Save The Last Dance For Me

   by Ed Gorman   
      
      
Volume I of Two Volumes
Pages i-Xii and 1-168



   Published by:   
Carroll and Graf Publishers
  An Imprint of  
Avalon Publishing Group Inc.
161 William St., 16th Floor
New York, Ny 10038.
 Further reproduction or distribution 
in other than a specialized
format is prohibited.

Produced in braille for the Library
of Congress, National Library
Service for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped, by National Braille
Press Inc., 2003.










This braille edition contains the
entire text of the print edition.

Copyright 2002 by Ed Gorman











Book Jacket Information iii

 A Sam McCain Mystery 
  
Praise For Ed Gorman's
Sam McCain Mystery Series

"Sweetly nostalgic mystery. ...
[McCain's] zeal to cleanse Black River
Falls of evil makes him the kind of hero any
small town could take to its heart."
--Marilyn Stasio, New York
Times Book Review

"Gorman's delightful series ...
provoke[s] a bracing nostalgia for a time that
was neither as innocent nor as dull as is sometimes
said."--.Wall Street Journal

"Gorman's successful capturing of time and
place ... sharply evokes the twilight of the
'ej's."--.Los Angeles Times

"No writer captures the mood of 1950's

middle America ... better than Gorman."
--..Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

 "Gorman seems to have hit a mother lode with this 
series."--.Publishers Weekly

"In Black River Falls ... good and
evil clash with the same heartbreaking results as
 they have in the more urban crime drama of Block 
or Leonard."--.Booklist

Murder strikes a poisonous note in
1950's Iowa as the acclaimed Sam McCain
mystery series continues.

It is August 1960, and Vice
President Richard Milhous Nixon is
riding the campaign trail. Among his next
stops is Black River Falls, Iowa--a
 prospect that has the whole town talking and 
Judge Esme Anne Whitney, the
presidential candidate's old friend, bustling with
Republican fervor. Out on the north edge of
town, meanwhile, in the abandoned garage where the
country preacher John Muldaur has set up
his ministry, the snakes are rattling. Very
 Muldaur has not endeared himself to the people of 
Black River Falls either with his snake-handling
ceremonies or with the anti-Catholic,
anti-Semitic pamphlets--The Jews
Behind John F. Kennedy screams their
headline--t he's been circulating. Still, the
 town's youngest lawyer and sometime private 
investigator, Sam McCain, finds
 Muldaur's claim that he may be the target of a 
papist assassination plot largely improbable.
McCain can't deny, though, that somebody has got
it in bad for Muldaur when, apparently
 by snakebite but actually from strychnine-laced 
Pepsi, the preacher drops dead at his own
altar.
With Nixon's visit only a week away
Judge Whitney wants this inconvenient matter
of murder cleared up fast, to keep the entire
population of Black River Falls from looking
like "a bunch of hill people" to the Gop and the national
 press. Between McCain and the solution stand a heap 
of local prejudices, some unpleasant
family secrets, the dim-witted police
chief Cliffie Sykes, Jr., another
 corpse, and a cageful of rattlesnakes. 
  
Ed Gorman, winner of the Shamus, the
Spur, and the International Fiction Writer's
 Award among others, is the author of many 
novels, including Cold Blue Midnight
and Senatorial Privilege. He has
written three other mysteries in the Sam
McCain series--..The Day the Music
Died, Wake Up Little Susie, and Will
You Still Love Me Tomorrow?--and is the editor of
Mystery Scene magazine. He lives in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

 Jacket design by Susan Shapiro, 
adapted from original series
design by Saksa Art and Design

Jacket photographs:
The Drifters; Frank Driggs
Collection/getty Images all other
photos Hulton/archivest-
  Getty Images  
    
    
Author photograph: Vii
   Amy Kinney   
      
 Also by Ed Gorman 
  
The Sam McCain Series
 The Day the Music Died; Wake Up Little 
 Susie; Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? 
  
The Jack Dwyer Series
New, Improved Murder; Murder
Straight Up; Murder in the Wings; The
Autumn Dead; A Cry of Shadows

The Tobin Series
Murder on the Aisle; Several Deaths
Later

The Robert Payne Series
Blood Moon; Hawk Moon; Harlot's
Moon

Suspense Novels
 The Night Remembers; The First Lady; 
 Runner in the Dark; Senatorial Privilege 
  
Short Story Collections
Prisoners; Dark Whispers; Moonchasers






















All of the characters in this book are ix
 fictitious, and any resemblance to actual 
persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.































For Joe and Mitsue Gorman
    and the grandkids    
Shannon, P.J., and Regan
and For Sadao, Norika, and
Hisami Sugiyama
with great love, affection, and joy









I have drawn extensively from Richard Xi
 Hofstadter's fine book 
Anti-Intellectualism in American
Life.
--E.G.




























"It was not until I was 8 years old that I
 discovered that not all the world was Roman Catholic. 
When John F. Kennedy ran for president, it
 became clear that many Americans outside our 
homogeneous enclave considered our faith strange
and suspicious and threatening. It turned out we were
a they."
--Anna Quindlen









Save The Last Dance 1
     For Me     
         
     Part I     
         
       One       
         
"You hear them, McCain?"
 "Oh, I hear them all right." 
And I did. How could you not hear them?
 "So you know what they are?" she said. 
"You bet I do," I said.
 "And you're not scared?" 
"Who said I wasn't scared?"
 "You did. On the way over." 
 "Oh." 
"So you are scared?" she said.
"A little, I guess."
"I'm scared. But then I'm a girl. I'm
not a big brave five-foot-four he-man like
you."
"Five-five."
 "Yeah, in motorcycle boots maybe." 
"In motorcycle boots I'd be
five-six. If I owned a pair."
"Have I ever told you I'm
five-foot-seven?"
"Not more than 4eagcb times," I said.
"Almost five-eight, actually."
"All right, I'm scared. Does that make you
feel better?"
 She gave me her best kid-sister grin and 
 squeezed my hand. It was a kid-sister 
squeeze, too. Nothing romantic.
"Actually, that does make me feel better,
McCain. So let's go in, all right?"
Just as we walked away from my 'ea red Ford
 ragtop, she stopped me and said. "Actually, 
maybe we're imagining it."
 "Imagining what?" 
"You know. Hearing the rattlesnakes. I
don't think you can hear rattlesnakes this far
away."
 "You want to get out a tape measure?" 
The grin again. It always made me want to kiss
her. But she was married and we were both reasonably
 honorable people. So I knew better than to try and 
she knew better than to let me should I be
foolish enough to try.
 I guess I should do a little scene-setting here. 
The date is August 19, 1960. 3
The town is Black River Falls, Iowa,
pop. 20eacjj. The pretty, red-haired young
 woman I'm with is Kylie Burke, ace 
reporter for The Black River Falls
Clarion. Only reporter, actually. She
isn't writing the story--her boss is doing
that--but she thought it'd look good on her resume
 (in case the New York Times calls 
 someday) to say she did background on a group of 
Ozark folks who moved here after getting kicked
 out of every state contiguous to ours. Seems these 
folk incorporate rattlesnakes in their
services and that is a violation of the law. And after
all the rain we had this past spring, there are
plenty of timber rattlers to be had in the
woods.
 Kylie's a bit uneasy about visiting these 
folks, as am I, so we're here together.
My name is Sam McCain. I'm the youngest
and poorest attorney in town. I'm also an
 investigator for Judge Esme Anne 
 Whitney, the handsome, middle-aged woman who 
presides over district court. At the age of
 twenty-four, I earn more from Judge Whitney 
 than I do from my law practice. I'm here tonight 
because I was summoned by Reverend John
Muldaur, the hill-country man who procures
the rattlers and oversees the services.
 The place we're about to enter is a deserted 
four-bay service garage that was once part of a
Chevrolet dealership on the north edge of town.
 It's closed up tight except two of the front 
windows have been smashed and are now filled only with
 cardboard, so you can hear everything going on. A 
tornado came through here in 'ed and killed eight
of us, including a two-month-old, and wiped out
everything in this area, including the gleaming new
Chevrolet showroom, except the garage. The
dealer decided to rebuild on the opposite end
of town, apparently figuring his luck might be
 better come the next tornado. 
 The cars and panel trucks and pickup 
trucks parked in the melancholy twilight
 looked as if they'd been driven across a time warp 
from the Dust Bowl. Hadn't been washed in years.
Had smashed windshields. Cracked headlights.
Missing taillights. Tires that held varying
amounts of air, some of them nearly flat. were
rusted out so badly the rust had turned into holes
in places. And were covered with stickers of 5
all sizes and all lurid colors exhorting
 pagans to hand themselves over to God and be damned quick 
about it before it was too late.
The service was just now starting. An Old
Testament voice said into a screeching
 microphone, "Let us now praise the Lord in 
 song." 
And that's when we knew that we really had been
hearing rattlesnakes. Because as a lone, lame
electric guitar began to play "I Know The
Bible's Right--Somebody's Wrong" the faint
 rattling sound disappeared. 
The man appeared from inside the small door in
the face of the whitewashed concrete-block
building. He was big and wide in his greasy
gray work clothes. The dour line of his mouth
exploded into a smile as he said, "The Lord
welcomes you." But the close, hard way he
 looked at us made me wonder about his words. 
 Kylie and I glanced at each other and nodded, 
 and he widened the doorway by standing aside for us. 
Right inside the door we saw the snakes.
A small, wood-framed cage of them sat
on a table with a large crude painting of Christ that
 was as spooky as the snakes. He had the 
demonic visage normally associated with
Satan. On the left side of the table was a
stack of pamphlets with a headline reading: The
Jews Behind John F. Kennedy. You could
pretty much guess what that one was all about. The
pamphlets were well printed on a
semi-glossy stock. I wondered where
Muldaur had gotten the money for them.
 There were no pews, just wobbly folding chairs; 
no decorations but an elevated platform holding
a lectern, and four more folding chairs, pushed
 back against the wall. You could still smell gasoline 
and car oil all these years later, though all the
hydraulic lifts had been taken out and the work
 pits filled in with concrete. 
"Say hello to some new friends!" John
Muldaur shouted into the microphone. He'd been
singing in a sturdy baritone. He kept grabbing a
bottle of Pepsi, gripping it hard as if it was
slipping, and guzzling it down between lyrics.
When they turned around and looked at us, the
 twenty or so people filling the folding chairs, I 
saw faces that were almost cartoons of joy and
grief and fear and hope as they sang out,
immigrant faces scrubbed clean for 7
churchgoing, unlovely faces for the most part,
 mountain people of the deep South who'd trekked up to the 
Midwest several generations ago but had never
fundamentally changed, a problem for cops,
social workers, doctors, clerics, and
neighbors. Some of these people still clung to the
 precepts of "granny medicine," where you cure 
lockjaw by crushing a cockroach in a cup of
 boiling water and drinking it down, and staunch the 
bleeding of a wound by rubbing chewing tobacco on it.
You can't estimate the effects of poverty on
generation after generation of people, that sadness and despair
and madness that so quietly but irrevocably
shapes their thoughts and taints their souls.
The Muldaurs lived off by themselves, a good
half-mile from the others, who lived in trailers
and shacks in an area called The Corners and
mostly worked for large tenant farms. Ten,
twelve families that crossbred with alarming
regularity. The women mostly wore faded
housedresses, their hair beribboned for church.
The men mostly wore threadbare white shirts with the
sleeves rolled up. A couple of them bore
dark neckties. There were six or seven very young
 children who wore shorts and shirts because of the 
eighty-degree heat. There was a certain
apprehension in the eyes of the young ones. They had not
yet been fortified with the certainty of their elders--
that those who did not practice the ways of their
faith would perish in hell, and that all strangers
meant you harm. Especially, according to the pamphlets
Muldaur had been circulating in town, the
Jews and Catholics all huddled behind Jack
 Kennedy in this fall's election. And of course it 
was the diabolical Jews stirring up all the
trouble down South with the "coloreds."
Naturally, I had mixed feelings about these people.
 About the only good thing I could say for their 
 religion was that they didn't wear hats of any 
 kind. I've often wondered if God wears a 
fedora. I mean, have you ever noticed that about
 religions, their thing for hats? But the 
rattlesnakes kind of balanced things back in the
other direction. The priests and monsignors I
grew up with all wore various liturgical
hats, caps, and beanies, but one thing you could say
 in their favor was that they never brought any 
rattlesnakes to mass, God love 'em. If
they had any rattlesnakes, they kept them in the
 privacy of the rectory and didn't tell 9 
 us about it. 
 But then there was the sadness of these people. Not even 
Steinbeck had gotten to it. The Okies were just
displaced farmers who wanted to work and prosper. I
never read anything about Okies and rattlers.
Dreiser kinda got to these people, I guess. That
opening scene of An American Tragedy where
the family is there on that twilight street
corner. I could see these people on that same corner,
snakes and all. They were the lost ones and didn't
even know it. Few of them would have indoor plumbing;
some of them wouldn't even have electricity. A good
 number of them would die young because they didn't see 
doctors. And they would spend too much of their time
fearing a Jesus who was a parody of the man or
god who lived not quite 2eajjj years ago. In their
version, He despised them and they were
appreciative of that fact. It gave some
explanation, I suppose, for their smashed and
shabby lives.
The singing continued even though John Muldaur
set down his microphone and suddenly walked down
 the aisle between the folding chairs. By this time, his 
 entire upper body glistened with sweat and he was 
muttering some kind of prayer to himself in the sort of
hypnotic fashion people speaking in tongues get
into.
 No doubt about where he was going, what he was 
 doing. 
He swooped up the two cages of snakes and
 transported them back to the makeshift altar. 
The air changed. Not just because of the hissing and the
rattling. Because of the excitement. I'd never been
to an orgy before but I was sure at one now.
Kylie nudged me. Whispered, "This is
scary."
I knew what she meant. There was a sense of
 violence in the orgiastic response to the 
snakes. Women moaned in sexual ways; men
stared as if transfixed. The children looked confused
 but excited and afraid, their tiny faces darting 
 up to survey the faces of their parents, wanting 
some sort of verbal explanation.
 Muldaur reached out his hands. His wife, 
Viola, took his left one; his teenage
daughter, Ella, his right. Both were buxom,
frizzy-haired, and aggrieved-looking. They
looked as troubled and angry as the
rattlesnakes. All three Muldaurs
raised their locked hands and said a brief 11
 prayer. "That I am pure of soul, I have no 
doubt, my Lord. Bless me in my purity, Father.
Bless me."
 Muldaur dropped the women's hands and turned 
to the snakes once again. A collective
emotional upheaval rumbled through the church. The
 big moment was approaching. The electric guitar 
played quick, exotic, crazed, off-key rifts.
Moans; shouts; cries. The snakes were coming.
Orgasm.
 My body spasmed when he reached into the cage 
and brought forth snake number one. Now slow down
and think about this: You have a small cage containing
four or five poisonous snakes, all right?
 So what do you do? You just plunge your hand in the 
 open lid up top and grab one of the buggers? 
Aren't you risking being attacked by one if not more of the
 snakes in the cage? 
 But if he was afraid--or even hesitant-- 
he sure didn't show it.
"God has sent us the serpent to reveal our
true nature," Muldaur said. Or intoned,
I guess. The rattler had brought out his intoning
 side. "Who wants his soul judged by the 
 serpent?" 
This part, I suppose, you're familiar with.
You go up there--y, not me--and let the good Reverend
Muldaur hand you off the rattler. Then you
proceed to grasp it while all the time trying
to keep it from biting you. If you manage to hold it
for a minute or two without being bitten, that means that
your soul is pure and you're one of the chosen. If
the snake bites you, you're a sinner whose sins must
be redressed. Right after they rush you to the
hospital.
Two men and a woman went up and it was about what
you might expect. There was a lot of
 Bible-quoting and a lot of prayer-shouting and one very 
tiny little girl crying. The snakes scared her.
What an irrational reaction. Timber
 rattlers, in case you don't know, usually have 
black or dark brown crossbands on a yellow
or tan body. The head is yellowish and
 unmarked. Every once in a while you find one that's 
black, misleading you into thinking you've got a
river rattler, as they're called hereabouts.
Makes no difference. Timber rattler or
river rattler, you really shouldn't treat them like
toys.
The last adult to handle a snake--a 13
heavyset bald man with a milky blue left
eye--took on two snakes. He slung them
over his shoulders, he let one wrap about half
its body around his neck, and he shook one so
 furiously that the thing went into snake psychosis. 
Then the two men and the woman stood as a group
below the lectern and let the congregation touch them, as
if they were anointed figures with divine powers.
 Singing all the time. Everybody was singing. I'm not 
 sure, but I think that even the snakes were singing. 
True, these people didn't wear hats, but they did
sing their collective asses off. The serpents
 had not bitten these three and so the trio had proved 
 its godliness and what better way to celebrate 
than with a slightly off-key electric guitar and
 twenty-some people (and some snakes) joining in 
congregational song.
I wondered if the ceremony was over. In a
Catholic mass everything depends on the sermon.
If the sermon's short, you're home free. A
short sermon, you can be out of mass in
 twenty-five minutes flat. I once got an 
eighteen-minute mass, in fact, leading to my
belief that the priest had the trots and needed to get
back to the rectory quickly. But God help you
 if you get the rambling old monsignor. With 
him, you should pack a lunch.
I had the same feeling here. The snake stuff
 hadn't taken so long--or been all that terrible, 
since nobody'd been bitten--s maybe
Muldaur wasn't as far gone as I'd feared.
 Then the little girl went up and stood next 
to Muldaur.
She was skinny, pigtailed, terrified. She
wore white walking shorts and a blue sleeveless
 blouse. She looked to be about seven. 
"Satan hides even in the hearts and souls of
children," Muldaur said.
And the congregation answered him variously with
"Yes, Brother" and "The Lord is the Light" and
"I do not fear the darkness."
 And it all changed for me. This whole 
experience. Until now a part of me was thinking about
how I'd tell my friends about this little adventure.
It'd be fun. There'd be a few shivers and a lot
 of laughs and the comforting knowledge that there really were people crazier 
than us, after all.
But I hadn't counted on a child handling a
snake.
That orgiastic sense only increased. 15
A low, steady murmur of prayer and excitement
and fear; women moaning, clutching their breasts almost
sexually; men's eyes gleaming with foreboding and
sinister anticipation.
"I'm going up there," I said.
 Of all the whispers and rumors these people 
inspired, this was the most disturbing, that they forced children
to handle the rattlers. This was the particular reason
why state, county, and local officials were always
trying to stop them from holding these services. But
nobody knew if they actually involved their children
or not. Until now.
"Be careful," Kylie whispered.
She didn't try to stop me. She wanted me
to go up there.
I started to step into the aisle when I felt
something cold and metal pressing against the back of
my neck. I'm not a gun guy. But I've
read an awful lot of Richard S. Prather
paperbacks and so I recognize the feel of a
shotgun barrel.
"Just stay right where you are," said the giant who'd
let us in. He poked me with the barrel for
emphasis.
"God, look at her," Kylie said, loudly
 enough for people to hear and turn to glare at her. 
"Mom!" the little girl shouted. "Please
 don't make me do this!" 
 They tell you snakes don't smell. And that 
they're not cold to the touch. And that they're not
slimy. In an objective sense, I knew
all this to be true. But I had the sudden
visceral feeling that I was in a cave of reeking,
slithering, cold-bodied snakes that dripped
 poison even from their vile scaly bodies. 
 "Please, Kathryn, help this young girl," 
Muldaur intoned. "We're trying to conduct a
service for the Lord here. He is not kind to those who
defy Him."
The young woman, scrawny and pigtailed as her
daughter, left her folding chair and ascended to the
raised platform. The girl clung to her, throwing
 her arms around her mother's waist and clutching her the 
way people clutch life preservers.
"If she will not hold the serpent," Muldaur
said, "that means she knows the serpent is already in her
heart."
Kathryn bent down and talked to her daughter in
a low voice.
 Muldaur addressed the congregation. 17 
"Pray for little sister Claudia that she might
receive the divine courage she needs to do her duty
for a loving God."
And they broke into loud, ragged prayer, mother and
daughter still talking in low tones back and forth.
Mother walked daughter a few steps closer to the
snake cages and pointed to the snakes inside as
if they were gentle creatures that would be fun
to play with.
 Claudia was calmer now, snuffling up her 
tears, standing little-girl tall and little-girl
 brave. Her mother dabbed at one of Claudia's 
tears with her finger. Then Mom nodded
to Muldaur.
 "Unto the Lord will the true heart deliver 
us," Muldaur said to the congregation as he opened the
lid of the second cage. Once again I was
startled by the way, almost without looking, he shoved his
hand deep into the middle of the piled, hissing
rattlesnakes and plucked one out.
He did not pause.
He handed it straight to the little girl.
And that was when the timber rattler, a sort of
 baby version, much smaller than the previous 
snakes, used the occasion to lunge at her,
striking her right on the cheek.
The little girl screamed. And so, I think, did
I.

      Two      
         
"God, Mr. C, you'll never believe
 who's pulling up in the parking lot." 
Someday, or so one hopes, Jamie
Newton, seventeen, sexy, freckled, cute,
will learn that "Mr. C" only works with Perry
Como on his Tv show because his last name happens
to begin with C. My name, using that Tv style,
would be Mr. M for McCain.
But that is only one of many things that has thus
 far eluded the elusive sweater girl who makes 
my middle-aged clients make terrible fools of
themselves. They find excuses to hang around my
office like it's the beer tent on a scorching day
at the state fair. It doesn't help that
 Jamie always looks like all the bad girls you 
see on the covers of Gold Medal novels about
jailbait girls who lead middle-aged men
to Death Row.
Jamie also can't answer the phone 19
("Uh, hello?"), type (my name usually
gets typed as "Mcc-ain"; or, on
especially bad days, "Mr. C"), buy
office supplies ("I just thought pink typing
paper would kinda brighten things up"), or resist the
call of romance (her boyfriend, Turk, usually
calls here four times per her two-hour
after-school sessions), or keep her bathroom
visits brief ("I guess I've just got a
weak liver").
How, you may ponder, did such an unpolished
gem come to reside in my cramped little office,
itself stuck in the back of a large building that
keeps changing businesses?
Small-city lawyers are like small-city
bankers. We get paid in a variety of ways.
I once got a side of beef for handling a
divorce; and a used Tv, which I still watch at
home, for a traffic case.
I got Jamie from her father, Lloyd, who
 couldn't afford to pay me for an insurance case I 
 handled for him. In exchange, he said, I'd get 
 his daughter for an unspecified time as my 
secretary. I'd tried to give her back many
 times but so far had had no luck. "Nobody 
 deserves her more than you do, Sam," Lloyd 
always says when I tell him I can't possibly
continue to accept his largesse. Lately, I've
begun to wonder exactly how he means.
 This was two days before my appearance at John 
 Muldaur's church. 
Jamie said, "He's the snake guy.
 Turk'n some of his friends snuck in there one night. 
 Turk says he heard some of them can turn themselves 
into snakes, like that girl in that movie at the
 drive-in a couple of summers ago? Did you 
ever see that one?"
"I think so."
"I just don't know how you could shrink yourself down
into a snake."
One of the questions Aristotle no doubt asked himself
many times.
"I wonder what he wants, Mr. C."
Came a knock.
"I guess we're about to find out."
She looked spooked. "God, Mr. C,
 I just thought of something." Stage-whisper. 
"What?"
 "What if he brought a snake with him?" 
"He doesn't carry snakes around with 21
him."
"Well, maybe he can turn himself into a
snake like that woman did in that movie."
 I sighed. "Just answer the door, please, 
 all right?" 
"I'm just trying to be helpful is all, Mr.
C."
"I appreciate it, Jamie. But please just
get the door."
My office is one room. I got all the
furniture at various county condemnations,
mostly businesses that couldn't pay their taxes.
Nothing quite matches but it's all serviceable enough,
I suppose. If you can overlook various dings,
scratches, scrapes, and gouges. The books
on the top two shelves of the bookcase are
fine, imposing volumes dedicated to law. The
 bottom two shelves, hidden somewhat by my 
desk, run to hardbound novels and short-story
 collections. They get read a lot more than the 
law books.
I always kind of pose when people come in. I
place myself behind my desk, put on a pair of
reading glasses I got for fifty-nine cents
at Woolworths, and pretend to be lost in my
perusal of legal documents. "Torts,
torts, torts," I've been known to mutter, just
loudly enough for my hopefully impressed client
to hear.
Jamie opened the door.
 Muldaur stood there in a faded work shirt and 
 even more faded work pants. His thick, dark hair 
 spilled over his forehead Elvis-style and his 
messianic eyes reflected both anger and
fear. Oh, yes, I suppose, I should mention
 the pistol he was holding. It was the kind of handgun 
my grandfather had, some kind of Colt.
"If this is a stickup," I said, "you've come
to the wrong place. I've got exactly
 thirty-five cents and I'm planning to blow that 
on a soda when I get done working."
"Turk gave me five dollars for my
birthday," Jamie said. "But I already spent it
on a pair of shoes."
He remained in the doorway, huge and
 fierce. "I brought the gun so you'd take me 
seriously."
"And why wouldn't I take you seriously?"
"Because nobody else in this town does. They
all think I'm kooky." 23
"Kooky," if you'll recall, is the word of
choice for Edd Byrnes, the male beefcake
on "77 Sunset Strip," one of those
realistic Tv crime dramas in which the
private eyes all drive Thunderbirds and
sleep with virgins. The word is irritating enough when
 the untalented Edd Byrnes says it; coming from a 
crazed and chiseled Old Testament madman like
Muldaur, it was downright comic.
"Why don't you come in and have some coffee and
 give your hand a rest? That gun looks pretty 
 heavy." 
"I can make some coffee," Jamie said.
She had apparently forgotten the day I pulled
an exceptionally long afternoon in court. Turk
stopped by and they got to necking and everything--I
 didn't ask her to detail "and everything" when I 
grilled her later on--and wouldn't you know it,
somehow she forgot to check the coffeepot and the darned
thing caught fire and gutted the pot so that I had
to throw it away and buy a new one. I hadn't
gotten around to replacing the coffeepot since. The
thing was, the burned-up coffee probably
didn't taste a whole lot worse than
Jamie's regular fare.
"That's all right, Jamie. Why don't you just
run over to Rexall and buy us each a cup?"
"Gee, Mr. C, I thought you only had
 thirty-five cents." 
 "Just tell them I'll pay them later this 
 afternoon." 
"Wow, you have a charge account there? That's
cool."
Bliss comes easily to Jamie.
 I watched Muldaur watching her as she 
disappeared out the front door in her tight blue
skirt and even tighter summer-weight sweater,
black-and-white saddle shoes with tiny buckles
in back, bobby sox with discreet hearts on their
sides. Wrapped around Turk's class ring (from
reform school, presumably) there was enough angora
to knit a good-size sweater. She couldn't tell
 you who John Foster Dulles was or what some 
guy named Khrushchev did, exactly. But she
was well aware of her own considerable charms.
 Turk, whom I'd never had the displeasure of 
 meeting, was a lucky kid. 
 "Nice," I said. 
"What?" Muldaur whipped around as if I'd
 poked him with a sharp stick. 25 
 "She's a nice-looking young girl." 
"I didn't notice."
"I noticed that you didn't notice."
 He shoved his craggy face forward. "If I 
put a serpent in your hand, would it find you innocent
or guilty of lust?"
I smiled. "Guilty."
"Well, it wouldn't find me guilty. I have
cleansed my soul of fleshly pleasures."
 What was the point of pushing further? He'd 
 taken more than a passing interest in Jamie's 
shapely backside, but why argue about it?
 "How may I help you, Reverend?" 
"Somebody's trying to kill me."
 "If that's true, you should go to the police." 
"If you mean that fool Cliffie Sykes,
Jr., I told him about it and he said he
didn't blame them. I'm being followed. I can
feel it, sense it. Somebody took a shot at
me as I was leaving the church. Can you believe that?
He's supposed to be a lawman."
"Any idea who might be trying to kill you?"
"You believe me, then?"
"I believe that you believe somebody is trying
to kill you. So I'd like to hear you explain things a
little more."
"I appreciate that." Then, "I think it's
the Catholics."
"Ah," I said, "The Catholics. I
see."
"And the Jews."
"Ah," I said. "The Jews." Then,
"Well, speaking as a Catholic myself, Reverend
Muldaur, I doubt the Catholics I know would
 do such a thing, despite all the really vile things 
 you've said about us. And as for Jews, there're only 
a few Jewish people in town, and they're just too
nice to go around killing people. Or even threatening
it."
He watched me. "You're a dupe."
 "A dupe of whose, Reverend Muldaur?" 
"The pope."
"Ah, a papist dupe."
"You think this is funny?"
"No, what I think this is, is pathetic. You
and your people are angry because a Roman Catholic
may become president. I hope he does.
I plan to vote for him."
 "And you know how he'll get in?" 
                         "How?" 27                         
"The Jews and their money."
 "I hate to say this but my people haven't ever 
treated the Jews very well. In fact, we've
 treated them very badly. Even murdered them. And 
refused to help them during Ww Ii. So why
 would the Jews and the Catholics be working together, 
exactly?"
 He leaned back. For the first time, he smiled. 
 His smile was even scarier than his scowl. "You 
 ever looked in the basement of your Catholic 
 church?" 
I returned his smile. "Now that's always been
one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I've ever
heard."
"You don't believe it?"
"Of course I don't believe it. I was an
altar boy. I was in the church basement hundreds
of times."
"You ever hear of subbasements, Mr.
McCain?"
"Oh, the old sub-basement routine, eh?"
"You find the subbasement and you'll find the
guns."
It was an old theory often expressed on
right-wing radio out here in the boonies. The
international cabal of The Jews (note the
capital letters) use the basements of Catholic
churches to store their weapons. What weapons and for
 what reason? Because when the revolution comes The 
 Jews and The Catholics, who have only been 
pretending to disagree at times, will then rise up and
impose a One World government on all
right-thinking non-Jews and non-Catholics.
I leaned forward on my elbows. "I'm
afraid I can't help you."
 "You're just like the others, aren't you?" 
"First of all, Reverend Muldaur, I'm a
lawyer. I'm not a bodyguard."
"You're also a private investigator."
"True."
 "So I'd like you to come to one of my services and 
just look around."
"Look around for what?"
 "Somebody who doesn't seem to belong." 
"A spy?"
 "Something like that. Dupes like you may not realize 
this, Mr. McCain, but the pope has his own
assassins."
 "I see. And the first place these assassins would 
think of is Black River Falls, 29
Iowa?"
"Catholics aren't known for clear thinking.
All that mumbo jumbo they believe."
I realized then that the only way I was ever
going to get rid of him was to agree to help him.
Besides, the service would probably be worth
seeing. Much as I feared snakes, there'd be a
certain repellent majesty to watching all the
snake-handlers do their work.
 "What time does it start?" I said. 
He didn't have a chance to answer. Jamie was
back.
 She should have asked for a sack. Instead she 
gripped the three soggy-hot cardboard containers
in her hands. And as she approached the front of the
 desk where we sat, I saw what was about 
to happen. She stubbed the toe of her shoe against
something and lurched forward. And in lurching forward the
coffee went slamming down against the desk.
"Oh, shit!" she cried as the containers
exploded, spraying coffee everywhere.
 Muldaur leaped from his chair, avoiding the 
worst of the flying coffee. I didn't do too
 badly, either, just got a shot of it on my right 
sleeve. My desk was the main casualty,
papers soaked, coffee dripping off the desk
edges.
"You let her talk that way?" Muldaur
intoned.
"Talk what way?" I didn't know what he
was referring to. I was too busy assessing the
damage.
"I used the word "shit," Mr. C."
 "She did it again," he said. 
"I was just saying what I said is all," she
said miserably.
"Please go get some rags and start cleaning this
up, Jamie."
"I'm sorry I used the S word,
Reverend," Jamie said earnestly, and I felt
sorry for her. She looked very sweet right now.
Too bad Muldaur couldn't appreciate her
 particular form of innocence. 
"You wouldn't be using words like that if you came
to my church, I can tell you that."
She glanced at me. Scared. She was
probably thinking he was going to turn her into a
serpent or something. She rushed from the room.
"Two nights from now," Muldaur said.
"Eight o'clock. I'm sure you know where it 31
is, the way everybody makes fun of us."
"Strictly speaking, you're breaking the law,
Reverend. Bringing poisonous reptiles to a
public place."
"Your law," Muldaur reminded me. "Not
God's law."
That's one thing I have against organized
religions of all kinds. They have all of the
answers and none of the questions.

      Three      
         
 I guess Kylie and I were sitting at the 
wrong angle. From our folding chairs in the back
of the place, it sure looked as if the little girl
had been bitten by the striking snake. Later on,
we'd learn that she'd flung the baby rattler
away from her before it could do any damage.
What we didn't mistake was what then
happened to Reverend John Muldaur. At the
same time the little girl was screaming and holding her
 hands out for her mommy, Muldaur went into the kind 
of convulsions Jerry Lewis goes into for laughs.
But you could tell by the abrupt mask-like stiffening of
his face, which was an expression of shock and
horror, that whatever was wrong with him was for real.
His body went into spasms, an arm kicking out,
a leg collapsing, the other arm flailing away from
his body as if it wanted to tear free.
 While one of the male members of the church 
 collected the rattlesnake and put it back in 
 its cage, the other members of the church formed a 
 circle around the minister, who was now flat on his 
back on the platform, arching up every few seconds
to allow his entire body to jerk and twist and
convulse. We were part of the circle.
Prayers went up like flares; sobs
exploded. A lone woman
hurried-pushed-paddled the children out the door.
 An older man in a T-shirt with a Dixie 
flag on it knelt next to Muldaur saying the
same thing over and over, "You're receiving the spirit of the
Lord, Reverend, and you shouldn't be afraid."
Some spirit. Some Lord.
"Is there a phone in here?" Kylie asked.
 "A phone in the house of the Lord?" a woman 
snapped back.
 "There's a pay phone down the road," one of the 
more sensible women said.
"He's receiving the Lord," said the man in 33
the Dixie flag T-shirt, calmly.
"He'll be fine in a minute."
But Muldaur wouldn't be fine in a minute.
His attempts at breathing were loud and frightening.
I'd visited my granddad, a "lunger," on a
Va ward one time. He'd never recovered from the
 various lung ailments he'd picked up from 
various poison gases in Ww I. He was like
a sea creature writhing on a beach beneath a
pitiless sun. My mom always cried for days after
seeing him like that.
Muldaur's death--I had no doubt he was
passing over--was far noisier and gaudier.
He was bug-eyed, flailing tongue, wriggling
eyebrows. He was spit, snot, urine,
 feces. He was crying, cursing, keening. He was 
dancing, heaving, pounding.
"The Lord comes to us in many strange ways," said
the Dixie T-shirt man. He was as beatific
as ever.
"Marv, you've got a motorcycle," the man
who'd recovered the baby rattler said. "Run
 down and call for an ambulance." 
Marv trotted out the door.
There are significant moments that you can't quite
deal with completely--they'd explode your mind if
 you gave yourself to them completely--s a portion of 
your brain observes you observing the moment. It was
like that the first time I ever had sex. I was enjoying it
all so much I was afraid I'd start acting real
 immature and yell stuff or act unlike the 
sophisticated, jaded sixteen-year-old I
was. So a sliver of my mind detached and took
 an overview of everything. While my body was 
completely given over to trying to last at least
three minutes, my mind was congratulating my
body. You're a man now, young McCain. A
worldly gadabout-philosopher stuck in a town where
the new co-op grain silo is still a newsworthy
event. You, McCain, are a Hemingway sort
of guy.
I was hoping a portion of my mind would detach
now and watch me watch Muldaur die. But it
 didn't. And so all I could do was stand there and 
hope that there was a life afterward because if this kind of
suffering had no meaning--six million Jews in
the concentration camps; millions who could be
 snuffed out with a brief exchange of atomic 
bombs--then none of the words our religions
spoke were anything more than ways of hiding 35
 the meaninglessness of everything. And frankly, cosmic 
meaninglessness scares the shit out of me the way nothing
else comes close to. I should never have taken those
 philosophy courses as an undergrad. 
 And then I realized something. 
The only thing more terrifying than watching
Muldaur throwing himself voodoo-crazed all over
 the floor of the platform was watching him lie there 
 absolutely still. 
Which is what he was doing now.
And it didn't take me long, worldly
gadabout-philosopher and Hemingway sort of guy
that I am, to realize what this meant.
 Muldaur was dead. 
  
