There Was a Little Girl

1: There was a little girl...

The first bullet hit Matthew Hope in the left shoulder.

The second one hit him in the chest.

He was a lawyer, and therefore subject to a deep-seated American animosity for the legal profession. But he was not normally a target for shooters. Well, he’d been shot once before, but this time hurt more than the last time. People who make movies should tell a person how much it hurts to get shot.

The last time he’d got shot, he had just shoved himself off the fender of a car and was trying to intercept a person being chased by a detective. This time, he was just coming out of a bar, in the same section of town, come to think of it, just stepping outside to see if he’d gotten the telephone message wrong — were they supposed to meet inside the bar or outside, on the sidewalk? — when all at once the shots erupted.

The last time he’d dot shot, he was still conscious when the ambulance arrived. This time there was first the searing pain and then a feeling of complete helplessness, his shoulder leaking, his shirt wet with blood, legs going weak, arms flapping, mouth gasping for air as he flailed backward through the swinging doors that led into the bar, everything swimming out of focus like in a cheap detective novel, everything getting darker and darker, and somebody screamed. People who make movies should tell a person that getting shot is so painful it causes you to scream aloud.

Everything went black.

Matthew was in the emergency room when his partner Frank Summerville arrived at ten thirty-seven that Friday night. He was told by the attending intern that Mr. Hope had been admitted unconscious at ten twenty-two and was at the moment awaiting emergency surgery. X-rays had revealed a relatively insignificant bullet wound in the left shoulder, just above the clavicle, fortunately missing the apex of the lung, passing through the soft tissue of the shoulder instead. The other wound was more serious. The massive loss of blood indicated that the bullet had ruptured at least one major blood vessel — one of the main pulmonary arteries or veins, perhaps — or numerous smaller arteries, causing Mr. Hope’s present state of shock. They were currently pouring in saline to bring his blood pressure back up, which at the moment was reading only thirty over palp. Blood for transfusion had been ordered from the blood bank. A sample of his own blood had been sent to the lab for a CBC, a medical screen, and tests of his arterial blood gases. Regardless of what the tests showed, he would be removed to the OR as soon as it was ready for him. A thoracic surgeon and two resident surgeons were standing by.

The intern’s smock was bloodstained. Victims of accidents or attacks were being carried in on stretchers. Stainless-steel tables kept wheeling past, bottles dripping into long plastic tubes. Police officers kept moving in and out of the entrance door. Outside, ambulances blinked furiously. Bewildered, Frank stood with the intern in the midst of this noisy, swirling maelstrom. Everywhere around them was the detritus of the start of a weekend’s mayhem in any American city or town.

“How did this happen?” Frank asked.

“I have no idea, sir,” the intern said.

Matthew was distantly aware of people fluttering everywhere around him. He was vaguely aware of motion and light. There were voices speaking in tongues. He did not know where he was or what was happening to him.

They talked in solemn whispers in the hospital waiting room. Warren Chambers wanted to know where Matthew had been that night. Frank said he didn’t know. Whispers.

Warren checked with Admissions and got the name of the Calusa P.D. officer who’d accompanied the ambulance to the hospital. The cop was long gone. This was now ten past eleven; Matthew had been in the operating room for almost a half hour. Warren called the Calusa Public Safety Building from a wall phone. A nurse wheeling a cart shouted, “Coming through!” and hurried on by. Warren put a finger in his free ear. The sergeant he spoke to told him that Officer Parks would be relieved there at the facility at 23:45 hours. Warren asked if he could raise him on the radio, this was important. The sergeant asked who this was.

“Warren Chambers,” he said. “I’m a licensed private investigator. I do a lot of work for...”

“What’s this in reference to, Mr. Chambers?”

Suddenly alert, ready to protect his behind. Or anyone else’s in the police department.

“It’s about a shooting victim admitted to Good Samaritan at ten twenty-two tonight. White male named Matthew Hope. Officer Parks signed him in.”

“So?”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“I’ve done work for the victim.”

“Come on over, maybe you can catch Parks when he rolls in.”

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you radioed him first, tell him I’ll be waiting.”

“Who’d you say this was?” the sergeant asked.

“Warren Chambers. Check with Detective Alston. He knows me.”

“Nick Alston?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll check with him.”

“And then radio Parks, okay?”

“I’ll talk to Nick,” the sergeant said, and hung up.

Warren went back to where Frank was still pacing the hallway. They spoke again in whispers.

“Will you be all right here alone?” Warren asked.

“Fine, fine,” Frank said.

He didn’t look fine.

“I want to get on this right away,” Warren said.

“Yes, sure, go ahead.”

“You might want to call Patricia.”

“Patricia?”

“Demming.”

“Yes. I will.”

“I’ll see you,” Warren said.

In the city of Calusa, Florida, in spite of the rash of tourist shootings elsewhere in the state, police officers still drove their motor-patrol sectors alone. Officer William Parks pulled his car into the parking lot behind Calusa Public Safety at twenty-five minutes to twelve that night of March twenty-fifth, took his peaked uniform hat from the seat beside him, got out of the car, and only then put the hat on his head. He was wearing the regulation blue nylon jacket with the blue imitation-fur collar. March in the state of Florida was sometimes chancy; if you wanted guaranteed sunshine and tropical temperatures, you didn’t choose a so-called semitropical climate where frost on the pumpkin was a distinct possibility during the winter months.

Apparently, the sergeant hadn’t radioed Parks.

The man reacted just the way any white cop would when confronted with a tall, healthy-looking black man in the semidarkness of an isolated parking lot, even if it was behind a police station.

“Who’s that?” he said, and placed his hand on the butt of the weapon holstered at his waist.

“Warren Chambers,” Warren said at once. “I called...”

“What do you want?”

Hand still resting on the butt of the .357 Magnum. Not yanking the weapon yet, still respecting the guidelines, but ready to use it if Warren so much as looked at him cockeyed. Warren wasn’t the least bit surprised. What Parks was seeing here was a black man, plain and simple, in a state where black men and white cops often viewed a mutual problem from opposite ends of the spectrum. Never mind that Warren was well-dressed and well-groomed, his hair trimmed in a neat Bryant Gumbel cut these days, wearing gold-rimmed specs that gave him the appearance of a scholarly accountant, never mind that Warren stood with his hands open, palms outward at his sides, his body language clearly signaling anything but aggressive behavior, never mind any of that. Warren Chambers was black. And therefore a threat.

“I’m a private investigator,” he said.

“Let me see your ticket,” Parks said. “Slow and easy. I hate surprises.”

Warren gingerly fished his wallet from the left-hand side pocket of his trousers, took a laminated card from that, and handed the card to Parks. Parks leaned into the dim light coming from a stanchion some twelve feet away. The card, issued in accordance with Chapter 493 of the Florida Statutes, gave its recipient the right to investigate and gather information on a great many criminal and noncriminal matters listed in detail in the statute. Warren’s actual Class A license to operate a private investigative agency in the state of Florida was framed and hanging on his office wall. The card simply affirmed that he had paid a hundred bucks for the license, had renewed it on the thirtieth day of June, and had posted a five-thousand-dollar bond as required by subsections 493.08 and 493.09.

Parks seemed satisfied he was talking to a bona fide individual and not somebody about to hit him on the head with a lead pipe because his sister had been arrested for dealing dope two weeks ago. Handing the card back, he said, “What can I do for you?” but his tone said Make it fast, pal, I’m just coming off a long, hard day.

“You signed in a shooting victim at Samaritan earlier tonight,” Warren said. “His name was Matthew Hope, he...”

“Yeah?”

“Where’d you pick him up?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to know who shot him. I’ve done work for him in the...”

“Leave it to the police, okay?” Parks said, and was starting away when Warren gently placed a hand on his arm.

“He’s a friend,” Warren said.

Parks looked at him.

“Detectives are already on it,” he said.

“I won’t get in their way.”

Parks studied him for a moment.

Then he said, “The Centaur on Roosevelt and G.”

“What do you mean?” Patricia said.

“He’s been shot,” Frank said. “I’m here at...”

“Shot?”

“Yes. He’s in surgery right this minute, they’re...”

“Where?”

“Good Samaritan.”

“I’ll be there.”

Oh, Jesus, she thought.

Warren did not recognize either of the two detectives who were still canvassing the neighborhood outside the Centaur Bar&Grill on Roosevelt Avenue and G Street. He said hello to them, introduced himself, told them the victim was a good friend of his for whom he’d done a lot of work...

“Yeah?” one of them said, totally uninterested.

...and would they mind if he asked a few questions?

“Like what?” the other one said.

This was a little past one in the morning and they had a shooting on their hands that might turn into a homicide at any moment, and they didn’t feel much like bullshitting with a friend of the victim, who, by the way, they now surmised was a black man like his good buddy here.

“Well, for openers,” Warren said, “what was he doing in this shitty neighborhood?”

“What kind of work?” the first one asked, suddenly interested.

“Investigation. He’s a lawyer.”

Both cops nodded knowingly, as if they felt it served lawyers right, white or black, to catch one in the shoulder and another in the chest. One of them started writing in his pad; apparently they hadn’t known before now that the victim was a lawyer. Warren wondered what they did know. He was beginning to wish Nick Alston had caught the squeal. Or even Bloom and Rawles, with whom he’d also worked in the past. These two...

“Name of the firm?” the second cop asked.

He was the bigger of the two. Wearing a plaid topcoat that had gone out of style in the sixties. Lots of people came down to Florida to stay, they stored their winter clothes, dragged them out whenever the thermometer dipped. In any cold winter, half of them looked like they were dressed for a costume party.

“Mine or his?” Warren asked.

“The lawyer’s.”

“Summerville and Hope.”

“And yours?” the first cop asked.

He was wearing an L. L. Bean jacket that looked fairly new. Green and blue, with a zipper front. He looked warmer than his pal in the plaid topcoat.

“Warren Chambers Investigations.”

“Here in town?”

No, in Singapore, Warren thought, but did not say.

“On Whittaker,” he said, and nodded.

“Who do you want to talk to?”

“Anybody who might have seen anything.”

“In this neighborhood,” the one in the jacket said, “that means nobody.”

This neighborhood was black.

He was still in the operating room when Patricia got to the hospital.

“How is he?” she asked at once.

“One of the nurses came out a few minutes ago,” Frank said. “There’s a lot of bleeding from the bullet that went through his chest. It’s going to take time. There are major arteries involved.”

“Who did this?” she asked.

Frank shook his head.

It all kept passing in the dark like a parade, all the circuses blaring, the elephants and clowns, the wild-animal acts and high-wire artists, the flyers and the girls in their sequined tights and tops. All the girls Matthew had ever kissed or never kissed, passing in the dark while voices whispered we’ve got a bleeder and the band played brass and gold. He’d never met a circus he’d liked, even when he was a kid, he’d always hated circuses, always.

“So what was he doing here?” Warren asked.

“I guess he was waiting for somebody,” the bartender said, and shrugged.

He was black, like Warren. But in this neighborhood, you didn’t get involved in police business. Warren had identified himself only as a friend of the victim. The bartender was wary nonetheless, brother or not. This section of the city was called Newtown, exclusively black until recent years when an Asian population had begun moving in, causing a somewhat volatile mix in a neighborhood already seething with racial unrest. Warren wondered when the hell it would ever end.

He was not a black man who chose to call himself African-American. He had been born in this country, as had his mother and his father and his grandparents, and if that didn’t make him one hundred percent American, then he didn’t know what did. One of his liberated slave ancestors who’d been carried here in chains from the Ivory Coast might have reasonably called himself African American — which was what he’d been, after all — but the label simply did not apply to Warren, and he wasn’t having any of it, thanks. Nor did he believe, the way some black people did, that every black act was justified, any more than every human act was. In fact, he would have hanged those bums who’d beat up that truck driver in Los Angeles.

The way Warren looked at it, black men like the ones out there only made it harder for black people like himself to get a taxi when it was raining. It was as simple as that. Get any black man breaking the sacred covenant — or so he considered it — and all black men suffered. Warren Chambers was a hardworking man dedicated to the “faithful and honest conduct and performance” of his business. Those were the words that had come along with the $5,000 bond he’d posted: Conditioned upon the faithful and honest conduct and performance by the licensee of the business so licensed. Warren Chambers Investigations. That’s me, he thought. And he was damn good-looking besides.

“Did he say he was waiting for someone?” he asked the bartender.

“No, but he kept checking his watch.”

“What time did he come in?”

“Around ten.”

“Came to the bar?”

“Yes.”

“Ordered a drink?”

“This is a bar, ain’t it?”

Warren looked at him.

“I don’t think I got your name,” he said.

“Mister, the cops already asked me all this.”

“I’m not a cop. And I still don’t have your name.”

“My name’s Harry, and I still told the cops all this.”

“Harry, my friend was shot bad, twice, outside your place of bus—”

“It ain’t my place, I just work here. And I didn’t see who shot your honkie friend. First I knew there was any trouble, was I heard shots and he come falling back through the doors.”

“What kind of drink did he order?”

“Beefeater martini on the rocks, pair of olives.”

Warren knew what Matthew drank; he was simply confirming that he and the bartender were talking about the same man. The only white men who came to the black section of Calusa were here looking for pussy or crack.

“We don’t carry the Beefeater, I made it with Gordon’s,” the bartender said.

“So the man sat down,” Warren said, “and he ordered a drink. Did he say anything after he ordered the drink?”

“Said the Gordon’s would be fine.”

Like pulling teeth, Warren thought. He felt like smacking him one upside the head.

“Anything else besides that?”

“Asked me if the clock was right,” the bartender said, and gestured vaguely toward the clock hanging on the wall behind him, over the mirror and the lined-up bottles of booze. Warren checked it against his own watch. The bar clock was two minutes fast.

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him I hadn’t had no complaints about it.”

“Did he say who he was waiting for?”

“Didn’t say he was waiting for nobody. That’s what I surmised. Him looking at his watch, looking at the bar clock, turning to look at the doors. That’s only what I surmised, he was waiting for somebody.”

“But he didn’t say who.”

“No, he didn’t say who. For the fifth time,” the bartender said.

“But who’s counting?” Warren said, and flashed a big, fake, watermelon-eating grin.

The bartender did not grin back.

“Did he say anything before he went outside?” Warren asked.

“Nope. In fact, I thought he was leaving.”

“Why? Had he settled his bill?”

“No, but...”

“Then why’d you think he was leaving?”

“I don’t trust nobody, this place.”

“Gee, no kidding?” Warren said. “So he just got up, and without a word, he started for the doors, is that right?”

“That’s right. And I don’t appreciate sarcasm.”

Warren swung around on his stool. The doors were the kind you’d find on a bar in a western town, or at least in a movie about a western town, these slatted, wooden, swinging doors hanging waist-to-shoulder high, perfectly suited to the milder weather the state of Florida advertised in its come-on catalogs and brochures, but distinctly inappropriate for a March like this one. Warren noticed that the tables just inside the doors were empty, small wonder. He turned back to the bartender.

“Did you ask him to settle his bill?”

“No, I did not.”

“Even though you thought he was leaving?”

“I figured he was a cop.”

“How’d you figure that?”

“There was a cop smell on him,” the bartender said, and shrugged.

Warren wondered if he himself ever would have mistaken Matthew for a cop. It was a tough call. Matthew was around six feet tall, he guessed, weighing maybe a hundred eighty, a hundred eighty-five, in there, dark hair, brown eyes, a fox face. Most cops Warren knew had pig faces.

“What time was this? When he walked out?”

“Around a quarter past. I didn’t look at the clock.”

“How soon after that did you hear the shots?”

“Minute he walked through the doors.”

“He pushed open the doors...”

“Yeah, that’s the way it usually works.”

Smack him both sides the head, Warren thought.

“...and there were shots the minute he...”

“Yeah.”

Which meant someone had been waiting for him to come out.

“How many shots?”

“Three.”

It still felt like Friday night, but it was already Saturday morning. One thirty in the morning, by the impersonal clock on the immaculate hospital wall. Passover would start today at sundown. Patricia had called a florist earlier today — well, technically yesterday, Friday — to order a dozen roses for delivery to Matthew’s home at nine in the morning, even though he wasn’t Jewish. Seven and a half hours from now. The inscription on the card would read:

No signature.

Matthew would not be there to accept them, of course, Matthew was still in the operating room, Matthew had been in surgery since ten-thirty tonight, last night, whenever the hell it was, she didn’t know or care which day it was, all she knew was that her man might...

No, she thought.

None of that.

Stop it.

She clenched her hands in her lap.

Saturday was one of Matthew’s tennis mornings. He would have driven directly from his house on Whisper Key to the club on the mainland, and there he would have played against one or another ruthless attorneys like himself, who would invariably beat him because in truth he was not a very good tennis player. Nor a very good any kind of athlete, for that matter. He’d once wondered aloud why pool shooters were referred to as “athletes” on television. Pool shooters? How about dart throwers? She’d shot pool with Matthew only once, in one of those new decorator pool parlors where athletic girls in fuck-me dresses leaned over the table to zero in on the eight ball while simultaneously showing a crowded bra and a tight-skirted ass. Not Patricia’s style. Except in bed.

Had Matthew got home at eleven or so this morning, which was when he usually got back after his tennis game, he’d have found the roses at his front door and would have known instantly who’d sent them, despite the lack of signature on the card. Not three weeks ago, they’d had a conversation during which he’d asked why women never sent flowers to men. Didn’t they know men like flowers, too? This was only one of the things she loved about this man, the fact that he was so unconcerned with all the macho bullshit that so burdened most other men she’d known.

She looked up at the wall clock.

She looked at her wristwatch.

Frank had gone down the hall again for coffee. The coffee came in cardboard containers. Since she’d got here, they’d each drunk three cups of the vile stuff. She did not know Frank very well. Only once had she and Matthew gone out for dinner with him and his wife. A hospital waiting room was not the best place in the world to strike up an acquaintance.

She looked at her watch again.

He had been in surgery for a bit more than three hours now. Was that normal for something like this? Should it be taking this long? Was something wrong in there?

...told him ten o’clock sharp, but maybe they were supposed to meet outside the bar. Chilly night, Matthew could feel the cold coming under the bar doors, over the bar doors, too cold a night to be out chasing lions and tigers and daring young men on the flying trapeze, too cold for little girls who dance on glittering balls, and clowns who roll in sawdust, he hated the circus. Why was it so cold in here? What were they doing to him? Why were they all over him? Let me... Please. Let me out of here... please! Push open the doors, feel the night air sharp and cold, see the car sitting at the curb, steaming at the curb, start for the car, no, see the window sliding gently down, swiftly down, silently down, oh God, no...

The hooker Warren spoke to thought he was looking for a good time. It was very cold for this time of year, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Many of your snowbirds had left by now, heading north again for Easter, which was only eight days away. But despite the promised unseasonal overnight lows and accompanying frost, the girl was wearing only a skintight red satin dress, a little red-dyed monkey-fur jacket, a red plastic shoulder bag, red high-heeled, ankle-strapped slippers, and a red lipstick slash to match the overall color scheme. Her own color was harder to classify. Somewhere in the beige-to-brown spectrum, more or less, but her eyes and her narrow bone structure suggested an Asian influence; Warren figured her for the daughter of a black soldier and a Vietnamese woman. She told him her name was Garnet, which meant nothing; every hooker in town had a working name. When she realized that all he wanted was information, she started walking away.

“Were you on the street when the shooting occurred?” he asked again.

“What’s it worth?” she asked, turning back to him.

“Depends on what you saw,” Warren said. “Let’s start with ten, okay?” he said, and opened his wallet and pulled out two fives.

“No, let’s start with twenty-five,” she said, which was the going price for a blow job in Newtown.

“Sure,” he said, and peeled off a ten and another five.

The girl — Warren figured she was eighteen, nineteen years old — opened her handbag, tucked the money into a change purse, and snapped the bag shut again. Cars were cruising the early-morning street, trolling. Her eyes kept following them; she’d been paid for about ten minutes’ work here, and she wanted to make this fast, get on with her business. A white Ford van was still parked on the street outside the bar. This was the police department’s mobile crime lab, and Warren knew one or two of the technicians on the Criminalistics Unit, but he didn’t see any familiar faces at the moment. Which was too bad, since he’d wanted to ask about that third bullet. It was now around two in the morning, but a crowd was still gathered on the street, huddling against the cold winds that blew in off Calusa Bay.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“This was around ten-fifteen,” she said. “I usually start around ten, ten-thirty, try to get a jump on some of the other girls who don’t come out till midnight. I was on the corner here... this is my usual corner, right near the bar here, I get them going in the bar and coming out, and I also get the car traffic going both ways on Roosevelt and G. This guy came out of the bar. Good-looking white man, tall, dark-haired, wearing a topcoat, no hat. A car was sitting there at the curb. Engine running.”

“Who was in the car?” Warren asked.

“I don’t know. It had tinted windows.”

“What kind of car?”

“A two-door Mazda. Low, sleek, black.”

“Know what year it was?”

“No.”

“See the license plate? Florida, out of...?”

“I didn’t notice it.”

“Okay, what happened when he came out of the bar?”

“He saw the car and started for it as if he recognized it. Then he... sort of hesitated. And seemed about to move back toward the bar, seemed about to turn. But the... the window near the curb rolled down. And a gun came out. An arm with a gun. A gun in somebody’s hand.”

“White or black? The hand?”

“I didn’t see the hand itself. The person was wearing a glove. A black glove.”

“Was this person male or female?”

“I couldn’t see inside the car.”

“Then you don’t know whether the person was white or black.”

“That’s right, I don’t know.”

“What kind of gun was it?”

“I don’t know guns. It must’ve been a powerful one, though. Blew him back across the sidewalk and through the doors again.”

“How many shots?”

“Three. I think the first one missed.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw him flinch, but he didn’t act as if he’d been hit. He just sort of ducked away, looked again as if he was about to turn, or run, or, I don’t know. Then there was another shot and it must’ve caught him in the shoulder, it knocked him sort of backward a little, and a little to the side, and the next one hit him in the chest someplace. He was like struggling to keep his balance, like thrashing all over the place, his arms, his legs, it was like he was being carried by the shots, do you know what I mean? Do you remember the scene at the beginning of Jaws, when the shark grabs her and carries her? It was like that. As if the shots were carrying him backward across the sidewalk and through the bar doors. It was very frightening. I still won’t go in the water.”

“What happened then?”

“The car drove off.”

“Immediately?”

“Yes. Well... the hand went back in the car, the arm, the hand with the gun, and then the window went up, and then the car shot away from the curb.”

“In which direction?”

“West. G’s a one-way street.”

“Then what?”

“Somebody came running out of the bar, yelling for the police. I took off. Cops and me don’t get along.”

“When did you come back?”

“Half an hour ago. I figured it’d be quieted down by then.”

“You didn’t see that car again, did you?”

“No.”

“It didn’t come back for a second look, did it?”

“No. Would you?”

She looked at the car traffic on the street again, turned back to him, and said, “Listen, that’s all I saw, and I have to go now, really. I think what I told you is worth at least another dime, don’t you?”

Warren gave her another ten-dollar bill.

The price of a hand job in Newtown.

“A client in Newtown?” Frank said, and raised his eyebrows a notch.

Matthew had once told her that many people thought he and Frank looked alike — though Matthew, personally, could see no resemblance. Neither could Patricia. Matthew was thirty-eight years old, and Patricia guessed his partner was forty, or perhaps even older. True, they both had the same brown eyes and dark hair, and were about the same weight and height — well, now that she really thought about it, Frank was two or three inches shorter and some twenty pounds lighter. More importantly, though, and using a classification system Frank himself had invented, Matthew had a “fox” face and Frank’s face was definitely “pig.” Moreover, Matthew was originally from Chicago whereas Frank had been born and raised in New York, and their styles were totally opposite. So, really, there was no resemblance at all. Except now, perhaps, as Frank sat solemnly sipping his coffee in the dimly lighted waiting room, hunched over the cardboard container, his face looking weary and apprehensive, all the sharp New York edges worn smooth by concern for his partner and friend.

“We had dinner together earlier,” Patricia said. “I thought he’d be coming home with me, but he said something had come up, he had to meet someone. I assumed it was a client. I told him to come over later. He said he didn’t know how long the meeting would take.”

“But did he say he was going to Newtown?”

Still amazed. What the hell had Matthew been doing in Newtown?

“No, he didn’t say Newtown,” Patricia said.

“Where did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t actually.”

“Did he make any phone calls while you were in the restaurant?”

“No.”

“Or receive any?”

“No.”

“Then whatever had come up...”

“...had to’ve been before dinner,” Patricia said.

“He didn’t tell you what this might’ve been, did he?”

“No. Thinking back, though, he seemed... well, not quite himself. Quiet. Preoccupied.”

“He’s been that way a lot lately,” Frank said, and sighed heavily. “Ever since the Barton trial.”

Mary Barton. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, for whom a jury had deliberated a verdict on three counts of Murder One. Mary had been Matthew’s client. The trial had taken place in the weeks preceding Christmas. This was now close to the end of March. A long time to be brooding over what had happened, especially when one considered the circumstances surrounding it.

“He told me he didn’t think he’d ever step foot inside a courtroom again,” Frank said.

Patricia looked at him. This was news to her. She herself was an assistant state attorney for Florida’s Twelfth Judicial District here in Calusa, and she knew Matthew was a damned good litigator. Then again, she loved the man.

“Not after what happened with Mary Barton. He won’t take on anyone he believes is guilty, you know...”

“I know.”

“...and he was so convinced of her innocence. Then to have happen what happened... which, really, you know, was something beyond his control...”

“I know.”

“But he doesn’t. And that’s the problem. Frankly, Patricia, I think he meant what he said. About trying another case. He’s turned down half a dozen criminal cases since the trial, and I think it’s because he’s lost faith in his own judgment. If he won’t defend anyone he thinks is guilty, how can he trust he’s making the right decision about someone’s innocence? After Mary? How can he trust anything after Mary?”

“That was an unusual situation, Frank. Surely he knows...”

“No, he doesn’t. He blames himself. For taking her on in the first place, although she was innocent as it turned out, wasn’t she? And for having it turn out the way it did in the second place, which was the goddamn irony of it. You know what he’s been doing since you guys got back?”

“Yes, but I thought...”

“Real estate,” Frank said.

“I know, but I thought that was only temporary.”

“Trying to buy the state fairgrounds,” Frank said, and shook his head.

“Yes, he mentioned that.”

“Something nice and safe. No crazy ladies under the bed or in the bushes.”

“Well, there was a suicide involved, wasn’t there?”

“A what?”

“A suicide. The woman who owned the circus. Didn’t she commit suicide?”

“He never mentioned that to me,” Frank said, and looked up at the wall clock. “What the hell is taking so long?”

Why was he remembering his sister holding a doll in her arms, smiling in approval while he ran his electric trains under a Christmas tree? Why was he remembering Chicago thirty years ago, what was happening to him? He thought he might be dying, he thought his life was flashing by while he died. The voices were terribly concerned, someone was saying I can’t see, suck up that blood, what blood, what were they talking about? Someone said sixty over forty, someone else said one-twenty, someone else said sponge, a gorilla was throwing gorilla shit at Gloria. They were walking up the midway where you could see the animals in their cages, Matthew was eight and his sister was only six, and a gorilla threw his own shit at her. It stained her bright yellow dress and splattered on the ground, eighty-seven over fifty, he reached down and picked up a handful of straw and shit and threw it back at the gorilla who began pounding his chest and baring his teeth, he’d hated circuses ever since that day. There was ringing now, something was ringing, someone said Oh shit, he’s flat-lined, he’s in cardiac arrest, someone else said, Let’s pace him, someone said, Epinephrine, someone else said Keep an eye on that clock, someone said One cc, one to a thousand, someone else said Still unobtainable, Matthew picked up the phone.

Cynthia Huellen was telling him that a man named George Steadman was on five. There was a combination digital clock-calendar on Matthew’s desk. The date on the calendar read, FRI 3/18. The clock read 9:27 A.M.

“Who is he?” Matthew asked. “What does he want?”

“Says he wants to talk to you about a real estate deal.”

“I’ll take it.”

Truth be known, he would have taken anything but the inside of another courtroom.

“Hello, Mr. Steadman, this is Matthew Hope,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“Ahhhh, Mr. Hope, how are you?”

“Fine, thank you,” he said. “And you?”

“Fine, just fine.”

“I understand there’s some real estate you want to talk about.”

“Yes. I was wondering if you could come out here...”

“Well, Mr. Steadman, I just got back from vacation on Monday, and my desk is still piled high to the...”

“I would come there, but we’re just settling in here, too. There’s a lot of work to be done before the top goes up tomorrow.”

“Sorry?”

“The top, the big tent. I’m George Steadman, the Steadman & Roeger Circus, you’ve heard of me?”

“Yes, I have.”

“So this is a busy time for me, hm? Putting it all together before we go on the road in April.”

“I see.”

“Otherwise, of course, I’d come there.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Steadman. But... Is there some urgency to this? Real estate isn’t usually a matter of life or...”

“No, no, there’s no urgency, certainly. But I’m a man of action, Mr. Hope. And when I get it in my mind to do something, I want to do it right away, do you see? Where were you?”

“Sorry?”

“On vacation.”

“Oh. Little Dix Bay.”

“I don’t believe I know it.”

“On Virgin Gorda. The British Virgin Islands.”

“Ahh, yes. So what do you say? Can you come out here today?”

“I don’t know where ‘out here’ is, sir. And, as I told you, today would be out of the...”

“Then how about tomorrow? We’re only a half hour from where you are,” Steadman said. “Timucuan Point Road, do you know what used to be the old Jackson cattle ranch?”

“Yes?”

“That’s where we are. We lost our lease on the land we were using for twenty years now, so I have to make do with this for the time being, hm? That’s what I want to talk to you about. Please come out, Mr. Hope. It’s only a half-hour drive, truly. And I won’t keep you long, I promise. Besides, you might enjoy seeing a circus go up.”

Without mentioning to Mr. Steadman that he would not enjoy seeing a circus go up or down or even sideways, Matthew agreed to go out there tomorrow at nine in the morning. The conversation with Steadman had taken exactly ten minutes. He made a note of Steadman’s name and the duration of the call, though he would not bill him for the time unless Steadman actually hired him. Sinus rhythm, someone said. Gloria began shrieking at the top of her lungs. Thirty over ten, someone said. Someone was yelling that the little boy had thrown shit at the gorilla. One-forty, someone said. The gorilla was pounding his chest and bouncing all over the cage, rushing the bars, backing off again, beating on his chest, bouncing, shrilling his challenge to Matthew where he stood on the straw-covered ground, almost wetting his pants in fear. Sixty over forty, someone said. Clamp it, someone said. One-twenty. What was the time? someone said. Five-forty, someone said. Silence. There’s another one, someone else said. Five minutes, Jesus, someone said. And forty, someone said. Careful now, someone else said. Watch it. I’ve got it, someone said. Voices. Careful now. Clamp it. Steady now. Tie it. A hundred over...

The road leading into the temporary circus grounds was the old dirt road that used to serve as the entrance to the Jackson ranch. While Patricia and Matthew were lolling on a white sand beach in the Caribbean, it had been raining day and night here in Calusa, and so the road now was muddy and rutted and wet with standing pools and puddles of water, even though the sun was shining faintly on this moderately warm Saturday in March. As Matthew fought the wheel of the car, an Acura Legend that usually handled beautifully under almost any conditions, trying not to get stuck in the muck and mire, he could see on his right a vast field similarly awash in slime, where trucks and trailers were parked in a seemingly haphazard fashion. In the center of this evidently erratic circle of vehicles, a mass of muscled, blue-jeaned men, naked to the waist and covered with mud, were furiously struggling to erect the center pole of a huge tent Steadman had called “the top.” Matthew had no idea how far along the process was. A bulky gray shape loomed on his left, and he turned, startled to see an elephant lumbering past his car. He rolled down the window, said, “Excuse me” — not to the elephant but to the man leading it — and when he’d caught the man’s attention, asked where he might find Mr. Steadman.

“In the red wagon,” the man said, and then grunted something to the elephant, who began moving again toward where the men were hoisting the pole.

Matthew looked in the direction the man had vaguely indicated. He could see no wagons, red or otherwise. Instead, there was only a long, tractor-trailer rig painted white, and seeming to serve not only as a means of transportation but also as a multiple poster for the show. On the cab of the vehicle, the words STEADMAN & ROEGER CIRCUS were lettered in black on the rim of a flaming hoop through which a fearsome tiger was leaping. This same ad was echoed — in much larger red, yellow, and black lettering — on the side of the rig, where more prominence was given to the word circus than to the owners’ names:

At the far end of the rig, just beyond a door with a barred upper half, the word TICKETS was lettered in the same red, yellow, and black colors, spanning three openings now shuttered with pull-down wooden flaps painted white to match the rig. Matthew parked the car, got out, and walked through the mud toward a small platform of three wooden steps leading up to the barred door. There was no bell. He knocked on the door.

“Come in!” a voice shouted.

George Steadman was a tall, burly white man, with wide shoulders, a paunchy middle, and ham-hock hands, one of which he extended as he came around his desk. His face was broad, leathery, and suntanned, framed north, south, east, and west, by a head of thick black hair, a thick black mustache, and sideburns going white. He lumbered toward Matthew like a big ferocious bear, but his smile was friendly, and his handshake was surprisingly nonassertive.

“Come in, come in, Mr. Hope, forgive the mess,” he said, “have a seat, please,” and instantly offered Matthew a canvas-backed director’s chair that had the word BOSS lettered in black across its back. The inside of the trailer was furnished as a traveling office, with a proper metal desk and metal filing cabinets, all painted institutional green, framed circus posters on the walls, and a metal door — open now — that could be closed to ensure privacy from the ticket-selling operation next door.

“Some coffee?” Steadman asked. “Something to eat? If you’re hungry, I can send one of the boys over to the cookhouse, the flag is up. Have you had breakfast?”

“I’ve had breakfast, thank you.”

“Then some coffee, yes?”

“Not right now, thank you.”

Steadman’s voice was loud and resonant, perfectly suited to his huge frame and blustery manner. He was telling Matthew now that most circus owners put up their big tent a week before they set out on the road, which was usually on the first day of April. Rehearsed for a week inside the tent, most of them, then took the show out.

“Not the Big One, of course, Ringling rehearses for weeks and weeks. And some of your very small mud shows, the performers’ll arrive the day before they move out, there’ll be just a single run-through, and that’s it.”

He went on to explain that he personally liked his tent up and his performers arriving at winter quarters two weeks before they went out. That way he could be sure that what Steadman & Roeger was putting on the road was a hundred times better than any of the other truck shows.

“This isn’t a very big circus,” he said. “Ringling moves how many — eighty railroad cars? Altogether, S&R moves twenty-five trucks and trailers, ninety, a hundred people altogether, depending on who blows the show. But what I’m saying is this is definitely not a gigantic operation here, even though a hundred people isn’t a small number of people to move about — plus the animals, of course.”

“In fact, it sounds like a very big operation,” Matthew said.

“Well, no, not really. Even so, when you’ve been doing it for so many years, you get the knack, hm? The reason I want the fairgrounds is so we can become a paying proposition all year round. Set up a permanent tent — Calusa is a tourist town, am I right? There are people here all winter long, looking for entertainment. How many movies can they go see?”

Plenty, Matthew thought. Some thirty first-run screens by the latest count.

“I figure if I can keep the show running here from November through March, I won’t have to look all over for winter dates. Besides, I can probably get a tax benefit if I donate the tent to the local schools for the summer, to train kids who want to make the circus their life, whatever. What do you think of that idea, by the way? Would there be a tax benefit in doing something like that?”

“One of our tax attorneys would have to discuss that with you, Mr. Steadman. What I’m here for is to...”

“The fairgrounds, yes. They’re commonly called the state fairgrounds, you know, but the land is privately owned, which is good for us. The state only leases the land for its fair every summer, same as anyone else who wants to use it. Carnivals, horse shows, Virginia Slims tournaments, whatever.”

“How much land are we talking about?” Matthew asked.

“Thirty acres, convenient to both the Tamiami Trail and I-95. If I use eighteen acres for parking, and put the remaining twelve under canvas — you know what kind of a circus that would be? A midway, sideshows, a permanent menagerie, carnival rides, animal rides, a three-ring tent, what a circus! I have dreams, Mr. Hope. Very big dreams. But of course, I have to acquire the land first. Whoever owns it is represented by a company called Florida Sun and Shore — the names they come up with down here, hmm?”

“Then you don’t actually know who owns the land, is that it?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. I would leave all that to you. Find out who they are, tell them what I want to pay, come back to me with their counteroffer, you’ll negotiate back and forth for me, we’ll get the land.”

Maybe, Matthew thought.

Aloud, he said, “Who’s Roeger?”

“Max Roeger, my former partner. He sold his fifty percent of the business ten years ago. In reality, there is no more Steadman & Roeger, there’s just Steadman. Max died of cancer shortly after he sold out. That’s why he got out, in fact. He knew he was dying. We kept the name because it had recognition value, hah?”

“Who’s we?”

“Pardon?”

“You said Mr. Roeger sold...?”

“Oh. Yes. Willa. Willa Winkie. But she’s also deceased now.”

“I see. And what happened to her share of the...”

“Her only child inherited. A daughter. Maria Torrance.”

“Inherited her mother’s share of the circus?”

“Yes. Fifty percent.”

“Does she still own that fifty-percent share?”

“Oh, yes. But she hasn’t interfered with my running of the business. She’s left that entirely to me. Anyone employed by me reports directly to me. I do all the hiring, and everyone’s responsible to me. The performers, the workmen, the people in charge of bookings, promotion, publicity, routing, everybody, all of them come to me. I have the final say. Maria’s never said anything about the way I’ve been running things.”

“Is this a general partnership, by the way?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Does a partnership agreement exist?”

“Yes.”

“Between you and the late Mr. Roeger?”

“Yes.”

“Does it define what would happen if one or the other of the partners decided to sell his share?”

“We each had the right of approval over any prospective buyer. If we didn’t approve, then we had the right to meet the offer on the table.”

“Did you approve of the sale to Mrs. Winkie?”

“Torrance. Mrs. Torrance. Winkie was her circus name.”

“Oh? Was she a performer?”

“An entertainer, actually. But a major attraction, very big. Here with S&R, the circus. Max and I both knew her for a long time before he decided to sell to her. We were all very good friends.”

“So you approved of the deal?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“And I’m assuming all of Mr. Roeger’s right, title, and interest in the circus was then conveyed to her.”

“Yes.”

“She became a full partner, just as Mr. Roeger had been before her.”

“Yes. A very good businesswoman, in fact.”

“Mr. Steadman, can you tell me whether the original partnership agreement specified what would happen in the event of the death of either of the partners?”

“Are you talking about a person inheriting?”

“Yes. I’m assuming Miss Torrance inherited the same right, title, and interest her mother had purchased...”

“Yes.”

“What I’m trying to find out is whether or not Miss Torrance would now have anything to say about how the partnership’s assets are spent.”

“Well, my original agreement with Max specified that if either one of us died, whoever survived was obliged to consult with the deceased’s heirs on any business decisions. But, as I said, Maria’s never given me the slightest trouble about how I run the business.”

“But on an investment of this magnitude... thirty acres of choice business property... how much were you planning on offering for that land, Mr. Steadman?”

“Land in that part of town is going for anywhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand an acre. We’ll offer very low and settle at the bottom. I’m figuring three million for the thirty acres. No mortgages, three million on the barrelhead.”

“Exactly my point. How do you think she’ll feel about your spending that much of the circus’s assets? For your dream, as it were.”

“The final decision is mine to make,” Steadman said.

“You just said...”

“Yes, but Max and I thought of that too, Mr. Hope. Good friends make good contracts, and vice versa. Consultation is one thing, but suppose Max’s daughter... or my daughter, for that matter... married some jackass, and he was the only one left when we died, and he turned out to be a plumber or a shoemaker who didn’t know a damn thing about running a circus, were we supposed to worry about how he thought we should conduct our business? No, sir. We put in a clause that said, in the event of a deadlock, the surviving partner had the right to make the final decision. We put that in for our own protection.”

“Maybe I’d better have a look at that original agreement,” Matthew said.

The tent was up.

Workmen stood about with their hands on their hips, admiring their handiwork, smoking, talking softly, occasionally chuckling, the way men will when they feel they’ve accomplished something together by their own hard labor. The canvas, blue and white in the afternoon sun, flapped in a mild breeze, the tent all aflutter with brightly colored pennants and pennoncels, an American flag flapping high atop the center pole. The man who’d earlier led the elephant past Matthew’s car was now feeding the animal, who’d probably done most of the work in getting all those poles up.

Matthew could see inside the open entrance flap to where cages and chutes were being set up for the wild-animal act, trapezes and platforms hoisted high for the flyers, a wooden platform set up for the band. This — the main entrance to the big tent — was where the midway would lead when all of the sideshows and concessions were in place. It was on such a midway that the gorilla in his cage had thrown shit at Matthew’s sister all those years ago. Back then, in addition to the caged menagerie, the midway had featured sideshows with what were then called “monsters” or “freaks,” no longer exploited in today’s traveling circuses.

While Steadman had searched in the trailer’s old Mosler safe for the ancient partnership agreement between him and Max Roeger, and then for the agreement between Roeger and Willa Torrance, and then for a copy of the will granting Willa’s rights to her daughter, he had told Matthew that his working nut was somewhere between $8,000 and $9,000 a day. His tent could hold 2,500 seats, and he sold those for $10 apiece. If he sold all 2,500 seats, he could take in $25,000, but kids were let in free, so he had to figure only half the seats were paying seats. That came to $12,500 a show. Of that, Steadman had to give anywhere from ten to forty percent of the gate to whichever town organization sponsored the show — the Lions Club or the chamber of commerce, or the Elks or the Shriners or whoever — and so he had to figure that doing two capacity shows daily, he could net after expenses something like $6,000–$12,000 a day on admissions alone. The midway, however, brought in a lot of money over that.

Gone were the days of the Siamese twins or the dog-faced boy or the fat lady or the turtle man or the mule-faced woman or the half man/half woman or the dwarf who lifted weights with a hook in his pierced tongue or the monkey girl or the tattooed lady or the rubber man or the human pincushion or the armless wonder or the midgets who could fit in thimbles or the giants taller than trees or the elephant-skin girl or alligator-skin boy or the bearded lady or the three-eyed man, gone was the entire Tarot-deck array of oddities that had bedecked the midways of the past.

But Steadman had explained that if a circus could find an empty lot large enough to put up a big top and a proper midway, and then open the midway an hour or two before the big show began, he could sell rides on the ponies and the camels and the elephants — all of which he owned — at two to three dollars a ride, depending on which town you were showing, and five dollars for an adult. Sell a thousand rides at each show, that came to a piece of change. Open your midway at three o’clock, say, let your two thousand or more lot lice in at that time, have your front-talkers lure them in to pay a paltry two-dollar admission fee for the privilege of watching a sword-swallower or fire-eater or knife-thrower or strong man or snake charmer or magician or ventriloquist or master of a thousand disguises, none of whom were monsters or freaks, all of whom were perfectly normal human beings performing amazing feats of wonder and surprise, and then have them wander all goggle-eyed outside again to buy some soda pop at a buck-fifty a can, or some hot dogs at two bucks apiece (with mustard but no sauerkraut) or some peanuts at a dollar a bag (the peanut pitch alone was a gold mine) and then maybe try the moonwalk for a couple of bucks and eat some cotton candy or some snowballs and buy some souvenirs, all of this before these people bought their admission tickets to the big top, all of them enjoying themselves and spending their money before the big show even started! And, baby, before you could say, “Step right up!” the concessionaires and attraction operators were taking in some ten, twelve, fourteen thousand dollars a day, forty percent of which went to Steadman for leasing them the midway space.

