The Best American Noir of the Century

1984 STEPHEN GREENLEAF IRIS

The buick trudged toward the summit, each step slower than the last, the automatic gearing slipping ever lower as the air thinned and the grade steepened and the trucks were rendered snails. At the top the road leveled, and the Buick spent a brief sigh of relief before coasting thankfully down the other side, atop the stiff gray strap that was Interstate 5. As it passed from Oregon to California the car seemed cheered. Its driver shared the mood, though only momentarily.

He blinked his eyes and shrugged his shoulders and twisted his head. He straightened his leg and shook it. He turned up the volume of the radio, causing a song to be sung more loudly than it merited. But the acid fog lay still behind his eyes, eating at them. As he approached a roadside rest area he decided to give both the Buick and himself a break.

During the previous week he had chased a wild goose in the shape of a rumor all the way to Seattle, with tantalizing stops in Eugene and Portland along the way. Eight hours earlier, when he had finally recognized the goose for what it was, he had headed home, hoping to make it in one day but realizing as he slowed for the rest area that he couldn’t reach San Francisco that evening without risking more than was sensible in the way of vehicular manslaughter.

He took the exit, dropped swiftly to the bank of the Klamath River, and pulled into a parking slot in the Randolph Collier safety rest area. After making use of the facilities, he pulled out his map and considered where to spend the night. Redding looked like the logical place, out of the mountains, at the head of the soporific valley that separated him from home. He was reviewing what he knew about Redding when a voice, aggressively gay and musical, greeted him from somewhere near the car. He glanced to his side, sat up straight, and rolled down the window. “Hi,” the thin voice said again.

“Hi.”

She was blond, her long straight tresses misbehaving in the wind that tumbled through the river canyon. Her narrow face was white and seamless, as though it lacked flesh, was only skull. Her eyes were blue and tardy. She wore a loose green blouse gathered at the neck and wrists’ and a long skirt of faded calico, fringed in white ruffles. Her boots were leather and well worn, their tops disappearing under her skirt the way the tops of the mountains at her back disappeared into a disk of cloud.

He pegged her for a hitchhiker, one who perpetually roams the roads and provokes either pity or disapproval in those who pass her by. He glanced around to see if she was fronting for a partner, but the only thing he saw besides the picnic and toilet facilities and travelers like himself was a large bundle resting atop a picnic table at the far end of the parking lot. Her worldly possessions, he guessed; her only aids to life. He looked at her again and considered whether he wanted to share some driving time and possibly a motel room with a girl who looked a little spacy and a little sexy and a lot heedless of the world that delivered him his living.

“My name’s Iris,” she said, wrapping her arms across her chest, shifting her weight from foot to foot, shivering in the autumn chill.

“Mine’s Marsh.”

“You look tired.” Her concern seemed genuine, his common symptoms for some reason alarming to her.

“I am,” he admitted.

“Been on the road long?”

“From Seattle.”

“How far is that about?” The question came immediately, as though she habitually erased her ignorance.

“Four hundred miles. Maybe a little more.”

She nodded as though the numbers made him wise. “I’ve been to Seattle.”

“Good.”

“I’ve been lots of places.”

“Good.”

She unwrapped her arms and placed them on the door and leaned toward him. Her musk was unadulterated. Her blouse dropped open to reveal breasts sharpened to twin points by the mountain air. “Where you headed, Marsh?”

“South.”

“L.A.?”

He shook his head. “San Francisco.”

“Good. Perfect.”

He expected it right then, the flirting pitch for a lift, but her request was slightly different. “Could you take something down there for me?”

He frowned and thought of the package on the picnic table. Drugs? “What?” he asked.

“I’ll show you in a sec. Do you think you could, though?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m kind of on a tight schedule, and …”

She wasn’t listening. “It goes to …” She pulled a scrap of paper from the pocket of her skirt and uncrumpled it. “It goes to 95 Albosa Drive, in Hurley City. That’s near Frisco, isn’t it? Marvin said it was.”

He nodded. “But I don’t…”

She put up a hand. “Hold still. I’ll be right back.”

She skipped twice, her long skirt hopping high above her boots to show a shaft of gypsum thigh, then trotted to the picnic table and picked up the bundle. Halfway back to the car she proffered it like a prize soufflé.

“Is this what you want me to take?” he asked as she approached.

She nodded, then looked down at the package and frowned. “I don’t like this one,” she said, her voice dropping to a dismissive rasp.

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t happy. It’s from the B Box, so it can’t help it, I guess, but all the same it should go back, I don’t care what Marvin says.”

“What is it? A puppy?”