"What'd he do? Crap his pants? God, that
smell is awful. I knew those damn snakes
would kill somebody eventually." We were still inside
the church. Sykes'd shooed a lot of the
worshipers outside.
With his usual dignity and professionalism,
Cliffie Sykes, Jr., hitched up his
holstered Colt .45, hitched up the Bowie
knife he carries in a belt scabbard, touched
a tip of his black Western boot to the corpse,
and screwed up his fat face into a parody of
Porky Pig, no personal offense meant to you,
Porky.
 Cliffie, Jr., is the chief of police. 
At one time Black River Falls was owned and
operated by the Whitney family, a branch of
Eastern millionaires who came out here when one
of the men got involved in some kind of legal trouble
involving stock swindles. They tried to create a
 small version of a New England town out here on the 
prairie. They were imperious, of course, and
snobs, of course, and contemptuous of the rest of the
town, of course. But they brought sound town
government, good and fair law, and an eagerness
to keep the town clean and modern, all the
virtues of New England Yankees.
World War Ii changed all this, as it changed
so many things, good and bad. Cliff Sykes,
Sr., owned a small construction company at the
 start of the war. Then he entered into various federal 
 contracts with the government. He built airplane 
runways, roads, training camps. And his
brothers and sisters practiced every kind of
black-marketing there was. One of his sisters was
even an Allotment Annie, a woman 37
 so-called because she married soldiers just about to ship 
overseas and collected their monthly allotment
 checks. One New York woman was indicted for 
having forty-six husbands. I doubt that Helga
Sykes had had that many husbands, only because there
 weren't that many blind soldiers. 
 Anyway, the long run of the Whitney 
family, begun in the previous century, came
 to an end. The Sykes clan were not only 
 wealthier, they were more powerful. They took over this 
part of the state, including our town. And thus it was
that Cliffie Sykes, Jr., who had failed
to pass the police entrance tests given by six
other towns, started his law enforcement career as our
chief of police.
"You smell that, McCain?"
"Yeah, I smell it."
"He crapped his pants."
 "Yeah, you said that, Sykes." I only 
called him Cliffie when I was so mad I
 didn't care anymore. 
He pointed to the snake cage. "I should go
get my shotgun and kill every one of those
bastards." He pawed his stubby hands on the
front of his khaki uniform, the kind Glenn Ford
always wears when he's playing a lawman.
 Secretly, Cliffie thinks he's Glenn 
Ford. Secretly, I think I'm Robert
Ryan. Which I am, pretty much, except for the
height, the good looks, the deep voice, the
 masculinity, and the charm. 
"Or you could always just take them to the woods and
set them free," Kylie said.
He seemed to see her for the first time. She'd be
 pretty hard to miss. She was the only pretty 
 one of the three of us. Everybody else he'd run 
 outside. 
"Say, what're you doing here?"
"I'm with McCain."
"And what's McCain doing here, while I'm
at it?" he said.
 "McCain is doing here what Muldaur asked 
 him to do," I said. 
 "And that would be what exactly?" 
"Exactly, that would be trying to ascertain if
somebody was trying to kill him."
"He told you that?"
"He told me that."
"Why'd he think somebody was trying to kill
                         him?" 39                         
 "He thought it was because of all those pamphlets 
he was handing out."
"What was wrong with those pamphlets? I read
a couple of 'em and they seemed all right to me."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" I said.
"And anyway, the snakes killed him."
"I don't think so."
"That's what you told me."
"No, it wasn't. That's what you told yourself.
You haven't even asked me what killed him."
"Well, if he was doin' all that
heebie-jeebies stuff, then what killed him?"
Kylie said, "Poison."
"Yeah, snake poison."
 She shook her fetching head. "I don't think 
so. We studied snakes in biology in
college."
"College," Cliffie scoffed. "A training
ground for commies."
Kylie sighed. She was used to him. "Snake
 venom rarely produces symptoms like that." 
"Like what?"
"Like what you call the heebie-jeebies."
 "So if it wasn't snake poison, what was 
 it?" 
"We'll have to let the autopsy tell us," I
said.
The ambulance siren cut through our conversation as the
boxy white truck swept up in front of the
open doorway. You could hear the attendants
hitting the ground and yanking the gurney from the
back.
 Cliffie, thumbs in his gunbelt, swaggered 
up to meet them.
"Why aren't I surprised Cliffie liked
those pamphlets? And I'm not saying that just because
I'm Jewish. I'd be mad even if I
wasn't." Then she smiled. "And by the way,
 McCain, the rabbi put some more guns in the 
basement of your church last night."
"I'll alert the monsignor."
 They made swift work of Muldaur, the 
ambulance boys.
 When they were lifting him onto the gurney, 
Cliffie, ever helpful, said, "Sorry about the
smell, boys. He crapped his pants."
"You calling Bci?" I said, referring to the
state Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Without
their help, small towns just can't do adequate
scientific crime investigations. 41
"For what?"
 "For what? To find out who poisoned him." 
"Did it ever occur to you, McCain, that maybe
one of his snakes bit him earlier and he was just
having a delayed reaction. Snakebites can do
that, you know."
 "Clifford Sykes, Jr., 
Herpetologist," Kylie said.
"What's that herpe-thing mean?"
 "It means snake expert." 
 "Oh." 
He'd obviously thought she'd insulted him.
 Then he said, "So I call them in and it turns 
out to be an accidental snakebite and then I
look like a fool."
"Gee, I can't imagine you ever looking like a
fool, Chief," Kylie said in her sweetest
voice.
"Well, God knows you and that left-wing rag you
work for have tried to make me sound like one every chance you
get."
 Maybe it was the innumerable times he'd arrested 
 people for crimes they hadn't committed. Maybe it was 
the year he pocketed half the ticket sales
to the policeman's dance. Maybe it was the time
The Clarion pointed out that it was Cliffie's
first cousin Luther who was not only selling our town
its police vehicles but also charging twenty
percent over the sticker price. It wasn't real
hard to make a case against Cliffie.
"We couldn't do it without your help," Kylie
said, all sweetness again.
Cliffie was about to respond when one of the children
raced into the church. Cliffie did not like this. When
Cliffie tells you to stay out, he gets most
unpleasant if he sees you defying him.
He lunged for the kid and shouted, "Hey, you,
twerp!"
"Maybe he'll shoot him," Kylie said.
"Nah. Nothing worse than a
pistol-whipping, probably."
The kid wanted to see the snakes, was the thing.
He rushed up to the cage and stood gazing in fear
and amazement at the serpents that hissed and rattled
at a world as alien to them as theirs was to us.
"You get away from there now," Cliffie said.
"They wouldn't bite me, Chief," the boy
said. He was probably eight, with a bowl-job
haircut like Larry's of the Three Stooges,
something Mom probably gave him at 43
home. "I don't have sin in my heart. I
really don't."
 "You heard what I said." 
Cliffie yanked him down from the platform and
dragged him outside.
 Something had been troubling Kylie all evening. 
Something that was becoming clearer and clearer on her
girlish, elegant face. Somehow, I sensed that
 it didn't have anything to do with the church here, frightening 
as that had been.

 "You give me a ride home, McCain? I 
guess I've about had it. Watching him die like that
 took it out of me." She slid her arm through mine. 
"Let's go outside."
Heat, mosquitoes, fireflies, and the
smell of gasoline, cigarettes, and sweaty people
awaited us. The place was already becoming a
carnival. On a summer night in a small
town there's nothing front-porch folks would rather do
than follow ambulances. Put up some iced
tea there, honey, and we'll see where that ambulance
is goin'. Hurry, now. More dramatic than
 Tv, cheaper than the movies. And they were just now 
pulling up, forming a semi-circle around the cars
of the churchgoers. They were practiced enough at all this
to leave plenty of room for the official vehicles
to get in and out. And they were bold enough to go right up
to Muldaur's flock and ask them questions. They were
sure this just had to involve snakes, and what could be
more exciting than something that involved snakes and was
cheaper than going to the movies?
But it wasn't all front-porch types, and
 that surprised me. Reverend Thomas C. 
 Courtney was there, for one, the first minister to look 
as if Esquire had dressed him. I wondered
if the apostles had worn starched blue dress
shirts, white ducks, and deck shoes. And
 driven green Mg's. I always enjoyed driving 
 past his church to see the titles of his forthcoming 
sermons. "You, John Paul Sartre, and The
Crucifixion" was still my favorite. We used
to parody that title. I came up with "You,
Gabby Hayes, and The Heartbreak of
Hemorrhoids." (i was reading Mad
magazine a lot in those days.) Courtney
appealed to what we call, out here anyway, the
gentry. He'd angered a lot of Catholics
lately by preaching a piece written by Dr.
Norman Vincent Peale, the most 45
successful Protestant minister of our day, who
claimed that Jack Kennedy was, as a
Catholic, beholden to Rome and that a vote for
Kennedy was thus a vote for papal rule.
Finding Sara Hall here was even more
surprising. A fading country-club beauty
who'd been to the Mayo Clinic several times for
what was locally called "a little drinking problem,"
Sara was a friend of my employer, Judge
Whitney, and a woman I liked. Her hands
twitched sometimes, and she was known to have had a couple
minor breakdowns in very public places a few
 years back. One day, seeing me on the street 
 and having met me only once, she asked if 
I'd have a cup of coffee with her. I was
 surprised but I went. And when our coffee came 
and she'd had a couple of swallows, she said,
"I was just afraid I might pop in somewhere and have
 a drink. But instead I can sit here and talk to you. 
I really appreciate this."
Muldaur's people had gathered in front of two
battered Chevrolet trucks, from one of which
issued the plaintive cry of hill music in its
purest form, not steel guitars but slide
guitars, the kind of music first heard on these
shores a couple hundred years ago when
Irishers landed on the shores of the Atlantic.
The voices of the girl singers were my favorite
parts, high-pitched wails relating tales of
doomed lovers and the men who enslaved them. The
lyrics were changing now, influencing country music
and being influenced by it at the same time. This was the
music of a subculture that would never become
mainstream. To find life as it was lived a
hundred years ago, maybe a hundred and
 fifty years ago, you didn't have to travel far. 
 I saw it peripherally, not sure at first that I 
 did see it, the big man who'd guarded the church 
door leaning over to slap a small woman,
 hard, across the mouth. This was in the far shadows, beyond 
the wall of crunched and crushed vehicles they
 drove. They stood between two such vehicles. 
 They were easy to see. 
It was just at that moment that Cliffie started baying
orders for all the people who'd been inside the church
to start giving statements to his men--first cousins,
second cousins, shirttail cousins--who were now
moving among the flock with ball-point pens and
nickel back-pocket notebooks. Cliffie
had once seen Bci agents do this and had 47
forever after imitated it. Hey, this idea of
interviewing witnesses seemed like a pretty
neat-o keen idea. Boy, where was this
scientific detection stuff going to end,
anyway?
"You mind if we leave? I'm getting kind of
tired."
 Kylie's voice broke somewhere in the middle 
of that last sentence and then she did something I'd
 never seen her do before. She started crying. Not 
hard, not loud, mostly just large, gleaming tears
 collecting in the corners of her dark eyes. She 
didn't wait for my answer. "C'mon,
McCain, let's go, all right?"

      Four      
         
It is a strange summer for me. The girl
 I've loved since grade school is in 
Kansas City, hiding out from the scandal of running
off with our town's most important lawyer.
Married lawyer, I should add. Two kids and
all. Lawyer and wife have made up. The
beautiful Pamela Forrest is, however, pretty
much gone forever. Mary Travers, the girl I should
have fallen in love with--z much as you can determine
something like that, I mean--is getting married to the
man whose father owns the local Rexall plus a
 whole lot of other property in the county. She still 
loves me, or so she said the last time I saw
her, but I've screwed up her life too many
times as it is.
And the other day I was sitting in the backyard of
my folks' place and I started to study them. Not
just look at them. Study them. And see how old
they're getting. And I felt scared and sad and
lonely because they're such good people and I sure don't
want them to die. And Mrs. Goldman, my
 landlady, about whom I've had more than a few 
erotic fantasies, went to some kind of cancer
meeting in Iowa City--her sister recently died
of cancer--and she came back with those sticker
decals you put on your medicine cabinet
mirror, Cancer's Seven Danger
 Signals. And put them on every medicine 
cabinet mirror in the house, including mine. And
I started thinking about it. I mean, she meant
well. But I started thinking about it. That I could
die, too. That it wasn't impossible for a
twenty-four-year-old to pass over. 49
 And then at the grocery store last Saturday, 
everybody crowded in there buying potato chips and
beer and Canada Dry mixes for highballs.
I saw a lot of the kids I'd graduated with from
 high school. And they all had wives and kids in 
tow. And looked happy. And grown up. And I
thought of what a mess my life was and how in a
 lot of ways I was still a kid and sometimes that was 
all right but other times it made me ashamed of
myself. Maybe I'd never be Robert Ryan but
at least I could be an adult like my dad. He
had to quit school when he was in tenth grade
to help support his family. I guess that
grows you up pretty fast.
 And now here I am with Kylie, whom I have this 
sort-of stupid half-assed crush on even though
 she's married and I sure don't want to get 
involved in anything like that, and we're just riding the
prairie night with the top down in my red Ford
ragtop, taking the long way home at her
request, out on the blacktop that runs between the
woods and the river, the moon high and round and
silver-gold, and the cattle and the horses lowing in
 the farmyards, and a lone motorboat out on the 
river, its wake phosphorescent as it cuts the
moonlight, and I'm wondering if Kylie
feels as lonely as I do at this moment.
She said, "This feels good."
"Yeah. It does." Though I wasn't quite
sure what "x" referred to.
"Everybody should have a convertible."
"Can't disagree with you there."
"Even the pig shit smells sort of good
tonight."
"Yeah, I was just thinking that myself. Boy, this
pig shit really smells good tonight."
She slugged me on the arm.
She didn't say anything for a time, we were just
cruising along the river, and there was this houseboat
 then and even from here you could hear the Latin music 
and the people all laughing, and she said, "I wish I was
out there."
"On the houseboat?"
"Uh-huh."
"How come?"
"Oh, I've got my reasons."
"What you've got is some sort of secret,
don't you?"
She laughed. "Cliffie Sykes, Jr.,
Herpetologist. Samuel McCain, 51
Mind Reader."
"So you going to tell me what it is?"
"No. Because if I do I'll get sad again.
And I don't want to be sad for a while."
"I don't blame you there."
 "Sometimes, it feels sorta good to be sad. 
You know what I mean?"
"I think so."
"But most of the time it just feels like shit to be
 sad." Then, "Could you turn up that song? I 
 love it." 
Fats Domino. "Blueberry Hill."

I got her home about half an hour later.
 She lived in a cottage isolated on the 
edge of a creek and snuggled between elms. There was
 an old swing set in the side yard. You could almost 
hear the happy squeals of kids from other times.
Every once in a while, tired of newspapering,
she'd say, "I should just pack it in and have some
kids, McCain." She hadn't said that for some
time.
The house was dark. Her road-weary 1951
 Dodge sat in the grassy drive. Chad's car 
 wasn't there. Chad taught English at the 
University of Iowa, forty-five minutes
away. He was one of many grad students there
writing a novel on the side. We'd never cared
much for each other. He was this big, blond guy
 who dominated every room he was in with his harsh 
opinions and uncharitable evaluations of everybody
 around him. I think the word I'm struggling for here 
is jerk. He caught me reading a Gold
Medal paperback by Charles Williams at the
Rexall lunch counter one time and has ever since
called me, with great scorn, "The Gumshoe."
I planned to tell him someday that Williams was
a better stylist than he or his fellow
wanna-bes would ever be. But I was waiting till
I got my full growth before I did. He was
something like six-two.
"Guess Chad's still in Iowa City, huh?"
I said.
"Yeah," she said.
"Probably working on his novel."
"You know better than that." Not looking at me.
Just staring at the dark house.
"I do?"
 "You're not exactly an idiot, McCain." 
"I'm not?" 53
"Chad's got himself a girlfriend."
"Oh."
"That's what he's doing in Iowa City."
"You sure?"
"I skipped work one day and went to Iowa City
and followed him around. She lives off-campus.
They spent all afternoon in her apartment. She's a
junior. Really beautiful."
"Maybe it's not what you think."
"All afternoon and it's not what I think?"
"So what're you going to do?"
"Kill him is what I should do."
It was a night of fireflies and frogs on the
cusp of the creek and boxcars rattling through the
 darkness up in the hills. The ragtop idled a 
little rough. Tune-up time.
 Then she was up and gone to the dark cottage, 
 cursing when the key didn't open the front door 
first try, exploding into sobs once she was
inside.
 I thought of going in after her but she probably 
wanted to be alone. I liked her and I felt
sorry for her. The good ones always get it.
Maybe the Reverend Thomas C. Courtney could
explain that one in one of his sermons. Why the good
ones always get it. Or maybe I could put in a
long-.tance call for John Paul Sartre and
 he could tell me. 
I went home.

Judge Whitney called me early the next
morning and told me what she wanted. Soon after
the call I ate breakfast at Also
Monahan's. Al lost both his legs on
Guam but the way he gets around in his wheelchair
 should qualify him for the Indy 500. People, including 
the wasp Brahmins, started going to Also's out of
duty and pity. But they kept coming back because the
food's so good. Al and his harried crew have the
most successful restaurant in town.
When I got outside on the street again with my
 toothpick and my Lucky, my easy-over eggs 
and toast sitting just fine and dandy in my stomach,
I saw three middle-aged men standing beside a
small black car, assessing it. There'd been
an advertising sign for the Edsel--?Rock and
Roll, Sputnik, Flying Saucers, and now the
 Edsel!"--t had irritated the old-timers. But 
that was because it reminded them of their age, and seemed
to exclude them from driving such a 55
youthmobile.
The Volkswagen this trio was looking at was
 controversial for another and far more serious reason. 
 Men their age had fought hard to defeat Germany, 
leaving many of their friends behind on European soil.
Now here came the krauts insinuating their way
into the American economy with their undersized,
underpriced cars that were threatening to displace a segment
of the American car market. The fear was that these little
cars would ultimately throw a whole lot of
American workers out of jobs. I didn't have
to stop to hear the dialogue. I knew it by heart.
 And agreed with it. "This was the car that Hitler had 
built for his people. They shouldn't be allowed to sell it
over here."
I was glad to get into my red Ford and head out
to the edge of town. It was a butterfly morning.
In places beneath heavy branches the shaded areas still
gleamed with dew. All the early-morning kids on
their trikes and bikes looked fresh and alert at
the top of the day. A skywriting plane was writing
"Make it Pepsi!" The radio was wailing a
great old Elvis tune "I Want You, I
Need You, I Love Y." The Church of
 Elvis. I was a faithful communicant. 
I tried not to think about rattlesnakes or
Kylie's unfaithful husband or my loneliness.
I just tried to enjoy the day, the way all the
positive-thinkers like Pat Boone tell you
to. His best-seller of advice to high-schoolers
"Twixt Twelve and Twenty" had teenagers
laughing from coast to coast.
And I did, too, all the way out to the
trailer behind the church where Muldaur had died
last night. The exchange of gunfire, however,
took the day down a notch. Even Pat Boone
would have to admit that gunfire tends to put a pall
on a nice day.
Six or seven quick shots burnished the air.
It was a butterfly day out here, too.
Except all the butterflies were hiding behind
boulders so they wouldn't get hit in all the
gunplay.
 The first thing that came to mind was the 
Hatfield-McCoy feud of lie and legend,
two hillbilly families that warred with each
other generation unto generation. They came to mind because
the trailer resembled a shack, patched as it was with
cardboard, sheet metal, stucco, anything that could
be adhesed, nailed, or otherwise 57
appended to the rusted-out abode. A shotgun poked
from its lone front smashed window.
 Then there was the motorcycle with a sidecar. A 
very small man, not much bigger than a munchkin,
looking an awful lot like Yosemite Sam with his
long red beard and floppy battered hat, crouched
behind his cycle, firing away with his shotgun at the
trailer. What you have to understand here is that neither party
was seriously trying to hit the other. Nobody's
 aim could be that bad. The sidecar was more interesting 
than the gunfire. From it stuck the barrels of at
least eight or nine long rifles, shotguns, and
even--I kid you not, as Jack Paar likes
to say--a hunting bow. As in bow and arrow.
 The first thing I considered was the health and 
well-bbing of my ragtop. I swung back in
front of the church and parked it there. Then I
snuck around the side where I could be seen and
heard. The folks firing the guns were under the
impression--probably correct--t out here in the
boonies nobody would bother them. Hell,
nobody would probably hear them.
But being the good-citizen type, I raised my
voice and said, "If you people don't put your guns
down I'm going to call Sykes and have him come out
here."
 "Viola! Viola! Who the hell is this 
 guy?" shouted the man with all the weapons. 
 "He works for Judge Whitney!" a female 
voice from inside the trailer shouted back.
"Judge Whitney! She's the one threw me
in the jug for lumpin' Bonnie up that time!"
"Lumpin'" in mountain language means
putting lumps on another person's body.
"We better stop firin', Ned!"
 "Put your gun down and walk away from your 
motorcycle," I said. "With your hands up."
 "You ain't even got a gun," he said. 
"That's right."
"And you ain't even much bigger'n me, either."
 "Right again, pal. But it's me or Cliffie." 
He frowned and spat a stream of tobacco that was
probably carcinogenic enough to scar the earth forever.
"Cliffie. One day me'n that sumbitch is
gonna tangle, I'll tell you that."
 "Away from the motorcycle. Hands up. 
Now." I said it just the way Robert Ryan would
h.
Cliffie loved beating up people who didn't have the
 education or the money to fight back 59 
legally. A man like this would give Cliffie
plenty of thrills.
 He moved away from the motorcycle. With his 
 hands up. 
"Now, you come out of the trailer," I said.
"With your hands up," Ned said. Then to me, "I
 gotta have my hands up, they gotta have their hands 
 up." 
"Fair enough," I said.
There were two of them, mother and daughter, the
 Muldaurs. They wore the same kind of 
tent-dresses they'd worn last night, the kind
that hides bodies too big, shame dresses
really.
"C'mon over here," I said. "I want you
folks to tell me what's goin' on."
 "I want my money," Ned said. 
"What money?"
"Money their mister owed me for snakin'."
"I thought Muldaur did his own snakin'."
"He could handle 'em but he couldn't find 'em.
 I took him out with me about six months ago and 
he couldn't find nothin'. Not even a garter
snake. Muldaur's the only one made any
money that day."
"He paid you what he could," Viola
Muldaur said. She had a wide, Slavic
face that had likely been pleasant before hard
times had taken their toll. It was too easy,
what with her snakes and all, to dismiss her as an
alien of some kind.
"So he paid you to find them?" I said.
He nodded. If he weighed 120, 100 of
it had to be dirt, grime, slime. The ratty
 red beard had things crawling in it. The gums 
looked charred--yes, folks, charred--andthe one
 blue glass eye managed to appear goofy and 
 sinister at the same time. He wore a filthy 
 cotton vest with nothing but scrawny, hairless 
 chest beneath, and a pair of Sears Roebuck jeans 
 even more vile than the vest. And no shoes. His 
toenails had some kind of luminescent
green-blue fungus growing on them. I'd be
 proud to have him in my family. 
"He owed me for that last batch."
"And you came here with your shotgun?" I said.
 "You ever hear of sending somebody a bill?" 
 "That's how we settled things in the hills." 
"He's right, mister," Viola said. "We
wouldn't actually hurt nobody. Just 61
 make a lot of noise. And what're you doin' out 
here, anyway?"
"Just wondered if you'd had any ideas about who
might've poisoned your husband."
 "I sure do," the girl said. 
 "You hush, Ella." 
 I studied their eyes. Ella had been crying. 
Viola was wiping tears from her eyes. Ella
seemed unsteady, ready to erupt. Viola
looked calm. Different people react differently
to the death of a loved one. Still, Viola's reaction
made me curious. Ella kept touching a rashed
spot just below her knee. She'd rubbed something on
it.
"You tellin' me you don't have no money?"
"That's what I'm tellin' you, Ned."
"I suppose they give you credit down at the
Tv store."
"John hisself bought that set. I don't
know nothin' about it."
"I bet."
I said, "You were going to say something, Ella.
About who might have killed your father."
"Ella wasn't gonna say nothin' and
 Ella ain't gonna say nothin'," Viola 
said. "You understand that, girl?"
 Ella, a whipped dog, nodded slowly. She 
suddenly seemed winded, washed out. She looked
older today, maybe sixteen or seventeen.
"And as for you, mister, I want you off my
property."
 "You seem to forget your husband hired me." 
"Yeah. To find out who wanted to kill him."
She smiled with dirty teeth. "And you done a
 whale of a good job at finding out who, didn't 
 you?" 
Ned's whole body did a delighted kind of
puppet-dance. "Hee-hee, she sure got you
on that one, city boy."
That was probably the first time a man from Black
River Falls, Iowa, had ever been called a
city boy. In a way, it was flattering.
 I glanced back at his junky motorcycle, 
big-ass old Indian, and the sidecar with all the
artillery in it. "You expecting a war any time
soon?"
 "I sure am, city boy. And when it comes, 
I'll be ready for it."
I'd suddenly run out of things to say to these people.
I felt sorry about leaving Ella behind-- 63
she was young enough there might still be hope for her--but there
wasn't anything I could do short of kidnapping
her. And if I did that, Ned here would probably
 get out his bow and arrow. 
I went around and got in my ragtop.

What exactly, you may ask, is the
Cincinnati Citadel of Medinomics? Many
before you have asked and many after you will do likewise.
 As near as I can figure, it's a diploma 
mill. The "Medi" part I get (medicine), but
 the "nomics" thing I think they stuck in there just because 
it sounds sort of vaguely official.
Its most prestigious, and only, local
graduate is Doc Novotony, who is yet
another relative of Cliffie's. Doc had
to battle the state medical board to get his
ticket but they finally had to give in after the state
supreme court ordered them to. Cliffie,
Sr. made Doc the county medical examiner, which
 was all right with everybody because he did so with the 
tacit understanding that Doc, who is actually a great
guy, would never actually touch a living human
 being. He would work only on corpses, people 
figuring how much harm can you do to a stiff? And if
he didn't have a stiff to work on, he generally
sat in his office in the morgue in the basement of the
courthouse, chain-smoked his Chesterfields,
 gnawed on his Klondike candy bars, read his 
scandal magazines ("Kim Novak's Naughty
Nite Out With The Football Team!"), and
avoided damaging his five-six, 220-pound
figure by doing any exercise at all.
"Hey," he said when I walked in, his feet
up on his desk as usual. It being Saturday
morning, his voluptuous middle-aged receptionist
Rita, with whom he was or wasn't having an
affair, depending on which town gossip you talked
 to, wasn't here. He wore floppy loafers, 
 red Bermuda shorts, a polo shirt with a 
Hawkeye insignia on it (he was quoted as
saying once that he was neither Jew nor Christian
but Hawkeye, meaning a fan of the various
University of Iowa Hawkeye teams), and a
 smile on his face. He almost always looked 
happy, as if he were spiting the corpses tucked
 in the drawers all around him. 
 "Cliffie said you'd be here, McCain, and that 
I wasn't supposed to tell you anything."
 "Good ole Cliffie." 65 
"How come you're interested, anyway?"
I shrugged. "I was out there when he died.
Plus I got a phone call."
His blue eyes became downright merry. "Herr
Himmler?"
Which is what he called Judge Whitney,
my three-quarter-time employer.
"Uh-huh."
"Why would she give a damn about Muldaur?"
"She doesn't. But Richard Nixon's going
 to swing through here after he stops in Cedar Rapids and 
she's afraid we'll all look like a bunch of
rubes to him if we've got a murder going
involving a minister who used snakes in his church.
She's going to have dinner with Nixon. Said she
doesn't want our little town to sound like a bunch of
mountain crackers."
He beamed. "Richard Nixon? Really?
 I'm gonna vote for him. I guess I've 
got to give the old broad one thing--she sure
is connected."
As she was. In the past few years, she's
 golfed three or four times with Ike and dined with 
celebrities as various as Leonard Bernstein,
Dinah Shore, and Jackie Gleason; next
month she was scheduled to be on the same Chicago
dais as Claire Booth Luce and Dr.
Joyce Brothers.
"So what's the word on Muldaur?" I said.
 He took his feet down. "You want all the 
mumbo jumbo or English?"
"English will do fine."
"He was poisoned."
One thing about those Cincinnati Citadel of
 Medinomics graduates--y can't put anything 
over on them.
"Anything a little more specific?"
"Ah, you do want the mumbo jumbo. I
 appreciate the opportunity to sound like I know 
what I'm talking about." He cleared his throat.
Pulled up his baggy trousers. The spotlight was
his. "Technically, he died from exhaustion."
"Exhaustion? You're kidding. I thought you said
he was poisoned."
"He was. Strychnine has that effect. You
know all those convulsions he had?"
"God, they were terrible."
"They literally wore him out. Yes, he was
 poisoned, and that asphyxiated him. But the 
convulsions were so severe he also had a 67
heart attack brought on by sheer exhaustion."
"God, what a terrible way to go."
"Been better poetic justice if one of his
vipers got him. But the vipers wouldn't have done
half the damage the poison did."
"But doesn't poison like that taste terrible?"
 "Yeah, but the way he worked himself up during those 
ceremonies ... He might have swallowed it and not
realized it. He wouldn't have had to drink a whole
hell of a lot of it. Cliffie talked to one of the
churchgoers who said Muldaur was always guzzling
Pepsi. Somebody coulda put it in that."
"I need to talk to his wife."
 "Cliffie said she wasn't any help." 
"Yeah, she probably didn't respond
well to when Cliffie clubbed her."
Doc grinned. "I shouldn't put up with you
 making fun of my beloved cousin that way. Without 
him I wouldn't be medical examiner of this here
county. And I wouldn't be permitted to wear my
stethoscope in public, either."
"Now, that would be a shame. You look very good
 strutting down the street in your stethoscope." 
He giggled. "That's what the ladies tell
me, counselor."
"Exhaustion, huh," I said, thinking about
 everything he'd told me. Then an image of 
Muldaur convulsing came to me. Seeing something like
that diminished our entire species. I'd always
known we were vulnerable. I just didn't like to be
 reminded of it in such a grotesque fashion. 
  
      Five      
         
 I guess I should explain about our dunking. 
It's one of our darkest family secrets.
 Everybody in my family dunks. We dunk 
doughnuts, we dunk coffee cake, we dunk
sandwiches, my kid sister, at least before she
moved to Chicago, dunked her French fries in
 her Pepsi. In moments of great excitement 
I've been known to dunk a slice of pizza in
 my glass of beer. Maybe it's genetic. You 
 don't want to know about family reunions, 
 believe me. The inclination to dunk affects 
multiple generations. Eighty, ninety
McCains planted at various picnic tables in
a public park. Dunking. All at the same
time.
 Anyway, after visiting Doc, I 69 
stopped over to ask my dad about a guy who used
to work at the plant and then all of a sudden there were
three of us at the kitchen table, dunking long
 johns in our coffee. 
My dad's three biggest dreams had come
true. He produced a kid who became a
 professional man, he bought a house, and he paid 
saved-up cash for a 1958 Plymouth that has the
 fin-length of a shark. 
My mom's three biggest dreams have come
 true, too. My dad returned safely from the 
war, her sister survived breast cancer, and she
 finally got the Westinghouse washer-dryer combination 
she's always wanted, thanks to the way Betty
Furness hawks them on Tv.
My dad was mid-dunk when I said, "So did
Walter ever tell you why he dropped out of
 Muldaur's church?" 
"He sure did."
"How come?"
 He held up his finger, meaning please let him 
finish swallowing. He's a little guy, which is where
I get it, and when Mom's in high heels they
look sort of funny together, not mother-son but more like
big sister-ll brother, but when they get out on the
dance floor to Benny Goodman, their musical
 tastes having ossified around 1946, they are 
dazzling, gray hair, girdle, shoe lifts,
bald head, and all.
"Muldaur tried to get frisky with his
wife."
"What? You're kidding."
"Oh, no," Mom said. "One of the women at
the beauty parlor said that the same thing happened
to her daughter-in-law. Apparently, he was a
frisky man."
 I don't have to tell you what frisky means. 
 Dad rarely uses vulgarities and Mom never 
does. That particular genetic streak ended with me,
I'm afraid.
I wondered if Cliffie knew anything about
this. Muldaur was not only a religious bigot
but a ladies' man as well. Two motives
had already surfaced for his being killed. There would
likely be more. There usually are in homicide
 investigations. You take a guy like Muldaur, you 
might find six, seven people who'd considered killing
him, each with very specific and unique reasons of
their own.
 Part of my mom's long john got 71 
soaked and fell in her coffee. She used her
spoon to rescue it, then ate it like a piece of
 cereal. I'm more careful with my dunking. More 
timid, I guess. I'm well aware of how
 pieces get too wet and fall off. I don't 
want that to happen to me.
"Where'd Walter move to, anyway?"
"Cedar Rapids. Penick and Ford plant.
He's got a brother-in-law there who's a big
shot in the union."
"He didn't happen to move because of
Muldaur, did he?"
"Heck, no. Walter? He knew what he
was getting into when he married Jinny."
 "What he was getting into? What's that mean?" 
 "You know," my dad said, as if we were 
telepaths. "Her, uh, bosoms."
"She had big knockers, as the men like to say,"
Mom said, "your father included."
"Yeah, now that I think about it," I said, "I
guess she did."
 "Guys were always gettin' frisky with her," 
Dad said. "Muldaur was just one more. His wife was
the one who thought the snake stuff was so neat,
 anyway. So when she told Walter about 
Muldaur askin' her to meet him out to the old
 Tyler farm, he just told her that he didn't ever 
 want her to go back there to church." 
"You know who you should talk to," Mom said.
"Who?"
"Kenny Thibodeau."
"You're kidding."
"No. He wrote a long article on
 Muldaur and his church, back when he worked for 
The Clarion."
Kenny Thibodeau was a local kid who
 graduated from the University of Iowa 
journalism school in 1955 or so. He came
back to town here, became the assistant editor
of the local paper, got himself married, had a
son, took up golf, and could even be seen ushering
at the Pentecostal church on Sunday morning.
Then he read On The Road by Jack
Kerouac and claimed to have the same kind of vision
St. Paul had on the road to Damascus, or
wherever he was going. Well, not exactly the
same, of course. Paul claimed to have seen
God and renounced all sin. Kenny Thibodeau,
on the other hand, claimed to have seen Allen
Ginsberg and Neal Cassidy. And instead 73
of renouncing sin, he embraced it. All kinds
of sin. He left his wife and child and moved to the
West Coast. He reappeared a year later, his
wife and child long gone, no longer the
buttoned-down, crew-cutted Kenny we'd known
and ignored. He was a beatnik. I hate that
word, it's a press word, but that's what he was.
He had the goatee, he had the black
 horn-rimmed glasses, the black 
turtleneck, the black chinos, the black
socks, and, worst of all, the Jesus sandals.
I'm no fashion plate but there's something about
socks and sandals that rankles. At least he'd
spared us the beret.
 Kenny had been coming and going ever since. He 
went to London, Paris, San Francisco,
New York. And always returned. He
supported himself by writing pornography, or
what the moralists called pornography,
anyway. Paperbacks with sexy covers and
suggestive titles but virtually nothing
explicit inside. Lesbo Lodge was one of
his, as was Life of a Lesbo. Kenny
lived in a trailer near the west end of town.
We had coffee whenever we ran into each other. I
enjoyed him without quite approving of him. And I
 disapproved of him because I was probably jealous. 
He traveled, he supported himself writing,
albeit somewhat scandalously, and he was always going
 to Iowa City on the weekends and coming back with 
 wild tales of undergraduate English majors 
who "know how to swing, man, and I do mean swing."
 I'd never thought of asking Kenny for actual 
 hard information. I'd never suspected Kenny of 
having any hard information. But maybe Mom was
 right. Maybe before he'd taken up marijuana, 
 cheap wine, and Zen there had been an actual 
fact or two rolling around inside his mind.
"He looks so silly in that goatee," Mom
said. "But he's still a nice boy."
Dad laughed. "Don't tell that to Emily
at the rectory. She thinks he should be put in
jail for writing those dirty books."
"Yeah," I said. "She also was going to start a
petition to put D. H. Lawrence in jail
until she found out he was dead."

Summer Saturday mornings in Black
River Falls are a good time to be on the
 streets. The merchants are happy because 75 
business is good; the farm wives are happy because
they're getting their hair done or buying something
new for themselves--it could be a dress or an
electric mixer, it doesn't matter, it's just
the idea of getting something new; the little ones are
happy because there's a triple feature plus a
chapter of a serial at the Rialto; the teenage
girls are happy because they'll be modeling their
swimsuits at the public pool; and the teenage
boys are happy because they'll get to watch the
teenage girls model those swimsuits.
 The street rods are out already. They'll go out 
to the park where the boys will polish them the way
 pagans used to polish false idols. Chopped 
and channeled hymns of metal and fiberglass and
rubber that wouldn't think of playing Fabian or
Frankie Avalon or anybody like that, sticking
strictly to Mr. Chuck Berry and Mr. Little
Richard and Mr. Gene Vincent and his Blue
 Caps. There are also "jes' folks" kinds of 
cars, bicycles, a horse-drawn Amish
buggy or two (there's an Amish community
twenty miles due east of here), and a whole
bunch of motorcycles, most of the riders being
Marlon Brando in their minds (but then who do the
grandmas riding the big Indians imagine themselves
to be?).
Kenny Thibodeau made it easy for me. He
was sitting in the town square reading a John
Steinbeck paperback, In Dubious
Battle.
 His black uniform was intact. Even his shades 
were black. The only way I knew he saw me
 was the way he tilted his head up at me. 
"Hey, man."
"Hey, man, yourself, Kenny."
I sat down next to him on the bench.
"How they hangin', man?"
"Oh, you know," I said. I've never known how
to answer that particular clich@e. They're hangin'
 low, hangin' high? Which way is best? "How's 
the writing going?"
 "Pretty good. They jumped me up in 
 advances." 
Two paperbacks rested on the pigeon-blessed
bench between us.
"Take 'em, I was gonna give 'em to you
anyway when I ran into you."
 I picked them up. The covers were nicely 
 illustrated. One showed a virginal young 77 
blonde woman in a matching skirt and sweater and
 bobby sox and penny loafers staring over her 
 shoulder at a severe but coldly beautiful older 
woman standing in a shadowed doorway. "Student
Advisor ... Lesbos ruled this campus
until a stud professor was hired." The other
one featured a well-built shirtless young girl
in bed with a nearly naked older woman. "Sex
Machine ... His "tools of the trade" could
turn lesbos into man-lovers."
"The Nobel Committee wants every copy of
those they can find," he said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he laughed, "so they can burn 'em."
"You ever actually meet a lesbian?"
 "I heard one on the radio once." 
 "How do you know she was a lesbian?" 
"She said she was."
"I guess that's one way of telling." Then
I said, "My cousin's a lesbian and she's
actually very nice. I mean, nobody in the
family wants to acknowledge it but she never even
pretends to be interested in guys romantically."
"Maybe you could introduce me to her sometime.
You know, maybe she could teach me how they talk,
code words, stuff like that."
"I think they talk pretty much like everybody
else. At least Alison does."
"You mean Dr. Edmond DeMille wasn't
right? They don't have a secret handshake?"
"Who's Dr. Edmond DeMille?"
"I am. That's one of my pen names. I
wrote a book called When Your Daughter
Is a Lesbo. DeMille is even more full
of shit than I am."
That was Kenny's greatest virtue. The
self-deprecation. He didn't harangue you the
 way some of his compatriots did. I'd never even 
heard him describe anybody as "square." That
was why I liked his books, too. I
 appreciated the errant erections they sometimes 
inspired but even more I appreciated the humor
he was able to sneak in.
 "My mom tells me you did an article on 
Muldaur."
"Yeah," he said. "Hey, wasn't that wild?
Him dying and all."
"The Judge wants me to find out what
happened before Richard Nixon gets here."
He whipped his shades off. "Richard 79
Nixon is coming here?"
"That's right. In six days. Having dinner with
her at her club."
"That Nazi."
"I agree, Kenny. But right now I need
to know about Muldaur. You find out anything interesting
about him?"
 "Interesting meaning sleazy?" 
"Yeah. Something like that."
"He was porking a lot of the ladies in his
flocks."
"That I've heard."
"And then about six months ago, he came
into some money."
"Inherited, you mean?"
Kenny shook his head. He had beagle brown
eyes. Plaintive. He made you want to put
a dog biscuit in his paw. "I guess not.
He just suddenly had some money. Paid off the loan
 on that garage he uses for his church. Paid off a 
lot of bills, too."
"But nobody knows where the money came from?"
 "Nobody I talked to." 
"Wonder where he'd get money? The place
he came from--^th hill people don't have any
 money." He hesitated. "You want me to see 
what I can find out."
"I'd appreciate it."
"In fact, maybe I can get some ideas from
it. You know, sort of playing private eye. You
ever watch "Peter Gunn?""
"Never miss it." And I didn't.
"How about that Mancini music?"
Henry Mancini had revolutionized
television theme music. His music was as much a
 part of the noir feel of the show as the scripts and the 
 actors. 
Kenny put his glasses back on. Raised
his Steinbeck. "Writing sleaze is starting
to take its toll on me, man."
I stood up. "How so?"
"Even readin' somebody like Steinbeck. You
know, like this really serious, really fine writer. I
 keep waiting for the sex scenes now." 
"Yeah, I can see where that could get to be a
problem."
"Like my mom was watchin' Little Women the
other night on the boob tube."
"Yeah?"
"And all I could think of was how I could 81
 turn it into a sleaze book. Like all the sisters 
 are grown up now but they're lesbos." 
"Little Lesbos."
"That's exactly the title I was thinking of.
Exactly, man."
"I'd hold off on that one awhile, Kenny."
 "Yeah, for one thing, the people who read my books 
--they probably wouldn't see the parallel
to Louisa May Alcott anyway."
Little Lesbos.
At least it was alliterative.
A squat, plump puppy followed me out of the
town square and all the way to the sidewalk, then
went bounding back to his people.
The heat wasn't too bad yet--st in the low
seventies--j the sort of temperature plump
 little puppies love. 
  
