Stone Quarry

I can." She met Eve's eyes with her own polished obsidian ones.

"I find it difficult," Eve said slowly, "to understand how you"—she indicated both of us—"can do what you do."

"You mean dig out things people buried on purpose, and want to keep buried?" Lydia asked.

"That's exactly right."

"Well," Lydia said, "but someone's doing that to you, right? Or you're afraid they will. Having us on your side just evens the odds."

"Are you always sure you're on the right side?"

"No," Lydia said simply. "Sometimes I make mistakes."

Eve looked at me. "And you?"

"All the time," I said. "Morning, noon, and night. That's why I need Lydia. She's right at least sometimes. Can you two excuse me a minute? I have to talk to Tony."

As I stood, I caught a look passing between Lydia and Eve that seemed to augur well for their getting along, though I had the feeling it didn't do much for me.

I walked to the bar, leaned on it while Tony finished mixing someone's scotch and soda. "What's up?" I asked.

"C'mon outside," he said, wiping his hands on a towel, not looking at me.

We left the warmth of the bar for the damp night chill. This was Tony's call, so I followed him, stopped when he did, waited.

He had trouble starting. We hadn't gone far from the door, and he stood with his back to the building, hands in his pockets, neon glowing over one square shoulder, the pitted tin sign in the air behind him. "I gotta tell you," he said. "I gotta tell you what happened. What I did."

"Okay," I said.

"Last night—" he began, then suddenly stopped as his eyes flicked from mine to something behind me. Fear flashed across his face. I tried to turn, to see what it was, but Tony slammed into me like a wrecking ball. I crashed onto the gravel. Maybe I heard tires squeal, maybe I heard shouts; the only thing I was sure I heard was the whine of bullets cutting the cold air.

I twisted over, yanked my gun from my pocket, emptied it at the tail lights tearing out of the lot. I couldn't tell if I hit anything, but I didn't stop them.

Now there were shouts, running feet, shadows. I turned, saw light from the open door cutting a sharp rectangle on the ground. Tony lay just beyond it, two spreading pools of red merging on his chest.

I ripped off my jacket, tore my shirt off and wadded it up. I leaned hard against the places where Tony's blood welled. A forest of legs surrounded me, too many, too close; and then Lydia's voice: "All right, people! Move back, give them room. Come on, move!" The legs receded. Tony moaned, opened his eyes.

"All right, old buddy," I said, pressing on his chest. My heart was thudding against my own. "Don't move. Don't talk. It'll be all right." In the cold air the blood seeping under my hands was sticky and hot. I called, "Lydia!"

"Right there," she said.

"Get me something to use for a bandage. Call the nearest rescue squad."

"They're in Schoharie," said a calm voice beside me. Eve crouched on the gravel, took Tony's hand. He focused his gaze, with difficulty, on her face.

"Shit!" I said. "It'll take them fifteen minutes to get up here."

"What the hell happened?" A face bent over me; a voice echoed other voices on the edges of my attention.

"Back off!" I spat. The face retreated and the voices became background noise again.

Lydia reappeared clutching a roll of gauze and a pile of clean towels. "They're calling the ambulance," she told me, kneeling.

Tony's eyes closed. His breath scraped through lips tight with pain.

"No time," I said. "I'll take him. Lean here. Hard."

I reached for a folded towel, but Eve took it from me, said calmly, "I'll do this. Get the car."

She began peeling my shirt back from Tony's bloody chest, laying clean cloth, directing Lydia's help with short, quiet words.

I grabbed my jacket off the ground, searched it for my keys as I sprinted across the lot. I backed the car down the lot, pulled as close as I could to the place where Eve and Lydia knelt.

Eve was knotting the ends of the gauze. The dressing on the wounds was neat and tight, better than it would have been if I'd done it. I picked a big guy out of the wide- eyed crowd; he helped me lift Tony, manuever him into the back seat, strap him in as well as we could.

As I climbed out of the car, Eve slipped in. She perched on the seat where Tony lay. Someone pushed through the crowd, passed Eve a blanket. It was Marie, white under the deep shadows of her makeup.

I looked around for Lydia; she was at my side. "Call the state troopers," I told her. "Tell them I'm taking 30 to 145, 145 to 1, to the highway to Cobleskill. Tell them to pick me up wherever they can." She repeated the route back to me. "Good," I said. "When they get here, tell them what happened, but nothing else. Stay here until I call you from the hospital."

"Good luck," she said. There was blood on her cheek, Tony's blood.

As I started the car, I called back to Eve, on the seat beside Tony. "You sure?" I asked.

"Yes."

I wound up the engine, let the clutch up fast. The front tires spat gravel. The car started to slither across the parking lot. I cursed, stopped, closed my eyes. I breathed deeply, forced my shoulders to relax, my fingers to loosen on the wheel, focused the electric current sizzling on my skin into a thin beam I could draw on, in my gut. I started the car again, accelerated quickly and quietly out onto 30.

30 was easy. I knew every inch of it, the bends, the dips, the places where dirt would have washed onto the road from last night's rain. I knew the turns where I could let the steering go light, where there was room to catch it on the far side. It helped that it was dark. I drove the whole road, dipping my headlights at each curve to check for the swell of oncoming light that would warn me I wasn't alone. The rhythm of the road was bad but my rhythm was good, and I snaked through at seventy, faster in short bursts.

When we hit 145 it got harder. More people lived along it, and I knew it less well. There were hidden driveways, there were potholes I wasn't prepared for. I was deep into turns before I knew they were there. Trees grew thickly, close to the road. I had to come down to sixty, which was still too fast for the road, but not fast enough to keep the adrenaline of anger and frustration from pushing through to my fingertips. My hands began to sweat. The steering wheel, sticky with Tony's blood, now became a slimy, slithery thing on which my grip was not sure. I pressed my fingers into the ridges at the back of the wheel to keep my hands from slipping. I wished for my gloves, but I didn't know where they were. At Antonelli's, on a back table, by a half-finished drink, a half-started conversation.

Ahead, from the right, lights swung onto the road. A hulking truck body followed, filled my vision, my world. I didn't slow because I couldn't have stopped. I flicked the wheel left, flew out past him, and eased right. I felt the left front wheel search for the road, then claw its way back onto it. The rear wheel hung in the soft shoulder another second, then followed. We dug up dirt as we thudded back onto the asphalt. Then we were running smoothly, except for the staccato hammering of my heart. Sounds came from behind me, soft words, but I didn't pay attention. I'd lost my focus, thinking about gloves; we were lucky to have made it through that, and you don't get two of those.

My world became a moving, headlight-lit band and the shadows on either side of it. The texture of the road, the car's banked angle, the sound of the engine as we headed into a curve were all I cared about. My breathing became as regular as a metronome. My heart slowed again, and I had no purpose and there was nothing I wanted but to push this car down this road and onto Route 1 as fast as it was willing to go.

And we made it. There were other cars, other headlights, migrant leaves and branches huddled across the road, but we made it through all that, and burst out onto 1 like a sleeper screaming himself awake from a dream.

1 was a good, four-lane road. It was one of the ones the county had widened and straightened, and it gave me room and a clear view. I pushed up to eighty.

As I hit 1 the insistent flash of circling red and white lights appeared in my mirror. A siren howled. I held my speed steady. The lights moved up close behind me. Then he pulled beside me, in front of me, opened a distance between us, kept it even. I flashed my lights, inched up behind him to show I could match his speed. He accelerated.

A mile and a half of that, running straight and fast, the siren clearing the way for us as we lay each well-banked curve smoothly onto the one before. Sometimes we sped by a car cowering in the right lane; most of the time the road was empty, ours.

The state highway was even better, six lanes, and we took the six miles, on and off, in four minutes. The hospital was only two miles away now, a long, long two miles through residential streets whose posted speed was thirty.

The cop ahead of me, with his screaming siren and flashing light, kept us near sixty. I felt as though I'd come down to pleasure-drive speed, Sunday afternoon meandering. I wanted to pass the cop, to drive the way Tony needed me to drive; I wanted to arrive.

A car skidded to a stop as we ran a light; his screeching brakes faded fast into the night behind me. The cop ahead of me signaled and swung right, taking a turn I didn't know. I followed; we zigzagged through night-sleepy streets whose quiet we ripped apart. The cop darted right again, and we were in the hospital lot.

The medics were waiting as I swung under the canopied emergency entrance. They spoke little to each other, nothing to Eve or me, as they lifted Tony from the back of my car onto a gurney, sped him out of sight through glass doors that opened without help.

I watched them vanish, medics like parentheses bent at the ends of Tony's wordless sentence. Suddenly I had no words either, and no ability to move. I stood in the cold, drained and empty, staring at the door because I was facing that way.

A voice said, "Go inside." I turned, uncomprehending. Eve stood close, her hand warm on my bare arm. "You've got nothing on. I'll park the car. Go inside."

I spread my hands, looked down at myself. I wore a sweat-drenched, blood-streaked undershirt. There was blood on my pants, my hands, my arms. Even the blue snake curling his way up to my left shoulder was smeared with Tony's blood.

Eve took the car keys from my hand. I did what she said, went inside, to a room where a nurse sat behind a cheerful yellow counter beside yellow double doors you couldn't see through. It was warmer inside, but I didn't feel warmer. The smell was cold and the shiny vinyl floors were cold and the deserted silence was very cold.

The nurse asked me some questions about Tony and I filled in some forms. There were a lot of things I didn't know. Eve came in with my jacket. I put it on. She went around a corner, came back with a steaming paper cup, handed it to me. The hand I took it with must have been shaking; hot coffee slopped over my fingers, dripped onto the floor. Eve took the cup back, waited, handed it to me again. I held it in both hands. The coffee was bitter, with oily green droplets floating on the surface, but as I sipped it I finally began to warm.

Eve said, "Do you feel better?"

"I'm all right." My voice sounded loud in the stillness.

"You probably saved his life, driving like that."

I reached a cigarette from my pocket, lit it without answering her, because we both knew that Tony might not live, even so.

The nurse behind the counter glanced up at the sound of the match. She rested a long look on me, on the cigarette, on Eve. Then she went deliberately back to her paperwork as though nothing was amiss. I wondered whether some people were born understanding the true nature of kindness, or if it was something you had to learn.

A state trooper came through the glass doors, knife- sharp creases in his pants smoothing at the knees as he sat.

"You the guy I was following?" I asked him.

"Uh-huh. Donnelly." He had crinkly blue eyes and a wide smile. He stuck out his hand. I reached for it, then saw my hand, dirt, blood, and coffee in equal parts darkening my skin. I withdrew it, said, "Thanks."

"What happened?" he wanted to know.

I finished the coffee. "Drive-by."

"Yeah?" he said. "Like the movies?"

"Yeah."

"You know who it was?"

"No."

"You know why?"

"No."

"Anybody else hurt?"

"No."

"Well," he said, "none of my business. I'm just supposed to keep an eye on you until someone who knows something gets here."

"On me?"

"Sure." He was a little surprised. "You're a witness. From what I hear, you're the witness. You're gonna be a popular fella around here."

Somehow, I doubted that.

I stubbed out the cigarette, found the men's room, lathered liquid soap on my arms, my face, my neck. I took off the undershirt, threw it away, washed again. There weren't quite enough paper towels to dry on; Housekeeping must have had a heavy day.

I wormed back into my jacket, went out to the pay phones in the corridor by the vending machines. Donnelly was sitting peacefully talking to Eve, his back to me. I could have slipped down the fire stairs and out the basement level door, and would his face have been red when someone who knew something got there. Lucky for him I had no place to go.

I called Antonelli's. A cop answered, in the voice of cops answering crime-scene phones. I asked for Lydia, hoping he wouldn't ask me who I was, and when he did, I thought briefly of lying. But that would just have led to trouble later, and there was enough trouble now.

"It's Bill Smith," I said.

"Hold on. Lieutenant!" the cop yelled.

Then MacGregor's tired voice: "Smith? That you?"

"Yeah, it's me. You find anything?"

"What the hell am I supposed to find? Jesus Christ, one minute I'm in my jockeys watching Star Trek reruns, next thing I know I'm racing to a run-down bar because it's hunting season in parking lots. What happened?"

I told him what I had and hadn't seen.

"Who was it?"

"I didn't see."

"That doesn't mean you don't know."

"I don't know."

"Any theories?"

"Frank Grice."

"Why?"

"Because I don't like him."

"Screw you. Describe the car."

I closed my eyes, tried to flip through the pictures in my mind. "Strip tail lights. Red-white-red. License plate between, not below. The plate was dark. Covered with something."

"You see the color?"

"Dark."

"No shit."

"Come on, Mac."

"Anything else?"

"Something shiny above the left light. Auto club sticker, something like that."

"Okay. Does Antonelli have any enemies?"

"Probably. But not this kind."

"You said Grice. Tell me what this has to do with the fight Monday night."

"I don't know. Why don't you ask Grice?"

"You're a pain in the ass, Smith, you know that? Anyhow, maybe it wasn't Antonelli they were after. Maybe it was you."

I said, "Maybe it was."

"You got enemies of your own?"

"I've got nothing but. But if someone thinks I'm worth killing, I don't know why. Except that bastard with the broken wrist. He may be annoyed about that."

"Otis Huttner? A guy with a cast on his wrist can't drive and shoot at the same time. But I'll pick him up anyway, just for practice."

"Maybe he had someone with him. That other bastard."

"So I'll pick them both up."

"Frank Grice doesn't like me, either."

"Smith, you want me to pick up Grice, you'd better have a damn good reason. You have one?"

"I have the one I've always had. I think he killed Wally Gould, or he knows who did, and I think he knows I think that. Maybe he thinks I know more than I do."

"That's not good enough. He pays his lawyer too much for me to pick him up because you think he thinks you think he did something that even if he did he knows I can't prove."

The headache that had been sitting quietly in the bruised place behind my left ear suddenly threw its arms around my head and held on tightly, as if MacGregor scared it. "Mac," I said, "I don't even want to understand that."

He hesitated. "How's Antonelli doing?"

"He's in surgery. They haven't told me anything yet."

"You think he saw who it was?"

"He could have."

"I'll send someone over, to be there when he wakes up."

"You've got someone here now."

"Who? Donnelly?"

"Yeah."

"He should've been Highway Patrol. He drives great, but he doesn't think so good."

"Does the Highway Patrol know you feel that way?"

"Yeah, and so does Donnelly. Smith, listen—"

An electronic voice interrupted him, asked me for more money. I fished around past the gun in my pocket for quarters, shoved them in the slot. I said, "I'm listening."

"Whatever it is you've been sitting on, I want it. Don't give me client confidentiality, don't give me it's not police business. I've got one dead body and I might—I almost had another. I cover three counties here, Smith. This is more homicides than I had all last year. So your time's up. Give."

"I can't, MacGregor."

"You can, and you will. If you don't, I'll send somebody over there to pick you up. You won't like my jail, Smith. It's not nice and comfy like the ones you've got in the big city."

A nurse squeaked down the hall on crepe-soled shoes.

"Oh, Christ," I said. "Yeah, okay, Mac. But tomorrow, okay? I want to stay here until—until I know something. And I'm beat. I'll come in the morning."

He was silent a moment. "You going to spend the night there?"

"Yes."

He sighed. "Am I going to be sorry if I don't make you come in now?"