She thrust the package through the window. He grasped it reflexively, to keep it from dropping to his lap. As he secured his grip the girl ran off. “Hey! Wait a minute,” he called after her. “I can’t take this thing. You’ll have to …”

He thought the package moved. He slid one hand beneath it and with the other peeled back the cotton strips that swaddled it. A baby—not canine but human — glared at him and screamed. He looked frantically for the girl and saw her climbing into a gray Volkswagen bug that was soon scooting out of the rest area and climbing toward the freeway.

He swore, then rocked the baby awkwardly for an instant, trying to quiet the screams it formed with every muscle. When that didn’t work, he placed the child on the seat beside him, started the car, and backed out. As he started forward he had to stop to avoid another car, and then to reach out wildly to keep the child from rolling off the seat.

He moved the gear to park and gathered the seat belt on the passenger side and tried to wrap it around the baby in a way that would be more safe than throttling. The result was not reassuring. He unhooked the belt and put the baby on the floor beneath his legs, put the car in gear, and set out after the little gray VW that had disappeared with the child’s presumptive mother. He caught it only after several frantic miles, when he reached the final slope that descended to the grassy plain that separated the Siskiyou range from the lordly aspect of Mount Shasta.

The VW buzzed toward the mammoth mountain like a mad mouse assaulting an elephant. He considered overtaking the car, forcing Iris to stop, returning the baby, then getting the hell away from her as fast as the Buick would take him. But something in his memory of her look and words made him keep his distance, made him keep Iris in sight while he waited for her to make a turn toward home.

The highway flattened, then crossed the high meadow that nurtured sheep and cattle and horses below the lumps of the southern Cascades and the Trinity Alps. Traffic was light, the sun low above the western peaks, the air a steady splash of autumn. He checked his gas gauge. If Iris didn’t turn off in the next fifty miles he would either have to force her to stop or let her go. The piercing baby sounds that rose from beneath his knees made the latter choice impossible.

They reached Yreka, and he closed to within a hundred yards of the bug, but Iris ignored his plea that the little city be her goal. Thirty minutes later, after he had decided she was nowhere near her destination, Iris abruptly left the interstate, at the first exit to a village that was handmaiden to the mountain, a town reputed to house an odd collection of spiritual seekers and religious zealots.

The mountain itself, volcanic, abrupt, spectacular, had been held by the Indians to be holy, and the area surrounding it was replete with hot springs and mud baths and other prehistoric marvels. Modern mystics had accepted the mantle of the mountain, and the crazy girl and her silly bug fit with what he knew about the place and those who gathered there. What didn’t fit was the baby she had foisted on him.

He slowed and glanced at his charge once again and failed to receive anything resembling contentment in return. Fat little arms escaped the blanket and pulled the air like taffy. Spittle dribbled down its chin. A translucent bubble appeared at a tiny nostril, then broke silently and vanished.

The bug darted through the north end of town, left, then right, then left again, quickly, as though it sensed pursuit. He lagged behind, hoping Iris was confident she had ditched him. He looked at the baby again, marveling that it could cry so loud, could for so long expend the major portion of its strength in unrequited pleas. When he looked at the road again the bug had disappeared.

He swore and slowed and looked at driveways, then began to plan what to do if he had lost her. Houses dwindled, the street became dirt, then flanked the log decks and lumber stacks and wigwam burners of a sawmill. A road sign declared it unlawful to sleigh, toboggan, or ski on a county road. He had gasped the first breaths of panic when he saw the VW nestled next to a ramshackle cabin on the back edge of town, empty, as though it had been there always.

A pair of firs sheltered the cabin and the car, made the dwindling day seem night. The driveway was mud, the yard bordered by a falling wormwood fence. He drove to the next block and stopped his car, the cabin now invisible.

He knew he couldn’t keep the baby much longer. He had no idea what to do, for it or with it, had no idea what it wanted, no idea what awaited it in Hurley City, had only a sense that the girl, Iris, was goofy, perhaps pathologically so, and that he should not abet her plan.

Impossibly, the child cried louder. He had some snacks in the car — crackers, cookies, some cheese — but he was afraid the baby was too young for solids. He considered buying milk, and a bottle, and playing parent. The baby cried again, gasped and sputtered, then repeated its protest.

He reached down and picked it up. The little red face inflated, contorted, mimicked a steam machine that continuously whistled. The puffy cheeks, the tiny blue eyes, the round pug nose, all were engorged in scarlet fury. He cradled the baby in his arms as best he could and rocked it. The crying dimmed momentarily, then began again.

His mind ran the gauntlet of childhood scares — diphtheria, smallpox, measles, mumps, croup, even a pressing need to burp. God knew what ailed it. He patted its forehead and felt the sticky heat of fever.

