"Thanks, Charlie, I'm glad to know that."

"I'm sure he'll have that list up for you by tomorrow, even if he has to work on it all night."

"Tell him I said thanks," I said.

"Tell him yourself," said Charlie One Ear. "I'm off for the hall of records."

Cowboy Lewis was right where I left him, laboring over his errant notebook.

"Cowboy, don't kill yourself on that, okay?"

"Tomorrow," he said, shoving the baseball cap back on his head. "I got to tail that Logeto tonight but I'll have it tomorrow."

"Thanks. "

"By the way, Zapata said to tell you he went out to find that creep that shot you."

"His name's Turk Nance," I said.

"Turk Nance, right." He smiled. "Zapata'll find him, you can put that in the bank."

"I'll thank him when I see him," I said.

"I think I'm going to have to take writing lessons," he said as I was leaving. "I can't read my own f.u.c.kin' writing."

As I headed for the door a new figure loomed in my path. It was the cop with the waffle-iron features.

"We didn't have a chance to get acquainted last night," he said. "I'm Kite Lange."

"Jake Kilmer."

"I'm a good wire man," he said. "You need anything wired, you call me, okay? I can bug a fly in motion right in front of your face, you wouldn't see me do it."

"Terrific."

"I'm not bragging," he said, and his battered features broke into a smile. "It's a G.o.d-given talent."

"And I'm sure you don't abuse it," I said.

"Not unless somebody asks me to," said Kite, then he added, "I hear you were in Nam."

"Yeah," I said.

"When was that?"

"'67, '68. I got held up coming home by Tet."

"What outfit?"

"Military intelligence. How about you?"

"Medevac chopper pilot," he said.

"How many missions did you fly?" I asked.

"You'd throw up if I told you."

I hesitated for a moment before asking him the next question, but I figured, what the h.e.l.l. I was getting to be one of the boys.

"Mind if I ask you a personal question?" I said.

"Shoot. "

"How did you f.u.c.k up and get in this squad?"

Lange's smashed face bunched up and he howled.

"Hey, that's getting right to the point," he said. "Well, I was flying helicopter traffic control for the Denver PD. Three guys heisted a bank and I was tailing them at about five hundred feet. A blue and white was closing in on them but he lost his car and went off the road. So I dropped right down on top of the getaway car. You know, a couple of feet. I was hanging right in there, radioing back his position, trying to force him off the road, when we came to a railroad bridge. At the last minute I had to pull up to get over it."

"Yeah."

"I didn't see the freight train that was crossing the bridge at the time. Flew right into an open boxcar. It happened to be the mayor's favorite chopper. Had his name on the side and everything. You should of seen it, the chopper, I mean." He stopped a moment and chuckled. "It looked like the Jolly Green Giant had it for lunch."

"So you got the old heave-ho for breaking the mayor's toy, huh?"

"That, and the city had to buy a new boxcar for the train. They didn't even give me a going-away party."

I said, "You're lucky you lived through it."

"What d'ya think happened to my face?" Kite said, still grinning.

"What were you doing when Dutch found you?" I asked, expecting him to tell me he was selling used cars or something.

"A traffic gig in Roanoke, Virginia, with a lady reporter," he said. "It was kind of demeaning after doing police work, but it had its moments. She used to give me head on the way back from the afternoon rush every day."

It was my turn to laugh. "You must be some kind of pilot," I said.

"After Nam, it's all pie a la mode."

Then I got an idea. I still don't believe what I did next. Old Mr. Due Process, ex-lawyer, always-do-it-right Kilmer. Maybe the hooligans were beginning to rub off on me.

"I got an idea," I said.

"Shoot. "

"You know the Seacoast Bank's main branch down near the river?"

"I can find it."

"I'd like to know who the president's doing business with. Who he talks to during the day, that kind of thing. His name's Charles Seaborn."

"How about the phone?" Lange asked. "You want it bugged, too? I got a two-for-one special on."

"No, they wouldn't be that dumb."

Lange spread another smile over his boxcarred face.

"Done."

25.

LIGHTNING PEOPLE.

All the way back to the hotel I was thinking she had probably called and left a message canceling out. It kept building up in my mind until I broke out in a sweat, the way you do when you want something so bad you're sure you won't get it. I started getting p.i.s.sed and by the time I got to the hotel I had this dialogue between us worked out in my head. I would get it all off my chest, once and for all.