"No. Nothing else is going to happen tonight. All the bad guys have gone home to bed."

"You'd better be right."

"I'm right. Listen, it's been fun, but I didn't call to chat with you. What are the chances of my speaking to Lydia Chin?"

"The little Chinese dish in the leather jacket?"

"You'd better hope she didn't hear that."

"Who is she?"

"She's a friend of mine, for Christ's sake. She came up to spend a couple of days."

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time."

"Can I speak to her?"

"Yeah, sure. Oh, and look—Brinkman's on his way to the hospital, to talk to you."

"Jesus, Mac, did you have to do that?"

"I didn't want him screwing up my crime scene. Tell him what happened, tell him you're coming in to see me in the morning, tell him to leave you alone."

"Sure, Mom. Can I tell him my big brother'll beat him up if he doesn't?"

"Tell him any damn thing you want." MacGregor's voice became distant as he called Lydia's name.

I waited, not long. "Bill? How's Tony?" Lydia's voice was both soft and urgent, like spring rain.

"I don't know. He's still in surgery. MacGregor give you a hard time?"

She said noncommittally, "He's a cop." With a smile in her voice, she added, "And he's listening."

"Talk dirty."

"You wish. What should I do? They took my statement; I can go."

"Come to the hospital. I want you to take Eve home, stay with her."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to stay here." I wasn't sure why. Tony wasn't likely to wake until morning, if then; and I was desperately tired. But it seemed, somehow, as though it would help.

I went back to the little waiting area. Eve and Donnelly were sitting companionably, silently. I asked the nurse behind the yellow counter whether she could tell me anything about Tony yet. She smiled a gentle, practiced smile, said she was sure Doctor would let us know as soon as he could.

I sat down next to Eve. Donnelly and I looked each other over; then I leaned back, stretched my legs, closed my eyes. Eve rested her hand on mine. It was rough, warm, and sure. I twined my fingers with hers, and slept.

Chapter 17

I didn't sleep long. The sound of boot heels clomped through the confused images in my mind. I felt Eve squeeze my hand just before a deep voice drawled, "Well, look at Sleeping Beauty."

I opened my eyes but I didn't sit up. The fluorescent hospital lights seemed harsher, brighter than before. I squinted against them.

"Every time I see you, city boy," Brinkman said, dropping into the chair next to Donnelly, "you look worse. Why d'you think that is?"

"In the eye of the beholder, Brinkman." Now I sat up, took my hand from Eve's. I lit my last cigarette, drew on it hungrily. The nurse looked up again, her face more disapproving this time. I crumpled the empty pack, showed it to her. She smiled and bent over her papers again.

Brinkman half turned, spoke to the man next to him. "You Donnelly?"

"Yessir," Donnelly said cheerfully.

"He say anything I should know about?"

Donnelly scrunched up his face, thought about what I'd said. "I don't think so, Sheriff."

"Okay," said Brinkman. "You can go." He turned back to me. "You shoot Antonelli, Smith?"

I felt color fill my face like a flood tide. I could have leapt out of that chair and broken his neck.

Eve said quietly, "Sheriff."

I stepped on her word as I said, "Brinkman, you're an idiot."

"You were alone out there. No one saw what happened but you."

"Other people saw the car."

"A car driving out of a parking lot. In a hurry to get to the next drink."

Wordlessly, I let my eyes meet his. Then I pulled my gun out of my pocket, held it out to him.

He smiled delightedly. "Why, how'd you know? Just what I wanted."

"Tony's a friend of mine, Brinkman," I said quietly.

"Wouldn't be the first time a man crossed up a friend." He sniffed at my gun. "Could even be you had a good reason."

"The gun's been fired," I said. "At the car."

"At the car." He nodded. "Now tell me the whole story."

I told him. It was a short story. Donnelly, dismissed, didn't move, but sat gaping at the excitement he'd missed.

"And, of course," Brinkman said when I'd finished, "you have no idea who might be shooting at Antonelli, or at you. Do you, city boy?"

I told him what I'd told MacGregor. His response surprised me. "Frank Grice," he said. "You and me, that's something we think the same on."

"Then what's this shit about me shooting Tony?"

"Well, that was mostly to get a rise out of you," he grinned. "See, the way I look at it, anybody’d rather shoot you than him."

"Brinkman," I said carefully, "it's been a long, long day. If you're through, I'd appreciate it if you'd go to hell."

But he wasn't quite through. First he took a statement from Eve. Her calm, low voice was like a warm place to watch a storm from. Then he wanted to hear about the car, so I told him about the car. Then he asked me where Jimmy Antonelli was.

"You think Jimmy shot Tony?" I asked.

"It would make me happy."

"Making you happy isn't high on my list, Brinkman, or Jimmy's either."

"Maybe he's dead," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe that's why I can't find him."

"Well," I said, "maybe if he's dead, he'll come looking for you."

That made Donnelly laugh. It made Brinkman narrow his beady eyes and scowl. "When I find him," he said, "and he tells me you knew where he was all along, that'll make my day."

"Glad to help," I said.

Then he gave me the usual warnings about not leaving the area, about making myself available. Then he left, about a year after he'd come, with my .38 in his hand and Donnelly trailing behind him.

The waiting area was very, very quiet without cops. I stood. "You want coffee?" I asked Eve.

"Yes, I suppose I do."

I got coffee and peanut butter crackers from the vending machines. "Dinner," I said. She smiled and we ate crackers and drank coffee and said nothing.

I spent the night in Tony's hospital room. It had been close to an hour before Lydia had arrived, and another half hour after that until the surgeon, discreetly triumphant in a red streaked green gown, had pushed through the doors to tell us Tony had lived through surgery and had a good chance of staying alive.

Eve had been willing to go home then. While she was in the ladies' room, Lydia asked me, "What do you want me to do?"

"What you came here for: keep an eye on Eve."

"This doesn't change things?"

"I don't know what this does. I feel as though I've been working blindfolded for days. Every time I think I'm close, something happens I don't understand."

"Think about it," Lydia said slowly, "as though you didn't know these people. As though you really were an outsider."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm not sure. It's just—I can't lose the feeling there's something you're not seeing. I wish I could see it, Bill. I wish I could help."

I gave her a tired grin. "Just standing there, you help."

"God, you're impossible. If you didn't look so pathetic I'd slug you."

"That's why I practice looking like this. Actually I feel great."

Eve came back, asked me to call her in the morning. I promised I would. I watched through the glass doors as they crossed the parking lot together, saw Eve incline her head to catch Lydia's words, saw Lydia's smile flash as she unlocked her car.

After they'd driven away I sat back down, thought about what Lydia had said. My mind chased ideas around like a greyhound after a whole pack of mechanical rabbits, until I finally gave up and got up to talk to the nurse.

Tony didn't wake that night. Because it was a country hospital, the nurses found a cot for me—"From Pediatrics," they confided—and pillows and blankets and even a toothbrush in a cellophane wrapper. Because it was a hospital, I didn't sleep well anyway. Nurses came and went all night, checking Tony's tubes and bandages, his temperature and his breathing. I woke each time, and then lay awake, breathing the bitter, antiseptic air, watching the moon, tired but dutiful, move across the sky. It finally gave up and set, discouraged.

A long time after the moon had set, the sky began to show streaks of red and iron blue, like a slow-to-develop bruise. Sometime after that I heard the jingle of glass and metal that tells you the doctors are making rounds, accompanied by nurses with trays of syringes and pills and other things patients need. By then the sky was a sullen gray, as bright as it probably meant to get. I got up, washed and dressed, zipped my jacket over my bare chest because I didn't want anyone's sympathy.

I stood watching Tony, who with the aid of a complex network of machines and tubes and drugs was able to successfully complete each breath he started. His face was pallid, yellow-tinged, his eyelids dark and sunken. He already looked like a man who’d been sick a long time, a man who’d be a long time getting well.

The attending physician, a younger, colder man than the surgeon, asked me to wait outside while he did his work. When he came out he was noticeably friendlier. He told me Tony was doing well. I recognized that thaw, that softening of the armor in which he wrapped himself in case he had to deliver bad news. Relax, I wanted to tell him. You get used to it. Eventually the armor turns to stone around you. Then it doesn't soften anymore; but then you're never caught without it, either.

I didn't go back into Tony's room when the doctor was gone. Tony was not likely to wake until later. The cop MacGregor had sent was sitting patiently in the hall— had, it turned out, been sitting there most of the night, while I was tossing on the cot. Let him wait to hear from Tony. I had to move. I had to do something, while the ideas slugged it out in my head until a winner was declared.

The hospital cafeteria wasn't open yet, so I drove to Friendly's, just before the state highway entrance—E-Z- Off, E-Z-On. I had fried eggs because I knew they couldn't make fried eggs from powder, and I had bacon and potatoes and toast and coffee and orange juice and more coffee, but before any of that I called Eve Colgate.

She answered on the second ring.

"It's Bill," I said.

"Are you all right?" Eve asked. "I just called the hospital.

They've upgraded Tony's condition to 'stable.' They said you'd gone."

"He's doing all right, but the doctor says it'll be a slow recovery."

"Did he wake up? Did you speak to him?" "No."

"So he doesn't know you were there."

"It doesn't matter."

"If you're not staying with him, maybe I'll come down. He should have a friend there when he wakes."

"He'll tell you he'd rather be left alone."

"When he tells me that, I'll leave," she said easily. "Bill, how are you?"

"I'm okay. How are you two doing?"

"We're fine. We're having breakfast." A note of amusement crept into Eve's voice. "We just got back from doing the morning chores."

"What's funny?"

"Lydia did quite well," Eve said gravely.

"Oh, God," I said.

"She wants to talk to you."

A pause, and then Lydia. "Bill? Do you know how big cows are?"

I chuckled.

"Don't laugh!" she demanded. "The closest I ever was to a live chicken before is the Grand Street kosher market. Did you know chickens get annoyed when you take the eggs away?"

"Only if your hands are cold."

"Oh, you're so smart. Did you ever milk a cow?"

"Did you?" I asked, impressed.

"Well, sort of. Eve showed me. I wasn't real good at it. I mean, they do it all by machines anyway. We just got enough for breakfast." She stopped for breath, then asked, "How's Tony?"

I repeated what I'd told Eve.

"It sounds as though he'll be all right," she said. "I'm so glad."

"Yeah," I said. "Me, too."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going over to Frank Grice's place, on the other side of Cobleskill. If I can't find him I'm going to try that other dump."

"Be careful."

"I'm always careful."

"Uh-huh. I'd feel better if I were with you."

"I'd feel better if you were with me, too. But I want you to stay with Eve. And think of all you're learning. This will be good, for when we buy our little rose-covered cottage. You can milk the cows and collect the eggs and bake cherry pies while I split firewood and shoot things for food for the winter."

"If this were my phone I'd hang up on you."

"If this were your phone your mother would already have hung up on me. I'll call again later. 'Bye."

I drank the coffee and worked my way through all that food. I wondered if the gun in Jimmy's truck actually was the one that killed Wally Gould. I wondered why Wally Gould was killed. I wondered if Lydia's hands had been cold. I wondered who had shot Tony, and whom they'd meant to shoot, and why.

A half mile from Friendly s there was a Valu-Center, a supermarket as big as a New York City block. They sold everything there: food, lawn furniture, hardware, clothing. I bought a T-shirt, a sweater, and a carton of Kents, and I bought gloves. Back in the car I pulled the clothes on, lit a Kent, and headed across Cobleskill, to the place Jimmy had said Grice lived. I went past once-elegant frame houses, a couple of public buildings built out of gray stone from the quarries, and a municipal park that looked tired and old in the dull morning light. As I crossed the bridge over the state highway I caught a glimpse of the Appleseed plant, enormous painted trucks coming and going, pale smoke pouring into the sky from a stainless-steel chimney. On a day like this even the stainless steel didn't shine.

The complex of three-story buildings Grice lived in was the only one like it in Cobleskill, maybe in the county. Luxury Condos, a sign announced. Balconies, Euro-style kitchens, 1 1/2 baths. Pool. The buildings were tan-colored stucco. The pool was empty, except for a small congealed lump of winter leaves. The paint on the sign was peeling.

The first building, Jimmy'd said, on the third floor. I found the bell labeled Capone. I pushed it; nothing happened. I started, methodically, to push all the second- floor bells. I was halfway through them when the intercom barked, "Who's there?" I put my mouth very close to the speaker, growled something loud and unintelligible. The question came again and I growled again. I was buzzed in.

I found the first-floor garbage room and waited there, gave my benefactor a chance to give up and stick his head back in his door. After a few minutes I slipped out, continued along the corridor to the fire stair and up to the third floor.

Grice's apartment wasn't hard to find and it wasn't hard to break into. That was disappointing. What I really wanted was to talk to Grice; this little excursion was just an irresistible side trip. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, and it seemed likely that a man who made it so simple to get into his place wouldn't have left anything to find.

That turned out to be true. The apartment didn't have quite the ambience of the green house near Franklinton, but there was nothing about it to make me want to spend my retirement there. A thick gold carpet lay prostrate under a large brown leather sofa and matching La-Z-Boy recliner. In a smoked-glass wall unit there was an enormous projection TV and VCR. There were three used high-ball glasses on the glass coffee table, and a full ashtray. I examined the butts. Marlboro Lights, mostly; but among them, two Camels. Without filters.

In the bedroom the bed was unmade, but it would be hard to say how many people had slept in it, or when. There were dirty dishes in the Euro-style kitchen sink.

The whole place had an air of grease and uncaring that made me want to open a window, open all the windows. I resisted because I didn't want any movement up here to be seen from outside.

Wearing my new gloves, I worked fast. I opened everything that was closed, pawed through drawers, rifled through piles. I found both cocaine and marijuana in a kitchen cabinet, but in small amounts, like what a host might keep on hand for guests. There was change and a pile of bills in a bowl by the bed, and in the same bowl a pair of jeweled and tinkling earrings, which I pocketed, but no large amounts of cash. No phone bills, which I would've been interested in. No credit card receipts, no datebook.

No lists, no ledgers, no maps to the pirate gold.

Okay, the hell with it. What had I expected, a signed confession? "I killed Wally Gould and I've been trying to frame Jimmy Antonelli for it. I did it because he was an ugly little creep and he got on my nerves. I'm writing this because the guilt is too much to bear. Yours truly, Frank Grice."

I was wasting time.

I left. Down the way I'd come, out the rear door this time, around the side of the building. Out of habit, I surveyed the parking lot before heading across it to my car. It was almost empty, and I didn't see any bad guys.

The only thing I saw that I wasn't expecting was Lydia.

Chapter 18

She was sitting in her rented car, parked next to mine in the condo lot. As I stepped from the shadow of the building she flashed me a smile, opened the door, got out. The smile turned down the voltage on the jolt that had gone through me when I saw she was alone, but I still covered the lot in fast strides and I still called, "What's wrong? Where's Eve?"

"No, she's all right," Lydia answered as I reached her. "She's at the hospital, with Tony. There's a cop there and everything. She won't leave until I come back. It's just that I called Velez right after we talked to you, and he gave me something Eve and I thought you should have right away."

Velez. I'd forgotten about Velez; but that had been a grudge match anyway, what I'd hired him for.

