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Chapter 13

The Shithouse

It was such a brief and such a kindly note, to have generated so much adrenalin:

 

Dear Mr and Mrs Dortmunder

somebodys askin around the island tryin to find you two without you knowin. I didnt say nothin but they will find you sure by tomorrow or the next day. You seem like a nice young couple. I thought youd want to know.

Regards,
Maurice Lycott

 

June always took a secret special pleasure in blowing her lover's mind. So few people could manage it. Even she, who could blow just about anybody's mind, usually had to work at it with Paul. The look on his face now, the color in his forehead, the little squeak in his voice as he said, "You want to what?" were enough to calm her down, and almost enough to cheer her up.

"Call Wally and Moira," she repeated.

He made three successive sounds, two moist and one dry, none of which graduated to the status of a proper syllable.

"You said it yourself: they've got the kind of minds that can think about time travel without boggling. For sure they've been thinking about it longer than we have—and reading the ideas of better minds than their own, too. The more I think about this, the more my head hurts. You need a getaway: you call in a wheelman. You need something moved: you hire muscle. Right now, we need a time travel specialist in the string, fast. Two would be even better."

He closed his eyes, sighed, and opened them again. He began quietly, but built to a crescendo by the end of his question. "And you don't suppose the fact that both those airheads are presently consumed by a passionate desire to examine my giblets with rusty fucking tongs might present a few trivial fucking obstacles?"

She ignored his anger: it was not really directed at her. "You tell me—you know them better. Which would a true-blue science fiction fan rather do, in his or her heart of hearts? Avenge a sting—or meet a no-shit time traveler?"

"No way they're going to believe me a second time—"

"Way," she said, knowing he hated that particular neologism. "They're not stupid, you said. You steam-cleaned them, Paul, down to the last peso. They're wigless, gigless and cigless now. You know it, and they know you know it. The only possible motive you could have for coming back on them again with the same tale is if it's the truth this time."

"That's not—"

"That Kornbluth guy—was he a big name in sci fi?"

"One of the very very best. So what?"

"How much do you want to bet Wally or Moira once read the same story you did?'

He frowned and squinted ferociously, as at a sudden blinding light.

"Think about it, Paul. Everything I know about time travel, and half of what you know, we got from the movies and TV. They're lousy sources of information about real science, for God's sake. You want to blow this, through some equivalent of expecting to hear sounds in vacuum, or thinking cars blow up in real life?"

He gestured, like a beggar seeking alms. Shylock, crying, "My daughter! My ducats!" could not have sounded more conflicted. "But June—ask a mark for help? It's . . . it's not decent."

She shared his pain, but pressed on. "You don't like that argument? Here's one you're gonna love: it goes right to the root of your favorite root. So far we think we've worked up a few field tactics useful for defending ourselves against this guy's mind-ray—maybe—for as long as a pair of AA batteries hold out—maybe long enough to slip in under his radar. All to the good. But wouldn't you like to have a way to threaten the bastard?"

His frown eased slightly. "With what?"

"Look, we know he's afraid of exposure. Maybe even more than we are: we could go to jail, he could go to Never-Never Land. That in itself doesn't give us a whole lot of leverage, though . . . because ninety-nine people out of a hundred, we could tell them everything we know, in detail, with a straight face and corroborating exhibits, and all they'd do is call the men with the thorazine. But suppose we convinced a science fiction fan, who's wired into the Internet?"

Paul's frown released altogether; so did all his facial muscles. "Oh, my," he said softly. "Oh la." He pulled his jaw back up, and shaped it into a grin. "Oh angel, I like it. That might be just about the only thing we could possibly do that would scare the living shit out of the son of a bitch. Will you marry me?"

"No."

His grin faltered. "Huh? Why not?"

"Paul, don't ask me that now, okay?"

Back to a frown. "I think it constitutes what I'd call a valid point of order," he said. "I may have been smiling, but it wasn't a joke question."

"I know."

Hurt twisted his features. "So?"

"I gave up on marriage a long time before I met you: it just isn't in the cards for me, alright? Please, baby, can't we just go on living in sin and get this fucking zombie off our backs and then see what happens?"

He turned on his heel and walked away.

"Paul?"

He reached the telephone's base unit and thumbed the intercom; a loud repetitive whoop in the next room announced the location of the wandering handset.

"Aw, come on—Paul?"

He retrieved the phone, punched keys. "Yes, in Vancouver, operator, I'd like a residential listing for a Wallace Kemp, that's kay ee em pee, on West 12th, please?"

