"Tomorrow," said Ned, "or maybe the next day."

Seven pairs of glazed eyes glared at him.

THIRTY-FIVE.

Paul returned, he hoped for the last time, to the steamy environs of the crepe and cappuccino cafe. Since he'd hired Arthur Mordred, Paul had been in a highly agitated state during which he'd watched several different newscasts, hoping not to hear a report of a dead writer in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, it seemed, was far less enamored of dead writers than New York City. Here you might find a dead writer at the bottom of any subway stair.

There was nothing. He could not help supplying Channel 4 with the details they weren't reporting: "Police say the shooting is a complete mystery. Whoever fired the fatal shot that killed writer Ned Isaly-" No, it would be more like "Award-winning novelist Ned Isaly has disappeared and-"

At several points in his newscast, Hannah had appeared, clutching one of her stuffed Dalmatians, in order to change the channel to The Simpsons or some other cartoon. To get her away from the TV, Paul would tell her one lie after another: "Wile E. Coyote finally got the roadrunner so it's not on anymore; the Simpsons have been kidnapped-the whole family-and the producers are waiting to see what happens . . ."

(Hannah did go away on these occasions; he heard her telling her mother that Daddy was acting really weird, even for a writer, and her mother would find some alternative activity to absorb Hannah, better than watching television, but not necessarily better than watching Daddy.) Back to supplying his own details: "-the fatal shot. The body was discovered in a dark alley by a child with her dog . . . with her Dalmatian-" And in the middle of this, the phone rang. It was Jimmy McKinney.

A welcome interruption. "Jimmy! You're back! How was the weekend? . . . No? . . . Sure, I can meet you. Tomorrow, how about that coffee shop? . . . Can I take it this Birches colony wasn't a howling success . . . ? For some people, maybe . . . Okay. Tomorrow around three. Good. See you then."

Paul went back to haunting the TV.

When last night there had still been nothing reported from Pittsburgh except for an incident in Shadyside that involved a red Porsche and people with guns, none of whom had yet been tracked down, Paul found that he could breathe a little easier. At eleven P.M. Molly asked him if anything was wrong. Would he like a drink? "Do you think there might be a mention of Don't Go There on Larry King Live? It wouldn't surprise me; you remember how much he liked the last book."

Paul smiled and took the drink she brought, knowing that Molly knew not even Larry King could stand himself for three or four hours two nights running. It was her way of making up a story to let him know she didn't find his watching television all of this time peculiar. She just wanted to give Paul an excuse for gluing himself to the TV and not insisting she know why. What a wife! It would have been impossible, even given his fertile imagination, to make up Molly.

She sat down on the chair arm and ma.s.saged his neck while they watched Andrea Thompson give the performance that hadn't gone over very well with N.Y.P.D. Blue. Paul leaned back, feeling much more relaxed after Molly's ma.s.sage. CNN's anchor mentioned again the extremely queer incident in Pittsburgh (Shadyside section), a name that in the last two days made Paul tense up like a harp string no matter what its context. ". . . including a wildly driven red Porsche and people with guns."

Molly, her cheek resting on the top of Paul's head, said she liked that. " 'People with guns.' Sounds like a John Sayles movie."

Arthur was eating a crepe, this time with strawberries. Paul sat down, telling Arthur he'd brought the additional "fifty large." (Paul couldn't stop writing dialogue sometimes.) "So what happened in Pittsburgh?"

"It went fine," said Arthur, spearing a strawberry.

While Paul waited for Mr. a.s.sa.s.sin to comment further, to enlarge upon the "It went fine," he looked around the cafe: rickety tables and mismatched chairs (chosen just for those reasons) and a lot of people with beads and facial jewelry sitting in and at them. It was so Village. They were reading or writing or talking about reading and writing. Paul would have much preferred a real bar, but Arthur nixed that idea because he was an alcoholic.

"Recovering," Arthur had told Paul when he wedged into the booth in the steamed-milk environs of the cafe. He said it with a snicker, as if he didn't value his recovered status, at the same time looking impossibly smug as if he did. "Two years now. My liver was on its last legs, let me tell you-"

Let you not, thought Paul.

"-and so I always carry my chip." As if to prove it, Arthur brought this bauble out of his pocket into the cafe's lemony light. It looked like a poker chip.

"Good name," said Paul, fearing he was about to hear Arthur's drinking history. He was.

"See, they give these out for a lot of your nondrinking anniversaries: a month, a year, five years, and so on."