"Eve and you thought, huh?" I said to Lydia.

"Uh-huh. I told Eve where Grice lived and she told me how to get here after I dropped her at the hospital. I was afraid I'd miss you, but I found your car. I figured I'd give you time to toss the place if that's what you were doing. If you'd been much longer I'd have come up to see if you were okay."

"I appreciate that, I really do. As it turns out, it was what I was doing. No one's home, and I didn't find a thing. Well, almost not a thing." I lit a cigarette, leaned next to her on the car.

"What did you find?"

"You first. What's Velez's big news?"

"He says to tell you first it's not dirt," she said. "He hasn't found anything illegal, which is what he thinks you wanted."

"That was what I wanted, but I'm flexible."

"Good. Now, you know for a couple of years Appleseed's been buying farms all over the county?"

I nodded.

"Well, one thing is, Velez says they've been consistently paying more than the land is appraised at."

"How much more?" I interrupted.

"Not a fortune. Ten or fifteen percent."

"Hmm. Not enough to ring any alarms, but enough to make a seller grab it before Appleseed comes to its senses."

"I guess," she said. "The other thing is, it's not really Appleseed."

"Oh?" I said. "Do tell."

"Velez says he needs more time to work on it, but it looks as though it's Appleseed's money that's making the purchases, but the title to the land is actually put in the name of a thing called Appleseed Holdings, not Appleseed Baby Foods. It's a whole different company, a partnership with two partners."

"And the partners are . . . ?"

"That's the good part," Lydia said. "Mark Sanderson owns forty percent. The other sixty is in the name of Frank Grice."

Lydia looked at me for a moment, then laughed. "Boy," she said, "that's an expression I don't see on you very often. I'll have to tell Velez."

"Son of a bitch," I said. I dropped the cigarette, crushed it underfoot. "Are you real busy right now?"

"I could probably make some time. What did you have in mind?"

"How about we go see Mark Sanderson?"

"Sounds lovely."

We left her car in the condo lot, rode to Appleseed in mine. In the car, Lydia went on. "Velez says to tell you Sanderson's wife disappeared about four years ago."

"I knew that. Did Velez find her?"

"No, and he looked. Her credit cards haven't been used since the day she left. Her social security number hasn't either. There were no unusual withdrawals from their joint bank accounts in the couple of months before she left. Since then all the activity has been Sanderson's." She added, "She supposedly ran away with some guy, but Velez couldn't find anyone."

I nodded. "MacGregor said she had a reputation. He said everyone but Sanderson knew it." We passed the state college campus, turned onto the spur road to the Appleseed plant. "Were her credit cards canceled?"

"Lena Sanderson's? They weren't renewed when they expired, but they weren't canceled. She could have gone on using them for a couple of months."

"Except that would have made her easier to find."

"She must have really wanted to stay lost."

"You don't know Sanderson. It's a natural reaction."

Mark Sanderson didn't keep us waiting long this time. We didn't even have time to sit and enjoy the vegetables.

As soon as the secretary's beautiful voice announced us, the door to Sanderson's office flew wide and Sanderson filled the opening.

"Where is she?" he demanded.

"Ask your partner," I said, pushing past him into the corner office, where the windows offered two different views of the same sullen sky. Lydia followed me, looked Sanderson over. He shot her one glance and then ignored her.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he barked. "Where's Ginny? That Antonelli punk, his brother was shot last night. What the hell is going on? Where's my daughter?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were still doing business with Frank Grice?"

He stopped dead, his eyes fixed on me as though I'd suddenly mutated into a form of life he'd never seen before. He looked at Lydia again. "Who the hell is this?"

"Lydia Chin," I said. "Lydia, this is Mark Sanderson." Lydia put out her hand. Sanderson didn't move. Lydia shrugged. "Lydia and I are business associates," I told him. "Like you and Grice."

"Smith," he pushed through his teeth, "it's none of your fucking business, but if you mean Appleseed Holdings, that's a completely legitimate operation."

"Yeah," I said. "Seems to be, so far. What I really want to know is why you didn't tell me about it."

"Because it was none of your fucking business!" he said again. "It has nothing to do with my daughter, who is the only reason I let a man like you into my office at all!"

"How about a man like Grice?"

Sanderson forced the muscles in his jaw to relax. He walked around behind his desk, sat down. "Appleseed Holdings is a profit-making venture. Sometimes business decisions get you involved with people you’d otherwise rather not be involved with."

"Profit-making for whom? The money that goes into it is Appleseed's. Yours. But Grice owns a bigger share than you do."

Sanderson smiled a hard, cold smile. "For us both."

"But not yet?"

"No," his smile widened, then flicked off. "Not yet."

"Uh-huh. That's what I thought."

Lydia lifted her eyebrows, waited to be enlightened.

"The gas pipeline," I said to her, but with my eyes on Sanderson. "I'll bet I could map the properties he's bought. North to south down the county, mostly in the valley. When NYSEG starts buying up land for the pipeline, they'll have to come to him. What if it doesn't happen, Sanderson?"

Sanderson practically laughed at me. "It'll happen. You forget," he said. "I have friends who tell me things."

"But I thought they condemned land for things like that," Lydia said. "So you couldn't speculate that way."

Sanderson looked at her as he might at a retarded child with whom he was forced to deal. "They do. But they have to pay a fair market price. And this is very, very productive land. We lease it to Appleseed Baby Foods at very good terms. Appleseed—Appleseed Baby Foods—is making huge profits on the crops we grow on this land."

"Because you pay chickenshit to the people who grow them, the people who used to own that land," I said.

He shook his head. "Doesn't matter why. Profit is profit." "And what about Grice?" "What about him?"

"I could understand if there were strong-arm work involved. But I haven't heard that. People are falling all over themselves to sell their farms to you. So how come you're willing to invest in Grice's future?"

"Smith, let me tell you again: this is none of your business. My daughter's safety should be concerning you. It should be keeping you up nights. Because if anything’s happened to Ginny-" He stopped as the earrings from my pocket skidded, jingling, across his desk. He looked up. "What's this?" "Hers?" Sanderson glanced at them. "No. They're too flashy for her” "Christ, Sanderson, you're a case." I picked up the photograph from his desk, passed it to Lydia, who as usual, was leaning by the window. She studied it, handed it back to me. I offered it to Sanderson. The spun gold of Ginny's hair and the tilt of her head combined to hide all but the tip of one earring, but the amethyst bauble was unmistakable.

He paled, picked up one earring between finger and thumb. He said, "Where did you get them?"

"You really didn't recognize them? That picture's right under your nose every day, Sanderson." He scowled.

"Sanderson," I said, "there's a lot you don’t know, and a lot I don't know. Let's fill each other in." I sat, put a match to a cigarette. Then I had to get up and retrieve the ashtray, as I had two days before. "Your daughter," I told him, "met Jimmy Antonelli in a bar sometime last month." At the word bar his eyes flashed and he started to say something, but I went on. "It was Grice who told you they were seeing each other, wasn't it? You're a pawn, Sanderson. Grice couldn't talk me into finding Jimmy for him, so he thought maybe you could. By the way, did he tell you he owns the bar where they met?"

He didn't answer, but the look in his iron eyes told me I wouldn't have liked anything he'd said anyway.

I went on: "Ginny dropped Jimmy about a week ago. She told him she'd met someone else. Someone tougher than he was, she said. There are probably a lot of men in this county tougher than Jimmy, but I found those earrings in Frank Grice's apartment."

Suddenly a pencil broke in Sanderson's grip. He looked at the yellow splinters, then at me. "This is crap!"

"There's more. Last Friday someone broke into a house near Central Bridge and stole some valuable things. Your daughter has been fencing those things."

"What the hell are you trying—"

"There's at least one witness who can identify her, and if I have to I'll find more. But here's where what you want and what I want may come together. The stuff from that burglary that's already been sold we'll forget about. But there was a crate with some paintings in it. Six of them. They haven't surfaced yet. The police don't know about this. If I get the paintings back, they never will."

Sanderson was livid, his jaw clamped shut in his round face until he found enough control to speak. "You stupid bastard," he hissed. "You think you're smart enough to set Ginny up and blackmail me? You don't know what league you're playing in, Smith. Where did you get these? Where is my daughter?" He crushed the earrings in his shaking hand.

"Ask Grice," I said. "Get my paintings back. And who knows? Maybe you can talk your daughter into coming home."

"You bastard," he repeated. His eyes shone with a molten rage.

"Sanderson," I said softly, tapped my finger on Ginny's picture, "you threw it away."

"Get out of here!" Sanderson screamed, apoplectic. Lydia looked at me. I nodded. She straightened up, walked unhurriedly before me out Sanderson's office door.

"That was exciting," Lydia said as we left the plant. "But you didn't tell him you'd seen her."

"It wouldn't have helped. Actually, I think it would have made things worse. That I was so close, but I didn't bring her home."

Lydia nodded. "There's something peculiar."

"All of this is peculiar. What do you have in mind?"

"Well, Jimmy said Grice didn't want anything to do with Ginny. Why wouldn't he? And if Jimmy was right, what made Grice change his mind?"

"Maybe he didn't. There are lots of guys tougher than Jimmy."

"But the earrings—?"

"I'm not sure. But this should loosen things up."

"You think Sanderson will go straight to Grice?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"I don't know. I've never been anyone's father." She looked up at me quickly, said, "God, Bill, I'm sorry."

I didn't look at her, shook my head. "You don't have to tiptoe."

"I'm sorry," she said again.

Now I met her gaze. Usually, Lydia's eyes are a hard, pure black, like polished ebony or basalt; but sometimes, unpredictably, they soften to an infinite liquid depth. They were that way now, and I thought of the quarry, Jimmy's shack next to the wide black water deep with secrets, like Lydia's eyes.

I said nothing, and she understood.

We'd reached the car. I'd put it close to the building, in a "Reserved" space in the Executive Parking area around the back. I unlocked her side, went around to mine; but I didn't get a chance to get in.

A big blue Ford was parked nose to nose with my Acura. Three of its four doors sprang open together, three figures jumped out, and in three hands guns glinted, even in the dullness of the day.

Lydia, halfway into the car, froze. I did the same. "Tell her to get out!" Otis snarled. "And to keep her hands where I can see em!"

"She speaks English," I said evenly. Lydia stepped out of the car, her hands raised. "Lydia," I said, "this is Otis and Arnold and Ted. They're creeps." To Arnold I said, "You guys must be running out of cars. You used that one already." It was the one they’d been in Monday night at Antonelli's, Grice and Arnold and Wally Gould, and I should have spotted it the minute we walked into this lot.

"Shut up!" Otis ordered. Ted came over and frisked me. "This time he ain't even got a holster, Otis," he complained. "Do the girl," Otis said in disgust. Ted crossed to Lydia's side of the car. Otis jerked his head at Arnold, who came and went over me again, more expertly and roughly than Ted had. Arnold stepped away, shook his head. Ted, meanwhile, pocketed Lydia's .38. He didn't bother to search my car, so he didn't even come close to the .22 I'd strapped back under the dash between the visit to Grice's place, where I'd thought I might need it, and here, where I hadn't.

"Who's the gook?" Otis demanded. Lydia's cheeks flared hotly but she said nothing.

"She's a friend of mine."

"Your friends all carry guns?"

"Yours do."

"Yeah? And where's your goddamn rod this time?"

"This time the sheriff has it. Can you really shoot lefty?"

"Fuckin-A right I can! You wanna see, just keep flappin' your yap!"

Lydia spoke. "Who writes his dialogue?" she asked me.

"Mike Tyson. So what now, fellas? You shoot us here in the parking lot in the middle of the day and drive away?"

"You see anyone around who'd care if we did?" Otis snickered. The secluded area was empty except for us. "But I'm not supposed to shoot you till after Frank talks to you."

I shook my head. "I don't get Frank. I've been looking for him since yesterday. I even dropped by his place this morning. How come every time he wants me he thinks he has to send armed assholes to pick me up? And which of you assholes shot Tony Antonelli?"

Arnold growled, started toward me, but Otis said, "Uh- uh. Not here. Get in the car." He waved his gun around. Ted echoed gleefully, "Get in the car."

Lydia and I got in the car, in the places where they told us, Lydia in the middle of the back seat, me next to her. Arnold climbed in behind Ted, who was driving, Otis having been put on the Disabled List.

Otis waved his gun at me. "Turn around." I shifted in the seat. Arnold pulled out a set of handcuffs, leaned across Lydia. Ratchets clicked as steel closed tight around my wrists.

Otis put the gun about two inches from the end of Lydia's nose. "Now, we got no cuffs for you, cutie pie," he said. "But we also got no use for you. So if you or smartass here do anything dumb, even once, I'm gonna blow your pretty face off, and no one's gonna care. Got it?"

Lydia said, "I've got it." Her voice was clear and steady.

Ted threw the Ford into gear and we started down the road.

It took us half an hour to climb to the green house through hills heavy with the weight of the sky. Maple trees shimmered with the shiny red-brown of buds waiting to open. A pair of hawks wheeled low against the clouds. In the heaviness of the day even the snowdrops seemed dulled, subdued.

From the corner of my eye I watched Lydia concentrate on the road, the turns and the miles we covered. Otis smoked. Every cell in my body begged for a cigarette, but I didn't give Otis the satisfaction of turning me down.

I knew where we were going; I had no need to do what Lydia was doing. I stared out the window, saw other things. I saw Eve Colgate's eyes, tiny jewels glowing in them; I saw blood from her heart spread across six paintings, blood which was still, after all this time, too fresh for the world to see. I saw Tony's blood, and Tony's face, backlit in red neon, trying to find a way to tell me something he needed me to know. I saw Jimmy as I'd seen him last night, filthy, exhausted, scared, but his eyes full of the same mixture of bravado and belief that had been there, years ago, when he'd followed me onto a wobbly rope bridge across a swollen creek because I'd said it was safe. And I saw a little girl with those same eyes.

And I heard voices, words: Lydia's; MacGregor's; Brinkman's, at the hospital.

And suddenly I knew.

A late-model Buick Regal was parked between Otis's black truck and a dark green Aries in the spongy place next to the house when we got there. The Aries had a triple-A sticker above the left tail light and cracks spiderwebbing out from a small hole in the rear window.

The air as we crossed to the decrepit porch was sharp, bringing on it the scents of pine and water; but that was only outside. I saw Lydia's nose wrinkle with distaste as we walked through the door.

Grice stood in the living room opening. "Well," he said. "It's about time. Nice of you to come, Smith."

"I've been looking for you. You didn't need this."

"Yeah, I heard you wanted to see me. I didn't like the way you put it."

"How'd I put it?"

He shrugged, smirked at Lydia. "Who's this?"

"A friend of mine."

"She got a name?"

"Lydia Chin," said Lydia, looking steadily at Grice.

"Cute," Grice said. He reached to touch her cheek. She slammed his hand aside. Her eyes blazed. "Grice!" I said sharply. My arms tugged uselessly against the cuffs. "You want to deal, leave her alone."

Grice stopped, open mouthed, eyes on Lydia. Then he laughed. "Well," he said, "maybe later." He looked at me. "Deal? I don't think so." Smiling, he asked Otis, "Where'd you find them?"

"We was lucky," Otis said. "When we was crossing the bridge, Ted spotted that fancy car of his going into the Appleseed lot. We sat and waited till they come out."

