The New Black Mask (No 4)

David A. Bowman Pincushion

David A. Bowman describes himself as “just a regular guy” who likes good fiction — Jim Harrison and Jonathan Valin in particular — and has been practicing for ten years to write it. “Pincushion” is his first published story, if you don’t count “The Big Nap,” a mystery for young readers on computer diskette distributed by Scholastic Software, where he works as an editor. Mr. Bowman is presently at work on a private-eye novel. He is twenty-eight.

The woman showed up at his door with a Great Dane taller than a bicycle.

“Mrs. Rhine, please leave your friend outside,” Foy Laneer said, trying to smile.

She let go of the dog’s leash and it plowed past Foy’s belly to the middle of the office, where it thumped down on the mg and began panting.

Mrs. Rhine edged past Foy and sat down on the chair beside his desk. She was not a small woman. He could imagine her scooping mashed potatoes onto trays in a cafeteria.

Foy sat down behind his desk and asked Mrs. Rhine why she wanted to hire him to follow her husband.

“I think my husband is doing adultery again,” she said, dropping her hands into her lap.

Foy got out a legal pad and pen to take notes. Mrs. Rhine told him that her husband was never at his office Tuesday and Thursday afternoons when he was supposed to be. She kept track of the daily mileage on his Impala. On those days he was driving 120 extra miles.

“Maybe he’s out on business,” Foy suggested with a shrug.

“He’s doing adultery,” Mrs. Rhine repeated.

She elaborated on her husband’s history of infidelity. He noticed that her fingers were stained with what looked like ink from a black Magic Marker.

“If you had proof your husband was seeing another woman again, what would you do?” Foy asked.

“M.Y.O.B.,” Mrs. Rhine replied. “You just find out where he does it and who he is doing it with.”

Foy hated working for fruitcakes, but he got out a client form for her to sign. Suddenly, he noticed the Great Dane staring at him with such intense concentration that Foy felt like he was floating across the rug, moving closer and closer to the animal’s face. He was conscious of a hollow space the size of an egg growing in the middle of his skull. He found himself loping across a field of wet grass, his ears perked up and snout pointed straight.

Then Mrs. Rhine started shaking his arm. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Do you have a photograph of your husband?”

As he heard her rummage in her purse, he looked at the dog sleeping on the floor and waited for the space inside his head to close up. Foy occasionally had what he called “out of the body” experiences. The best thing to do when they ended was concentrate on the business at hand. Mrs. Rhine handed him a Polaroid that had been taken at a wedding. The groom looked like a thug despite his tuxedo. Mrs. Rhine had been a slender bride and would have looked pretty except her lips were stretched in a lurid grimace. Based on her hairdo, Foy estimated they had been married about seven years.

“I’ll start working on Tuesday.”

“Start now,” she whined.

“Your husband does driving on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Today is Friday.”

She started to pout, so Foy told her how much two days of investigation would cost. She fished for her checkbook. Her purse was filled with black Magic Markers and a large notepad covered with scrawled hieroglyphics. The only word Foy could make out was “Jesus,” and it appeared several times.

She gave him a check, then left, dragging the Great Dane behind her. The air in the office smelled like unwashed dog. Foy turned off the air conditioner and opened the windows. He saw Mrs. Rhine driving away in a station wagon filled with dogs. As she ran a red light, Foy wondered why Mr. Rhine walked down the aisle with her in the first place.

Foy made several phone calls. He found out that Mr. Rhine (Rocky Jay to his friends) was, in fact, a thug. He had been indicted on a narcotics charge, beat the rap at trial, but had served six months for possession of a sawed-off shotgun.

He opened a file drawer filled with road maps and pulled one out at random. He needed to relax, so he studied the forks of the freeways. Foy believed if a client was worried enough about his or her spouse to come to a private investigator, the odds were 99.9 percent in favor of adultery. The chances were good that Foy would hand Mrs. Rhine a report that reflected poorly on her husband’s fidelity. She would tell Rocky Jay that she had hired a private investigator. Rocky Jay might then try to fix Foy’s wagon.

Foy felt nervous but decided to live with the feeling until he knew what Rocky Jay was up to. He had been involved in a violent confrontation only once in his career. One night, Foy was photographing a couple dancing to the radio on the woman’s patio. When she went into the house for more beer, the man heard Foy in the bushes and came running up holding a garden hoe over his head. Foy ducked, then grabbed the man by the collar and waltzed him in circles through the backyard, slapping the guy’s face until he heard the crack of jawbone. The guy crawled away and Foy sat on the picnic table hyperventilating. Never before had Foy had such a sense of his own physical presence. He summoned up this courage whenever any redneck was giving him a hard time and they always backed down.

Foy folded up the road map and turned the air conditioner back on.

On Tuesday morning Foy ate breakfast at the counter of a Lil’ Chicken. He was across the street from Rocky Jay’s office at the Hi-Ho Dogfood Company — a two-story factory building underneath a dull green water tower. He made small talk with the countergirls. They couldn’t have been older than seventeen. When Foy rolled up his sleeves they asked where they could get tattoos like his. Foy thought that was cute, until he realized they weren’t putting him on.

A little before noon, Rocky Jay stepped out of the building. Foy paid his tab and trotted to his car. Rocky got into a maroon Impala and drove out of the parking lot.

Foy turned his tape player on and it immediately started eating the tape. His radio had been stolen, so he had to content himself with just humming as he followed the Impala. Rocky Jay drove past the truck depots where the curbs were filled with rotted vegetables, then turned onto the interstate which cut through the immense cabbage farms that surrounded the city. Soon he was driving past Bible billboards and gas stations that sold bait, ice, and ammo.

Foy figured if Rocky drove 120 miles every Tuesday afternoon, they’d be stopping soon. They were heading for hill country when Foy saw the spire of a rocket ship on the horizon. Small bucket seats were twirling around the nose cone. Rocky Jay pulled into the huge gravel parking lot of Tornado County Amusement Park.

It was late August and the parking lot was jammed. After Foy parked, he sat until Rocky walked to the front gate, then he followed. The cars at the far end of the lot shimmered in the heat waves.

Foy paid the admission and got his hand stamped with orange ink. He waded through a swarm of waist-high kids, their fathers all bare chested with T-shirts tucked into waistbands. Foy noted some interesting knife scars.

Foy had been to Disneyland, so he was spoiled as far as amusement parks were concerned. He went there with his ex-wife and his stepkids and never had so much fun in his life. They rode a train and saw dinosaurs. He whipped down an artificial white mountain so fast he felt pulled inside out.

Foy pushed through the line for the Tilt-o-Whirl that snaked around the garbage cans and followed Rocky to a second ticket booth under a sign that said “To Enter You Must Be 21 or Over AND PROVE IT.” Rocky Jay paid and entered. Foy reached the gate and got his hand stamped again, this time with green ink.

Inside, he walked past trailers covered with billboard-sized paintings that looked as if they were painted by giant psychotic children. He passed the “House of Human Reptiles” and “The Sleeping Nubian Princess.” He passed an open-air tent where a sickly dwarf with no teeth sat at a miniature drum set and muttered. Foy figured any second now he would bump into a bearded lady.

Rocky Jay walked to a cinder-block bunker with a sign outside that said “The Pussykat Klub.” Foy paused. The place was small and he didn’t want to blow his cover, but he took a chance and entered.

The dim room smelled of bug spray. Foy almost tripped over the folding chairs. There was a wooden platform at the rear where a cone of cigarette smoke drifted under the single spotlight. The only other illumination came from a Coke machine.

The room could hold maybe fifty people; about twenty-five seats were taken. Rocky sat off to the side, stage right. Foy sat in the back row. Nothing happened for a while. Then a jaundiced man in a T-shirt brought a boom box up to the stage and turned it on. Incoherent funk blared for several minutes. When it was over, the yellowed man returned to the stage and said, “Gentlemen, please welcome Wanda Laneer!”