      Six      
         
"I wouldn't expect you to like him, McCain.
He's a cultured gentleman."
"Yeah, some cultured gentleman, the way he
went after Alger Hiss."
"Alger Hiss is pink right down to his lace
panties."
"Nixon himself said that."
 "Wrong," she said, pleased, as always, 
to correct me. "That was Harry Truman himself,
McCain."
"Bull roar."
"Bull roar yourself. Look it up. Harry
 Truman, the darling of the lefties, had a crony 
out in California he wanted to run for congress.
Felt the man could beat Nixon. Then Helen
Gahagan Douglas came along and decided
to run against Nixon. It was Harry Truman who
started the story she was a commie. And Harry
 Truman who came up with that remark about being pink 
down to her panties. Dick Nixon merely
picked it up."
 I would've argued with her but the tale was just 
 unlikely enough to be true. Ever since Ike got 
in, Democrats have tended to canonize
Truman. But you don't want to look too
 closely or too long at him. Most of us, me 
certainly included, don't hold up under that kind
of scrutiny.
Judge Esme Anne Whitney was
fashion-model elegant as ever, 83
poised, prim, and regal against the long windows
on the east wall. White summer suit, white
pumps, Gauloise cigarette, glass of
brandy. We were in her chambers--s much mahogany
 it was like living in the heart of a tree--and yes it was 
but eleven A.M. and yes, you did read
 correctly, a glass of brandy in her slender 
hand. She claims it helps her concentrate. The
amazing thing is that she never shows the merest effect.
I laughed. "Haven't we had this argument
before?"
Judge Esme Anne Whitney didn't
laugh. Just took another dramatic drag on
her Gauloise. "Don't worry, McCain.
I won't make you meet him when he comes out
here." She shook her head. "You and Ike."
"Me and Ike?"
"The General can't stand him. And poor Dick
has always done everything he can to please the man.
I like Ike very much, as you know--he and my father used
to down shots together in New York after the first war
--but I don't think he's ever been very fair about
Dick." She turned on me. "And that's why I
want you to get this ridiculous snake mess
cleared up. My Lord, we'll look like
hillbillies. Snakes and Ozark faith
 healers. Good grief. The man is an 
intellectual, for God's sake." She
 frowned. "For once I don't even care about 
humiliating Cliffie for the sake of my family
honor. I just want the culprit caught and put
 away." She set herself on the edge of her desk. 
 The smoke from her Gauloise was diamond blue 
in the sunlight.
 I lit a Lucky Strike. 
"You know how the cops always look around to see
who's at a crime scene?"
"Rudimentary police science, McCain."
"Well, I happened to notice two people at the
 crime scene last night. And you know them both." 
 "Oh?" 
 And then she fired the first volley of the morn. 
She launched a rubber band slung on her
thumb and forefinger. She's good at it. Nine times
out of ten she hits me. But she was a little slow this
morning. I just angled my head a bit to the left
 and the rubber band went right on by. 
"Who are we talking about here, McCain?"
"We are talking about here, Judge, the good
Reverend Thomas C. Courtney and 85
Sara Hall."
"You just don't like Protestants."
"Well, aside from the fact that most of my good
friends are Protestants, and that I sometimes go
to hear Reverend Cosgrove's sermons because he's
the most Christ-like man in the whole town, I'd
say I do pretty well by you folks. And he's
a very conservative Methodist."
"You've never liked Tom. I think you're
jealous of him, in fact."
I smiled. "And I probably should be. He
 seems to have more lady friends than I do." There had 
 been whispers about Courtney and some of his flock. 
As in fleeced.
"You just couldn't resist saying that, could you?"
I kept on beaming. "No, I couldn't. And
 I still find it damned strange he'd be out there at 
the time Muldaur died."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning nothing other than I find it damned
 strange. I find Sara Hall being out there even 
 stranger." 
"Maybe she went for a ride. She says she
does that sometimes when she feels the urge to take
 a drink. That was something she learned at her Mayo 
program. You know, to keep yourself occupied in some
way."
"So she goes for rides with Courtney?"
"What's wrong with that? He's her minister. And
it's better than taking a drink, she says."
She got me with her rubber band this time. Pearl
Harbor sneak attack, as I'd been wont
to say on the playgrounds of my youth.
"So maybe they were just driving by and saw the
ambulance and--"
"I think I'll talk to her."
"For God's sake, McCain, why?"
"For the same reason I'm going to talk
 to Courtney. They aren't the type that chase after 
ambulances. They didn't belong there. Ergo,
 they're worth talking to." 
"Ergo," she said, taking a dramatic drag
on her Gauloise.
Her chambers weren't as exciting as they'd
once been. In the old days, I came here
to see the beautiful Pamela Forrest, to try and
get her to go out with me. Nobody could make me
 feel as bad as Pamela when she turned me 
down and it was wonderful, anyway. I was drunk
 on her. And the Judge hated it, was always 87 
 symbolically hosing me off with harsh words about 
leaving Pamela alone.
But Pamela was gone. I was still in love with
her. It hurt but it wasn't a wonderful hurt
anymore. It was a hurt hurt. And for the first time
in my life I realized that it was a hurt I'd
have to work on getting over. She was out of my life
--living elsewhere in shame--and she was never going
to be in my life again.
 "I want you to promise me you won't go see 
 her." 
"We're talking Sara Hall?"
 "We are, as you say, talking Sara Hall." 
"She just happened to be out there."
"She just happened to be out there."
"A country-club lady out at a hillbilly
 church where they use rattlesnakes in their 
religious ceremonies?"
"Yes."
 "And you're not even curious why she was out 
 there?" 
 "No." 
 "Well," I said, standing up so as to avoid the 
rubber band she'd just shot at me, "you're the
boss."
"Yes, I am, McCain," she smiled with
 her imperious mouth, "and don't you forget it." 
  
How I came to talk to Sara Hall twenty
minutes later is something I'm not necessarily
 proud of. I mean, it's the sort of 
 duplicitous thing only a counselor-at-law 
could come up with. Or a Republican.
Let me put it to you as a philosophical
question.
Say there's this woman you want to ask some
questions. Now, you've already given your word that you
won't go see her.
But what if you happen to be driving by her house
 and you see her backing out of her driveway in her 
new DeSoto convertible?
And what if you just happen--not having anything
 else better to do and the day being so beautiful and all 
and you owning a red 'ea ragtop and it needing to go
for a drive to clean some of the engine sludge away
 and all--y just happen to follow her to our town's 
first, only, and very tiny--twelve stores--
enclosed shopping mall.
And what if you just happen to follow her inside?
And wait while she's in The Moderne 89
 Woman? And when she comes out, she runs into you. 
You will notice, I believe, the subtle
difference between me running into her and her running
into me. Which, technically, she did. She could've
 gone right, she could've gone left, but instead she 
chose--completely of her own volition--ffwalk
straight.
 Now, to be technical again, it is true that I 
abruptly moved over from my rightward position
to be in front of her when she chose--of her own
volition--ffwalk straight ahead. But that's
hardly my fault, is it? There was a sudden
draft from the nearby air-conditioning duct, and is
 it my fault I didn't want to catch a head 
cold and be laid up for weeks? Possibly in
traction?
"Hi, Sara."
"Oh, hi, McCain."
Neither time nor alcohol could ever quite dim her
 beauty. She had a kind of sensibly erotic 
face, the schoolmarm whose ripe lips told of
discreet and memorable pleasures. The brown
eyes were sad--y don't drink as much as she did
and look happy--but again they were not without aesthetic
pleasure, fine brown eyes they were, even with
their melancholy, and not without a hint of high
intelligent humor even in their gentle pain.
White sleeveless blouse, tan tailored
skirt, no hose, brown flats. Nice arms.
"That's funny. I just saw the Judge a
while ago."
"I talked to her this morning," she said.
"She's very excited about Richard Nixon coming out
here. It's all she talks about these days." Then,
"Nice seeing you."
 People ebbed and flowed around us. From the record 
store came the sound of Jerry Lee Lewis.
Teenagers sparked over by the hot-dog counter.
"Say," I said, ever the sly one. "I saw
you last night."
"You did?"
"Yes. Out at Muldaur's church."
She actually blushed. "Oh. ... We were just
passing by. And saw the ambulance and everything."
"I thought maybe you knew somebody there. I
 saw Reverend Courtney." 
The flush had faded. An abrupt coldness
 came into eye and voice. "Yes, we'd taken a 
ride together. He ... helps me sometimes. You
know, with--" She hesitated. "You know I 91
went to the Mayo Clinic."
She looked humiliated. Hard to look at
 pain so fresh in those lovely eyes. 
"It's all right, Sara."
"Well, he helps me sometimes. Sort of
counsels me."
 But if he was the kind and gentle counselor, 
why had her first reaction been anger when his name
came up? And going for a ride together? But then
I'd probably been reading too many books
by Dr. Edmond DeMille, astksta Kenny
Thibodeau, and was suspicious of even the most
generous acts.
 "I really need to go. I'm sorry." 
"I didn't mean to bring up anything
 unpleasant, Sara." 
"I know. It's all right."
 She touched shapely fingers to the edge of her 
 erotic mouth. "It was nice seeing you." 
Wanting to keep her here as long as I could,
hoping something useful would just spurt from her,
 unbidden, I said, "How's your daughter?" 
A tiny tic at the outer corner of her left
eye. I didn't make much of it. Coincidence.
"Fine. She's just fine." But she sounded tight
again, the way she had about Courtney.
 "I heard her sing at the springfest in the park. 
She's got a beautiful voice."
She smiled, looking happy for the first time.
"Folk music. The Kingston Trio eighteen
hours a day." Then the tic came back. "I
need to go. Bye."
I gave her a long minute, then I followed
her. There was a bar on the edge of the mall. I
hoped I hadn't driven her to it. I felt
guilty and confused. Everybody always clucked about
her "nervous personality" but her response
to what I'd said seemed awfully dramatic.
 She acted as if I'd accused her of something 
 sinister. 
She went into a bookstore. I sat on a
bench and smoked a Lucky. I was there two or
three minutes when I saw Reverend Courtney
appear from the far end of the L-shaped brick
mall. He wore a yellow golf shirt and
chinos and white Keds. He looked like Yale's
most successful graduate of recent vintage.
He went into the bookstore, apparently not seeing
me, and emerged a bit later in the company of
Sara Hall. She looked angry again. 93
Angry but on the verge of cracking, her feelings
threatening to overwhelm her.
He had her by the arm, led her to The House of
Beef. I'd been there a few times. It was
cave-dark, cavern-cold. It was the preferred
trysting place. The martinis were good, the food
better. All the upwardly mobile young men who
imagined themselves to be cool--a la Peter Gunn
or Tony Curtis I suppose--called the
place "The House," the way Frank Sinatra
would.
I wondered if she'd drink. I wondered if
she'd cry. I wondered if she'd get
violent. She'd seemed on the verge of all
three. And then I wondered if she was in love with
Courtney. It was the kind of thought I didn't
especially want to have. I'd always liked Sara
Hall.

      Seven      
         
I spent half an hour at the gas station where
I get my ragtop worked on. Being a
Saturday, they were busy with cars up on the
 hoist. I'd stopped in just to schedule a time for a 
tune-up but I liked the particular atmosphere
of the place--the smell of gasoline and oil, the
clank of tools hitting the concrete, the hoist that
lifts and lowers the cars--andthe male camaraderie
that is second only to a barbershop. Taverns
don't count for camaraderie because alcohol skews
everything. But barbershops and gas stations ... that's
where men are men. And someday I plan to be one of
them.
The topics today included how bad the Cubs were
doing, how muchsthow little they looked forward to Nixon
visiting our town, the high-school girls parading
 up and down the sidewalk in short-shorts 
 ("God, I wish they woulda worn 'em that short 
back when I was in school!"), how Jack
Kennedy's wife walked like she had a cob up
her ass (republicans) or looked like a
glamorous movie star (democrats), and finally
how Muldaur's murder was inevitable, him being the
center of "all them nuts out to his church."
The gas-station consensus was that one of
 Muldaur's own had done him in. Nobody 
mentioned Muldaur's affinity for cheating on his
wife. In fact, they didn't offer any
specific reason for his being killed. They 95
just felt that anybody who messed around with snakes
the way he did was bound to come to no good.
 I stopped by Rexall for lunch, bought a new 
John D. MacDonald paperback and a copy
of Galaxy, which I read through while I ate my
burger and fries. While I was sitting at the
counter, I saw Muldaur's sergeant-at-arms
 towering above the patent medicines in aisle three. 
 He wore a worn, blue work shirt and was the 
strapping size of Muldaur himself, but there was
nothing messianic about his face. He looked
well-attached to reality, and not all that happy about
whatever his particular reality was doing to him. I
 left a tip and slid down off the stool. 
I started toward him but decided this wouldn't be a
good place to talk. There was a lull in business.
Too easy for people to overhear. The quiet would
intimidate him.
I followed him outdoors after he bought a
carton of Wings and a bottle of
Pepto-Bismol. He made his way toward a
pickup truck that had once been a
Model-T. The back half had been sawed
off and two-by-fours set in behind the front
 seats. It was the kind of truck that got a lot of 
poor families through the Depression.
 After he'd climbed in and started the engine, which 
sounded pretty damned smooth given the age of the
vehicle, I went up to him and said, "I'm
afraid I don't know your name."
"So what?"
"You remember me from the other night?"
"Yeah. You were with that Jew girl."
"What makes you think she was Jewish?"
"They smell."
"Why don't you keep your filthy mouth shut?"
"You just can't take the truth."
"What truth?"
 "That bringing a Jew in there is what killed 
 him." 
"So it was her fault, huh?"
He patted a Bible on the seat next to him.
It had an outsize golden cross on its
imitation leather cover. And next to the Bible was a
stack of his leaflets about Jews and Catholics.
"Jews killed Our Lord. They start trouble
wherever they go."
 I wanted to laugh. I'd had the same problem 
with Hitler. He was, for all his evil,
 laughable. His theories of a "pure race" 97 
were ridiculous on their face. Thousands and thousands
of years ago, the Vikings visited most places
on the planet. And they were one randy bunch of
guys, let me tell you. There hadn't been a
"pure" race since. In fact, it's doubtful
even the Vikings were a pure race. That's the
trouble with evil sometimes--it turns into farce.
Jews smell. The presence of a Jew had
caused a murder to take place. Uh-huh.
"I'm curious about something."
 He ground the car into gear. Sounded as if the 
 transmission teeth needed a little work. I 
notice stuff like that.
"I don't want to talk to you anymore."
"I saw you slap a woman the other night.
Was that your wife?"
He grabbed me. So quickly, so skillfully that
I wasn't sure what happened till it was
over. He flung me back across the sidewalk,
propelling me into a corner mailbox.
He pulled away.
 I shouted, trying to recover at least a 
modicum of dignity for the interested bystanders,
"Was Muldaur sleeping with your wife? Was that
why you slapped her?"
 A guy the town seemed to employ as a wise 
guy--he'd always been here, I'd never seen him
gainfully employed, he just kinda wandered around and
made sarcastic remarks, a modern version of the
Greek chorus--sd, "Good thing he took off.
 Otherwise you would've killed him, McCain." 
The groundlings who were standing around all looked at
me and laughed.

I wasted an hour walking around to the various
 print shops. Half of them were closed on such a 
baking Saturday afternoon and the other half claimed that
they didn't know anything about who'd printed the
 leaflets and the slick pamphlets that came from 
 Muldaur's church and were plastered all over 
town. Most people of all denominations found them
disgusting and complained about them in The Clarion
letters column.
In a small town like ours, you have to be very
 careful of who you offend. There were just enough Catholics 
that printing Muldaur's hate mail could cost you
any Catholic business you had.
But if anyone knew anything, they weren't
talking about it. Only one person gave me
anything remotely resembling a lead. 99
He said that there was a former press operator who
now had a small press in his basement and did
odd jobs. He'd taken a full-time job in the
Amana factory where they made freezers because the
 pay was so much better. The guy said he didn't 
know if Parnell, the former press operator, had
done the Muldaur work but that he was probably
 worth checking out. He gave me Parnell's 
 address. I thanked him. I'd gone 
to Catholic school with Parnell. We hadn't
 been friends, but then we hadn't been enemies. 
  
Reverend Courtney was sitting on his church
 steps talking to a dowager in a summer frock and a 
 large summer hat. They looked quite handsome, the 
church of native stone magnificent in the afternoon
light, the large front lawn well-tended and very
green, a watercolor cover from The New
Yorker perhaps, even a breeze cooperating
 by fluttering the long blue ribbon that trailed from the 
dowager's hat.
 Her name was Helen Prentice, and she and her 
husband were not only wealthy but also generous. There
wasn't a hospital, library, or
 auditorium within a hundred miles in any 
direction that the Prentices hadn't contributed
 substantially to. 
 "Hello, Sam," Helen said, extending her 
hand. We shook. I'd met her at various
 soirees at Judge Whitney's house. 
"Afternoon, Helen."
She checked her watch. "I need to run."
Courtney, now in dark slacks and a white
 shirt, started to raise himself from the church step but 
she stopped him with a gloved white hand.
"The last time I checked, Reverend, I
wasn't royalty. There's no need to stand." She
smiled at me. "George and I really enjoyed
sitting with you at the Judge's dinner table last
month. You're a very funny young man." Then
back to Courtney. "See you in the morning at the
ten o'clock service."
 When she was out of earshot, or so he assumed, 
he said, "There goes one very rich lady,
McCain."
"I'd think that a man who'd dedicated himself
to following in the footsteps of Jesus might also
point out that she's a very decent person, too. Very
 generous with her riches." 
"Nice to know you're not afraid of being 101
pompous."
I said, "How was the food at The House
today?"
He wasn't intimidated. "I knew you were
an unsuccessful lawyer. I guess I'd
 forgotten that you were an unsuccessful gumshoe, 
 too." 
"You and Sara Hall just happened to be driving
around last night and ended up at Muldaur's
church completely by coincidence?"
"That's right, McCain."
He looked vital and modern standing against the
massive medieval-style doors of the church.
"I'm sorry I got you Catholics in a
tizzy by quoting Dr. Peale. It's a free
country, you know. Or so they tell me,
anyway."
 "Right now, I'm more interested in you and Sara 
Hall. What were you really doing out there last
night?"
He smiled. He had great teeth, of course.
Movie-star teeth. "As I said, I'm told
 it's a free country. Or didn't they teach you 
that in that second-rate law school you went to?"
 He came down off the steps and walked over 
 to where a rake leaned against an elm. From his back 
pocket he took a pair of brown work
gloves, cinched them on, and started raking.

As I walked back to my office, I
noticed leaflets on car windows, placed under
windshield wipers. A block before I reached my
place I saw a boy of maybe twelve toting
an armload of the leaflets and getting punched in the
 face by a much bigger kid. The Flannagan 
boy. Flannagan was no doubt displeased with the
anti-Catholic nature of the leaflets. But
 mostly he just liked punching kids smaller than 
him. Flannagan, who'd played fullback on
 the Catholic school junior varsity squad 
until they realized he didn't have any talent,
was born to bully.
I got between them and gave Flannagan a
shove.
 "What're you stoppin' me for, McCain? You 
see that shit he's got about Catholics? He
says we ain't Americans."
 "You're a lot bigger than he is, 
Flannagan."
"I don't care. He still deserves 103
to be punched."
Nice to know that Muldaur's work was living on
beyond him. He'd brought the town to a boil in life
--andthe water was still hot now that he'd died.
"Who told you to pass these out?" I said to the
kid. He wore bib overalls with a striped
T-shirt. He had freckles and a cowlick and a
squirt of blood in his right nostril from
Flannagan's fist. And bare feet. I was
surprised he wasn't dancing a jig.
"God told me to," he said.
I almost laughed.
"God," Flannagan said. "My ass."
"You shouldn't talk like that. Dirty, I mean,"
the kid said. "My mom says Catholics and
 Jews talk like that all the time." 
Now I'll double back on what I said
 earlier about the foolish side of evil. There's 
nothing more frightening than a youngster who has been
completely indoctrinated by his parents. He's
as soulless as a robot and as deadly as an
assassin. You can't reason with him because the "on"
switch in his brain doesn't operate. His
parents turned it off permanently long ago.
"Why don't you let me take those?" I said.
I reached for the leaflets and he jumped back a
foot.
"No! You're a dirty Catholic just like
 Flannagan here." 
 "You call me a dirty Catholic again and 
I'll knock you out."
"Shut up, Flannagan," I said. "Kid,
I want the leaflets."
"They're mine and you can't take them away from
me."
 "Let me handle him, McCain," 
 Flannagan said, "c'mon." 
 And with that, not unexpectedly, the kid took off 
running down the sidewalk. Flannagan
lunged, as if he were going after him. I grabbed
him by the shoulder.
 "I should be able to hit him if I want to," 
 he said. 
"Yes," I said, "that's one of your inalienable
rights. Punching kids who weigh forty pounds less
than you do."
"He hates Catholics."
"Or at least his parents do."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." 105
His moon face tightened into a sneer. "You
mind if I go now, your royal highness?"
"Always a pleasure to see you, Flannagan."
There are some people you just don't want on your side.
As I climbed into my ragtop and headed
home, I tried not to think about some of the feelings that
Jack Kennedy seemed to stir up. Otherwise
reasonable, decent people still had their bias toward
Catholics in office. William Jennings
 Bryan always said that he wished he hadn't run for 
president because it taught him just how deep
anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish bias ran in
this country. Things had improved since then but, as
with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, even
respectable ministers felt safe in talking about
 Kennedy as a stalking horse for the pope. 
 Then there were the unrespectable people--the Klan, the 
Nazi sympathizers left over from the American
 Bundt days of the big war, the small-town 
radio ministers, the pamphleteers of every
 description. There'd been an article in Time 
magazine a few years back noting that any
 fund-raising letter or pamphlet with the word 
"Jew," "Communist," "Catholic," or
 "Negro" in its headline would earn twice as much 
money as a letter or pamphlet without. Judging by the
entertainment shows on the tube, everything was just
 okey-dokey here in the land of Lincoln. But we 
knew better, didn't we?

      Eight      
         
I parked in back of my apartment house, meaning
 to wash my car the way I usually did on late 
Saturday afternoons. Mrs. Goldman had a
nice two-stall garage with a hose.
I was about halfway to the house when I heard the
music. It wasn't all that loud but it was an
odd choice for Mrs. Goldman. Miles
 Davis. I wondered when she'd gotten interested 
in jazz. She liked Broadway tunes and
singers like Patti Page and Kay Starr.
I had just reached the stairs that run up the back
and lead to my apartment when I realized that the music
was coming from my place, not Mrs. Goldman's.
 The windows were open and so, partially, was the back 
door. I went inside.
She sat in the big leather armchair. She
wore a white blouse that displayed her lovely
breasts discreetly, a pair of dark 107
 blue shorts that did equally nice things for her 
long legs, and a pair of white tennis shoes.
She had a tanned, tight body and that impish
 damned face that could go sentimental on you all of a 
sudden and make you sad. I'd never had a crush
 on a married woman before and I didn't want 
 to now. But here she was in my apartment. There was a 
half-full bottle of JandBut scotch and a
 Peter Pan peanut-butter glass sitting on 
the arm of the chair.
"You bastard," she said from the couch, where she was
reclining.
"Nice to see you too, Kylie."
"You're late," she said, all hot accusation.
 "Late for what?" 
"For our job interview." She was slurring her
words but I'll spare you the drunk dialect.
 "Kylie, did you by any chance drink half of 
 that bottle of scotch?" 
"What half bottle of scotch?"
"The one next to your hand."
"My hand?"
She was in fine shape. A drinker she was not.
I'd seen her get snockered once on two
beers. The toll the scotch took had to be
devastating.
 "So where were you?" 
"Working, actually," I said.
"Working actually? Who's actually?" Then she
grinned, looking pretty damned cute. "I
told a funny."
 "Yes, you did." 
"You're late."
"You said that. But I didn't realize we had
an appointment."
 She shook her head. She was so loaded she had 
to squint one eye to see me. There were probably
multiple me's, the way I'd be perceived by a
 fly. "Job interview." 
"What job interview are we talking about?"
"We aren't talking about a job interview.
I am talking about a job interview."
"All right." I went over and sat down on the
couch and got a Lucky going. "And what job
 interview would that be?" 
 "I want to hire you to kill my husband." 
"Well, that sounds reasonable enough. What's the
pay?"
"I could give you a hundred down. And a
hundred more later on. When I get my 109
paycheck."
"Well, I do have a gun, I guess."
She squinted again. Her head was rotating as if
 on a track of ball bearings. "You got any 
bullets?"
"A few."
"How many's a few?"
"Probably a couple dozen."
"Good, 'cause I want you to shoot him at
least that many times." Then, "Where's that damned
bottle?"
"I think it got on a bus and went
to Cleveland in self-defense."
She either didn't hear--or didn't care
to hear--my joke.
"There it is."
Watching her pour a drink was like watching a
high-wire act. There was a lot of danger. It
did things to your bowels and heart and the palms of your
 hands. Somehow she managed to get it poured without 
 (a) cracking the glass when the neck of the bottle 
 slammed against the rim, (but) spilling any on the 
chair, or (can) spilling any on herself.
"Then I want you to set him on fire."
"Shoot him first. Then set him on fire.
Got it."
 "He's a jerk. I just can't believe how much 
 of a jerk." 
"You know, Miles Davis may not be the best
music for you to be listening to right now," I said.
"I need to be sad."
"Well, ole Miles'll help you get
there."
"Who you want to hear? Frankie Avalon?"
"Why don't I just turn it off?"
I got up and turned it off and then went over
to the refrigerator. "You had anything to eat
lately?"
"Last night."
"You haven't eaten since last night?"
"Too mad to eat." And again her head rolled
free on the ball bearings. "That jerk." Then she
belched. It was a cute little belch. "Excuse
me."
"How about a bologna sandwich?"
 "Didn't I just say excuse me?" 
 "Yes, you did. And you are excused. Now how 
about I fix you a bologna sandwich?"
"With ketchup?"
"If you want some." 111
"I'm not all that hungry."
"You need some food. Believe me."
"The first place you should shoot him is right in the
crotch."
 "Poetic justice, eh?" 
"Damn right."
I made her a bologna sandwich.
She said, as I was making it, her head rolling
around more violently than ever, "What happened
to Ray Charles?"
"You weren't listening to Ray Charles. You were
listening to Miles Davis." We liked a lot
of the same jazz records.
 "I was not. I was listening to Ray Charles. 
"Green Dolphin Street.""
"You were listening to Miles Davis, and
"Green Dolphin Street" is Tony
Bennett, anyway."
I served her a sandwich on a saucer. "Sit
up."
"Why?"
"So you can digest this better."
"What happened to Dakota Staton?"
 Dakota being a jazz singer we both liked very 
 much. 
I decided not to go back through it. "I turned
off the music."
She stared--through a fly's eye again, no doubt
--at her sandwich, looking as if nobody'd ever
before put such a thing in front of her. "Did I
tell you you should shoot him in the crotch?"
"Duly noted."
"What's that mean?"
"It means, yes, you told me, and yes,
I'll remember it."
"What's this?"
"A bologna sandwich."
"I'm not hungry."
"You need to eat. Now, c'mon."
Her head wobbled and she glanced up at me.
"How come you're so short?"
"How come you're so drunk?"
"Shoot him in the crotch twice."
"Eat."
"We should get some grenades, is what we should
get."
She ate.
Two bites. Then, "You know what I found in
his billfold?"
                        "What?" 113                        
"Picture of her."
"I'm sorry."
"He carries a picture of her around with
him."
 "C'mon, just eat." 
"Just like she's his wife or something."
"Eat."
 She ate, all right. About six, seven bites 
alt. Then it--anda lot of the scotch--came right
back up. Luckily I got her to the john in
time.
There was a fan going in the bedroom window. I
 positioned her as comfortably as possible on the bed 
and then let my three cats Tasha, Crystal,
and Tess--well, technically, a friend of mine
named Samantha left them with me when she went
to Hollywood hoping to find gold and glamour--
situate themselves around her.
The next four hours were pretty boring so
let's just say that I watched some Tv, I
 fixed myself a couple of burgers, I fed the 
 cats, and I looked in on Kylie every once in 
 a while. I felt bad for her. Having chased the 
beautiful Pamela Forrest all those years, I
knew all about heartbreak. Or at least I
fancied I did. Me and Robert Ryan. But
 actually never having been married ... wow, your 
mate comes home and admits that he's seeing
somebody else--which is what I guessed had
happened--t was head-in-the-oven time.
The heat broke around nine. Kylie got up
and went in the john. She wasn't in there very long.
I got a glimpse of her when she came out.
She was walking that stiff-armed way Boris
 Karloff always does when he plays 
Frankenstein's monster. She went right back
to bed.
 I barely heard the knock. The fan was 
 kicking out and the Tv was on. I wouldn't have 
noticed the door at all if Tess hadn't
 trotted over there. She's kind of a watch cat. 
She can't bark but if you come in and she's got her
doubts about you, she bites you on the ankle.
He let himself in. And Tess bit him on the
ankle.
"Hey!" he said.
He was tall and blond and handsome, I
 suppose, but in a preppy way I've always 
resented. Or been jealous of. Take your
                        pick. 115                        
The one and only Chad Burke.
"What's with your cat? She bit me."
"She's discriminating."
He said, "She here?"
"Yeah."
He looked around. "Where?"
"Bedroom."
I'd gotten up and walked over to him. He
started toward me now. Angry. "You didn't
screw her, did you?"
"No," I said. "And I guess you didn't,
either. Your new girlfriend wouldn't like that, would she?"
The anger vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
He ran a long, artistic hand through his curly
blond hair. He looked miserable. "All I
asked her for was a little time. I didn't say
I'd leave her. I just said I needed to work through
it. She made a big deal of it."
"Gee, how insensitive of her."
 "I told her when I married her, writers 
are pretty messed-up people. Being creative
isn't easy. You know, like actors."
I decided not to tell him that (a) he wasn't
a writer but a grad school dabbler, (but) that
even if he was a real writer it didn't give
him any license to cheat on his wife, and (can)
everybody knew that most actors were morons
anyway.
He said, "You really didn't screw her?"
 "I really didn't screw her." 
"That's what I figured she'd do. You know, go
out and sleep with you. She likes you."
 "She did want to hire me to kill you. But that 
was for money. She didn't mention anything about
sex."
He didn't smile.
"That'd just make things worse," he said, "she
goes out and starts grudge-screwing people."
"But it's all right if you nail your student?"
"That's different. That doesn't have anything to do
with spite. I'm half in love with her."
"Ah. Now I get the distinction."
 He glared at me. "I'm not asking for your 
approval, McCain. I could give a shit
what you think about me. Now, I've got my car
out back and I'm going to go in there and get her and
take her home. And you're not going to stop me."
"She's your wife, Chad. But let me tell
you something."
 He waved me off. "Believe me, 117 
 I've heard it all already. All day long 
 I've heard it. She called her folks and they 
called my folks. All I've done all day
is argue with people. And try and justify myself. What
can I say? Diane is good for my writing.
I'm just more creative when she's in my life."
And then he got a little more intimate.
Male-to-male. "And she's not the prude
 Kylie is. I mean, this is a terrible thing 
to say but Kylie isn't so hot in the sack."
I hit him. Right in the mouth. And he hit
me. Right in the mouth. I wasn't tough but then
neither was he. What he was was tall. So I kept
pounding him in the stomach and in the ribs. And he
kept pounding me on the top and the sides of the head.
The cats all scattered, howling. We knocked
a floor lamp over, then a table lamp.
And that's when Kylie came out, sweet in her
 mussed hair and wrinkled clothes, her little-girl 
fist grinding sleep out of her eyes. "Is this a
dream?"
 "It sure isn't a dream," Chad said. 
"Some friends you've got. He hit me."
She surveyed the living and kitchen areas.
"God, you guys broke stuff. That's what
woke me up." Then, "You okay, McCain?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"I see." Chad pouted. "You ask about him but
you don't ask about me. I just happen to be your
husband."
And a writer, too, Chad. Don't forget
you're a deeply tormented writer.
 This time when Tess went to the door, it was the 
inside one. I expected I knew who it was.
I opened it and there she stood, the best-looking
 landlady in the universe. Tall, graceful, 
gray subtly streaking her long, dark hair,
mid-fifties. Mrs. Goldman. One
beautiful babe. "Are you all right, Sam? I
 heard all this commotion and--" She looked behind me 
 to where Kylie and Chad stood. "Oh, hello. 
 I'm Kate Goldman." 
 Chad said, "He attacked me." 
Mrs. Goldman smiled. "You're an awful
lot bigger than he is."
 "And for what it's worth, McCain," Chad 
said, "I'm not so sure I believe you about you and
Kylie." Then, to Kylie: "Will you get your
 damned shoes on so we can get out of here?" Then, 
to me: "And if I find out you weren't 119
 telling me the truth, McCain, you're going to be 
damned sorry, believe me."
Kylie went on her groggy, uncertain way.
Got her tennis shoes on untied and came
back to the living room. "I'm sorry,
McCain." Then she gave me a peck on the
cheek.
 "You kiss him right in front of me?" Chad 
said. He looked at Mrs. Goldman. "Did
you see that? Right in front of her own husband, she
kisses him!"
"Yes," Mrs. Goldman said. "I was
shocked."
He frowned. He had quite a frown. "I
should've known you'd be just like him."
"Chad's folks bought him a new car,"
Kylie said brightly. "Maybe I'll get
lucky and puke all over it."
As they left, Tess bit him on the ankle
again. He tried to kick her but she was too quick for
him.
 The air was unsettled, like a battleground in 
 the aftermath. 
"Gosh, I sure hope to see a lot more of
him, McCain."
"You no doubt will. He's going to be famous."
"Oh?"
 "He's a writer. Just ask him." 
 "That poor girl. I see her at temple every 
once in a while in Iowa City. But I've
never really gotten to know her. How could she have
married a jerk like that?"
Kate Goldman's husband, who was by all
accounts a very nice guy, died several years
 ago. Mrs. Goldman now dated men from the 
synagogue in Iowa City. I was personally
pulling for this history teacher at City High.
One night on the porch downstairs he'd told
 me about his time in Italy during the war and then we 
ended up talking about paperback writers. His
two favorites were David Goodis and Day
Keene. I was hoping he'd run for president
some day.
"Gosh," Mrs. Goldman said, "I really
like your new friend here, Sam." She fanned herself
with a slender hand. She wore a crisp pink
blouse and black walking shorts and black
 flats. If Lauren Bacall had any luck, 
 she'd end up looking just like Kate Goldman when 
she got older. "This place is a 121
mess."
"Yeah, I'm sorry."
"I'm sure it wasn't your fault."
 I got the broom and dustpan and we got 
 busy. 
 Afterward, I poured us each a beer and we sat 
around and talked about Dick Nixon coming to town and
how Jack Kennedy was holding up, and then we
talked local news, her wanting to know all about
my visit to Muldaur's church. "Boy, I
 sure wouldn't handle any of those snakes." 
 A summer storm started right after Mrs. 
Goldman left, August heat lightning stalking
the sky like huge electric spiders. It got
hotter and even more humid for a time and then it got
much cooler suddenly. I lay on my bed with a
beer and a cigarette reading a collection of
 Irwin Shaw short stories. The rain came 
around ten o'clock, a Biblical rain. In the
valley where the city park was the sewers would flood
and some of the park benches and picnic tables would
float a few yards away, and at the next city
council meeting somebody would stand up and suggest that
we chain the benches and the tables to nearby trees so
this catastrophe would never be visited upon us again.
Whenever the call came--in that state that is
neither sleep nor waking--I was standing at the altar
 and a guy in a funny religious hat and a lot of 
funny religious capes and vestments was reading from
 one of Kenny Thibodeau's racy novels--I 
think the title was Lesbo Lawyers--and
saying, "I now pronounce you husband and
 wives." And there I stood with the beautiful 
Pamela Forrest and the fetching Mary Travers
and--
"Hullo."
"McCain?"
"I think so."
"Very funny."
 "What time is it?" 
"Four thirty-seven. You should be up."
"Uh-huh."
"Do you have any idea why I'm calling?"
"Do I win a prize if I guess right?"
"I'm calling because I figured that you hadn't
heard the news yet."
"What news?"
 And then she told me and I abruptly came 
 awake. 
 "I want you to get over there before 123 
Cliffie mucks everything up."
 "I'm on my way, Judge." 
"When you get done over there, call me."
 "How'd you find out about it?" 
 "I keep a police radio on very low next 
to my bed. If anything important happens, the
dispatcher begins to screech. That wakes me up."
There was something very lonely about that but then the
lady'd had four--or was it five?--husbands so
I guessed she was lonely by choice.
I jerked on some clothes and ran downstairs
to my ragtop.

