Lyle could not sleep. He lay very still, his hands clasped behind his head, and thought. There might be no way that he or anyone else would ever be able to find out for sure who had killed the cop that night in the Convent Street Housing Project. If they couldn't, it meant no one would ever be punished for the worst crime of all. If no one was punished, it would happen again. And again. There would be no stopping them. These people had to understand they couldn't kill a cop and get away with it. There had to be some sort of retaliation. Every cop in the department believed that too. Lyle knew that whether Dexter was a cop killer or not, he had too much money to be innocent.

He stayed in bed a couple more hours, and left the house as dawn was creeping in through the windows. He needed to find B.T. They had a busy day in front of them.

That night after her reading cla.s.s, Sherree walked across the Convent to pick up Lucilla at a neighbor's house. It was quiet tonight, too quiet, only ten o'clock and no one at all around. It was funny how quickly things had returned to normal, because this was normal, everyone afraid to come out of their houses, prisoners in their own homes waiting for the sound of gunfire, the bad guys shooting at each other as if it were the Old West. Burgess either couldn't do anything about it or didn't want to do anything about it. It didn't matter; he wasn't doing anything about it.

Sherree walked alone. