NBM: How long had you been writing before your first novel, The Oklahoma Punk, was published?

Estleman: Eight years.

NBM: So you started when you were sixteen?

Estleman: No, actually I was about fifteen.

NBM: And writing with a view toward being a professional writer?

Estleman: Oh, yeah.

NBM: Publishing?

Estleman: Yep.

NBM: Where?

Estleman: The first place I sent a short story, when I was fifteen, was Argosy magazine. So I had my mind on the pulp fiction market even then.

NBM: What was the attraction of the pulps?

Estleman: It seemed to be my kind of fiction. I had tried, and now and then I still try, to write one of these things that takes place entirely in someone’s head, and I found that it just wasn’t for me. I write stories about people who do things.

NBM: Action and adventure?

Estleman: Right.

NBM: The pulps are typically thought of as being a man’s reading material.

Estleman: Yeah, to begin with, although there was a time when there were fully as many women readers as men — at least of the Westerns. Around thirty years ago men, women, and children were gobbling up Westerns by the millions.

NBM: Do you have any sense now that you are writing for a male audience?

Estleman: I am constantly interested in finding out how I am going over with a female audience. It always surprises me, and maybe it shouldn’t, to learn that I have quite a large female following for the Amos Walker series. A lot of my colleagues have asked me how my Walker series does with women, because he’s kind of macho as opposed to the usual modern Alan Alda kind of hero. My answer is always the same: I seem to be going over quite well with women. What captures the female audience is Walker’s type of humor. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. I think that is an important ingredient in what I call the quintessential American hero, the complete revolutionary who does not take authority, others, or himself too seriously.

NBM: You have written a substantial amount of Western fiction. Why Westerns?

Estleman: I think I recognized early on that the Western is a purely American form, and it was a form that I could relate to more than, say, the European style of both living and writing. There are definite similarities between the detective form and the Western form. One of them is the revolutionary hero I talked about. The cowboy myth, if you will, the man alone, the man outside — that goes back to our own revolutionary beginning. Whether I’m writing about Amos Walker, who lives on the modern urban frontier, or a character named Page Murdock in one of my books set on the Western frontier, I’m basically writing about the same kind of person, though I am using somewhat different methods and describing different forms of civilization. Nevertheless, it’s the same person underneath it all. The idea of the lone revolutionary-type hero has produced a purely American form. Too often we overlook in our fiction Ned Buntline, Prentiss Ingraham, Owen Wister, Jack Schaeffer, Louis L’Amour, and some of the more sophisticated Western writers. You can draw a straight line from the Street & Smith Buffalo Bill stories and Ned Buntline stories right to Street & Smith’s pulps of the twenties and thirties and forties and then to today’s paperback novels. That type of story is beginning to make itself known in the hardcovers now.

NBM: There’s a classic affinity between the Western and mystery fiction.

Estleman: There are definite differences too. The mystery is more complex in the way it deals with nature and a bit more cerebral because of it. I don’t mean puzzles of the Agatha Christie type. Detectives depend on their minds a little bit more than their physical reactions.

NBM: The setting of detective fiction is certainly more complex.

Estleman: The settings are basically different, and yet somehow the same too. Both are set in a kind of a gray-area frontier where the only real law is the law that a man makes for himself.

NBM: If my count is right, your fourteenth book will be published in spring 1986.

Estleman: Actually my twenty-second. If you ask me about that, I will say that I remember writing every one of those twenty-two books, but I don’t remember writing twenty-two books.

NBM: You have series novels with at least three publishers. For Houghton Mifflin you do the Amos Walker mysteries; for Mysterious Press you do the Macklin series; and for Doubleday you do the Westerns. Have you ever written under a pseudonym?

Estleman: I never have. Never felt the urge to. I never really trusted it in the people that I read because I always felt that what they wrote under a pseudonym was something that they didn’t put their heart and soul into. I always thought that if I ever did write under a pseudonym, subconsciously I would not make it as good as if I were putting my own name on it. I’m much more comfortable with my own name, because knowing that my reputation is going to depend forever on that book, I’m going to make it as good as I can.

NBM: Is there one of your series characters that makes your heart beat a little faster, that you anticipate writing about with a little more excitement?

Estleman: Yes. When I’m writing a Western I’d rather be writing a mystery, and vice versa. It always works that way. That’s why we’re paid. But you’re always thinking ahead to the next project wishing you were doing something else, because when you get to the nuts and bolts, it’s not as romantic as it was when you first had the idea. They all make my heart beat faster, though, when the writing’s going well. I may be more comfortable in the Western form. I can’t really tell you why. Maybe it’s because it’s a little bit freer, and I can depend on those reactions a little bit more. And you can use a little bit more action and not feel as if you’re just greasing a story up. That’s how things were done out West; they were men of action. But I certainly wouldn’t give up the mystery for anything. Any time I begin to contemplate a new Walker book, it’s like seeing an old friend. As long as that continues, I’m going to continue to do it. If I ever find myself writing a Walker book just to write a Walker book, that would be the time to quit that series and go on to something else. It has to be enjoyable for me or it’s not going to be enjoyable for my readers.

NBM: Why do you write short stories? With your writing schedule they would seem to be a distraction and not worth your time.

Estleman: I enjoy them; they’re a challenge. They are certainly a change of pace when I have finished a long project like a novel. I enjoy writing short stories. And yet, probably when you talk about intensive work, a short story is exceedingly more difficult to write than a novel. It’s kind of like making love on an elevator; you have to know where you’re going from the beginning. You have to nail your character down in a couple of lines and move on from there — keep it in constant movement. It’s been said that those who can’t write poetry write short stories, and those who can’t write short stories write novels. I don’t know about the poetry part because it’s been twenty, twenty-five years since I’ve tried poetry. But I do know that short stories are a challenge.

NBM: Do you ever worry, as Hemingway might put it, that the juices might dry up?

Estleman: Not consciously, but certainly when I’m between books and more than a couple of weeks — well, let’s be honest — when more than about two days pass, I start to climb the walls. There’s always that little niggling doubt somewhere in the back of my mind that maybe I’ve lost it and can’t do it anymore, and I have to glue myself to the typewriter and get back in the harness and prove to myself that I can. That may be a valuable asset.

NBM: In nine years of book publishing you’ve established yourself in the first rank of writers in two genres, if you also count Westerns, both of which are becoming more and more respectable.

Estleman: Very good people have been working in the Western field, and I fear that the average reader hears so much about Louis L’Amour that he’ll pick up a L’Amour book and think that this is as good as it gets. L’Amour writes well, not as well as he used to, but he still writes well. But there are people who are doing classic American literature in that form who are not as well known.

NBM: Aside from talent, which is obvious, to what do you attribute the success you have enjoyed in a relatively short professional career? A lot of people, presumably even talented people, have books that they can’t get published.