Grice whipped to face me. "You talked to Sanderson?"

"Yes."

He started to say something else, but recovered himself. Turning to Otis and Ted, he said casually, "Thanks, boys. Make yourselves scarce for a while. I'll let you know." Ted gave a mock military salute, headed to the kitchen. He lifted a six-pack of Miller from the fridge, clomped behind Otis up the stairs.

Grice waited until we heard the canned laughter of daytime TV drifting down after them. Then he looked at me, asked softly, "Did you tell him?"

"No. I didn't know. I didn't catch on until about ten minutes ago, on the way here."

He looked at me strangely. "Bullshit. You told Mike you knew, at the Creekside. You told everyone. Why do you think Arnold tried to take you out last night?"

At the Creekside. What had I said? I thought back, seeing the hostile faces, smelling the dull air, hearing my words.

"That wasn't my idea, by the way," Grice went on. "I was busy last night." He winked at Lydia. "So Arnold had to decide what to do about you, and Arnold gets a little carried away sometimes."

Arnold, who'd settled on one of the shabby brown chairs, smiled sheepishly.

"I figured that's why no one's found her yet," Grice went on. "Because you and that painter lady, or whatever she is, were going to try to shake me down." He grinned.

"No," I said. "That's not why. Eve doesn't know anything about it. And I didn't have it at the Creekside, Grice. I knew Ginny was with you. I knew she had the paintings and the truck. That was all I knew."

"You're kidding." His crooked mouth pursed. "Christ, you disappoint me, Smith." He shook his head in mock sorrow, spoke to Arnold. "See? I told you we could afford to back off. Plus, of course," he added, to me, "you're not worth as much to me dead, yet."

"You set Jimmy up for it, didn't you?" I said. "Like with Wally Gould? That was your frame, even though you didn't kill him, right?"

Grice laughed out loud. "Maybe you're not so dumb.

That was good, wasn't it? Quick thinking in a crisis, I mean."

"Any idiot would have thought of it. What was she doing, just showing off?"

"Uh-huh." He took a cigarette case from his pocket, opened it. Arnold jumped up, did the number with his lighter. "Give one to Smith," Grice told him. "He looks like he needs it."

I did need it. Arnold lit a cigarette, held it about six inches from me, grinning. Finally he stuck it in my mouth. I drew deep on it with the resentful gratitude of any addict who's waited too long for a fix.

Grice perched on the arm of Arnold's chair. "Sit down," he offered.

"I'll stand."

"Ma'am?" courteously, to Lydia.

"Go to hell," Lydia said.

Grice winked at her again. He went on: "Ginny thought I'd be impressed by the paintings. They were worth a cool million, she said. She talked like that. A cool million.' Shit." He shook his head, laughing. "She wanted me to fence them for her." He mimicked a prim young voice. '"We're gonna be rich, Frank. You and me!'"

"But you couldn't fence them, so they weren't worth anything."

"Sure I can. There's nothing can't be fenced. But that kind of shit takes time. I mean, years. She didn't want to wait."

"And you didn't want her trying it on her own."

"She was a fucking idiot. She couldn't keep her goddamn head down pushing nickel bags at Pussy Prep."

"And you couldn't afford for her to get caught. That would've screwed up your deal with Sanderson, if she'd dragged you in and he found out you'd been messing with his baby."

"Maybe it would've, maybe not," Grice shrugged. "But why take the chance? That pipeline thing is worth two, three million, all legal. 'Go back to Daddy, baby whore,' I told her. 'You're not ready for the big time.' 'Oh, no?' she says. She smiles that smile she had, kind of scary, you know? She walks up to Wally, presses her tits against him like she's been doing for days. He gets all hot. He was so dumb, Wally." Grice took a drag on his cigarette. Arnold nodded solemnly. "He never noticed when she pulled his gun outta his pants. Three lucking shots she put in that jerk. Then she said, 'Is that big time enough?' You know, she never stopped smiling."

Grice pressed his cigarette down into the ashtray. He smiled, folded one hand over the other in a gesture of finality.

My cigarette wasn't finished yet. I watched him through the smoke that drifted up past my eye. "And after you had Jimmy set up for that one, you figured you'd make it two," I said.

"Well, what the hell was I gonna do, send her home? She was bragging to everyone and his brother-in-law about the burglary, like she was the only broad ever stole anything. She would've called the newspapers to say she'd killed somebody."

"And that would have gotten you involved."

"You bet your ass. Besides, I was thinking about the paintings. I didn't want her to fuck that up for me."

"For you?"

"That's right. For me." He smiled the smile of a python thinking about a mouse. "We went back to my place. Christ, that's what she wanted. We spent the whole next day in the sack. Just me and those tits and that pink ass. She was a great lay, Smith. You ever have her?"

I couldn't do anything but shake my head.

"Well, you should've. You missed something. She told me she talked to you, that night."

I spat my cigarette butt onto the floor, squashed it under my foot. "She was looking for Jimmy."

"She told me. She thought I'd be impressed if she found him for me. I would've, too. But you wouldn't tell her shit."

"After that," I said, trying to keep my voice calm, even, "that night, you took her to Eve's studio?"

"Hell, she took me! She still thought I just didn't believe her. She thought showing me where the goddamn paintings came from would change my mind. 'She's real famous, Frank.'" Mimicking, again. "'I learned all about her in school.' Christ, a million-dollar education, that broad was still dumber than shit."

"She was fifteen, Grice."

"And she'd've been sixteen one of these days, if she'd kept out of my way. I tried to get rid of her. I told Mike and those guys, Jimmy too, not to let her hang around, but she was balling 'em all, what were they gonna do?"

Grice stood, faced me close, slipped his hands in his pockets. "So tell me, Smith. Why hasn't the shit hit the fan yet?"

I ignored the question. "What was the setup?"

He stared, then shrugged. "I found Jimmy's gloves in the truck, left one of 'em next to her in the shed. Didn't you notice?" he asked sarcastically.

"That was all?"

"What did I need? Everyone knew he'd been screwing her. I had the truck, I had the gun. I had Brinkman chasing all over the county hunting Jimmy for doing Wally. The glove was plenty."

"The blood in the truck was hers? And the gun you killed her with—Gould's gun?"

"You know so fucking much, how come the whole county isn't screaming about it? You expect me to believe you weren't counting on a little shakedown?"

"Blackmail's your game, Grice. It isn't mine."

He was starting to speak when the telephone shrilled loudly. Grice may have jumped; I know I did. Lydia was still as stone. Grice backed over to the phone, picked it up. "Yeah?" Silence. His twisted face twisted some more. He tried to speak a few times, finally yelled, "Hold it! Dammit, hold on! No. No! Look, I'll call you back." He dropped the receiver back between its prongs, said to Arnold, "Take them upstairs." He stood by the phone, watching, as Arnold pressed his gun against my spine and showed us the way upstairs.

On the next floor were three disheveled bedrooms and one closed door. Arnold, with a lift of his eyebrows, rousted Otis and Ted from a decaying couch and a Gilligan's Island rerun. He passed Ted something from his pocket, nodded toward the closed door, and thumped back down to join Grice.

"Doesn't he ever talk?" Lydia asked into the cold air as we were shepherded up the steep steps beyond the door.

"He talks to Frank," Otis said. "He don't like to talk to no one else."

The stair stopped in a small, slant-ceilinged room. It held two chairs and a table, a sink full of ancient dishes, and a sense of chill neglect.

"Now what?" I asked Otis.

"Now you stay here until Frank wants you somewheres else." He turned to go.

"I don't trust him, Otis," Ted whined.

"It's too damn cold to stay up here with 'em."

"Maybe we should cuff him to something. The radiator," Ted suggested.

"Yeah," Otis agreed. "Good idea." He took the gun Ted had been pointing and he pointed it while Ted came around behind me and opened the cuffs.

I was ready. As soon as the first steel claw released I twisted, dropped, hooked Ted's legs from under him. I saw a blur of black as Lydia dove for Otis's gun.

Ted thudded to the floor, me on top of him. I slammed my elbow into his face, and then I did it again. He softened under me. I rolled off, was pushing to my feet when I heard an explosion, the shattering of glass.

Lydia had Otis bent back against the sink. She had one hand around the gun, which had just gone off, and the other on his throat. Dimly aware of pounding footsteps, I grabbed at Otis's fingers, pried the gun loose. Lydia drove a hard punch into Otis's exposed gut, seized him by the

shoulder, threw him across the room. I swung the gun to face the door opening at the bottom of the stairs. Then another explosion, roaring, blinding, knocked me down, endlessly down.

Chapter 19

My name, spoken faintly in the darkness. I tried to answer, and to move; I couldn't do either. The soft voice spoke my name again, more urgently this time. It came from far away, the other end of a long, dark tunnel. It was hot in the tunnel, stifling; or maybe it was deathly cold. I wasn't sure, and it didn't seem to matter anyway.

I heard my name again, and this time with the sound came the blessed cool of a damp cloth pressed to my temple. A pale shape formed in front of me, gradually resolving, sharpening into a face, Lydia's face. She was sitting on the floor next to me, wringing out a dish towel in a bowl of water. The water was pink with blood.

I was sitting too, my hands behind me, sharp ridges pressing uncomfortably into my back. I tried to shift position, bring my hands around, but it wasn't possible.

"Don't try to move," Lydia said. "You're handcuffed. To the radiator." She dabbed at my face with the wet towel, then laid it against the side of my head again.

I leaned my head back, resting it between two cold metallic ridges. "What the hell happened?" I managed.

"Arnold shot you. Just a graze. There's a lot of blood, but I don't think it's bad."

She didn't think it was bad. "Are you okay?" My voice sounded like someone else's.

"Uh-huh."

I tried to look at her; my eyes wouldn't focus. I couldn't tell whether what she said was true.

"Where are they?"

"Downstairs. Grice isn't here. They're waiting for him to get back before they decide what to do with us."

Chances were good they'd already decided, but I didn't say that to Lydia. "Is there anything to drink?"

"Not the way you mean it. There's water."

"Water's good."

She brought me some and it was better than good. I drained the chipped glass twice. Doing that exhausted me, and I leaned my head back again, closed my eyes. "How come you're not chained to something?" I asked her bitterly.

"They're out of cuffs. They tied me, but only with a rope."

"Only with a rope." I opened my eyes again, saw through the throbbing and the haze a snaky length of hemp lying limply on the floor. "You're amazing. Can you pick a lock?"

"You taught me. But I don't have my picks."

"In my wallet, in my jacket, left side."

She searched my jacket, both sides. "Your wallet's gone."

"Shit. What about the cell phone?"

"You really think they're dumb enough to leave you a cell phone?"

"I thought maybe they were too dumb to recognize one."

"Six months ago you wouldn't have recognized one," she pointed out.

"Oh, Christ, all right. Just remember, I told you the thing was useless. Do I still have cigarettes?"

She fished one out, lit it for me, and then, while I smoked, Lydia prowled the room, collecting things that could be used to pick a lock. She sat on the floor, worked on the handcuffs with the bent tine of a fork, with the prong from my belt buckle, with the straightened end of a wire hanger she'd found hanging from an empty curtain rod. Finally she sat back on her heels, spread her hands emptily. "I'm sorry, Bill. It's not working."

"You must have had a lousy teacher."

Sounds came from somewhere in the house below, the loud slamming of a door, voices. We both froze, eyes on the stairs. Lydia's hand tightened on my arm.

When no footsteps came up the stairs and the voices stopped we breathed again.

"What's outside?" I asked. "Something you could climb on? Could you make it out a window?"

Lydia looked around without getting up. "Maybe I could. But I'm not going to leave you here like this."

"Lydia, please, don't be a hero, just go call a cop."

"It'll take me an hour to find a phone."

I started to shake my head, realized that was a mistake. I leaned back again, but I didn't close my eyes. "There's a Hess station a quarter mile north, where this road hits the paved one." We'd come from the south. She wouldn't know I was lying.

She hesitated. Then she said, "They'll kill you."

"Christ, Lydia!" I put as much into it as I had, which wasn't much. "You think you can stop them, if you stay?

If you're here when Grice gets back they'll kill us both." It crossed my mind that I didn't know why they hadn't done that already. "I don't want to die here, but if I do, I want someone to pay. Please, Lydia."

"If it were the other way around, you wouldn't leave me."

"Bullshit! I'd leave your Chinese ass in the dust so fast it wouldn't know what hit it."

She laid her hand very gently on my cheek. "Can you look at me and say that?"

I turned my head, to her, looked into her eyes, which had become liquid, bottomless. I didn't say anything.

After a moment she kissed me, her lips soft and warm, resting as lightly on mine as her hand on my cheek. Then she stood. She walked around the room, looked out each window in turn. She paused at one in the wall to my right, one I couldn't see. I heard her open it, felt the cold wind push in. A soft slithering sound, a quiet thud, and then nothing. Nothing for a long time. I started to breathe again.

And then the crack of a rifle shot. Another. Voices, yelling; words I couldn't make out. Adrenaline surged through me, rammed my spine straight, scraped my nerves. I strained to hear, through the hissing wind, through the pounding in my ears, but the voices had stopped and there was nothing else. I found I was yanking, stupidly, repeatedly, at the cuffs that pinned me where I was, in this dim attic room, alone and useless.

I didn't have much time to be alone; I didn't have much time to wonder. Feet thudded, the door crashed open, Arnold and Otis and Frank Grice exploded up the stairs and into the room. They stopped when they saw me. I could feel them relax.

"Well," Grice grinned. "So it looks like your girlfriend skipped out without you."

I couldn't see their faces well; they were standing too close, towering too high. The radiator wouldn't let me tilt my head back. Hoarsely, I said, "If you hurt her, Grice, I'll kill you."

"Yeah," he snickered. "Sure." He squatted, brought his face level with mine. "Would it bother you if I told you she was dead?"

I couldn't answer; I was frozen in ice. Then Grice laughed, clapped me on the shoulder as though we were drinking buddies sharing a good joke. "Well, she's not. She's not even scratched. She was lucky," he said. "Just like me. Get him up, boys. You're lucky too, Smith. Come on, we'll go for a ride."

Arnold knelt behind me, unlocked the cuffs. He and Otis hauled me to my feet. Otis propped me up while Arnold pulled my hands behind me again, slid the handcuffs shut around my swollen wrists.

I needed the support. The room was swaying; my knees were like water. I shut my eyes to fight the dizziness, but it got worse. Grice's voice came from a long way off: "Sit him down." I felt myself dropped onto a chair. I'd have slipped off if someone hadn't been holding me there. The world rolled sickeningly around me.

Then something hard was pressed against my mouth. Fire burned my tongue, my throat. I swallowed, coughed. Time out. Then there was more, and I swallowed again, and when I opened my eyes the room was almost still.

"All right?" asked Grice. "Because the boys don't want to carry you."

"More." A croaking half whisper seemed to be the only voice I had.

Arnold held the bottle for me, and I gulped as much as I could get. Whiskey trickled down my chin, splashed wet patches onto my shirt. When Grice said, "Enough," Arnold took it away, stood it on the table.

I let my eyes shut, made them open again. I wasn't ready for Grice's face; I focused on the bottle. Canadian Club. I gave a short, harsh laugh. "I had you figured for the Four Roses type, Frank."

