I sat down and Claire brought out a cracked and chipped blue china plate, holding it at the bottom with the towel. On it was a very large, very b.l.o.o.d.y piece of meat with numerous score marks across it and a great number of peppercorns floating in a blood sauce. Beside the meat was a single baked potato steaming in a jacket of aluminum foil, and beside that was a small cup full of spinach with vinegar already added.

Claire gave a truly regal nod and wink and I burst out, "You are trying to kill me. Do you remember what the doctor said? 'No meat, maybe just a little chicken.' Help, help, my wife's trying to kill me!"

I picked up a mismatched steak knife and fork and prodded the meat, only to have Claire pull the plate away.

"Well, if you don't want it ..."

When I growled at her, she put the food down and went to get her own. By the time she came back, I was on the fourth bite.

"Oh, G.o.d! This is better than s.e.x."

She looked at me and arched an eyebrow so I covered. "Um, er, with anyone but the present company, of course."

She put real b.u.t.ter, chives, and sour cream on her potato, and then pa.s.sed them.

"Good. Nice recovery. I guess my mama was wrong. You can be taught."

I ate some more. "Not to look a gift cow in the mouth, my sweet, but this is hardly welfare dining."

She waved a small chunk of meat in the air and I saw Renfield follow it with his muzzle while a thin line of drool broke free from his lower lip and fell to the floor.

"This, my virtuous little ex-con, is a reward. While you were out sweating and doing G.o.d knows what (although I do hope it was legal), I took a message. Apparently your charm has managed to convince one Steven Marquez to hire you to work in his convenience store. You start tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. sharp."

I went over and gave her a kiss on the cheek, which she accepted as her due. On my way back I stole a tiny bite of her steak and she waited until I was sitting before continuing. "As for the steak, it was cheap, cheap, cheap. No one knows how to cut meat any more and no one actually likes to eat it, either, and so this poor little well-marbled steak sat there naked and battered for three days past its due date until only I could see the essential goodness within."

She cut off a nice-sized bite and examined it. "So I got it, nicely rotted, for a song."

She ate and I felt my stomach churn. Claire's father had been a butcher with his own shop in Banff and she had learned from him while growing up. If she said the meat was good, then it was good, so I took another bite and she went on. "Tell me about your day."

So I did and frankly it was kind of boring but she listened and she asked questions and we talked. After a while we spent some good time staring into each other's eyes and eating in an easy silence that filled the whole house. Outside it became darker and cooler and quieter.

When it came, the knock on the door was shockingly loud and I jumped in my seat. Renfield barked twice and looked around as though wondering where the noise had come from. Claire looked at me bleakly and lifted a mouthful of spinach to her lips. "Ignore it."

Her voice was dead. Premonition? Fear? Knowledge? The knock was not repeated, although I waited. Finally I stood up and picked up the crowbar I'd put in the umbrella stand.

"I just got to know."

I stood to one side and gently pushed open the door with the straight edge of the bar, but there was no one there. Claire had come up behind me and held the bayonet behind her back as she stayed near the front window.

"What's there?" she asked.

My voice cracked as I answered. "A bottle of whiskey and a shot gla.s.s."

My knuckles were white on the crowbar as I leaned down and picked up the note. In pencil on the sheet of foolscap was the command "DRINK ME."

I crumpled the note, then thought better of it and smoothed it out before handing it to Claire, who read it without comment. I looked up and down the street and saw nothing and when I spoke again my fury was under control.

"Someone has a nasty sense of humor."

The bottle gurgled as I picked it up and I held it up to the light so I could see the dark browns, the almost-reds of the liquor within.

"Sam? Just let it go."

Claire was talking fast and nervous. It wasn't that easy to just dump the stuff. A failed dancer in an after-hours club had introduced me to Jack Daniel's Kentucky Bourbon and vice versa.

I'd been sixteen and I'd drunk it pretty much all the time for most of my life. I'd drunk it to wash down cocaine residue and to smooth acid paranoia. I'd drunk it first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening. I'd drunk it from the hollow just above a pretty girl's a.s.s and out of the bottle and just about every other way there was. I'd drunk it straight with a gun in my other hand while an imaginative young woman did expensive things to my partner after robbing a jewelry store. I'd choked it down as a veterinary hospital dropout had dug police-issue buckshot out of my hip. For me it had been a sign of the times.