"Paul—"

He held up a hand. As the digits were read to him, he punched them into the phone. When he had them all, he hung up, poked redial and returned the thing to his ear. "Ringing," he said.

"Paul, damn it to hell—"

He held his hand higher and turned his face away slightly.

They waited, alone, together.

After what seemed like an eternity, he disconnected. "Answering machine. They stayed in Toronto. Oh damn."

"Paul—"

"They gave me their fucking number there—and of course I burned it the minute I got home. Oh—" He began his swearing litany. It was different every time, and she had once heard him continue it for three solid sulphurous minutes before he slipped, and repeated an obscenity. Another time, the victim—a grown man—had fainted dead away, midway into the second minute. It was going to be impossible to interrupt him now until he had finished wringing the English language dry of its power to express his frustration.

She gave up and left the room, to attack the same task from a feminine perspective. Somewhere she couldn't be interrupted either, with a door that locked, and lots and lots of kleenex.

But of course she was wrong. One simple knock at the front door, and she and Paul were both as interrupted as they could be.

 

"Look," Paul said wearily, when they had all seated themselves, "the sooner you put those silly things away, the less chance you'll end up using them as suppositories."

"You're probably right," Wally agreed. "But I'm feeling reckless." His gun-hand looked dismayingly steady.

"It's not necessary, you know," June said. "We were just trying to call you when you showed up, only we lost your Toronto number."

Wally looked at her for a long moment. "That is such a preposterous assertion, I think I almost believe it." He glanced to Moira.

She shrugged. "My experience is that the really ridiculous is usually true. But I'm not losing the gun."

Her husband nodded, and turned back to June. "Why were you going to call us? You don't look like gloaters. You know you tapped us out. Oh, wait, I get it—you must have found out somehow that we hit your other place on Point Grey Road. What, you were going to ask us to give you your money back?"

June groaned. Another perfectly good address and identity, blown for good. Not to mention another large cash-stash gone. "You know," she said to her own partner, "I've had better weeks. Lots of 'em."

"Tell me about it."

"Our own has been excessively eventful," Moira pointed out.

"Let me take this," June said.

"Of course," Paul agreed.

There was no more than that to the exchange: half a dozen banal words, absolutely no ironic vocal undertones or pained expressions. But June clearly saw Moira grasp that she and Paul were presently in the middle of a quarrel. From this she inferred that Moira was no fool, and reconsidered her opening.

"Wallace, Moira, my name is June Bellamy, and this is Paul Throtmanian. I can't think of any reason why you should believe those are our real names, because I'm as good a professional liar as he is. But you have to call us something. It's a place to start."

"Call me Wally, June," Wally said.

She felt relief. She did not want to address herself principally to Moira, to seem to be trying the lame let's us girls work this out while the boys hold weapons on each other ploy. "Thank you, Wally. As I said, Paul and I were discussing phoning you and Moira. Not because you have brains—we have brains—but because you both have a particular kind of brains. And I think you've proven that, by tracking us. Frankly, I don't know how you pulled it off—and please don't think I'm asking how you found us: I haven't earned the right. But we have a problem we need your kind of brains to solve, and I'd like to explain it to you."

"Pardon me," Wally said, "but I want to get this straight. We're holding guns on you, and you're trying to hire us?"

"Basically," she agreed.

He nodded. "I'm beginning to like you, June. Proceed."

She carefully did not smile. "Thank you, Wally. Since you say you got as far as the Bernardo house, I assume you must know what happened to Paul's Metkiewicz place." She glanced to Moira for confirmation, got back nothing, glanced away. "From that and our hasty departure for here, you must have deduced that someone else is after us. Someone we are very respectful of."

"And you want to hire us as consultant hackers," Wally said. "Oh, this is lovely."

"Would you like to hear our minimum fee?" Moira inquired.

June turned back to her. "Please, let me define the job correctly first. It may not involve any hacking as such, for instance. What we really need is your expertise as science fiction fans." She saw Moira begin to frown. "Please," she said quickly, holding up a hand, "I know that sounds like exactly the same sort of grifter technique my partner used on you: tell the mark what she wants to hear. Unfortunately, it happens to be the truth. Paul and I need a fan, badly. All I have to overcome your reasonable suspicion is logic. If you're really who we need, you'll see that logic. Will you listen?"

She was quietly elated when Moira shared a glance with her husband before saying, "Yes."

"Again, thank you. I'm going to make another assumption. I'm guessing you've both figured out where Paul got the idea for the game he ran on you. A story by . . . what's his name, honey?"