Shifting position, he felt something hard within the blanket, felt for it, finally drew it out. A nippled baby bottle, half-filled, body-warm. He shook it and presented the nipple to the baby, who sucked it as its due. Giddy at his feat, he unwrapped his package further, enough to tell him he was holding a little girl and that she seemed whole and healthy except for her rage and fever. When she was feeding steadily he put her back on the floor and got out of the car.

The stream of smoke it emitted into the evening dusk made the cabin seem dangled from a string. Beneath the firs the ground was moist, a spongy mat of rotting twigs and needles. The air was cold and damp and smelled of burning wood. He walked slowly up the drive, courting silence, alert for the menace implied by the hand-lettered sign, nailed to the nearest tree, that ordered him to keep out.

The cabin was dark but for the variable light at a single window. The porch was piled high with firewood, both logs and kindling. A maul and wedge leaned against a stack of fruitwood piled next to the door. He walked to the far side of the cabin and looked beyond it for signs of Marvin.

A tool shed and a broken-down school bus filled the rear yard. Between the two a tethered nanny goat grazed beneath a line of drying clothes, silent but for her neck bell, the swollen udder oscillating easily beneath her, the teats extended like accusing fingers. Beyond the yard a thicket of berry bushes served as fence, and beyond the bushes a stand of pines blocked further vision. He felt alien, isolated, exposed, threatened, as Marvin doubtlessly hoped all strangers would.

He thought about the baby, wondered if it was all right, wondered if babies could drink so much they got sick or even choked. A twinge of fear sent him trotting back to the car. The baby was fine, the bottle empty on the floor beside it, its noises not wails but only muffled whimpers. He returned to the cabin and went onto the porch and knocked at the door and waited.

Iris wore the same blouse and skirt and boots, the same eyes too shallow to hold her soul. She didn’t recognize him; her face pinched only with uncertainty.

He stepped toward her and she backed away and asked him what he wanted. The room behind her was a warren of vague shapes, the only source of light far in the back by a curtain that spanned the room.

“I want to give you your baby back,” he said.

She looked at him more closely, then opened her mouth in silent exclamation, then slowly smiled. “How’d you know where I lived?”

“I followed you.”

“Why? Did something happen to it already?”

“No, but I don’t want to take it with me.”

She seemed truly puzzled. “Why not? It’s on your way, isn’t it? Almost?”

He ignored the question. “I want to know some more about the baby.”

“Like what?”

“Like whose is it? Yours?”

Iris frowned and nibbled her lower lip. “Sort of.”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’? Did you give birth to it?”

“Not exactly.” Iris combed her hair with her fingers, then shook it off her face with an irritated twitch. “What are you asking all these questions for?”

“Because you asked me to do you a favor and I think I have the right to know what I’m getting into. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”

She paused. Her pout was dubious. “I guess.”

“So where did you get the baby?” he asked again.

“Marvin got it.”

“From whom?”

“Those people in Hurley City. So I don’t know why you won’t take it back, seeing as how it’s theirs and all.”

“But why …”

His question was obliterated by a high glissando, brief and piercing. He looked at Iris, then at the shadowy interior of the cabin.

There was no sign of life, no sign of anything but the leavings of neglect and a spartan bent. A fat gray cat hopped off a shelf and sauntered toward the back of the cabin and disappeared behind the blanket that was draped on the rope that spanned the rear of the room. The cry echoed once again. “What’s that?” he asked her.

Iris giggled. “What does it sound like?”

“Another baby?”

Iris nodded.

“Can I see it?”

“Why?”

“Because I like babies.”

“If you like them, why won’t you take the one I gave you down to Hurley City?”

“Maybe I’m changing my mind. Can I see this one?”

“I’m not supposed to let anyone in here.”

“It’ll be OK. Really. Marvin isn’t here, is he?”

She shook her head. “But he’ll be back any time. He just went to town.”

He summoned reasonableness and geniality. “Just let me see your baby for a second, Iris. Please? Then I’ll go. And take the other baby with me. I promise.”

She pursed her lips, then nodded and stepped back. “I got more than one,” she suddenly bragged. “Let me show you.” She turned and walked quickly toward the rear of the cabin and disappeared behind the blanket.

When he followed he found himself in a space that was half kitchen and half nursery Opposite the electric stove and Frigidaire, along the wall between the wood stove and the rear door, was a row of wooden boxes, seven of them, old orange crates, dividers removed, painted different colors and labeled A to G. Faint names of orchards and renderings of fruits rose through the paint on the stub ends of the crates. Inside boxes C through G were babies, buried deep in nests of rags and scraps of blanket. One of them was crying. The others slept soundly, warm and toasty, healthy and happy from all the evidence he had.

“My God,” he said.

