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  She looked at me and smiled. "Well, now I've been forced to look at life the way mere mortals do. You know, walk into a room and have men be courteous but not interested in me in the slightest bit. Or see the pity and the horror in the eyes of beautiful women who worry that this may happen to them someday."

  "He's gone now?"

  She nodded, staring at the river again, down the brambly hill and past the sandy shore to the sunlight-painted water and the occasional splashing fish.

  "He'll be back tonight. You can call him around eight if you want to catch him."

  "I'll set up a time for an interview tomorrow."

  She eased her arm through mine, led me back toward the beautiful Victorian.

  "Are you married, Jim?"

  "Not anymore."

  "Divorce?"

  "She died."

  "Lord."

  When we reached the sidewalk, she slid her arm out from mine and said, "Maybe I'll use you to make him jealous. You're a nice-looking man."

  "Thanks."

  "Would you mind?"

  I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "Not if it'll make you feel better."

  "For a little while it would."

  "Then go ahead and do it."

  "I'll tell him that you took me to lunch and that we spent the afternoon walking in the woods. God, it's been so long since he was jealous." She laughed suddenly, heartily. It was good to hear. "God, you probably think you stepped into a local production of Sunset Boulevard, some nutty old broad carrying on this way. Do you know Sunset Boulevard?"

  "One of my wife's favorites."

  "I'll bet you were faithful."

  "I was."

  "And I'll bet she was faithful, too."

  "Far as I know."

  This time, she kissed me on the cheek. "I think I'll go inside and lie down and have a fantasy about you, Jim."

  I smiled. "That's when I'm at my best. In somebody else's fantasies."

  I gave her arm a squeeze and walked back to town.

  6

  He found out soon enough that cons like to brag about crimes they'd never been charged for.

  Dumb goddamned cops this, dumb goddamned cops that.

  You know. That sort of thing.

  His second cellmate went by the name of Shay. Decent enough guy. Kept to himself. Didn't ask all sorts of questions. Kept his part of the cell clean. Was as discreet as he could be, given the circumstances, using the toilet. Was even known to read a book or two.

  But sometimes he couldn't help himself, Shay couldn't. He'd give in to the con habit of bragging about himself and his criminal past.

  "Eight burglaries in the same three-block area in the same two-week period, and they didn't catch me. Can you believe it?"

  Or:

  "Man, did I have to hightail it out of that town, believe me. That cute little waitress I said gave such great head? Guess how old she turned out to be? Fourteen years old, man. Fourteen. Her old man told the cops and then came after me himself with a couple of these jerks from the bowling alley. Man, they would've torn me limb from limb. Fourteen years old!"

  Or:

  "I bet this other guy, see, bet him I could do it with the cops sittin' right across the street in a squad car. And I did it, too. I mean, the place is all lit up and everything, and I just kind've stroll real casual-like onto the lot, and I get in this red Plymouth convertible—I figure I may as well steal a car that's got some style—and I slide behind the wheel and I hot-wire the sonofabitch right across the street from the cops, and then I pull off the lot. And they don't do anything—not a goddamned thing—till it's way too late! I took that baby for a joyride and then ditched it. They never caught me!"

  A guy can't keep hearing and hearing about how smart and cool and gifted his cellmate is without feeling a little bit competitive.

  Isn't he also smart and cool and gifted?

  Hasn't he himself pulled off a couple of stunts that would make his cellmate's pale by comparison?

  So, knowing that his cellmate will never believe his tale, putting it down to standard jailhouse fantasy, he decides to tell his cellmate about one night outside Miami, Florida.

  The speedboat he's using overturns—he's probably had a little too much vino to manipulate such a craft in the stormy waters, a downpour having started an hour earlier—and damned if he doesn't wash up like a castaway in an old silent movie.

  Now what?

  Starts walking. All he's wearing is a pair of swimming trunks. Even left his Rolex behind.

  Walks through the night and the rain for half an hour before he sees this little cabin down in a wash of white sand, meager little light showing.

  Walks down there. Knocks.

  Lady answers. Forty-fiveish. Bit overweight. But dressed in a bikini and an open man's shirt, she has a voluptuous quality that is undeniably sexy.

  Tells her his dilemma, she invites him in.

  Which is when he meets the husband, chunky guy with balding gray dome and so much gray hair on his barrel chest that he looks like he's training to become a bear. Unfriendly as hell. Can tell right away this is one very possessive guy. Doesn't appreciate your eyes on his wife's breasts. No, sir.

  They're drinking some kind of A&P generic beer and are actually pretty wasted on it. And listening to some Cuban station. Now that he gets a longer look at her, she looks a little Cuban as a matter of fact. As for the guy, what he has on the wall is a bunch of Hemingway kitsch, this stuffed marlin that he probably didn't catch personally and this big color photo of himself in battle gear in what looks to be Vietnam.

  Far as he can see, the place has three rooms and a bath. She suggests that he can sleep on the floor with some blankets she'll give him, then in the morning her husband can give him a ride into town. Husband doesn't look all that happy about it. Keeps glowering at him.