“Who says the midway is dead?” Steadman had asked rhetorically. “The S&R midway is very much alive, thank you, and hopes to stay that way.”

Matthew had suddenly understood why the man wanted to spend three million dollars for a piece of vacant land upon which he could erect a permanent circus.

“Hello?”

He turned to where a recreational trailer had just pulled in alongside his Acura. The vehicle was lettered in red across its side with the words THE FLYING MCCULLOUGHS. A man was at the wheel, leaning on the lower part of the window frame, the window down. His hair was blond; his blue eyes squinted against the sun limning Matthew.

“Are you the lot boss?” he asked.

Matthew figured the question had been directed to him solely because he was the only man in sight wearing a jacket and tie, trappings that gave him a look of authority.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Just want to know where I should park the rig,” the man said.

“Mr. Steadman’s in the red wagon,” Matthew said, showing off.

The blond man turned to the woman sitting beside him.

“Want to go say hello to George?” he asked.

“Later,” she said irritably. “Let’s park.”

“Let me see if anybody’s laid out the lot yet,” he said, and opened the car door, looked down at the mud underfoot, scowled, and stepped gingerly to the ground.

“Sam McCullough,” he told Matthew, and extended his hand. He was wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt with a crocodile logo over the left breast, tan chinos, a braided leather belt with a large silver buckle, and leather sandals. The first thing Matthew noticed was the strong grip. McCullough had massive hands and thick wrists, and he took Matthew’s hand as if he were catching him after a triple somersault without a net. His chest, neck, and shoulder muscles were also well defined, giving his trim body a look of tremendous power. Matthew decided that if ever he’d want anyone to catch him after he’d left the safety of a trapeze, Sam McCullough would be a good choice.

“Matthew Hope,” he said. “I’m an attorney.”

McCullough nodded noncommittally, and then turned away in dismissal. “You getting hungry, Marnie?” he asked the woman in the van.

“I could eat,” she said.

There was a sultry, pouting look on her face. Either they’d just had a terrific argument or she was habitually cross. She was wearing red. A red blouse, red coral earrings, lipstick to match. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, fastened with a red barrette the color of the earrings. She stared ahead through the windshield, ignoring Matthew, ignoring McCullough.

“I’ll see if they’ve set up the cookhouse,” McCullough said.

“They have,” Matthew said, remembering Steadman’s offer to send one of the boys for food.

“Know where it is?”

“Sorry.”

McCullough’s look said What good are you? He glanced down at the mud again, seemed to deliberate whether he should take off the sandals or not, and then set out across the field like one of Henry the Fifth’s archers at Agincourt. The blonde turned to look at Matthew. Their eyes met. Hers blue, his brown. Her glance was like the flick of a whip. She turned away almost at once.

Matthew got into the car without looking back at her, and drove through the mud and out of the lot.

They both listened intently, as if trying to memorize the doctor’s words. He was still wearing a green surgical gown, a green mask still tied behind his neck and hanging around his throat. There were speckles of blood on the gown, Patricia noticed, none on the mask. This was a quarter past three in the morning, and he was telling her, telling Frank, his eyes moving from one to the other of them — no sexist pig, this one, an equal opportunity employer, this one, the eyes all-inclusive regardless of sex — telling them both that they’d repaired all the ruptured blood vessels caused by the bullet’s passage through Mr. Hope’s chest and that his blood pressure was back to one-ten over eighty, and his pulse down to a hundred. He was in the recovery room, and should be coming out of the anesthesia in, oh, a few hours, at which time they could see him, talk to him, the surgery had been entirely successful, and they weren’t expecting any postoperative problems. He should tell them, however...

They both leaned in closer to him.

“...that for a period of time during the operation, Mr. Hope suffered cardiac arrest, which meant that for some five minutes — five minutes and forty seconds, to be exact... there was a loss of blood to the brain. That is, no blood was being pumped to the brain, no blood was being circulated anywhere in the body. His EKG had flat-lined, there was no reading, his heart had stopped pumping blood, his blood pressure was unobtainable, a zero b.p. We paced him... we put a temporary pacemaker on the chest wall at once, and injected adrenaline directly into the heart. This got the heart pumping again, but as I say, during those five minutes and more of the cardiac arrest, there was no electrical activity, and no blood circulating.”

“What does that mean?” Patricia asked. “No blood circulating?”

She was beginning to get alarmed. She did not like the idea of Matthew’s brain being deprived of blood for more than five minutes. Five minutes and forty seconds. That sounded very alarming to her.

“Well,” the doctor said, “in some cases, loss of circulation to the brain can result in varying degrees of damage.”

“Damage?” she asked at once. “What do you mean? Damage to the brain?”

“Yes. When the loss of circulation is an extended one.”

“What do you mean by ‘extended’?” she asked. “How long is extended?” She had fallen unconsciously into the stance she took when cross-examining a hostile witness, leaning into the doctor now, every bit the prosecuting attorney, zeroing in, wanting facts and only facts.

“Anything upward of five minutes could be considered extended.”

“And Matthew’s heart stopped for five minutes and forty seconds, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, Mr. Hope’s brain was deprived of blood for that period of time. His heart was not pumping blood for that period of time.”

“You said varying degrees of damage,” Patricia said. “Varying in what way?”

“The brain will tolerate a loss of circulation for only a short period of time. As a rule of thumb, if deprivation continues for more than five minutes, damage will usually result.”

Five minutes and forty seconds, Patricia was thinking.

“But any interruption in the reticular activating system will be only temporary if...”

“What’s that? Reticular acti—?”

“The interaction of neurons with the cortex of the brain. The cortex maintains wakefulness and consciousness.”

Consciousness, Patricia thought.

“We’re talking about coma here, aren’t we?” she said.

“No, no. Well, yes, if the brain is deprived of blood for anywhere between five and nine minutes, coma will undoubtedly occur. But it will usually be only temporary.”

“How about more than nine minutes?” Frank asked.

“If circulation is interrupted for from ten to twelve minutes, then recovery of consciousness would be unlikely.”

“He’d be in coma permanently,” Patricia said.

“Most likely.”

“Permanently,” Patricia said again.

“Most likely,” the doctor said again.

“How about five minutes and forty seconds?” she asked. “Where does that leave him?”

“You have to remember,” the doctor said, “that there was massive bleeding from numerous ruptured arteries. Mr. Hope was bleeding continuously until his heart stopped pumping, and the moment we got it going again, he began bleeding all over again. Quite often, such a severe loss of blood is enough in itself to cause a drop in blood pressure sufficient to compromise circulation to the brain. In Mr. Hope’s case...”

“How about five minutes and forty seconds?” Patricia repeated.

“Obviously, that’s at the very lowest end of the scale.”

“What scale?”

“Of probability.”

“Probability of what?”

“Permanent brain damage.”

“Permanent coma?”

“Yes.”

She could tell he was getting annoyed, he’d just spent four and a half hours awash in blood, locating and clamping and tying God knew how many ruptured vessels, and he was tired and hungry and all he wanted to do was wash up and go to a pancake house for breakfast, and then head home for some sleep, but here was a pushy broad who wanted a crash course in Thoracic Surgery 101. Well, the hell with him, this was her man lying unconscious there in the recovery room, and she wanted to know whether or not he’d been turned into a goddamn vegetable.

“I hasten to add that we’re anticipating his return to full wakefulness and awareness as soon as the anesthesia wears off,” the doctor said.

Then why the hell did you bring up coma? Patricia wondered.

“I merely felt you should be made aware of what occurred during surgery,” he said, as if reading her mind, “so that there wouldn’t be any surprises in the event of a worst-case scenario. Incidentally, when you see him, don’t be dismayed by all the paraphernalia. There’s a tube in his nose to draw out stomach contents and another in his mouth to help him breathe, and we’ve got a catheter going to his bladder, and all sorts of tubes and lines feeding him intravenously and monitoring his vital signs. His condition is stable, but this was an enormously severe trauma. Getting shot twice is no picnic. So don’t expect him to get up and waltz you around the room just now.”

When will he waltz me around the room? Patricia wondered.

Aloud, she said, “How long will he be in the recovery room?”

“Two or three hours, I’d say. He should be coming out of the anesthesia by... what time is it, anyway?” He looked at his watch, raised his eyebrows as if surprised to learn how late it was, and then said, “Six A.M.? Around then? Maybe a little later. We’ll keep him in the recovery room a while after he comes around and then move him to TIC — the Trauma Intensive Care unit. I must emphasize, once again, that the man was shot. Twice. One of the wounds was in the chest, the path of the bullet severing a main pulmonary artery and countless other arteries before passing through. The trauma, therefore, was quite severe. We won’t know for a while what damage has been done to the brain, if any...”

There it was again. Brain damage. What damage has been done to the brain. If any.

“...but his condition is stable, and we’ve every reason to believe he’ll be waking up as soon as the anesthesia wears off.”

“What’s the long-range prognosis?” Frank asked.

Flat-out New Yorker style; Patricia wanted to kiss him. What are we talking about here, Doc? Will he be okay, or won’t he?

“As I said, his condition is stable for the moment. What happens within the next few hours, the next few days...”

“What can happen?” Frank persisted.

“I can’t add anything to what I’ve already told you,” the doctor said, and then — so softly they almost couldn’t hear him — he murmured, “The man was shot.”

There was only darkness, there was intense light. There was unfathomable blackness, there was searing glare. There was no present, all was then. There was no past, all was now. Voices gone now, concerned voices gone, lingering voices in the dark, voices swallowed in the then and the light. Whispering voices, pattering footfalls, flurries of movement, a circling of moths. Cold everywhere, hurting in the dark, shaking in the dark, sweating and hot as he came around the corner of the house. I may be out back, she had told him on the phone, by the pool, just come around the house. Sudden glare of sunlight, black slate walk set in white pebble field, darkness and light, motion and death. Was he dying, was he dead? What was today, when was yesterday? He knew that Sunday was the twentieth day of March, but that was then, and then was now, so Sunday was today, and he was walking into sunlight on black slate set in white, walking from deep shadow into shattering glare, walking through the valley of the shadow of death, Matthew knew he was dying or dead, I may be out back by the pool.

Maria Torrance wasn’t out back by the pool, or at least not anywhere that he could see her. Instead, a shining bald head sliced through the surface of the glistening blue water, its partially submerged owner crawl-stroking toward the far end of the pool, head turning at regular intervals to suck in air, face dipping back into the water as Matthew came around the eastern end of the house and walked into the blinding sunlight slanting in over the Gulf.

