“Maybe.”

Stubbs put a cigarette in his mouth. “You don’t mind, right?”

“No. Good idea.” Morgan pulled out one of his cigars, bit the end off, and spit it like Jones had shown him.

Stubbs lit his cigarette, then Morgan’s cigar. Both men puffed. They sat back in a gray-blue cloud of tobacco. A couple of guys enjoying drinks and a smoke. Sudden chums at the end of a long day. Morgan was seized with an irrational fondness for the man. How friendly to buy him a drink, keep him company during his fruitless brooding over Annette Grayson.

“Let’s get some pancakes,” Morgan said.

“Is the kitchen open?”

“We’ll go someplace, get out of this fucking hotel.” Morgan pushed his drink away, stood, almost tumbled over the table. Stubbs caught him.

“We’ll find someplace open,” Morgan said. “Come on. I got a car we can use.”

“Okay, sport,” Stubbs said. “You lead the way.”

Morgan made a point of verbally abusing the parking valet, then felt guilty and tipped him twenty bucks when he brought Dirk Jakes’s Mercedes. Morgan took the wheel, and Stubbs climbed into the passenger’s side.

“That way out of the parking garage.” Stubbs pointed straight ahead.

Morgan maneuvered the car, circled down a level. His steady hands on the wheel surprised him. He knew he was drunk.

“You don’t got any shoes.” Stubbs watched him work the pedals.

“I don’t need any goddamn shoes!”

He circled the garage, followed the EXIT signs. A red vest caught his eye, a guy walking along the edge of the garage, cute little bow tie pulled loose. It was the prick from the gift shop, off work. He was walking toward the big Dumpster in the corner. Morgan hit the accelerator, bore down on him, teeth clenched, eyes blazing.

Stubbs grabbed at his seat belt. “What the hell’s the hurry?”

The prick stopped, turned. His eyes bulged, grew to the size of headlights, mouth pulled tight in terror. He ran.

Morgan followed, honked the horn.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Stubbs yelled.

Morgan swerved, came within two inches of the prick’s knee. The prick dove, screaming fear. He landed in a pile of garbage bags. The Mercedes roared by, tires squealing as it made the turn down to the next level.

Morgan’s face was a mask of feral joy, wicked contentment. He laughed, and it sounded like the devil.

They didn’t go for pancakes.

Deke Stubbs talked Morgan into heading for the Gulf, where he’d seen billboards advertising titty bars near the beach. Since it was a thirty-minute drive, they stopped at a liquor store and purchased nine small bags of BBQ chips, a six-pack of Busch, and more cigarettes for Stubbs.

Stubbs was having a problem. He liked Morgan. Morgan told him all about the prick at the Sheraton gift shop. Stubbs hated little smart-ass guys like that. Morgan told him about Annette Grayson, the sudden boink, the woman’s lightning change of heart. Stubbs hated women like that. So superior. They’d slum with a guy, then try to cover it.

Morgan wasn’t a pompous, know-it-all, snob professor. He seemed to be a regular guy just trying to get some action, have a few laughs, live his life like anybody else. Stubbs would feel real bad when he turned Morgan’s lights out and made off with the cocaine-if he could find it. It would be a shame since Morgan appeared to be a stand-up guy.

These were Stubbs’s thoughts at a dark, corner table at The Shag Hut just outside of Galveston. The marquee boasted 75 Beautiful Women & 3 Ugly Ones. Onstage a woman named Cricket and another woman named Jade seemed unnaturally interested in one another. One of the women-Jade? — was a curvy Hispanic lady, round ass, hanging tits, an enormous pile of midnight hair. The other was willowy, pale, blond, barely eighteen-maybe.

Morgan swayed with the show, chin in hand, elbow on table. His eyelids were heavy. He’s fading fast, Stubbs thought. No sleep. Too much to drink.

“I’d sure like to be in between that,” Stubbs said, nodding at the stage show.

Morgan said, “MmmHmmmm.”

“I’m going to take the car keys a minute,” Stubbs said. “I left my smokes in the Mercedes.”

Morgan waved his disinterest.

Stubbs went outside. He smelled the ocean, the Gulf of Mexico actually. It was a good smell. Maybe when everything was settled, he’d move near the ocean. Not right on the beach. He hated the beach, hated sunburn and sand in his ass crack and screaming kids and surfers. But close to the water where he could smell it and get fresh seafood. Maybe near a pier. He’d never fished, but he thought he might like it.