“Aren’t they beautiful? They’re just the best little things in the whole world. Yes they are. Just the best little babies in the whole wide world. And Iris loves them all a bunch. Yes, she does. Doesn’t she?”

Beaming, Iris cooed to the babies for another moment, then her face darkened. “The one I gave you, she wasn’t happy here. That’s because she was a B Box baby. My B babies are always sad, I don’t know why. I treat them all the same, but the B babies are just contrary. That’s why the one I gave you should go back. Where is it, anyway?”

“In the car.”

“By itself?”

He nodded.

“You shouldn’t leave her there like that,” Iris chided. “She’s pouty enough already.”

“What about these others?” he asked, looking at the boxes. “Do they stay here forever?”

Her whole aspect solidified. “They stay till Marvin needs them. Till he does, I give them everything they want. Everything they need. No one could be nicer to my babies than me. No one.”

The fire in the stove lit her eyes like ice in sunlight. She gazed raptly at the boxes, one by one, and received something he sensed was sexual in return. Her breaths were rapid and shallow, her fists clenched at her sides. “Where’d you get these babies?” he asked softly.

“Marvin gets them.” She was only half-listening.

“Where?”

“All over. We had one from Nevada one time, and two from Idaho I think. Most are from California, though. And Oregon. I think that C Box baby’s from Spokane. That’s Oregon, isn’t it?”

He didn’t correct her. “Have there been more besides these?”

“Some.”

“How many?”

“Oh, maybe ten. No, more than that. I’ve had three of all the babies except G babies.”

“And Marvin got them all for you?”

She nodded and went to the stove and turned on a burner. “You want some tea? It’s herbal. Peppermint.”

He shook his head. “What happened to the other babies? The ones that aren’t here anymore?”

“Marvin took them.” Iris sipped her tea.

“Where?”

“To someone that wanted to love them.” The declaration was as close as she would come to gospel.

The air in the cabin seemed suddenly befouled, not breathable. “Is that what this is all about, Iris? Giving babies to people that want them?”

“That want them and will love them. See, Marvin gets these babies from people that don’t want them, and gives them to people that do. It’s his business.”

“Does he get paid for it?”

She shrugged absently. “A little, I think.”

“Do you go with Marvin when he picks them up?”

“Sometimes. When it’s far.”

“And where does he take them? To Idaho and Nevada, or just around here?”

She shrugged again. “He doesn’t tell me where they go. He says he doesn’t want me to try and get them back.” She smiled peacefully. “He knows how I am about my babies.”

“How long have you and Marvin been doing this?”

“I been with Marvin about three years.”

“And you’ve been trading in babies all that time?”

“Just about.”

She poured some more tea into a ceramic cup and sipped it. She gave no sign of guile or guilt, no sign that what he suspected could possibly be true.

“Do you have any children of your own, Iris?”

Her hand shook enough to spill her tea. “I almost had one once.”

“What do you mean?”

She made a face. “I got pregnant, but nobody wanted me to keep it so I didn’t.”

“Did you put it up for adoption?”

She shook her head.

“Abortion?”

Iris nodded, apparently in pain, and mumbled something. He asked her what she’d said. “I did it myself,” she repeated. “That’s what I can’t live with. I scraped it out of there myself. I passed out. I…”

She fell silent. He looked back at the row of boxes that held her penance. When she saw him look she began to sing a song. “Aren’t they just perfect?” she said when she was through. “Aren’t they all just perfect?”

“How do you know where the baby you gave me belongs?” he asked quietly.

“Marvin’s got a book that keeps track. I sneaked a look at it one time when he was stoned.”

“Where’s he keep it?”

“In the van. At least that’s where I found it.” Iris put her hands on his chest and pushed. “You better go before Marvin gets back. You’ll take the baby, won’t you? It just don’t belong here with the others. It fusses all the time and I can’t love it like I should.”

He looked at Iris’s face, at the firelight washing across it, making it alive. “Where are you from, Iris?”

“Me? Minnesota.”

“Did you come to California with Marvin?”

She shook her head. “I come with another guy. I was tricking for him when I got knocked up. After the abortion I told him I wouldn’t trick no more so he ditched me. Then I did a lot of drugs for a while, till I met Marvin at a commune down by Mendocino.”

“What’s Marvin’s last name?”

“Hessel. Now you got to go. Really. Marvin’s liable to do something crazy if he finds you here.” She walked toward him and he retreated.

“OK, Iris. Just one thing. Could you give me something for the baby to eat? She’s real hungry.”

Iris frowned. “She only likes goat’s milk, is the problem, and I haven’t milked today.” She walked to the Frigidaire and returned with a bottle. “This is all I got. Now, git.”

He nodded, took the bottle from her, then retreated to his car.