    Part Ii    
        
      Nine      
         
The way I got all this--mostly from an
auxiliary cop named Coggins who had a thermos
full of wonderful-smelling coffee--was that around
midnight Iris Courtney started worrying about
her husband. She told Cliffie (coggins
apparently being present) that shortly after that time
she got a strange call from her husband. He
said that she was not to worry but that he was involved in
something and would explain when he got home. She
said he'd sounded anxious but not afraid. At
 three a.m., frightened now, she walked out to the 
 garage to see if something might have happened to him. 
She recalled hearing a story on the radio about
a man who pulled his car into the garage, had a
heart attack, slumped over on the seat, and was
not discovered until morning when it was too late.
 She didn't want this to happen to her husband. 
She went out and checked the garage. She saw that his
car was there and immediately began to panic. She began
 to frantically search the alley. And that's when she 
looked between her garage and the one belonging to their
neighbors. He was lying on his back, staring up
at the quarter-moon that looked so fresh after the
rain. She saw that he'd been stabbed many times in
the chest. His yellow shirt was soaked dark with
blood. A neighbor's dog was crouched nearby
--a rather stupid-looking beagle, she noted--staring
at the corpse as if it could not understand what was going
on here. Usually, the minister was so friendly and
playful with the dog. She immediately went in and called
the police station.
She was inside the rectory with Cliffie now.
Dawn was still an hour away but 125
 neighbors were beginning to drift into the alley where 
Doc Novotony was looking over the corpse.
Everybody looked well turned-out given the time
 of day. Most of them had put on street clothes. 
Few wore robes.
Coggins kept them away from the strip of grass
between the garages by waving the beam of his red-capped
flashlight to the right. "Nothing to see, folks.
 Don't get in the doc's way now." 
Dick Coggins was the best of the auxiliary
cops. In fact, he was smarter than any of the
cops on the regular force. But because he wasn't
 a member of the Sykes clan, and despite 
scoring high on all the state tests for peace
 officers, he was kept on reserve status. In 
the meantime, he drove a panel truck for an
office-supply company and played a lot of
softball. He could throw a softball about as fast
as anybody I'd ever seen. He was tall,
 trim, wore his dark hair in a crew-cut and 
spoke with a faint Virginia drawl. He'd
spent his first eleven years there.
"I should've figured you'd be here, Sam," he
said. "I could've brought your book back."
He borrowed my textbooks on
 criminology and police procedure. He knew 
all about crime scenes and how to set them up.
"You able to beat Cliffie to the punch tonight?"
He smiled. "Well, I got here before he
trampled all over everything. I'll give all
the evidence to Theresa at the hospital, same as
I did with Muldaur's stuff."
 Theresa was a lab tech and a girl he dated. 
Since Cliffie hated to send anything to the state
 lab--feeling apparently that it robbed him of his 
authority as el comandante--Theresa was the best we
could do locally.
"I'll call her."
"Sure."
 The press was here now. A rumpled, sleepy 
 reporter with a microphone and a heavy tape 
recorder slung over his shoulder wandered from one
 neighbor to the other asking all the usual 
obvious, stupid questions. I'm waiting for the wife
 of a recently murdered man to say to a reporter, 
"How does it feel to have your husband murdered?
 I'll tell you, It feels great. He was an 
arrogant, overbearing jerk and I want to thank
 whoever killed him. I can finally live like a 
normal human being now that old Ralph 127
is gone." Just once.
The crowd grew. The ambulance team took the
 body away. Doc Novotony yawned a lot. 
Cliffie gave the radio guy one of his Dick
Tracy Crime Fighter speeches--th case was
going to be wrapped up within forty-eight hours and you
 had his word on it--and then said (honest), "Some people 
thought that Reverend Courtney was sort of a snob and
thought he was better than the rest of us because he was
from back east, but I felt that deep down he was
 just a regular guy. Let's not forget that he was a 
Cubs fan."
Maybe they'd let him give the graveside
remarks.

I had to appear before Judge Ronald D.
K. M. Sullivan that morning. Don't ask
what the initials stand for. Local lawyers insist
that they translate to Duly Krazy Mick. And
that would certainly apply. D.K.M. has two
modes--ccfused and very, very, which is to say
 extremely, pissed off. He has been known 
to hum, whittle an apple and eat it, do deep
breathing exercises, and flip coins while you're
making your case before his bench. He berates you for the
color, cut, and cleanliness of your suit. He
reminds you when you need a haircut. He has
advised young women to wear more uplifting bras and
 young men to wear toupees because the sunlight streaming 
through his courtroom windows is brilliant when
 bounced off a bald pate. His nose runs, his 
eyes collect pounds of green stuff in the
 corners, and the last time he brushed his teeth we were 
bombing Berlin. He is, as near as anyone can
guess, somewhere between two hundred and four hundred
years old. Like those turtles.
He said, "And what offense against humanity
has Mr. Larkin committed today, Mr.
McCain?"
"He's been charged with obstructing justice."
"Obstructing justice?" He made it sound as
if he'd never heard the words before.
"He is alleged to have struck an officer who
was trying to arrest Mr. Larkin's lady friend."
 "And why was the officer trying to arrest Mr. 
Larkin's lady friend?"
"Because allegedly his lady friend had kicked the
officer in the crotch area."
 "And for what reason had his lady friend kicked the 
officer in the crotchtal area?" 129
The crotchtal area? Crotchtal? D.K.More
always tried to make things sound a little more dignified
 than they are. Hence, crotchtal area. And by the 
 way, all the things he makes me explain? 
Most judges read the charges before they have you
address the bench. But D.K.M. saves time
 by having you do all his prep for him. 
"She kicked him in the crotchtal area because he
 called her a name." 
"And what name would that be, Mr. McCain?"
"He called her a hooker."
"A what?"
"A hooker. It's slang for prostitute."
"Ah, a strumpet."
 "Something like that." 
"So the officer of the law calls the lady friend of
 Mr. Larkin a strumpet and she kicks him in the 
crotchtal area and when the officer of the law tries
to arrest her Mr. Larkin steps in and strikes the
officer of the law in the face?"
"That's correct, Your Honor."
"Good. Now I understand. And by the way, Mr.
 McCain, you really need a haircut." 
 I wanted to kick him in the crotchtal area. 
  
I didn't get in to see Judge Whitney
until much later that morning. And when I did
get to her chambers, I found two men and two
women I'd never seen before. They had the taint of
 fussiness about them, a certain archness that stamped them 
 as her kind of folk, not mine. One of the women was 
a nice-looking redhead. Which reminded me of
Kylie Burke. I wondered how she was doing.
Her world had to be coming apart. No matter that she was
too good for him. She'd always been so clearly
gaga over him that it was painful to watch.
The Judge was giving orders like a field
commander. "Then, Rick, you know how I want the
tent set up. And Randy you know how I wanted the
cake to be made--eight tiers. And Darla I
want the food to be as colorfully arranged as
Michele's flowers--in fact, you two should get
together and see if there's some way you could
coordinate some things."
 Maybe a gardenia sandwich, I thought. 
 All this was for Richard Milhous Nixon, of 
 course. 
I had seen the Judge a-flutter and
a-twitter before but these had been on separate
 occasions. But I'd never seen her both 131 
 a-flutter and a-twitter at the same time. This was 
something to behold.
Oleg Cassini had become her designer of
choice and so on her four-trips-a-year to New
 York City she stocked up on Cassini duds 
the way factory workers stocked up on Monkey
Wards work clothes. Today, she wore a handsome
tan linen suit with matching pumps. Her short
 hair looked freshly washed and combed. And she 
strode the length of her office with runway
elegance. She was all crazed, nervous energy,
terrified that she'd make less than a good
impression on old Milhous.
That's why you have to be careful about being a-flutter
 and a-twitter at the same time. It can really 
make you crazy--y're like an engine with the idle
running too fast.
"Now, does everybody know what they need
to do?"
Cowed, terrified, they glanced at each other and
then looked back at the Judge. They nodded like
frightened puppies who'd just pooped on the new
carpeting.
 "Good, because I don't need to tell you, there'll 
be hell to pay for anybody who screws up."
I felt sorry for them. God, I felt
sorry for them.
 She waved them dismissively away. They 
 left with great hurried relief. 
 "So," she said when the last of them had closed the 
door, "this thing is getting worse and worse."
She went over to her desk, poured herself some
brandy, plucked a Gauloise from her cigarette
case and lighted it with a small aluminum box that
somehow produced fire.
"They're connected," she said, exhaling a
gulf stream of blue smoke. "Muldaur and
Reverend Courtney."
 "I sure think so." 
"But how?"
"Not a clue. Not so far."
"I don't want these ridiculous murders
hanging over our heads when Dick gets here."
A chic sip. She was a damned good-looking
woman and knew it. "You have one of your famous
lists?"
 "I have one of my famous lists." 
My crime instructor at the university said
that a good detective always writes down names and
incidents and then begins to connect them, like 133
children's puzzles where eventually the connected lines
draw a picture. In this case, the picture
of a killer.
 "The night Muldaur was murdered, both Sara 
Hall and the now-deceased Reverend Courtney just
 happened to show up. I find that strange. I 
 mean, why would they be way out in the boonies like that? 
That's the first thing on my list. The second thing
 is that when I went out to Muldaur's trailer the 
day after the murder the daughter said she knew who'd
killed her father but then her mother told her to shut
up. Also, there was a crazy hillbilly there named
 Ned. He was exchanging bullets with the 
 Muldaurs, which they explained to me was just a 
mountain tradition and not anything to worry about. He
claims that Muldaur owes him money for
collecting snakes. He's worth following up
on and so is the daughter, Ella. Item three
on my list is Sara Hall again. I know you
told me not to bother her but I just happened to run
into her out at the shopping mall."
"I'll bet you just happened to run into her."
"She looked very rocky. Scared, angry,
confused. Take your pick. Or maybe all
three. Anyway, after she left me she met the
good Reverend Courtney. They went into The House
of Beef together."
"I wonder what that was all about."
"So do I."
 Her face twisted with displeasure. "She 
wasn't having an affair with him, was she?"
"She's your friend, Judge. You'd know better
than I would."
She walked over to the long, leaded window that
 overlooked the courthouse lawn. She loved 
to pose dramatically in front of it. Maybe
she was practicing for Milhous.
 "Did she ever mention Courtney to you?" I 
said. "Did she say why he was counseling
Dierdre?"
"Not really. But Dierdre's always had
problems. Depression. She saw her father
drown."
The story was well-known locally. Extremely
wealthy man trying out his brand-new
Chris-Craft one late Fourth of July on
the river when a speedboat being driven by a
monumentally drunken local playboy smashed
into him. The wealthy man--Art Hall--drowned
after rescuing his wife and daughter. 135
Dierdre went back in the water after her father.
 Bystanders had to restrain her from doing it again. She 
spent a fair amount of time in a mental
hospital shortly after that. She was thirteen
years old at the time, probably seventeen now.
 The playboy had some good lawyers. He quickly 
moved to California and had not been heard from
since.
You saw Dierdre walking around town. One of
 her doctors had apparently told her that 
exercise was good for combating depression. So she
walked. Everywhere. Day and night. She had yet
to finish high school. She hadn't attended the
previous semester. Depression. She had a
prim, Victorian beauty except for the troubled
eyes. She favored heavy sweaters, jeans,
 white Keds. Even in the summer, when other people 
 wore the least the law would allow, there would be 
Dierdre in her cable-knit sweater. Walking.
 "You want to talk to Sara?" 
 She shook her head. "I'll have you do it. I 
value her friendship too much. She'll resent it
coming from me."
"She'll resent it coming from me, too."
She smiled. "Yes, but I don't really
give a damn about that, do I? Now get out there and
find out what's going on, McCain. When my people
 ran this town, we didn't have any unsolved 
murders, believe me."
The thing was, for all the puffery, the statement was
probably true. If nothing else, the
Whitneys are bright and tidy and efficient civil
servants.
At the door, she said, "Muldaur being
killed did one good thing, anyway."
"What?"
 "No more of those damned anti-Semitic and 
anti-Catholic flyers he was putting out. And
 I say that as a Protestant, McCain. You 
know I don't have a prejudiced bone in my
 body. I'm very happy that all you people came over 
here on your little boats."
I could tell she wanted some sort of Nobel
 peace prize for saying what she'd just said. 
Unfortunately, I didn't have one on me
to give her.



                        137                        
       Ten       
         
I heard girlish giggling as I walked through
my office door. Kylie was parked with great
 poise upon the edge of my desk and Jamie was 
sitting behind her typewriter stand. They both were
smoking filtered cigarettes and drinking Pepsi
from bottles.
"God," Kylie was saying, "so how did you
get your clothes back?"
"That's the thing," Jamie was saying. "We
 didn't. The dog dragged them off. We never 
found them again."
"Then how'd you get home?"
"We drove back on dirt roads and then
we had to take alleys all the way to my house.
 I had to get a blanket from the garage and sneak 
into the house. I was afraid my dad was gonna
wake up and see me in my birthday suit."
Giggling again. They were as drunk as they could get
 on Pepsi. There was something sweet about it. 
 Kylie was a city girl with a brain and Jamie was 
a small-town girl with a body. And yet here they
 were fast friends, at least for this small 
inconsequential moment in this backwoods town in
this backwoods state on this backwoods planet
in the vast, indifferent universe. Every once in a
while, I try to put things into perspective. It
 was those damned philosophy courses I took. 
I went behind my desk and sat down. Kylie,
cautiously erotic in a prim white blouse and
 tight royal blue skirt, pushed her Pepsi 
at me and said, "Jamie's been telling me about
the night she and Turk went skinny-dipping."
 "Good old Turk," I said. 
"Mr. C's never met Turk," Jamie
said.
 "And I'm the poorer for it, no doubt," I 
 said. 
"Turk sounds sort of cool, actually,"
 Kylie said, relishing the effect her words would have 
 on me. 
"Oh, yes, very cool," I said.
"As opposed to short, mouthy guys who aren't
cool."
Jamie giggled. "I think she's talking about
you, Mr. C."
At which point a horn sounded.
 "Turk!" Jamie said. "He's picking me 
up for lunch!" 139
 "I hope he's got clothes on," Kylie 
 laughed. 
"She'd make you a great girlfriend," Jamie
said of Kylie. "I mean, if you weren't all
 hung up on that snob Pam Forrest. And if 
Kylie wasn't married."
"You have a succinct way of stating a problem,"
Kylie said.
"I don't know what succinct means but it
sounds sort of dirty."
The horn again.
"He'll have to come in sometime so I can meet
him," I said.
"He doesn't like lawyers."
"Oh? How come?"
"That time he ran over that nun? This lawyer his
dad got really didn't have any respect for
Turk. I mean, the nun wasn't even hurt
much. It wasn't his fault she was so short. He
just couldn't see her behind the dump truck he was
backing up."
 "Turk's father owns a construction company," I 
explained to Kylie.
"Ah," Kylie said.
 "I mean, she sprained her ankle was all," 
 Jamie said. "It wasn't like she died or 
 anything." 
 The horn. For the third time. 
"He isn't real patient sometimes," Jamie
explained. Then, "Gee, I've got a lot of
 other stories about stuff me'n Turk did, 
Kylie. We'll have to get together again sometime."
 "You know," Kylie said, sounding sincere. 
"I'd actually like that."
 Jamie was wearing a pair of jeans so tight 
they should be illegal. Unfair to lechers like me.
Kylie sat down in the client chair. "She
really made me feel better. She's not a
genius but there's an innocence and an energy that's
really great to be around."
"Great. So you're feeling better."
"Much better, actually. I can't believe
it."
 And then her body sort of collapsed in on 
itself and she started sobbing. "I've been up and down
like this ever since he told me about his affair," she
managed to say.
I didn't have any Kleenex so I went into the
can and got several fistfuls of toilet paper.
She said, when she'd gathered herself, 141
"I should leave him, shouldn't I?"
"Oh, no."
"Oh, no, what?"
"No advice. You give people advice on
matters of the heart, you lose them as friends forever."
 "But I'm asking for advice. That absolves 
you of all responsibility."
"You say that now--but later ..."
 "C'mon, McCain. You really think I should 
leave him, don't you?"
I took her hand in mine and gently said, "You
know what I really think?"
"What?"
"That we should go get some lunch."
 She jerked her hand away. "Coward." 
"Damn right I'm a coward. I have three
fewer friends today because I advised them on their
affairs of the heart. They won't speak to me.
 Now, let's go." 
  
The wading pool in the town square was packed with
tots. You could hear them squealing, summer music
 on a summer breeze. There was a drowsy, 
siesta feeling such as you always read about in the
western novels of Mr. Max Brand, for whom
 I'd formed a real affection. I'd read two of 
his when I was twelve and then kept on reading. His
heroes were always brooders and mourners and
 failures and daydreamers and that lent his stories a 
 uniqueness and depth most westerns just don't have, 
John Wayne forgive me. He was especially
great at describing Mexico. And that, at least
in my imagination, was how our little town felt at this
noontime. Some dusty Mexican pueblo where this
really neat-looking short guy rides in on a
 white horse and all the se@noritas come 
running. It was so hot here today tires were losing
tread simply by revolving against the steamy
pavement.
Kylie spotted them before I did. On the
windshield of a pink-and-white Nash rambler. And
on the windshield of a nice new Pontiac
 convertible. And on the window of a Dairy Queen 
panel truck.
Flyers.
She snatched one up. Glanced at it.
Flicked it in my face.
 Why The Jews Want Jfk 
 To Win! 
The Zionist Powers Behind The
                        Kennedys! 143                        
 The rest you can imagine for yourself. 
"But didn't old man Kennedy hang around with
Hitler?" she asked.
 "Liked the man very much. Considered him a friend. 
 That's one of the reasons the Kennedys have to keep 
 old Joe out of sight. A lot of people still resent 
the old bastard."
"Then why do they think the Jews are behind
Kennedy?"
"I guess I don't know," I said.
 "Maybe for the same reasons the Jews are stashing 
all their guns in church basements."
"These people are nuts!" she said with great
authority. "As my folks always pointed out."
Her folks were (a) university professors
and (but) Jewish, in a time when it was not universally
fashionable to be either. Kylie'd grown up in
Madison, Wisconsin, one of the most lovely
and exciting cities in the U.S.
"Well, they get to economize on this
election, anyway," I said.
 We started walking again. She started fanning 
herself with her fingers. She had wonderful long
fingers. Artistic, I guess you'd say. She
also had a very artistic ass.
"How are they economizing?"
"Well, when the Klan and the other crazies
get all riled up around election time, they
 usually take the Jews and the Catholics on 
 separately. But since Kennedy has a lot of 
Jewish advisers, they've decided they can save
on their printing bills by doubling up. The only
thing they didn't get to is the
Eleanor-Roosevelt-is-a-lesbo-thing."
 "Eleanor Roosevelt is a lesbian?" 
"That's what all the pamphlets say. Say,
I wonder if Kenny Thibodeau has heard that
one. There's a political novel in it for him.
Lesbo Legislators."
She laughed. "He's actually an interesting
guy."
"Yeah, he is."
"He goes away to all these big cities and
 comes back and tells us what's going on. You 
know, trends and stuff. I even read a couple of
his novels."
 "Shameless hussy," I said. 
"He can write people well. I was surprised.
 I asked him why he doesn't write a serious 
book and you know what he told me?" 145
"What?"
"He said that every time he tries, he freezes
up. Blocks. But that he can write his porno just
fine because he knows it's just trash and doesn't
matter. I sort of feel sorry for him."
 "You feel sorry for everybody." 
"Look who's talking."

Al Monahan has two bus-stop benches
 on either side of the entrance to his caf@e. Nice 
for eating outdoors on hot days, which we did.
I had iced tea and a cheeseburger. She had
iced tea.
"I thought you wanted some lunch."
"Iced tea is lunch," she said
defensively.
"I'd hate to hear you argue that in court."
"Want to take the case?"
"You should eat," I said.
"You should stop being a mother hen."
"That's the most effective diet in the world.
Heartbreak."
 "It sure is." 
 "When's the last time you ate?" 
"Last night. A piece of pizza."
I was about to do a little more mother-henning when I saw
them.
Sara and Dierdre Hall. Jaywalking from the
other side of the street.
"Be right back," I said and jumped up,
setting my lunch down.
 I caught them just as they reached their baby-blue 
DeSoto convertible. They were dressed pretty
much the same--pink summer blouses, white pedal
pushers, white dressy sandals. And the darkest
 sunglasses this side of Elizabeth Taylor. 
They looked alike, too. Quiet beauty all
the richer the longer you studied it.
"Hi, Sara, I wondered if I could call
you this afternoon."
"Get in the car, Dierdre."
"Mom, didn't you hear him?"
 "Didn't you hear me, Dierdre? I said 
to get in the car."
"Sara, we really do need to sit down and
talk."
 "Mom, do you have any idea how embarrassing this 
is? Why don't you at least answer him?"
"I'll answer him when you get in the car."
 "This is very embarrassing, Mr. 147 
McCain. I'm sorry."
"It's all right. Your mom's obviously
 having a bad day." 
"My mom's always having a bad day."
Dierdre got in the car. Crossed her arms
across her chest.
"I have nothing to say to you," Sara Hall said
to me.
"I'm trying to help you, Sara."
"How noble."
"Would you prefer if I just started talking right
here? In front of your daughter?"
"Yes, Mother," Dierdre said. "That'd be
 fun, wouldn't it?" 
"I resent this," Sara Hall said.
"So do I. You owe me some answers."
"I don't owe you anything. And I plan
 to take this up with Judge Whitney, believe 
 me." 
I knew better than to say that the Judge
already knew I'd be talking to Sara. "I'd
 appreciate it if you'd be at my office at 
four o'clock."
"If she isn't there, I will be, Mr.
McCain."
That was another point I'd make on my list.
 Muldaur's daughter and Hall's daughter 
offering to cooperate even though their mothers refused
to.
"I'll see you at four," Sara Hall said,
 and got into her car. 
I could see them pantomiming an argument as the
swept-fin convertible swept away. I had the
 sense that it was an argument they'd had many times. I 
 wondered what it was about. I felt sure it had 
 some bearing on the murders. 
"Ah," I said, sitting down next to Kylie
on the bench again and picking up my lunch. "Just the
way I like it. My cheeseburger's cold and my
iced tea's hot."
 "I'm now a black-belt in fly-shooing. It 
looked like Pearl Harbor on your burger." She
sipped her iced tea. "So, did you learn
anything?"
"Just that Sara and Dierdre Hall don't
seem to get along very well."
"Any idea why?"
"Not yet."
 "Meaning you plan to find out?" 
"Of course. Before Richard Milhous 149
Nixon gets here and finds out that we have murders
just like everybody else."
"He says he's not sure if he loves
her."
 "I take it we're not talking about Nixon 
anymore."
"He says he knows he's being unfair to me
 and he wouldn't blame me if I just walked out. 
We really got into a terrible argument--the people
 downstairs were banging on the wall and everything--and 
then we ended up making love practically all
night. And then when he was leaving for school this
 morning--even though he doesn't have any 
classes today--I asked him if I'd see him
 tonight and he said that he had a date with her." 
 "Ah." 
"That's all you're going to say? Ah? What
kind of comment is that?"
"A non-comment. I'm staying out of this,
remember?"
"Well, pretend it's you and not me. What would
you do, then?"
 "That's how it sorta was at the end with 
Pamela. We finally made love one night and
as soon as we were finished the phone rang. It was
 good ole Stu and she went rushing off to him." 
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Did you take her back?"
 "She never came back. Not really, anyway. 
She snuck away a few days later because Stu was
having second thoughts about dumping his wife and
family and the governorship."
"What governorship?"
"Everybody figured it was his turn to be
governor."
 "But he's here now." 
"Yes, he is. Rebuilding his image after
 running away with a hussy." 
 "And where's Pamela?" 
"Hiding somewhere. I'm not sure where,
exactly."
 "What if she called and asked you to get 
 married?" 
"I don't know. That's the only answer I can
give you."
"She walked all over you."
"Yes."
"And ditched you for somebody else."
                        "Yes." 151                        
"And you'd still consider taking her back."
"I'd consider it, I suppose."
"Well, that's exactly how I'd feel,
McCain. I'd consider it."
"We're a couple of fools," I said, "is
what we are."
"Damned fools."
"Double-damned fools."
"We're really pathetic, you know that?"
"Do I know it? Do I know it? I make myself
 sick I know it so much." 
And that's when I saw this guy working his way up
the street, slipping leaflets under windshield
wipers.
"I'll call you at work this afternoon," I said.
"I'm really going to need you tonight, McCain."
"Good. Because I'm really going to need you,
too."
She grabbed my hand. "You are?"
"Sure I am." And then I did something I
 really shouldn't ought to have done. I leaned over and 
gave her a kiss right on the mouth. A married
woman--well, a somewhat married woman--right
on the mouth.
Just the kind of thing I'd expect from you, I
could hear my ninth-grade nun, Sister Mary
Florence, saying. Just the kind of thing I'd
expect from you.

     Eleven     
         
John Parnell was a chunky guy with a limp
that resulted from a grade-school tractor
accident. He wore a lime-colored
 T-shirt and jeans and sandals. He was bending 
over a Ford station wagon to slap a leaflet beneath
its windshield.
"Hi, John."
He backed himself off the car hood he'd been
bent over and said, "Hey, McCain, how ya
doin'?"
"Fine. Or I was till I saw you putting
 those leaflets on car windows." 
He grinned. "Yeah, that'd make the nuns
 mad, wouldn't it?" 
I nodded to the stack of leaflets in his car.
He was still the freckled, snub-nosed guy I'd
always known. I couldn't connect him to the leaflets.
"You printed them and now you're distributing them?"
"Yep. That's what God wants me 153
to do, McCain."
"He told you that?"
"Now you're being blasphemous, Sam."
 Maybe this wasn't the old Parnell I'd 
 known. 
 "You're a Catholic, Parnell, and you're 
 handing this stuff out?" 
 He shook his head. "Not anymore I'm not. 
A Catholic, I mean."
"Since when?"
He shrugged. "Well, the wife--I'm not
sure you ever met her, gal from Sioux City I
met when I was doing my printing apprenticeship
up there--anyway, she was raised as an
evangelical. And what with one thing and another she
kinda got me interested in the whole thing. She
 always says you should feel bad when you go to church. 
 And I tried 'em all--Lutheran, Baptist, 
Presbyterian. But they always tried to make you
feel good. But bad's the only way you know your
 religion's workin' for you. When you feel terrible. 
 And that's what we both liked about Reverend 
Muldaur. His whole deal was how unworthy we
 all are. And I believe that, McCain. You 
might believe something else--but that's what I
believe, McCain."
"But the snakes--"
"That's what people don't understand."
"What don't people understand?"
"They're not snakes."
"They sure looked like it to me."
"They're devils. Really and truly.
Devils. Evil spirits. I've held them. I
can feel their evil. I truly can. But they
didn't bite me because Reverend Muldaur
cleansed my soul before he handed me the snakes."
"But all this bullshit about Jews and
Catholics--"
"I don't use words like bdds. anymore,
Sam. But I'll tell you, they're both out
to conquer the world. They know they can't do it alone, so
 they've joined forces. And the only people who can stop 
them are people like me." He leaned forward
 confidentially. He smelled of sweat and onions. 
"And there're a lot of people in this town who believe
 the same way I do, Sam. But they don't 
 want people to know it." 
"So you just gave him all this printing free?"
"Heck, no. A friend of his paid for it."
"What friend?" 155
 He leaned toward me again. He mst've had an 
onion sandwich with some onion rings and onion
 juice on the side. "Like I said, Sam, 
there're a lot of folks in this town who agree with
everything we do. And one of them was nice enough to pick
up the tab for the printing. I just charged my costs.
 No profit. That wouldn't be right, seeing's how I 
 was doing it for the Lord." 
 Parnell, Parnell, what did somebody 
drug you with? How can you possibly believe this
crap?
Then I realized it was time for me to go pick up
the rabbi and the monsignor. We were doing some
target practice this afternoon with the guns in the church
basement.
"I'd really appreciate it if you told me
who paid for the printing, John. I'm trying to find
 out who killed Muldaur." 
 "I know you are. We all hear the Judge is 
trying to get it all cleaned up before Nixon
gets here. Now, there's a guy with almost as many
 Jew friends as Kennedy has. Hard to know who 
to vote for."
 I couldn't deal with it any longer. 
"You're making me so damn sad, Parnell."
 "And you're making me sad, too, Sam. I 
saw you over there eating with that Jewess. She's not
fit company for a true Christian, Sam."
"Well, she's fit company for me. She's a
damned good woman, in fact."
 He shook his head. He really did seem 
sad. "The ways of the flesh, Sam, the ways of the
flesh."

At one time, the two-room house had
probably looked pretty nice sitting all
alone by the fast creek in the curve of a copse of
pine. It looked like one of those houses a fella
could order himself from the Sears Roebuck catalog
late in the 1890's. Such homes came with
assembly instructions; the fancier kits even
included hammers and other tools. You could see
some of these Sears houses standing well into the
1940's, by the grace of spit and God, as the
old saying had it.
Ned Blimes, whose last name and current
address I'd learned by asking around, didn't
seem to be at home as I pulled my ragtop
behind a stand of pine to the west of his house. I
didn't want my car to pick up any 157
stray bullets.
 A dainty man, he wasn't. His meals 
apparently included a lot of self-shot
squirrel meat because the grass on the side of his
place was strewn with carcasses. Several gleaming
 crows hovered nearby. I'd interrupted their 
 meal. I've never been able to tolerate the smell 
 of squirrel meat frying. The air was coarse and 
bloody with it.
I knocked on the front door of the shack-like
house. The lone front window was filled with
cardboard and just a jagged remnant of the glass that
had once covered it.
The crows went back to eating. The pollen got
to me and I sneezed. And somebody poked something in
my back.
 The smell told me it was Yosemite Sam 
 himself. 
 "Put your hands over your head." 
"This high enough?"
"Higher."
 "This is as high as I can go." 
 "What'chu want, McCain?" 
"I wanted to ask you some questions."
"About what?"
"About Muldaur."
"Don't want to talk about Muldaur."
"Why not?"
 "Because that was part of the bargain." 
"What bargain?"
He guffawed. Or whinnied. I couldn't be
sure. Maybe it was a guffaw-whinny. "That's for
 me to know and you to find out." 
"Gee, I haven't heard that one since third
grade."
"Huh?"
"How about taking the gun out of my back?"
"Then how about you gettin' in that car of yours and
gettin' the hell out of here?"
Then he started marching me back to my car.
I still had my hands above my head. There was a
variety of animal poop all over the buffalo
grass. I am happy to report that my black
penny loafers didn't touch any of it.
"What happened out there the day you took
Muldaur snakin'?"
"Who tole you somethin' happened?"
"You did."
 "I did? When?" 
"When I saw you at Muldaur's 159
place. You said something like "He was the only one
who made any money that day.""
"Shit," he said.
"What?"
 "You sure I said that?" 
 "I sure am." 
"Then I shouldn't've. Me'n my big mouth."
We'd reached my car.
He prodded and poked me with the barrel of his
rifle. I got in and got behind the wheel.
"You just forget I said anything, mister."
"I'm not going to."
"Well, you damned well better," he said.
"You can't make me."
 "Bet I can," he said, and put the tip of the 
rifle about three inches from my face.
"You always talk like you're in third grade?"
"Do you? Now you get the hell out of here and you
 don't bother me no more, you understand that?" 
  
When I got back to the office, I got out
my list and added a few more items.
Why were Sara and Dierdre Hall so angry
at each other?
Who paid Parnell the printing costs?
What happened the day Muldaur and Ned
Blimes went snaking? Jamie had left me a
typed note:

I Finisshed Up Tyyping Earlie
So Me And Tturc Went Swimming.
This Time Wit Our Close On.
He-he. I Cracked A Funnie,
 Mrr C. Jamie 
  
Well, she was coming along, anyway, God
love her. A couple of times she'd even
 mistyped her own name--?Jammie" and 
"Jaamie"--s hanging around Turk--excuse
me "Tturc"--was apparently starting to pay
off. The first time I'd interviewed her for the job,
she'd told me, "My dad says he hasn't
got a lot upstairs, Turk I mean, and
maybe he doesn't. But he's got a lot of
 common sense. Like one day this big dog was really 
growling at me and he had this kind of foamy stuff
 dripping from his mouth. And you know what Turk said? 
He said, "Don't try to pet him or nothing,
Jamie. He looks kinda mad." See what
I mean? He's got a lot of common 161
 sense, Mr. C." 
 The Common Sense Typing Method. 
A volume that should be in every school library.
Between 2ccji and 3ccec I got four calls.
Two of the callers were clients explaining why they
couldn't pay me this month, and two were people who
wanted to sell me some things. Maybe if the first
 two callers came through with money, I might be 
able to buy things from the second two.
 I looked through some court documents the county 
attorney had shipped me; a dunning letter from my
alumni association; a copy of Time with Ike
 on the cover. The Wwii people would always be my 
true heroes. Even a little town like ours lost
 twenty-eight men and women in the war. And you never 
forgot. Some people talked about their war experiences and
 some didn't. But whether they held their memories 
public or private, they could never let go of
 them. There are some things you go through that change you forever 
 --even if you don't want to be changed--and war 
is one of them. My dad still has nightmares
sometimes, my mom says, and they're always about his
war experiences. I didn't agree with everything
Ike believed politically but I admired him a
 damned sight more than I did showboats like 
Patton and MacArthur. MacArthur I gave
up on when he said we should drop atomic bombs
on China. He enjoyed war too much to be
 trusted. He loved posing against a backdrop of 
 explosions and bombed-out people trooping down lonely 
roads. I always laughed about what Ike said when
asked what he'd done as an Army captain in the
South Seas during the 1930's, when he'd served
as MacArthur's secretary: "I studied
drama under General MacArthur." MacArthur
never forgave Ike for that crack.
Just before Sara Hall was due, my dad called
and said, "Don't forget Monday's your mom's
birthday."
"God, I'm glad you reminded me."
"She says she doesn't want us to make a
big deal of it. But you know better and so do I."
 "Mind if I bring somebody new? And she's 
not a date exactly. Kylie Burke."
"That newspaper girl? She's sure a
cutie. And nice, too. She interviewed a
bunch of us at the Vfw last year. Sure,
bring her."
"Maybe Kylie can help me pick out a
gift, too." 163
"Well, I'm goin' fishin', son. Talk
to you later."
Four-fifteen and Sara Hall still hadn't
 appeared. I picked up the phone book, found 
her number, dialed it. No answer.
Four twenty-one. A timid knock.
"Yes?"
"It's Dierdre Hall, Mr. McCain."
"C'mon in."
She was dressed as she had been earlier, but her
shades were pushed back on her head.
"Where's your mom?"
 "I-I'm not sure." 
"Boy, are you lousy at it."
"At what?"
"Lying. Your entire face is red."
"Oh, shit."
"C'mon in and sit down and let's talk."
"I'm sorry I lied."
"It's all right. Just sit down. We can talk
about your mom later. What I want to know for now
is why you decided to come over."
She hesitated a long time. "My mom's
going to kill me for coming here."
"Let's worry about that later."
She scanned my office for gremlins, a
pretty girl with more poise than one would expect
in somebody her age. That was my thought, anyway.
But then she sort of spoiled the impression
 by jerking up from her chair, covering her mouth with her 
hand--the way I always did when the Falstaff beer
 started backing up--and rushed out the door to the john 
on the other side of the coatrack.
My charm had worked once again on a female.
 They didn't usually go so far as to barf literally. 
Only figuratively.
The exterior door opened and Sara Hall,
angry and frantic, rushed in, scanning my
 office much as her daughter had only moments 
earlier, and said, "Where is she?"
 She wore the same outfit she'd worn 
earlier, too, but her shades were over her eyes.
"Who?"
"I don't want any of your guff,
McCain. You know who. If you don't tell
me, I'll have Sykes arrest you for contributing
to the delinquency of a minor. Or maybe
statutory rape would be even better."
"Why don't you sit down and quit acting
                        crazy?" 165                        
"Where is she, McCain? I'm serious about
calling Sykes."
 And then we both heard Dierdre throw up for the 
second time.
"Oh, Lord," Sara said. She didn't sound
angry; she sounded drained, weary.
 She came in and sat down and took off her 
 sunglasses and then covered her face with lovely 
 fingers. 
"Sara, why don't you tell me what's going
on?"
 She shook her head. Said from behind her hands, 
"I can't, McCain. I wish I could. I wish
 I could tell somebody, anyway." Then, "This 
is when I resent my husband dying on me. He
should be here. He was stronger than I was with things like
this." Then, whispering, "This whole thing."
I almost asked what whole thing.
 "You're not weak," I said. 
"No, I'm pretty strong. But this whole
thing--"
We were back to the this-whole-thing thing.
Toilet flushing. Water running. Paper
towel being cinched free from the dispenser. Door
opening.
 She came up to the door and said, "Mom!" 
Sara turned in her chair as if she'd been
shot.
 "How'd you know I'd be here?" 
 "You told me you trusted McCain, 
remember? So when you snuck away this was the first
place I thought of."
"I didn't tell him anything, if that's what
you're worried about."
Sara seemed ecstatic. "Really?"
"Really, Mom."
 Then to me: "Really? She didn't--?" 
I shook my head. "Didn't have time. Started
to. Then got sick."
 Sara was as bad at lying as Dierdre. 
 "She's been sick--the flu--" 
"We're way down the road on that one,
Sara," I said.
"I don't know what that means." Sounding
scared.
 "It means she's pregnant. That's why she was 
throwing up."
Sara gasped the way women in movies gasp.
Dierdre showed no particular expression.
"Then you did tell him!" Sara 167
snapped, crazed again.
"Mom, he figured it out. Throwing up in the
middle of the day. Me coming over here to tell him some
kind of secret. You being so wound-up and all--he
 figured it out for himself." 
Sara turned to me again. "Please don't
tell anybody, McCain. Please promise
me."
My seventeen-year-old sister had gotten
 pregnant a few years ago. People still whispered 
about her, snickered, even after she'd fled
to Chicago. Nobody deserved that kind of
treatment.
"Don't worry, Sara. I won't say a
word."
"I have to trust you, McCain."
 "I know." I reached over and took her hand. 
"And you can." To her daughter, I said, "How about
taking ole Mom home and helping her relax?"
Sara smiled anxiously. "Ole Mom here
could sure use one."
 I hadn't learned anything other than that a 
high-school girl had gotten herself in trouble, the
 kind of trouble small-town gossips, lineal 
 descendants of the folks who ran the Salem 
witch trials, loved to dote on. But now
wasn't the time to push for anything more.
 "You're a good man, McCain." 
 "And you're a good woman, Sara." 
Sara and Dierdre hugged briefly and left.
 Leaving me to wonder if her pregnancy had 
anything in particular to do with our two most recent
murders.