Foy Laneer jerked up. This was a county with a lot of Laneers in the phone book, and many of them were kin. He racked his brain but couldn’t think of a relative named Wanda.

She was slim with heavy breasts, bouncing up to the stage wearing an Aladdin’s Lamp getup of baby blue chiffon — the kind of pajamas a girl would pack for her honeymoon. Wanda ceremoniously placed an ivory box the size of a Kleenex dispenser on a card table, then bent over and stuck a cassette in the tape recorder.

She did a snaky belly dance to a top-ten pop song. Little by little she unfastened parts of her pajamas and they fell around her ankles. She was young and didn’t look real used. Her skin was clean and flushed, as if she had just stepped out of a hot bath.

She opened the ivory box and one by one removed long silver-colored needles and pushed them into her skin.

Foy knew of acupuncture, but he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Soon Wanda was stuck with dozens of metallic quills that shimmered in the spotlight.

The men in the audience filled the room with a collective energy that made Foy again feel that he was running across the wet grass. When the tape finished, Wanda started pulling the needles out with smooth precision. Foy left.

Outside, the sunlight was a blunt glare. A number of beefy men with tattoos were hanging around. Foy rolled up his sleeves.

“The freak show over?” one of the guy’s asked him.

Foy shrugged. “Almost, I think.”

Foy stood at the edge of the crowd next to a sausage stand. Eavesdropping, he found out that after Wanda’s human-pincushion act there was a more conventional bump-and-grind show. The air smelled like frying grease, and listening to the sausage sizzle was as soothing as the sound of rain.

Soon after, Rocky filed out of the building in a group of men in rumpled sports jackets. They all looked glazed and sweaty. Foy trailed behind as they left the adult section of the amusement park. Rocky Jay headed for the parking lot.

Foy’s car was an oven full of flies. As he cranked down the windows, he realized he’d left the windowing open. He started his car and followed Rocky back to the city.

On Wednesday morning, Mrs. Rhine appeared at his office door with the dog. He grabbed the dog’s collar as it trotted into the office. The dog twisted its neck and put Foy’s wrist into its mouth, holding it as gently as would a bird dog. The dog’s snoot was the size of a loaf of bread. Foy let go of the collar.

“Buster is high strung,” Mrs. Rhine said, as the dog flopped to the floor.

Foy shut the door. He sat at his desk and told Mrs. Rhine what he had observed on Tuesday. As he spoke, she couldn’t take her eyes off the ink stamps on his hand. At the point he described Wanda’s act, Mrs. Rhine started to bleat, “She sticks herself with needles? You are telling me sickness!”

Foy heard a sound like fish being beaten against a rock. He leaned over his desk and saw Mrs. Rhine pounding her fists against her thighs. As she jerked her head back and forth, she said, “I know she does the thing with him. You follow him and get me photographs. You do that tomorrow.”

Foy tried to explain that all Rocky Jay did was watch. Mrs. Rhine sank down into the chair and balled up her face like she was crying. She didn’t make a sound, and no tears fell.

Foy wanted to say, “There, there...,” but didn’t have the energy. The Great Dane got up from the middle of the floor and trotted to the window. He stood up, put his front paws on the sill, and looked outside.

The next morning, Foy was parked near the dog-food company watching the drizzle. His tape player was fixed and he sang along with Crystal Gayle. She was singing a song about a lighthouse.

Rocky Jay left work in his car at 10:05 with Foy tailing him. They drove to Tornado County Amusement Park and ran across the parking lot in the rain to get their hands stamped.

In the cinder-block bunker, Rocky and Foy caught the tail end of an uninspired strip performed by a woman who looked like she had lived the wrong way for quite some time.

Foy saw some trucker types in the audience, but most of the men were the same ones who had been there on Tuesday. He had a hunch Wanda Laneer was going to stick needles into herself again.

Wanda hopped onto the stage dressed in a scarlet kimono. She held the gown closed as she bent over to drop a cassette in the tape player. The rock song sounded like something rolling around inside a cement mixer.