"Cyril Kornbluth," Paul supplied.

"Told you," Wally blurted, and flinched at the glance it got him from Moira.

"Thanks," June pressed on. "Kornbluth." She began slowing the pace of her speech. ("June," her mother had once told her, "it is almost impossible to speak foolishness slowly.") "I haven't read it, but Paul's told me about it. You've read it. A grifter pretends to be a time traveler. He works a long con." Beat. "What happens to him?"

Moira's eyes began to glitter a whole second before Wally's did. She covered superbly, kept her face serene and body relaxed. Wally managed to keep silent, but allowed his eyes to widen and his knuckles to whiten on his Glock, which happened to be pointed at his own ankle. Neither said anything for several seconds. Then simultaneously they turned to each other, exchanged a silent highspeed transmission, and turned back to June together. Wally's gun was no longer pointing at his ankle.

"You allege that the Time Police are after you," Moira stated. Her own gun was smaller, but nearer; June felt she could almost see the .22 bullet in there in the chamber. Dammit, this did sound exactly like another con, improvised to fit their known weakness. They were right to be angry. It was time to go for broke.

"I have a . . . call it a skill," she said. "I call it the eye of power, or just the eye. I have not tried to use it on you so far—" She did so now, on Moira, gave her both barrels. "—but you can see that it is very powerful. I can sell a turd to a perfumier with the eye of power." Moira nodded involuntarily. "I am now going to look away from you both and talk to the bay out there for a few minutes. You can shoot me any time you become convinced I'm lying to you. If you can think of any other explanation for what's happened to us, I promise to believe it." She switched off the eye, continued to meet Moira's eyes long enough for her to grasp that, then slowly swiveled her chair until she could just see Moira's gun in her peripheral vision.

And then she told them, as concisely and accurately and dryly as she could, everything that had happened to her since she had first seen the mook in Pacific Spirit Park.

She was quite surprised not to be interrupted even once. Her opinion of science fiction fans rose somewhat, in consequence. She did not try to hide her own complicity in Paul's sting. When she came to the only part she had intended to gloss over, how she and Paul came to be in tenancy of this particular dwelling, she changed her mind and told that straight too, giving O'Leary's name and a rough sketch of the game she had been planning for him, blowing it thereby.

For her finale, she got up, went to the phones base unit, and activated the speakerphone feature. "I just thought of one small piece of evidence that can corroborate at least one tiny thing we've told you," she said, over the sound of dial tone. "I wish I had more." Signifying for them like a mime, she pushed the redial button. After four rings, they all heard a click, and then Moira's recorded voice saying, "This is what it sounds like. Do the obvious at the standard cue." June disconnected before it could beep at them.

Wally and Moira exchanged a glance.

"You both must know the Sherlock Holmes quote about eliminating the impossible," June concluded. "Paul and I are down to the X-Files, ancient hairy gods, a mad scientist, or a time traveler. I don't know about you two, but time traveler is the only one of those I can live with. I would reject that as impossible . . . if I had anything at all to replace it with. Do either of you see any possibility I missed?"

There was a long silence.

"And you see why we need you?"

Outside, the rain stopped.

She was mildly surprised when it was Wally who broke the silence. "You've defined the job. I will stipulate the problem is interesting to us. Will you hear our consulting fee now?"

She swiveled back to face them, and took Paul's hand. "Please."

"Ninety-nine thousand Canadian dollars."

Paul's hand tightened on hers. She squeezed back. "You've already—" she tried.

"—recovered a large fraction of what you took us for, yes. That's a separate transaction. That's why we're probably not going to shoot you. This is different. Ninety-nine thousand dollars is the fee your partner set for giving us an education, in his area of expertise. We won't work for less."

June looked at Moira's eyes. They meant it.

Paul groaned, and made one last try at preserving a shred of self-respect. "The correct figure—"

"Excuse me," Wally said mildly, but it was the gesture with the Glock that cut Paul off. "I am not going to shoot you unless you absolutely insist. And I may work for you if we can agree on terms. But if you want to dick me around over change, I may be moved to pistol-whip you a little. Can we keep this friendly?"

"Sorry," Paul said. He turned to look at June. She felt his pain, like a blow to an already weary heart. His hand was limp in hers, now. "That's about everything we've got left," he said.