"A month? Sounds like you don't have to work very hard. Now, about Pitts-"

"What? Don't have to work hard?" Arthur threw up his hands, looking up, enjoining the malingering ceiling fans to witness. "Listen to the man! Just listen to him. Nonalkies just don't realize. What one of us has to go through-"

Impatiently, Paul shifted into another gear by bringing out the envelope and saying, "Here's the rest of it." He plunked it down on the table caring not a jot for whatever FBI agents might be in the cafe drinking cappuccino. "Now, tell me what happened."

Forgetting all about his spent liver, Arthur s.n.a.t.c.hed up the envelope, took a look inside, apparently counting the bills with his eyes, then stuffed the money in an inside pocket. "Okay, you heard right. These two, Candy and Karl, they were there, sticking out like a sore thumb-"

"Only because you knew who they were, Arthur."

"Well, yes, that's possible." He looked toward the espresso machine, which seemed continually to be spitting out steamed milk. "I'd like another latte. You want something? Cappuccino? Latte? Coffee? I'm treating," Arthur said, prissily.

Paul sighed. "Sure, why not?"

Arthur picked up his cup and went over to the bar.

At least, thought Paul, he had tried to protect Isaly. But that didn't do much to lessen the guilt about putting Ned Isaly in jeopardy in the first place. And still was in danger, even if these two goons hadn't made a try in Pittsburgh. What in h.e.l.l were they waiting for? When Arthur came back with the cups, Paul asked him.

"Sam didn't tell you about them?"

"No. I didn't want to know, either, why should I? Now I do." Paul paused, dredging up the phone call to Sammy. "Yeah, he did say something about them taking their time."

Arthur set down his fresh cup with an Ummm and lowered his voice. "They have to scout things first. They get to know the mark, you know, his or her routine, friends, stuff like that. They watch him. They eventually draw their conclusions and decide whether the mark deserves it or not."

"Deserves it? What in h.e.l.l do you mean they decide? But what-who?" Paul realized he was near to shouting and dropped his voice. "Who the h.e.l.l would hire guys like that? I may be old-fashioned, but I always thought it was the person laying out the money who got to decide."

Arthur shrugged. "They don't do the job, they give back the money. That's what I heard. I guess they got principles, same as you and me. Well, you, anyway." He patted the pocket in which he'd deposited the money. "I feel almost guilty. I mean, I didn't do all that much."

For a brief moment, Paul panicked. "Ned Isaly is still alive, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes. Yes. Unless his plane crashed. I couldn't get a seat on the same plane, but I stayed with him, meaning behind him, until I saw him go through the checkpoints."

"You don't think he's still in danger?" Paul said, his voice br.i.m.m.i.n.g with hope.

"Probably not. If Candy and Karl were going to take a shot at him, they'd certainly have done it in Pittsburgh. As a matter of fact, maybe they did. I might have aborted one attempt by Candy-"

"What, what?" Paul leaned across the table, arms crossed.

"I thought he was going for his gun, you know, he likes to keep the holster strapped to his belt in back-?"

"Actually, I don't know where this guy keeps his gun."

"Heh, heh. I was sure he was going for it, but-" Arthur shrugged. "I guess not. That's why-" Again he patted the pocket, this time making a frowny face worthy of Hannah.

Paul made an equally frowny face. "Tell me I'm wrong, but isn't the bottom line here simply that the vic lives on? I mean, it makes no difference whether you do or do not shoot the man who's after him." Paul wanted to get the protocol straight here in case he decided to write a book about it. The actual meaning of services truly rendered had never come up in the fictionalized version of Sammy Giancarlo's career since Sammy always a.s.sumed he deserved the money.

Arthur took a sip of his latte and nodded. "Theoretically, yes."

Paul held his palm flat out as if pushing that answer back into Arthur's mouth. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Theory isn't involved here. You were hired as a bodyguard, not as"-Paul lowered his voice-"a b.u.t.ton man" (still that dialogue).

"You're saying, then, the one is not contingent upon the other?"

Paul tried to ticker-tape this question through his addled brain. "Yes."

Arthur nodded. "I see."

Paul really wanted to pop him. He wasn't giving this hired hit man f.u.c.king lessons.

Arthur said it again: "I see, yes. Yes, so theoretically-"

Paul slammed his fist on the table, making Arthur jump as well as the people sitting at the nearest rickety table. He gave them a lop-sided smile and mumbled an apology. Then he turned again to Arthur. "Look. We'll compromise on the money: if Ned Isaly gets killed by the end of the week, you can give back the fifty large (he couldn't help himself). Is that fair?" Paul a.s.sumed Arthur would agree with alacrity since he was the one to question the morality of taking Paul's money.