End Of Volume I
















Save The Last Dance For Me

   by Ed Gorman   
      
      
Volume Ii of Two Volumes
Pages i-Ii and 169-340



   Published by:   
Carroll and Graf Publishers
  An Imprint of  
Avalon Publishing Group Inc.
161 William St., 16th Floor
New York, Ny 10038.
 Further reproduction or distribution 
in other than a specialized
format is prohibited.

Produced in braille for the Library
of Congress, National Library
Service for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped, by National Braille
Press Inc., 2003.












Copyright 2002 by Ed Gorman












Save The Last Dance 169
     For Me     
         
 Part Ii (cont.) 
  
     Twelve     
         
We ended up eating in the backyard that night with
Mrs. Goldman. She'd been grilling herself a
burger and so we threw our own burgers on the
fire and joined her at the small picnic table.
"We tried out that new dance boat last
night," Mrs. Goldman said, in between shooing
 away flies and slapping mosquitoes. 
"How was it?" Kylie said.
"A lot of fun."
 A couple of retired men had spent a year 
building a large, completely enclosed dance
boat that was decorated like a restaurant and dance
club inside. Booths lined two of the walls and
there were three decks where you could stand for romantic
moonlit glimpses of the night.
"How about we give it a try?" Kylie said.
"Fine," I said.
She mst've seen how Mrs. Goldman was
watching us.
"My husband and I are separated for the time
being," Kylie said.
"It's really not any of my business."
Kylie laughed. "I don't care about my
reputation. It's McCain's I'm worried
about. I don't want to spoil his virginal
image."
Mrs. Goldman smiled. "His life
seems to have slowed down the last few months here."
 "He's just resting up. He'll come roaring 
 back." 
 "I really like it when people talk about you like you're not 
here," I said.
 Kylie and I were sitting next to each other on 
 one side of the table. Mrs. Goldman's summer 
 garden imbued the dusk with exotic odors you 
don't usually associate with states where corn
and pigs are economic staples. I was having
my usual reaction to that purgatory between day and
night, that melancholy that was not quite despair but
came pretty close.
Kylie slid her arm around me. "I wouldn't
have made it these last few days without Sam here."
"Ditto for her. I've been kinda down
                        myself." 171                        
"Well, you never know where things like this will lead,"
Mrs. Goldman said.
Dogs barked; children laughed; a group of three
very young teen couples walked down the alley,
boys nervously teasing the girls they liked, not
knowing what else to do, that wonderful awkward
 terrifying time of first love; and night, 
irrevocable and vast, fell upon the prairie. I
wanted, for a brief firefly moment there, to be
one of those teenage boys, starting all over again,
 wanting in some ways, what with my failed foolish 
 pursuit of the beautiful Pamela Forrest, to start 
all over again, an eternal late summer of
 county fairs and swimming-pool dates and 
Saturday night movie dates.
But even at the young age of twenty-four things
had become irretrievably complicated.
Pamela, whom I shouldn't have loved; Mary,
whom I should have; and poor sad Kylie and her
 strutting jerk of a husband. I really wanted 
to sleep with Kylie but she was married. And so I
was afraid I would, against my principles; and
afraid I wouldn't, against that pure clean lust
I felt for her. She was so damned good and kind and
smart and sexy in her kid-sister way.
We all went inside and had some iced tea in
Mrs. Goldman's apartment--Kylie whispering
that she didn't want me to leave her alone just
yet--and then around nine-thirty, the fireflies
thicker in the perfume-scented night, a white
 kitten on the garden fence looking as if she were 
posing before the half moon ... we went
upstairs.

"So," Kylie said, half an hour later,
"what happens if I stay here tonight?"
"I'm of two minds about that."
"I'm of three or four minds about that."
"Well, then, it looks like we have a dilemma
here, doesn't it?"
"A conundrum."
"Where's Chad tonight?"
"Whereabouts unknown."
"And you--"
 his--don't feel like going through another 
Strindberg play with him. Strindberg being his
favorite writer. So when we get into one of our
 arguments, he always starts doing Strindberg. And 
 I've had enough Strindberg for a while." 
"You can't ever have too much 173
Strindberg."
"You like him?"
"Eh," I said, shrugging. "In a pinch, I
suppose."
"So I'll take the couch."
"You're too long for the couch."
"I'm the same size you are."
"You're always telling me," I said, "that you're
taller than I am."
 "Haven't you figured out by now that I'm an 
incorrigible liar?"
"I'll take the couch. It'll make me
feel nobler."
"I'd really feel awkward doing that to you."
"You'd deprive me of feeling noble?"
"It's still pretty early. Could we watch a
little Tv?"
"But of course."
 We started out watching "Highway Patrol." 
Broderick Crawford never takes off his trench
coat. They could have deep-sea sequences like on
"Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges and Brod
would still be wearing his trench coat, his Aqua-Lung
strapped on outside of it. Oh, and he'd be
wearing his fedora, too.
I say "started out watching" because, after about one
act of ole Brod barking "Ten-four, ten-four"
into his two-way, we gave up and started making
out.
 I guess we resolved our dilemma and our 
conundrum.
At least sort of.
It was ninth-grade sex.
We French-kissed but when my hand drooped (of
its own volition) toward her chest area (or
chestal area as Judge Ronald D. K. M.
Sullivan would say), it was gently moved back
up by her hand.
By the time "Highway Patrol" was wrapping up
we lay lengthwise on the couch. Pressed very
tightly together. She was a great kisser. Maybe
the best kisser I'd ever been with. She was such a
great kisser that kissing her was almost enough. But my
hand kept drooping and her hand kept gently
brushing it away. We did a little tenth-grade
dry-humping but she wouldn't let my hand linger on
 her bottom. I had one of those erections that 
make you crazy. One of those erections that takes
you over so completely you are nothing more than a
                        penis. 175                        
She was girl-flesh and girl-body and
girl-mouth; girl-sigh, girl-gasp,
girl-moan.
She was moaning, I was moaning.
She was insinuating (a Kenny Thibodeau
 dirty-book word) herself against me as hard and fast 
as I was insinuating myself against her.
I suppose in the murky past I'd wanted
the beautiful Pamela Forrest this badly but it was
really murky. Nobody had ever seemed as fresh
and vital and fetching as Kylie did right now.
 And then she was up and grabbing her purse and 
rushing out the door.
"I've got to get out of here!" she said. "I
 don't want to do anything I'd regret. 
Good-night, McCain! I'm sorry!"

At seven-thirty the following morning I sat
in my ragtop on a shelf of shale above the cup
of grassy land where the hill folk lived. My
field binoculars were trained on the Muldaur
trailer behind the church. At 7ccdg, Viola
came out with a magazine and a roll of toilet
paper in her hand and headed for the outhouse to the east.
How'd you like to face the outhouse every morning?
Summer would be bad enough--but Iowa winter when it
was twenty-five below zero?
She didn't go back to the trailer till
8ccbd.
Daughter Ella carrying, presumably, the
same roll of t.p. but a different magazine,
emerged from the trailer at 8ccdh and went to the
outhouse. She stayed only till 9ccjc.
At 9ccbf I got the opportunity I'd
been waiting for. Viola got in the rusty truck
and drove away, leaving Ella behind. I drove
down to the trailer and walked up to the door.
 The place smelled of decades-old grime. 
The yard was spiked with broken glass, empty
bottles, rusty cans. A Tv turned low
hummed in the front wall.
I knocked.
As I waited for a response, I turned
 to look at the land behind the church. I wondered how 
thoroughly Cliffie and his minions had searched the
 area of weeds and buffalo grass and the four rusty 
garbage cans.
 I turned back to the trailer when I heard the 
 door open but by then it was too late. The angry 
man had his shotgun pointed at me. 177
Bib overalls, T-shirt beneath, massive
head, shoulders, forearms.
"C'mon," he said.
He was the keeper of the gate. The man who'd
 let Kylie and me into the church that first night. The 
 man arguing with his wife a little later on, striking 
 her. 
"What's your name, anyway?"
"You think I'm afraid to tell you? It's
Bill Oates."
"What's with the shotgun, Mr. Oates?"
 "I want to take you somewhere." 
 "I came here to see Ella." 
"Ella don't want to see you."
"It'd probably be better if I heard that
from her myself."
"We suffered a loss. You don't seem
to understand that. You shouldn't be botherin' people at a time like
 this. If you was pure, you wouldn't be." 
 "How do you know I'm not pure?" 
 "You work for that Judge, for one thing. And I'm 
told you're going around with that Jew woman."
"And that makes me impure?"
He smiled and for the first time I saw the stubby
blackened teeth. "I guess we're going to find
out, ain't we?"

You're probably ahead of me on this one. Not
even when he marched me over to the church at
gunpoint did I realize what he had in mind.
Slow learner, I guess.
The church interior was shadowy. The chairs were
arranged in orderly fashion. The altar was dark.
On a hot day like this all the ancient
 service-station odors rose up. You could almost 
 hear the bell on the drive clanging to life and a 
motorist saying, "Fill 'er up, would ya? And
I guess you'd better check the oil."
 And then I heard them. And then I had my first 
understanding--dread, actually--of why he'd brought me
here. And the real implication of his "pure" remark.
He nudged me down the aisle with the barrel of
his gun.
I began to make out the dimensions of the snake
cage. I tried to guess from their sudden hissing and
rattling--the approach of intruders--how many of
them there were.
"What the hell you going to do?"
 "Just keep walkin'." 
I stopped. In an instant I 179
weighed the threat--getting shot in the back versus
having to do something with rattlesnakes. So I
stopped.
 He stabbed the barrel of the shotgun nearly all 
the way through me.
"I said to keep walkin'."
"I'm not going near those damned snakes."
"Watch your language. This is the house of the
Lord."
"And I suppose the Lord wants you to put those
snakes on me?"
 "You're not pure." 
 I flung myself forward, hitting the floor and 
rolling to the right. I was slower than I'd hoped and
he was much, much faster. He put a bullet about
three inches from my head. It ripped up some
concrete and ricocheted off the far shadowy wall.
You could smell the gunfire; the rattle of it
echoed in the small place.
"Get up."
 He came over and kicked my ankle so hard 
it felt broken.
"You bastard."
He kicked me again in the same place. Even
harder.
 "The next time you use a word like that, I'll 
put a bullet in your brain."
The bullet or the snake? They each frightened
me but in different ways. At least a bullet
didn't have those glassy eyes and those fangs and that
forked tongue and that--
But I got to my feet. I didn't want
to die on the floor there. Got to my feet and
tried to stand tall but it was difficult and not just because
 I'm short. It was difficult because my right 
 ankle hurt so much where he'd kicked me. 
He grabbed me by the shoulder and flung me on
the altar.
There had to be at least three of them, maybe
four.
 They made even more noise than the bullet 
had. Angry, filthy noise.
 I stumbled on the altar platform and sprawled 
 facedown before the small raised box on top of 
which the snake cage sat.
"Stand up."
 "What're you going to do?" 
 "You said you were pure? I'll give you the chance 
to prove it."
"I'm not going to handle those snakes." 181
"I'm sick of talk, you. Now stand up."
 The pain in my ankle was fading much faster than 
I had thought possible. But I didn't want him
to kick me again. This time he'd probably break
bone.
"I'm not afraid of the snakes because I'm
true to my Lord."
"Is that why you slapped your wife the night
Muldaur died? Because the Lord wanted you to?"
"He's ordained that sometimes man needs
to instruct woman in the ways of righteousness."
"And that includes slapping them around?"
"I don't take any pleasure in it, if
that's what you mean. I do it because the Lord has
ordained it. I'd be committing a sin if I
didn't do it."
All the time the hissing continued.
"Sometimes one man must instruct another man in
the ways of righteousness, too."
"That's what you're doing with me?"
"You need to know if you're impure. I'm
actually doin' you a favor."
"Gosh, thanks so much."
He prodded me with his toe just above the ankle.
I really didn't want to get kicked again. I
pushed myself to my feet. Sometimes, you kid yourself and
think you're tough. But then something like this happens.
 I'd banged my head on the floor just now and had 
a headache. My ankle was sore. I was pasty
 with sweat. And all I could hear were the snakes. 
I was being pushed toward them. They may not
actually have been louder, they may not actually have
been angrier. But they sure sounded that way. I
 stumbled toward them. 
He clubbed me on the side of the head hard with
his rifle barrel.
I dropped to my knees before I realized where
I'd be: kneeling next to the snake cage.
"Open it up."
He had to shout to be heard above the hiss and
rattle.
I just looked at him. Terrible things were going
on in my throat, my chest, my bowels.
"You open that up and grab one of 'em. If it
 don't bite you then you are judged worthy 
by Divine Wisdom."
 I couldn't talk. Literally. I tried. But 
 my throat was raw and dry with fear. Only a 
few inches and a mesh of metal kept the rattlers
                        at bay. 183                        
I wondered if he'd really shoot me. He
seemed crazed but was he that crazed? And--a
 wild thought that should have occurred to me much earlier-- 
what had he been doing in the Muldaur trailer
 so early in the morning? He'd arrived before I 
 had. What was his exact relationship to Viola 
Muldaur? Was he pure? Could he pass the
snake test?
Then he did it. Leaned in, unlatched the
simple lock that held the lid down on the
cage.
"I'm makin' it easy for you."
And for the second time, he fired his weapon.
One year at camp I'd slept in the grass
and during the night a bat kept flying inches over
my face. I always remembered the heat of its
passage. The bullet was like that now. The heat of
its passage.
 I did a kind of dance on my knees, jerking 
sideways, frontways, slamming into the snake
cage. And then doing, in simple animal
reaction, the unthinkable.
I reached my arm out and grabbed the far side of the
 cage to keep it from falling off the low table it was 
resting on. And then I jerked back, astonished
at my stupidity as the snakes flew out at me,
 at least two snakes arcing their heads into the top 
of the cage, trying to get at me.
"Open it!" Oates shouted.
And then swung the rifle barrel into the side of
 my head again. My entire consciousness was sliding 
into pain. It was getting difficult for me to think.
I nudged up against the cage.
He swung the rifle around yet another time.
 This time I consciously stopped myself from bumping 
against the cage.
And this time I realized how I could get out of this
situation, rifle or no rifle.
It was not without risk. There would be a few
 seconds there when the snakes would be close to me, 
able to bite me and hold on if they wanted to.
But I didn't have much choice. The snakes or
 the religious crackpot--y decide. 
"Open it," he said. His voice was raw now.
He'd glimpsed the future. One of the snakes
striking me, filling me with poison. He spoke
in the raspy tone of true passion.
So I opened it.
But I kept hold of the handle to the lid. And
instead of shoving my hand inside, I used 185
the handle to swing the entire cage around and fling it
at him.
He screamed like a young boy.
 He fired two shots. 
And he dropped his gun when one of the flying
rattlers slapped him across the face.
The gun discharged when it hit the floor.
 I was already halfway down the aisle, my 
 sore ankle be damned, heading for my ragtop. 
  
     Thirteen     
         
I went home and took a very cold shower. I
stood in there fifteen minutes trying to get
snake off me. Part of it was psychological, of
course. You couldn't scrub away a sense of
snake. It stayed with you for a long, long time.
I'd just finished getting into some clean
summer-weight clothes--white short-sleeved
shirt, blue-on-blue striped necktie, blue
slacks, black socks, black loafers--when
the phone rang.
"You're going to think I'm crazy."
"He called and said that he still loved you."
"Yeah, sort of, anyway."
 "So you're going to see him." 
"Tonight. That's why I called. I told him
I was with you last night and I think he got
 jealous. He started insisting that we get together 
 tonight." 
"You know something?"
"What?"
"I'd do the same thing you would. I'd go."
"Really?"
"Are you kidding? Look at all the times I
went running back to Pamela."
"Yeah, I guess you were kind of a glutton for
punishment."
"Well, as one glutton to another, why not
give it a try?" I said.
"You think it might actually lead somewhere?"
"Probably not," I said. "But it's nice
to have a little hope again, isn't it?"
"Hearing "maybe" is always better than
hearing "no.""
"That's right," I said.
 "Even if "maybe" is a lie?" 
 I sighed. "Yeah, kiddo, even if 
"maybe" is a lie."
"You're really a wise man, 187
McCain. You should run for pope or something."
"I was thinking of that. I'd like to wear that hat he
does. You know that really tall one? With the lifts
I have in my shoes, that hat would make me seven
feet."
She laughed. "Thanks for being such a good friend."
"My pleasure."
Pause. "I really did want to sleep with you
last night."
"Same here."
"Chad's the only guy I've ever slept with,
though. So it would've been a really big step."
"I understand. I'm running for pope,
remember?"

Mrs. Courtney was just leaving the two-story,
redbrick Colonial-style rectory when I
pulled up. She wore a black suit on this
boiling day. She had the look and air of a
millionaire's wife, a somewhat lacquered and
severe middle-aged blonde who did not belong out
here in the sticks. Attractive but not appealing.
As if money--or in her case, the prestige of
Harvard Divinity--had bled all the juices out
of her. I reached her just before she got into her
dark-blue Chrysler.
"Mrs. Courtney, my name is--"
"I know who you are, Mr. McCain. I
hope you'll excuse me but I'm in a hurry.
 I need to be at the mortuary in five 
minutes." Her voice was cool if not quite cold.
No reading on her eyes. Shades.
"I'd really appreciate ten minutes of your
time."
 "For what, Mr. McCain?" The words weren't 
 slurred. But they were slightly indistinct. Or 
was I imagining it? It had now been a few hours
since the snake cage but every few moments snake
images filled my mind, daymares, skewing my
hold on present reality.
"I need to talk to you about your husband."
"I repeat, Mr. McCain, for what?"
 Only then did I realize that she swayed 
slightly as she stood there, and only then did I
catch the first wisps of gin aroma. Nothing else
smells like gin. Praise the Lord.
"I'm trying to find out who killed him."
"So is Mr. Sykes. And he told me about
half an hour ago that he's got some very
promising leads." 189
I had to be careful here. I owed her the
deference one normally gives a widow. But she was
way too bright to believe that Cliffie could find a
murderer. Or his ass with both hands and a compass.
 "Every once in a while, he arrests the wrong 
 person." 
"He assures me that the person he has in
mind is indeed the guilty party."
 "Did he say who that person is?" 
She put a slender hand on the door handle.
Her knees gave a little, the way a drunk's do
when he's been standing erect too long in one
place. "Good day to you, Mr. McCain."
"Do you really want your husband's killer
 found, Mrs. Courtney?" 
"What a ridiculous thing to say."
"If you're serious about finding his killer,
 you're not going to leave it up to Cliffie." 
"Should I share your sentiments with him?"
 "He knows my sentiments." 
"You're being stupid, Mr. McCain. Why
wouldn't I want my husband's killer found? I
loved my husband."
"Loved him enough to protect him even after he's
dead? Maybe there's something you're hiding, Mrs.
Courtney."
She said, "There's a wake tonight in his honor.
I need to get ready for that. And I've spent enough
time with you."
 I put a hand on her arm. Carefully. "This 
isn't any of my business, Mrs. Courtney,
but are you sure you're all right to drive?"
"You're right, Mr. McCain, it isn't any
of your business."
She got in her car and let the heavy door
slam. She started the engine, then started the radio
--classical music--and then started the
air-conditioner. She swept away in a great
Harvard Divinity moment.

 My cousin Slim works at the state-run 
liquor store. There's a push on--there's been
 a push on for years--ffget liquor by the drink in 
Iowa and to make bottled liquor available in a
variety of retail stores ... but you know how it
is with conservative legislators. They're always
accusing liberals of wanting to legislate
morality--especially with civil rights--but they
don't have any problem telling you when and where you can
buy liquor, whom you can have sex with 191
 (technically, adultery is still punishable by jail 
 time), and what you can read (they get to decide 
what's objectionable). Excuse the political
message here. But I get irritable every time I
enter a state-run liquor store. It's like
getting a note from your mom telling you it's all
right to have a highball.
 Slim is a Korean War veteran who had 
one burning-bright dream the whole time he was getting
his ass shot at in the snow over there. He wanted
to go to work for Uncle Sam once he got done
fighting for Uncle Sam. I remember the
college year I spent reading most of
Chekov's stories. I just got hooked.
 Nobody ever wrote so well about the 
civil-servant mentality, and God knows, if
there's one country that has that mentality, it's Mother
Russia. Slim Hanrahan also has that
mentality. He's a slender, gray, balding
man with yellow teeth and surprisingly lively
 blue eyes. His favorite size in everything is 
small. A tiny Nash for a car, a tiny tract
house for a home, a tiny woman for a wife. When
he's in his cups, he always pats his flat
belly and says, "Yessir, the way I
figure it, I got it made. They say
millionaires got it made. But they don't.
You got money like that, you're always worryin' you're
 gonna lose it. The way I see it, the people who 
 got it made got government jobs. You really 
got to be a screw-up to lose a
civil-service job. And then you got the right
to appeal it, anyway. There'll never be
liquor-by-the-drink in this state, so I got a
job for life. Reasonable hours, nothing heavy
to lift, good insurance plan absolutely free.
And no layoffs. Those factory guys always
braggin' about how much they make an hour ... but
lookit how often they get laid off. Or go on
strike. I've got it knocked."
That's Slim.
I decided to check with Slim since he works
the day shift in our one and only liquor store.
Mrs. Courtney's state of intoxication had
made me curious.
"You ever see her in here?"
Slim fingered the clip-on bow tie he always
wore. Another man was running the counter. "I
don't know if I should be talking to you about this
stuff, Sammy." 193
He always called me Sammy. I hated it.
 "This is a murder investigation, Slim." 
"You think she did it?"
"No, but I think she's acting awfully
strange for a woman whose husband has just been
killed."
"Oh, yeah? Funny how?"
"You think Cliffie could solve a murder?"
He shone his yellow teeth at me. "Are you
ki.in'? That idiot?"
"Well, she's leaving it all up to him, she
says. She's too smart for that. Which makes me
wonder if there's maybe something she doesn't
 want to come out about her husband." 
"I see what you mean. By the way, you going to the
reunion this year?"
"Probably."
 "My old lady and Joanie O'Hara got 
into it the other night at the bowling alley. So
I'm kinda nervous about goin'. You notice how
 the O'Haras think they're a big deal since 
Wayne was made a foreman at the plant?"
"I guess not."
"The first thing he did was get an extension
phone. They have two phones now."
"Gosh."
"Their house is even smaller than ours and they
got two phones. That's what I mean, they
walk around actin' like they're some sort of big
deal. The wife said something about that new discount
store out on the highway. This was when they got into it
at the bowling alley. And you know what Joanie
says?"
"What?"
"She says "I wouldn't be seen goin' into a
place like that." Like she's too high and mighty
 to save a little money on stuff." 
This sounded like a matter for the United Nations if
I'd ever heard one.
"Slim, you think we could get back to Mrs.
Courtney?"
"Oh, yeah. Sure."
 "So does she come in here and buy liquor?" 
"Now she does."
"Now?"
"Yeah, startin' about four months ago. It was
funny. Never saw her in here before. And then all
 of a sudden she starts comin' two, three times a 
 week." 
 "Two or three times a week. 195 
 Isn't that a lot?" 
"It's a lot for what she was buyin'.
Half-gallon of gin at a time."
 "Was she ever drunk when she came in?" 
"Not drunk but drinkin'. Slurring her words,
stuff like that."
"Hey, Slim," the man running the first
 register said, "I could use some help over here." 
 The place had filled up suddenly. 
"I appreciate it, Slim. Thanks."
"I'll bet at the reunion Joanie goes
 around tellin' everybody about their new extension 
phone. Whaddaya bet?"
He went over and greeted his customer.

 I drove out to the Judge's place, something 
I don't often do. The house is a huge
 Tudor set upon three acres of perfectly 
kempt grounds that are safe behind a black iron
fence. When her Eastern friends visit--I met
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. there one day;
Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits
another--the west lawn is covered with a vast tent,
a six-piece classical ensemble, and enough booze
to get Moscow drunk on a Saturday night.
 The props were just now being set up as I aimed 
my ragtop up the curving drive to the manse.
I saw Lettie and Max and Maria, the
regular staff, carrying armloads of serving
bowls, glasses, cups from the house to the tent.
The florist was there, as was the caterer, as were the
 musicians. Jay Gatsby would envy what was 
being set in motion here.
The Judge herself was in her study, Gauloise
and brandy in hand. You rarely saw her in jeans, but
jeans she wore and a white silk blouse. She was
a little bit Rosalind Russell and a little bit
Barbara Stanwyck. She was also a little bit
drunk.
 "So nice of you to keep me informed, 
McCain."
The study had one of those floor-mounted globes
that was about half the size of the actual planet and
walls and walls of paintings and photos of her
Whitney forebears, all of whom looked
constipated and skunk-mean. There was also a lot of
leather furniture that smelled of a recent oiling.
She also smelled, as usual, of a recent oiling.
I wasn't up for her sarcasm. "You want
 to hear about how I almost got my head 197 
shoved into a cage of rattlesnakes or not?"
That shut her up. Who could resist hearing a
story like that? She was giddy as a girl listening
 to my tale of bravery and grace under pressure 
and which, I have to admit, I did embellish a
tad here and there, especially the part about how I
tied two rattlers together.
"You tied them together?"
"You bet I did. Otherwise they would've
jumped on me."
"No offense, McCain, but I've just never
thought of you as being that smart."
"Thank you."
"Or that brave, for that matter."
 "Thank you again." 
 "Let me toast you." 
She toasted me. You'll notice she didn't
offer me a drink so that I could toast me.
"Ah," she said, downing the brandy. "And you
 learned what, exactly, for all your travail with 
those damnable snakes?"
"I learned that I'm much smarter and braver
than you thought I was."
"You shouldn't brag, McCain. It's
unbecoming."
"And I learned that Bill Oates seems
to be on exceptionally good terms with Viola
 Muldaur." I told her about how early he'd 
been there this morning.
She said, delicately, "Dierdre keeps
 telling me that Sara isn't home and will call me 
 back." 
 "Avoiding you?" 
"What else?"
"I thought you were friends."
"Best of," she said.
"And she won't talk to you?"
 "Afraid not." 
"So she knows something."
 "Afraid so," she said. 
 "And could be in trouble?" 
"Maybe."
I told her about the mother-daughter visit to my
 office and about how they went home on friendly 
terms. And then I said, "Dierdre's
pregnant. I promised her I wouldn't tell
you and I probably shouldn't have. But you need
to know."
"She's pregnant? But she's just a little
                        girl." 199                        
She nearly choked inhaling the smoke from her
Gauloise.
 "Knocked up." 
 "Please, McCain. You're vulgar enough just 
 standing there. You don't need to enhance it." 
"With child. In a maternal way. Preggers, as
 our British friends say." She was something of an 
Anglophile. I thought maybe she'd go for it.
"Poor Sara," she said.
"Poor Dierdre."
"And no idea who the father is?"
"Not so far."
"Probably some greasy-haired high-school
boy who drives around with his car radio turned
all the way up. Like you, in fact, McCain."
 "Thank you for the third time today." 
"No wonder she doesn't want to talk
 to me." Then: "Are you any closer to figuring this 
 thing out than you were before?" 
"Not so's you'd notice."
 "Then what do I pay you for, McCain? 
You're my investigator--investigate, for
God's sake. Don't sit here soaking up my
brandy and wasting my time."
"You haven't offered me any brandy."
"Oh."
 "And as far as wasting your time goes, I thought 
you'd appreciate being brought up to date."
She went to the window and swept a graceful arm
toward the grounds.
"You maybe have noticed all the activity out
there."
"I did indeed."
 "Dick will be here very soon." 
"I'm trying to hide my enthusiasm so as not
to embarrass myself."
 "I want him to be comfortable here and to think well 
of us. I don't want him to think that we're a
bunch of hill people who throw snakes around in our
religious ceremonies. And murder each other."
 "You'll have your killer." 
"You promise?"
"I promise."
 A knock at the door. 
"Yes?"
Max, the butler. "There seems to be some
trouble with the lilies, Judge."
"The lilies?"
"They're lagging."
"The lilies are lagging?" 201
"That's what the floral man says, Your
Honor."
"Florist, not floral man, Max."
"The florist says the lilies are lagging,
Judge. He'd like you to join him in the tent."
 After Max was gone, the Judge, obviously 
unhappy, said, "Did you hear that, McCain?"
"I certainly did. Your lilies are
lagging."
"I pay this kind of money and they lag."
"I don't want to live in a world like this
anymore."
 "You're more sarcastic than usual today, 
McCain. And since you don't seem to have any
sensitivity toward my lilies, I may as
well be honest with you."
"Honest? About what?"
"That ridiculous story you made up about tying
two rattlesnakes together."
"You didn't believe it?"
"Not for a second."
 "Well," I said as I left, "it's a 
hell of a lot more interesting than lagging lilies,
 I'll tell you that much." 
  
     Fourteen     
         
 On Main Street, sitting primly on a 
bench in front of the Dairy Queen, I saw
Kylie Burke and I almost pulled in and talked
 to her. But she looked so happy just then and I 
imagined her head was filled with all sorts of
hopes and blissful fantasies about her life
ahead with Chad. It's funny how love can do that
to you like nothing else. You put your hand on fire just
once and you know enough never to do it again. But you listen
to the same person make the same empty
promises again and again, and you still come back. And
back. And back. And there's always the friend who knows
the couple (they always live in Des Moines or
Cleveland or somewhere like that) that went through exactly
the same thing you're going through--all the bunco and
pain and humiliation and degradation--and you know what?
It was worth it because today these two are The
Happiest Couple In The World. They have
seventy-three children and eighteen dogs and eleven
cats and they live on love. They don't need
groceries, they don't need cars, they don't
need baths. Who needs that stuff when you've got
Love, and we're talking capital-letter 203
Love here, of course. So maybe if you can just
hang in there just a little longer you'll be exactly like
this couple--maybe just like Debbie Reynolds and
Eddie Fisher who look, I have to say, as if
 they're living on Love for sure--and then all this 
suffering and shame and emotional sucker-punching will be
well worth it. She was probably thinking stuff
like that. Because that's the sort of thing I used to think
about the beautiful Pamela Forrest when she'd
give me just enough hope to hang on for another
couple weeks. But in the end it's us, isn't it?
We could walk away anytime if we had the
pride or common sense we should have. And yet we
cling and hope. And have those happy-scared moments like
the one Kylie was probably having now when the
object of our affection throws us another sunny
 bit of hoke and hope. 
A visitor waited for me in my client's
chair.
When he turned around, I said, "Lesbo
Lummoxes. About really lazy lesbians."
"Not bad," he said.
"I was kidding."
"Gee, McCain, so was I. I suggest a
title like Lesbo Lummoxes, the editor
probably wouldn't ever give me any more work."
As I walked around the desk to my chair, I
said, "How about Lesbo Laundromat?"
 "Lesbo Laundromat?" 
 "It's where all these lesbians go to wash their 
 clothes." 
"See, McCain," Kenny Thibodeau said
patiently, "this stuff isn't as easy as it
looks."
"I guess not."
"Are you by any chance a frustrated writer,
McCain?"
"Yeah. Sort of, anyway."
"I thought so." Then, quickly: "Not to change the
subject but I have some info for you."
"Info?"
Even on a boiling day like today Kenny was
decked out in black. He wasn't in mourning.
He was just honoring his place in the ranks of the
Beat Generation. "I told you I'd play
detective and I did. I'm going to write this
private-eye novel." Then: "Guess who was
caught breaking into Courtney's rectory last
night?"
                        "Who?" 205                        
 "Dierdre Hall." 
 "How'd you find that out?" 
 "I have my ways." 
 "C'mon, Kenny, how'd you find out?" 
"My aunt is their cleaning woman."
"Ah."
"She stopped by my mom's place and I was
there."
 "Cliffie know this?" 
 He shook his head. "I don't think. He 
didn't know as of earlier this morning, anyway."
 "Why do you say that?" 
"Because my aunt hadn't told him yet."
"Why?"
"She doesn't like Cliffie. She goes to the
Lutheran church and he stopped them from playing
Bingo one day."
 "Didn't Mrs. Courtney turn her in?" 
"Mrs. Courtney doesn't know."
 "Wasn't she home last night?" 
 "Oh, she was home, all right. With her 
bottle. Aunt Am was in the basement.
 Courtney's lawyer had asked her to start taking 
 an inventory of everything that belonged to the church and 
everything that belonged to the Courtneys. Mrs.
Courtney says she plans to move back east
very soon."
"What'd your aunt do with Dierdre?"
 "Just told her to go back home. She said the 
kid was pretty bad off. Crying and stuff."
"She didn't say why she was breaking in?"
"Just said she was looking for something. But wouldn't
say what."
A sad, not-unfamiliar scenario was starting
to take shape. B-movie, maybe. Or one of
Kenny's paperbacks.
 "You told anybody this?" 
"Only you, counselor. I'm working for you,
remember. I figure it's a trade-off."
"Oh?"
"I'll need to ask you a lot of questions about law
while I'm writing. I try to make my books
as authentic as possible."
"Authentic? I thought you'd never met a
lesbian?"
"Well, authentic except for the lesbian
parts, I guess."
 "But aren't most of the parts about lesbian 
 stuff?" 
 "What are you, a critic? You want 207 
me to keep working or not?"
"You're right, Kenny. Sorry. And this is very
useful information. Thanks." Then I said,
"Lost Lesbians."
"Lost? Where're they lost?"
"Africa? Some desert somewhere?"
"It just doesn't ring right, McCain.
Sorry."
"Lesbian Locksmiths?"
 He shook his head in pity. "Sorry, 
McCain."

 There was no answer at the Halls'. I tried 
front and back doors, I peeked in windows.
I checked backyard, garage, nearby alley.
Why would Dierdre have broken into the rectory
last night? Looking for what, exactly?