He opened the door on the stinging smell of ammonia. The baby greeted him with screams. He picked it up, rocked it, talked to it, hummed a tune, finally gave it the second bottle, which was the only thing it wanted.

As it sucked its sustenance he started the car and let the engine warm, and a minute later flipped the heater switch. When it seemed prudent, he unwrapped the child and unpinned her soggy diaper and patted her dumplinged bottom dry with a tissue from the glove compartment. After covering her with her blanket he got out of the car, pulled his suitcase from the trunk, and took out his last clean T-shirt, then returned to the car and fashioned a bulky diaper out of the cotton shirt and affixed it to the child, pricking his finger in the process, spotting both the garment and the baby with his blood. Then he sat for a time, considering his obligations to the children that had suddenly littered his life.

He should go to the police, but Marvin might return before they responded and might learn of Iris’s deed and harm the children or flee with them. He could call the police and wait in place for them to come, but he doubted his ability to convey his precise suspicions over the phone. As he searched for other options, headlights ricocheted off his mirror and into his eyes, then veered off. When his vision was reestablished he reached into the glove compartment for his revolver. Shoving it into his pocket, he got out of the car and walked back to the driveway and disobeyed the sign again.

A new shape had joined the scene, rectangular and dark. Marvin’s van, creaking as it cooled. He waited, listened, and when he sensed no other presence he approached it. A converted bread truck, painted navy blue, with sliding doors into the driver’s cabin and hinged doors at the back. The right fender was dented, the rear bumper wired in place. A knobby-tired motorcycle was strapped to a rack on the top. The door on the driver’s side was open, so he climbed in.

The high seat was rotted through, its stuffing erupting like white weeds through the dirty vinyl. The floorboards were littered with food wrappers and beer cans and cigarette butts. He activated his pencil flash and pawed through the refuse, pausing at the only pristine object in the van — a business card, white with black engraving, taped to a corner of the dash: “J. Arnold Rasker, Attorney at Law. Practice in all Courts. Initial Consultation Free. Phone day or night.”

He looked through the cab for another minute, found nothing resembling Marvin’s notebook and nothing else of interest. After listening for Marvin’s return and hearing nothing he went through the narrow doorway behind the driver’s seat into the cargo area in the rear, the yellow ball that dangled from his flash bouncing playfully before him.

The entire area had been carpeted, ceiling included, in a matted pink plush that was stained in unlikely places and coming unglued in others. A roundish window had been cut into one wall by hand, then covered with plastic sheeting kept in place with tape. Two upholstered chairs were bolted to the floor on one side of the van, and an Army cot stretched out along the other. Two orange crates similar to those in the cabin, though empty, lay between the chairs. Above the cot a picture of John Lennon was tacked to the carpeted wall with a rusty nail. A small propane bottle was strapped into one corner, an Igloo cooler in another. Next to the Lennon poster a lever-action rifle rested in two leather slings. The smells were of gasoline and marijuana and unwashed flesh. Again he found no notebook.

He switched off his light and backed out of the van and walked to the cabin, pausing on the porch. Music pulsed from the interior, heavy metal, obliterating all noises including his own. He walked to the window and peered inside.

Iris, carrying and feeding a baby, paced the room, eyes closed, mumbling, seemingly deranged. Alone momentarily, she was soon joined by a wide and woolly man, wearing cowboy boots and Levi’s, a plaid shirt, full beard, hair to his shoulders. A light film of grease coated flesh and clothes alike, as though he had just been dipped. Marvin strode through the room without speaking, his black eyes angry, his shoulders tipping to the frenetic music as he sucked the final puffs of a joint held in an oddly dainty clip.

Both Marvin and Iris were lost in their tasks. When their paths crossed they backed away as though they feared each other. He watched them for five long minutes. When they disappeared behind the curtain in the back he hurried to the door and went inside the cabin.

The music paused, then began again, the new piece indistinguishable from the old. The heavy fog of dope washed into his lungs and lightened his head and braked his brain. Murmurs from behind the curtain erupted into a swift male curse. A pan clattered on the stove; wood scraped against wood. He drew his gun and moved to the edge of the room and sidled toward the curtain and peered around its edge.

Marvin sat in a chair at a small table, gripping a bottle of beer. Iris was at the stove, her back to Marvin, opening a can of soup. Marvin guzzled half the bottle, banged it on the table, and swore again. “How could you be so fucking stupid?”

“Don’t, Marvin. Please?”

“Just tell me who you gave it to. That’s all I want to know. It was your buddy Gretel, wasn’t it? Had to be, she’s the only one around here as loony as you.”

“It wasn’t anyone you know. Really. It was just a guy.”

“What guy?”