"He's ready," said Grice. "Get him up."

This time as they pulled me to my feet the room lurched but it didn't flip over. The stairs were difficult, but Arnold's iron grip kept me upright all the way down to the living room, where Lydia sat, pale but, as far as I could see, whole. Her hands were tied behind her. Opposite her, on the other shabby chair, Ted held a deer rifle casually on his lap.

"You okay?" I asked, in a voice as strong as I could make it.

She nodded. Then she shrugged, smiled with a corner of her mouth, said, "Sorry."

I gave her back the same smile. Then I turned to Grice. "I want to deal."

"Smith, what the hell you think you have to deal with?"

"I must have something. I'm not dead yet."

"Oh." Grice grinned. "And you think that's because you have something I want? Well, you don't. You're just going to help me out a little. Now," he crossed to Lydia's chair, laid his hand on her head, "this is something I want. But it's not yours anymore."

Lydia jerked her head from under Grice's hand. He laughed. I ignored what he was doing, and the way it made me feel. I spoke evenly. "So why aren't I dead?"

"Because you're lucky. You see, when I had the boys bring you up here, I was still looking for Jimmy. Just to help Brinkman out, you know. I'm that kind of guy. Arnold was going to persuade you to tell us where he was. You wouldn't've enjoyed that, but Arnold would." He smiled at Arnold, who smiled back. "But then I had to go all the way to fucking Cobleskill to calm Sanderson down, because you got his balls in an uproar. And driving back, I'm thinking about you, I'm thinking about Jimmy, I'm thinking about last fall. And bang! It comes to me. That's where he's got to be. He's up at the quarry."

He waited for an answer. I didn't give him one. "Well?" he said.

I met his eyes. "I don't know."

Grice looked at me for a minute, then laughed again. "Okay," he said. "But let's go look. If he's not there, Arnold can ask you nicely where he is. If he is there, you can be my insurance. I don't think he'll shoot me if he has to shoot through you."

"I still want to deal."

"With what?"

I took a breath. "I have the paintings."

Grice smiled a big, slow, crooked smile. "No," he said.

"Yes."

"And I thought you were a straight-arrow type."

I shrugged. "They're worth a lot of money."

"So you stole them."

"I just moved them. Nobody else seemed to have any idea they were there. I didn't know how they got there but I knew what they were."

Lydia was watching me closely, her eyes narrowed.

"So where are they?"

"That's the deal."

Grice flipped open his gold cigarette case. Arnold snapped his lighter. Grice sucked at the end of the cigarette, said around it, "Okay. You tell us where they are, we'll let you go."

I laughed. "Bullshit. I'm dead, Frank. You think I don't know that? The deal is this: you let Lydia go. Then I tell you where the paintings are."

"If you're dead," he said, streaming smoke at me, "how come she's not?"

"Because she's not as dangerous as I am. What the hell does she know? She heard you confess to one murder and to being an accessory to another, but you've got Jimmy framed for both. By the time she gets to tell anyone her story, Jimmy and I'll be dead and you and the boys here"—I spat the word "boys"; I couldn't help it—"will have an airtight alibi, probably provided by Sanderson in return for whatever it is you've got on him."

Grice smoked, a contemplative look on his uneven face. I wasn't sure he'd bought it, so I went on. "In fact, if she's smart—and she is—she won't say anything to anybody. Why bother? Isn't that right, sweetheart?" I looked at Lydia, my face blank, everything I'd ever wanted to say to her in my eyes.

Lydia's obsidian eyes widened slightly. She said, "That's right. I like to stay out of trouble."

"Okay," Grice decided. "We go find Jimmy. Then we go get the paintings. Then she goes home."

Even through the protective layer of Canadian Club the throbbing in my head was making it hard to think and my legs were getting rubbery again. I had to end this. If I passed out here Grice would just pile us all in the car and forget about making any deals.

"She comes with us," I said. "She gets out where I say, so I can see. Then I tell you. Nothing else, Grice. Nothing else."

Grice finished his cigarette. He nodded slowly. "Sure. Why not?"

Thank God, I thought, as the six of us crossed the swampy lawn to the blue Ford. Thank God. Now just keep it together, Smith, one more play and you can sit out the rest of the game.

Because I knew what Grice was thinking: let her go. Find out where the paintings are. And then deal with her later.

He could do that. I knew he could. Lydia wouldn't be able to prove what she'd heard today, and she wouldn't be safe from him, ever.

But I had one more play. And if Grice was stupid enough, and Lydia was smart enough, we just might pull it off.

Chapter 20

The rhythm of the car was soporific with my eyes closed, sickening with them open, but I needed, desperately, to stay awake. One chance; one place.

An argument started in the front seat and I concentrated on it.

"It ain't on the goddamn map, Frank," Ted was complaining. "I never been there."

Papers rustled loudly, Grice unfolding a highway map, not nearly detailed enough to show them the way to the quarry from the green house near Franklinton.

"Here," Grice said, with his finger on a place on the map. "This is where the truck road starts. Get us here. I can find it from there."

Ted peered over. The car drifted; he yanked at the wheel, swung us back from the shoulder. "Okay, Frank," he said. "Sure."

Arnold had brought the bottle. I asked for a drink. Arnold looked to Grice, in the front seat next to Otis. Grice shrugged, Arnold held the bottle for me, and against its better judgment my blood started to move again.

I wondered if Ted had been promoted to Wally Gould's old job, and how Otis felt about that. We drove north, hit the paved road a mile away at a featureless intersection. Lydia threw me a look, muttered, "Hess station, huh?"

Grice turned around. "What?"

"Private joke," I answered.

We kept moving. I kept trying to stay awake. Not much longer, I promised myself, feeling a trickle of blood slide down along my jawline from the throbbing place near my eye. For Lydia. For Jimmy. And not much longer.

I almost missed it. There was only one good way to the quarry from where we'd been; that was the basket all my eggs were in. But when we got to where I'd been waiting to get to, I was almost gone. The road climbed, ran straight, fell. I pushed myself back to consciousness, said, "Here."

"Here what?" Grice asked.

"Lydia gets out here."

Grice gestured to Ted. The car slowed, stopped. "Why here?"

"Because it's deserted. Because it'll take her an hour to find anyone, if she's looking. So she can't stop you doing whatever it is you're planning to do. So you'll let her go." Buy it, I begged him silently. Buy it. It's all I've got.

Grice nodded. Arnold reached across Lydia, opened her door. He untied her hands as Grice said, "Get out."

Lydia hesitated, looked at me. I met her eyes. "Walk back the way we came," I told her. "Don't turn around. And Lydia?" I added, "it's okay. Remember, it's just a game."

A light flashed in the depths of Lydia's eyes, or maybe I just needed to think I saw it there. She turned, slid swiftly from the car, and stalked rapidly away. She didn't look back.

I leaned back against the seat, shut my eyes. That was it. My part was almost over.

The car started to move again. "That was touching," Grice said.

"Screw you," I murmured.

"Where are the paintings?"

"Screw you."

Arnold grabbed my jacket, jerked me close to him. He smacked me with his open palm once, and again. Howling pain shot through my skull, blinding my left eye.

"No," I said weakly. "Wait." I didn't want to be hurt any more, and I was lying anyway. Arnold pushed me back against the seat. I lay there breathing unevenly, not speaking, as long as I dared. Make them look at you, Smith. Make them think about you, focus on you.

I felt Arnold's hand tighten on my collar again. "No," I whispered. I didn't even try to open my eyes. "Cobleskill. Self-storage rooms near the college."

"Where's the key?" Grice demanded.

Key. I hadn't thought about a key. "No key. Combination. Room number's one-twenty-four. Combination's eleven, twenty-five, fifty-one." I swallowed, said, "Give me a drink."

"Screw you." Grice laughed, Otis laughing with him. Arnold was probably grinning, but I didn't look to see.

I was cold. A drink would have helped, or a cigarette. Or a soft voice, or music. Schubert, maybe. I began to hear the soft opening chords of the B-flat Sonata, the one I didn't play. They faded, along with everything else, as the darkness thickened around me.

I woke when the car stopped moving. Outside, a silver sky pressed down like a weight on thick slate-colored clouds. Ted had brought us by the truck road to the flat, exhausted plain. I stared across the pit to the shadowed ridge rising against the sky. We had come along the road up there, the ridge road; from Franklinton it made sense. But the drive from there to the truck road was long, roundabout. You couldn't see the quarry pits from the ridge road, even in winter. If you didn't know the area well, if you didn't know where you were, you might not be able to tell anything about that road when you were on it, except that it was deserted, far from anywhere.

That was the reason I'd given Grice for letting Lydia go there.

"Is that where he's been staying?" Grice's words tore the silence. He pointed toward the shack.

"I don't know." My voice sounded like sandpaper on a board.

"Drive closer," Grice told Ted. He drew his gun from his coat; so did Otis. Arnold's was already out, aimed casually at my belly.

We rolled slowly over the stones scattering the plain. Ted angled the car toward the shack. My heart, beating fast, jarred, then stopped as Jimmy's van came into view.

Lydia hadn't made it. She hadn't understood, or maybe she hadn't been able to handle the climb down. Whatever; it didn't matter; she hadn't made it.

The car stopped again. Arnold leaned across me, as he had across Lydia, and opened my door. He nudged the barrel of his gun against my temple, against the place where the blood was drying. "Out," said Grice. I swung my legs through the door, stood with an effort. From behind, Arnold grabbed my arm. We moved clear of the car. Grice got out, kept behind me. "Jimmy!" he shouted into the empty sky. The word echoed, faded; there was nothing else. "Jimmy! I just want to talk to you, kid. Come on out for a minute." There was no movement, no wind in the trees. "Jimmy! I got your friend here, kid, and he doesn't look good. You don't talk to me, Jimmy, he could get to look worse."

More silence. The clouds could have been painted; the surface of the water was polished marble. Grice tapped Arnold's arm, and we walked forward again, toward the shack.

Then, crashing through the stillness, a gunshot exploded, magnified by silence, multiplied by echoes. It seemed to come from everywhere around us, but as Arnold's grip suddenly slackened I spun around, ran with everything I had left toward the rock pile at the mouth of the other road.

What I had left wasn't enough. As shots came from behind me and another from ahead I tripped, stumbled, fell, and knew I couldn't get up; but strong hands seized me, yanked me forward, around the fortress of rock.

The world was reeling. Shots screamed through the air. I was hauled up, over stones and loose pebbles, until finally I was dropped, battered and breathing dust, my shoulders and arms burning with pain wherever I had feeling at all.

From somewhere above, Lydia said, "Is he okay?"

Jimmy's voice: "I guess." I was helped to sit, my back against a rock. At first my eyes showed me nothing but shape and movement. Then things started to make sense again. I squinted, made out Lydia's black-wrapped form kneeling between two boulders. She squeezed a shot out of Jimmy's Winchester, pulled back, and reloaded fast as a bullet chipped the stone at her shoulder.

"What the hell are you two idiots doing here?" I coughed on stone dust.

"Christ, he's crabby," Jimmy said to Lydia.

"He gets like that when he doesn't feel well," Lydia answered. She took aim, shot again. I heard glass shatter.

"I got my goddamn ass busted trying to save yours," I told them. "You were supposed to be gone by the time we got here."

"They weren't going to keep hauling you around if Jimmy was gone," Lydia pointed out. "They'd've killed you and dumped you here."

"So now they'll kill us all. I don't suppose it occurred to you two superheroes to go for help?"

"Not to me. Jimmy?"

"Uh-uh." He shook his head. Then he grinned at me. "I mean, not after we put it out on the CB."

The CB. Oh, beautiful consumer audio technology. "You called for help?"

Jimmy grinned again. "Man, I was so scared, I told the guy who picked it up to call the sheriff. Brinkman, man. Me—I called the fucking sheriff!"

But it wasn't Brinkman whose car came rocketing up the truck road, scaring a cloud of dust into the air.

Since the first storm of shots, Grice and his boys hadn't moved out from behind the Ford. They had reasons not to. Lydia was a deadly accurate shot. Otis and Ted were cowards. And Arnold was out of the picture, stretched still as stone where Lydia's first bullet had dropped him.

But we couldn't go anywhere either, and we had only one gun. Sooner or later, if we had to keep sniping to keep them pinned, our box of shells would be empty. They would know that moment, and that moment would be theirs.

We had no escape; we needed a rescue.

So fifteen minutes later, when we heard the whine of a heavy engine, the screech of brakes echoing off the stone walls, they were good sounds. "The fucking marines!" Jimmy cheered.

But Lydia, peering around a boulder, said, "It's not a cop."

She was wrong, but she was right.

"Civilian," she said. "One man." She whipped her head back as a bullet spewed stone chips into the air. She took aim, fired back, pulled her head in again. "He's out of the car. I can't see him now. He must be behind the other car with Grice." She reloaded, inched her head out. "Nothing." A pause. "But maybe he is a cop. There's a red light on the dash, the portable kind."

"What does he look like?"

"I couldn't really see. Thin face, reddish hair."

A cold shock hit me. I heard a wordless sound of surprise and sorrow; I realized it had come from me.

This was the piece I hadn't had.

"Smith!" MacGregor's voice burst, loud and distorted, from the electronic bullhorn all state cop cars carry, even unmarked ones. "Don't shoot. I'm coming up there."

Lydia turned to me. I said, "Let him come."

I heard MacGregor scramble up the rocks, watched as he appeared, crouching, in the narrow cleft we occupied. His face darkened when he saw me, the cuffs, the blood.

"What happened?" His voice was tight, cold.

"Your friends."

"They're no friends of mine."

"Crap, MacGregor." A shiver overtook me. "You're Grice's hip-pocket cop. You're why he's always a step ahead."

MacGregor exploded. "I warned you, you son of a bitch!" His voice was driven, full of fury. I squinted to look at him. "I begged you, stay out of this fucking case! I told you to go the hell back to New York!"

"That's true," I agreed quietly. "You tried. And I smelled something wrong with the way you did it. But I didn't add it up. I guess I didn't want to know."

"Oh, Christ, Smith, don't get holy on me! Small shit, that's all it is. I pass on what I hear. I bury a file or take a guy off something before he gets too close. So what? I don't have the manpower to go after every crook around. Someone's going to get away with something. What's the difference if it's Grice?"

"Uh-huh," I said. "And the kids shooting up in the Creekside? And guys who're barely squeezing out a living, then splitting their chickenshit take-home with Grice so they don't get their legs broken? That's okay with you, Mac?"

"Oh, come off it! If it weren't Grice it would be somebody else!" His face was purple with anger, but in his eyes there was something like pleading.

"And Ginny Sanderson?" I said softly. "That's okay with you?

MacGregor looked quickly from Jimmy to me. "What about her?"

"She's dead. Grice shot her. I think you'll find her if you drag the quarry." I looked at Jimmy. He was white as marble.

"She was a kid," Jimmy whispered. "She was a kid."

"Yeah," I said. "A kid. That's what it was about, right, Mac? Kids?"

It took MacGregor a long time to answer. "Tuition," he said, not to anyone, not looking at anyone. "Books, clothes. Travel. Piano lessons, painting lessons. There had to be something for them besides this. I had to find them a way out." He faced me suddenly, the pleading back in his eyes. His voice wavered. "I had to, Smith. I'm their father; I had to."