Technically he was lying; there were a few stashes here and there, though none easily accessible. But in another sense he was correct. There could be no more humiliating fate for a grifter than to have to pay the mark double. If they agreed to this—even if they swore Wally and Moira to secrecy—it would be the irrevocable end of both their careers. No one but the people in this room would ever know what a genius Paul Throtmanian was. She groped for words. As she did so, her eyes met his squarely for the first time since Wally and Moira had arrived . . . and she fell in.

"Yes, I will," she heard herself say.

He understood her perfectly and at once. His smile was a beautiful thing to see. "Then everything's okay, then."

"Yes, Paul," she said. Her pulse thundered in her ears.

"I was broke when I met you."

"So was I," she agreed. "Ow."

He eased his grip on her hand, snapped their gaze-lock with a visible effort, and turned his smile-beam on their guests. "It's a deal. You'll want it up front." Both nodded firmly. "It'll probably involve a little pick and shovel work: the bastard burned my house down around it. But it should still be there, perfectly safe, untoasted and undiscovered, not far from a basement entrance I know survived. Best done in darkness; if we catch the next ferry the timing should work out." June had tuned out, distracted by the stunning awareness that she had somehow, despite a lifetime of wariness, become a fiancée. But her attention was caught again when Paul went on, "I guess the only thing left to be settled is whether you need to pistol-whip me before we can put the heat away and get this show on the road."

Moira visibly deferred to her husband. He considered the matter, frowning speculatively. "You're a prick," he said finally, "but I've worked for pricks without violence all my life. And for about twenty-four hours, there, I thought I'd saved John Lennon's life. Maybe that is worth what it cost me." He engaged the safety catch on his gun and put it in his lap. (Moira, startled, started to take her own safety off . . . then left it the way it was, and put the gun in her purse.)

June was so relieved she shamelessly allowed it to show.

Paul nodded. "In that case, I believe the moment has come when honor will permit me to apologize, to you and your wife, for what I did to you. I don't have any excuse, and I don't expect you to accept the apology, but I give it gladly."

No response.

"So do I," June said, largely to see if her numb lips could produce speech. "We're quitting the business."

"One last thing and then we can head for the ferry," Paul went on. "You're the first to know: we just got engaged."

Wally and Moira both raised their eyebrows and exchanged a glance. And began to smile.

"June," Moira said, "all your sins will be satisfactorily atoned for."

"You lucky duck," Wally added.

She found her cheeks were being squeezed up so tight by the corners of her mouth that water was threatening to leak from her eyes. "I hope we're as lucky as you two."

"Not a chance," Wally said. "But it's something to shoot for."

"Then I take it we're adjourned?" Paul asked.

"Just one thing," Wally said. "That PC I saw in the den—is that the one with the Pentium 133 chip?"

Moira smacked him on the shoulder. In spite of herself, June giggled. After a moment and a few blinks, so did Wally.

This might, June decided, just work out.

 

The ride to the ferry terminus in Wally and Moira's Toyota was undertaken in a slightly strained silence. All four knew that further discussion of the time traveler would be improper until the consultants had received their advance, and the only other interest they all seemed to have in common was the Beatles, which seemed inappropriate under the circumstances.

But by the time they shut off the engine at the tail end of the lineup waiting for the next sailing (at this end of the trip, perhaps thirty whole vehicles—for which no accommodation whatsoever had been provided, stacked up in most of the downhill lane of "downtown" Snug Cove's "main street"), the women could stand it no longer. "How long have you and Wally—" June began, at the same instant Moira asked, "How long have you and Paul—" and everyone laughed, and that broke the ice. Then they swapped How We Met stories. June went first, and gave both the version they told people, and the truth. So Moira felt compelled to do the same when it was her turn. Sharing embarrassment forged another small bond. Yet another formed between Paul and Wally as each attempted and failed to edit his mate's account: that peculiar, wry late-twentieth-century brotherhood of shared public submission.

Whatever their business differences, it is difficult for really intelligent people not to enjoy each other's company. Each couple had good and recent reason to respect the other's intelligence. None of the four ever quite completely forgot that there were loaded firearms in the vehicle, or just where they were located; nonetheless they were all about as relaxed with each other as crime partners, for instance, ever get by the time the Queen of Something-or-Other snugged itself into its tire-studded berth, stuck out its steel tongue and began vomiting Jaguars, Ladas and 4X4s onto the land.

As Wally parked in the vehicle bay, they agreed they were all hungry, but not enough to eat ferry food. The two grifters went first up the steep narrow stairwell, out of an intuitive sense that they were still not fully trusted yet. The first time you climbed those stairs, you wondered why the handrails had studs along most of their length; halfway up you came to appreciate the pitons. June became slightly aware of Wally's nose only a few inches from her buttocks, and tried to climb as unprovocatively as possible. Apparently she succeeded; when they all sat together on a life-jacket locker outside on the upper passenger deck, Moira did not interpose herself between them.