  They drink until two, and by then he knows what he's going to do.

  Really crazy idea. Dangerous idea. Absurd idea.

  But of course he's going to do it anyway.

  He's worked up so much hate for her swaggering abusive macho husband—the kind of guy he really loathes, kind of guy who was always picking on him when he was growing up—that he knows he'll go through with it.

  He gets up and pretends he's going to go to the bathroom, carrying his beer bottle to set in a cardboard box along with the empties.

  But when he gets even with the husband, he turns suddenly, hits the bastard on the head, grabs a length of clothesline he's been eyeing for the past hour, and then ties the husband in his chair. Then he grabs the wife and slams her against the wall and asks where her old man keeps his guns. She tells him. He finds a .38, loaded.

  All the wife does is scream and scream and scream. So shocked she can't get herself together enough to help her husband at all. Blood is running down the side of his head, in a stream down his cheek

  Then he goes for the wife.

  Rips her shirt off and then her swimsuit and then throws her down on the table and spreads her legs.

  He doesn't rape her till he's sure the husband is conscious and watching.

  The guy, by this time, is all screamed out. He's called him every possible name, made every possible threat. And now he's hoarse. Literally, hoarse.

  The woman is long past crying.

  She just kind of stares. He's reamed out every orifice. She just slides to the floor and stares over at her husband.

  Which is when, for his final act tonight, he rattles around in one of the drawers by the sink and finds the butcher knife.

  He goes over and cuts the husband free and then orders him, at gunpoint, to stand against the wall.

  "What're you gonna do?" the husband says suspiciously.

  But he just smiles slow-like and hands the wife the knife.

  "Stab him," he says.

  "What?"

  "Stab your husband." Terror has turned her meaty face ugly.

  "I—I couldn't do that. I love him."

  "If you don't do it, I
'll kill you."

  She looks at her husband. At the knife in her hand. Back at her husband again.

  He shoots her in the calf of her right leg. She cries out.

  "I'm going to keep shooting you till you stab him."

  An animal frenzy takes her over—she looks wildly about the room for some kind of escape.

  He shoots her in the left leg.

  She cries out.

  "Stab him!"

  And she does, lunges forward and gets him in the hairy shoulder, burying the knife much deeper than she'd probably planned.

  "Wow," Shay says. "Stabbin' her own husband. That was a great idea."

  He smiles. "Yeah, I kinda liked it myself."

  "Man," Shay says, lying back on his bunk "You sure come up with some good ones. You sure do."

  7

  Two blocks from my motel, I saw the caddy again. Cruising slow. Keeping me in sight.

  But why? She'd hired me to do a job. Didn't she trust me?

  When I got to my motel room, I went immediately to the window and peered through a slit in the dark and dusty drapes.

  They were just pulling into a parking place. I watched as they got out and walked down the street to a restaurant. They were both dressed in jeans and sweaters. She wore high heels with her jeans, this year's fashion. She had a slightly wide but very friendly sort of ass. They come in all temperaments, asses do, tight little dour ones, big friendly happy ones, perfectly shaped ones that are nice only after you click your heels and salute, and weary suburban ones that just want to be rubbed a little with a mixture of fondness and Eros.

  I went over and laid on the bed and looked at the patterns the water stains had made on ceiling and wall. What were they doing in town, anyway?

  The person in the next room decided to take a shower. The wall behind me roared and thrummed with water.

  I turned on the news. Dan Rather looked as psychotic as ever, just about ready, at last it seemed, to pick up a gun and shoot everybody on the set of Nightly News. All the time smiling that Norman Bates grin of his.

  When I woke up, it was dark. M.A.S.H. was on. I'd clickered the volume down to 0 so it was a silent movie.

  I knew exactly what I wanted to do, given the fact that Nora and Vic were following me around.

  I got up, washed my face with a washcloth that smelled musty, went over to the phone and dialed Des Moines information.

  I was surprised that Richard Tolliver had a listed number.

  I called it. A maid answered. "I'm sorry, Mr. Tolliver has gone out for dinner."

  "I see. Would you ask him to call me later tonight?"

  A suspicious hesitation. "May I ask what this is about?"

  "Family matter. His family."

  "I see." Pause again. "Do you know Mr. Tolliver?"

  "No, I don't, ma'am."

  "I see. All right, give me your telephone number, then."

  I gave her the number. "Room 115."

  "Room?"

  "It's a motel."

  "I see." Prim disapproval. I'm sure she had a picture of me naked and rolling around on the bed with five or six equally naked ladies, all of us wearing tattoos and lamp shades.

  "It's important," I said.

  "I'll see that he gets the message, sir. That's all I can do."

  "Thank you."

  "Yes, sir."

  Click.

  I went in and washed up and changed into a blue button-down shirt that the cleaners had starched to razor-sharpness, dark slacks, dark ribbed cotton socks, the ones with the gold toes just as in my college days, and a red windbreaker in honor of James Dean. Sometime this year he'd be having a birthday. It seemed the least I could do.