The house was on Fatback Key, not far from where Patricia lived. He had told her, in fact, that he’d stop by after his four o’clock meeting with Miss Torrance. The property ran from east to west, a driveway snaking through it and circling to the house’s front entrance, which faced the morning sun and Calusa Bay. The rear of the house opened onto the Gulf of Mexico and the magnificent sunsets that graced the barrier islands whenever it wasn’t raining — which, in all fairness, was quite often, despite what Frank Summerville maintained.

Matthew had parked the Acura on a white pebble driveway, had rung the doorbell set in the entrance jamb, and had then walked around the house as instructed, circling back into sunlight to come upon the bald-headed man methodically swimming away from him. To Matthew, there was something almost hypnotic about the man’s even, graceful crawl, the sunlight dappling the pool’s surface, the sound of rushing surf on the Gulf beyond, the cry of seagulls somewhere in the distance. He watched as the man reached the far end of the pool, turned, and began swimming leisurely back toward where Matthew stood sweltering in the burning sunlight, wearing a proper seersucker suit, a proper shirt and tie, proper blue socks and polished black shoes, and feeling like a proper shmuck.

“Hi!” he shouted. “I’m looking for Maria Torrance.”

The man did not break stroke. Steadily, deliberately, the bald head leading him like a silver bullet, head turning rhythmically to breathe, face turning rhythmically into the water again, arms pulling him, legs kicking behind him, he swam to the shallow end, found the steps with his outstretched arms, and began climbing out of the water.

The bald-headed man was wearing a woolen, flesh-colored tank suit that adorned a body voluptuous by any standards. Scooped low in the front, the suit scarcely contained the abundant bosom it timidly sought to conceal. Cut high on the thigh, the suit merely emphasized a rich curve of hip and a long expanse of leg. Matthew guessed the woman — for there was no question about it now — was some five feet eight, five feet nine inches tall in her bare feet. She pressed the palm of her right hand to her right ear, hopped up and down on her right leg, and then repeated the maneuver with left ear and left leg, bouncing on the tiled deck, shaking water loose from whatever interior canals had trapped it during her swim. Her bald head gleaming in the sun, her crinkling blue eyes catching sunlight and flashing it back like a shared joke, she grinned and said, “Hi, I’m Maria Torrance, you found me,” and extended her hand toward Matthew where he stood dumfounded.

He took the hand.

It was cold from the water.

He found he could not take his eyes from her hairless head. However much he tried to shift his attention to her truly electric-blue eyes or her perfectly shaped nose or bee-stung lips, his gaze kept wandering back to that sleek, smooth dome. A thought suddenly occurred to him: she was undergoing chemotherapy. The thought shamed him, and the ensuing guilt forced him finally to confront her eyes. They were still amused. He had the sudden feeling that she was used to a visitor’s shock at seeing her for the first time and, like a mischievous child, actually enjoyed it. He supposed she was no more than nineteen years old. A girl really. A girl with a woman’s body and a man’s bald head.

“I’m Matthew Hope,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

They shook hands briefly.

“May I offer you something?” she asked. “Some iced tea? Some lemonade? Something stronger? What time is it, anyway?”

“Almost four,” he said. “I’m a little early.”

“Well, then,” she said, “too early, I suppose,” which Matthew took to mean too early for anything alcoholic. But she went nonetheless to the sliding glass doors at the rear of the house, slid open one of them, and called, “Helen? Could you bring us... which will it be?” she asked Matthew. “The tea or the lemonade?”

“The tea, please.”

“A pitcher of iced tea, please, Helen!” she shouted, and slid the door shut with a bang, and said, “Please sit down. And stop worrying about my head, will you? I shave it.”

“Why?” Matthew asked.

“For my business,” she said.

“What business?”

Was she an actress? Were they shooting a segment of Star Trek here in Calusa?

“I sell hairpieces.”

He looked at her.

“I do,” she said, “I’m serious. I go all over the country demonstrating them on television.”

He thought this was action above and beyond the call of duty, but he said nothing.

“That troubles you,” she said.

“No, no,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “Why would a young and beautiful woman shave her head for the sake of Mammon?”

“Well,” he said, and shrugged.

She had called herself a woman, he noticed. Perhaps she was older than the nineteen years he’d guessed she was. Or perhaps teenagers these days had taken to calling themselves women. He had trouble with that, political correctness be damned.

“Well,” she said, “because I love the smell of money, Mr. Hope, and my business brings in tons of it. Do you know how many people in the United States suffer from alopecia areata?”

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a common cause of hair loss.”

“I see.”

“Occurs in both sexes,” she said, and glanced down — perhaps unconsciously — at her own swelling, water-speckled breasts in the scoop-necked top of the woolen tank suit — “male or female, usually before the age of fifty. Generally starts with one or more small, round, bald patches on the scalp, but it can progress to total body hair loss. Guess how many sufferers there are?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Some two million Americans.”

“I see.”

“In seven and a half million American families, there’s at least one person with alopecia areata. It’s thought to be an autoimmune disorder.”

Matthew wondered if alopecia areata was in any way related to common garden-variety baldness. He was truly interested. His father had begun losing his hair when he was forty, and Matthew was fearful he would follow in his footsteps. Forty wasn’t too very far away these days. He’d been assured, though, that baldness was hereditary only through a mother’s genes, and Matthew’s grandfather on his mother’s side had died with a full head of white hair. But was this information true? Or would Matthew look like Maria Torrance a few years from now?

One of the sliding doors opened and an exceedingly plain, exceptionally stout woman wearing a Hawaiian print caftan came out of the house, carrying a tray upon which were a pitcher of tea, two tall glasses with ice cubes in them, a little bowl of lemon wedges, a sugar bowl, and two long spoons. She set the tray down between the two lounge chairs and went back into the house without saying a word. Maria poured.

“Sugar?” she asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Help yourself to the lemon,” she said.

Matthew took a wedge and squeezed it into his tea.

“Not many people know about alopecia areata,” Maria said, “until they get it. It sounds like an opera singer’s name, doesn’t it? Alopecia Areata, now appearing as Mimi in La Bohème,” she said, and threw her hands up as if the name were appearing in lights, and then grinned as if she found the allusion amusing. She lowered her hands, picked up her glass of iced tea, and sipped at it demurely, all deliberately shaven and shorn while apparently oblivious to the fact that her tits were trying very hard to escape the confines of her swimsuit. He still could not imagine her purposely shaving her own head just to further her business aspirations. But apparently this was God’s honest truth, as she now went on to attest.

“Cortisone treatments are available for milder cases of the disorder,” she said, “but when it’s progressed to total hair loss, a wig is the best alternative. That’s where Hair and Now comes in.”

“Here and now?” Matthew asked, puzzled.

“Hair and Now,” she said. “The name of my company.”

Matthew wondered why Maria felt compelled to make fun of her line of work. There were, after all, people who even sold cemetery plots. But first the opera singer and now the outrageous pun. Matthew wondered if she’d first shaved her head and then gone into business. Or had she shaved it later in guilt, as penance for taking advantage of the misfortunes of others? There was something undeniably attractive about the perverse combination of voluptuous body and shorn head. It conjured visions of collaborators and witches, vampires and dominatrices. Maria seemed well aware of her bizarre allure, twisting this way and that on the lounge to afford fleeting glimpses of breast or cheek, a bald teenager seemingly itchy in the woolen tank suit. He found himself increasingly more uncomfortable in her presence.

“And, of course,” she said, “there are also women who lose their hair through radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Hair and Now provides a service for all of them. My wigs won’t come off in the water...”

Then how’d you lose yours? he wondered.

“...or on a sailboat or at the gym or in bed,” she said, and waggled her eyebrows. “Come, let me show you,” she said, and rose in a single fluid motion that afforded a view of both nippled breasts and simultaneously brought her to her feet, hand extended. He did not take the hand, but he followed her to a pool house decorated in pastel lemons and limes, where a red long-haired wig sat on a wig stand, beckoning like a traffic light.

“Human hair,” she said. “European. Color approved from a sample. To match my natural color,” she said, and arched one eyebrow, confirming his surmise that she was well aware of her own sexuality and used it shamelessly, habitually, and perhaps even unconsciously. He wondered if she was as young as he’d earlier guessed, and was tempted to ask her. But he knew that might appear as if he were picking up on her sexual allusion, the arched eyebrow, the mention of her natural hair color. He let it pass. She lifted the wig from its stand.

“The base is created from a plaster mold taken from your own head by one of our representatives in the field. We have representatives in every major American city. The manufacturer fashions the wig’s base from your unique mold, and you try it on before our patented vacuum system...”

She lifted the wig above Matthew’s head now, so that he could see its underside...

“...is applied. The system ensures a perfect fit and perfect suction. We guarantee that, under any circumstances, this wig will not come off until you take it off. That’s an iron-clad, money-back guarantee, and we make it without restrictions or...”

“Who’s we?” Matthew asked.

“What?”

“You keep saying ‘we.’ Who’s we?”

“Oh. Hair and Now. The company. There is no we. I’m the chief executive officer and sole stockholder.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-two,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight,” he said.

“Nice age span,” she said, and winked and put on the wig. Didn’t look in a mirror, just slipped it over her head and onto it as if she’d done this a hundred times before, a thousand times before. She smoothed it down swiftly and firmly, probably to create the vacuum she’d talked about earlier, and where not a moment earlier there’d been a bald teenager standing there in a revealing swimsuit, there was now a twenty-two-year-old redhead standing there in the same suit.

“Now watch,” she said, and stepped outside onto the tiled deck and sprinted for the pool, long legs flashing, red hair swinging, buttocks virtually naked on either side of the suit’s thong, and took a running dive into the water. She stayed submerged long enough to cause Matthew concern, and then suddenly her red hair — or some European woman’s red hair — broke the rippling surface of the water, and she began swimming in a faster crawl than the bald-headed man had used, coming swiftly to the pool’s side, placing her hands flat on the tiled surface beyond the lip, and hoisting herself straight-armed out of the water. She executed a midair turn as she lifted herself, swinging her buttocks around and plunking them down firmly on the tile. Pulling her knees up to her breasts, and then using the same single fluid motion she’d used earlier, she rose like a dancer and shook out her long red hair. Or somebody’s. Soaking wet, the suit clinging, she went back to where she’d left her tea on the table between the lounges, leaned over to pick it up, turned to him, arched her eyebrows, smiled and said, “See?”

“Remarkable,” he said.

He couldn’t wait to get out of here. He had the feeling he could get in very serious trouble here.

“I hate that son of a bitch,” she said.

She was talking about George Steadman, her inherited partner. It was now almost five-thirty. The sun sinking behind the house was already casting long shadows over the pool area. She had put on a short robe the color of the tank suit. She had switched from iced tea to gin and tonic. Matthew had politely refused a drink. He was thinking that the first thing he’d do when he got to Patricia’s house was mix himself a Beefeater martini. Here with Maria Torrance, he wanted to keep his wits about him.

“I wouldn’t agree to any deal he came up with, and you can tell him that.”

“He says you have no quarrel with how he’s running Steadman & Roeger.”

“That’s right. But only if he keeps sending me statements and a check every month,” Maria said, and took another swallow of the gin.