“Just a guy. I went out to a rest area way up by Oregon, and I talked to him and he said he was going to Frisco so I gave it to him and told him where to take it. You know it didn’t belong here, Marvin. You know how puny it was.”

Marvin stood up, knocking his chair to the floor. “You stupid bitch.” His hand raised high, Marvin advanced on Iris with beer dribbling from his chin. “I’ll break your jaw, woman. I swear I will.”

“Don’t hit me, Marvin. Please don’t hit me again.”

“Who was it? I want a name.”

“I don’t know, I told you. Just some guy going to Frisco. His name was Mark, I think.”

“And he took the kid?”

Iris nodded. “He was real nice.”

“You bring him here? Huh? Did you bring the son of a bitch to the cabin? Did you tell him about the others?”

“No, Marvin. No. I swear. You know I’d never do that.”

“Lying bitch.”

Marvin grabbed Iris by the hair and dragged her away from the stove and slapped her across the face. She screamed and cowered. Marvin raised his hand to strike again.

Sucking a breath, he raised his gun and stepped from behind the curtain. “Hold it,” he told Marvin. “Don’t move.”

Marvin froze, twisted his head, took in the gun, and released his grip on Iris and backed away from her, his black eyes glistening. A slow smile exposed dark and crooked teeth. “Well, now,” Marvin drawled. “Just who might you be besides a fucking trespasser? Don’t tell me; let me guess. You’re the nice man Iris gave a baby to. The one she swore she didn’t bring out here. Right?”

“She didn’t bring me. I followed her.”

Both men glanced at Iris. Her hand was at her mouth and she was nibbling a knuckle. “I thought you went to Frisco” was all she said.

“Not yet.”

“What do you want?” Her question assumed a fearsome answer.

Marvin laughed. “You stupid bitch. He wants the rest of them. Then he wants to throw us in jail. He wants to be a hero, Iris. And to be a hero he has to put you and me behind bars for the rest of our fucking lives.” Marvin took a step forward.

“Don’t be dumb.” He raised the gun to Marvin’s eyes.

Marvin stopped, frowned, then grinned again. “You look like you used that piece before.”

“Once or twice.”

“What’s your gig?”

“Detective. Private.”

Marvin’s lips parted around his crusted teeth. “You must be kidding. Iris flags down some bastard on the freeway and he turns out to be a private cop?”

“That’s about it.”

Marvin shook his head. “Judas H. Priest. And here you are. A professional hero, just like I said.”

He captured Marvin’s eyes. “I want the book.”

“What book?” Marvin burlesqued ignorance.

“The book with the list of babies and where you got them and where you took them.”

Marvin looked at Iris, stuck her with his stare. “You’re dead meat, you know that? You bring the bastard here and tell him all about it and expect him to just take off and not try to stop us? You’re too fucking dumb to breathe, Iris. I got to put you out of your misery.”

“I’m sorry, Marvin.”

“He’s going to take them back, Iris. Get it? He’s going to take those sweet babies away from you and give them back to the assholes that don’t want them. And then he’s going to the cops and they’re going to say you kidnapped those babies, Iris, and that you were bad to them and should go to jail because of what you did. Don’t you see that, you brain-fried bitch? Don’t you see what he’s going to do?”

“I…” Iris stopped, overwhelmed by Marvin’s incantation. “Are you?” she asked, finally looking away from Marvin.

“I’m going to do what’s best for the babies, Iris. That’s all.”

“What’s best for them is with me and Marvin.”

“Not anymore,” he told her. “Marvin’s been shucking you, Iris. He steals those babies. Takes them from their parents, parents who love them. He roams up and down the coast stealing children and then he sells them, Iris. Either back to the people he took them from or to people desperate to adopt. I think he’s hooked up with a lawyer named Rasker, who arranges private adoptions for big money and splits the take with Marvin. He’s not interested in who loves those kids, Iris. He’s only interested in how much he can sell them for.”

Something had finally activated Iris’s eyes. “Marvin? Is that true?”

“No, baby. The guy’s blowing smoke. He’s trying to take the babies away from you and then get people to believe you did something bad, just like that time with the abortion. He’s trying to say you did bad things to babies again, Iris. We can’t let him do that.”

He spoke quickly, to erase Marvin’s words. “People don’t give away babies, Iris. Not to guys like Marvin. There are agencies that arrange that kind of thing, that check to make sure the new home is in the best interests of the child. Marvin just swipes them and sells them to the highest bidder, Iris. That’s all he’s in it for.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just give me Marvin’s notebook and we can check it out, contact the parents and see what they say about their kids. Ask if they wanted to be rid of them. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

“Iris?”

“What, Marvin?”