It was quite pleasant on deck, no cooler or windier than they were dressed for. The rain had been over for so long it was not necessary to dry the surface of the locker before sitting on it. The sun was just settling toward the treetops, behind the ferry, crowning Bowen Island with glory. They were on the south or starboard side of the ship as it left Snug Cove and headed out into the bay; thunderheads comfortably far away on the horizon produced a Disney sunset. June mentioned that it reminded her a little of Key West; Moira said it reminded her of her and Wally's summer place in Nova Scotia. Paul observed that both couples seemed to look for similar sorts of things in a vacation home: remoteness, simple circumstances, few and tolerant neighbors. Wally suggested the needs of con organizers and con artists were not all that different—using the latter term somewhat shyly until he saw neither Paul or June took offense at it. Conversation became general; each of the four performed a few of their standard anecdotes, and was pleased with their reception. Wally beta-tested a new pun he was working up, to the effect that if the promised paperless digital world ever materialized, writers would all be The Artists Formerly Known In Prints. He lived; the only one armed besides himself within earshot had married him knowing of his affliction.

Shortly, the captain made a general announcement over the loudspeakers, and the four got up and joined ninety percent of the vessel's passengers on the north side to gawk in awe and inexplicable pleasure at a whale. A bitter argument broke out among several of their fellow passengers as to just which sort of whale it was. An elderly man loudly demanded to know why, for this kind of money, the captain couldn't for chrissake drive the damn boat closer so he (the jerk) could get some better shots of the fish. The air was cooler out of the cove, and the wind was from the south, so it was somewhat less nippy there on the port side; they remained by tacit mutual consent even after the whale had gone about its business, and most of the other passengers had gone back indoors to enjoy "food" or videogames or virtuously display their nonsmoking status.

It would not have made the slightest difference if they had remained where they'd started. The trackfly passed the ferry on the south side, no more than half a kilometer away at closest approach, but as stated, the wind was from that direction. The fly was not quite bright enough to change course to pass the ferry to leeward; in order to bring the search down to something manageable, it had been programmed to regard bodies of water as null areas, to be traversed as quickly as possible. Ignoring the can of pheromones downwind, it continued on a straight line toward Bowen Island.

If it had so much as glanced their way, even its rather poor vision might have picked out Paul's fuzzy skull, decided that it fit the parameters of a male head which had been bald three days ago, and vectored in for a quick sniff. If any of the four had been scanning the right quarter of the sky with good binoculars at precisely the right instant, and known what to look for, they might just have glimpsed the fly. They did, in fact, like all the other passengers out on deck, hear a muffled sound that might be termed a sonic poof, and like everyone else dismissed it as some sort of ferry noise, or perhaps a far-distant Canadian Forces jet.

It was—as it had been at the very start—just that tantalizingly close. But they were sailing to Horseshoe Bay, not playing horseshoes, and so again "close" was simply not good enough.

 

They ate in a wonderful place Wally and Moira knew just outside Horseshoe Bay. (A law of nature states that all sf fans know all superb and most good restaurants within a fifty-kilometer radius of their home. SMOFs generally at least double the radius.) The food was so good that it was not until the check was actually on the table that Paul remembered to blush.

"Wally?" he said. "Are you familiar with a condition called shellout falter?"

Watty's eyebrows rose sympathetically. "You suffer from a reach impediment?"

"Well, it's been a hard week."

Wally waved a hand, and grinned. "Take it from your mind. I cannot tell you how much you will have improved this whole anecdote if you will allow me to buy you dinner."

Paul and June considered that . . . and burst out laughing.

Moira joined in too, but when the laughter had subsided she said to June, "So you two took off so fast you didn't have time to grab any cash?"

June nodded. "There are still a couple of small accounts around town we could tap in theory—but none I'd dare access until we settle this."

"So what were you going to do when O'Leary's fridge emptied out?"

"Pocket cash has never—" Paul began automatically, and then trailed off.

"What?" Moira said.

"Pardon me," he said slowly. "A phantom ache in an amputated limb. I said goodbye to my life out there on Bowen Island, but I'll be awhile unlearning old habits, I guess." He looked away.

June took his hand. "What Paul means," she said quietly, "is that he started to say cash has never been a problem for us, we'd just have worked some short con or other on some mark for operating capital. And then he remembered that we've retired, and there's no answer to your question anymore."