Kenny Thibodeau's aunt was a nice-looking
sixty-year-old woman who lived in a
 friendly-looking little white house on a nice shady 
corner of a dead-end street. She was on her
haunches gardening when I pulled up. Her
 graying hair was pulled back into a ponytail and 
her white U of Iowa T-shirt and jean
cutoffs made her seem much younger than she was.
 Her son had gotten into some speeding trouble several 
 times during the past few years and I'd 
represented him in court. She greeted me with a
raised trowel. "Morning, McCain."
 "Morning, Am." 
"Plug your ears."
"My ears?"
 "These old bones make a lot of noise when 
I have to stand up."
 "You're a doll and you know it." 
"I used to be a doll. A long, long time
 ago I was a doll. Here we go." 
 Her bones did sort of crackle 
arthritically.
 She wiped the back of a hand across her forehead. 
"I bet Kenny told you about Dierdre."
"Yeah."
"If you want to know what she was looking for, I
don't know."
"You've seen her there before?"
"Oh, sure. She was one of the Reverend's
regulars."
"Regulars?"
"He counseled people. I know you 209
 didn't care for him but he did a lot of good. 
 I mean, he was sort of stuck-up and a snob and 
everything. But he saved half a dozen marriages
I know of and he got four or five men to quit
drinking. Got them into Aa."
Every time you try to hate somebody, they go and do
something honorable. The inconsiderate bastards.
"And he counseled young people, too, huh?"
"Five or six of them on a regular
basis. The Beaumont boy? All the trouble he
used to get in? He's been walking the straight
and narrow for the past eleven months. Every time I
 see his mom, she breaks into tears over the 
Reverend. Says he walks on water and can do
no wrong."
"You ever hear any scuttlebutt about his
counseling sessions?"
"What kind of scuttlebutt?"
 She was about to answer when the mailman appeared 
in his pith helmet and blue uniform walking
shorts and shirt. "There's a nice cold glass
 of lemonade in the refrigerator for you, Deke. 
 I guess you know where to find it." 
 "Thanks, Am," Deke said. "You're a 
lifesaver. As usual." He nodded and left.
"They've got a lot tougher job than most people
think. When my husband got laid off at the
 plant back in 'ec, he started being a 
substitute carrier. You never saw so much leg
trouble and back trouble and arm trouble. It looks a
lot easier than it is. So when it gets real
hot, I leave lemonade for Deke in the
fridge. He just goes inside and gets it.
Even if I'm not here. And I have hot cocoa for
him in the winter months."
 "You're the one who walks on water." 
"Oh, yes," she laughed. "I'm one holy
person. That's why Fred and I sit up in bed
some nights reading Playboy and giggling over the
cartoons."
 Deke had just set a record for 
lemonade-guzzling. He was back outside,
waving good-bye, going on to the next house.
"What were we talking about?" she said. "Oh,
yes, scuttlebutt. No, not really."
"Anybody ever get mad at him about his
counseling?"
"A couple of husbands who thought he was taking
their wives' side." She smiled. "You know how
men are, McCain. You have the misfortune 211
of being one yourself. Here they were happily running
around on their wives, and getting stinko in the
 process, and they deeply resented this minister 
 telling them that they were at fault for their unhappy 
marriages. Why, the nerve of that man!"
 "Were they mad enough to kill him?" 
 "Of the two I'm thinking of, one got a 
divorce and moved up to the Twin Cities. And the
other one finally saw the error of his ways. He's
one of the ones who went to Aa. And he still goes,
too. Things've worked out pretty well for him, in
fact."
"You ever hear any scuttlebutt about
Dierdre Hall?"
"Well, I don't know if this is
scuttlebutt or not but there was a pretty angry
argument there one night."
"Between Dierdre and the Reverend?"
"No. Between Sara and the Reverend."
"What happened?"
The phone rang. "Wouldn't you know? I'll be
right back, McCain."
She went inside. I watched butterflies,
bees, horseflies, robins, dogs, cats
... that parade of beings we share the planet with
even though we've convinced ourselves that we're the
only ones who matter to the history of this nowhere
little world.
 She came back bearing lemonade. Handed it 
 over. 
 "Boy, this is good," I said. 
She was the picture of the perfect housewife.
 Except her lemonade was so sour I felt my 
cheeks puckering inward and my sinus passages
starting to drain. No wonder Deke had made it
out of there so fast. He knew what was waiting for
him. He poured it out in the sink and fled.
"Homemade," she said.
 "Mmmm," I said. 
"Extra lemons and no sugar," she said.
 "Mmmm," I said. 
But intrepid detective that I am, I
 carried on with my questions. "You were telling me about the 
 argument between the Reverend and Sara." 
"Oh, right. Well, she just burst in the
rectory door one night and ran down the hall
 and burst into the study where he has his counseling 
 sessions. And started screaming at the Reverend." 
"Was Mrs. Courtney home at the time?"
"No. She was out somewhere. She's in a 213
lot of clubs and groups. You know how it is for a
minister's wife like that."
"So what happened inside?"
"Well, the first thing Sara did was to send
Dierdre home."
"Did Dierdre want to go?"
"No. She was yelling at her mother pretty
loudly."
"Could you figure out what they were arguing about?"
"Not really. The Reverend got very angry and
told them to keep their voices down. He knew
I was somewhere in the house."
"Did Dierdre leave?"
"Uh-huh. She slammed the front door very
hard."
 "How long did Sara stay?" 
"Probably another twenty minutes."
 Her phone rang again. 
 "You're a popular lady." 
"Oh, yes, I'm thinking of running for
president next time."
"I'd vote for you."
She glanced at my glass. "You hardly
touched your lemonade."
"Oh. Sorry. I'll finish it now."
"I'll get the phone."
"I need to leave, anyway. Thanks for
talking."
"My pleasure, McCain."
I made sure she didn't see me dump the
 glass on the far side of the front porch. I 
 set it on the steps and walked to my car. 
  
You always think of burglary as a nighttime
occupation.
But I didn't want to wait for night. Things
 were starting to come clear to me, at least as far as the 
relationship between Dierdre and Reverend Courtney
were concerned. I wondered what Dierdre must have
been looking for when she broke in. I also
 wondered what else there was to learn about 
Courtney. The most promising place to look was
his office in the rectory.
Church and rectory were built into the side of a
 piney hill. A tranquil, natural setting. 
Anybody who pulled up in a car could be seen,
however, from the street that fronted it.
 The first thing to do was to walk up to the front door 
and ring the bell and see if anybody was inside.
I rang. Chimes echoed inside. No 215
response. I knocked. A tabby cat with one
injured eye viewed me skeptically from his perch
on a low-hanging branch. No response.
 I checked the adjacent garage. Empty. 
 I drove up on top of the hill. A small 
grocery store sat there. One of the few left,
now that the supermarket chains had discovered our little
burg. I parked way over on the edge of the
gravel drive so the store folks couldn't see
me, went inside and bought a pack of Luckies
and a pack of Black Jack gum, and then went
back outdoors.
Three pairs of tandem-bike riders went
past. I figured them all to be about twelve or
thirteen. They were at that group-dating stage when you
got to hide the crush you had on a girl by going out
with a mixed assortment of equally terrified boys
and girls. They went inside the store and got
soda pop, the girls much more in control of themselves
and the situation than the boys, the boys all seeming
younger and more callow than the girls in fact, and then
 they were on their tandem bikes again and rolling down the 
 hill. 
Nobody in the parking lot. Nobody driving
by to see me.
I started my hike down the hill. The great
thing about pine is the smell. The bad thing about pine
 is the way it stabs you. There was a vague path that 
wove its way down to the valley. The trees were
thick enough here to cool the temperature by several
degrees. I used to play Indian in places
like these. I always wanted to be the Indian, never the
 cowboy, never the cavalry. Indians, at least 
in movies made by white guys, always knew neat
stuff, all about caves and how to track mountain
 lions and how to communicate with smoke signals 
 and pieces of stone smoothed to shine like mirrors. 
Who wouldn't want to be an Indian?
I was sweaty, piney as a porcupine, and
 irritable by the time I reached the backyard of the 
church. At least the grass had been mowed
recently and smelled good.
 I had my trusty burglary picks with me-- 
taken in trade from a thief I'd managed
to keep out of prison--anda good thing, too. This
place was locked up tighter than Jimmy
Hoffa's secret bank records. It took
me longer to get inside than I'd hoped, thus
increasing my chances of being seen. A raccoon sat
at the tree line observing me with the kind 217
 of wry look only raccoons, of all God's 
 animals, can summon. He seemed to be under the 
completely mistaken impression that I was some
kind of idiot.
Air-conditioning. I just stood in it and let it
cool me, balm me, dry me. All I needed
was a glass of Aunt Am's lemonade.
 Courtney had a lot of the Great Books on 
his shelves. I suspected he'd actually read
them. His den was English manor house with
 fireplace, leather wingback chairs, 
antiques, and a really first-rate collection of
smoking pipes. Not a corncob among them.
Since Cliffie had no doubt searched this
office, I felt sure that it was worth searching
again. Cliffie could overlook a corpse
sprawled across a desk.
I spent a good twenty minutes looking. I
went through the desk; I went through the books, making
sure they weren't false fronts hiding a safe
 or slot behind them; I got down on my hands and 
knees and made sure the floor was flat, no
trap doors, no insets, no safes.
As I was getting up, I realized that I
hadn't checked the in-out tray on his desk. An
oversight worthy of Cliffie. I had some
luck.
There were four envelopes hand-addressed in a
 forceful male script. Blue ink. I read 
 them. Letters from Courtney thanking various members 
of his flock for favors they'd done the church.
There was a letter folded in half, too. I
 opened it. It wasn't a letter, though. It was a 
crude layout for a leaflet.

Why The Jews Favor Kennedy

It was the same creed as always. The Jews
wanted to be on the Supreme Court so they could
outlaw all the good Christian principles this
country was founded on--including letting colored people
marry white people (i.e., big black hands soiling
virginal white female flesh)--and Kennedy would
happily appoint Jews because they would see to it that
he was able to serve not just two terms but three or
four. The way Fdr did.
There was something else folded into the flyer. A
check written on the personal account of Reverend
 Courtney and made out personally to Parnell, the 
 printer. No businesses were named. 219 
Looked completely and unsuspiciously like a
personal transaction.
"He wasn't very fond of either Jews or
Catholics," she said from the doorway. "But then
we all have our little failings, don't we, Mr.
McCain?"
 She would have made a good cover model for 
Manhunt detective magazine just then, a
 fashionably dressed widow holding a 
silver-plated .45 in a black-gloved hand, a
 veil covering the cold, attractive face. A 
Raymond Chandler wet dream.
The laugh was pained. "When you came right down
to it, he wasn't all that crazy about
Protestants, either. But he came from five
generations of ministers, so he bowed to family
 pressure and went to divinity school." 
"He really believes all that stuff about
Jews secretly running the world?"
This time the laugh was bitter. "His one true
love--the girl he fell in love with his
freshman year in college--fell in love with a
Jewish graduate student. He hated Jews
ever since."
 "You hate a whole group of people because of one 
 guy? Sounds like he had a few mental 
 problems." 
"More than a few--and that's probably why he
was such a good counselor, which he was. He could
 identify with the people he helped. He genuinely cared 
 about them." 
"Enough to get one of them pregnant," I said.
 I wanted the satisfaction of seeing what was 
going on behind the veil. All I could hear in
 response was a tiny, harsh breath. "Did Sara 
 Hall tell you?" 
 "No. I just put a few stray pieces of 
 information together. Dierdre broke in here looking for 
 something." 
"It would've destroyed him. He started to come
undone the last six months--ever since he started
sleeping with her. And then when she got pregnant
--anyway, she'd written him some very foolish
letters. That's why she broke in here. She wanted
them back."
"And you started drinking again."
I said it without judgment. Merely a statement.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
 "Believe it or not, I still loved 221 
 him. He had a difficult life. Spiritually, I 
 mean. Good and evil. It was a constant struggle. 
He never learned to forgive himself."
 It's always instructive to hear somebody else 
talk about a person you don't like much. How could you
both have the same person in mind? A minister who
would take advantage of a teenage girl? A
 man of God who would pay for hate mail and 
condemn an entire group of people because he lost a
girl? How could this possibly be the same man
she was describing in terms of a John
Donne-ish torment with his demons?
But you know something, it was quite likely that both
portraits were true. We're heroes or
villains depending on who's talking.
"He had one thing, anyway."
"What's that?"
"A good wife," I said.
 The bitter laugh again. "Oh, yes. Such a 
good wife that I passed out at a dinner party the
 night the dean of the divinity school gave a party 
for his best students. And one time--at his first church
assignment--I tripped and fell walking down the
aisle to the front of the church. Dead drunk.
And a lot of traffic accidents, Mr.
McCain. Thank the Lord I didn't hurt
anybody. I wake up in cold sweats
sometimes, thinking I've run over a child--" She was
crying now.
I went over and took the gun from her. No
bravery on my part. It was pointed at the floor
by now anyway. I slipped it into my trouser
pocket. She came against me in a rustle of
black organdy. She slid her arms around my
neck. I eased her hat and veil away and let
her weep.
When I felt my groin starting to react
automatically to the pressure of her body against
mine, I helped her across the floor and eased her
down on the couch. I took her pumps off and
got a pillow behind her head. There was a bottle
of spring water on a small sidebar.
I poured a glass and held it to her lips.
 She drank. "Thank you." 
I went over and sat down in one of the leather wing
chairs and lit a Lucky.
"I need to ask you some questions."
"I'll try to answer them."
"What was he doing out at Muldaur's church
the night Muldaur died?" 223
"Muldaur was blackmailing him."
"What? Are you sure?"
She nodded. Put the back of a hand to her head.
"In my purse outside the door there are some
 aspirin. I have a terrible headache. Could you get 
me those, please?"
I got them, lifted her head the way I would
have a sick person's, and put the aspirin on her
tongue.
"You're giving me communion, Mr.
McCain." She smiled. She was a good-looking
woman.
"I guess I missed my calling."
I went over, rescued my cigarette from the
ashtray, and sat down again.
"What did Muldaur have on him?"
"The way I understand it--and this may not be
exactly correct--is that Muldaur and one of
his friends were out hunting for snakes one afternoon. There's
a small fishing cabin near where they were. The
 cabin was owned by an old man who belonged to our 
church. When he passed on, the widow insisted that
 John take the key to the cabin and use it whenever 
he liked. He took Dierdre out there several
times--he'd gotten very stupid about her, he told
me; he said he hadn't felt lust like this in
 years--" The smile again, sweet, 
self-deprecating. "Which isn't exactly what
a wife wants to hear."
"I don't imagine."
"But I didn't blame him. All the hell
I'd put him through with my drinking--we'd quit
 being lovers a long time ago. Or he had 
 anyway. I was more like his sister or his daughter 
than his wife--at least as he saw it--somebody
he was obligated to take care of. That's not
uncommon among alcoholic spouses. They
stick by the alcoholic but the romance goes and
rarely ever comes back."
"I'm sorry," I said. Then, "Could you
 please tell me a little more about Muldaur?" 
"Well, he was a piece of work, wasn't
he? The snakes. And blackmailing people. And
sleeping with women in his own congregation." She
 caught herself. "I guess except for the snakes, 
I could be describing my husband, couldn't I?
That never occurred to me before just now. That my husband
 and Muldaur were similar in that respect. They were 
both men of the cloth who'd seriously violated their
vows. If Muldaur ever took any 225
vows."
 "Why did your husband have Sara Hall with him 
that night at Muldaur's?"
"They were going to talk to Muldaur. We aren't
wealthy. Muldaur was getting $500 a month from
 my husband and it was breaking us. That's about what he 
makes for a monthly income. All our clothes and
his fancy cars ... they came from a trust fund
 I inherited. But that's about gone now. He'd 
raided our pathetic little savings account to pay
 Muldaur as it was." 
 "What about the sportscar?" 
She rolled over on her side, watching me.
"Do you suppose I could have a cigarette?"
"Sure."
 I got a fresh one going the way Robert 
 Ryan would have and carried it, along with an 
ashtray, over to her. She sat up on an
elbow, inhaled deeply.
"He didn't want me to smoke."
"It's not good for you."
"Yes, I notice you don't smoke."
"I'm down to three cartons a day."
"I'm surprised."
"About what?"
"Y. I sort of like you. And all the time I
thought you were just this grubby little creep that worked for
Judge Whitney."
"I have that right on my business card. Grubby
little creep. At your service."
Another deep inhalation. "What were we talking
about?"
"About how your husband could afford a
sportscar."
 "A gift from the last church." 
 "Ah." 
"They didn't find out until after we'd left
 that he'd been seeing three or four of the choir 
women on the side."
"I see a pattern here."
"Oh, it was definitely a pattern. Same
 as my drinking was--is--a pattern. Life is 
patterns, Mr. McCain."
"Yeah, I've kinda noticed that." Then:
"You never did tell me what Sara Hall and
 your husband were doing at Muldaur's church the 
night he was killed."
"They were going to beg him to stop blackmailing
my husband. We were running out of money and she was
afraid Muldaur would tell somebody 227
about my husband and Dierdre. And then eventually the
whole town would know she was pregnant."
"They really thought Muldaur would back off?"
"Last-ditch effort." A long trail of
 smoke. "As I said, we didn't have much money 
left. And Sara was terrified of what Muldaur
would do."
 "You know a guy named Bill Oates?" 
"No. Why?"
"I saw him arguing with his wife the night
Muldaur died. And then I saw him in
 Muldaur's trailer very early in the morning 
later on. Made me curious about his relationship
with Viola Muldaur."
"You think he might have killed Muldaur?"
"He looks like a possibility."
"Anybody else?"
"Y."
"Are you kidding?"
She sat up. The leather sofa made a lot of
noise.
 "Afraid not." 
"Why would I kill my husband?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"And did I also kill Muldaur?"
"Probably. But that's the trouble I'm having
with all this."
 "Do you ever read Nero Wolfe?" 
"All the time."
"You know how he always makes those astonishing
leaps of deductive logic?"
"I wish I knew how he did it. The question
is--who would have a motive to kill both your
husband and Muldaur?"
"Are you saying that you've eliminated me?"
"Not necessarily."
"But why would I have killed Muldaur?"
"Look at the time sequence. Maybe you were so
sick of Muldaur blackmailing your husband that
 you killed him with that poison." 
"That makes sense I suppose--may I
 mooch another cig, by the way?--but if I killed 
Muldaur why would I turn around and kill my
husband?"
I brought her another cigarette. She lit it
from the butt of the one she was finishing.
 When I was seated again, I said, "You kill 
Muldaur. Everything looks good for a day or so.
And then your husband tells you he wants a
divorce. Or you find that he's 229
sleeping with another one of the choir ladies again.
You could have a lot of motives. Especially if
you were on the bottle again. Alcoholics aren't very
rational when they're tipping a few."
 "Very neat. Nero would be proud of you." 
 She sure did enjoy cigarettes. She 
smoked with great erotic enthusiasm. My groin was
 starting to make itself felt again. 
 "The only thing wrong with it is that it isn't 
 true, Mr. McCain." 
"So say you."
"So say I."
I stood up. Stubbed my Lucky out.
Walked to the door. "I need to go."
"I could always tell Cliffie you broke into my
house."
"I could always tell Cliffie your husband was a
blackmailer."
She smiled. "I guess that's a good point."
 Then: "I'm curious." 
"What?"
"A minute or so ago--were you looking at
me--sexually?"
"Boy, what a question."
"Well, were you?"
"Yeah, I guess I was."
"Thank you. Thank you very much. It's been such
a long time since I felt a young man's eyes
on me that way. The proper alcoholic wife
of a minister doesn't get a lot of looks like
that. I lost fifteen years when I saw your
eyes settle on my breasts and legs." Tears
touched her eyes and voice. "It felt so good."
"My pleasure," I said. "You're a very
good-looking woman."
A teary laugh.
 I thought of going over there to give her a 
reassuring hug. But given the moment, that was
 probably a very risky move. 
I said good-bye and left.

There were two people I wanted to talk to.
 Reluctant as I was to go back to Muldaur's 
place--my ankle, since you've probably
 been worrying about it, the considerate people you are-- 
hurt only at certain angles. I just wasn't
sure which angles those were. So I'd be moving
 along just fine and then I'd step down just so and--one 
of life's little mysterious games.
 The top of Muldaur's shabby 231 
trailer had been painted silver and shone like a
 mirror in the stabbing rays of the sun. I decided 
not to take any chances with men with shotguns bursting
out the door. I brought my own .45, which was the
 gun my dad carried in the war. 
I knocked several times. No answer. No
dog bark. No human voice. No radio
blare. No Tv drone. I took this to mean, in
my worldly way, that probably nobody was home
or that if somebody was home, he or she didn't
plan to come out.
Then I heard the singing. Sweet and high and
 mountain-stream pure, no affectation, no straining 
 for effect, a simple, sincere young girl's 
voice singing one of those old hillbilly hymns
you could catch on "Grand Ole Opry" or
"Country Jubilee" every once in a while.
My assumption at first was that it was a record
or a radio. But as I turned I realized that
 it was coming from the church. I let it pull me, 
eager to hear it more clearly, and moments later I
stood in the cooling shadows of the old service
garage, listening to Ella Muldaur sing.
Ella stood in the center of the platform, a
radiant hill child in a tattered blouse and faded
jeans. Viola sat in the chair next to her,
 dressed in a pair of overalls and a blouse. 
  
 "Oh, I have talked to Jesus, 
And He said He will show me peace.
Oh, I have talked to Jesus,
And He promised me no more grief."

Her voice was skilled and knowing enough to convey both
the promised peace and the grief of the present time.
No wonder Viola was crying, as she had been that
first night I'd seen them here on the altar.
 She held Ella's right hand as the girl sang 
and swayed in joy and sorrow to the melody. And for that
moment I was able to put aside all the hip,
 modern ways I'd been taught to feel about our 
quest for purpose and meaning and to simply share in
our need to understand our place in the cosmos.
Cave paintings dating back thousand of years
illustrated the desperate need mankind had always
felt in seeking such an explanation. It almost
didn't matter if you believed in a god-force
or not. The need to bring some meaning to the spectacle
of human history was primal.
And so gentle and soothing when put 233
into song by this girl.
They were so caught up in Ella's singing they
 didn't even seem aware of me at first. 
 And then she was done. And I felt banished from 
celestial comfort. I was no longer elevated by my
humanity but doomed to it. It was not in heaven I
stood but in an old garage that smelled of car
oil and filth.
"You shouldn't be here," Viola said.
 "I'm here to see Ella." 
"Ella? What for?"
I was only halfway up the aisle. I
stood in place.
"The other day she said she had something to tell
me. I'm curious what that was going to be."
"I shouldn't've said that, mister," Ella said.
"That's the most beautiful singing I've ever
heard."
 "You should not praise the Lord's music," 
Viola snapped. "Only the Devil wants
worldly praise. Ella sings beautiful because her
soul is beautiful. Ella is the purest of us
all. She is God's favored child."
 "Ella's old enough to speak for herself," I said. 
 "Please, mister, you're gonna get me in 
an awful lot of trouble. And besides, all I was
gonna say was that my daddy, he got sick even
 before he came to the altar that night." 
 "You hush, girl!" Viola said. "We 
 don't talk to this man." 
"Yes, Mama!"
"Now, you leave, McCain. Or I'll have
Bill Oates spend some more time with you." She
grinned. "He told me how he done you pretty
mean the other night."
"You don't seem very interested in finding the man
who killed your husband, Mrs. Muldaur."
"All I'm interested in is you gettin' out of
my sight."
 Not much I could say to that. 
  
     Fifteen     
         
Bill Oates lived on an acreage on the
north side of the town. A hundred yards or so
from his dirt driveway was the "City Limits"
sign. He'd planted half an acre of corn
and some soybeans and there were a few head of cattle
on a wide patch of grazing land. People who couldn't
make a living farming anymore often 235
lived on places like this. They worked in town but
kept a hand in the farm life they'd grown up with.
The outbuildings--gd-size barn and a large
wooden shed, maybe for chickens--were in decent
shape and the John Deere tractor parked near the
back of the house looked to be in fine repair,
too.
The inevitable farm collie rushed at me in the
inevitable way and made all the inevitable
noises and threats until a tired-looking
woman even more faded than her housedress shushed
him and shooed him and then came out, screen door
 snapping shut behind her, to meet me. She'd 
apparently been baking. Her hands were white with
flour.
"Help you?"
"My name's McCain."
"I know who you are." Not at all friendly.
Wide face, smart but angry blue eyes,
 reddish hair just starting to go gray. And a very nice 
body if you liked them voluptuous, body that
performed all the functions of eating, sleeping,
 working but that she probably never gave much thought 
to otherwise. Mid-thirties, most likely.
 "The mister ain't home." 
"Then I'd like to talk to you."
 She held up her hands for inspection. "I'm 
baking pies."
I knew I had only a few seconds
 left before she ordered me back to my car. "I was 
out at Muldaur's church the night he died."
"Yeah, I seen you. So did everybody
else."
"Muldaur asked me to be there."
"Muldaur's dead, like you say."
"Your husband slapped you that night."
 "How'd you find that out?" 
"I saw it."
"Oh."
"I'd like you to tell me why he slapped you."
"That wouldn't be any of your business, mister.
And anyways, I thought Sykes was the law in these
parts."
I grinned. "More or less."
 "You ain't even half as cute as you think you 
 are." 
"I'll try to remember that." I didn't have
anything to lose so I said, "Were you friendly with
Muldaur?"
 She spat into the dust. "You got a 237 
 lot of nerve askin' a Christian woman a question 
 like that." 
 "Two men have been murdered. I need to know 
 why." 
 "Somebody tell you something about me?" More 
suspicious now than angry.
 "No. But I'm learning things about Reverend 
Muldaur. And I just thought it was strange that your
husband would hit you like that."
"He hits me all the time like that. I need
to be hit all the time like that."
 I thought of what Parnell had told me about 
how a good church should make you feel bad. My
God is a wrathful God.
"Any particular reason?"
 "There was a time in my life when I wandered." 
"Wandered?"
She looked over at the collie. The dog had
a long, sweet face. She looked as if she
sympathized with the woman's wandering.
"I used to wander off with other men."
"I see."
 "I had the Devil in me." 
 "That's why he slapped you?" 
"Used to be why he slapped me. Then we
 moved up here from Georgia and the wandering stopped." 
"But he kept hitting you?"
She stared at me. "I'm a sinner, mister.
I done a lot of other terrible things. I mean,
 it wasn't just the wanderin'. I don't always keep 
the house clean the way God wants me to, I
don't always fix Bill the meals he wants the
way God wants me to, I don't always do the
things in our marriage bed God said I should do
even though it hurts me when I do them. I'm a
coward about pain. I even hated my own children when
they was bein' born because I was in so much pain.
I'm not a good woman, mister. So Bill's
 got every right in the world to hit me." 
 "He found out about you and Muldaur?" 
 She spat in the dust. "Git. And git now." 
"I'll find out eventually, Mrs. Oates.
 If not from you, somebody you know. Things like this get 
 around." 
Hard-eyed, hard-voiced, she said, "You must
think you're pretty big stuff. Goin' around and
 judgin' people like this." 
"I'm not judging you, Mrs. Oates. I'm
 a sinner just like you. No better, no worse." 
 That seemed to affect her. She touched 239 
a flour-white hand to her hair, as if for the first time
 she was concerned about her appearance. As if for the first 
 time, she saw me as human and thus somebody 
to look presentable for.
She shrugged. "He found out a week before
 John died. He had his suspicions and he just 
kept workin' on me."
"What did he do?"
 "He sent the girls to stay down to his 
in-laws and then he tied me up in our bedroom.
 Tied me up naked and then he beat me with his 
razor strop. Beat me on my body so
nobody could see it. He didn't want
 nobody to know what I'd done and I didn't 
blame him. I'd wandered again and I had promised
him on God's holy head that I wouldn't. I'd
 even been able to handle the snakes a few times 
without them biting me. Now, after what I done with
John, they'd kill me sure. They're
demons, you know."
 Then: "So he let me go after a few days. 
He carried on, though, even after he let me
g."
"Carried on?"
 "Cried and pounded his fists against the walls and 
got so drunk he kept falling down. I could
 see what I done to this man and I wanted to take 
my life and that's God's truth, mister. I
wanted to take my life. But I'd be damned
to hell if I did and I knew it, what with my
 two young ones and all. Who'd take care of them? 
That's the first thing God would ask me. Who's
 gonna take care of your girls now, Pam?" 
I heard the panel truck before I saw it.
It rattled like a wagonload of pots and pans.
 It came up the driveway about forty miles an 
 hour, lost in its own dust. 
We both watched as he jumped out of the car.
Oates. He had a shotgun in his arm. Pointed
at me.
He said nothing. Just charged at me.
 "Bill!" Pam Oates cried. 
But it was too late. He swung the rifle
 barrel toward the side of my head, the same thing 
he'd done to me in the empty church.
But for reasons of manliness I suppose--
I'd seen an awful lot of Roy Rogers
movies growing up--I decided I was too
 pissed to care at this point. He had pushed me, 
shoved me, pounded me long enough. 241
 I ducked under the barrel of his weapon. My 
 foot caught him directly in the crotch. 
 I jumped to his left, while he was still trying 
to absorb his pain, and slammed a fist into the side
of his head. The crotch kick had forced him to stoop
so reaching his face was no longer a problem. I
doubled up and put a fist against his nose, too.
Blood sprayed out of his left nostril. I
 can't speak for him but I was having a hell of a good 
 time. 
Pam took the opportunity to yank the rifle
from his hands.
"Now, get in the house, Bill. And I'm
afraid you'll have to leave now, McCain. And I
 don't want to see you back anytime soon. You 
understand what I'm sayin'?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Because the next time, I'm callin' Sykes."
Her husband, in pain and shame, had already reached
the back door and was going inside.
The violence had disoriented the collie and I
 felt sorry for her. She was running around in 
frantic circles, obviously not comprehending the
exact nature of what was going on here but very
affected--.mayed, startled--"the air of violence.
A hot, sleepy day on the acreage was not
supposed to be like this.
Pam Oates followed me back to the car.
 "He's a good man." 
"I'll take your word for it."
"He's never wandered off on me."
I wondered about his wandering and why he'd been at
 Muldaur's trailer with Viola so early. 
Maybe he wasn't quite as innocent as Pam
 thought. He was likely the man who'd fired at 
Muldaur. Sleeping with a man's wife can get
 you in that sort of trouble sometimes. But this wasn't 
exactly the time to raise the question.
 She touched my car with an almost shocking 
tenderness. Her touch had a sexual quality to it.
"Boy from Macon used to drive up and see me
--th was before I knew John--and he had a nice
convertible, too. We had some fun in that car."
 Her face and voice lost twenty years. "We 
 sure did have some fun." 
  
 I ate a late lunch at the Rexall 
counter. Lunch-dinner, I guess. I
probably wouldn't be eating much more today. Between the
heat and my frustration with the case, I was 243
ready to lie on the floor in front of the fan and the
Tv and be entertained.
Rexall was pretty busy. Bug spray,
suntan lotion, charcoal starter, charcoal
briquettes, cigarettes, and beer seemed to be
the most popular items at the cash register. The
 air-conditioning was freezing but that was all right after the 
baking sun.
 I looked over the men's adventure 
magazines. I never bought them but I sure had a
good time looking at the covers of he-men fighting
 off Nazis, Nazi alligators, Nazi 
snakes, Nazi bats (rabid, of course).
The cover quotes were what I enjoyed most of
all. And this month's batch had some honeys.
"Sexual Psychopaths ... Oversexed
Women!" "Nympho Outlaw and Her Legion
of Outcasts!" "Nazis Dive-Bombed My
Body!" "Confessions of a Nazi Call
Girl!" My favorite was "Nude Queen of the
Communist Cannibals!" Whoever came up with the
commie cannibals deserved a bonus. Now that was
real writing.
 Kylie was at the checkstand. Looking sweet but 
nervous, she set a small boxcar load of
cosmetics on the counter.
"You don't wear all this stuff."
"I thought I'd really get dolled up tonight."
"You don't need dolling up, kiddo. You're
 a good-looking girl." 
"You're prejudiced, McCain. You like me."
"He's your husband. I'm assuming he
likes you, too."
She bit her lower lip, half-whispered, "You
 should see what I'm up against, McCain. She 
looks like a movie starlet."
 I wanted to hold her, protect her. Any 
man who could throw away a young woman this bright, this
decent, this caring--but she had to go through with this, I
knew. Same as I'd had to go through it with
Pamela Forrest all those years. Being
 desperately in love is grand, isn't it? 
 She nodded to my ham and cheese. "You should eat 
 better." 
"I know. Usually, Mrs. Goldman fixes
me meals three or four times a week. But her
sister took sick all of a sudden."
"Where's her sister?"
"Des Moines."
I saw how her right hand was twitching. 245
 It made her even more vulnerable. 
"I wish I was in Des Moines,
McCain."
 "You'll be fine." 
"I try to be objective about it, you know."
"One thing you can't be objective about is being in
love with somebody."
 "I mean, I really can't blame him." 
"I can."
"I'm what you'd call pretty, I
guess."
"Very pretty."
 "But you should see her, McCain. She makes 
me want to hide in the basement."
"Is she as smart as you are? As much fun as you
are? As deep as you are?"
"Oh, McCain, I'm not deep."
"Are you kidding? You know things, Kylie. You
understand things. You have insight into people."
"I don't fill out a bikini very well."
"I happen to've seen you in a bikini one
time. And you filled it out just right."
"And my nose-- You know, back east a lot
of Jewish girls get bobs."
"You don't need a Bob. Or a Dave.
Or a Rick."
She smiled.
"You've got a very fine nose. It fits your
face perfectly."
We went through this every once in a while. Her
insecurities ran pretty wide. But then again,
 so did mine. I figured that's why we liked 
 each other. 
 "You'll be fine tonight. You just have to relax." 
"It's like a first date. And look how long
we've been married."
I held her hand. "You'll do fine."
"Really?"
"Really."
 She asked about the case and I told her what 
I'd learned. She tried to seem interested but her
anxiety made that impossible. She said good-bye
and fled.

I hate to admit this but that night I drank more
than my usual two beers. I drank three
beers. Which meant, given my size and my
inability to hold alcohol at all well, I
was pretty stinko.
 I banged my knee going to the 247 
bathroom, I banged my head getting a slice
of cold pizza from the refrigerator, and I
banged my butt when I miscalculated how far
the end of the coffee table extended.
My dad and I are about the world's worst
 drinkers. It takes most accomplished drinkers 
a long time to get stupid when they drink. We can
 do it in about the length of time it takes to guzzle a 
beer-and-a-half.
 Things get all out of proportion for us. Something 
mildly amusing becomes unbearably hilarious.
Something modestly sad becomes a cause for great
theatrical tears.
Tonight, for instance, Art Carney did a routine
on "The Honeymooners" that made me laugh so
hard I had to dash (well, stumble forward quickly)
 to the bathroom before I yellowed my Sears 
underwear; and then on "Gunsmoke" they had this
story about a young crippled girl who becomes a
 gunfighter in order to avenge her brother, and 
man, tears were dripping off my chin when she got
killed in the end.
I had the great good sense to go to bed shortly after
that.
Sometime in the sticky murk of sleep--not even
the fan cooled things off in any substantial
way--the phone rang. Rang several times.
Rang loud enough to stir me but not loud enough to make me
pick it up.
I fell back to sleep.
The phone started ringing again and this time, I picked
it up.
"Hullo."
"McCain?"
"Uh-huh."
"Have you been drinking?"
"Never."
"This is Judge Whitney."
"Yes, I recognized you. You're sort of
 hard to confuse with anybody else." 
 "Get some coffee in you and then head for the jail. 
 I'll meet you there." 
"The jail? What for?"
"Cliffie, Jr., in his infinite wisdom,
has just arrested Sara Hall for murdering
 Muldaur and Courtney." 
  
  
  
                        249                        
    Part Iii              
        
     Sixteen     
         
You have to wonder how word could spread at three
o'clock in the morning. No air-raid sirens had
sounded, no words were bellowed from the loudspeakers the
city had planted in various places, no Paul
Revere had hopped in his car and driven up and
down the dark streets announcing that Sara Hall
had been arrested for murder.
And yet there they were, maybe as many as
fifteen of them, looking like the kind of crowd you
always saw in westerns, the low-murmuring crowd that
could turn into a lynch mob when the guy in the
black hat appeared and stirred them up.
Except people in those westerns didn't wear pink
hair curlers that made them look like Martians,
or Cubs baseball caps and Monkey Ward
sleeveless undershirts that emphasized hairy,
beachball-like stomachs. And in westerns Annette
 Funicello wasn't playing on car radios. 
Main Street was empty otherwise, and
 shadowy, and like the people in the crowd, it suggested a 
movie, too, small-town Americana. I
glimpsed a shooting star and then heard the steady
sound of a plane lost in the clouds. Any kind of
plane sound suggested only one thing to Americans
these days. That's why we taught civil defense
in our schools--?Duck and cover"--and that's why
forty percent of us, according to the Eastern newspapers,
were busy building some form of bomb shelter. There
were a lot of jokes going around about what Hugh
Hefner would put in his bomb shelter.
One of Cliffie's cousins--a dense deputy
named Jebby Sykes--stood in front of the
 front door of the jail with a shotgun in his arms. 
 He didn't look scared. He looked sleepy 
 and he looked rumpled. 
"Hey, where you goin', McCain?"
"Little pecker, he thinks he's hot stuff,
don't he?"
 "Him and that damn Judge Whitney!" 
I should have known that it would not be the hard-working people of
town who would tumble out of bed in the middle of the
night to see somebody prominent thrown in jail.
No, it would be Cliffie's vast array of
cousins, shirttail kin, and mutants who would
find this so thrilling. Just imagine, one of them
high-tone women who bathed regularly and 251
wore clean clothes spending the night in Uncle
Cliffie's jail. Who could ask for a bigger
thrill than that?
"You got cause to be here, McCain?"
He got all swole up the way
unimportant people do when they're trying to be
 important, all swole up with his badge and his 
wrinkled uniform and his Remington shotgun, all
swole up keeping the hair-curlers and the
Cubbies caps at bay, all swole up because
nobody had ever let him be before. And it was almost
sad. That was the terrible thing about the Sykes
 family. But every once in a while their coarseness, 
vulgarity, greed, ruthlessness, and stupidity made
you sad, too. They were, in the cosmic sense,
your brothers and sisters. And there wasn't a
 damned thing you could do about it. 
"I'm supposed to meet Judge Whitney
here, Jebby."
"She's inside. But that don't mean I got
to let you in."
 "Are you still mad because I caught your fly ball 
 that day?" 
 "You damn right I--" Then stopped himself. 
"What fly ball he talking about, Jebby?"
 said a mostly toothless man. 
"Never you mind, Cousin Bob," Jebby said.
He looked pained. "Cliff said I was to pack
you people up in your cars and get you back home.
Otherwise he's gonna gnaw on me somethin'
terrible. Now, will you do that for me?"
"Maybe she'll try'n escape," somebody
said.
 "Yeah, and then Cliff would have to shoot her," 
said another.
 "Now, we wouldn't want to miss somethin' like 
that," said the first.
Jebby scowled.
"She ain't gonna escape. She's really
ladylike. How'd she ever get outta jail?
No, now you folks get back home before
Cliff gets mad at me. Please. I
 promise to have my mama make you some of her 
special rhubarb pie for the family reunion this
year."
"Enough for everybody, Jebby?"
"Enough for everybody."
 A woman said, "You know how Cliff can be on 
people who work for him. Maybe we better leave
Jebby here alone." 253
"She escapes, though, don't forget them
dogs of mine," a man said.
 I wanted to ask if anybody had any 
tanks or B-52's. Sara Hall was a
dangerous woman. You couldn't be too careful.
They all said their good-nights, and now there was
something peaceful about them and their shabbiness made me
feel guilty for always holding myself to be so
 superior to people like them, and then they left. 
"That was a home run. You stole it."
"I didn't steal it," I said.
"It was over the center field fence."
 "Yeah, but I caught it, didn't I?" 
He looked at me squarely. He was just
faintly cross-eyed.
"That would've been the only homer I ever hit.
I wanted my folks to be proud of me. My
daddy was at that game. He had that heart condition.
I wanted him to see me do good at somethin' because
he always said I was like him, that I wasn't good at
 nothin'. He died about two weeks later." 
Ninth grade that had been. Ten years ago.
I'd felt so damned good about making the catch,
all the way back to the wall in the American
Legion baseball park built over by the old
swimming pool, all the way back to the wall,
 snatching it from being a certain home run. God, 
I'd strutted around. Major leagues, here I
 come. But knowing all the time that I was just about like 
Jebby, I wasn't much good at things either, not the
manly things so treasured by all boys, not good with
hammer, not good with football, not good with car
 engine, not good with simple physical labor that 
required even the dimmest skill. And for that
wonderful moment--my teammates patting me on
the back and telling me what a great player I
was--I was good at the manly and thus
important things. It had been pure fluke
to catch it and now here was Jebby telling me that it
had been pure fluke to hit it.
"God, I'm sorry I brought it up,
Jebby. I just said it to piss you off."
He shrugged. "I don't blame you,
McCain. Neither of us was worth a shit." He
smiled. His slightly crossed eyes smiled,
 too. "It was time for one of us losers to have a little 
bit of luck, wasn't it? You was never mean to us
 Sykeses the way some of them was, so if 
 anybody had to catch that homer of mine, I'm 
glad it was you." 255
Then he stood back and said, "The Judge,
she's in Cliff's office."