  I went over and peeked out the window. The Caddy was gone. It probably wasn't much fun, killing time while the guy you were following caught a nap in his shabby little motel room.

  I checked my watch.

  Still had an hour to go before dinner.

  I decided to make myself useful.

  8

  I drove to within a block of the McNally house, took my little black bag from the backseat and then worked my way down an alley so that I could watch the place from a relatively safe position.

  Lights shone. I figured I would have to come back later, or even possibly tomorrow.

  But then the downstairs lights clicked off.

  Eve McNally came out the back door, moving quickly down the narrow walk next to clotheslines still hung with white sheets that smelled clean in the starry dusk.

  I crouched behind the garbage cans and peeked through a dusty garage window.

  She got into a new Ford sedan, worked the garage door gizmo, and then drove away.

  I heard her tires crunch gravel as they headed west toward the mouth of the alley.

  A few minutes later, I stood in her small but well-organized kitchen that smelled pleasantly of spices.

  And stared into the sweet earnest face of her dog Sara. A little growl rattled in her throat and twice she let out a bark but when I got down on my haunches and put my hand out, she trotted over and I started petting her head. I almost hated to take advantage of her good nature this way. For the rest of the time, Sara followed me around, tail wagging.

  The first floor was a living room, large bath, sewing room and the kitchen. Upstairs were three good-sized bedrooms, a room with a worn couch and an old Philco black-and-white portable 17" TV and a bookcase that leaned dangerously leftward. It was filled with battered paperbacks running to romance novels, which I've always considered to be science fiction for women. My otherwise-educated, beautiful and most-sophisticated wife had read them. I found her taste just as baffling as she found mine for private-detective novels. "They're just as much make-believe as my romance novels are," she'd always said. And she was probably right.

  Nothing is what I found. Nothing at all useful, not in any way, nothing that told me why Eve McNally looked so depressed and anxious this afternoon, or burst into tears as soon as she'd closed the door behind me.

  The woman had real problems but what were they?

  I decided to try the basement, a large, dark, dusty room that would have made Bela Lugosi feel right at home.

  The washer and drier were almost comically white and comically new against the backdrop of cobwebs and cracked plaster and rat droppings and empty battered coal bin of this basement.

  There were several cardboard boxes filled with cobwebby mason jars of homemade preserves. I lifted each jar and looked under it. Nothing.

  Thanks to all the dust in the air, my allergies kicked in. I spent a few minutes sneezing, blowing my nose and coughing hard enough to give myself a vague headache. I groped in my pocket for the antihistamine tablets I always carry, my allergies being what they are and all, and after taking two, and giving my flashlight a little nudge so that its waning batteries temporarily fed more juice to the bulb, I went back to my search.

  There were drawers to be looked into, boxes to be opened and inspected, and an old metal desk that probably dated back to the forties to be gone through.

  It was in the desk—bottom-right drawer if you really care—that I found the small white box, and in the small white box that I found the finger.

  At first I thought it was fake. I have a nephew who is at that age when whoopee cushions and joy buzzers bedazzle the young mind. He once showed me a finger like this. As now, I started when I saw it. The difference was, it took me only a half-second to realize that Jamie's was a fraud. This one, however, was real. Fake ones don't come with cuts and bruises and the long red nail fiercely broken. Before this finger had been chopped off just below the lower joint, the woman to whom it belonged had put up a violent struggle.

  The finger felt obscene in my hand, cold and inhuman.

  I shone my light into the box and found the note. I used the edge of my handkerchief to extract the note—there might well be fingerprints on it—and set it down on the desk.

  Neatly typed in the center was:

  This is what happens
to your daughter if I don't get those tapes back. And if you go to the police, I'll kill her.

  There was no signature.

  I replaced note and finger in box, put box back in desk, and was just turning toward the stairs when I heard a wooden step creak.

  I shone my light up there.

  Her eyes glowed like a cat's.

  Eve McNally, she was. And she held a carbine. And it was pointed directly at me.

  "What do you think you're doing?" she said.

  "Trying to help you."

  "Right," she said. "Trying to help me."

  "I found the finger."

  "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, and I don't care. I just want you out of my house."

  She told me much more in that last sentence than she meant to.

  Most homeowners finding a burglar in their place would immediately phone for the police.

  But it was obvious that Eve McNally wanted no police in on this at all.

  I felt sorry for her. She looked alone and scared even with that carbine in her hand. She needed a friend. She really did.

  Then there was the matter of the finger.

  "You just come up the steps very slowly."

  She waved the carbine at me.

  I didn't move. "Mrs. McNally, you really don't know about the finger?"

  Her fear was now replaced by confusion. "Finger? What're you talking about?"

  "Have you been down in the basement lately?"

  "No."

  "Let me just walk over and get something from the desk. Then I'll bring it back to you."

  She sighed a ragged sigh. "This is some kind of trick. I know it is."

  "No trick. There's just something I want you to see."

  I turned and started walking to the desk. She didn't shoot me in the back. That was definitely a good sign.

  Lower drawer, right hand, small white box. You couldn't miss it. The one with the human finger inside.