After an awkward silence, Moira spoke up. "You meant that about quitting your line of work?"

June nodded.

"Why?" In spite of herself she giggled. "I mean, you're good at it," she tried to explain. "That eye of power thing is awesome. And you had no way of knowing Wally and I were going to catch up with you. Why were you thinking about retiring?"

"To change your pattern, make it harder for the time traveler to track you?" Wally suggested.

Still looking at her fiancé's expressionless profile, June shook her head. "Basically," she said, "we woke up one day and found ourselves stinging nice people. People who we could have liked. We always swore we weren't going to. Maybe every grifter swears that, starting out—the good ones, anyway. Maybe not. But over the years, your standards slip, a centimeter at a time, while you aren't paying attention. Your partner's standards slip, too. Soon you're like two drunks trying to hold each other up, each certain you're sober. The next thing you know, you find you've written a truly brilliant new con . . . that only works on smart, kind people." She reached out and stroked Paul's cheek. "So you look back to see just where you lost control, and you can't pin it down. So maybe you've had it all wrong from the start, and nobody deserves to get stung."

"I'm not certain I agree with that part," Moira said. "There are bastards on this planet. Maybe you've just lost faith in your own wisdom to judge."

It was not said unkindly; June considered it, and shook her head. "My right to."

"It isn't right to be Simon Templar, and smite the Ungodly," Wally suggested, "unless you're in a book, where you don't make mistakes, and you can guarantee there won't be any innocent bystanders."

"Exactly," Paul said, and turned back to face the table. "There's a song James Taylor's brother Liv wrote, that goes, 'Life is good—when you're proud of what you do . . .' " he said to Wally. "Well, for a long time now, I've been trying to skate by on being proud of how I do it, instead. It just stopped being good enough."

"I see," Wally said.

"I mean, look at my masterpiece. My most brilliant artistic creation. Like June says, it only works on bright sensitive misfits with unusually flexible minds. I mean, it's pretty obvious who I'm really trying to sting, isn't it?'

"Your mother," June said.

He spun on her, thunderstruck, and started to cloud up—then his face went blank. "Good one," he said after a few seconds of thought. "I was going to say me, but that was infuriating enough to have some truth in it."

"Maybe some of both," she suggested.

"You two are going to be good at this marriage business," Moira said.

"And the rest will fall into place," Wally agreed. "It always does, if you've got the basic stuff covered."

June found herself smiling. "Well, if we don't get caught and killed, or shipped off to the Stone Age or something, I think we've got a shot. That's why I accepted his proposal."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Wally assured her. "I think we can deal with that."

Paul and June stared at him.

"Oh yeah," he said, somewhat abashed. "I worked it out on the way to the ferry. A plan, I mean. It needs a little polish, but it ought to work."

Moira's eyes were gleaming. "My heroin," she said in a swooning, theatrical voice.

Her husband smiled at her. "Aw, shocks."

The good fellowship that had grown up between the four of them made it sort of necessary for Wally to outline his idea then, even though he and Moira had not yet been paid their consulting fee. His scheme was not, at first, received with great enthusiasm, since it required large amounts of trust and faith and hope—ingredients Paul and June were mostly accustomed to selling to other people. But eventually they were forced to concede that their only other option was to cut their own throats, right now. June then spotted a potential hole in the scenario, but Moira was able to patch it brilliantly. They all left the restaurant feeling confident, and with that special warmth that comes from having made good new friends. Wally and Paul talked together in the front of the Camry, and Moira and June talked in the back, all the way back to Vancouver. When they reached the building behind Paul's former address, the ladies split the chore of keeping lookout—June in the parking garage, Moira on the other side of the burned-out property—while Paul and Wally excavated together, armed with a shovel and a good tire iron Wally kept in his trunk. Wally was poor at gruntwork, but turned out to be world-class at thinking of easier ways to do things.

The camaraderie thus engendered helped considerably to smooth over the awkward moment that arose when they reached the site of Paul's secret stash, and found only shrapnel.

After several minutes of silence, during which Paul considered using his swearing litany—after all, the house had already burned down—but couldn't work up the heart to begin, he felt Wally's pudgy hand on his bowed shoulder. In all the countless permutations of the English language, there was only one right thing Wally could possibly have said just then, and Paul was immensely gratified to hear him say it.

"You can owe us."

Too moved to speak, he nodded.

"Let's get our women and go to war," Wally said.

Paul nodded again, and they left.

 

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