Stubbs tried the trunk first. He went through by the numbers, pulled out the spare tire, lifted the carpeting.

No drugs.

He looked in the backseat. For some reason there was a bunch of tools. He ignored them, kept searching. There was a god-awful odor in the back. Faint but plain.

If he got lucky, if he found the drugs here in the Mercedes, Stubbs could just take off and leave Morgan inside the titty bar. He wouldn’t have to bash the guy over the head-or worse. That would make it easier all around.

He took a pocketknife out of his jacket and opened it, shook his head. A shame. The Mercedes was a damn nice car. He plunged the short blade into the fabric, cut a six-inch slit. He reached in and around. Only stuffing.

Hell.

He did the same to the other seats. Nothing.

Stubbs sighed. He’d have to make Morgan talk. But just to be sure, he went through the car one more time.

Morgan couldn’t believe naked women could get so boring so fast. The simple fact was that Jade and Cricket didn’t give two shits about Professor Jay Morgan. Neither did Amber, Titania, Zoey, Brandi, Jasmine, or Princess Daisy. As soon as Morgan ran out of dollar bills, he’d be just another sucker paying inflated prices for watered-down drinks.

He looked around for his new pal. Deke had been a good sport. Morgan knew he was a textbook sad-sack drunk. It was good of Deke to humor him, keep an eye on him while he destroyed himself. Where was Deke? The rest room? No. Morgan remembered. The car. Cigarettes. But that seemed like a long time ago.

Morgan stood. He felt tired but steadier. He walked toward the exit. The beefy bouncer gave him a long look on the way out. The parking lot was dark, poorly lit. Chilly. His feet especially were cold. He saw the Mercedes and shuffled to it.

He opened the back door and saw Deke pulling the stuffing out of the backseat. Morgan blinked, not sure if he was seeing right. He opened his mouth. He should say something, make Deke stop tearing up the expensive car, but he couldn’t quite get his mind around why Deke would intentionally fuck up the interior of a brand-new automobile.

Jakes will go nuts.

Stubbs looked up, met Morgan’s eyes. They stayed frozen like that for a long second.

“Shit.” Stubbs grabbed Morgan, pulled him into the car, shut the door.

Morgan couldn’t resist. He was stupefied. Stubbs pulled his fist back to his ear, held it a moment, then let loose, popped Morgan across the jaw. Hard. A smack of flesh. Morgan wilted into the corner of the Mercedes, the sparks going off in his eyes, bells. He didn’t even put up his hands, couldn’t fight back. Maybe Morgan didn’t understand what was happening. But Stubbs was on top of him. Another punch. Darkness overtook Morgan a moment, a cottony drifting. He shook himself out of it, tried to speak, wanted to know what and why. The salt taste of blood in his mouth.

“Sorry,” Stubbs said. “I can’t have you yelling for help.”

Morgan groped for reality. Was Deke robbing him? He’d had the car keys. It would have been easy to take off.

“I hate to do this, pal.” Stubbs had a fistful of Morgan’s shirt, hand cocked for another punch. “I tried to find the stuff the easy way, not cause you any more grief than needed, but it just didn’t happen that way. You should of stayed inside and watched the T&A show.”

Morgan spit blood. It stained his teeth and chin. “What do you want? Take the car.” He couldn’t find breath. Panic and dread had sapped him.

“Not here for the car, buddy. Maybe some cargo. You truck anything down here from Fumbee?”

Morgan looked blank.

“Come on,” Stubbs said. “I know all about your little side deal, snowman. Don’t you want to fork over the goods and get all this nastiness over with?”

Morgan shook his head. He didn’t know what the man meant. Cargo? What did he think Morgan was doing? There was nothing in Houston for Morgan but the conference. The only reason he’d even left Fumbee was to get away from…

“Oh no.” Morgan’s own voice was tinny and far away in his ears. Cold dread seeped into him, spread down his spine. He shrank in on himself, looked up at Stubbs.

“Oh no.” It was all he could say. He thought feebly he should fight or flee or scream, but he could only wait for the end. Maybe Stubbs would kill him quickly. Or maybe he could figure out what the man wanted, give it to him. Mind and muscle surrendered. All Morgan could do was shut his eyes tight, whine like a whipped dog.

“Knock it off,” Stubbs said. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just tell me where the drugs are.”

Morgan sobbed. He was so desperately tired. And ashamed. He thought of Fred Jones. Frail, emaciated Fred Jones. The old man would never whine. The sudden thought that Jones would see him like this, hear about Morgan’s pathetic display made him the most ashamed.

Morgan had to do something-anything-to help himself. He wouldn’t go out a quivering wad of jelly. “Drugs?”

“Don’t play dumb. I can put two and two together.”

It was perhaps a mistake that Morgan now decided to be creative.

“Jakes.” Morgan was appalled at the sound of his own voice, a hoarse croak. Fear. It was a start at least. He was trying. He would rage against the dying of his own, sad, little light.

“What? Jakes?” Stubbs’s voice took a rough edge. “What the hell does that mean?”

“The guy I came with,” Morgan said. “He’s the one. He’s got the drugs in his hotel room.”

“Let’s go get him.”

“What are you going to do?” Morgan’s voice was better. Still scared but no longer jelly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Stubbs said. “All you need to know is that I’m desperate and committed and if I don’t get what I want, there’ll be hurt and pain and bad times forever.”

Not an eloquent threat but convincing.

“Okay,” Morgan said. “Just take it easy.”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy. You take it easy.”

“Right.” Morgan’s hands shook. He breathed deep, made himself calm. “What do you want me to do?”

Stubbs let him up. “Get behind the wheel.”

Morgan reached for the door.

“Not that way.” Stubbs jerked him by the shirt. “Over the seat. I don’t want you making a run for it.”

Morgan crawled into the front seat, sat behind the wheel. He was breathing better. In the rearview mirror he saw Stubbs move, felt the cold metal behind his ear. Morgan didn’t need to be told it was a gun.

“I’ll stay back here,” Stubbs said. “You can guess what’ll happen if you pull something screwy. Don’t fuck with me.”

“I’ve had a lot to drink.”

“Don’t give me your mothers against drunk drivers bullshit.” Stubbs pressed the gun barrel harder against Morgan’s ear. “This should keep you plenty alert.”

Deke handed Morgan the keys and Morgan cranked the engine. “You’re going to hold that gun against my head all the way to Houston?”

“Yep.”

Morgan pulled out of the titty-bar parking lot, turned vaguely toward the highway.

At the light he made a decision. He barely knew he was doing it. Instead of taking the highway on-ramp, he turned toward the water, the Gulf of Mexico.

“What are you doing?” Stubbs pushed the gun barrel into Morgan’s neck.

“I missed it.”

“I can fucking see that. Don’t make this hard.”

“I can get on at the next intersection.”

Morgan drove along the water, the Gulf glittered in moonlight. Although he knew the risk, Morgan felt strangely calm. There was a certain freedom in doom. He flashed back to his dream, how he’d felt turning the car into the headlights. A giddy liberty in surrendering to oblivion.

Which was maybe why he laughed a little when he jerked the wheel and turned onto the fishing pier.

“Goddammit!” Stubbs’s face flushed. He spit when he yelled. “You think I’m kidding? You don’t think I’ll blow your fucking head off?”

The pier hadn’t been built for cars. The boards rattled, creaked. The Mercedes bounced violently. Morgan sideswiped a trash can, debris exploding upward, drifting down again on the Gulf breeze. Morgan hit the accelerator.

Stubbs reached over Morgan, tried to grab the wheel. Morgan pushed him away, steered one-handed. Stubbs went for the keys, and Morgan punched over his shoulder, tried to get Stubbs in the face. They picked up speed.

“Are you crazy?” Stubbs had gone back to waving the gun. He still leaned into the front seat, tried to threaten Morgan with the.45 and grab the wheel at the same time. “I swear to God I’m going to do it. I’ll blast a hole in your face. Hit the brakes.”

“You’re all talk.” Morgan swerved between the guardrails, clipped one on the left with a sharp crack, splintered wood. The left headlight winked out. The end of the pier sped toward them in near darkness. Stubbs was tossed around in the backseat, but righted himself quickly, shoved the gun against Morgan’s neck. He kept with the threats, shouted himself hoarse.

Morgan didn’t care. He half expected-half wanted-the bullet. Let it come. Bring on the hot flash of blood, fragmented skull. He could pitch forward into sweet, eternal nothingness.