Estleman: Sure. Those stories are all over the place. Both world and American literature would be immeasurably richer if a lot of books that never were published had gotten to the right people. I think that many fine, fine writers have been and are being overlooked. I know a few myself. I think the real danger that we face now is the mania for categorization. The average publisher is afraid to touch a book that doesn’t fall into an acceptable pigeonhole. They don’t know how to present and how to handle books otherwise. I think that’s going to be a problem for a while. I had a realistic approach from the beginning. I knew that the kind of writing I wanted to do would be the kind that could be popular. And, also, I thought that I could maintain my integrity, and I feel that I have by doing the best that I am able to do. At the same time I’m lucky enough that the kind of writing I’m most comfortable with is the kind that tends to be the most popular. Yet I’ve never really gone with the trends. If I see a trend developing, I almost immediately head in the opposite direction. That’s how it was with Amos Walker. When I started Amos Walker, there were no other major private detective figures out there except Bob Parker’s Spenser, and when I first started doing Westerns, they were at their nadir both critically and popularly. I guess there was a certain amount of luck there. After my first book, I landed an excellent agent who I still have and who can speed things up immeasurably because he knows to whom to send a book. I’ve had a series of very good editors along the way who have well understood what it is I’m trying to do and have known how much to take part and when to back off and defer to me. I may be more comfortable and more knowledgeable as a result of these circumstances, and that is a valuable asset. At the same time, I look around and I see extremely good, Nobel prize-quality writers who are just not being published.

NBM: You said that the writers whose works have had the most profound influence on your own writing are Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, and Raymond Chandler. How big a factor is the writing of others in your work? Or to put it differently, how dependent are you as a writer on literary history?

Estleman: I think every writer is definitely dependent on those who have gone before us. Both on their mistakes and on the trail that they’ve blazed. I can’t pinpoint any one person who has been the greatest influence on me. They have all been influences to some degree. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s a good place to start as long as you can move on from there and advance the cause that these other writers started. I read a great deal, and I make it a practice not to read writers who do not themselves read. We read for the same reason a baseball player looks at a videotape of another player in action. Certainly a pitcher does it to sec how his opponent works and to see if he can better it. You also read to know what’s going on around you; and it’s good for the soul. Two things can make you sit down and write. One is reading a book that is really bad, thinking I could do much better; the second is reading a book that’s very good. It makes that old fear work up, and you think maybe I better get back in the harness here and establish myself.

NBM: Television seems hungry now for detective series, especially hard-boiled detective series. These shows haven’t been in vogue for about fifteen years. Why the interest all of a sudden?

Estleman: It would have to do with our continuing interest in crime. Crime is something that happens to people you’ve never heard of, except when it happens to your next-door neighbor, or to people in your family, or to you and me. As long as we are potential victims, the interest in crime fiction is going to continue — certainly in detective fiction in which the criminal gets caught, because it’s something you don’t see too much in everyday life. It’s definitely going to continue to grow as time goes by. The reason private detectives themselves are of interest now is this American revolutionary concept. At the moment, I think people are sick and tired of police, and they want to see something a little less structured than police procedure. They want to see basically ordinary men of an extraordinary makeup doing things the police can’t because of the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court, and the inertia of modern American law enforcement.

NBM: So you don’t think that detective fiction or detective material is in danger of being oversold, as Donald Westlake has suggested?

Estleman: Probably not. I don’t think that it can be oversold. I think that there’s going to be a lot of bad detective fiction written; there always has. And along the way there’s going to be a lot of good fiction. But as far as being oversold, I don’t see that happening.

NBM: You’re now thirty-three years old. Do you anticipate with tranquility another thirty years of writing fiction?

Estleman: Oh, yes. That’s what I’ve been doing so far, and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t see that changing. I can’t tap-dance or sing. So I think I’ll stick with the talent I have. I do hope that I’m going to continue to get better, and I hope never to sell out.

Ernest Krell’s aversion to windows was a legend in the investigation business. It was a trademark, like his tie clasp made from a piece of shrapnel the army surgeons had pried out of his hip in Seoul and his passion for black suits with discreet patterns to break up their severity. During his seventeen years with the Secret Service he had spent so many public hours warning presidential candidates’ wives away from windows that when it came time to open his own detective agency he dug into his wife’s inheritance to throw up a building that didn’t have any. Narrow vertical slits set eight feet apart let light into a black marble edifice that looked like a blank domino from anywhere along the Detroit River.

A receptionist with blue stones in her ears and that silver complexion that comes free with fluorescent lights took my hat and left me alone in Krell’s office, a bowling alley of a room carpeted in black and brown and containing oak-and-leather chairs and an antique desk in front of a huge Miró landscape, lots of blues and reds, to make up for the lack of a window. The walls were painted two shades of cinnamon, darker on the desk side of the office to keep the customers where they belonged. A lot of framed citations, Krell’s license, and a square black-on-white sign reading “RELIANCE — Courtesy, Efficiency, Confidentiality” took care of the bare spots.

There were no ashtrays, so I took a seat near a potted fern and lit a cigarette, tipping my ashes into the pot. After five puffs the man himself came in through a side door and scowled at the curling smoke and then at me and said, “There’s no smoking in this building.”

“I didn’t see any signs,” I said.

“You don’t see any ashtrays either.” He ran a hand under the edge of the desk. A second later, the silver-skinned receptionist came in carrying an ashtray used just for putting out smokes, and I did that. I couldn’t decide if it was the way he had pushed the button or if I just had the look of a guy that would light up in the boss’s office. When she left carrying my squashed butt, the man extended his hand and I rose to take it. His grip was cool and firm and as personal as a haberdasher’s smile.

“Good to meet you, Walker. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

“This is the first time I’ve gotten any higher than the fourth floor,” I said.

Krell chuckled meaninglessly. He was six three and two hundred pounds, a large pale man with black hair that looked dyed and wrinkles around his eyes and mouth from years of squinting into the sun looking for riflemen on rooftops. It was orange today, orange stripes on his black suit and jaunty orange sunbursts on his silk tie to pick it up. It softened the overall effect of his person like a bright bow tied to a buffalo’s tail made you forget he was standing on your foot. The famous tie clasp was in place.

He waved me into one of the chairs but remained upright at parade rest with his hands folded behind him. “I spent last night reading the files on the cases you assisted us with,” he said. “Despite the fact that you’re anything but the Reliance type” — his gaze lit on my polyester suit — “you show a certain efficiency I admire. Also you spend more time and effort on each client than a Reliance operative could afford.”

“You can do that when they only come into your office one at a time,” I volunteered.

“Yes.” He let the word melt on his tongue, then pressed on. “The reason I asked you to come down today, we have a client who might best benefit from your rather unorthodox method. A delicate case and a highly emotional one. Frankly, I’d have referred her to another agency had she not come recommended by one of our most valued clients.”