I had trouble speaking, too. "Ginny Sanderson had a father, Mac."

"I didn't know about her. I didn't know."

No one spoke. We watched each other, motionless, silent. Statues, all of us, cold and separate, powerless, and alone.

Lydia, finally, broke the silence. A quick, worried glance at me; then to MacGregor, "What do they want?" MacGregor gave her a blank, lost look. "What?" "They let you come up here. They're holding their fire. Why?"

He swallowed. "Jimmy. They'll let you two leave with me. They want to talk to Jimmy."

"Do it." Jimmy's words came fast, but they caught in his throat.

"Talk, bullshit." I didn't look at Jimmy, spoke to MacGregor. "They'll kill him. Then they'll call Brinkman. Here he is, the guy who killed Wally, the guy who killed Ginny. Sorry he's dead, but it'll save the cost of a trial. Any problems, call MacGregor." I paused, said, "Then they'll come for Lydia and me later."

He met my eyes, nodded slowly. "I know that. It was all I could think of, to get Grice to let me come up here. It'll buy time."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not the only cop who picked up the CB call. Brinkman's on his way, but he wasn't close."

I looked closely at him. "You could have stayed away, then," I said. "You could have kept out of it, and maybe you'd have stayed smelling clean."

"Yeah," he said. "But they said it was Jimmy, and he was asking for help. I had a feeling what was happening. And I'm a cop, Smith. Whatever you think." An engine roared to life below us. "Hey!" Lydia yelled. "They're moving!" "What the hell—!" MacGregor stuck his head up next to hers, dropped down again as a shot sliced the air. With a cop's instinct he reached for his gun, pawed an empty holster. He cursed, looked at me, shrugged. "Grice has it," he said. "That was the deal."

Grice's voice blared from the speaker on MacGregor's car. "You've got thirty seconds, folks. Come down, everyone can leave but Jimmy. How about it?"

"Do it, for Chrissake!" Jimmy said again.

Lydia and I exchanged a look that MacGregor caught, and MacGregor understood it. For the first time, he grinned. "Fuck you!" he yelled over the rock, and his words echoed in the dusty air.

"What's happening?" I asked Lydia. I struggled to sit up straighter, as though it would help me think.

"They're moving the Ford around this way. I can't get a shot."

But they could. As the Ford's engine shut off, a barrage of gunfire from our right almost hid the sounds of someone scrabbling up the rock. Lydia whipped around, fired where she couldn't see. Sudden silence; then a shot from behind her, the side MacGregor had climbed. She answered that, too, and then the Winchester was empty and Ted's sneering face appeared behind a Luger where the first shots had come from.

He swung the barrel of the gun to Jimmy, who was frozen, pressed against the rock; but before Ted could fire, MacGregor tackled him. They fell, struggled, tumbled down the rocks out of sight. Then a shot. Then nothing.

Lydia had reloaded. Suddenly we were fired on from both sides. Lydia shot again, twice, looked at me with frightened eyes. There was nothing I could give her. She shook herself, reloaded again, and as she did, a siren screamed and tires crunched and car doors slammed and a voice I had never been glad to hear before hollered, "Give it up, Grice! I got two more cars on the way!"

Shots screamed from our right, and two or three from ahead, near the shack. Lydia crept forward to the cleft shed been shooting from before, craned her neck. She yelled, "Sheriff, on your left!" She stood to get an angle, fired down the face of the rock.

Then, at the whine of another shot, she jerked, lost her footing, fell hard against the rock. She didn't get up, didn't move.

"Oh, Jesus, no," I heard myself plead. I was dimly aware of Jimmy grabbing the rifle, more shots, then silence, sudden and total. I saw nothing but Lydia's face. "Lydia, please," I whispered. "Please."

The silence ended, broken by shouting voices, slamming car doors, a confusion of smaller sounds. Through it all, Lydia's pale, still face.

"Antonelli, you bastard!" I heard Brinkman yell. "I'm coming up there. You gonna shoot me?"

"No," Jimmy answered, but it came out as a whisper, so he had to say it again: "No!"

"Stand up—where I can see you!"

Jimmy did, leaning the rifle against a rock, showing the cops below his hands were empty. Grunts and curses as Brinkman hauled himself up the rock pile. He appeared from behind a boulder like Godzilla coming to crush a city.

"Well," he drawled, with the mean little smile. "Don't you two look like shit."

Lydia groaned, moved her hand a little in the dirt.

"Help her!" I looked from Brinkman to Jimmy. "Jesus, help her!"

"Yeah," said Brinkman. He dropped to one knee, bent over Lydia. "Calm down, city boy. Nothing wrong with her. Just a bump on the head. I got the Rescue Squad coming."

"Sheriff," a voice called from below, "two of these guys are alive."

"Yeah?" Brinkman yelled back. "Which two?"

"The one with the cast. And Ron MacGregor."

Lydia groaned, stirred. "Don't move, little girl. You'll be fine," Brinkman told her.

Lydia's eyelids fluttered, opened. "Little girl," she murmured. "I'll kill you."

"It'd be a waste," Brinkman said. "You saved my life. Now just don't you move." He took off his jacket, covered her with it. He swiveled to face me, said, "You know, city boy, you look a hell of a lot worse than she does. Who has the key?"

I had no idea what he meant.

"The cuffs. The key to the cuffs."

I tried to remember. "Arnold."

"Arnold Shea? The big guy?"

"Yes."

Brinkman narrowed his eyes at Jimmy, smiled a little smile. "He's stretched out there by your van, Jimmy, deader'n hell. Go get the key off him. For your buddy here."

Jimmy swallowed hard, turned, climbed down off the mound of rock.

"You didn't have to do that, Brinkman." I coughed, closed my eyes.

"I like to see that kid sweat," he said. "Now how about you telling me what went on here?"

"Later," I said, my voice sounding distant, even to me.

Chapter 21

MacGregor died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

After Brinkman had unlocked my handcuffs, he’d told Jimmy to get me down to the cruiser, where it was warm. He moved Lydia there also, laying her on the back seat while I slumped in the front, and we were there like that until the ambulance came; but before that, after I had worked my way down the rocky mound with Jimmy's hand tight on my numb arm, I had crouched by MacGregor, motionless in the dust.

Brinkman's fat deputy had covered MacGregor with a blanket from the cruiser. There was blood on the blanket. MacGregor's face was ash gray and his breathing was shallow, ragged.

I spoke his name. His eyes opened. "Smith."The corners of his mouth moved weakly. "I guess no trout this spring, huh?"

"Summer," I said. "They'll be bigger by then, anyhow."

"Yeah." His face contorted with pain. He said, hoarsely, "I wouldn't have done it, you know." He gestured toward Jimmy with his eyes. "If you'd left it alone, I'd have found a way to let him off. I knew it was a frame. I wouldn't've let it happen."

I had no way to tell if that was true, but MacGregor's gray eyes were locked onto mine, and I said, "I know, Mac. I know."

His eyes closed. I saw him struggling to keep them open, not to lose yet.

"Take it easy," I said. "They've got an ambulance coming."

I tried to find something else to say, but there was nothing. Jimmy tugged gently on my arm, and I stood, my eyes stinging in the cold gray light.

The "later" I had promised Brinkman happened in the outpatient department of the hospital in Cobleskill. Lydia was in a room upstairs. Brinkman had been right: she had a concussion, not serious. Prognosis excellent. I'd waited until they could tell me that before I let them take me down the hall and put four stitches next to my left eye. I lay now on a bed in a curtained-off stall in Outpatient because, although they'd made a room ready for me upstairs too, I had refused to be admitted. The doctor who'd sewn me up, a round man named Mazzeo, popped in every ten minutes to tell me a man in my condition couldn't leave the hospital.

"You can't drive," he pointed out, a pudgy finger smoothing his thick mustache. "You probably can't even see straight. You have a headache to beat the band, am I right? And your hands won't be much good for hours."

I flexed my swollen fingers. The numbness was receding slowly, leaving the billion pinpricks of returning circulation behind. My wrists were bruised, red and purple under the icepacks that wrapped them.

"No," I said. "I'm leaving." I didn't try for anything else. I knew that I couldn't argue with him, but I also knew I wasn't staying. Everything here was sharp and bright, and outside the curtain I could hear voices and footsteps and the sounds of endless activity. There was no peace here, no darkness, no silence. No music. I couldn't stay.

Immediately after the third or fourth of Dr. Mazzeo's disapproving visits the curtains parted again and Brinkman stood smiling and very tall next to the bed. "Shit," he said, took his hat off. "I brought in four corpses today, Smith, and they all looked better than you do."

"Go to hell."

"Christ! For a man whose life I saved, you're an ornery son of a bitch."

"Yeah," I said. "I always was." I paused, went on, "But I owe you for that, Brinkman. And for Lydia and Jimmy."

"So pay up, city boy. What the hell's going on around here, and how come I shouldn't lock you up, you and Jimmy and that china doll of yours?" He dropped his hat on the bed, pulled a stool close.

I turned my pounding head carefully, groped with thick fingers for the button that would raise the bed. Brinkman vertical and me horizontal was bad odds to start with.

I tilted the bed as upright as it would go, and then I asked Brinkman to find me some water. By the time he got back I'd found a way to tell it, very close to the truth.

"Ginny Sanderson," I said, after a drink.

"Snotty little bitch," he drawled. "What about her?"

That jolted me; but then I realized he didn't know.

"She's dead, Brinkman. Grice killed her."

Nothing moved but his eyes. They narrowed into slits. "The hell you say."

I drank more water, spoke slowly. "She wanted to be part of Grice's in-crowd. But Grice wasn't having any. She thought it was her, so she tried harder. She took up with Jimmy; she robbed a house."

"Robbed what house?" Brinkman interrupted.

"Eve Colgate's."

"Miss Colgate didn't report that."

"No," I said. "She called me instead."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "Some people aren't crazy about cops." "Smith—"

"Oh, Christ, Brinkman, will you shut up and let me finish? Let me get through this, then you can arrest me or shoot me or whatever the fuck you want."

His face darkened, and I wondered briefly whether it was beyond him to beat up a man lying in a hospital bed. Maybe I'd get to find out.

Meanwhile, I went on. "I traced the burglary to Ginny pretty easily. She denied it, but sooner or later she'd have come across. But there was a wrinkle: some of the stuff she'd stolen was really valuable. She thought Grice would be impressed with that, so she showed him. He wasn't."

Brinkman asked through gritted teeth, "Why not?"

"Well, he was, but it was hard stuff to fence. And Grice had a sweetheart deal going with her father. He didn't want to blow that by getting caught fooling around with her."

"Grice? You're telling me Frank Grice was making deals with Mark Sanderson?"

"Uh-huh. Based on blackmail, I think."

"Blackmail over what?"

"The murder of Lena Sanderson."

"The what? Jesus, city boy, what the fuck are you talking about?"

"When Lena disappeared," I said, "Sanderson called the cops, it's true; but it would've looked too odd if he hadn't. But he didn't hire anyone to look privately, after you guys turned up nothing. Okay, so maybe he figured good riddance. But he also didn't cancel her credit cards. He didn't close bank accounts she had access to. He never filed for a legal separation. He didn't make any effort to protect himself from her. All I can figure is he knew he didn't have to."

"You're saying—"

"I think Sanderson killed her. Either that, or he hired Grice to do it; but my money's on him. In anger; probably by accident. She played around one too many times; the whole county was full of it, from what I hear, but it took him forever to catch on.

"Then I'll bet he lost his nerve. He called Grice. They knew each other: Grice did muscle work for Sanderson. So Sanderson calls. I've got this body in my living room, get rid of it. No problem, Grice gets rid of it. And suddenly Grice is a big shot. He's running the county. Sanderson buys him a cop, Sanderson buys him information, and he and Sanderson go into business together."

Brinkman's eyes were hard, his mouth tight with anger. I thought he was going to tell me to shove my theories, but when he spoke, it was to ask, "What business?"

"Appleseed Holdings." I told him about that.

Brinkman sat silent for a while when I was through, then stood abruptly. "City boy," he said, "the Sandersons fought under George Washington. When that war was over they came up here and settled this county. My county, Smith. Now you want me to believe Mark Sanderson murdered his wife and bends over for Frank Grice?" He shook his head. "I don't know, city boy. I don't know."

"I don't give a shit what you believe, Brinkman. I'm telling you what happened. A real cop would check it out."

"A—" His hand curled into a fist, but he said, "Ginny. You're so fucking smart, what about Ginny?"

I told him about Ginny, Wally Gould, Frank Grice. He asked what it was Ginny had stolen that was so valuable, and I told him the only lie I had for him: "I don't know."

After a long silence, he asked, "Where are they?"

It took me a moment; then I caught on. "The bodies? I'll bet you'll find them if you drag the quarry."

Brinkman looked at me long and hard, his small eyes like a cold, close weight, stones on my chest. "All right," he said at last. "I'll check it out. Otis Huttner's still alive; I'll see what he has to say. And I'll drag the quarry. And you'd better be right, Smith. You'd better be right, or you're fucked."

He turned and strode out, the curtain closing behind him.

I was right, I knew I was. The part about Lena Sanderson was theory, but it fit too well to be wrong. I thought about Mark Sanderson, what it would be like for him when

Brinkman faced him with the two bodies in the quarry, the one he knew about and the one he didn't.

I was grateful for the emptiness of the room after Brinkman was gone. I'd worked hard to give him what he'd needed to know, but to hold back the one part I'd told no one. I hadn't been sure I could do it. In the end I had, but the exhaustion I felt now, alone in the curtained alcove, was in my nerves, my muscles, and bones, a tiredness so deep I was, finally, unable to move.

I lay back, my eyes closed, prepared to surrender whenever Dr. Mazzeo busted back in. I slept for a while; then I heard the metallic slide of the curtain rings. I opened my eyes to see Eve Colgate pulling the curtain shut.

I reached out my hand. She took it, smiling slightly. "Well," she said, "you don't look as bad as A1 Mazzeo said you did."

"I don't feel as bad as he says I do."

"How do you feel?"

"Battered." A thought hit me. "Jesus, you've been here all day, haven't you?"

She nodded. "I was stranded. Lydia was supposed to call me. I waited until afternoon. When I hadn't heard from her, I called the state troopers. Was it they who found you?

"Sort of," I said. That must have been why MacGregor had reached the quarry so fast after Jimmy's call came over the CB. He'd been on his way to Franklinton, to the green house. He'd known right where to head for when Eve told him Lydia and I had gone off radar.

"How's Tony?" I asked Eve.

"Improving. He was awake for a while. He asked for you. He's anxious to talk to you. But he doesn't know who shot him."

"Arnold Shea," I said. "He's dead."

"Bill, what's going on? What happened to Lydia? The sheriff's men won't tell me anything."

"Lydia'll be okay. A concussion, not serious. And it's all over, Eve."

"What do you mean, over? What happened? What's happening?"

"You're safe. You always were; you weren't the target. I'll tell you about it. And I think I know where your paintings are."

She was speechless for a moment, her clear eyes widening. "Do you?" she asked. "Do you?"

"I think so. If I'm right, I'll get them in the morning."

"Where? Who has them?"

"I don't want to tell you, in case I'm wrong." I wasn't wrong, but the whole story was something I hoped she would never know. "But Eve, I need a favor."