“Besides, he has the right to make the final decision regarding any business matter.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Yes, he does. I’ve read the agreement between him and Mr. Roeger. The terms of that agreement have carried down to...”

“I don’t care what his original agreement says. You come here telling me he’s planning to spend three million dollars for a piece of land...”

“That’s right.”

“And I’m telling you there’s no way I’ll let him do that,” she said, and nodded emphatically. She was still wearing the red wig. This wig will not come off until you take it off. Apparently, she did not wish to take it off just yet. Matthew wondered what determined when she swam wigless and when she swam otherwise. Did she ever go out in public without the wig? When she did those television presentations she’d mentioned, did she show how she looked Before and After? When she made love, did she take off...?

It was very dangerous here.

“I have the right of consultation,” she said. “If he thinks...”

“But not approval,” Matthew said. “Mr. Steadman has the final word. In any case, I’m here only to tell you what he’s proposing. I’m here to consult with you, Miss Torrance, as per the terms of the agreement.”

“The hell with him and the agreement,” Maria said, and drained her glass. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “It’s getting chilly out here.”

She set her glass down on the table between the lounges, and rose again with that same swift dancer’s motion. Matthew followed her to the sliding glass doors that led into the house. They opened onto a living room decorated in cool whites and blues, a particularly gorgeous Syd Solomon painting on the white brick fireplace wall, colorful throw pillows softening the white tile floor, a huge John Chamberlain sculpture sitting against a window wall that opened onto a deck facing the Gulf. The sun was quite low on the horizon now. The Chamberlain was almost in silhouette.

“I’m still wet,” she said. “I’ll be right back. Make yourself a drink, the bar’s right there.”

He did not make himself a drink. He sat in the serenely cool, serenely beautiful living room and watched the sun sinking lower in the western sky, dipping toward the water, the sky turning to the colors and shapes of many of Solomon’s paintings, though the one on the fireplace wall was aglow with cobalt blues and emerald greens. The sky was changing swiftly now, from the fiery reds and oranges and swirling shapes of a moment earlier, to a roiling reddish violet, and then a flatter purple. A thin line of color lingered on the horizon. The living room was dark.

A light snapped on behind him.

He turned.

Maria was adorned in the colors of the sunset, her red hair echoed in a thousand subtle ways by the threads woven into the silk caftan she had put on, red-and-gold high-heeled sandals adding two inches to her already impressive height. Glancing toward the sea, she said, “Beautiful, hmmm?” and then walked swiftly to the wall bar, obviously naked under the flowing garment, and mixed herself another gin and tonic. She squeezed a lime wedge into the glass, dropped it into the drink, raised the glass and then one eyebrow, and asked, “Sure?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Cheers, anyway,” she said with a shrug, and sipped at the drink. “Very good,” she said. “You’re missing something.” She came to where he was sitting, sat beside him. “What do you think of the deal?” she asked.

“I think it has merit. If I can get the land at his price.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t approached anyone. But I don’t feel you’d be going wrong, if that’s your question.”

“I hate the son of a bitch, you see.”

“I gather. Why’s that?”

“I loved the circus, it was my whole life when I was growing up, and I loved Max, too, but I couldn’t stand George. My mother was an entertainer with S&R, you know, very well known, quite famous, she had offers from Ringling, Beatty, Vargas, all of them. But she chose to stay with George and Max, finally bought half the show from him, Max, when he found out he had cancer. I must’ve been twelve, thirteen years old at the time. My mother kept entertaining after she bought Max out, but she became a hardheaded businesswoman as well. Well, after all, half owner of Steadman & Roeger? This wasn’t some cheap little mud show. It was small, but highly respected. My earliest memories are of moving out, moving on, setting up, tearing down, moving on again...”

...the booking agents did all the advance work long before we moved out on the first of April. There were four agents, they’d be on the phones day and night calling potential sponsors, your Kiwanis Clubs, your Jaycees, who got ten, twenty, sometimes forty percent of the gate for furnishing locations and getting the necessary permits, the basic lots and licenses. George set up all the routes, sometimes keeping them secret even from Max. There are a lot of mud shows out there, you know, ready to take advantage of the paper you put up, the clowns or elephants you send out ahead, steal all your promotion and advertising, move in as if they’re S&R, set up on a supermarket parking lot and take all your customers. The routes varied year to year, but in Florida we started here in Calusa and then hit Sarasota, Naples, Bradenton, St. Pete and Tampa on our way north. Then we’d move through the Carolinas and Virginia, swing west through Kentucky and Missouri, and then head back south again through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and then home in October, November, depending on the schedule. We tried to keep the jumps no longer than a hundred miles, moving at night or else very early in the morning, four, four-thirty A.M., when there wasn’t much traffic on the roads. Twenty-five percent of our tickets were usually sold before we got there. We counted on paper to bring in the rest.

Paper is what circus people call the posters we put up, the streamers, or the banners, or the guttersnipes — that’s the paper they paste on rain gutters — these are all different kinds of circus posters, circus paper. The billing agent is the person who makes sure a town is well-papered long before the circus gets there, goes out with a billing crew a week, sometimes ten days before the show opens in any given town. Your twenty-four-hour man is the one who puts up the arrows the trucks follow. While you’re still showing a town, he’s gone twenty-four hours before anyone else, leading the way. He knows where the next lot is, some of them are really in the boonies, and he staples arrows to telephone poles or pastes them to lampposts, so the trucks’ll know which turns to take to get there. I can remember, sometimes, there’d be two circuses playing the same town at the same time, although this was something you tried to avoid in your routing. Whenever that happened, there’d be different colored arrows up for each of the circuses, telling the trucks which way to go, you’d sometimes end up on the other circus’s lot by mistake, you’d have to retrace your steps. Your twenty-four-hour man laid out the lot, deciding where the midway and the big top’d be — S&R still has a great midway, you know, not many small circuses do. He orders hay for the elephants and ice for the snowballs, and he’s there ready to tell you where to park when your truck or your trailer pulls in. My mother was a star, so we always got to park at the front of the lot, near Max and George’s trailers.

“I always loved the circus,” Maria was saying. “All the confusion, all the ballyhoo, all the noise and excitement, I really loved it. Even after what it did to my mother, I still loved it. I could have sold my share, you know, the fifty percent she left me. But I held on to it because of my love for her. And my love for the circus.”

Matthew hesitated a moment. Out on the Gulf, there was only the thinnest line of color now, the sky above it virtually black blue. A single star was shining.

“What did the circus do to your mother?” he asked.

“It killed her,” Maria said without hesitation.

Warren Chambers had joined Patricia in the hospital waiting room at four-fifty A.M., and the clock on the wall now read six o’clock sharp. Frank was asleep in the chair beside her, snoring. Matthew still hadn’t come out of the anesthesia, but Patricia figured that was okay because the doctor had said two or three hours, six o’clock, maybe a little bit later, so they were still within the outside limit. She filled Warren in on what the doctor had told them, about all the bleeding the bullet had caused, all the ruptured arteries. Warren told her he wasn’t surprised. He’d finally got one of the Criminalistics techs at the scene to tell him they’d recovered three .22-caliber bullets, one of them in pristine condition, the other two badly deformed...

“...most likely the two that hit Matthew and went on through,” he said. “People have the misconception a low-caliber gun doesn’t do much damage, but that isn’t true. The bullet hasn’t got as much force as a slug from a forty-four, or a forty-five, or a nine, but that means it doesn’t just go through clean. Instead, it bounces around inside the body in there, like a rubber ball bouncing off all the furniture in a house before it flies out a window. By that time, it’s broken a lamp and a vase and knocked a picture off the wall, it’s the same as that. The bullet goes caroming around inside the body doing all kinds of damage before it exits.”

Patricia hadn’t yet mentioned possible brain damage.

“The thing I’ve been trying to figure out is what he was doing in Newtown,” Warren said. “Even I don’t go to Newtown.”

“Frank asked me the same thing,” she whispered.

They were both whispering. A hospital waiting room encouraged whispering. Six o’clock in the morning encouraged whispering. She looked at the clock again: Six-ten. Six A.M., the doctor had said. Around then? Maybe a little later. Still okay, she supposed. She hoped. She prayed. Six-ten was still around six o’clock, it was still only a little later than six o’clock. When will it get too late? she wondered. She said nothing to Warren.

“He never mentioned Newtown to you, did he?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

She did not want to look up at the clock again.

“Did he tell you what he was working on? It wasn’t a criminal case, was it?”

“No, he was trying to acquire some land for the circus.”

“What circus?”

“Steadman & Roeger.”

“Oh? Really? That’s a good circus.”

“Yes.”

“Where? What land?”

“The state fairgrounds.”

“Mmm.”

She looked up at the clock. Twelve minutes past six.

“What is it?” Warren asked.

“There’s a possibility of brain damage,” she said, and sighed heavily.

“Oh shit,” he said.

He looked up at the clock, too.

“When’s he supposed to be coming around?”

“Now,” she said.

They both looked at the clock. The minute hand lurched visibly as if conscious of their scrutiny.

“Wasn’t there something about that circus?” Warren asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Some kind of scandal, I forget. In St. Louis? Wherever? Didn’t something happen?”

“Yes,” Patricia said. “But I don’t think it was a scandal, it...”

“What was it?”

“One of their stars committed suicide.”

“Was that it?”

“If that’s what you’re thinking of.”

“I only remember a big fuss in all the papers down here. I’d just moved here. It was a big story.”

“I was still living in New York at the time.”

“Wasn’t it in the New York papers?”

“I guess it was. But that’s not why I remember it.”

“Then why do you?”

“Matthew told me about it.”

“About this woman who committed suicide?”

“Or whatever it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was only telling me what her daughter said.”

“Well, what’d she say? When was this, anyway?”

“A week ago. Right after we got back from the Caribbean, the Sunday after we got back.”

“How’d he happen to start talking about it?”

“He’d just come from a meeting with the daughter.”

“What about?”

“The circus deal he’s handling. She’s part owner.”

“I see,” Warren said.

Patricia looked up at the clock, and then looked immediately down at her hands. They were folded in her lap, as if in prayer. Frank suddenly snored sharply, awakening himself.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Time, Patricia thought.

“Six-twenty,” she said.

“Should be coming around soon,” Frank said, and checked his own watch against the wall clock.

“What did Matthew tell you?” Warren asked. “About the suicide. About what the daughter said about it.”

“I’m going to find someone,” Frank said, and stood up abruptly. “See what the hell’s going on here.” He hiked up his pants, looked at the clock once again, and went off toward the nurse’s station.