"Yep, someone has a very nasty sense of humor." My voice broke as I looked at the bottle and then I shuddered and threw it high into the air. My rage carried it far out to smash into shards on the road in front of the house, where the lights from the streetlights glinted on the gla.s.s and the liquor and made a kaleidoscope of rainbows appear.

Claire took my arm as I shut the door. "Let's go finish dinner."

She led me to the table and on the way I put the crowbar where it belonged. I thought about neighbors and cops and bad guys and good guys and tried to think past the alcohol.

"The booze. It could be any one of a hundred people."

She sat me down at my spot and went back to hers before speaking pensively. "True. Well, whoever it is, I guess we'll have to deal with him or her or them, right?"

I looked at her and smiled and then she went on.

"But let's do it honestly, honestly and gently. I like having you here on the outside looking in instead of vice versa."

Pressure. I could feel it building, coming from all sides and increasing. Popping my eardrums, bruising my skin, distorting my life. Claire smiled at me and I smiled back.

But pressure from where? From whom? The cla.s.sic bits of information needed were who, what, where, when, and why, but all I needed was who. Then I could stop it. f.u.c.k the rest.

Claire raised her gla.s.s of water and I raised mine and we toasted each other.

That night I slept badly. The memories of the liquor had swallowed me and were unwilling to let go. Finally I woke up before five and went down to the kitchen. I got out some sc.r.a.p paper and started to put phone numbers and addresses to all the names I'd remembered from the hospital. It didn't take long until there was a list of people and t.i.tles, and beside each name was listed a TV station or a newspaper or a radio station.

When I was done, I leaned back and waited for dawn.

14.

Marquez was a thin man with brown hair, brown skin, and brown eyes, and it was 6:55 when he drove up to the front of his store and parked just to the left of the main doors. I was standing there with my suit on and an overcoat jacket draped over one arm and trying to look casual. The store behind me was a brick-fronted, single-storey building with too many big windows and heavy bars across most of them. Where there weren't bars, there were signs and advertis.e.m.e.nts and pictures of snack foods like Astro Bars, Bubble Tea, and Musk Ox jerky.

Okay, I was kidding about the jerky, but still.

Marquez locked the doors of his Cadillac Eldorado and then turned to face me. "Sam Parker?"

I took two steps forward and smiled to show my teeth as he reached out to shake my hand.

"Yes. You're Mr. Marquez?"

Marquez ignored the proffered hand and stared at me like he was trying to memorize something. I wondered what he was seeing, pale skin drawn tight like I'd been sick for a long time, but, overall, pretty big. Was he wondering about whether he should keep looking for staff? I was wearing my best and only loser suit, which made me stand out in the neighborhood, and I was probably a lot older than anyone else who had applied for the job. Those were probably pluses. Finally he made up his mind who he was and nodded.

"Yes, I'm Marquez, come in."

The doors were of thick Plexiglas reinforced with alarm wires and the display windows had bars on the inside as well. He caught me looking at the security arrangements and chuckled.

"Not a lot of crime 'round here, if that's what you're thinking. I bought the building from the city, they'd taken possession of it after a gang was caught smuggling booze and cigarettes out of here. The gang had made the place into a fortress and the cops busted it up good when they came knocking so I got it for a song. And a lot of renovations."

Inside Marquez gestured at the walls and racks of equipment. "I'll be honest, we sell mostly c.r.a.p. Fried pork rinds, nachos, dips, chocolate milk, overly carbonated drinks, cigarettes, dirty magazines, things like that."

He motioned for me to walk ahead of him to where the cash register sat in an island formed by a wide linoleum counter. "For example, we are the only store in a ten-block radius that sells Hustler Hustler. I'm not sure if that's a good claim to fame."

He opened up the cash register and pulled the drawer onto the counter. Then he began to empty small baggies of change and bills from his pockets into the compartments, talking all the while. "I bring the money home at night and count it in the morning, before work. It's a lousy idea to try to balance your books at the end of a shift. Each day the till starts out with two hundred dollars and we open the doors at 7:30 and close them at 11:00. I take the shift from 3:00 to 11:00 and I need someone to cover the 7:00 till 3:00. I pay seven dollars and a quarter an hour and you can have all the fountain drinks and coffee you want. Interested?"

I smiled and made a noncommittal gesture.