"What do you need?"

"A ride. The doctor wants me to stay here. I want to leave. But he says I can't drive yet and I know that's right."

She hesitated. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Yes."

Another hesitation, then an ironic smile. "All right. But what am I supposed to use for a car?"

"Oh," I said. "A car." I thought. "Mine's at the Appleseed plant. Lydia's is at Grice's condo."

"Yours is closer. I'll call a cab."

"Is the cab company still open?"

"They're open until eight. It's only four-thirty."

"Four-thirty? Jesus."

I'd thought midnight, at least.

When Eve was gone I got gingerly out of bed. I dressed, moving very carefully. At first I was light-headed, clutching the door frame for support until a wave of dizziness passed, but I was feeling more solid by the time I got to the admissions desk to check out. After I did that I asked for Lydia's room number, bought myself a cup of coffee, and rode the elevator to the second floor.

In Lydia's room the lights were out, leaving the room to settle softly into the purple dusk. I stood silently by the bed, sipped my coffee, watched the bedclothes rise and fall with the gentle rhythm of Lydia's breathing. The white bandage around her head made her features look delicate, her face small and vulnerable. She'd hate to know I was even thinking that.

When my coffee was almost gone Lydia's eyelids fluttered, opened, closed again.

"Bill?" Her voice was faint.

"I'm here."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"Thank God," she breathed. "Now go to hell."

"Lydia—"

"Passwords, for God's sake." I leaned to hear her better. "'It's only a game.' I almost broke my neck climbing down that cliff. You smell like a brewery."

"Distillery."

"Go to hell," she whispered again.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"No, you're not. You're standing there thinking how very clever you are, how you managed to save everybody after all."

Not everybody, I thought. In the twilight I saw MacGregor's ashen face.

I stood silent, not knowing what to say. She was silent too, and for a while I thought she was asleep. Then, her eyes still closed, she slipped her hand from beneath the blanket, found mine. I closed my tingling fingers around her small, soft ones. "Bill?"

"It's okay. You'll be okay."

The sky outside the window faded slowly to black. I stood holding Lydia's hand until the soft rhythm of her breathing told me she was asleep again, and for a long time after that.

When I left Lydia I took the elevator again, this time to the third floor, to Tony's room. In here the lights were on, but Tony was asleep, his face pale and, even in sleep, reflecting pain.

Suddenly deeply weary, I pulled a chair next to the bed, leaned forward in it. I spoke Tony's name once, twice. His lips moved, without sound; then his eyelids rose slowly. He looked blankly around. "Tony," I said again. With an effort, his eyes found mine.

"Smith." His whisper was almost inaudible.

"Don't talk," I said. "Just listen. I came to tell you it's over. Jimmy didn't kill anyone, Tony. Ginny Sanderson— the little blond girl—Ginny Sanderson killed Wally Gould and Frank Grice killed Ginny Sanderson. Tony, do you understand what I'm saying?"

He moved his head minutely, a nod. "Blood," he whispered. Pain shadowed his face. "All over everything."

"Uh-huh. But Jimmy wasn't involved in any of it. Any of it, Tony. He ran because he was scared. He didn't have the keys and he didn't have the truck. Do you understand?"

"The truck," he whispered. "I was followin' the truck."

"I know, Tony. Don't talk, don't tell me. All right? What Frank told you about Jimmy—he told you about Eve's burglary, right? That night at the bar? He said Jimmy did that, that he could prove it, he could get Jimmy sent away for a long time? It wasn't true.

"Jimmy told you he was going straight. That was true. He's clean, Tony. He had nothing to do with the burglary, he had nothing to do with the murders. Tony, don't talk," I said again, as he tried to speak. His mouth closed; he watched me.

"Grice is dead. Jimmy messed things up a little trying to protect Ginny Sanderson, but it probably would've come out the same anyway. He saved my life, Tony, just like you did.

"Those bullets you took, they were meant for me. From one of Grice's boys." I stood. "That's what I came to say, Tony."

"Smith—"

"No," I said. "I don't want to hear it. Rest. You need to rest, Tony. You'll be all right, but it'll take time." We looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Then I said, "I'll see you, Tony," and I left.

Eve Colgate was waiting in the lobby when I got downstairs, but so was Brinkman.

"I got to talk to you, city boy."

"Jesus, Brinkman, can it wait until tomorrow? I'm a wreck."

"No. Now."

Eve put her hand on my arm. "I'll wait outside. I'm tired of this place." She turned to Brinkman. "I'd appreciate it if you kept it short, Sheriff." She walked out the smoky glass doors.

Brinkman watched her go. "'I'd appreciate it . . .' Shit."

"What the hell do you want, Brinkman?" I sat, exhausted.

"I've been talking to Otis Huttner. He's going to live. He's not even hurt bad."

"Great. Can I go now?"

"He says everything you said is true, except he claims he didn't know a goddamn thing about Lena until after it was over."

"Uh-huh, sure. And?"

"And he says the cop Sanderson bought Grice was Ron MacGregor."

I rubbed my eyes. Flashes of red and yellow played behind my lids.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me that, Smith?"

I thought of saying I didn't know, but I had nothing left for that kind of show. And there was something more important, so I said that instead. "Brinkman, does it have to come out?"

"What the hell are you talking about? I'd've had Grice years ago, except for that bastard! I don't—"

"Brinkman, look. Grice is dead. MacGregor's dead. Any organization Grice built you'll be able to take apart pretty easily now, and it probably doesn't amount to much anyhow.

"But I don't think you're going to get much else out of this. You might get Sanderson for the murder of his wife, but you'll have to drain the quarry pit to find her, and I don't think you'll have enough to go to court on, even if you do that.

"So pretty much it's over. You'll give press interviews and get re-elected. The DA and NYSEG and the Feds, and whoever else wants to, will start investigations into Appleseed Holdings. Sanderson's pet politicians will suddenly lose his phone number. He'll be nobody in this county anymore, but he won't go to jail.

"And Ron MacGregor will get buried, but as a hero, Brinkman. That's what his family thinks. That's what everybody thinks. What the hell good is it going to do anybody, if the truth comes out?"

Brinkman's small eyes fixed on me for a long time. "You're just so goddamn smart, aren't you, city boy? You can just tell what's good for everybody, and how everything oughta work."

"No," I said, standing. "If I were smart, I could make things come out the way they should, instead of being left behind to clean up the mess."

I turned away from him, followed Eve Colgate out the gray glass doors.

In the car I told Eve the story from the beginning. I told her more than I'd told Brinkman, because the paintings were hers; but the part I'd kept from him I kept from her also.

I found myself telling her about MacGregor, though, which was something else I had decided not to talk about. But I needed to talk about it.

"I didn't catch on." I said. "At first he just told me to keep out of his way. He was a cop; that's standard. And he started asking me why I thought Brinkman, with such a grudge on, hadn't been able to get at Grice. I wondered why he was asking me. But he was fishing, looking to see if I'd figured out Grice had protection. And I had, but I wasn't smart enough to see where it was coming from.

"Then suddenly he was ordering me off the case, out of the county, pissed off, as though I'd done something. I guess that was when he found out Grice really was involved and trying to set Jimmy up. He was afraid I'd get too close. He wanted to protect me. And I didn't get it."

"He was a friend of yours," she said. "You trusted him, and he couldn't afford to trust you. What would you have done, if you'd known?"

"I don't know. Honest to God, I don't know."

We rode in silence for a time, back over the route we'd taken last night with Tony. The night seemed very quiet, very dark.

"That little girl," Eve said at last. "Do you think she really did that?"

"Shot Gould? Yes. If Grice had done it hed've been proud. He wouldn't have manufactured a story, at least not for me. Yes, I think that was true."

There was more silence, more narrow, curving road, the smell of damp earth and woodsmoke in the air.

"Eve?"

"Yes?"

"I want to know something. You told me it was none of my business once, but I'm asking again. What's behind your arrangement with your gallery?"

She didn't answer for some time. Finally she said, "You have to have all the pieces, don't you? That's what drives you.”

"That's part of it," I said. "Part of it."

She shifted, turned onto 30. Her driving was smooth and sure, even in my unfamiliar car.

"I told you," she said, "how my husband died. In a car accident. I was driving; we had both been drinking. I didn't tell you why." A pause; then, "Henri had just told me he'd made another woman pregnant."

She didn't look at me. I said, "Someone up here?"

"Yes. He'd been seeing her for over a year. I didn't understand it then, and I don't now. I thought we had ... I thought. . . my God, how I loved him!" Her voice quavered. "And so I killed him. I don't think I meant to. I don't think so. But I don't think I'll ever know.

"Henri's daughter was born not long after I got out of the hospital. Her mother, Henri's . . . Henri's mistress . . . she wasn't a tramp. She ran a plant nursery. She was older than I, as Henri was. Smart, kind, and strong.

"She never knew who I was. I used to go to the nursery regularly. My cherry trees are from it. I watched the child grow."

The night had grown foggy as 30 climbed into the hills. I shivered slightly in the clammy air.

"I tried, through Ulrich, to give her money for the child. She knew it was from Henri's widow; she turned it down. But when the child was ready for school, she found she had a dilemma.

"We had gotten to be friends, of a sort. I don't know if you'll understand that . . ." For the first time, she glanced at me.

I said, "Yes. Yes, I do." In the darkness I couldn't see her eyes.

She nodded, went on. "She wanted the child to be educated well. She told me she had promised the child's father that. She told me—she said she had loved him very much." Eve drew a breath. "But the public schools here were not good. The only nearby private school was Adirondack Preparatory, which at that time was just a finishing school. There was no other place to send her daughter close to home, and she couldn't bear to send her away.

"And at last I had found something I could do. I made arrangements with Ulrich. On my behalf, he met with the trustees at Adirondack Preparatory. In the beginning I endowed chairs. I sponsored scholarships. I donated a new building, for the visual and performing arts.

"Eventually, as happens, my money attracted more money. Other people began sending their daughters there, and giving generously.

"By the time Henri's daughter was ready to enter the fifth grade, Adirondack had changed a great deal. She was sent there on a scholarship; she did quite well. She went on to college, and to medical school. She lives in New York now. I look her up when I go in, an old friend of her mother's.

"I've continued to support the school, and the answer to your question is that that's where my money goes. I'm not alone anymore in this, so now I concentrate my efforts in two areas: I sponsor a number of scholarships, and I underwrite Adirondack's programs in the visual arts."

The road curved, straightened again at a place where, in daylight, the view stretched fifty miles. Now there was only blackness, and distant lights.

"Do you see," she asked, "why I was unhappy with Lydia's prying into this? I knew it was unrelated to the burglary. And I had kept it secret for so long."

"Yes," I said. "I do see. And thank you for telling me. I know it was hard."

She surprised me with a wry smile. "Telling you wasn't as hard as I thought it would be."

I hesitated, said, "Eve? Who chooses the scholarship recipients?"

She threw me another glance, said, "There's a panel. They have certain criteria. Occasionally I recommend someone. I don't abuse my position and my candidates are never turned down. Why?"

"MacGregor's girls go to Adirondack," I said. "His arrangement with Grice was paying their tuition. That's what it was all about, his girls."

Eve said, "And you want me to make sure they can continue? You want to do that for him, even now?"

"Especially now. It's what he sold his soul for."

We spoke very little after that, as we covered the dark miles. I lit a cigarette and stared out the window and thought about Eve educating two generations of girls, other people's daughters, helping them to see so much, and so clearly, that in the end a nursery woman's daughter becomes a doctor, and a wild fifteen-year-old can identify, with certainty, unsigned canvases no one has ever seen before.

Chapter 22

Eve unlocked my cabin door, came in long enough to turn the light on in the front room. Her eyes fell on the piano, which gleamed softly. "I am sorry," she said, "that you won't let me hear you play." She smiled her small smile, studied me. "I imagine you're quite good."

"No. I'm not."

She smiled again, didn't answer.

Her eyes swept over the room, came back to me. "Are you sure you'll be all right?"

"Yes," I said. "Now that I'm here."

"Then I'll leave you here. Do you want me to come in the morning with your car?"

"No. I'll find my way over tomorrow. Thank you, Eve."

She took my hand, held it a moment. Then she turned and left.

I worked my way out of my jacket, found a glass and the bourbon bottle. I needed music, and I knew what I wanted: ensembled playing. Music made when people know each other, can anticipate and understand each other. I put on Beethoven, the Archduke Trio. I stretched out on the couch, sipped at the bourbon, felt the music flow around me. The soloistic, separate parts of the trio wove, danced, glided forward and back, created together what none of them was, alone.

It was an illusion, but it was beautiful.

I slept until one the next afternoon. Sometimes after the music was over and the bourbon was gone Id made my way into bed, and after that I was aware of nothing except the strange, sad images of my dreams.

When I awoke I was aching and stiff. My head hurt, but not as badly as the day before, not as badly as I'd expected. I stumbled to the outer room, clicked on the hot water, built a fire, put the kettle on. The day was gray again, silent, but with an expectation in the air.

I put bourbon in the coffee and made the coffee strong. After it was gone I showered, tried to soothe my aching shoulders under the rhythm of the pounding heat. I shaved, inspected in the mirror the shiner ringing my left eye, blood under the skin from the bullet that might have killed me. I was a mess. You could read the week's accumulation of trouble on my face.

Still, I didn't have to wait long on 30 before a pickup, heading south, stopped for me. Antonelli's was north of my place, and Eve Colgate's house north of that, but before I did what I needed to do today I had to eat.

"Thanks," I said as I climbed into the truck. "I wasn't sure anybody would stop for someone who looks like this."

The driver, a big, unshaven man, laughed a big, friendly laugh. "You kiddin'? Safest guy in the world to be with is a guy who's finished makin' trouble for someone else."

We shared a smoke and some idle talk about the nearness of spring. He let me off at the Eagle's Nest, a small, shiny diner that still had most of its original aerodynamic chrome.

At the counter I ordered steak and eggs, homefries, toast, and coffee. I took the first mug of coffee to the phone, called the hospital. I asked them how Tony was and they told me he was better, out of danger now. Then I asked for Lydia's room.

The phone rang five times and I was about to give up when a groggy voice answered in slurred Chinese.

"English," I said. "It's me."

"Oh, goody, it's you," she said. "Where are you?"

"At a diner, having breakfast. How do you feel?"

"Sleepy, and I have a huge headache. Is this what it's like when you have a hangover?"

"No, a hangover's worse because you know it's your own fault, too. Listen, I'll be up to see you later. I just wanted to know how you were."

"I can't wait. Bill, is Jimmy all right?"

"He wasn't hurt. I haven't seen him since yesterday, but he's okay. Go back to sleep."

"Wait. You don't really have Eve's paintings, do you?"

"No. That was for Grice. It was all I could think of. But now I know where they are. I'm going to get them after I eat."

"You do? Where are they?"

"I'll tell you about it when I come up," I said, and I knew I would. The part I hadn't told anyone, I would tell Lydia. "Hey, Lydia?" "Umm?"

"You want me to call your mother, tell her what happened?"

She sighed, but just before the sigh I thought I heard a stifled giggle. "You," she said, "are an idiot."

"Yeah," I said, "I know. I'll see you later."