He didn't. After another thoughtful pause, he said, "Thing is, he could meet with an accident and that doesn't come into the arrangement." He took a bite of strawberry crepe and chewed thoughtfully.

Paul stared at him, then leaned across the table, resisting the temptation to pull him forward by his collar. "If the 'accident'-like getting in front of a car-were arranged-wink wink, nod nod-then it most certainly would come into the 'arrangement.' "

Arthur considered and nodded. "But there's always the possibility it might really be a total accident, like, for instance falling on the subway tracks-"

Paul laughed a trifle hysterically. "Arthur, when has that ever been an accident? People get pushed, that's what happens."

Arthur looked around the room blindly. "Okay, so do you want to include the type of accident that would be covered? Like, if it's the subway, then he was clearly pushed?"

Paul blinked. "I'm not Metropolitan Life, for G.o.d's sakes." His head sank into his hands. He shook it. "What in h.e.l.l are we talking about?" He'd forgotten.

"What?"

"What are we talking about?"

Arthur whispered. "My fee. Why don't we split the difference and say twenty-five thousand goes back to you if anything happens to him."

Paul just looked at him.

Arthur shook his head. "I don't know how you manage to write books. You can't keep your mind on a thing for more than ten minutes. Right now you look blank as a plate."

Blank as a plate. Paul liked that. He made a mental note.

THIRTY-SIX.

The coffee shop near the entrance to the Durban Agency's building was virtually empty, something worth noting in Manhattan, where nothing was ever empty except in the event of a bomb scare or Memorial Day weekend.

Jimmy was sitting at the same table they'd shared before, with the same waitress hovering with her coffeepot. She set down another thick white mug, filled it, and walked off.

"I feel as if I never left," said Paul, sliding into the booth.

"Just be glad you never left for Upstate New York."

"So what happened?"

"Ah! What happened-"

"Incidentally, you look like s.h.i.t." Paul smiled as if to say s.h.i.t didn't bother him at all. "You've got a John Grisham beard going, purplish circles under your eyes, and your whole being seems, well, unruly. Twitchy."

"Have you actually been to any of these writers' colonies?"

"No. But I have friends who swear by them. They say Yaddo is better than Paris. Better than Rome, even."

Jimmy's hand crawled across the table to grab Paul's forearm. His eyes would have crawled, too, if they hadn't been totally spent. "How in the f.u.c.k do Paris and Rome come into it?"

Paul shrugged. "Beats me. That's just what they said."

"Okay." Jimmy pushed his spoon, napkin, and water gla.s.s closer to one another as if trying to gather himself in. "I'm given this cabin-one room, bathroom, a coffeemaker, and a little refrigerator. It's very nice. No telephone, thank the Lord. No television, ditto. It's in the woods, a really gorgeous woodland-"

"That's how I pictured it, kind of."

"For an hour I just lay on the bed listening to nothing. Nothing. When was the last time you ever listened to nothing?"

Paul shrugged. "Last time I talked to my agent?"

Jimmy glared. "That question was rhetorical, for G.o.d's sakes. Stop interrupting. Then I get out my notebook, the one I write my poems in, you know-"

Paul grunted as an answer, in case the notebook business was rhetorical, too.

"This was Friday, after dinner-"

"What was for dinner?"

Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't d.a.m.ned well know what was for dinner; I got there after dinner was over, didn't I?"

Paul bit back any comment.

"So I lay there thinking of a poem I was working on-"

"Excuse me for interrupting, but is this accounting going to be your basic summary or is it a blow by blow? I only ask because if it's the latter, maybe I should get a piece of pie-"

"Just hold on. Now I was lying there watching the trees turn dark, thinking about this poem, when suddenly there was a pounding on the door that nearly knocked me off my bed." Here Jimmy raised his fist, pounding on air. "I open the door and there's these three guys totally drunk or stoned out of their minds, smoking cigars and one holding a fifth of Montecristo rum-"

"Great stuff. It's old Guatemalan rum, really rich. Good with cigars."

Jimmy blinked. "I get the feeling you're missing the point here."

"Go on."

"They introduce themselves. Two of them are Irish and they're all poets. They gibber on about how the IRA spelled death to poetry in Northern Ireland and all sorts of s.h.i.t like that. Two of them think they're f.u.c.king Dylan Thomas-"

"Ha! It'd take at least two to make one of him."