The Judge was in Cliffie's office, all
right. He was crouching in his desk chair, doing
everything but covering his face with his arms, while she
 shouted at him and blew Gauloise smoke in his 
face. Not even his crisp khaki uniform and all
the framed photos of him holding various types
of rifles, shotguns, howitzers, could make him
look in control of this moment.
 "The idea of arresting one of this town's most 
upstanding citizens--and my best friend--is
 ridiculous. You know and I know, Cliffie, that this 
is just one more of your little games to embarrass me as
the only intelligent representative of law and
order in this town!"
Oh, she was blistering. Oh, she was
bombastic. Oh, she was absolutely right.
What sort of reason would Cliffie have for arresting
poor Sara Hall? And she did all this in a
 white shirt, dark slacks, and a blue suede car 
 coat that cost a lot more than my ragtop. 
"You always have to arrest somebody, don't you, and
it's always the wrong person, isn't it?" she
concluded.
Which is what I asked him as soon as the
 Judge saw me and gave me the floor. "You 
had to arrest somebody, didn't you, Cliffie? You
just can't let a few days pass without throwing
 somebody in that pigsty of a jail of yours, can you?" 
"We clean it once a week. And we clean
it good."
 "Yeah, but the drunks puke in it every night," 
 I said. 
"I don't want to coddle prisoners the way
you two do. The smell of puke'll be an
incentive to stay out of jail."
The Judge looked at me and said, "He's
medieval."
"And moronic."
"And malevolent."
"And malignant."
 "And a lot of other M words," she sneered, 
"if we just had time to go through them all."
With "malevolent" and "malignant"
Cliffie's face had gone blank. He was still
trying to figure out what they meant.
"I'm holding her on a charge of first-degree
 murder," he said, sitting up straight, 257 
trying to convince us, and himself, that he was back in
control.
"You're forgetting something, Cliffie," I said.
"What?"
 "She's the judge with jurisdiction in this 
case." I pointed to the Judge.
"Yeah? Big deal."
 "It is a big deal, Cliffie," I said. 
 "She can set bail." 
 "And I'm setting bail right now," the Judge 
interjected. "Ten dollars."
"That's crazy! Nobody sets a ten-dollar
bail in a murder case."
"I do," Judge Whitney said.
"I'm gonna file a motion," he said.
"What sort of motion?" I said.
"To the state Supreme Court."
 Actually, they'd probably not only hear his 
motion but also agree with him that a ten-dollar bail
was ridiculous.
"Do you have a fin on you?" Judge Whitney
said. Sometimes, she tries to sound like Barbara
Stanwyck.
"I think you mean a sawbuck."
"A sawbuck. Do you have one?"
I nodded and got out my wallet. Have you ever
noticed how rich people never seem to carry cash?
Could that possibly account for how they got rich in
the first place?
I slapped it down on Cliffie's desk.
 "I hereby grant this bail," Judge 
Whitney said. "Now go get Sara."
"You gotta fill out forms."
 "You'll have your forms in the morning. Now go get 
 Sara." 
"Stash!"
 Stash was the night deputy. 
 "Why'd you arrest her, Cliffie?" I said. 
"Don't call me Cliffie or I'll
arrest you."
"You didn't have anything on her."
 "The hell I didn't." 
 "Oh? Like what?" 
"Like a tip to look in her garage. And guess
 what I found there?" 
Stash, a guy with a ducktail haircut that was
 greasier than Jerry Lee Lewis', peeked in 
and said, "Uh-huh."
 "Stash, go get the Hall broad and bring her 
                        here." 259                        
He finger-popped Cliffie and said, "Gotcha,
Chief."
"The Hall broad," the Judge said under her
breath.
"So what did you find?" I asked after Stash
and his very loud heel-clips disappeared to the back
and the jail.
"I found a can of strychnine just where the caller
said it would be."
"Was the caller a man or woman?"
"I don't have to tell you squat."
 "Man or woman, Cliffie?" 
He grinned. "Well, it was one or the other."
"Moronic," the Judge said.
 "No, we used that word already." 
"Mediocre, then."
I smiled. "That's almost a compliment for
somebody like Cliffie."
 Stash and his heel clips were back. A 
disheveled Sara Hall fell into the arms of her
friend the Judge and the Judge, without once looking
back at Cliffie or saying good-bye to me,
left with Sara in tow. On the other side of the
 door, Sara glanced back at me and I knew 
then that she knew I'd broken my word to her and
told the Judge about Dierdre's pregnancy.
It wasn't a hateful glance, just a weary one.
I'd betrayed her and she'd never trust me again.
 I suppose in the cosmic scheme of things it 
didn't matter a whole hell of a lot. But I
certainly felt ashamed of myself, and sad that she'd
 never again count me as a friend. 
"Ten dollars," Cliffie said. "I can't
believe it."
"Hell, Cliffie," I said, watching him
again, "she could've made it five."

 A weeping Dierdre was led into the long dining 
room ten minutes after we arrived at Judge
 Whitney's. The Judge ordered breakfast for 
everybody and then we all sat down with
cigarettes and coffee--the Judge, of course,
drinking brandy--fffigure out exactly what to do
next.
"Was it your rat strychnine he found?" I
asked Sara.
"I'd never seen it before."
 "Did he present you with a search warrant?" 
"Yes."
 "Where were you while all this was going 261 
on?" I asked Dierdre.
"Being sick," she said. "I'm still sick."
She touched her stomach. "The baby."
"Did Cliffie dust for fingerprints?"
 "Not that I saw. He came to the front door 
and pounded and pounded till I woke up. He
left his emergency lights on. Which woke up
all the neighbors, of course. It was very
embarrassing."
"So then he led you out to the garage?"
"Yes. Then he started looking around."
"And he found the poison."
She nodded. Then: "I'm picturing it now.
He just picked it up. He couldn't have looked for
fingerprints."
 "Good old Cliffie." 
The staff didn't look all that happy about
being awakened in the middle of the night to feed us. I
was thinking I'd have to train my inherited cats
 to cook. Then any time I wanted something to eat-- 
We ate and didn't talk much while we did
so. I had scrambled eggs, toast, orange
 juice, and more coffee. I felt vaguely 
entitled to renew my membership in the human
 race. I still needed a shave and a shower but the food 
was doing wondrous things for my brain and
attitude.
"Did you ever threaten to kill Muldaur?" I
said when we got rolling again.
"No."
"Did you ever threaten to kill Courtney?"
"Several times."
"Did anybody hear you?"
"His wife. And probably the
housekeeper."
"His wife? Did she say anything to you?"
Sara Hall hesitated. "I'm trying
to remember. She'd had to hear us arguing. I
heard steps on the floor outside the door. A
 dead spot in the wood. You know how older houses 
 are. I got the impression she was listening." 
"So she may have heard everything you said about
Dierdre?"
"Yes."
 Even though I'd gone over this with Mrs. 
Courtney, hearing it from Sara gave it all more
emotion. What kind of impact would it have on a
woman when she first learned that her husband had
gotten a teenage girl pregnant? And him a
minister, no less. 263
"Did you see anybody around your yard
lately? Any strange faces?"
"No," she said. "Honey?"
Dierdre was barely hanging on. Any moment
now she'd be racing to the john again. "No. But then
 I wouldn't have noticed, anyway, Mom. I've 
been too busy puking."
"There's no reason to talk that way at a
 dinner table," the Judge said. 
"She was only kidding, Esme," Sara said.
"Nonetheless."
And Dierdre was off again. To the bathroom.
I was writing some things down in my notebook
when Sara said, "I just thought of something."
"What?"
"I was in the backyard taking laundry down from
 the line--th was right at dusk--when I noticed this 
truck down the alley."
"What kind of truck?"
She described it.
"It looked familiar for some reason," she
said.
"You remember when this was?"
"I'm not sure but I think it was the day after
 Courtney was killed." 
 The truck was duly noted in my notebook. 
It belonged to Muldaur. I decided not to say
anything for now.
"You see anybody in it?"
"No."
"Around it?"
"Not that--no, not that I can think of."
 "How long was it there?" 
"I don't know. I didn't really think
 anything of it. I just took the wash and went back 
 inside." 
 There was more. Lots more, in fact. But nothing 
useful. I had another piece of toast and
another cup of coffee; Dierdre got sick
again; the staff, eager to get back to sleep so
they'd catch at least a few hours of blissful
rest, began making an awful lot of noise
to convey their displeasure with us. The Judge
 returned their glares but this time of night, they were 
willing to stand up to her. They weren't intimidated.
Sara and Dierdre stayed there for the night.
The Judge walked me outside. It was that
thrilling time of night, just before dawn as all the
mysteries of evening begin to vanish and day,
reluctantly, begins to reassert itself. 265
It was actually chilly and it felt good.
"She didn't do it," the Judge said.
"I know."
 "I feel so sorry for her." 
"So do I."
 "And I'd like to strangle that little idiot 
Dierdre."
Given the condition my sister had left town
in, there wasn't much I could say.
"People do foolish things, Judge. And you and
me."
 "Nice of you to remind me." She lighted one 
Gauloise off another, pitched the butt into a
hedge. "Get a few hours' sleep and then get
 back at it, McCain. Dick will be here late 
 tomorrow afternoon. In a few hours, this place will be 
 hell with all the Secret Service men. 
They'll be stringing phone lines and setting up
checkpoints and clearing gawkers out of the way and--but
it'll be worth it to see him again. He's a very
charming man."
"Yes, I've noticed that."
 "I'm being serious, McCain, and you're being 
sarcastic."
"I guess I'll have to take your word on the
charming part. He's about the most wooden
 politician I've ever seen. He always wears 
 a suit, no matter what. Does the guy ever 
 relax?" 
"Ever relax? When he was out here for the caucus
 last year, you should've seen him playing croquet 
in my backyard. This year we're going to play
volleyball."
"Gosh, I sure hope so. Dick Nixon
playing volleyball. How lucky could I get
to see that?"
"Get out of here, McCain, before I have
Cliffie arrest you."
 "On what charge?" 
She allowed herself the tiniest of smirks. "For
being insufferable, of course. You were born
insufferable, McCain, and I'm sorry to say
you'll die insufferable."

The phone woke me around nine-thirty that
morning.
Tasha was sleeping on my chest, where she
usually was whenever I slept on my back,
Crystal slept near my head, and Tess was at
my feet. Biting them. 267
"Yes?"
 "You're still asleep." 
"I was till you called. Shouldn't you be writing
Lesbo Landscapers or something?"
"That's not all that bad, McCain. For just
waking up."
"Do I get my National Book Award now
or later?"
"Later. After you go see Muldaur's first
wife."
"You going to tell me something, Kenny?"
 "I told you I'm really getting into this 
private-eye jazz. It's fun."
 "So who's his first wife?" 
"Bill Oates' wife, Pam."
"You're kidding. How'd you find that out?"
"Guy down the block works out at the quarry
where Oates does."
I eased out of bed, eased a Lucky between my
 lips, eased a book of paper matches into my 
right hand. I knew how to strike one with only one
hand. Any time I got down on myself for not
accomplishing much in my life, I always asked
myself how many people could strike a paper match with one
 hand and then I felt a whole lot better. 
"Your neighbor say anything else?"
 "Just that one night Muldaur was over there and 
Oates walked in on them."
"Walked in on what exactly?"
"He isn't sure. But he said later that
Oates told him he pulled a gun on
 Muldaur and ordered him out of the house." 
The cigarette was helping to wake me up. So
was the information.
Pam Oates had seemed so open, so forthright.
You always feel betrayed on a personal level
when somebody you arrogantly dismissed as a
simpleton proves not to be a simpleton at
 all. Because that makes you the simpleton, 
doesn't it?
"The way I see it," Kenny Thibodeau
said. He was wearing his deerstalker hat, no doubt
about it. "Oates kills Muldaur over Pam
 and then kills Courtney when Courtney won't 
give him the blackmail money he was giving
Muldaur."
 "How did you find out about the blackmail?" 
"It's all over town."
"Oh, great. Poor Dierdre."
                        "Huh?" 269                        
"Never mind. Thanks for the call, Kenny. This
is helpful."
I got some coffee going, took a shower, and
 got dressed in the lightest clothes I could find. 
 It was already in the mid-eighties. 
It was Sunday morning but I went to the office
anyway.
 The place had a Sunday feel. Lonely, and 
making me feel a little like an intruder in my own
place. I went through Saturday's mail. No
 money, nothing of interest. 
 I walked over to Monahan's for my second 
breakfast in less than ten hours. Scrambled
eggs and a piece of toast. I was having my
after-meal cigarette and coffee when Kylie came
in.
 She had a grin that could've lit up the Holland 
 Tunnel. 
She was dressed in a pink sleeveless blouse,
pink pedal pushers, white flats. Her lustrous
hair and eyes were set off nicely. She ordered
coffee and took out her pack of Cavaliers.
"Well, you still married?"
 "Not only still married. More married than ever." 
 She sounded like a convert to some cult religion that 
promised nothing less than perpetual bliss.
"I'm jealous."
"You'll find somebody, McCain."
"That's what they keep telling me."
 "You could have had me if Chad hadn't really come 
through last night."
 I'd never seen her this happy. In a strange 
way, she was a bit scary.
"He told me about every one of his slips."
"His slips?"
"Turns out, this girl he's seeing now, she
wasn't the first one. You know, on the side."
"Ah."
"There've been at least five others."
"At least?"
"He isn't sure. He said it depends on
how you count. A couple of them, he didn't go
 all the way, strictly speaking." 
"The considerate devil."
"And I've made mistakes, too,
McCain."
 "Not like he has." 
She thought a moment. "This is where being a
Catholic would be nice."
                        "Huh?" 271                        
 "I could just go to confession and I'd feel 
 better." 
"Maybe Jews should have confession."
 "Nah, it wouldn't work." 
"Why not?"
"Jews are so guilty about everything, if we
had confession we'd be in there eighteen hours a
day."
I laughed.
She thought some more. She let me tune in in
 mid-sentence. "But that's all behind him now. He 
said to think of him as the new Chad."
"New and improved."
"I know you're cynical about this, McCain.
But don't Catholics believe in redemption?
People do change, you know."
"So you really think he's changed?"
"He's going into Iowa City today--he's already
left, in fact--and breaking it off with this girl.
Complete break. And then we're going on a
three-day trip together. Maybe get married again
in some little chapel up in Door County."
"That's the prettiest part of Wisconsin."
California has the most variegated and
 spectacular scenery but for sheer beauty, I'll 
still take Wisconsin.
She grabbed my hand. Squeezed.
"Thanks for getting me through this, McCain."
"My pleasure." And it was.
I had a perky erection just sitting here next
to her. It's always nice when somebody who's fun,
 bright, and great company also stirs your groin. 
 "So when do you leave?" 
"Tonight. Soon as he gets back from Iowa
City. He's got a bunch of work he's got
to wrap up there. And I've got stuff at the
paper. Say, there isn't anything new on the
Muldaur thing, is there?"
"Not so's you'd notice."
 "It goes without saying that I'll be the first 
reporter you tell, right?"
I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
She had thrilling flesh. "You'll be the first,
Toots."

    Seventeen    
        
I was heading out to talk to Pam Oates when I
saw her husband's truck parked at Clymer's
Seed and Feed. Clymer's sold just about 273
every kind of seed and feed for farm and animal life
 there was. The Chamber of Commerce always mentioned 
Clymer's because it was a good draw for small
communities nearby. And when people drove their
pickups and panel trucks in to buy things at
Clymer's, they just naturally spent money other
places in town, too.
 The place was long, narrow, and sunny and 
contained various scents that combined to form an earthy
 perfume. The one thing Clymer's did that some 
folks objected to was open on Sundays. But
the place was crowded, so not everybody took
offense.
I saw Bill Oates in the back, talking
to a salesman about cattle feed. Special
 varieties were hard to come by at the co-op, I was 
told. They sold only the most popular brands
and types.
I didn't want him to see me. He
 wasn't going to like what I was about to do. 
The salesman was a kid named Bobby Fowler.
This would be a summer job. He'd be a freshman
at the university in a few weeks. He looked
like 1953: crew cut, high pants, checkered
short-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the
top. He even had a plastic pencil holder
jammed into his pocket, with a variety of pens and
pencils stuck in it. Still the acne problem. Still the
teeth problem. Crooked and unsightly.
 I'd always liked him. He used to come by the 
house on his ancient, clattering Schwinn with the
ancient, worn saddlebags and the big light on
 the handlebars. He had this obvious and tormented 
 crush on my sister, Ruthie. She was way too 
pretty and cool for him. Never cruel to him, the
way the other kids were, but she wasn't going
 to sacrifice anything for him, either. The Ruthie 
McCains of the world just didn't go out with the Bobby
Fowlers.
After talking with Kenny Thibodeau, I
realized that one person who had a reason for
killing both Muldaur and Courtney was indeed
Bill Oates. Muldaur had been sleeping with
his wife and Courtney did in fact represent
an income source to him. Not inconceivable that he
knew about Dierdre and Courtney. Maybe
Muldaur had told Pam and Pam had told
her husband.
 And maybe Oates had poisoned Muldaur, 
 taken care of Courtney, and then 275 
planted the rat poison in Sara Hall's
garage.
 And if he was going to buy rat poison, 
Clymer's would be a good place to do it.
 Oates was talkative. They spoke for 
 another five minutes. Bobby kept tapping the 
 feed bags the way he'd seen the more experienced 
 salesmen do, and once he even put a brown 
oxford on the edge of a bag and shot his trouser
cuff. The way the pros did.
Oates didn't look especially
impressed. He was not, apparently, hearing what
he wanted to hear, because every few minutes or so
he'd shake his head and look unhappy. Not
 angrily, just stubbornly. You ain't 
impressin' me, kid, and you might as well
quit tryin'. Something like that.
Oates finally left and I walked over
to Bobby.
"Gee, hi, Sam."
"Hi, Bobby. You getting ready for
college?"
"Yeah." He smiled. "I guess there're a
lot of chicks there." Those teeth were killers.
"There sure were when I went there."
The pain came up fast and without warning,
 luminous in the depths of his eyes like tumors. 
"So how's Ruthie?"
Fitzgerald was always doing that in his stories.
Having some guy think about some girl who'd
deserted or betrayed him long, long years ago.
But when he thought of her the pain was still fresh as a
knife slash.
"Getting along. She put the kid up for
adoption."
"Yeah. She was too young for a kid, anyway."
 I guess that's why I'd always liked Bobby. 
He had his Ruthie McCain and I had my
beautiful Pamela Forrest. All The Sad
 Young Men, as Fitzgerald titled one of his 
collections.
"She seeing anybody there in Chicago?"
"I don't think so. She's getting her
high-school diploma at night and working during the
day."
"That's great."
"Yeah."
"Tell her I said hi."
 "I sure will." 
He glanced around nervously, as if 277
he were about to share a nuclear secret with me.
"She ever visits, tell her I'd like to see
her."
 "I'll do that." 
 And then he said, "I'm gettin' my teeth 
 fixed." 
 And I, of course, did the social and 
polite and really bullshit thing and said, "Your
teeth? What's wrong with your teeth?"
"They're all kinda snaggly and stuff. Got
 all that green stuff stuck in the crevices and 
all. Anyway, my cousin Pete is gonna be
a dentist in Cedar Rapids and he says he can
 fix me up. Says he needs the practice 
 and'll do it for nothin'." 
"Gosh, that's great, Bobby."
"You could mention that to Ruthie, too."
 "I'll be sure to." Then: "You know, 
Bobby, I could use a little favor."
"Sure, Sam."
And if I do it will you be sure to tell
Ruthie? I was using him. I had to.
 "Does the store here keep records of the 
poisons it sells?"
"Some of them."
"Strychnine?"
"Oh, the Muldaur guy, huh?"
"Yeah."
"I read Mickey Spillane all the time.
I love murder stuff."
It was a town full of blooming private
eyes.
"But didn't Cliffie arrest Sara Hall?"
"He did. But she didn't do it."
"You figure Cliffie's wrong again?"
"I figure Cliffie's always wrong."
A grin. With those teeth.
"So if she didn't do it, who did?"
"Bobby, listen, I can't really talk about it,
you know?"
"Mike Hammer's like that." Bobby tapped his
head. "Keeps it all right up here in his head.
 Won't even share it with the cops. No matter how 
 often they beat him up." Then: "But there might be 
another way to check on the poison."
"How?"
"If the person who bought it has a credit
account with us."
"Say, I never thought of that."
"So whose file should I look in?" 279
I half-whispered.
"You were just talking to him."
 "Oates? Bill Oates? You think Bill 
 Oates did it?" 
A megaphone couldn't have made his voice any
louder.
"Gosh, Bobby. You think Mike Hammer would
bellow out somebody's name like that?"
He blushed.
"Damn, I'm sorry, Sam."
"Could you check in Oates' file?"
"Sure. But it'll take me a few
minutes."
 While he was gone, I walked around. I'm the 
 same way in feed and seed stores that I am in 
hardware stores. They unman me. Grown-up
men know how to use hammers, nails, saws,
two-by-fours and lintels. And just so do grown-up
men know about soil and plant life and mulch and
peat moss. In fact, those are manly code
words, mulch and peat moss and two-by-fours and
lintels.
 I'm not a grown-up man. I walk around with 
 holes in my socks and the elastic loose on my 
 shorts and I can't get it right with a girl yet-- 
except maybe for Mary Travers, but I've
 already screwed her life up enough and don't want 
to do it anymore damage--and I know my
 twenty-fifth birthday's coming early next year. 
But I won't be any older. Not where it counts.
Not in the head. Not in the soul. You know that Famous
Artists School where you can write away and they
teach you how to draw? There should be a Famous
 Grown-Ups School where real true adults 
 give you all their secrets for being an adult. 
The only comforting thing is, I'm not alone. You
 see guys with white hair and slumped-over 
backs walking around who say things just as callow and
stupid as the things I say. They need to join the
Famous Grown-Ups School, too.
I tried faking it.
 I walked around and tapped an important hand 
on a mulch bag and said to a passing couple,
"Mulch. Good old mulch. How can you go wrong with
mulch?"
I think they went and called the mental
hospital eighteen miles due west of us.
 I did the same thing with peat moss. Except 
I sniffed it. An elderly lady named
Florence Windom was watching me and said, 281
"Are you smelling that, McCain?"
"Yes'm."
 "Smelling peat moss? I never heard of such 
 a thing." 
"Most people don't know about it. That's why they
always end up buying the bad stuff."
 "I'll have to tell Merle. Thanks for the tip, 
McCain."
I would probably have done some more walking around
--I was trying to combine strolling and swaggering which,
when you think about it, isn't all that easy to do--when
young Bobby came back.
"Strychnine," he said.
"Is there a date when he bought it?"
 He gave me the date. 
"That's two days after Muldaur was killed."
"Is that bad?"
 "Yeah, it is, Bobby. And I'm not even 
 sure what it means." 
"You going to ask him about it?"
 "I sure am, Bobby." 
It was then I saw that the couple I'd made the
 mulch remark to had joined Florence Windom in 
 whispering together and pointing at me. And smirking. 
 You try and give people a little good advice, and 
what do you get?

     Eighteen     
         
 The black cars began appearing late that 
Sunday morning. The men ran to type. Trim,
 sunglassed, somehow foreign in style of clothing and 
manner. But then anybody in these parts who
 didn't buy their suits at Sears or J.C. 
Penney's looked sort of foreign. A number
 of them carried walkie-talkies. Secret 
 Service. 
 The Vice President of the United States 
was about to visit our fair town.
They were scoping out the business district. An
election being in progress, Nixon would
certainly take the opportunity to speak to The People
as well as visit his friend the Judge.
Since the scouts seemed to be concentrating on
the town square area, I assumed that this was where
he'd be giving his speech. Pockets of people had
gathered to watch the agents at work. There'd be
talk of this for a long time and by the time a year or so
had passed everything would have been quadrupled. The
number of agents, the number of black 283
cars, the number of walkie-talkies. One
 tale-teller would throw in a few submachine 
guns and another tale-teller would add a
sinister-looking foreign type lurking around the
edges of the town square, and yet another
 tale-teller would invent a gun battle between a 
lurking foreign type and an All-American
agent and there you'd go, a tale for the ages. I
sometimes get the feeling that this is how most history
gets written.
I stayed around twenty minutes talking with people
 on the street corner about the invasion Black 
River Falls was undergoing. Dick Nixon was a
 popular man out here. This was a moderate state, 
 politically, and after the siege of the Taft and 
McCarthy factions at the last Gop convention--
as one guy on Cbs said, "It sounded like Germany
in 1931"--Nixon looked pretty moderate,
hard as that was for most Democrats to recognize.
The ragtop made the drive enjoyable. I
 took the long way, the blacktop out along the 
river. There were a couple of homemade
sailboats arcing against the line of horizon and they
sure were pretty. A skywriting plane was again
 championing the virtues of Pepsi-Cola. And 
half a dozen teenage couples strolled
hand-in-hand along the riverbank.
 No sign of any trucks or cars at the 
Oates place.
 I pulled up, killed the engine. Got out. 
Even with the cows and the chickens, there was a sense of
 desolation to this acreage. The hill people usually 
gave this impression--living isolated and
transient--whole groups of them had been known
 to pick up and move away overnight. 
Gypsy-like.
I knocked a few mandatory knocks and got
 in response the mandatory silence. The sun was 
helping me sweat off a few pounds. I got my
 handkerchief out and started mopping my brow 
 farmer-style. Farmers know how to look natural 
 daubing themselves with their hankies. City folk always 
look a little fussy.
 I walked down to the garage-like shed at the 
bottom of the slant, scattering squawking,
feather-flying chickens as I went. Turds
crunched beneath my shoe leather. In the hazy distance
I could see a green John Deere in a
 cornfield. Nice afternoon to get a nice new 
paperback and a couple of Pepsis and 285
sit out in the shade of an oak.
Sheds and garages always fascinate me. I like
the ancient, msty smells of them--most of them,
 anyway--andthe particular kind of shadows they cast 
 and the attic-like jumble of items you find in them. 
Oates had tools here, and newly sawed
lumber that smelled like the old days when I was a
kid and my dad built things in the garage. There
were small piles of wood dust on the floor and a
worktable covered with hammers, nails,
screwdrivers, and four different saws.
 But it was the other things that interested me. 
People keep old stuff for no good reason.
Maybe they think it's bad luck to give it
away. Or maybe they're just sentimental about it.
But how attached can you get to toasters that don't
work, a wooden case of cobwebbed Coca-Cola
 empties, a stack of Liberty magazines that 
innumerable animal species had gone not only
 number one but number two on as well, car 
 tires worn beyond repair, a rusty lawn mower, 
a baby carriage with most of the hood ripped
away? These weren't the kinds of things you'd press
into a scrapbook. But they were the kinds of things some
people kept in their garages.
I heard them coming. All that rattle of truck
metal was hard to miss.
I had to make a calculation. Was there time for
 me to make it to my car and get away? 
Probably not.
Was there any good place to hide?
Not that I could get to in time.
I'd have to make do with the shed here.
My best bet looked to be a stack of slashed
tires in the rear of the place.
 The truck clattered to a stop. 
 A truck door in need of oiling resisted 
 opening. 
Pam Oates said, "Be careful. He might
have a gun this time."
She was right, actually. This time, I did have a
gun. And I'd come to resent Oates enough that I
 sure wouldn't mind using it. Not shooting him. I 
wasn't certain I could shoot anybody except
 in a moment of true self-defense. But I 
 sure wouldn't mind pistol-whipping him for a few 
 days. 
"You don't worry about me, woman,"
 Oates said. "You worry about him." 
He canvassed the yard and the other 287
 outbuildings. He called out my name several 
times, as if he were summoning his dog.
 You know how in books and movies and Tv shows 
nobody ever has to go to the bathroom or shift in
their hiding place because their butt goes to sleep.
Or has to sneeze. Or fart. But in fact,
 it's stuff like that that gives you away. I was 
packed in so tight that if I moved, the stacked
tires just might come tumbling down.
I mention this because of the bee.
 Okay, it wasn't exactly a bee, it was a 
small-to-middling yellow jacket. It didn't
even look especially fierce. I mean, you can
run into some yellow jackets that are so big and
bold they give you the finger and moon you before they sting
you.
This one seemed to be just sort of flying around,
taking in the scenery. Maybe it was on yellow
jacket vacation.
It landed on a tire above my head, it
dropped onto the rotting wooden wall behind me,
 and then hovered above my nose. 
 Yes, my nose. It's a little Irish nose 
and while I don't especially like it, it's all
I've got.
So there were a couple things annoying about the
yellow jacket hovering there.
One, with such a clear field, its sting was going
to hurt like hell and probably cause me to carom
off the wall and knock the tires over.
And two, the sting could really be ugly on my
face. You're surprised I'm vain? I have
to admit that Robert Ryan probably wasn't
--or Roy Rogers or Gene Autry if you
want to go back to my boyhood--but I was. I
didn't want a sting swelling up on my little
Mick schnoz. And what if it were to get
infected? Then I'd have this huge disfigurement in
the center of my face.
So, please don't sit on my nose, Mr.
Yellow Jacket. Please don't sit on my
nose.
It didn't give me the finger. And it didn't
moon me. But it most definitely sat on my
nose.
And when it did, I did just what I'd been
afraid I'd do.
 I lurched forward, hoping the movement would shoo 
the insect away before it had time to insert its stinger.
Well, I avoided getting stung, 289
 all right. But in the process, I knocked over 
the highest half of the tires. They didn't
crash, they kinda whumpfed to the dirt floor, but
the whumpfing was sufficient to bring Bill Oates
on the run.
I ran to the front of the garage, pressed myself
 flat against the small wall inside. 
In the quiet, I heard his feet slapping
against the summer-burnt grass, coming faster and
faster, closer and closer. And I heard the
rattlesnakes.
I wasn't sure where they were. Somewhere not
too far away. Hissing and rattling. I could
easily, too easily, picture them in their
cage. The whumpfing (yes, it is fun to say that
word, isn't it?) must have stirred them.
When Bill Oates came racing into the
 garage, all I had to do was suddenly inject my 
leg into his forward-motion path. He hit the
floor, making much the same sound the tires had.
The shotgun he was toting didn't misfire.
His hand flicked out quickly to grab the weapon but
 I stopped it with the heel of my shoe. I put the 
 full weight of my body on his knuckles. 
One of them made a cracking sound. It was most
pleasurable to hear. He made a pitiful noise
in his throat.
"Where're the snakes?"
"What?"
"The rattlers. Where are they?"
"Out back-a the garage, why?"
"We're going to pay them a visit."
"What you're up to, McCain?"
 His voice now had real pain in it. I 
decided I hadn't broken anything, after all.
Just moved things around a little. I stepped down even
harder.
"You're going to tell me that you bought strychnine
at Clymer's two days after Muldaur was
murdered and then planted it in Sara Hall's
garage."
"I'm not gonna tell you anything."
 "Which leads me to believe that you didn't kill 
Muldaur or Courtney. But somebody you care
 about did. And now you're protecting her." 
I took my foot off his hand.
"Get up."
He didn't, of course. He just kind of lay
there wriggling his hurting hand around, working it like a
piece of equipment that was on the fritz. 291
Then I went and stepped on it again.
He clearly wanted to deny me the
 satisfaction of giving me the big dramatic 
scream. But he did make one of those real
strange throat noises.
"Get up."
 This time he did, using his good hand to swat away 
some of the floor dirt he'd gotten on his Osh
Kosh overalls.
We'd just left the shadows of the garage when
Pam Oates opened the screen door at the
back of the house and said, "You all right, Bill?"
"You just go on inside, woman," he snapped.
"You ever think I worry about you, Bill?"
"Were you worried about me those times you were with
Muldaur?"
This was a long way from the home life depicted
on "Father Knows Best" every week. Oates hated
her and loved her. He needed to forgive her and it was
obvious he couldn't. Not yet. Maybe someday.
Sometimes, something happens that you can't forgive. And
it kills you because you can't forgive. You drag it
along with you your whole life and remember it at
odd moments and no matter how old you get, that
one thing still retains its fresh and vital pain.
 And a part of you knows that the other person has gone 
on and probably never thinks about it at all.
She closed the screen door quietly and
 disappeared behind it. 
"She killed him," I said, "because she wanted
 to end it and he didn't. And then she tried 
 to blackmail Courtney--give you two enough money 
to go on the run--but he said no and she got mad and
stabbed him."
"You should write books, McCain."
Moving, all the time moving. Along the side
 of the garage in the blistering, bleaching sun. 
The rattlers were getting loud now. My mental
picture of them was getting clearer and clearer.
 We reached the back edge of the garage and there they 
 were. Same cage. Same number of 
rattlers. Out there in the scathing sun. As much as
I could, I felt sorry for the damned things.
 I prodded Oates forward with the barrel of my 
 .45. 
"Now we're going to find out how holy you are,
Mr. Oates."
 "What're you talking about, McCain?" 
"I noticed that you never handle the snakes
yourself. Not the night Muldaur died, not 293
the time you tried to force me to shove my hand into the
cage. Now it's your turn."
"Oh, no. I ain't stickin' my hand in
there."
 "Sure you are, Oates. Or I'm going 
to shoot you in the arm. And if you still won't do it,
I'm going to shoot you in the leg. And I'm
 gonna tell Cliffie I did it in 
self-defense. He hates you people even more than
he hates me. So he'll go along."
"No," he said. "No. You can't do this."
All his mountain swagger was gone.
He glanced over his shoulder at me.
"I have nightmares about these snakes,
McCain. I really do."
"I thought you were so holy."
"Nobody's holy, McCain."
"Then how do some people handle these snakes?"
"They're just lucky, I guess. Please
 don't make me handle them, all right?" 
"Then tell me the truth about the strychnine."
"I can't do that, McCain. No matter what.
Just please don't--"
 This could've been a briar-patch routine. 
Please don't throw me in that briar patch, oh,
 my, don't. But I doubted it. His eyes were 
 starting to look frantic, the stigma of real 
 bowel-wrenching fear. 
 Looked like he was going to tell me all the things 
I wanted to hear.
 We reached the cage. 
The rattlers didn't look any prettier
or any friendlier.
"Reach down and open the lid."
 "I--c't do it, McCain." 
"Well, you'll have to do one or the other."
He just shook his head.
I surprised both of us by firing a shot that
missed his head by about three inches.
He jerked, sobbed. He was too fierce for
jerking and sobbing. Or so I'd thought. You want
bad guys to be bad in every way and that included not
responding to stress the way we common folk do.
This wasn't any briar patch.
Between my bullet and the snakes and the burden of
holding his secrets, he was in a bad, bad
way.
 I clubbed him on the side of the head with my 
 .45. Got him hard on the ear. And then I 
changed gun hands and planted a fist 295
into his stomach. What he did was puke. Not a
lot. But his whole stomach, not so much from my punch
but from all the tension he was feeling, backed up on
him.
 This time when I hit him on the side of the head, 
he dropped to his knees right next to the snake
 cage, which is where I'd wanted him in the first 
 place. 
"Open it," I said.
The snakes were as crazy at this moment as he
was, and he knew it.
"No."
 I kicked him in the hip. 
 "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will 
sustain you." He was starting in with the Bible again. He
was begging the Lord to get him out of here and I couldn't
 really blame him. 
"Open it up, Oates."
"For thou hast been to me a fortress and a
refuge in my day of distress."
"Open it up, Oates."
 Either he'd run out of Bible quotes or he'd 
finally realized that he didn't have much choice here.
He put his long, shaking hand to the lid of the cage.
And that was when somebody shoved a metal rod
 into the base of my back. 
 "I want you off our land, Mr. McCain. 
 You don't have no call to treat a man like you're 
treating him."
"You should've seen the way he treated me,
Mrs. Oates."
Oh, yeah, well he punched me first,
 Sister Mary Francis. I'd used that line 
all the way through grade school and it was nice
to know that a variation of it still applied.
"I just want you to go. I just want all this over
with."
 "Somebody killed two men, Mrs. Oates. 
I'm wondering if it was you."
"Don't say nothin' to him," Oates said.
"Maybe Courtney was killed because he'd run
out of money to pay the blackmailer," I said,
"and the blackmailer was afraid Courtney might
go to see Cliffie."
 "You heard what I said," Oates snapped. 
"Don't say nothin' to him."
So he was inclined to see things the way I did.
He thought his wife killed the men and he had
planted the strychnine to make it appear that Sara
Hall was the guilty one. 297
"You need to leave now, Mr. McCain," she
said.
I didn't have much choice.
 He took the rifle from her and sent her to the 
 house and then, after dropping my gun in the pocket 
of his overalls, he walked me back to the car.
 "She let the Devil take her a few 
times," he said, as if I'd just accused the
missus of something. "But she has cleansed herself
since. She ain't even afraid of the snakes, which
shames me. The man of the house shouldn't show fear.
But I just can't stand those things."
"She killed those men, Oates."
"You don't know that for a fact."
"Maybe not. Though I think you do."
 The sun was so hot not even the dust wanted 
to rise when an old truck passed by in front
 of the yard. I was betting the chickens wished they had 
electric fans.
"You don't trouble us no more," he said when we
reached the ragtop.
 "You really think things're this easy, Oates?" 
"You don't dwell on things, sometimes the good
Lord just takes them away."
"The good Lord may but then Cliffie brings them
right back."
"You can't prove anything. And anyway, you know
how them Sykeses don't like to be showed up. You
 tell him about that strychnine and he'll say "so 
what?" Strychnine is sold all the time.
He's got Sara Hall all zeroed in on and
nothin's gonna change his mind."
 Oates was probably right. I didn't know 
for a fact that Pam had killed anybody. I just
had a suspicion that he had a suspicion that his
wife had killed the two men. But that was
 surmise, not fact. 
 I got in the Ford and did a little 
backside-dancing. The seats, back and
bottom, were blast-furnace hot. The steering
wheel was probably going to brand my palms for
life.
"You get away from here now," he said. "And you
don't come back."
The seats were still scorching when I got back
to town.




