And I remember Doe saying, "Stop soon, Jake. Please!" I never heard that tone in her voice before. Husky, with a lot of breath behind it. I topped a dune and slammed on the brakes and we tumbled out before the buggy was fully stopped. It rolled down to the bottom of the hill and stalled.

We were like animals freed from a cage. Touching, feeling, pulling. I found the soft spot in her throat and when I kissed it I could feel her heart beating in my mouth and she cried out and pulled her dress down and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s jumped free and I slid my lips down to her and opened my mouth as wide as I could and sucked her up into it, feeling her nipple grow hard under my tongue. Then her hands reached down and found me and she turned me sideways and began stroking me. Finally I unzipped the dress and slid it down over her feet and she hooked her thumbs in the sides of her panties and slid them off. Then she helped me undress and we lay back for a minute and just stared at each other. Then there was more touching and pulling and stroking until finally I felt her open under my fingertips and she pulled me over on top of her and guided me into her, enveloping me, crushing me, devouring me with her soft muscles . . .

Nice going, Kilmer. That's putting it all in the proper perspective. Objective, right?

Sure.

26.

SILVER-DOLLAR WOMAN.

Oh, Jesus, just keep it in me!

Take it, take it all, baby.

Oh, G.o.d, don't stop!

You're all alike. can't get enough, can you, baby?

Never!

There . . .

More . . . oh, yes, MORE!

There . . .

What are you doing?

There . . .

Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, f.u.c.k me!

Hereitcomes, hereitcomes . . .

OH . . . ohoh, nownow, ohoh, nownow . . .

Here comes the f.u.c.kin' freight train!

Now . . . yes, now . . .

ONE potato, TWO potato, THREE potato, FOUR . . .

Oh, you . . . f.u.c.king . . . m-m-machine . . .

G.o.dd.a.m.n!

Don't stop now, oh, sweet Jesus, don't stop now!

) Gonna . . . f.u.c.k you . . . dead . . . l-a-a-a-d-e-e-e Oh . . . G.o.d . . . NOW!

Yeah.

NOW!.

YEAH!.

NOW . . .

Later . . .

I'm going to be sore for a week, you d.a.m.n crazy . . .

Hey, you're the one keeps cryin' for more.

Yes. More.

Not enough anything for you, is there?

Not that.

Not just c.o.c.k, ANYthing.

After tonight we'll have it all.

No such thing as ALL, baby. And no such thing as enough.

f.u.c.k me again.

Gotta save up some s.p.u.n.k, lady. It's gonna be a long night.

When it's over . . .

We'll celebrate. I'll f.u.c.k your head off . . .

Promise?

You got it.

Crazy doin' it tonight.

When'll he be here?

Fifteen minutes.

That's takin' it to the edge.

I love it. Gimme a kiss.

Sure. So long, babe.

He caressed her throat with his thumbs, running them, side by side, from her collarbone up along her carotid to her chin and back and then again, and this time he pressed harder and her face bunched up.

Too hard . . .

Too late. His thumbs suddenly seemed to spasm, digging deep into both sides of her Adam's apple.

Her eyes bulged, her tongue shot out, quivering obscenely.

He pressed deeper. Something cracked. She gagged, fought, tried to scratch.

He stopped suddenly, straightened up, struck her sharply with two fingers in the temple, and her life blinked out.

He rolled her over in the bed, arranged her as if sleeping, killed the light, and went to the window.

Ten minutes. Two black limousines pulled up. Four men jumped out of the first limo, perused the street. Two of them entered the apartment house while the other two waited at the door.

Footsteps on the stairs, some m.u.f.fled talk. He moved silently across the room and entered the closet.

One of the men inside opened the front door of the apartment house and nodded to the two outside and one of them ran to the second car and opened the rear door. A tall, chunky man, whose face indicated that he had once been thinner, got out and hustled into the apartment. One of the goons checked the second floor hallway and waved him in. He was nattily dressed in a dark blue blazer, tan gabardine pants, a pale blue shirt, and a dark striped tie. He climbed the stairs, nodded to the man by the door of the apartment, who went back down. The chunky man took out his key and let himself in.

The four men gathered just inside the front door of the apartment and started pitching silver dollars against the wall in the carpeted hallway.

The chunky man stood inside the doorway, looking at the woman on the bed, sleeping on her side, the bed a mess. He started getting hard, thinking about it. What a wanton b.i.t.c.h she was. He smiled and walked to the end of the bed and began to shake it very easily.

The closet door opened without a sound. The chunky man never heard anything until the whirrr of the rope as it whipped around his throat, then the sudden, awful vise around his neck. He reacted almost instantly.