“I want you to pick up that pan and knock this guy on the head. Hard. Go on, Iris. He won’t shoot you, you know that. Hit him on the head so he can’t put us in jail.”

He glanced at Iris, then as quickly to Marvin and to Iris once again. “Don’t do it, Iris. Marvin’s trouble. I think you know that now.” He looked away from Iris and gestured at her partner. “Where’s the book?”

“Iris?”

Iris began to cry. “I can’t, Marvin. I can’t do that.”

“The book,” he said to Marvin again. “Where is it?”

Marvin laughed. “You’ll never know, Detective.”

“OK. We’ll do it your way. On the floor. Hands behind your head. Legs spread. Now.”

Marvin didn’t move. When he spoke the words were languid. “You don’t look much like a killer, Detective, and I’ve known a few, believe me. So I figure if you’re not gonna shoot me I don’t got to do what you say. I figure I’ll just take that piece away from you and feed it to you inch by inch. Huh? Why don’t I do just that?”

He took two quick steps to Marvin’s side and sliced open Marvin’s cheek with a quick swipe of the gun barrel. “Want some more?”

Marvin pawed at his cheek with a grimy hand, then examined his bloody fingers. “You bastard. OK. I’ll get the book. It’s under here.”

Marvin bent toward the floor, twisting away from him, sliding his hands toward the darkness below the stove. He couldn’t tell what Marvin was doing, so he squinted, then moved closer. When Marvin began to stand he jumped back, but Marvin wasn’t attacking, Marvin was holding a baby, not a book, holding a baby by the throat.

“OK, pal,” Marvin said through his grin. “Now, you want to see this kid die before your eyes, you just keep hold of that gun. You want to see it breathe some more, you drop it.”

He froze, his eyes on Marvin’s fingers, which inched further around the baby’s neck and began to squeeze.

The baby gurgled, gasped, twitched, was silent. Its face reddened; its eyes bulged. The tendons in Marvin’s hand stretched taut. Between grimy gritted teeth, Marvin wheezed in rapid streams of glee.

He dropped his gun. Marvin told Iris to pick it up. She did, and exchanged the gun for the child. Her eyes lapped Marvin’s face, as though to renew its acquaintance. Abruptly, she turned and ran around the curtain and disappeared.

“Well, now.” Marvin’s words slid easily. “Looks like the worm has turned, Detective. What’s your name, anyhow?”

“Tanner.”

“Well, Tanner, your ass is mine. No more John Wayne stunts for you. You can kiss this world goodbye.”

Marvin fished in the pocket of his jeans, then drew out a small spiral notebook and flashed it. “It’s all in here, Tanner. Where they came from; where they went. Now watch.”

Gun in one hand, notebook in the other, Marvin went to the wood stove and flipped open the heavy door. The fire made shadows dance.

“Don’t.”

“Watch, bastard.”

Marvin tossed the notebook into the glowing coals, fished in the box beside the stove for a stick of kindling, then tossed it in after the notebook and closed the iron door. “Bye-bye babies.” Marvin’s laugh was quick and cruel. “Now turn around. We’re going out back.”

He did as he was told, walking toward the door, hearing only a silent shuffle at his back. As he passed her he glanced at Iris. She hugged the baby Marvin had threatened, crying, not looking at him. “Remember the one in my car,” he said to her. She nodded silently, then turned away.

Marvin prodded him in the back and he moved to the door. Hand on the knob, he paused, hoping for a magical deliverance, but none came. Marvin prodded him again and he moved outside, onto the porch, then into the yard. “Around back,” Marvin ordered. “Get in the bus.”

He staggered, tripping over weeds, stumbling over rocks, until he reached the rusting bus. The moon and stars had disappeared; the night was black and still but for the whistling wind, clearly Marvin’s ally. The nanny goat laughed at them, then trotted out of reach. He glanced back at Marvin. In one hand was a pistol, in the other a blanket. “Go on in. Just pry the door open.”

He fit his finger between the rubber edges of the bus door and opened it. The first step was higher than he thought, and he tripped and almost fell. “Watch it. I almost blasted you right then.”

He couldn’t suppress a giggle. For reasons of his own, Marvin matched his laugh. “Head on back, Tanner. Pretend you’re on a field trip to the zoo.”

He walked down the aisle between the broken seats, smelling rot and rust and the lingering scent of skunk. “Why here?” he asked as he reached the rear.

“Because you’ll keep in here just fine till I get time to dig a hole out back and open that emergency door and dump you in. Plus it’s quiet. I figure with the bus and the blanket no one will hear a thing. Sit.”

He sat. Marvin draped the blanket across the arm that held the gun, then extended the shrouded weapon toward his chest. He had no doubt that Marvin would shoot without a thought or fear. “Any last words, Tanner? Any parting thoughts?”