Wanda revealed herself quickly and shuffled geisha-like while flailing her arms in heavy-metal abandon. She gave a sly smile as she removed the first silver needle from the box.

Foy’s pulse started to race, and his spine felt like a carrot that had just been pulled out of the dirt. He had to stand up and wait outside.

That night, Foy climbed up to the attic crawl space in his house. He searched with a flashlight and found a box of old books. He spent a few hours reading the Bible his mother had given him. He thought he remembered something about silver needles in the Old Testament. He paged through the Bible but had no luck. Two nights later he awoke thinking he heard an animal panting in the middle of his bedroom. He snapped on the light, but the room was empty.

On Monday he drove out to Tornado County by himself, playing his Crystal Gayle tape. When he stepped into the Pussykat Klub, he sat closer to the stage. He looked at the back of his hand and it resembled a passport. He heard the regulars sitting down behind him but didn’t turn around.

For the Monday performance, Wanda wore an Egyptian robe of purple silk and a headdress like Nefertiti’s. She had a thick gold band around her neck and wore several rings that looked like bits of jeweled seashells. She had black designs painted around her eyes. Wanda popped a cassette into the boom box and Foy’s mouth dropped open when Crystal Gayle started singing the same song she had sung with him that morning.

As Wanda danced like an Egyptian princess, Foy sang along very quietly. Wanda looked him square in the eyes and he knew she was performing for him. When her robe fell, he saw how creamy her skin was. There were no pock marks or scars from the needles. A drunk in the back of the bunker, started clapping, and yelled, “Come on, baby! Get hot!”

Five men quickly stood up and faced him. The drunk looked them over; when his eyes landed on Foy, he staggered up and left.

Wanda used twenty-three needles. Each one went through her skin as smoothly as if her flesh was butter. She held her head very erect. Foy thought she looked regal. The spotlight caused the needles to cast geometric shadows across her flesh. As she danced, the patterns moved like the spokes of a bicycle.

When Wanda removed the needles, Foy felt he had never seen a woman look as naked — not because of her physical nudity, but because the needles were no longer a part of her skin. Foy’s tongue was raw from rubbing it against his front teeth. It felt like he’d been breathing through a spout at the top of his head.

As he left the bunker, the four other men who had stood up to the drunk each gave Foy a nod.

He leaned against the building for a moment to get his breath back. Then he snuck around to the back of the bunker. He saw Wanda getting into the cab of a pickup truck. Her hair was piled up on her head, and she would have looked like a Gibson girl except for the Cleopatra eye makeup. She started the truck and drove away.

Foy sprinted to the parking lot. If he was lucky, the pickup would have to leave through the parking lot. He started up his car and waited. Just when he had given up hope, the pickup drove by. He backed out of his space and followed.

They drove down the interstate for about five miles until the truck pulled into the parking lot of a Red Rooster Motor Lodge. Wanda rolled up both windows before she got out. Foy pulled into the motel parking lot just as Wanda danced up the steps to the second landing and entered a room. Foy parked next to the fence that surrounded the swimming pool. He got out of the car and strolled to the soda machine, casing the motel.

Before he could return to his car, Wanda skipped back down the steps. She’d cleaned her face. She was wearing a low-back, one-piece bathing suit that was royal blue. Unlatching the fence gate, she walked across the sidewalk that surrounded the small rectangular pool. The cement must have been hot, because she started running on tiptoe to the edge of the water and dove in. From his angle, Foy couldn’t see her and assumed she was swimming underwater. He tried to make it back to his car, but suddenly she surfaced in the shallow end and waved at him, yelling, “Hey, you there! Hey, shy boy!”

Foy walked over to the pool gate and leaned against the fence.

“Well, say hello or something,” Wanda said, looking up at him. When Foy didn’t answer, she added, “I noticed you today. You’re the singer.”

He said, “My name is Foy Laneer, and I wondered if we are related.”