“She?”

“You’ll meet her in a moment. It’s a missing persons situation, which I believe is your specialty. Her son’s been kidnapped.”

“That’s the FBI’s specialty.”

“Only in cases where ransom is demanded. On the statutes it’s abduction, which would make it a police matter except that her ex-husband is the suspected culprit. The authorities consider that a domestic problem and approach it accordingly.”

“Meaning it gets spiked along with the butcher’s wife who threw a side of pork at her husband,” I said. “How old is the boy?”

“Seven.” He quarter-turned toward the desk and drew a typewritten sheet from a folder lying open on top. “Blond and blue, about four feet tall leaning to pudgy, last seen April third wearing a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, red corduroy shorts, and dirty white sneakers. Answers to Tommy. One minute he was playing with a toy truck in the front yard of his mother’s home in Austin, Texas, and the next there was just the truck. Neighbor thought he saw him on the passenger’s side of a low red sports car going around the corner. The ex-husband owns a red Corvette.”

“That’s April third this year?” I asked. It was now early May.

“I know it’s a long time. She’s been to all the authorities here and in Texas.”

“Why here?”

“A relative of the mother is sure she saw the father at the Tel-Twelve Mall in Southfield three weeks ago. She flew in right after. Staying at the relative’s place.”

“What makes it too hot to touch?”

He stroked the edge of the sheet with a meaty thumb, making a noise like a cricket. “The ex-husband is an executive with a finance corporation I sometimes do business with. If it gets out I’m investigating one of its employees—”

“Last stop for the money train,” I finished. “What’s to investigate? She should’ve gone back to court to start, put the sheriffs on his neck.”

“His neck is gone and so is he. He took a leave of absence from his company, closed out his apartment in Austin and vanished, boy and all. He probably had all his bags packed in the Corvette’s trunk when he picked up Tommy and just kept driving. It’s all here.” He put the sheet back inside the folder and handed the works to me.

It ran just five pages, triple-spaced and written in Reliance’s terse, patented preliminary-report language, but on plain paper without the distinctive letterhead. Very little of it was for me. The ex-husband’s name was Frank Corcoran. He was a house investments counselor for Great Western Loans and Credit, with branch offices in seventeen cities west of the Mississippi. There were two numbers to call for information there. The name and number of the witness who had seen his car at the time of the boy’s disappearance were there too, along with the ‘Vette’s serial number and license plate. It was long gone by now or the cops in Austin or Detroit would have had it in on a BOL weeks ago. I folded the report into quarters anyway and put it in a pocket and gave back the empty folder. “Can I talk to the mother?”

“Of course. She’s in the other office.”

I followed him through the side door into a room separate from the one where the receptionist sat, a chamber half the size of Krell’s, decorated in muted warm colors and containing a row of chairs with circular backs, like the room in a funeral home where the family receives visitors. “Charlotte Corcoran, Amos Walker,” said Krell.

The woman seated on the end chair raised a sunken face to look at me. Her jaw was too long to be pretty, but it had been an attractive face before she started losing weight, the bones sculpted, not sharp like now, the forehead high and broad instead of jutting and hollow at the sides. The little bit of lipstick she wore might have been painted on the corpse in that same funeral home. Her hair was blond and tied back loosely with wisps of gray springing loose around her ears. Her dress was just a dress, and her bare angular legs ended in bony feet thrust into low-heeled shoes a size too large for her. She was smoking a cigarette with a white filter tip. I peered through the haze at Krell, who moved a shoulder and then flipped a wall switch that started a fan humming somewhere in the woodwork. The smoke stirred and began twisting toward a remote corner of the ceiling. I got out a Winston and sent some of my own after it.

“My boy Tommy turned seven last week,” Charlotte Corcoran told the wall across from her. “It’s the first birthday I missed.”

Her speech had an east Texas twang. I twirled another chair to face hers and sat down. The connecting door clicked shut discreetly behind Krell. It was the only noise he made exiting. “Tell me about your husband,” I said.

She snicked some ash into a tray on the chair next to her and looked at me. Seeing me now. “I could call him a monster. I’d be lying. Before this the worst thing he did was to call a half hour before supper to say he was working late. He did that a lot; it’s part of why I divorced him. That’s old news. I want my son back.”

“What’d the police in Austin say?”

“They acted concerned until I told them he’d been kidnapped by his father. Then they lost interest. They said they’d put Tommy’s picture on the bulletin board in every precinct, and maybe they did. They didn’t give it to the newspapers or TV the way they do when a child’s just plain missing. I got the same swirl of no action from the police here. Kidnapping’s okay between relatives, I guess.” She spat smoke.

“Skipping state lines should’ve landed it in the feds’ lap,” I said.

“I called the Houston office of the FBI. They were polite. They test high on polite. They said they’d get it on the wire. I never saw any of them.”

“So far as you know.”

It was lost on her. She mashed out her butt, leaving some lipstick smeared on the end. “I spent plenty of time at Police Headquarters here and back home,” she said. “They showed me the door nice as you please, but they showed me the door. They wouldn’t tell me what they’d found out.”

“That should have told you right there.”

Her expression changed. “Can you find them, Mr. — I’ve forgotten.”

“Walker,” I said. “A lot rests on whether they’re still here. And if they were ever here to begin with.”

“Frank was. My cousin Millie doesn’t make mistakes.”

“That’s Millicent Arnold, the relative you’re staying with?” She nodded. “I’ll need a picture of Tommy and one of Mr. Corcoran.”

“This should do it.” From her purse she drew a five-by-seven bureau shot and gave it to me. “I took it last summer on a trip to Corpus Christi. Tommy’s grown several inches since. But his face hasn’t changed.”

I looked at a man with dark curly hair and a tow-headed boy standing in swim trunks on a yellow beach with blue ocean behind them. “His father didn’t get that build lifting telephone receivers.”

“He worked out at a gym near his office. He was a member.”

I pocketed the photograph next to the Reliance report and stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I’ll be in.”

Krell was on the intercom to his receptionist when I reentered his office. I waited until he finished making his lunch reservation, then:

“How much of a boost can I expect from Reliance on this one?”

“You already have it,” he said. “The situation is—”

“Delicate, yeah. I’ll take my full fee, then. Three days to start.”

“What happened to professional courtesy?”

“It went out of style, same as the amateur kind. What about it? You’re soaking her five bills per day now.”

“Four fifty.” He adjusted his tie clasp. “I’ll have Mrs. Marble draw you a check.”

“Your receptionist has access to company funds?”

“She’s proven herself worthy of my trust.”

I didn’t say it. My bank balance was stuck to the sidewalk as it was.

“I am telling you right now,” Norbert Johnson said, “that you would not believe, that no sane person would believe, what I go through with this guy.” He wore a gray T-shirt that said “Property New England Patriots” on the front, encircling a Patriots logo of a colonial soldier preparing to throw a football. He sat behind the old wooden desk in the range master’s office at the Watertown Sportsman’s Club in the basement of the old Franklin Pierce School. The first floor had been converted to a YMCA, and there was a basketball game in progress over Norbert’s head. The vibration made the big green pipes in the basement shake on their hanging rods, dislodging droplets of condensed moisture onto Norbert’s desk. To his right, behind the steel safety door with the pane of safety glass at eye level in the center, the Wellesley Annie Oakleys enjoyed their weekly hour shooting at cardboard targets, the dull, thin concussions of their S&W .38s, 9 mm.’s, and Beretta .25s coughing through the padded paneling.

“You’re gonna,” Shanahan said, nodding toward the top of the desk where Norbert had a chromed Colt .45 automatic apart, “you’re gonna get that thing all screwed up, you get it wet like this.”

Johnson looked down irritably at the gun. “Oh, I could give a shit,” he said. “You know whose gun this is? This is Lieutenant Foster’s personal sidearm, that’s whose gun it is. And you know the last time Lieutenant Foster personally cleaned his personal sidearm? Lemme give you a clue, all right? Eisenhower was president.”

“Oh, come on,” Shanahan said. “Foster’s only about forty. Can’t be that long ago.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Johnson said. “You’n’ me’re thirty-five. You’re forgetting: time goes by. Don’t matter who you are. Charlie Foster’s fifty-five. Fifty-four at least.”

“He can’t be,” Shanahan said. “He’s in beautiful shape if he is, and besides, even if he is, that’d only make him, what, about...”

“About twenny years old when Ike was president,” Johnson said. “Which happens to be what he was. And sure, he’s in beautiful shape. Wouldn’t you be in beautiful shape, you never did a fuckin’ thing? Course you would, you jerk. Guy doesn’t even clean his own goddamned gun, for Christ sake. Naturally he’s got the skin of Elizabeth Taylor anna look of a man half his age. Heaviest thing the guy’s lifted since he turned eighteen’s a sandwich. A sandwich he paid for, of course — Lieutenant Foster takes no graft. He’s got integrity. Plus balls the size of an elephant’s, but that’s another thing.”

“Well,” Shanahan said, nodding toward the dismantled .45, “then I assume he’s paying you, I mean. For cleaning his gun for him.”

“Oh,” Norbert said, “sure he is. He’s paying me ten bucks. Which when I get it, I will treat you to a beer. Which I hope you’re not very thirsty for, right about now, because I have done this job before, for Lieutenant Foster. I have done it lots of times, for the same ten bucks. And you know how many ten bucks I have seen for doing it? ‘None’ would be a real good guess. You couldn’t miss with that.”

“He doesn’t pay you?” Shanahan said. “I wouldn’t take that from the old son of a bitch. I’d tell him he can take his gun and stick it up his ass.”

“I think you would,” Johnson said. “I really think you would.”

“Well, I would,” Shanahan said. “I’ve done it before.”

“And you can do that,” Johnson said, “because you don’t mind, he tells you: ‘Aw right, Shanahan, you prick, go patrol the lumberyard all night, and see how you like that.’ That’s why you can do that.”

“Well,” Shanahan said, “that’s all right, if he does that. I don’t give a shit. I’d rather count the fuckin’ boards’n kiss Foster’s big fat ass.” He snickered. “I got at least one ball, Norbert. That’s more’n you can say.”

“No, it’s not,” Norbert said. “I got both my balls. The problem I have got is this: my father’s got both his.”

“Your father’s retired,” Shanahan said. “There’s no way Foster can get at your father. Your father is retired. He don’t, Foster can’t, put your father inna lumberyard. What’s this shit you’re giving me, your father, all that crap.”

“My father,” Johnson said, “my fucking goddamned father. I’m telling you, it’s like I said. You just would not believe it. You know how him and my mother, they don’t get along?”

“What difference does it make, Norbert?” Shanahan said. “Them two’re, they’re at least divorced, we started onna force. And that was sixteen years ago, I first meet your old man. He wasn’t living with her then. He was off by himself.”

“Right,” Johnson said. “He had the pad down Inman, down in Inman Square, took the trolley car to work. And Foster was the sergeant then. Fuckin’ prodigy. And Foster knows Gerard don’t live in the city, like the rules require. And Foster is all over him, got the needle out. So you know who cleaned Foster’s gun, until Gerard retires? Gerard cleans Foster’s gun, is who. Gerard cleans Foster’s gun. Gerard picks up his laundry for him. Gerard shines his brass. Gerard’s his personal servant, right? Gerard’s his fuckin’ slave. Because if Gerard’s not his slave, Gerard is out of work.” He paused. “Besides, Leo Sullivan was chief, and you know how Leo was. Knight of Malta, all that shit, Communion every day. One of his cops left his wife, he’d better be a Protestant, or kiss his ass goodbye. You think Foster reams you out, with the lumberyard? It’s nothing, boy, compared to Leo. Leo was a holy terror. You could ask anyone.

“Now,” Johnson said, “Gerard retires. Comes under the heart bill. Hits the old blood pressure jackpot onna fuckin’ annual physical. ‘Clean your locker out, Gerard. Hate to do this to you, chum. You know how it is. Got to have our finest fit. No invalids in here.’ I thought he was gonna have a goddamned attack from laughing, he got home and calls me up after he gets the news. ‘I did it, Norbert,’ he keeps saying, ‘I outlasted them. I took their crap for all those years, and now I’m getting out. Forty-eight years old, full pay, I got the shooting range for days and nights all to myself. I tell you, kid, stick by that job. That job will stick by you.’

“The very next day,” Johnson said, “the very next fucking goddamned day, I go in as usual, the afternoon, and I’m down my locker getting my stuff on, and who’s this standing next to me but Sergeant Macintosh. Good old Sergeant Macintosh. Mack wouldn’t kiss a goat’s ass unless the goat had seniority. Then he would lick the thing and tell the goat it tasted good, and could he have some more. ‘Lieutenant Foster wants to see you, his office,’ Mack tells me. And then he goes limping off like he’s got a load in his pants, and I finished getting dressed and report. And Foster looks me up and down and says: ‘Well, Patrolman Johnson, hear your old man got the pink slip. Hear old Gerard’s left the force.’ And I say, I hem and haw ’cause I know they hate each other, I say: ‘Yessir, he has.’ And he gives me this nasty-looking grin, and he says. ‘Well, Norbert, then I guess that just leaves you.’

“Now,” Johnson said, “I’m stupid, all right? I admit it. I don’t know a lot. All those years that my father’s been kissing Foster’s ass and trying, stay out of his way, doing his errands and all of that shit, I thought it was personal. But it wasn’t personal, see? Maybe was in the beginning, Foster’s looking around for some way he can ride my old man, and he thinks: ‘Hey, I’ll make the bastard do my fuckin’ errands for me.’ But then, after all those years, the reason for it, you know, didn’t matter any more. Now it was just a matter, Foster gettin’ his fuckin’ errands done for him. He was used to it. So, he hears Gerard is gettin’ through, and he thinks: ‘Holy shit. I’m gonna have to pick up my own stuff, the cleaners. I’m gonna have to, when my car needs the inspection sticker, I’m gonna have to take it down the garage myself. What the hell do I do now?’ And then he thinks: ‘I know what I’ll do now. I’ll think up some way, get Gerard’s kid to do my shit.’ And that is what he did.”

“I don’t understand,” Shanahan said. “Your father, okay, he didn’t live in the city. But you, shit, you live there. You live right down on Congreve Street. What’s he got on you?”

“Well,” Johnson said, “it’s very simple, once you think about it. See, my old man, when Gerard and my mother split up there, it’s not because my old man, he’s lost interest in gettin’ his ashes hauled, all right? He always was a fuckin’ rooster, so he says at least, struttin’ around and braggin’ all the time he’s maybe not very big but his dick is always hard. He used to have this habit where he’d whip it out, you know? He’d bet you, he’d say all these wild things, and I guess he must’ve been able to get it up whenever he wanted. I guess he must’ve been able to do that, because whenever he’d bet, down the bar or something with the boys, he always won. So, him and my mother split up, which finally gives her a vacation, I guess, and he starts... What he does is start going the massage parlors, all right? That is what he does.

“Now,” Johnson said, “I’m a reasonable man. I been around some. I don’t mean I’m your basic man the fuckin’ world or any of that shit there, but I’ve been a few places and I had my share of pussy and I know what’s goin’ on, all right? I know what’s goin’ on. But I don’t care how much you know, where you been, what you seen, or what you’ve done, it’s still embarrassing when your old man’s hangin’ out the massage parlors. It’s fuckin’ embarrassing’s what it is, and there’s no two ways about it.

“So,” Johnson said, “naturally old Foster, the guy knows everything, naturally he finds out one way or the other what my old man’s doing over there in Cambridge three, four times a week. Or having done to him’d be more like it, actually. And the son of a bitch when my father retires, he calls me in his office and like I say he’s got this mean grin on his face, and he tells me, he gives me his personal gun and he tells me he wants it cleaned. And naturally I look at him like he just must’ve lost his goddamned mind, and I give him some lip. ‘Oh, good for you, Lieutenant,’ I say. ‘Take care of your weapon, and your weapon’ll take care of you.’ And he says: ‘Clean it.’ And I say: ‘Fuck you I will. Clean it yourself.’ And he says: ‘I’m not finished. Also: ’fore you come in tomorrow, pick up my suits down at Prestige,’ and he gives me a twenny-dollar bill and a claim check, ‘and when you get through there, stop off down at Bradlee’s and pick up a couple of them smoke alarms they got on sale this week.’ And he throws another twenny onna desk. And I look at him. I can’t believe this shit. And I say: ‘The fuck you think you are, handin’ me this crap? I haven’t got enough time, get my own errands done. The fuck makes you think I should run around for you?’

“ ‘Glad you asked,’ he says, and he whips open the desk drawer and pulls out this set of pictures, maybe half a dozen eight-by-tens, and they’re all pictures of my father, goin’ in and coming out, the Persian Delight. ‘Now lemme tell you a few things, Junior Johnson,’ Foster says. ‘The first thing is that the young lady’s name is Dawn and he always asks for her. Which he does because when she was a little kid, her mummy didn’t take good care of her teeth, which means the ones she’s got in her mouth now she can take out, and apparently this broad can suck a golf ball through a hundred feet of garden hose. And the second thing is that Dawn has got a brother who is doing time in Concord on a Middlesex sentence the Cambridge DA got for him, and she wants him paroled. Which the DA is willing to do if Dawn tells the grand jury about all the things that the Persian Delight does for people. Except that the DA needs a john, all right? Someone that will get up onna stand and corroborate what Dawn says. Which is a hard item to find, since most of the guys that go in there don’t care to testify about what they go in there for.

“ ‘So,’ he says,” Johnson said, “ ‘the question I have got for you is this: Are you gonna do what I want done? Or am I gonna tell my good friend the DA I know a guy who goes there and he’ll have to testify or I’ll yank his pension rights. You want some time to think about it? Or are you gonna be sensible, and do like I say?’ ”

Johnson shrugged. “So I’m cleaning his gun,” Johnson said.

“The son of a bitch,” Shanahan said.

“My father, you mean,” Johnson said.

“Your father I don’t,” Shanahan said. “I mean that fuckin’ Foster.”

Johnson shook his head. “You got to, Jake,” he said, “you got to find some way, you don’t just get all cranked off at somebody before you think things through. It ain’t Foster that’s my problem, all right? It’s my fuckin’ father, that’s my problem here. I get in here today about fifteen minutes late, which I got stuck in traffic and there’s no way I can help that, and I got Foster’s fuckin’ gun in my kit because it’s that time again, and you know what I get from him? From Gerard, I mean? ‘Where the hell’ve you been, you selfish little bastard? Don’t you know that Dawn’s got clients? She’s got her appointments? You’re supposed to be on time, you little bastard, you.’ And back and forth, and this and that, I tell you: it was awful.”

“And you’re taking this,” Shanahan said.

“Well,” Johnson said, “I don’t have a whole lotta goddamned choice, you know? I got the old man, and I got fucking Foster, and I got the fucking job onna force, and I got to keep all of them. You look at the whole thing serious, and there isn’t one of them I can get rid of, if I’m sensible. Which I am, because somebody sure should be.”

“I don’t believe this,” Shanahan said. “I don’t believe what I am hearing. What you’re telling me.”

“See?” Johnson said. “That’s what I told you. That’s exactly what I said.”

So this is the new fella. You’re only an hour late’s what gives it away. Solly mentioned he was sending you up. Must be he still has a soft spot for the Lincoln County bureau, ’cause we get all the eager beavers. Just lift your feet and let me sweep underneath a bit. The newsies don’t usually start dropping by till happy hour’s done.

Bet you didn’t know Solly won his stripes here. Before he got his legs broke he was a real eager beaver himself. If he wasn’t waking the DA for a perp’s middle initial, he’d be snatching some stiff’s picture right off the crate to run in the obits. Else you’d find him down to the sheriff’s office collecting the john list from Maybry’s vice dicks. Judge Walker okayed seventeen divorces the year he done that and in a county the size of Lincoln it’s some kind of record. Lot of folks’d shot him if they got the chance, but Solly passed the blame like shit through a goose. Said it’s a reporter’s job to print all the facts and let the chips fall where they may. Solly’s one fella still has principles.