"I need someone honest and hard-working and clean. You'll be working alone, selling to the customers, dealing with complaints, and making sure everything works. You'll also have to keep the place clean. I don't schedule lunch breaks, you can get a rush at any time, so you'll have to make your own as you get a chance."

Someone tried the door and Marquez looked over and shook his head violently from side to side and then motioned at his wrist. With an audible curse, the old man stamped away.

"Like it makes a difference if he gets his lottery tickets five minutes later. That's one of my regulars."

Marquez had shut the till and rung up No Sale, and was busy unlocking a deep drawer with steel plates reinforcing the sides and bottom. It was full of brightly painted bits of pasteboard, scratch-and-win lottery tickets with themes like "Trains of the World," "Great Music," and "Astronomy Jackpots." He shuffled through them and slid them into a display case over his head, then he reached over and turned on the computer that linked him with the Manitoba Lottery Corporation.

"Stupidity tax, anyway. Could you turn on the coffee maker? It's an old one."

I walked over and hung the jacket on a rack of oddly named generic and knock-off brands of potato chips, and then unscrewed the top of a big percolator beside a sink. Marquez was watching me as I looked into the big drum and whistled quietly.

"Not a problem."

The machine was exactly the same as the kind they had in every prison and halfway house I'd ever been in. I'd worked in the cafeteria out in Drumh.e.l.ler for a few months over the years and I'd nursed the same kind of machine through good days and bad. It had been a job with an interesting motivational base. If cons don't get their coffee, they'll kill someone, generally the person who's supposed to make the coffee in the first place. Marquez watched as I poured the water in and checked the stainless steel filter. It was filthy so I cleaned it before adding fresh grounds from a pre-measured foil envelope.

"Do you have any salt?"

Marquez was still watching me and I was feeling kind of nervous about being stared at.

"No. Don't worry, they won't care about bitter as long as you make it strong."

I flipped the switch and let the machine start. The red light came on and I turned around.

"All right, Mr. Parker. Do you have any experience in convenience stores?"

"It's Sam and, no, I've never worked in a convenience store."

The back of my head added, "But I have robbed many of them over the years." I ignored the voice and waited.

"You're hired. I'll work with you today until you've got the hang of it. Let's go open the doors."

And that was the start of my first day on my very first job, and that made for a lame curriculum vitae for a thirty-two-year-old man.

When I was finished work, I bought three dollars' worth of quarters from Marquez and headed west until I hit the next major street, which was Salter. A block along I found a phone booth, where I made my calls and double-checked each name and number of the news people I wanted to talk with.

I was right on the money for six out of eight and two receptionists also gave me the extension numbers. Those I marked down.

15.

On my way home, a young woman stopped me in the park beside the church near my house.

"Mr. Robillard wants to talk."

She was about ten feet away in the park, standing in the shadow of a big elm. Somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five, a dangerous age, a reckless age. She was slimly built with narrow hips and shoulders, a darkly tanned complexion, large green eyes, and straight black hair worn down to below her chin.

"s.h.i.t, lady. Don't do that. You scared me."

"Like I said, Robillard wants to talk."

Without thinking I looked both ways and stepped into the park and the concealing shadows. She was wearing gloves, a leather Stetson, olive-green overalls fastened with black b.u.t.tons, dark blue, high-topped runners, and a loosely fitting leather jacket. I recognized them as working clothes and my heart started to beat faster.

"Followed you this morning and saw you schlepping coffee and Snickers bars to the great unwashed."

Was this a hit? Was she going to kill me here? The overalls were a couple of sizes too big so she could have different clothes on underneath, and the jacket had room for the tools of the trade.

"I mean, really."

Her hands were visible, held loosely at her sides, and if she was intending to kill me, then I was pretty much dead, so I figured to wait until the hands moved and then dive forward to take her apart.

She'd still kill me but at least I'd be doing something. The woman smiled like she was reading my mind. "Relax, I'm not killing you today. Just taking you for a ride."

I didn't relax. "Chicago rules?"

She lit a cigarette with a small, red, steel lighter. "Don't know those."

"A ride is one way."

"Oh. No. The car's around behind the church. Robillard wants to talk at you."

"You said that. Don't you mean to me?"

She was silent.

"Even with me. But at me?"

She grunted and led me out of the park and around the church. "I meant what I said."