Wanda squinted and thought. They compared notes for several minutes until it was decided they weren’t kin. Wanda looked angelic standing in the turquoise light of the pool. Foy looked at her body in the swimming suit, the image rippling in the water, and he couldn’t believe that he had seen her do the things she had done. Now she possessed the same whole-someness he’d seen in perky young gymnasts, the ones interviewed on “Wide World of Sports.”

Foy heard footsteps and turned. A gray-haired man who looked like he was made from slabs of sunburned beef slowly walked to the pool gate.

“Wanda, finish your laps,” the man said. “I’ve got to vacuum the pool.”

“All right,” Wanda said and then looked at Foy. “That’s my brother-in-law, Kit. This is his Red Rooster.”

Foy watched the man walk away and thought he should clear out. Kit would probably come back with guard dogs who were fed on raw meat and gunpowder.

“Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Wanda,” Foy said. “I really liked the music you played today.”

Wanda smiled and began singing the song, and Foy joined in. While they sang, separated by a fence and ten feet of cement, Foy ran a brief home movie in his head of Wanda sitting in his lap, the two of them riding a little train through the Disneyland landscape of dinosaurs.

When they finished the song, Wanda climbed out of the pool and stood there dripping on the cement. Foy looked around for something that she could dry herself with. At that moment, he couldn’t bear the sight of her standing there so wet.

“How come it doesn’t hurt you to stick yourself with needles?” Foy asked.

Wanda shrugged. “It’s like a gift. When I was nine years old, my daddy came back from Tucson and in the back of his pickup was this piece of cactus he lopped off in the desert. I planted it in a clay pot and put it on my windowsill.”

A wasp flew by her head and she brushed it away. “One night, I had this bad dream. There was a big eye staring at me from the middle of the cactus.”

She walked toward Foy and he opened the gate for her. She looked him in the eye and the water kept dripping off her. Foy tried to smile and looked around because he thought he heard dogs coming.

“In the morning,” she continued, “a flower had bloomed on the cactus. I grabbed the pot and ran to show my daddy. I tripped and fell face first onto the cactus. It didn’t hurt. That’s when I knew I was gifted.”

Then Wanda stuck her fingers under the material around her hips. “Do you like my bathing suit? This is my one special treat. Every year I get the most expensive bathing suit in the catalog. You wouldn’t think a little piece of cloth would cost three weeks’ salary, would you?”

Foy shook his head as Wanda danced past him, whipping drops of water from her hair across his face. She ran up the steps to her room and left the door open. Several seconds later, he saw her two hands extend out of the doorway and squeeze out the bathing suit in the walkway. He looked at the wet footprints on the stairs and followed them up toward the now empty doorway.

On Tuesday morning, Mrs. Rhine showed up at his office door, the four-pawed monster standing beside her.

“Where have you been?” she yelled. “I’ve been calling you for days and days.”

Foy shrugged. “I had business. I followed your husband on Thursday. All he did was watch the girlie show and drive away.”

Mrs. Rhine and the dog plowed into Foy’s office. Foy left the door standing open and walked to the middle of the room.

“You take me out there,” Mrs. Rhine screamed. “I’ll fix her! She’s hexed my husband. She won’t sin anymore. No, no, no!”

He pointed at Mrs. Rhine and said, “There’s nothing going on between the dancer and your husband.”

Mrs. Rhine walked up to him and shook his shoulders, her belly bumping his. It felt like a hard mattress. “Don’t you tell me that,” she said. “I know what kind of man my husband is. You take me out there.”

“Stop it,” Foy said, grabbing wrists. Today her hands were covered with green Magic Marker ink. He looked over his shoulder to see if the dog was going to attack. The dog was staring transfixed at a mounted steelhead hanging on the wall.

Mrs. Rhine pulled away from Foy, with tears streaming down her face. “You don’t understand. He made me do those things and my family found out and my church found out and now he’s all I have left.”

Foy felt bad for her, but in a detached way — as if she was a character on some TV show. Mrs. Rhine ran out the door.