“Just that you forgot something.”

“What?”

“You left the door open.”

Marvin glanced quickly toward the door in the front of the bus. He dove for Marvin’s legs, sweeping at the gun with his left hand as he did so, hoping to dislodge it into the folds of the blanket where it would lie useless and unattainable.

“Cocksucker.”

Marvin wrested the gun from his grasp and raised it high, tossing off the blanket in the process. He twisted frantically to protect against the blow he knew was coming, but Marvin was too heavy and strong, retained the upper hand by kneeling on his chest. The revolver glinted in the darkness, a missile poised to descend.

Sound split the air, a piercing scream of agony from the cabin or somewhere near it. “What the hell?” Marvin swore, started to retreat, then almost thoughtlessly clubbed him with the gun, once, then again. After a flash of pain a broad black creature held him down for a length of time he couldn’t calculate.

When he was aware again he was alone in the bus, lying in the aisle. His head felt crushed to pulp. He put a hand to his temple and felt blood. Midst throbbing pain he struggled to his feet and made his way outside and stood leaning against the bus while the night air struggled to clear his head.

He took a step, staggered, took another and gained an equilibrium, then lost it and sat down. Back on his feet, he trudged toward the porch and opened the door. Behind him, the nanny laughed again.

The cabin was dark, the only light the faint flicker from the stove behind the curtain. He walked carefully, trying to avoid the litter on the floor, the shapes in the room. Halfway to the back his foot struck something soft. As he bent to shove it out of his way it made a human sound. He knelt, saw that it was Iris, then found a lamp and turned it on.

She was crumpled, face-down, in the center of the room, arms and legs folded under her, her body curled to avoid assault. He knelt again, heard her groan once more, and saw that what he’d thought was a piece of skirt was in fact a pool of blood and what he’d thought was shadow was a broad wet trail of the selfsame substance leading toward the rear of the cabin.

He ran his hands down her body, feeling for wounds. Finding none, he rolled Iris to her side, then to her back. Blood bubbled from a point beneath her sternum. Her eyelids fluttered, open, closed, then open again. “He shot me,” she said. “It hurt so bad I couldn’t stop crying so he shot me.”

“I know. Don’t try to talk.”

“Did he shoot the babies, too? I thought I heard …”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you look? Please?”

He nodded, stood up, fought a siege of vertigo, then went behind the curtain, then returned to Iris. “They’re all right.”

She tried to smile her thanks. “Something scared him off. I think some people were walking by outside and heard the shot and went for help. I heard them yelling.”

“Where would he go, Iris?”

“Up in the woods. On his dirt bike. He knows lots of people up there. They grow dope, live off the land. The cops’ll never find him.” Iris moaned again. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know. Is there a phone here?”

She shook her head. “Down at the end of the street. By the market.”

“I’m going down and call an ambulance. And the cops. How long ago did Marvin leave?”

She closed her eyes. “I blacked out. Oh, God. It’s real bad now, Mr. Tanner. Real bad.”

“I know, Iris. You hang on. I’ll be back in a second. Try to hold this in place.” He took out his handkerchief and folded it into a square and placed it on her wound. “Press as hard as you can.” He took her left hand and placed it on the compress, then stood up.

“Wait. I have to …”

He spoke above her words. “You have to get to a hospital. I’ll be back in a minute and we can talk some more.”

“But…”

“Hang on.”

He ran from the cabin and down the drive, spotted the lights of the convenience market down the street and ran to the phone booth and placed his calls. The police said they’d already been notified and a car was on the way. The ambulance said it would be six minutes. As fast as he could he ran back to the cabin, hoping it would be fast enough.

Iris had moved. Her body was straightened, her right arm outstretched toward the door, the gesture of a supplicant. The sleeve of her blouse was tattered, burned to a ragged edge above her elbow. Below the sleeve her arm was red in spots, blistered in others, dappled like burned food. The hand at its end was charred and curled into a crusty fist that was dusted with gray ash. Within the fingers was an object, blackened, burned, and treasured.

He pried it from her grasp. The cover was burned away, and the edges of the pages were curled and singed, but they remained decipherable, the written scrawl preserved. The list of names and places was organized to match the gaily painted boxes in the back. Carson City. Boise. Grants Pass. San Bernardino. Modesto. On and on, a gazetteer of crime.

“I saved it,” Iris mumbled. “I saved it for my babies.”

He raised her head to his lap and held it till she died. Then he went to his car and retrieved his B Box baby and placed her in her appointed crib. For the first time since he’d known her the baby made only happy sounds, an irony that was lost on the five dead children at her flank and on the just dead woman who had feared it all.