The Mercedes exploded through the wooden railings at the end, slipped the surly bonds of earth, pier, and reality. They seemed to hover. Stubbs screamed something, the pistol gone from Morgan’s neck. Neither wore a seat belt. Morgan felt himself float up and away, weightless, breathless.

Then gravity.

The long, awkward plummet.

It wasn’t more than twelve feet down to the water, but the Mercedes in freefall took a lifetime to plunge the distance. It smacked the water, the impact throwing Morgan against the windshield. He bounced back into the seat. A blur of water and darkness and dashboard lights. The windshield looked down into the depths, the remaining headlight flailing against the black of the Gulf.

Chilling panic. Morgan saw himself going down with the car, pictured the salty water rising over his head, his lungs burning for air. A strangled cry of fear, desperate. It had come out of his own mouth.

He clawed at the automatic windows, lowered the one on the driver’s side. The Gulf poured in. But the water came slowly. The Mercedes floated near the level of the lapping waves. The hood of the car tilted down into the water, but the rear remained above the surface.

Morgan scrambled through the window.

“Morgan!” Anger, panic, rage mixed in Stubbs’s voice. “God-damn you. Come back here, Morgan. I’m stuck. Morgan!”

Morgan paid no attention. Stubbs continued to scream after him.

Morgan squirmed through the window, bobbed on the freezing water. Went under, swallowed water, kicked to the surface, and coughed. Gulped for air. The shore was a smear of fuzzy light. It seemed about two hundred miles away. Muffled screams still came out of the Mercedes.

Morgan kicked toward shore. He wasn’t a strong swimmer. Water smacked his face, stung his eyes. He sputtered, stroked. His arms ached with exertion and cold. He was going numb, shivering.

Morgan felt the bottom sooner than he’d expected, stood in the waist-deep water, and trudged to land. Waves pushed him in the right direction. He made it to the beach, collapsed into the sand, chest heaving with burning breaths.

He propped himself up on an elbow, looked back toward the end of the pier. For a second he thought the Mercedes had gone down, the black against the night made it hard to spot. But there it was, the back end still visible, taillights like the eyes of a demon.

Morgan watched. The Mercedes bobbed. It looked to Morgan like the front bumper was bouncing against the sandy bottom. It was pretty shallow, even that far out. Each time it bobbed, more water poured through the open front window, the tide inching it farther out and away from the pier. The car was sinking slowly, and he hadn’t seen Deke get out.

Morgan watched, still gasping breath, as the Gulf of Mexico slowly ate Dirk Jakes’s new Mercedes.

The son of a bitch had left him. Stubbs had threatened, begged, screamed his throat raw, but Morgan didn’t come back.

When Morgan had taken the Mercedes airborne, Stubbs had lost himself. He’d floated, turned, the night sky a tumbling blur. The whole car had shuddered with the impact of water. Stubbs had hit the floor, his hands flying out to protect him.

His left hand had slid under the car seat in front of him. He heard a crack. Something had come apart under the seat. His fingers had wedged between the metal tracks just as the seat had suddenly shifted backward. His four fingers had been crushed, trapped, pain lancing past his elbow, up to the shoulder.

He’d screamed for Morgan to come back.

Now he pulled hard on his hand. If he could, he’d yank the fingers out of their sockets. He couldn’t see the hand, but he knew it was ruined. The water was up to his neck. The pain was nothing compared to the water’s relentless rise. Stubbs did not want to drown helpless in the dark. He gritted his teeth, pulled, grunted. He felt the skin of his fingers rip and pull away along the bone.

And the cold water still came.

“Oh, God.” Stubbs thrashed, tried to work the fingers loose. “Oh, God, please.” His free hand groped, tried to find leverage, anything to help get free. His hand landed on the tools. A hammer, some chisels.

A saw.

The water was halfway over Stubbs’s Adam’s apple. He stretched, craned his neck, gulped air. “Please, God.” He grabbed the saw, held it tight. Tears stung his eyes. “Please.” He lifted his head for another lungful of air, the water level hovering at his bottom lip.

He put the saw against his arm just above the wrist. The back of the seat kept him from going lower. Stubbs was already halfway through the bone when it occurred to him it might have been easier if he had just put the.45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The dark waters closed over him, the Mercedes gently bouncing against the sandy bottom, tiptoeing out to sea.