I hung up, went back to the counter, where my breakfast was waiting. I ate, filled with immense gratitude toward chickens and cows, offering a prayer of thanks for grease and salt. The homefries especially were almost unbearably good, burned in the pan, flecked with onions and peppers.

Finally finished, I lit a cigarette and worked the room, found somebody who was headed north on 30. He turned out to be a weekender, like me, and as we sped past my driveway and the empty parking lot at Antonelli's we talked about the city and, again, the approach of spring.

He dropped me on 30; I caught another ride into Central Bridge, walked the mile and a half to Eve's house. It felt good to walk, even in the dullness of a late winter day that made the promise of spring seem like just another damn lie you'd let yourself be suckered, again, into believing.

I was halfway up the drive when Leo came charging around from the back, barking, growling, yipping, and wagging all at once. I gave him the jelly doughnut I'd brought from the Eagle's Nest, scratched his ears, looked up to see Eve standing on the porch.

"Hi," she smiled. "How are you?"

"Much better, thanks."

"Come in. There's coffee and cake."

I shook my head. "Later, Eve. I want to finish this."

She gave me the keys to her truck and I headed back south. I pulled into the gravel lot at Antonelli's, slowed to a stop close to the door. I let myself in with the keys I had taken from Tony's hospital room.

I was steeled for an eerie silence, a sense of something ended, lost. But inside, the tables were set and a strong smell of garlic and oregano came from the kitchen. The jukebox was playing Charlie Daniels. As the door slammed behind me a voice yelled from the kitchen, "Marie?"

"No," I called back. "Bill."

The kitchen door swung open and Jimmy came through wiping his hands on a towel. "Hey, Mr. S.!" he grinned. "You okay? I called the hospital. They said you went home. What're you doing here?"

"I came to pick something up. What are you doing here?"

"Oh," he shrugged. "Well, you know. Tony's gonna be in the hospital a long time. That kind of stuff costs a lot. The hospital, they said Miss Colgate was taking care of everything, but that ain't right. You know? I mean, he's my brother. Hey, you want a drink?" He started to move behind the bar.

"No," I said. "No, thanks. Does Tony know you're doing this?"

"Nah. He don't want to talk to me."

"Did you go up to the hospital?"

"Uh-uh. He'd just tell me to get lost. That's what he always told me. You know."

I knew. I gestured around the bar. "You think you can manage here?"

"Sure. No problem. I called Marie and Ray. And Allies coming in later, to help."

"Alice? Hey, Jimmy, that's great."

"Yeah, well, she says just to help. For Tony. The rest of it, she says we'll have to figure it out."

We stood looking at each other, suddenly awkward. Then Jimmy said, "So—what'd you come to get?"

"Jimmy," I asked, "how much did Lydia tell you yesterday?"

He grinned, a little color seeping into his face. "I was scared, man. Real scared. She just sorta kept talking, you know, until you guys showed up."

"What did she say?"

"Well, about what happened." He told me what Lydia had told him. It was the same story Id given Brinkman: the truth, except for details of what it was Ginny had stolen from Eve Colgate.

And except, of course, for the part Lydia didn't know.

"Well," I said when he was through, "here's what comes next." I pulled a chair out from the nearest table, sank into it. I got a cigarette going before I went on. "That stuff Ginny stole that turned out to be so valuable? It was also big. Too big for her to take home and hide, and she didn't trust Wally with it."

"Wally?"

"Wake up, Jimmy. He's who she left you for. He was a lot closer to Frank than you were, and that's what she wanted."

"Wally?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Fuckin' Wally?"

"Yeah," I said. "Anyhow, she needed someplace safe to store this stuff for a while."

Light dawned in his eyes. "Here?"

"She had your keys. She must have known about Tony's basement. She probably figured no one would ever notice."

Jimmy flushed. "I told her. About downstairs. I was, like, goofing on Tony one day."

"So she hid it there. And she showed it to Frank Monday night. She’d already told him about it, and he was already figuring the angles. At the very least, he could frame you for the burglary and shake down Tony. That's what the fight was about.

"But when Ginny and Wally took him down here and showed him what they had, he acted cool. He wasn't impressed. Ginny was just a stupid kid, an amateur, he said. He told her to go home, back to daddy."

"She must've hated that, being treated like a kid. Like she wasn't tough."

"She did hate it. She hated it so much she showed how tough she really was by killing Wally, on the spot."

"Yeah," Jimmy muttered. "Yeah, that's what Lydia said. Jesus."

I didn't say anything. After a moment Jimmy asked, "Mr. S.? Why did Frank kill her?"

"She was in his way. She had just gotten to be too much trouble."

Jimmy rubbed his hand along his forehead.

Neither of us spoke for a long time. The jukebox moved from Charlie Daniels to Crystal Gayle. Finally Jimmy said, "Where is this—this stuff?"

"In the basement. Come help me with it."

We went down the creaking stairs. The basement still had the same dank smell, the same decades of dust covering things that once mattered to someone. The disturbances made by the finding of Wally Gould were already aging, rounding, fading.

Jimmy found his way to the middle of the room with an unconscious familiarity. He pulled the chain hanging from the bare bulb and in the light I searched the room from where I stood.

I found it immediately, a plywood crate about six by six, partially hidden behind other boxes. It was carefully made, fastened with screws at the corners, and it was practically dust free.

Jimmy and I carried it up, maneuvering carefully through the basement door, past the tables and barstools, out into the lot. I let down the back gate of Eve's truck and we hefted the crate onto the metal bed. My sore shoulders ached, my arms trembled a little as I closed the gate again.

Jimmy had been silent since we'd entered the basement. Now he turned to me, asked, "What's in it?"

"Eve asked me not to tell anyone, Jimmy. I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay. I sort of—I don't want to know, you know?"

I started around to the cab. As I put my hand on the door handle Jimmy said, "Mr. S., I don't get it." He frowned, rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, Tony's gesture.

"Don't get what?" I asked, but as I said it, I knew.

"Frank was framing me for killing Wally, right? And Ginny too? That's what Lydia said."

"That's right."

"But you told that trooper Ginny's body was in the quarry. Why would he, like, ditch her body, if he was setting me up? Is that who came up that night in the rain? To drop her there?" We looked at each other in the dull afternoon light. "Mr. S., that wasn't Frank, was it?"

I looked around me, the gravel lot, the tin sign swinging against the graying sky. The air had gotten colder since I left the cabin; there was a bite to the wind.

And suddenly I thought, tell him. Maybe something can be salvaged out of what happened here, if he knows. And so I told Jimmy what I had kept from everybody else. "No," I said. "That wasn't Frank. That was Tony."

It took him a minute to answer, and when he did his voice was shaky. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Tony'd heard what Frank had to say about you. When I found Gould's body, Tony came down to the basement. He knows every inch of it, every broken piece of trash there. He must've spotted the crate right away, knew it didn't belong. Then your keys, the whole frame. He bought it all.

"Wednesday night he went looking for you. Marie would probably tell us, if we asked. Maybe he closed up early, maybe he just left her in charge. He was on his way to the quarry, I think. I'd told him you were there; I wanted him to know you were safe.

"But he saw your truck, on the road. He followed it. He didn't know it was Frank and Ginny; how would he know that? He thought it was you.

"He followed them to Eve Colgate's shed. He stayed back, to see what was going on. He's lucky he did that; Frank would have killed him. But what he saw was two people going into the shed, one coming out. Remember how dark it was that night, Jimmy, right before it rained.

"The truck drove away, but Tony stayed. Frank must've driven right by Tony's car, never saw him. I checked that road up from the valley. You could pull off and hide in the dark, lots of places.

"Tony went to the shed. The lock had been cut through; it was easy to get in.

"And he found Ginny, in a pool of blood on the floor. Your glove beside her. Your truck driving away.

"He bought this frame, too. Just like the other one."

"He thought I did that?" Jimmy spoke slowly. "Ginny, like that? He thought I did that?"

I waited before I went on.

"He took her body to his car. Her body, and the glove. He tried to clean up the blood, but there was too much. So he did something else: He covered it up. With paint, which Eve—which she stores there. With anything else he could find. That mess in the shed? It was only the floor. The windows weren't broken, the walls weren't scrawled on. Only the floor.

"But just as he started—probably even before he moved the body—I came along. He heard me coming; he couldn't let anyone see. Couldn't let anyone know what you'd done. So he waited, and he hit me, knocked me out."

"No, man," Jimmy said. "Uh-uh. If that was Tony, even if he thought it was me, he'd've told you. You, man. You saved my butt that other time, he knew that."

"I also gave your keys to MacGregor. Tony and I had fought about that. He didn't trust me to protect you, Jimmy. Not when it came to hiding a murder, a fifteen-year-old kid."

Jimmy started to speak, but I stopped him.

"Just before he left he came back to check on me. To make sure I was alive. There was paint on my chin, on my neck, when Eve found me."

"No!" Jimmy burst out. "This is crazy! Tony don't even like me! Why the hell would he do this? He thought I did something like that? Hide her body and shit? And you, man, he wouldn't hurt you. You're his best buddy, man."

"Someone called Eve Colgate that night to tell her I was in trouble. And Tony called her place in the morning." I said quietly. "Looking for me, to tell me nothing: I'd gotten a phone call, someone wanted me. He said he'd closed up, gone to my place to find me; when I wasn't there he started calling places I might be. Eighteen years I've been getting phone calls at the bar, Jimmy. When I come in Tony hands me scraps of paper. Did you ever know him to go looking for me before?"

Jimmy shook his head, back and forth, back and forth. "No, man. You're crazy. You coulda died out there. Tony wouldn't do that shit to you."

"I'd've been all right, if it hadn't rained. Tony called Eve; then he went up to the quarry, to dump Ginny's body. He may have seen your light; anyway he knew you were there, but probably the last thing in the world he wanted was to talk to you.

"And then what could he do? He couldn't come back and find me. What would he have said? All he could do was wait, and wonder if I was all right. And think about you, and what he thought you'd done. It must have been a hell of a night."

Jimmy stood motionless. His right arm started a gesture, abandoned it, fell back by his side. "I. .." he said, sounding choked; he didn't finish.

I turned, climbed into the cab of Eve Colgate's pickup. I put the key in the ignition. As the engine roared to life I leaned out the window, said, "He's in room three-oh- nine, the new wing. Go see him."

I backed the truck around, rolled slowly out of Antonelli's lot. I drove with great care; I was very tired.

Chapter 23

The wind was picking up as I turned the truck up Eve's chestnut-bordered drive. Hard dark clouds pushed through the sky from the north.

I pulled in front of the house, silenced the engine. The front door opened and Leo bounded onto the porch, left Eve framed in the doorway. She waited until I jumped from the cab, then came forward slowly, walked down the steps and around the back of the truck. She looked at the crate. With her eyes still on it, she asked me, "Are they all right?"

"I didn't open it."

Together we pulled the crate from the truck bed, carried it inside the house, Leo wriggling through the vestibule along with us. The house had a soft, sweet smell, vanilla and brown sugar.

We laid the crate on the dining table. I waited while Eve brought a screwdriver. She unscrewed the cover, dropped each screw in the wooden bowl on the cedar chest before going on to the next one. When she was finished she used the screwdriver to pry the cover loose. We each took an edge then, lifted the cover, leaned it on the wall.

The canvases were stacked facedown. Eve touched the top one, pulled her hand back as though it were hot to the touch. She stared a moment longer; then, suddenly, she hefted the painting out of the crate, stood it on the floor against the chair without looking directly at it. She repeated the action, her mouth set in a hard, determined line, like a diver forcing herself over and over into icy water to search for something lost.

Then all six paintings were out, spread around the room, and Eve was standing as still as I was, in the center of the storm.

Like other powerful storms, this one was violent, frightening, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Thin razor-sharp wires of color were stretched across canvas, pulled so taut they broke apart; or, released, they bunched together in choking knots. These were colors other painters never found, colors you recognized instantly from the dreams you could never remember.

But unlike the Eva Nouvels I’d seen before, these paintings were not dark. The colors twisted, tangled, pierced each other, bled; but the field they were on was luminous, and the color wires glowed against it like lightning against the sun.

I was without words, looking from canvas to canvas as the storm raged around me. From the canvases I looked to Eve. She stood silent, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. Her crystal eyes swept each painting, moved to the next. Then she covered her mouth with one hand and began silently to cry.

I took two quick steps, gathered her into my arms. Her shoulders felt sharp and thin, made of glass. She pressed hard against me. I held her more tightly. At first she wept noiselessly; then came great wracking sobs that shook her again and again. I rocked her, smoothed her hair, whispered useless, meaningless words as the storm pounded and battered her.

Finally, like other storms, it ended. I held her as long as she wanted, after the sobbing stopped, until she softened, pulled away. She turned without looking at me, stepped out of the circle of canvases, walked to the bathroom under the stairs. The door closed and the water ran for a long, long time.

I felt a pressure against my leg. I looked down to see Leo sitting, looking up. He whined, lifted a paw anxiously. I crouched, scratched his ears. "It's okay, boy," I told him. "It's okay."

When Eve came out her eyes were pink-rimmed, her lined face pale. She hesitated outside the circle I still stood within, then stepped to my side. "Will you help me?" she asked.

We repacked the crate, each canvas facedown, and we tightened the cover. We carried the crate together out the back door, around into the storeroom, which had a new, heavy padlock and hasp. My eyebrows lifted at our destination; Eve saw that and shrugged. She gave me a small, tired smile. "It's where they go," she said.

We went back inside. Eve poured coffee, asked me to put some music on. "If you'd like," she added. I found Haydn, string quartets. Eve sliced a pound cake, brought me a piece. It was warm, rich, with a brown sugar glaze. She sipped her coffee, and the music calmed the air.

After a while I said, "They're beautiful, you know."

She shook her head.

"You'll probably never see it," I said. "But they are."

There was more music, more peace. She asked, "Bill, where were they?"

I looked into my coffee, watched the deep blackness release steam, which wandered out of the mug, lost itself in the open air. "They were at Tony's, in the basement," I said. At the look in her eyes, I added, "Tony didn't know."

She held my eyes with hers, searched my face. I couldn't tell what she found, but finally she nodded, released me.

I left soon after. Leo ran excited circles around us on the driveway as Eve and I walked the short distance to where she'd put my car. It was very cold now, as day edged reluctantly into night. Thick clouds rode the wind. Eve asked, "Will you go back to the city soon?"

"Lydia will be able to leave the hospital in a day or two," I said. "I'll wait and take her home."

She was silent again. The wind gusted icily; there seemed nothing more to say. I opened the car door. "When you come back," she said suddenly, "will you come see me?"

"It might be a long time, Eve."

She took my hand. In the depths of her eyes I thought I saw the jewels sparkle, but I couldn't be sure. She said, "I'll be here."

I held her close again, this time briefly. Then we separated. I slipped into my car, started it up, began to move slowly down the drive, away from the house. My headlights caught the trunks of the chestnut trees; I heard Eve, behind me, calling Leo.

I drove back south through a fast-fading twilight. I passed Antonelli's, lit now, cars on the gravel, the tin sign dancing in the gusting wind. Fallen leaves skidded ahead of me across the blacktop as the wind changed direction. My lights picked out what was in front of me; everything else was hidden.

By the time I reached the road down to my cabin, it had started to snow.