He put in for cityside during the big to-do what followed and just like that he’s the Tattler’s state editor. So far as I know, he’s only been back once, for the Rheinhold murder case. It was a regular tragedy, that was. Nutty Henry Rheinhold, one night when the folks was asleep he hacked ’em all to shreds, his pa, the missus, his granddad, Becky, and Steve, even the cat. Covered up what he done by torching the place and damned if he didn’t lose the barn and the henhouse too.

The funny thing is Henry was maybe the sanest one of all them Rheinholds. Half the time you’d swear the boy was better’n normal. During the Optimists’ picnic Judge Walker’s granddaughter fell in the Clear River directly above the dam and Henry was the only fella there with presence of mind to jump in and paddle the little tyke back to shore. Walker was so grateful he offered Henry money, a car, anything, you name it. All Henry wanted was a golf ball, so he could crack it open on a rock and play with the liquid center inside.

Anyways, after the big fire at the Rheinholds, Maybry counted up the bodies, and when he seen Henry’s wasn’t none of ’em it didn’t take a genius to figure out what must’ve happened. He scouted around till he found the boy camped out in the sugar bush back of where the barn used to be. Buck naked and baying at the moon, Maybry said. He wrapped him in a blanket and brung him in and booked him for murder, five counts’ worth. Judge Walker got on the horn to the state institution and warned the docs he’d be sending over a live one soon as the legal formalities was out of the way. Keeping him out of the penitentiary was the least he could do, after all.

The Lincoln County bureau was a one-man show back then, and when Pris Johnson, the new gal, heard they’d been an arrest, she couldn’t get to the jailhouse quick enough to see what’s in it for her. Maybry lived in fear of the Tattler, so he give her the run of the place, and Pris had a field day with Henry. The crazy dished out all the poop on how the cherubs and archangels was asking to see the folks and that’s why he’d sent them on up ahead, and then he wanted to know what that old Speed Graphic of Pris’s was for. Pris showed him all right. She went down low with her flash and shot straight up on him, so’s his puss caught the light like he was the devil incarnate. Solly hung the pix over the masthead and circulation topped out for weeks.

When Judge Walker got a look at the Tattler, he like to throw a fit. Had Pris Johnson hauled into court and told her she’d good as got Henry killed. What with all the ink, there’s no way he could sneak the boy off to the laughing academy, where he belonged. The DA’d jump-start the chair before he picked a jury. Pris shrugged and said she was sorry, but she was just doing her job. Walker done the same and give her thirty days for contempt.

Now, it’s no big secret how Solly’d made state editor, and it wasn’t his sunny disposition or that pug-ugly kisser he’s wearing today that done it. What he had going for him was even features and Sue McDonough, the publisher’s old lady, who he was doing weekends and holiday nights on the foreign desk. Sue was real upset over what happened to Pris. Solly told her not to worry; no hick judge was going to clap one of his top legmen in the slammer.

Soon’s he put the Friday p.m. edition to bed, Solly hustled himself up to Lincoln. He moved pretty good before his hips was busted, and by suppertime he was banging on Judge Walker’s door saying, “We gotta talk.”

His Honor’d been looking forward to chatting with Solly, so his answer is, “You bet. Only thing,” he says, “I wasn’t expecting company, let’s do it at the courthouse.” When Solly comes in his chambers, Walker’s got on his robes and he ain’t interested in a lecture about the First Amendment. All he knows is Pris Johnson has just about got Henry Rheinhold legally lynched by the state and someone’s gotta pay.

“I could care less,” Solly tells him right off. “This ain’t Russia; they got freedom of the press in this country in case you ain’t heard. Gimme back my reporter.”

Walker turns up his hearing aid ’cause he don’t believe he’s getting this straight. Only he is, of course, and while Solly’s still warming up Walker tells him he’s holding him in contempt of court, just like Pris. Solly’s trying to top that one when Maybry brings him down to the lockup and takes away his Swiss army knife and his shoelaces.

Solly’s pinching hard to a dime, but Maybry tells him it’s too late to make bond so forget about trying and ain’t it a shame he has to spend the whole weekend in jail, is there anything he’d like besides a cake with a file for the filling. It suddenly hits Solly where he’s stuck at, and he’s feeling so low he just dives on the cot and shuts his eyes. And he don’t open ’em again till he feels a poke in his ribs.

Solly thinks it’s the Tattler’s lawyer come to spring him, but when he rolls over he’s looking at the most wild-eyed creature he’s ever had the misfortune to see. It’s a fella, he finally decides, and sort of familiar looking at that, but it’s hard to say who ’cause his face is streaked with dirt, and his cheeks are running with blood where he’s dug them open with fingernails like daggers, and his hair is matted down over his eyes. Top of everything else, he’s babbling in a whole bunch of tongues, none of which Solly is acquainted with.

Seeing as how they’re bunking together, Solly figures it ain’t a bad idea to make friends. “What’s a nice fella like you doin’ in a place like this?” he tries for openers.

“What’m I doing here? I’m out of my mind, can’t you see?” To prove it he cracks his head against the bars so hard Solly’s begins to throb. “I’m nuts, and if Maybry’d notice he’d take me out of this miserable dungeon and put me in a nice clean hospital where I can play knock rummy and watch ‘General Hospital’ to my heart’s content.”

“Is that all?” Solly says. “Well then, what’s the problem?”

“The problem’s that I brung my folks to their heavenly reward and now the goddamn Tattler’s on my case and I can’t get justice nohow. They’re fixing to give me the hot squat. But I’m cuckoo, ain’t I? If I can only find a way to show ’em.”

Then he cools off just like that and hunkers down on the cot and wraps a paw around Solly’s shoulders. Solly don’t care for the smell, but he don’t push him away either ’cause Henry Rheinhold, I forgot to mention, is one very large boy. And then Henry says in a voice as smooth as a shrink’s, “But enough about my troubles... What brings you here?”

You can put your feet down now.

Delbert Evans was cheap: cheap with his time, cheap with his money. Cheap with everything. It didn’t do you any good to tell him, though, because he liked being that way. I was sitting at a table of the cheap bar we had agreed upon when he came up — thirty minutes late.

Delbert sold insurance. I don’t know how, but he did. I guess people bought it because they felt sorry for Delbert when they got their first look at him. His head was wedge-shaped, almost all profiles. His nose was a full-scale copy of Edison’s first light bulb, and his eyes were close set and slightly crossed. The rest of him wasn’t much better. He had a stick body that his Sears suits never fit and feet so long a cow gave up its life every time he went to buy shoes. Delbert made a nervous gesture I took for a wave, bumped the table sitting down, and said:

“Excuse me for being late, August I got caught on the phone with a very important call, and I didn’t leave my office until just a few minutes ago.”

I laughed like I didn’t believe him. “Okay, Del, why did you call me down here?”

Delbert smiled and capped teeth shone behind his thick lips. “You private investigators are always in a hurry,” he complained. “Couldn’t you allow me to order a drink before we get down to business?”