Then I got to the room and there were no phone calls or messages. It was almost a letdown.

I was still in a sweat so I peeled off my shirt and pants and sat down in front of the air conditioner in my shorts. I sat there until I got chilled. That took about fifteen minutes, which meant I had four more hours to go.

I kept waiting for the phone to ring, expecting her to call the whole thing off. The suspense was awful. I took the phone off the hook but it started screeching like bad brakes do and I hung it up. I sat on the bed and took it off the hook and waited until it screeched; then I'd depress the little bar and wait a minute and let it up again. I killed another fifteen minutes that way until my finger got tired.

About six o'clock I ordered a steak, potatoes, salad, and coffee. I had forgotten how bad room-service food is until I took the first bite. I wasn't hungry anyway. The coffee was in one of those ugly purple Thermos pitchers that always look dirty and it was lukewarm but I drank it because it was something to do.

I was killing time. h.e.l.l, who am I kidding, I was watching it crawl by on its hands and knees, checking the clock every five minutes. In desperation I started to read Cisco's report on Dunetown. It might just as well have been written by the chamber of commerce for all it told me. I dropped it in the wastebasket and stared at the television set for another thirty minutes.

At about seven I decided to take a bath, soak my tired muscles, and kill another half hour. I turned on the spigots and the radio. The water was so hot it took ten minutes of juggling and dipping before I settled in. A bath is great therapy, particularly when it's just about too hot to bear. It opens up the head, clears away the cobwebs, helps you sort the real stuff from the bulls.h.i.t. Kind of like medication.

About ten minutes after I got into the tub the muses began to whisper to me. They were saying things I didn't want to hear. The muses don't always cooperate.

Wake up, Kilmer, the voices said, you made Dutch a promise. No scandal, you told him, and he took you at your word, no questions asked.

Wake up, Kilmer, you can't erase twenty years with a kiss and a smile and a roll in the hay. 1963 is history. You had prospects then. What have you got now? Stick spelled it out, the Holiday f.u.c.king Inn, that's what you've got. Now that would really give Doe a laugh-for about the first five minutes.

Wake up, Kilmer. You don't even know what's real and what's fantasy anymore.

I was getting pretty fed up with the muses, and the radio didn't help. It was set on one of those easy-listening stations and Eydie Gorme was singing "Who's Sorry Now?" Just what I needed, background music with a sob in every note.

I lifted my foot and turned on the hot water with my toes and waited until I had to grit my teeth to stand it. The water was reaching the boiling point when I turned it off. That killed another fifteen minutes.

I needed to get a little perspective on things, separate what was real and what I wanted to be real. I needed to be objective.

But that's not what I did. What I did was think about that place at the base of her throat, the soft spot, the one where you can see the pulse beating. I used to stare at it and count the beats. I could tell when she started getting excited.

I thought about the way she closed her eyes and parted her lips about a quarter of an inch when I was about to kiss her. She had the softest lips. You could get buried in those lips. I never felt her teeth. I don't know how she did it. Her lips were as soft as a down quilt.

Three years, that's how long I had waited, watching her grow from a fifteen-year-old tease to an eighteen-year-old woman, playing the brother-sister act when they came up to Athens for football weekends. That was to appease Chief. When she was about sixteen, her good-bye kisses started getting softer. And longer.

Talk about strung out.

Get off it, Kilmer. Think about something else. Details, concentrate on details. And events. Reality is what we're after here.

I concentrated on her eighteenth-birthday party. It came to me in flashes, like a movie when the film breaks and they lose a few frames.

She wouldn't let me see her all that day. The way she acted, you'd have thought it was her wedding day. About midmorning Chief, Teddy, and I went to the Findley office on Factors' Walk. It was part of the ritual when we came down for the weekend, going to the office on Sat.u.r.day morning. We had to wear ties and sports jackets, setting an example so the workers wouldn't get the feeling that they could take it easy because it was the weekend. Chief was big on setting examples. The office was only open half a day, so the employees thought they were getting a break. "Gives us four hours' jump on the compet.i.tion come Monday morning," Chief said with a wink. He winked a lot for emphasis, a habit Teddy had picked up.