“Hey, take the dog,” Foy yelled. He grabbed the Great Dane’s collar. The heavy dog was passive as it was dragged out the door and down the hallway to the front of the building. Foy saw Mrs. Rhine starting up her station wagon. The dog suddenly jerked its head and Foy lost his balance, falling to his knees. The Great Dane stared down at him and Foy felt the wet grass beneath his knees, the dog’s face growing closer and closer until Foy passed into the dog’s skull and through it. He was a dog, then a man again, and the next thing he saw was the Great Dane running away behind the Piggly Wiggly across the street.

Foy heard Mrs. Rhine drive away. He walked back to his office, locked it, and went to his car. “It’s not over until the fat lady sings,” Foy muttered as he drove to the dogfood company.

As he turned the corner, Rocky Jay passed him going in the opposite direction. Mrs. Rhine’s station wagon followed several cars behind, a dozen dogs sticking their heads out of the windows. Foy made a sharp U-turn and followed.

Mrs. Rhine did an excellent job of tailing Rocky Jay. She stayed three car lengths behind, and if Rocky Jay knew his wife was following him, he wasn’t letting on.

There was road construction on the way to Tornado County, and Foy lost track of them. When he finally pulled into the parking lot, Rocky Jay’s Impala was already parked and empty. Foy parked across from the Impala, beside Mrs. Rhine’s station wagon. The windows were rolled up all the way, and the panting dogs inside were in danger of suffocating.

Foy wondered if it was too late to stop Mrs. Rhine. Rocky Jay could fend for himself, but he didn’t want Wanda to get hurt. Suddenly, a radar went off inside him and he ducked under the dashboard. He waited a few seconds and looked up. Two guys had walked past his car. One was a kid in a Harley Davidson T-shirt and dirty jeans that hung too low on his hips. The other was middle-aged and stocky. He was wearing a baseball jacket, and even at fifty feet Foy could tell the guy carried a gun under his arm.

The two stood by the trunk of Rocky Jay’s car and scanned the parking lot. The stocky man gave a signal. A white van drove up. The kid opened the back door of the van. The stocky man opened Rocky Jay’s trunk and yanked out two suitcases that were on top of the spare tire. He threw the suitcases into the back of the van. The kid pulled a canvas bag out of the van and threw it into Rocky Jay’s car, slamming the trunk closed. The two men disappeared among the parked cars. The van sped away. The whole thing took twenty seconds.

Foy rested his head on the wheel. No one was going to give him the Sherlock Holmes of the Year award. He now realized Rocky Jay was doing weekly errands for the big boys. He’d drive his car out to the parking lot to make the switch. Maybe watching Wanda dance was part of the deal. Maybe someone in the audience was supposed to make sure Rocky Jay wasn’t near his car to pull a double cross or something.

The way things stood now, Foy was sure Mrs. Rhine would cause a scene. Rocky Jay would know he’d been followed. He’d find out about Foy. Rocky Jay’s friends would find out about Foy. Things didn’t look so good.

Now Foy had to get to Mrs. Rhine before she did something stupid. He stepped out of his car and saw it was too late. Rocky Jay calmly walked across the parking lot to unlock his car. When he noticed his wife’s station wagon, he frantically looked around. He whipped open the door and jumped in his car. Gunning the engine, he sped out of his parking slot throwing gravel.

Rocky drove past Mrs. Rhine as she marched out of the amusement park. She screamed and ran toward her car, her body in a crouch as if she were a hunchback. She opened the door into the side of Foy’s car. A terrier jumped out and ran away. Mrs. Rhine backed her station wagon into a Toyota, then put it in drive and floored it.

Foy couldn’t think of anything better to do, so he followed.

The Impala was at the exit. Foy heard the metallic crunch of Mrs. Rhine slamming her station wagon into the rear of Rocky Jay’s car. The impact pushed him out into traffic, and he almost sideswiped a livestock truck full of cattle. He swerved just in time, then straightened with Mrs. Rhine tailgating right behind. Foy followed, amazed that they all didn’t end up as steak on the highway.

Mrs. Rhine’s station wagon wove across the dividing line as they sped down the two-lane that wound through the foothills. Foy could hear her pounding her horn. He saw the two cars take a sharp right turn bumper-to-bumper and disappear behind a hill. When Foy made the turn, Rocky Jay’s car was suspended in midair. Foy blinked, then saw the car flipping over the trees. He skidded to a stop on the shoulder.

Mrs. Rhine’s brakes screeched ahead of him. She jumped out of the station wagon, leaving the door open, and ran across the road to edge of the ridge. Dogs piled out of her car, scuttling across the highway in all directions. It looked like a scene from “The Little Rascals” where the dogs all escape from the dogcatcher.

Foy had to get out of there. He drove past as Mrs. Rhine was waving her arms, and the Doppler effect distorted her screaming. He swerved to avoid hitting some dogs. A mile down the road, he changed his mind and made a U-turn, putting his foot to the floor. He almost hit Mrs. Rhine as she ran back across the road to her station wagon. She tore away and dogs swarmed under the trees.

Foy jumped out of his car. He heard a diesel climbing the hill. He froze, then kicked at his tires until the truck passed. He made his way down the ridge and saw Rocky Jay’s car wrapped around a pine. As he walked under the tree, something dripped on him. He looked up and saw Rocky Jay curled in the branches like a human bird nest.

Foy went to what was left of the back of the car. He tried the trunk, but it wouldn’t budge, so he got a crowbar from his car to open it. He lugged the canvas bag up the hill, thinking it would be bad luck to open it now.

“The way things are going,” Foy said to a mongrel who had run up to sniff his leg, “I’m probably either carrying Rocky Jay’s laundry or a pipe bomb.”

Foy’s breathing didn’t slow down until his car reached the interstate. If he had to put money on it, Foy would have bet the bag was filled with dope. He wanted to make a ceremony out of opening it — maybe have a beer first. Instead, he steered with his left hand and opened the bag with his right.

It was full of money. He almost plowed into the back of a semi. It was ridiculous trying to drive and count money at the same time, so he pulled off the road. When he was done counting the money, he spread a road map in his lap and thought. There were times in his life when he deserved a heavenly reward, but this wasn’t one of them. He had been thick and had gotten a man killed, and now he was sitting beside a bag full of $300,000 in cash.

When the sun set, he drove to the Red Rooster Motor Lodge. The pool was a luminous lime wedge glowing from the underwater headlights. Foy didn’t see Wanda’s truck in the parking lot. A lumpy family was unloading their camper, and he helped the father carry a cooler full of rattling ice up the stairs to their room.

Foy walked back to Wanda’s door and knocked. When there was no answer, he slipped inside. Her bathing suit was hanging over the bathtub, and he rubbed it against his face. He sat on her bed in the dark and waited. He heard the TV go on next door. Hours later he heard it go off. He got up and turned on the desk lamp. He got out a piece of motel stationery and realized he hadn’t written a letter to a girl since he was in the service. He wrote a short note telling her he was leaving the city, and he would probably never see her again. Then he folded the note around a wad of approximately $50,000 and slid it under her pillow.

fust before he left, he noticed a metallic jar sitting by the TV. He took off the lid and it was full of silver needles buried in coarse black sand.

Foy drove to his office and cleaned out his file cabinets. There had been no mention of the accident on the radio news. Foy knew his biggest worry wasn’t whether Mrs. Rhine gave his name to the police, but whether she gave his name to the two guys who put the canvas bag in Rocky Jay’s trunk.

He went home and packed all his family pictures into a box. He carried them and his office files out to the barbecue pit on the patio and started a fire.

Foy cocked his head and listened past the crackling fire. He heard the distant zap of a bug light. He realized he was listening for Wanda. If she ever came to him, she would walk to his front door in the middle of the night and ring the doorbell. Suddenly, he heard branches cracking in the bushes. At the edge of the yard a huge animal stared at him. He heard the animal panting, its red eyes reflecting the fire. Then the animal turned and ran back into the darkness.