                        299                        
     Nineteen     
         
The drive-in was showing a Vincent Price
"Triple Terror" feature that night. His
lisp didn't do much for me but he was effective
in a hammy sort of way. They advertised this in
"spooky" lettering on their big sign out front.
That sounded good. Lots of buttery popcorn from the
 concession stand, a nice breeze off the surrounding 
cornfields, and my arm around any girl I could
 find who'd go out with me. A bachelor my age in 
a small Iowa town has slim pickings.
Girls are either married off or knocked up by the
time they reach twenty; by twenty-five they're
having baby number three or four. I would have
 daydreamed about taking the beautiful Pamela 
 Forrest tonight but she'd never have gone to the drive-in. 
She would have called it "uncouth," a word she
 picked up from an old Bette Davis movie 
 we saw together on Tv one night. 
I didn't recognize the car in my drive.
 The garage door was open, Mrs. 
 Goldman's car was gone. Meaning this gink 
didn't have sense or courtesy enough not to block her
 when she came back home. 
The car was a forest-green Mg. It looked
dashing in the way of many things British. That's one
thing the Brits have got all over us, the dashing
stuff. We have better cooking, prettier
girls, and a higher class of rock stars. But
they've got a corner on the dashing stuff.
I parked at the curb and walked around back.
He was sitting on my steps, smoking a
 cigarette with one hand, patting his hair with 
another. Maybe there was an invisible
photographer somewhere about to take his picture.
America's favorite unknown literary genius.
Just ask him.
When he looked at me, he frowned. "This
wasn't easy for me to come here. I want you to know
that."
 He sounded as if he wanted me to pin a medal 
 for valor on him. 
"You could always leave," I said. "Like right now,
for instance."
"Let's get one thing straight. I think
you're a two-bit hayseed lawyer who works for a
fascist judge in an intolerable little burg."
"Ok, now I'll tell you what I think of
                        you." 301                        
"You didn't let me finish. You see me as
an untalented, spoiled, rich boy who is
cheating on a very sweet young woman who was stupid
to fall in love with me in the first place and is
even dumber to stay with me now that she knows the
truth. At least part of the truth."
"Part of the truth?"
He looked suitably miserable for what he was
 about to say, a stage figure in his inevitable 
white button-down shirt and chinos.
 "The truth is I've never been faithful. The 
day after our wedding night--in Paris, thanks to the
largesse of my parents--I screwed the maid."
"The maid?"
"She was eighteen. You wouldn't have believed her
tits."
"And Kylie was--"
his--out shopping."
"The old screw-the-maid-with-the-big-tits-
while-the-ll-woman-is-out-shopping routine. And you
 are ashamed of yourself, of course." 
"Of course. You think I'm proud of it?"
"Yeah, I do. Because there was a little smirk in
your voice when you told me about it. You like being the
conqueror, and you know what? The big lug just can't
help himself. He's just a charming rogue, isn't
he? There's just enough of me like you to recognize it,
Chad. But where I'm not like you is that I'd never do
it while I was married. I'd at least get a
 divorce before I went back to chasing." 
He was wringing his hands now. He didn't know
how to wring his hands worth a damn. His hand-wringing
made him look prissy.
 "That's why I'm here." 
"I'm not following."
 "I'm here to ask you a favor." 
 You know how things come clear all of a sudden and you 
just know, almost word for word, what you're about to hear, but
 you reject it because you don't think that anybody would 
 have the arrogance to ask? 
"Don't ask me," I said.
 I dug out a Lucky and got it going. 
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"Sure, I do."
"All right, what is it?"
"You're going to ask me to go find Kylie and
tell her that you've decided you're in love with your
little undergrad after all and that it's time--painful as it
 is, and you're sorry as all hell--ffget a 
                        divorce." 303                        
I had to give him his courage.
Without hesitation, he said, "That's not an easy
thing to ask a guy."
He wanted another medal.
"You didn't ask a guy, dip-shit. I
asked a guy."
"Well, I guess that's sort of right. But
I would've asked if you hadn't asked yourself first."
 "You are a living, crawling, slimy piece of 
 shit." 
"You think I don't know it? I know I'm a
bastard. And I don't even know why. I just
 keep falling in love. It's not just getting 
pussy, McCain. It really isn't. I
really, truly fall in love. But it never lasts
very long."
 "You fell in love with the maid?" 
 "You're not gonna believe this--I damned 
near asked her to marry me."
And I felt sorry for him. I wasn't even
sure why. But every once in a while you see
somebody the way they really are--it only takes
 a second of seeing them that way--and then you can't 
hate them quite as much as you did. It's a curse.
Then he did me a favor and went back
to his whining. "I'm jeopardizing my inheritance
here, you know."
I was running out of medals to pin on this guy.
"It's funny," he said. He took out his
pack of Viceroys. "My parents were against me
marrying her because she was Jewish. They're not
anti-Semitic or anything--Kylie's folks
weren't all that hot about me marrying her, either--j
that they're pretty strict Catholics and everything
 --but now--I mean, I've kept them up on 
 developments and everything--now they're taking her 
part in this. They've really gotten to love her."
"That isn't hard to do."
Sudden anger. "You bastard. You did screw
her that night she was here, didn't you?"
I could have told him the truth. But why? His
ego needed some grief. In my best mature
voice, I said, "That's for me to know and you to find
out."
"God," he said, miserably. "You can't
trust anybody these days." And then--ffgive him
at least a smidge of credit here--he said, "I
guess that's pretty ironic coming from me, huh?
About not being able to trust anybody, I mean."
"I won't tell her for you, Chad." 305
 He started talking to himself. Angled his head 
away. Took a deep drag on his smoke and
began to ramble. "You know what I'm really scared
of? Looking into her eyes when I tell her. You
ever see her eyes when you hurt her feelings?
She looks like this devastated little girl."
He was right.
"And I don't want to put that hurt in her
eyes anymore. I've been doing it night after
night for a month now. I haven't just walked
away, McCain. You have to give me that,
 anyway. I know I've gone back and forth between the 
 two of them but it's only because I don't want 
to hurt Kylie. Hell, I've known for a long
 time that we had a shit marriage. We never 
should've been married in the first place. We're just
too combustible."
He was starting to persuade me and he knew it.
"She'll still want to see you," I said.
He looked at me, done with his reverie.
 "Oh, I know. But she'll know the situation. 
I won't explain that to her because you'll already have
covered it." Then: "I won't even care if you
sleep with her."
"You pimping for her now? I hate to tell you
 this, Chad, but you don't have the right to hand her out like 
 candy." 
 "You jerk. You know what I mean." 
 "No, I don't know what you mean. Now get 
off my steps."
 "So you'll do it?" 
"You slimy, crawling, stinking piece of
shit."
 "So you'll do it, McCain? Will ya, please? 
 Will ya?" 
 "You vain, pompous, arrogant--" 
 "So you'll do it?" 
"Yeah," I said, "you rotten bastard, I'll
do it."

She wasn't home and she wasn't home and
she wasn't home. I kept trying her every ten
 minutes. I wanted to get it over with. I 
dragged the phone with its long extension cord over
 to the couch so that I could lie down and watch 
"Science Fiction Theater." It had been on
 back when I was still a teenager. It was funny how 
I was already nostalgic for a pastime. How can you be
nostalgic when you're only twenty-four? But it
was the old shows and the old songs and the old 307
sights--the way the shadows of the trees played on
the river; the deserted baseball park where you could
see advertisements on the fence for businesses that
didn't exist anymore; the Catholic school
where I'd pined so arduously for the beautiful
 Pamela far across town at public school--mch 
as I liked Kerouac and art films and Evergreen
 Review and Lenny Bruce--I already missed 
the simpler times behind me. And "Science Fiction
Theater" with the ultimate father figure, Truman
Bradley, was part of those simpler times.
She called.
"He isn't here."
"I know. You need to come over here."
"What?"
 "Please. Just get in your car and come over." 
"Oh, God, this is going to be bad, isn't
it, McCain?"
 "Please, Kylie. Just come over." 
"He couldn't even face me himself, could he?"
"Right away," I said. "Please." And hung
up.
 She was at my door in under ten minutes. Her 
knock was exceptionally loud. I learned this was because
she knocked on the door with a full fifth of
Jack Daniels. In her other hand she carried
a suitcase. A big one.
 No sign she'd been crying. No sign of 
trembling. No sign of anger. This was scary.
I took her suitcase.
 "You want a drink?" I said. 
 "Please. You mind if we put on some 
 music?" 
"Anything in particular?"
"You pick."
"Been listening to this blues guy. Oscar
Brown, Jr."
"Fine," she said.
She got her drink and she got Oscar
Brown, Jr.
She sat at one end of the couch with her lovely
legs stretched out across my lap. She wore
 blue walking shorts and a white T-shirt. 
"He tell you he was leaving me?"
"Uh-huh."
 "He say he was in love with her?" 
"Uh-huh."
 "He say he couldn't face me because he 
"didn't want to put any more hurt" in my
                        eyes?" 309                        
"Yeah. Some kinda bullshit like that. He
probably thinks it's a good line."
"He does. He thinks all his lines are good
lines."
"And by the way, thanks for telling me what I
was supposed to tell you. I was sorta nervous about
how I'd say it."
"I almost told him I was pregnant."
"You're pregnant?"
 "No. But it would've made him suffer. This 
way he just gets to walk away."
She finished her drink in three gulps. Then
swung her legs off me and stood up.
 "You ready for another one?" 
"Not yet," I said.
"I'm going to make a stiff one."
"The night's young."
She actually smiled. "Yes, McCain, and
so are we."
 She poured about half a glass full of sour 
 mash, ran a silver slip of tap water into it, 
added a couple ice cubes from the fridge, and then
 came back, bringing those wonderful long legs with 
 her. 
 When they were once again inhabiting my lap, she 
 said, "Tonight's the night we sleep together, 
McCain."
"Probably not."
 "C'mon, McCain, I've got to sleep with 
 you tonight." 
"Because he's sleeping with her tonight."
 "No, because I want to sleep with you." 
"You like me. I like you. We're friends. That
 part's true. But the reason you want to sleep with 
 me is because of her." 
"Well, maybe part of the reason."
 "Most of the reason." 
"Maybe fifty percent of the reason," she
said.
"Maybe eighty percent of the reason."
"Maybe fifty-five percent of the reason."
We listened to Oscar Brown, Jr.
 "Boy, this drink's really getting to me," she 
 said. 
"That's probably more booze than you've had in
your entire life--right there in that one drink.
Nobody says you've got to drink it."
She set it down on the coffee table.
"Wow. I'm woozy."
 She laid her head back against the arm 311 
of the couch. Closed her eyes.
"Would you dance with me?" she said.
"I thought you were woozy."
"I'm all right now."
 "You're a dancer, huh?" 
"Not really. I mean, I used to dance with my
 sister sometimes when we watched "American 
Bandstand." And I danced in high school the few
 times the boys would ask me. They wanted 
 to slow-dance with girls with big breasts so that let 
me out." Pause. "I want you to hold me,
McCain, I really need you to hold me, and
dancing's a good way to do that."
"How about some Nat King Cole?"
"Perfect. I need to go to the bathroom first,
though."
 I had an album of ballads by Cole. It 
was Mathis or Cole or Darin when I wanted
ballads. Hearing Bobby Rydell ruin a
Jerome Kern song wasn't something I dealt with
very well.
I heard the glass smashing in the bathroom and a
terrible thought filled my mind. The jagged glass
from the Skippy peanut-butter jar I kept my
toothbrush in--ripping across her wrists.
 I lunged for the door. 
She'd been emotional, after all--suicidally
so.
The door swung open and there she was.
"Dammit, I broke your glass,
McCain. You had it sitting right on the edge of the
sink and I thought it wouldn't fall off. But you had
some kind of greasy stuff all over it."
"Hair oil. I probably picked the
glass up after I put the hair oil on.
 Greasy kid stuff, as they say in the ads." 
"Hair oil, then. Anyway, when I picked
it up, it slid right through my fingers. Get me a
dustpan and a broom and I'll clean it up."
She fixed me with a sharp eye. "And it wasn't
because I was drinking, either."
"I didn't say anything."
 "Yeah, but it's what you were thinking." 
 "Guilty as charged, I guess." 
She looked so bedraggled and exasperated just
then, her hair sort of mussed and her face
damp from the heat and her clothes a little mussed, she
just looked so damned sweet and lost and sad and
nice and girly and true and just plain wonderful that
I leaned forward and touched my lips 313
to hers.
I forced my eager arms to stay put.
I said, "I'll get the broom and the
dustpan."
A few minutes later, we were dancing.
"This is nice," she said.
 "It sure is." 
We were listening to "Lost April" and it was
 great, dancing there in the living-room of my 
apartment. I turned the light off. A quarter
moon hung in a pane of glass and a coyote
cried in growing flower-scented darkness. This was kind
of a medical procedure for both of us. A healing,
 if you will. It had been way too long since 
I'd held a woman and way too long since this
particular woman had been held by a man she
trusted. It wouldn't last long--dawn would turn
us back into our real selves--but for now we were
shadowshapes and nothing more.
"Is it all right if I kiss your neck,
McCain? Because if I don't I'll start
crying about you-know-who."
"Well, in that case, because it involves
you-know-who, I guess I don't have much choice
do I?"
One tiny little peck on my neck and I set
a land speed record for getting an erection.
We got tighter.
 I thought of Groucho's old gag line, "If 
I held you any tighter, I'd be behind you."
 And then we were kissing. And I do mean kissing. 
And thrusting. And rubbing. And stroking. And kissing
and thrusting even harder. And then rubbing and stroking
even harder.
 "I want to if you want to," I said. 
"Well, I want to if you want to," she
said.
All this said in great swooping gasps on both
our parts.
 And then we started dancing at a slight 
eastward angle, toward the bed.
I could see over her shoulders into the bedroom.
Tasha, Crystal, and Tess seemed to sense
what was about to happen.
They jumped off the bed as if it were a sinking
ocean liner.
 And then we reached the bed and then-- 
  
"Thanks," she said when we were all finished.
"Are you crazy. Thank you!" 315
"I'm not that great a lover, McCain."
"Well, neither am I."
"You were pretty good."
"Well, look who's talking. You were pretty
good yourself."
 "At least we're being honest." 
"Honesty is always the best policy." I
guess that's the myth of Stranger Sex. The
fury of it is great but sex is actually better
 --at least for me--af you've been together a few 
times. Get to know what to do, what not to do, when to do
 it, when not to ... need I go on? 
But I was already wondering if we hadn't been a
mite hasty about being perfectly honest about our first
experience. We'd been expecting a
Technicolor and Cinemascope musical.
What we'd gotten was a nice, lusty B
second feature in black-and-white on a
regular-size screen. And no reassurance.
And I think we both needed reassurance.
 "You're not telling me I am a great lover and 
I'm not telling you you are a great lover."
 "Yeah, but you did say I was pretty good, 
 Kylie." 
"Oh, you were pretty good, all right. In
fact, you were very good."
"Well, that's what I meant to say to you,
too. Not that you were merely pretty good. But that you
were very good."
"And so were you, McCain. Not just very good. Very, very
good."
 Now, that was more like it. Two verys. 
"You got a smoke?" she asked.
"I thought you only smoked filters."
 "I'm being European tonight, McCain. Like 
Simone Signoret or somebody like that.
European movie stars never smoke filters."
"There's nothing more alluring than lung cancer."
 I got us cigarettes and got them going and 
gave her hers.
 "God, that breeze feels good," she said, 
inhaling with epic depth.
We lay inches apart on the bed. Letting the
breeze balm us.
"I ever tell you what he did to me the first time
I ever met him at a dance?"
"I guess not."
"Could you stand to hear about it?"
"Sure."
She rolled over and kissed me on the 317
cheek. Her breast felt swell against my arm.
"Thanks for putting up with me."
 "So tell me." 
"Well, we met at this dance in
Manhattan, see. And we danced like every other
dance together. Fast and slow. And it was obvious there
 was something going on. You know? So I said, "Be 
sure and save the last dance for me." And he
kissed me. Right there in the middle of the floor.
This big dramatic kiss. An Mgm kiss.
 And then you know what the asshole did? He started 
dancing with this blonde who came in. Very
 Vassar, if you know what I mean. Vassar or 
 Smith. One of those real bitch schools. And then 
all of a sudden he forgot me entirely. He not
only danced the last dance with her, he took her
home."
 "So how'd you meet him again?" 
"Luckily--or unluckily, as things turned
out--we'd already exchanged phone numbers by that
point. I called him the next day."
"What he'd say about the Vassar chick?"
"Said she was an old girlfriend and he was taking
pity on her."
"That Chad, always thinking of other people."
We then proceeded to nuzzle, snuggle,
cuddle, grope, bite, nibble, lick, groan,
gasp, and giggle. I was almost ready but first I
said, "Need to go to the can."
"Don't be long."
"Thought I'd take a paperback in there with
me."
"Har-har."
I got up and walked to the john and--since I
have to reconstruct the thought process here--I
guess the next few seconds went this way.
 I walked into the john. 
 And stepped on a piece of glass we hadn't 
swept up. Just a sliver. But it cut me enough
to remind me of the glass I kept my toothbrush
in.
 And when I thought of the glass, I thought of it 
 slipping out of Kylie's hand. 
 And then I knew who had killed Muldaur and 
Courtney. Things work out that way sometimes.
She watched me as I yanked my clothes on.
"But where're you going?"
 "I'll be back in less than an hour." 
"You're forgetting something, McCain."
                        "What?" 319                        
She was already throwing herself off the bed.
"I'm a reporter, McCain. And I'm
going with you."
"You don't even know where we're going."
She grinned. "Doesn't matter."

     Twenty     
         
On the way out there, we stopped at the Nite
 Owl grocery store and bought a can of lighter 
 fluid. Then we were back on the road and I was 
explaining everything to her.
Fifteen minutes later I pulled off the
gravel road.
 "This is the part you won't like." 
 "What part is that, McCain?" 
"I'm going in there alone."
"That isn't fair."
"I'm acting as the investigator for Judge
Whitney. You're a reporter. If Cliffie
wanted to make a stink about me taking you along,
he could."
"So I wait till you wave a white
flag?"
 "Something like that." 
 She leaned over and kissed me. 
"I guess that makes sense."
Which made me suspicious. She took her
reporter's job very seriously.
 I got out of the ragtop. The moon was riding 
high. The prairie gleamed with moonlight. A
John Deere tractor with lights in a distant
field looked like a giant alien insect, like the
 mutated kind you always see on drive-in movie 
 screens. 
 The garage resembled a jungle ruin in the 
shadowy light. A lost race of auto
mechanics had once thrived here, sacrificing
 virgin Fords to the motor gods until the very 
 degeneracy of their actions caused them to vanish 
 utterly from the earth. There was a good chance they'd 
gone to Atlantis.
There was light and mountain music coming from the
nearby trailer.
First, to do my good deed for the day. The Boy
 Scout ethic was not lost on me, even though I'd 
been tossed out for smoking a cigar in the back of a
troop meeting. Somebody had dared me to do it and
 in those days a good dare was a bracing and 
irresistible spur. 321
The snakes were inside the church now. I could
hear them hissing from the makeshift altar. And, as
my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, see the
 outline of their cage. 
But the snakes didn't interest me--or even
especially frighten me--now.
What I wanted was the corner where all those
flyers were stacked. You know, John Kennedy,
Secret Rabbi.
The stack sat right next to a window. I was
hoping the folks in the trailer would see the fire
and come running. And there I'd be with my .45 and
my accusations.
I took my can of Ronson lighter fluid and
went to work. I did those babies up proud. By the
time I was done, the entire four-foot stack of
flyers glistened. And I was out of the giant-size
can of fluid.
 I struck a match and very casually tossed it 
on to the fliers.
Whoosh! and Whoom! The words you frequently
see in comic book panels applied here. The
 things whooshed and whoomed for several full 
 seconds, like a singer sustaining a high note. 
The flames leapt in every direction, burning
blue-yellow. They filled the window, too, which
faced the trailer. Any eye looking casually from
 the trailer was bound to see-- 
The flames lent an ugly light to the church,
a light that did not soften and flatter but revealed
and scorned. All the oil marks on the walls;
all the cracks and fungi on the floor; all the
cobwebs collected in the high rotting corners.
But the massive painting of the angry Christ was
the most startling. He was beyond anger, into hard-core
psychosis. He was not my Christ--y could
 believe in his divinity or not, it didn't matter 
--a Christ of sympathy, tolerance, understanding,
forgiveness. He was the dark Christ embraced
 by dictators of all kinds, especially the 
darkest dictators of all, the ministers and
priests who teach their followers to hate anyone
different from themselves. Anyone who doesn't
believe, think, dress or behave the way they
d. Any mercy or compassion this Christ had ever
 felt was gone now, gone utterly, as he glared 
down at me from the wall behind the altar.
The fire burned itself out in just a couple of
minutes. Ash was all that was left.
 A voice said, "I could kill you right 323 
now for trespassing, Mr. McCain."
 I'd been fixated on the painting of Christ and 
 hadn't heard them come in. 
Mother and daughter. The Muldaurs.
Mom, as most Midwestern moms were wont
to, carried a sawed-off shotgun.
 "That's our personal property, what you just 
 burned." 
 "I'll be happy to pay you for it. I just 
 don't want it dirtying up our little town." 
"What you don't want is for people to know the
 truth, Mr. McCain. About the Jews and the 
 Catholics. And the niggers." 
Ella just stood there in her worn gingham
dress, the blue eyes of that sad pretty face
 not quite here with us but somewhere else. But she wasn't the 
 soft-spoken, shy Ella she pretended to be for the 
people who didn't know her well. There was a hardness
 and a harshness in the face now; and a genuine lunacy 
in the eyes ...
She said, "My mom's right, Mr. McCain.
The Jews killed Our Lord and they won't rest
until they take over the world. You probably
don't even realize that several of the popes were
Jews."
And what should have been funny--Jewish popes,
Jewish guns in the basements of Catholic
churches--wasn't funny at all. It was
sorrowful. Because not long ago she'd been an
innocent little girl who should have been given the chance
for a full, free life. But Mama and Papa
had recruited her as a soldier in their dark
army. The Koreans and Chinese had nothing on these
 folks when it came to brainwashing. The 
Muldaurs had turned their daughter into a
vessel of pure rage and hatred. She was beyond
reasoning with. She believed all their conspiracy
 theories, no matter how ludicrous; and even 
did their bidding.
"You couldn't do it yourself, so you had your daughter
do it," I said.
"I wanted to do it, Mr. McCain. It's
the sort of thing God rewards you for."
"For killing your father?"
"He'd defiled the Lord, Mr. McCain,"
 she said. "And so did Reverend Courtney. He 
had defiled the Lord just the way my pa had--with
sins of the flesh."
 "How'd you know it was Ella?" her mother said. 
 She didn't sound angry or frightened. 325 
More curious than anything.
 "They found some kind of ointment all over the 
neck of the bottle your husband drank from. I
didn't make the connection till tonight--ffElla's
 poison ivy salve." 
 "You're a good detective." 
"Look at her, Mrs. Muldaur. Look
at her face. She shouldn't look like that. She should
be a nice, ordinary teenage girl."
"Wearing tight sweaters and going all the way,
I suppose, like other girls in this town, Mr.
McCain?"
"That's a lot better than this, Mrs.
Muldaur. I said to look at her and you
didn't. Because you see it too, don't you?
She's insane. That's why she doesn't feel
any remorse for what she did. She killed
devils, not human beings. And you and your husband were
the ones who taught her to think like that."
 "You kill him, Mama," the girl said. "Or 
 I will." 
For the first time, Mrs. Muldaur looked
nervous, uncertain. She wasn't a killer.
 Her daughter was. 
"We could just let him leave," Mrs.
Muldaur said. "Nobody'd believe what he
said."
"You know better than that, Mama. Now, either you
 kill him or I will." 
Mrs. Muldaur hesitated. And in that
moment, Ella snatched the sawed-off shotgun from
her.
"You go wait outside, Mama."
"I'm not sure we should do this, honey."
 "You heard what I said, Mama. Wait 
 outside." 
Her mother knew there was no sense arguing.
 "Honey, I just wish" 
 "Go wait outside," Ella said. 
Mrs. Muldaur looked down at the pocket
of her dress. She slid out what appeared to be
an old .38. Gripped it.
I was sure for a moment she was going to tell
Ella to hand back the shotgun. But she didn't.
She just looked at the handgun, turned, and
quietly left the church.
"You need help," I said. "There's no point
in killing me, too."
"You sound like some Tv show."
 "You really do need help. And there are 327 
people who can help you."
She smirked. "Jews? Catholics?" She
shook her head and raised the weapon. "^th're
your people, not mine."
 I thought of begging but what was the point? I thought 
 of lunging at her but what was the point of that, either? 
I'd just be giving her a better shot at me.
"You get up on the altar, McCain." She
sort of waggled the shotgun at me. "We're
going to see how holy you are."
 Snakes. Somehow, it always came back 
to snakes with these people, that litmus test of spirituality
that not even the Aztecs had been nutty enough to use.
"I'm not going to handle any snakes," I
said.
 "Sure you are. You just don't know it yet. 
Leastways, you got a chance with the snakes.
Otherwise, I'll kill you right here."
 She really looked like she knew what she was 
doing with the gun. She sighted down the barrel and
said, "This ain't nothin' personal."
"God," I said, "I'm glad you said that. That
makes me feel a whole lot better."
 "Sarcasm is the Devil's tongue. Says 
so right in the Bible."
"I think there's something about not killing people in there,
too, Ella."
 "Depends on how you read it. Way I read 
it, God wants us to smite the sinners who
won't see the one true way."
She was ready. It wasn't anything she said,
anything she did. But some judgment had been
reached.
It was right and just and proper to kill me. Any
 lingering doubts banished. 
I was trying to say a prayer for myself but I was
too scared to form the words.
Then I said it, the words John Wayne would
never say: "I really don't want to die,
Ella. It isn't your fault you turned out this
way. You need to talk to somebody who can help you
like I said." And then: "I'm kinda afraid
to die, Ella." You'll notice how I sort
of slid that "kinda" in there, taking the sting off what
a teeth-rattling, knee-collapsing,
sphincter-cringing coward I was.
All for naught.
"You get up on that altar or I'll kill you
 right here and right now." 
And I knew she would. 329
She hitched the gun up, sighted even tighter
down the barrel. Her elbow kicked slightly as
she got ready to fire--
And I turned and walked up to the altar.
"Sit in the chair."
 I sat in the chair. 
"Mama! Mama! I need you in here!"
About now, I was wondering where Kylie was.
Had Mama found her? Roughed her up?
Mama came through the door. She still had the
handgun clutched tight in her fingers.
"You get up here, Mama. I need you to tie
him up."
They'd reversed personalities. Daughter was
now mom, and definitely in charge. And mom, a
big woman rendered mousy all of a sudden, was
daughter.
Mama came up to the floor in front of the
altar. Ella stood next to the snake cage.
"I need you to tie him up, Mama."
 "I sure wish you wouldn't do this, honey. 
We're in trouble enough."
Ella's voice crackled. "Not with the Lord,
we're not in no trouble, Mama. Where's your
faith?"
Mama muttered to herself then began walking up
on to the platform. I glanced over my shoulder.
A coil of rough rope lay on the rear corner
 of the platform. Mama, all sweat now, all great 
sigh, all great dead eyes, dead as the eyes of the
rattlers, brought the rope over.
 "Tie him up," Ella said. "Good and 
 tight." 
"You've done a great job with her, Mrs.
 Muldaur," I said. 
Mama spat in my face. Hot, dirty
 spittle on my cheek. 
She did me good and tight. The circulation
left my upper arms and my lower legs. The
only thing that could cut me loose would be a
scimitar and you just couldn't hardly find any of those
in a small Iowa town like this.
"There you go, hon," Mama said. No more
 doubts. No more regrets. She wanted to see 
me killed. I'd insulted her one time too many.
"Now, you go stand in the back, Mama. I know
 how you don't like these snakes." 
"I wish I had better faith, hon,"
Mama said, sounding genuinely ashamed of herself.
"I can't help it them things scare me." 331
She turned--all too gladly, it seemed--
and walked back to the door in the rear of the place.
Ella set her shotgun down on the floor with
great care. No need to worry about me now. I was
all tied up.
The snakes had gotten the message. They were
having a snake revival meeting inside the
cage. While they weren't ordinarily much
interested in human beings--they only struck out at
us because they were as afraid of us as we were of them--they
were getting ready to take all their caged
 frustrations out on me. 
Ella went over to the cage, leaned down and
did a little work on the latch holding the lid in
 place. She couldn't seem to get it open. 
 Could I be that lucky? Of course not. A 
couple of seconds later she flipped the latch
and then opened the lid a few inches.
You could feel the energy of the rattlers. The
thrust and thrum and mean intent of them. Back when
 our species had been only twenty inches high, 
 we'd learned to dread and fear these creatures. And 
that dread stayed with us. It was with me right now.
 And then she did it. The unthinkable. Just 
plunged her hand down inside the cage--pretty
casually, really--and up came a timber
rattler.
I almost felt sorry for it. The thing was in
pure frenzy. Ella had obviously mastered the
trick of holding it in such a way that it couldn't
angle its head around to strike at her.
"Are you pure of soul, Mr. McCain?" she
said. "Somehow, I doubt that you are."
She carried the snake over to me. Wriggling,
wrenching, wrestling its body around in mid-air--and
 furious--she slapped the lower third of the rattler 
against my face. I made some kind of
 undignified sound of terror. I jerked up in 
my seat, bringing the chair with me.
"You're sure a 'fraidy cat, Mr.
McCain." She said this clinically, as if
 surprised that anybody my age could possibly 
fear rattlesnakes this much.
Then she got serious.
Gripping the snake tighter than ever, she
 brought it even closer, touching the lower part of it 
to my neck.
"I never was able to get one of these things around
anybody's neck," she said, again with great cold
loony dispassion. "Maybe I'll have 333
 better luck with you." 
 This time I didn't try to come up out of my 
chair. I knew better. I had to be as still as
I could be.
The rattle. The insane hissing.
Ella taking the snake and starting to wind it around
my neck.
 And then her mama fell face forward. 
 I'd been concentrating on Ella's large 
body but she moved out of the way--trying to get the
snake to coil better around my neck--and it was just
 then that Mama hit the floor. Heart attack? 
I couldn't think of anything that could fell a person
 so swiftly. I'd have said gunshot but there'd been 
no sound. Mama was just laid out on the floor.
 The snake began to grip onto my neck. 
Ella's science project was going to be a
success after all.
 I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip through my 
bonds. I wanted to beg.
But I was too frightened to do any of those things.
And that was when the United States Cavalry,
in the fetching form of Kylie, came through the rear
door.
Moving fast. Picking up the gun Mama had
dropped.
Breaking into a run down the aisle right up to the
altar and saying, "Put the snake back in the
cage, Ella."
My heroine.
That same drugged dead response from Ella:
"Be fun to try one of the serpents on a Jew."
Kylie pushed the gun in Ella's face.
"Put the snake away, Ella, and then stand over
there with your hands in the air."
"You can't order me around. Only God can."
 The snake was still against my neck. I wasn't 
 moving. 
"Do it, Ella."
"You won't shoot me."
 "You might be surprised." 
"You probably never shot a gun in your
life."
"You don't want to take that chance, Ella.
Believe me."
 And then she did it. 
Wasn't it enough for my heroine to knock out
Mama, grab the gun, and then rush the altar
to confront the snake girl?
Not enough for Kylie. 335
She doubled-gripped the gun and fired it just to the
side of Ella's head, the violent noise forcing
 Ella to jerk away, taking the snake she held 
 with her. 
Ella sort of windmilled backward for
 several feet and then fell off the side of the 
 platform. The snake went flying off into the 
 darkness. 
Kylie came over and started untying me.
 "How'd you knock out Mama?" I said. 
"Rock. A big one."
 "You saved my life." 
 She gave me a kiss, as she continued 
to untie my ropes.
"Yeah," she said, "and don't you forget it."

    Twenty-one    
        
 I'd never really been to a "d" before. 
Picnics, I was used to. Family
reunions, I was used to. Even
union-sponsored hot dog-and-beer
Democratic rallies in the park, I was used
to.
 But a real "d" such as you saw in the fantasy 
pages of Playboy or Esquire, with
actual servants ... all I could think of were the
 parties poor old Gatsby used to throw out on 
Long Island.
The Judge was wearing tennis whites and she
looked damned good--tanned, trim, imperiously
and regally beautiful. Not that she ever played
tennis, you understand. Sweating, to her, was vulgar.
She just flitted around this golden glorious
Midwestern afternoon--the temperature was in the high
 seventies and perfect--toting her glass of 
brandy and her Gauloise. A lot of her friends
had come in from Chicago. You could tell they were
big-city folks by the way they kissed each other
 on the cheek, the way movie stars do. 
As for Milhous, well, the Secret
Service basically imprisoned him. Wherever he
was, they were, surrounding him. Only an
 esteemed few were let inside that fortress of 
 heavily-armed bodies. 
Kylie kept trying to hide. She whispered that
she didn't have the right sort of clothes for an
event like this, and didn't speak well enough to be in
such august company, and hoped we didn't have
 to sit down and eat because she wasn't up 337 
on which fork and spoon to use at which point in the
feast.
 None of which mattered ultimately, anyway, 
 because about five minutes before the feast was to be served 
on the long tables covered with starchy white
tablecloths, the rain started.
And that was when I got my only really good
look at Dick Nixon.
He was playing volleyball with a bunch of people.
Being summer, and being hot, and volleyball being
a game that requires a lot of jumping and
stretching, everybody but Dick was dressed in
casual clothes, a lot of them, men as well as
women, in walking shorts and golf shirts.
Not Nixon.
He was the only guy I'd ever seen play
 volleyball in a white dress shirt, 
necktie and wingtips. And I felt sorry for
him. He didn't seem to even sense how
strange and sad he looked--laughable and pathetic
--volleyball played in suit and wingtips. But
then I'd always felt sorry for him, sensing that I
was as odd in my way as he was in his.
I never did actually meet him but as we
rushed in the downpour from the elegantly dressed
lawn to our car, I felt pretty sure for the first
 time that John Kennedy was going to win the election. 
Playing volleyball in wingtips.
Poor old Milhous. After this election, I
was pretty sure we'd never hear another
political peep from him again.

On the way home, rain slapping and slamming
 my ragtop, Kylie said, "I'm really sorry 
 the lovemaking wasn't so hot the other night." 
 "It was my fault, not yours." 
"No, it was my fault. You're just being
nice."
 "C'mon, Kylie, it was just my Catholic 
guilt. Sleeping with a married woman. It
inhibited me."
"You don't always have to be noble, McCain."
"I don't remember ever being noble."
"Well, sometimes you're sorta noble."
"Sorta noble--and on rare, rare occasions--t
I'd accept."
"If I wasn't so hung up with Jewish
guilt--I'm still a married woman--I don't
think you would've been inhibited. It was up to me
to free us both." 339
I reached over and took her hand. "There's
 only one thing to do." 
"What?"
"Try again."
She smiled. And squeezed my hand. This was no
kid-sister squeeze, either. "I think you're
right."
"Try and try and try until we get it
right."
"How about if we get a pizza and then go to your
place and just watch Tv for a while and kinda let
things develop naturally."
"Great idea. But I have to ask you something.
It's sort of kinky."
"Oh, God, McCain. I'm really not
kinky at all. That was one thing Chad hated about
me. No kinks."
"It's just this dream I've always had."
"This dream?"
"Well, this sexual fantasy, actually."
 I had her going. I could see she was expecting 
to hear something so funky she'd throw herself out of the
moving car.
"I have always," I said, "wanted to make love
 to a beautiful woman while I was wearing my 
 wingtips." 
"That's funny," she said. "I've always
wanted to make love to a short, redheaded Irish
guy while I was wearing my old Howdy Doody
galoshes."
"Talk about compatibility."
"Yeah," she said. And then slugged me on the
 arm. "You are a true dip-shit, McCain. You 
 know that?" 
"Gee," I said. "I was hoping you wouldn't
notice."

     The End