Almost.

A leg wrapped around both his legs and he lost his balance and fell forward on the bed. He was thrashing, trying to break loose, but the vise tightened.

He began to jerk . . .

And jerk . . .

And jerk . . .

Downstairs in the hall, the boys pitching dollars could hear the bedsprings squeaking.

That Tony, he didn't waste no time.

f.u.c.kin' bull. Go on, Ricky, pitch.

The silver dollar twinkled as it soared down the hall and hit the carpet and bounced against the wall.

And the winner sang: "Yuh kin t'row a silver dollar, across thu floor, It'll roo-ool, 'cause it's ro-ound, Woman never knows what a good man she's got, Until she lets him down."

27.

BUSINESS AS USUAL.

After I got out of the tub and dried off, I went in and lay down naked on the bed to cool off. I stared at the ceiling fan for a long time. Objectivity is a painful enterprise at best, and I had avoided it for twenty years. Now, as it grew dark outside, shadows stretched across the room like accusing fingers pointing at me. In the loneliness of the dark, romance wore off and reality took over. Other memories started coming back to me. The past began to materialize again, unfettered by candlelight and daisies. One face emerged from the harsh shadows and began to taunt me. It was Stonewall t.i.tan.

I remembered t.i.tan the night of the party, a little man, a shade under five five, who chose not to wear a tux, opting instead for his usual dark, three-piece winter suit, and arriving just minutes before Doe made her entrance.

More than once during the evening I caught him staring across the room at me with those agate eyes glittering in the candlelight. I didn't pay any attention to it at the time; it didn't seem important. Mr. Stoney never smiled much anyway; he was a quiet man, constantly introspective or contemplative or both, not an uncommon demeanor for short people. But now, reflecting on it, it strikes me that it was a hard look, almost angry, as if I had offended him in some way.

After Doe came over and officially welcomed Teddy and me to her party, after she had taken my hand and almost squeezed my fingers off and then drifted off to greet the rest of the guests, I worked my way across the room and greeted the taut little man. He stared up at me and said, "You really stick to it, don't you, boy? Been waiting a long time for tonight."

"What do you mean?" I asked with a smile.

"Just don't count your chickens," he said, and moved away.

That was the end of it. A caustic remark which he never repeated again during the summer I spent with the Findleys. I had forgotten it. Looking back on the moment, it occurred to me that the little man probably thought me unworthy of the Findley dowry. And since that night seemed to be the end of my probation period, he apparently had been overruled. After that, I was treated more like family than ever before. But Stonewall t.i.tan never warmed up to me, I presume because I had offended him by going the distance.

Was I really being tested during those years or was it just my paranoia, an excuse to back away from another emotional commitment, to remain disconnected, as Stick called it? None of this had occurred to me at the time. When you're nineteen or twenty years old and it's all going your way, you don't think about such things.

But now in the darkness of the room, my suspicions were stirred.

Was that it? Was it all part of the Findley test? Were Doe and Teddy part of that three-year probation during which they sized me up and checked me out for longevity, consistency, durability, loyalty, all the important things? Perhaps I had never pa.s.sed the test at all. Perhaps they had seen in me some fatal flaw that I myself did not perceive, something more ominous than bad ankles, something that did not prevent Teddy from accepting me as his best friend, but precluded my becoming one of the Findley inheritors. Perhaps my blood had never been blue enough.

Wake up, Kilmer.

Lying there, I began to feel like a piece of flux caught between two magnets. One drew me toward Doe and Chief and the sweet life that might still be there. The other, toward the Taglianis of the world, which was, ironically, a much safer place to be. In a funny way, I trusted the Taglianis precisely because I knew I couldn't trust them and there was safety in that knowledge.

A lot of raw ends were showing. It scared me. It clouded my judgment. Dunetown was dangerous for me. It was opening me up. My Achilles' heel was showing.

The magnets were drawing me out of my safe places.

I lay there, immobilized, staring at the lazy ceiling fan until the room was totally dark. At five after nine the phone rang. It rang for a long time. At twenty after, it rang again. I didn't move. I lay there like a statue. I couldn't talk to her, not right then. At nine thirty it rang twelve times; I counted them. After that, every five minutes. At five of ten I heard a scratching at the door. It sounded like a c.o.c.kroach crawling across a kitchen cabinet. I raised up on one elbow and looked over. There was a slip of paper under the door.

I picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes before I turned on the light. It was a phone message from Dutch Morehead.

Tony Logeto had made the list.