Patricia did not want to report all this to Warren, Patricia wanted to scream instead. It was already six-twenty, going on six twenty-one, the clock ticking noisily on the wall across from where she sat with Warren playing detective while her man lay unconscious somewhere down the hall, he’ll be out of the anesthesia by six o’clock, the doctor had said, around then, maybe a little later, but it was already a little later, it was already starting to get a lot later. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, Warren not prompting her, not urging her, just sitting there quietly in stately expectation, waiting for her to tell him how Matthew had happened to begin talking about a circus lady who’d committed suicide quite some time ago in a city other than this one, five years ago, was it? Six years ago? Boston, was it? Atlanta, was it? Place and time were here and now on this hard sofa in a barren room with a clock relentlessly throwing minutes onto the floor. Time and place were the twentieth day of March at seven P.M. in Patricia’s house on the beach, Matthew sipping the Beefeater martini she’d mixed for him, telling her that a bald, nearly naked woman had swum for him this afternoon in order to demonstrate the staying power of a wig fashioned from the hair of countless redheaded European women...

No, she didn’t, Patricia says.

She did. Only twenty-two years old, too.

You’re thirty-eight, Matthew.

Mm, yes. She thought that was a nice age span.

I’ll kill her, Patricia says.

It was strictly business, he says.

For Matthew, in fact, it was strictly business, until young Maria Torrance mentioned that the circus had killed her mother, at which juncture something odd clicked in his mind, something he realized at once was even more dangerous than the bewigged temptress sitting beside him jiggling a shapely foot encased in a red-and-gold high-heeled sandal that had slipped off her heel and was dangling by its toe. The something more dangerous was his own curiosity, lulled to near death by what he visualized in the near future as interminably boring negotiations for a three-million-dollar piece of dirt, not to mention the necessity of convincing a twenty-two-year-old twit that the deal was truly an excellent one, lest (despite documents to the contrary) she decided to sue for the right of approval, raising all sorts of legal problems that could cast a cloud over clear title and create a chilling effect in the seller’s mind — on a deal for which Matthew had no heart, anyway.

But here was this same twenty-two-year-old twit stating with all the certainty of a bona fide adult that the circus had killed her mother, which prompted the natural question, “Why do you say that, Miss Torrance?” to which Maria replied, “That was no fucking suicide, Mr. Hope.”

Her answer startled Matthew in any number of ways.

First, he hadn’t even known there’d been a suicide, or possibly a mere apparent suicide, as Maria’s response now seemed to suggest.

Moreover, if Willa Torrance’s death hadn’t been either a suicide or an apparent suicide, then it had to have been death either through natural causes, accident, or murder. There were no in-betweens, no other possibilities. The tone of Maria’s voice and the use of the strong epithet indicated that she was hinting homicide. Despite his own better judgment, Matthew was immediately intrigued.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

Famous last words.

It seemed that the “suicide”—

Each time Maria used the word, her lip curled in disdain, giving her the appearance of a bald Teutonic fencing master rather than a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old woman in a red wig and matching caftan—

The “suicide,” then, had taken place in Rutherford, Missouri, before Rand McNally had chosen that town as one of the more desirable places to live here in the United States of America. “It’s quite lovely now,” Maria said, and asked Matthew if he would like to see the newspaper reports of her mother’s “suicide”; she had copies of all of them, including the Enquirer and the Star, both of which had carried front-page stories on it. She went to a modern sideboard on the same wall as the bar, knelt to open a drawer, and brought out a good-sized gray cardboard box which she carried back to the sofa. She was about to remove the lid when Matthew said he would look at them later, if she didn’t mind. Right now he was more interested in knowing why she was suggesting that her mother’s apparent suicide had, in fact, been a homicide.

“I’ll tell you why,” she said, and put the box beside her on the sofa, and pulled her legs up under her, and turned to face him. “Three years ago come May,” she said...

The Steadman & Roeger Circus had been showing Rutherford for three days and was scheduled to tear down and move out on the eleventh of May, a Saturday...

“There’s something eerie about a tent coming down in the middle of the night,” Maria said, “everyone moving in silence as though afraid they’ll wake up the sleeping town they’ve just entertained...”

...seats and rigging disassembling in the empty hours of the night, pacing animals in cages loading onto trucks, the smell of early-morning coffee from the cookhouse, morngloam not yet here, trailers and trucks and recreational vans starting before the sun comes up, puffing carbon monoxide exhaust onto the early-morning air, something still, serene, and surrealistic. The Torrances, mother and daughter, were living in a...

Matthew noticed that not once had Maria yet mentioned her father...

...large trailer in a choice location on the lot, a ten-acre parcel of land with plenty of space for parking, close to a major thoroughfare, and convenient to a huge shopping mall, from which they’d drawn a great many walk-in customers during their three-day stand.

Maria had set her alarm for four-thirty in the morning, her mother having told her she wanted them both to be ready and on the road by six, before the morning rush-hour traffic started. Willa enjoyed her sleep, and generally allowed herself the absolute minimum amount of time necessary to shower, dress, and grab a cup of coffee at the cookhouse. She was still asleep when Maria left the trailer at five. Her own alarm was set for five-fifteen. It never went off because the bullet Willa presumably put in her forehead passed through her skull, ricocheted off the metal side of the trailer, and then went through the clock where it sat on a metal dresser bolted to the floor near the rear-entrance door, stopping it dead at ten minutes past the hour.

At the very moment of her mother’s death, Maria was in the cookhouse tent, sitting on the short side, as it was called...

“This didn’t refer to the short side of the tent,” she explained to Matthew now. “It’s where the shorter tables were, the better ones, reserved for George and his various managers and toadies, all of whom sat closest to the front door. There’s a pecking order in the circus, you know, same as everywhere else in the world. Your performers and entertainers are next in rank, and even there, the seating’s according to importance. Your equestrian performers are the top of the order, God knows why, you’d have thought it’d be your flyers or high-wire people, or your wild-animal trainers. The tent that morning...”

It is a miserable morning, thunder and lightning punctuating the steady rain that blows in over the lot in slanting sheets. The ground underfoot has not yet turned to mud, but the rotten weather has tempted many of the people who will not physically be tearing down the circus to stay in bed a while longer. The cookhouse tent, at this early hour, is packed with men on the other side of a curtain that divides performers and top management from workers, crew bosses, and gazoonies. Maria sits at one of the shorter tables with Davey Sheed, who’s awake and around because it takes a bit of time and care to load cats without spooking them, especially with all this lightning, and he wants his animals calmly packed away before the hubbub of moving out really starts.

“I was having an affair with Davey that season,” Maria said. “He was the first man I’d ever known intimately.”

Nineteen years old back then, Matthew thought.

“We picked each other on Choosing Day,” Maria said. “The first dress rehearsal is usually Choosing Day. That’s when everyone decides who they’ll pair off with for the season.”

Matthew took mental note of the grammatical lapse, but said nothing.

“We were the only two people on the short side of the tent...”

Otherwise, that side of the tent is empty. All the noise, all the buzz of conversation and laughter, the clatter and clink of cutlery on cheap china, is coming from the other side of the curtain. Over the noise in the cookhouse tent, no one hears the gunshot from the other end of the lot. Or so they will all later claim. Over the crackle of lightning and the booming of thunder, no one hears the gunshot from the Torrance trailer. Or so they will all later claim.

The chief medical examiner testified at the inquest that the autopsy report had been premised on certain indisputable facts consistent with a finding of suicide. To begin with, the bunk in which Willa had been sleeping was located on the right-hand side of the vehicle. Willa’s head was facing the front of the trailer, her feet the rear. She was lying on her right side when the body was discovered at 5:35 A.M. by her daughter. The shoulder straps of her white baby doll nightgown were flecked with spatters of blood. The sheet that had covered her to the neck when Maria left the trailer at 5:00 A.M. was rumpled below her waist when Maria returned.

The entrance wound of the bullet was in the center of the forehead, which was consistent with findings of suicidal shootings to the head whether the victim was right-handed or left-handed. In most such cases, the gun muzzle was held in close proximity to the skin, leaving brownish burn marks around the bullet hole and sometimes singed hairs above it. In Willa’s case, these indications were consistent with a finding of suicide. Moreover, a black coat of powder residue smeared the area of the entrance wound, and the coroner recovered unburnt powder grains from the skin around the site. Most convincing, the murder weapon — a .32-caliber Colt Detective Special — was found in Willa Torrance’s right hand, her right forefinger inside the trigger guard and resting against the trigger. All of these indications were consistent with a finding of suicide — apparently the chief M.E.’s favorite expression.

The Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that while lying on her side, Willa Torrance had placed the muzzle of the suicide weapon against her forehead, and fired a fatal bullet into her head. The bullet had moved upward and in a slightly lateral direction to burst through the skull, ricochet off the wall behind the bunk, and then tumble across the interior space toward the rear of the vehicle to smash the face of the dresser clock and become embedded in its mechanism, which was where it was finally recovered in a highly deformed state.

“Trouble is,” Maria said, “my mother never owned a gun in her life.”

“Was this brought out at the inquest?”

“It was.”

“And?”

“These days guns are easy to come by in America. Even then, three years ago, they concluded that my mother — leading the life of a circus entertainer — could easily have obtained a gun in any of the towns we showed.”

“Were there any blood splashes on her hand?”

“No,” Maria said. “Just on the straps of her gown. And the wall.”

“Mmm.”

“We carried her home in a coffin and buried her here in Calusa. The newspapers were full of it. There were headlines all over America. I’ll show you,” she said, and reached for the gray box beside her.

Matthew tried to remember where he’d been in the month of May, three years ago, not to have seen headlines about the suicide of a well-known circus performer, especially here in a circus town like Calusa. But, no, they’d never said performer, both Steadman and Maria kept referring to Willa Torrance as an entertainer, however that may have differed from someone who trained elephants to stand on their heads. Were those elephants, in fact, performers or entertainers? Matthew hadn’t the faintest idea. He knew only that he could not remember any headlines announcing the suicide of Willa Torrance. Had he been away at the time? Was that the year he’d gone to Spain for his vacation? Or perhaps it was the name Torrance that was throwing him. Steadman had mentioned her circus name, but he couldn’t quite recall it now. Wendell? Was it Willa Wendell? Or Wagner? Willa Wagner? No, that wasn’t it, either. Winkler?

“Mr. Steadman mentioned your mother’s circus name,” he said, “but I’ve...”

“Winkie,” she said.

“Yes, that was it, thank you.”

Maria nodded, and smiled, and then lifted the gray box onto her lap. She removed the lid, and took from the box a framed photograph of a little girl of three or four, wearing a short pleated skirt, a white blouse, and black patent-leather tap shoes. The little girl was beaming at the camera in a smile very much like Maria’s own. The little girl was standing alongside a caned wooden chair that gave scale to the picture; she could not have been taller than two and a half feet. In the photo, the little girl’s hair appeared lighter than Maria’s; she could have been a strawberry blonde. Matthew wondered if Maria was showing him a picture of herself as a child.

“Wee Willa Winkie,” Maria said. “That’s how they billed her, Mr. Hope.”

Matthew looked again. The little girl in the photo had the mature face and eyes, the lipsticked mouth, the knowing smile of a woman. The little girl in the photograph had the firm breasts, full hips, and shapely legs of a woman. Matthew was looking at Willa Torrance, he was looking at Wee Willa Winkie.

“My mother was one of the little people,” Maria said. “My mother was a midget.”

Frank Summerville came stamping into the waiting room.

“Nobody knows a goddamn thing,” he said angrily.