I said that I could.

Delbert signaled a waitress and ordered one of those sweet, candied drinks people are always inventing nowadays. I asked for another Scotch.

“Here’s the proposition,” Delbert said after the waitress had gone. “We want you to investigate the theft of an expensive diamond pendant that was insured by our company. We are prepared to offer you 10 percent of its insured value if you recover it. Otherwise, we will pay you at the rate of $100 a day plus expenses for the time you spend on the investigation.”

That was unusual. Insurance companies rarely offered to pay a daily rate for recovery investigations. I said, “What’s the catch, Del? I know you guys don’t work that way.”

Delbert’s face became flushed. “Yes, well, the pendant is worth over $500,000, so naturally the insurance company is very concerned about recovering it for our client. We are offering you the rate of $100 a day even if you don’t recover the pendant to insure that you will be motivated.”

I still wasn’t buying. Delbert was too cheap to offer more money than he had to. I rode him some with my stare.

“Ahem, of course,” Delbert sputtered on, “if it should turn out that the pendant has not been stolen at all, that our client still has it, then you could not really claim to have recovered it.”

“And I wouldn’t be entitled to the 10 percent fee, right? I get it now. You guys think your client has faked the robbery to get hold of the insurance money and still keep the pendant. But it’s cheaper to hire me at $100 a day to prove it than to pay me fifty grand.”

“Ah, yes, something like that,” said Delbert. “Will you take the case?”

Normally I didn’t like insurance jobs, but my bank balance was so low it would fit under a lizard. I said, “Okay, make it 125 and give me the details.”

Delbert smiled with relief. “$125 it is, August. Our client’s name is Pamela Dyer. She is the widow of a wealthy real estate developer. The pendant was stolen a week ago from the apartment of a friend of hers, Robert Grey. Mrs. Dyer and Grey had gone to the apartment after eating dinner in a restaurant. Shortly after they arrived, two men with guns burst through the door and demanded they turn over all the valuables on their person. The men had stockings over their faces. Grey lost a gold watch and a hundred dollars in cash; Mrs. Dyer lost two diamond rings and the pendant. The gunmen tied up Mrs. Dyer and Grey before they left and pulled out the phone for good measure: Grey said he managed to free himself after an hour of struggling, and then he released Mrs. Dyer and went to a neighbor’s apartment to phone the police.”

The waitress came up with our drinks and scurried off. I took a few sips from mine before I said anything. Finally: “I can see why you would think the robbery was a fake, Del. The gunmen knowing Mrs. Dyer would be in Grey’s apartment with the pendant at that particular time does seem unlikely. But they could have spotted the pendant in the restaurant and then followed Grey and Dyer home to make the heist.”

Delbert looked disappointed. “Do you really think so?” he asked.

“No, I’m not sure. I just wanted to show you that there were two ways of looking at it. Do you know what the police think about the robbery?”

“They seem altogether satisfied that Mrs. Dyer and Grey are telling the truth. However, they don’t seem to be doing much in the way of investigation. That’s why we are hiring you.”

I nodded in sympathetic agreement and pumped Delbert for a few more details, like the addresses of Robert Grey and Mrs. Dyer. We finished our drinks then, and I left Delbert in the bar to do whatever it is insurance salesmen do by themselves in bars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll start working on Tuesday.”

“Start now,” she whined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foy shrugged. “Almost, I think.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, let me tell you, it started out playin’ like the dream come true, I mean, blueprint beautiful, textbook perfect. I was thinkin’ we were ready to talk Major Method, give workshops and whatnot.

We’d parked a street away where we could see the station across this rubbled lot. I was wheelin’, Oakly sittin’ shotgun. He had what he called “No Wave” music goin’ in the tape deck, which he was usin’ to psych up on, real militant stuff, all axe-edge rhythm and ambulance melody that shot straight to the nervous system, even at low volume.

We let the sun set so the night could work for us, sure, for cover and all that, but the way we were playin’ it, atmosphere was one more factor to be exploited in our favor.

“Let’s do it!” Oak snarled.

See, we always diced at the beginnin’ to cast the main role, and Oak had won this round, so he was directin’ the stop and go signs.

So I took the cue and rolled us around to Shelburne and on into the station, pullin’ it up in front of the full-service pumps, right next to the office. Oak he jumped out and met the attendant in the doorway, just a kid, sixteen or so, you know the type, gone a little goofy over some certain flag twirler from school he can’t get outa his head, standin’ there all gangly in this greasy uniform with his name sewn over the pocket, Biff, or Buddy, or somethin’.

Well, Oak he slips the blade outa his sleeve and puts on his best crazy face. Let me tell you it was most effective. When the face was on him, he looked like nobody you’d ever want to see, ’cept maybe in a B movie where you could watch him terrorize somebody else.

I’d seen him back off this grizzly biker one night in a bar and once even a trio of Street Beaters, a much-feared local teen gang, real id kids, who’da just as soon as doused us with fuel and warmed their hands on our fire as wear gloves. But when the Oak flashed the face, flarin’ the nostrils, bulgin’ big with the eyes, showin’ his teeth, well, it’s just like they say, don’t nobody mess with a crazy man!

And this kid, he knew that immediately. He must’ve just hit the bathroom ’cause he showed all the symptoms but the wet pants. Oak filled his fist with green and was back in less than a minute. I threw it in gear and gunned it, spinnin’ the wheels purely for the sound effect.

It was that easy; a finger-snap green-light grab, hit and run without even a blow thrown, just bluff and burn ’em!

See? That’s all it was. Sure it was still a heist, a criminal act, I ain’t denyin’ that. What I’m sayin’ here is that we were doin’ some street theater, fuckin’ performance art!

What the Method was, was this. It wasn’t no strong-arm at all; it was nuthin’ but acting all the way, technique and talent right there on the line. That blade? Strictly a prop, like they use on TV. Any pressure on the blade pushes it back in the handle, not an ounce of deadly force involved at all, pure psychodrama. And Oak had pulled off an Oscar’s worth of performance; it was up to me to pull off the getaway.

And I was doin’ just that, takin’ time for a quick look in the mirror to admire the roll of rubber smoke and hopin’ to catch the expression on the kid’s face. But he was yellin’ an’ pointin’ at us to some guy who’d just pulled up in a car.

I accelerated us outa there across two lanes of traffic, whippin’ a one-hand ninety-degree right that triggered a three-car fender smash.

“You see that car?” I asked the Oak. “Think it’s a cop?”

“XLM 846?”

“Didn’t catch the plates.” That Oak, he’d detail ya to death.

“You just didn’t look. That’s it all right, and he’s comin’ after us!”