He'd always pull off some kind of deal, usually on the phone, just to show us how it was done. When he was wheeler-dealing, his left eye would close about halfway. Teddy called it the Evil Eye. When the Eye started to narrow, watch out, he was on to something, closing in for the kill. It's one of the things the rich inherited, that predatory sense. I guess that's why they're rich-they have a built-in instinct for the jugular.

I never got a true handle on the business. They were into everything. Cotton, shipping, real estate, industry, farming, you name it. All it did was bedazzle the h.e.l.l out of me. I don't think Teddy got into it either. He was more interested in h.e.l.l-raising. And poon. That's what he called it, poon. "Let's go down to the beach, Junior, check out the poon."

I got another flash. On that particular morning the office was closed in honor of Doe's eighteenth birthday. When we got there, the janitor let us in and we went up to the third floor. I always loved that building. It was all bra.s.s and oak and everything was oiled and polished so it sparkled.

Chief stood in his office, which seems now like it was maybe half the top floor. He stood there and swept his hand around.

"I'm going to divide this room up into three rooms, boys," he said. "I'll take this corner. One of you can have the river view; the other one, the park." Then he flipped a coin.

"Call it, Jake," he cried. I don't remember what I called. He covered the coin with his hand and peeked under it, looked up very slowly, and smiled at me. "You win, Jake. Take your choice, river or park?" I figured Teddy wanted the river and he had a right to it because it was obviously the choice view, so I picked the park.

And I remember Chief looking at me and that left eye narrowing down for just an instant, and then he said, "That's very generous of you, Jake."

The Evil Eye. Looking back on it, I think Chief saw that move as a sign of weakness. To him, it was winner take all.

The more I got into it, the faster and faster the flashes came. The way the place looked, Daisies all over Windsong, hundreds of them. And candles-my G.o.d, there must have been ten thousand candles. It was a fire hazard there were so many candles.

And people. Three hundred maybe, the top of the list. Black tie, a live orchestra, champagne, the works. Chief had seen to that. It's what you call taste, another thing the born rich inherit.

"I got to give you credit, Junior," Teddy had said as I was straightening his black tie. "Three years, man, you really stick in there."

Was that it? Was it a test?

Before the guests arrived, Chief took the two of us out onto the porch and popped a bottle of champagne and we stood there watching the sun go down. We drank a toast to Doe and threw our gla.s.ses at the big oak tree at the corner of the house.

"One more year, boys," Chief said. "And you'll be off to law school. The time'll fly. You'll be back here in business before you know it."

That was another part of the trap, Chief laying it all out for us that way, planning our lives. Only then it felt good. When you're on the inside, it always feels good. When he put his hand on my shoulder, there was lightning in his fingers. That's the way Chief was. That's the way all three of them were. They were Lightning People. You could feel their aura crackling around them.

"It's a h.e.l.luva night, lads," he said. He didn't know the half of it.

It was dark and all the candles were lit and the guests were all a.s.sembled when she made her entrance. I still have trouble breathing when I think about that moment. My mouth gets dry and my hands shake thinking about her walking into the eerie candlelight, dressed in white, with a scarlet sash that tightened her waist and molded every magnificent line of her body. Talk about lightning. Everybody applauded when she came in. She went straight to Chief and kissed him. Chief always came first. Then she came to us and that soft spot was twitching like crazy and it was all I could do to keep my hands off her. It was like that all night. I couldn't get close enough to her. I guess I never will.

The party ended about three in the morning and we were all a little drunk from champagne. Teddy had latched on to this kind of dippy girl and the four of us piled into the dune buggy and drove out to the beach. He threw me the keys. He was in the back, working up a little poon. When we got in the car it was all Doe and I could do to keep our hands off each other. Well, we didn't. She leaned over and put her hand down inside of my thigh and wrapped her fingers around my knee and squeezed it hard and the electricity started humming.

When we got out there we took some dunes and spun around a few times in the moonlight. Teddy popped a bottle of champagne, shook it up, and used his thumb to squeeze off a stream of it. We were all soaked with champagne and the dippy girl jumped out and ran down to the surf and jumped in, clothes and all, Teddy right behind her. We drove off and left them there, clawing at each other in the surf.