If I could’ve zagged a quick left at the next corner I’d’ve lost him for sure, but I knew it was a wrong-way street so I punched it for the next block. The light blinked red. There were cars blockin’ both lanes. Before I could get out an’ pass ’em on the right this sporty lookin’ foreign job carryin’ some pretty boy and the dream girl of his choice pulls up to my bumper and I was boxed.

Suddenly the dude in the car appears right next to us and jumps out.

Oak hit the lock as the light turned green.

But this guy, hey, he was red, glowin’ in the dark, screamin’ somethin’ that didn’t sound like any words I know.

“Who the fuck is that?” I yelled, hittin’ the pedal hard, then slammin’ the brakes to keep from runnin’ up the rear of the Gray Panther in front of me who was travelin’ her own sweet pace.

“It’s the owner! The fuckin’ station owner!”

The shrill of his voice made me look over at the Oak. Hey, he was truly spooked, retreatin’ across the seat toward me.

That guy’s face was fillin’ the window; he was runnin’ right along with us, five maybe ten miles an hour, even swung his fist against the window, but the safety glass held. Well, that was all the encouragement I needed. I swung the car over, forcin’ him outa the way, then gunned it into that lane.

“He’d’ve shot me! If he’d had a gun, he’d a shot me! I’d be splashed all over you!” Oak was bawlin’. “That face! You see that face!”

I’d seen it all right, this guy’d gone bent round the bend, stark blazin’ berserk. This was crazy incarnate! If he’d been a dog, they’d’ve shot ’im on the spot.

I was tryin’ to weave us a way outa there, but the traffic was all clogged.

“How much we get?” I asked Oak, to get his mind off the immediate for a minute.

The money was still in his hand and he was turned around on his knees lookin’ out the back. “I don’t know.”

“Well, why doncha count it. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“You just get us outa here!”

Well now, I was doin’ the best, believe me. I took an alley detour that got us into a side street that was just as jammed. There musta been some disaster around there somewhere and all the vehicles were gettin’ funneled into this one area.

“A hundred and eighty-four.” Oak called out.

That guy was still doggin’ us. So far I’d been able to keep some cars between us, and I was thinkin’ fast, rankin’ our priorities in case the worst came and it got to be decision time. Survival of course took precedence. After all, the money wasn’t the thing, strictly a small-time snatch, just icing. It was the act itself that was important, and the getaway.

That’s when slow flow stopped up. The light had just gone green and I had got us almost all the way across the intersection, which left plenty of room for our two-car cushion to turn right to avoid the jam.

Well, that guy, he got himself a runnin’ start and used our ass end to brake his momentum. The force impacted us into the car in front.

“Maybe if we refunded him half?”

“Give him all!” Oak screeched, shovin’ the cash in my hand.

Well, I must confess, I did have to think about it, but I knew the whole instant that I had to do it; so I got out and started back toward him.

His car was stalled and a bit of smoke was leakin’ out the hood. He was watchin’ me with wide, almost all-white eyes, while grindin’ ’way at the ignition.

Me I was makin’ no sudden moves, keepin’ the cash out there in fronta me like a shield. Trip this guy’s wire and he’d go off in my face; so upon reachin’ the door, I very carefully motioned for him to roll the window down.

He opened the door.

I had to kick it shut in my best firm but non-threatenin’ manner. Not an easy trick, in fact outright artful, but hey, for security’s sake I wanted to keep at least that bit of barrier between us.

“No need to get out,” I reassured him. “We deliver.”

He was givin’ me a real authentic-lookin’ old-country evil eve.

I held the money to the glass. That got the window down.

“Here you go. It’s all there, so just relax; everything is all right, justa simple mistake for which my friend and I offer our deepest heartfelt apologies.”

Yeah, I know, it even sounded dumb in my ears, but shit, I didn’t know what to say, and I don’t think he was really hearin’ me anyway.

So, I just made the switch without touchin’ him. Whatever this creep had I certainly didn’t want to catch.

He snatched it up and tried to get at me again.

Oak hit the horn, but I was already on the way with that loon on my tail. I leaped in the seat and threw the car in gear. Traffic was crawlin’ forward, so I creeped away with it. That’s all I could do, ’cept watch him get his car rollin’ again right for us.

“Hold on.” But Oak was already embracin’ his seat. I read his face like a crossword puzzle, doom across the eyes and despair down the cheek. There was nuthin’ reassuring I could say.

He hit us so hard my forehead bounced off the windshield. Oak tried to bail out then and there, but I got hold of his sleeve and held on.

Hey, I’da split myself, but you see, it was my car. We’d dressed it in hot plates, but it was still the only car T had. Couldn’t just leave it there, and I was not about to stick it out by myself. I knew if things ever got down to the mano y mano with this maniac, we were gonna have to use tag-team tactics to survive. So I kept one hand clamped to the wheel, the other anchored to the ol’ Oak.

“Lemme go!”

“Halfway home, pard, might as well ride it out.”

Oak was squirmin’ like a hooked fish outa water when we got hit yet again. It jerked the wheel right outa my hand and we jumped the curb, headin’ right for this store window where I caught a fleeting glimpse of these well-formed female mannequins sportin’ the latest in lacy bed wear.

It was only my sound instincts that kept my head clear of the panic, and I managed enough muscle control to steer us clear of the store and down the sidewalk into the alleyway and across, ’cause I just couldn’t pull off the turn. So we hit the wall next door.

What can I say, the fuckin’ physics was against me. I did what could be done, which was take the wheel in the gut.

I knew right away it was a sinkin’ ship-type situation. We’d been truly torpedoed, and it was time for the rats to race the women and the children to the lifeboat. But hey, I was dazed to a glaze, fogbound in my body, treadin’ the dark. I’m tellin’ you, my head hurt one place, my body somewhere else.

Oak was yellin’, and eventually it seemed I took his advice and got my door locked before that guy could pull me outa the car.

He was jerkin’ the handle and rockin’ the whole car while I tried to get it started again, but it was like tryin’ to raise the dead by telephone.

He suddenly turned and ran for his car. I tried to prepare myself for another rammin’. Through the window I could see a crowd was gatherin’ to catch some on-the-spot entertainment.

He didn’t disappoint them. He raced back to the door wavin’ a tire iron which he wound up and swung smack into my window.

I couldn’t believe it! The way this guy was actin’ you’d a thought we’d kidnapped, raped, then murdered his wife, daughter, and dachshund! It was only money, fer Christ sakes!

So there I was, sunk so low I was actually hopin’ somebody called the cops and they’d show up on cue like the cavalry, which they did.

I’ll tell you, there’s nuthin’ worse than gettin’ taught a painful lesson you learned thoroughly the first time. So let me be the voice of experience here for you and talk a little common sense, call it folk wisdom if you like. Just remember to remember, never mess with the crazy — whether man, woman, or animal.

And me? Just doin’ my time, thinkin’ of maybe writin’ some plays. Believe me, from now on I’m confinin’ my theater to the stage.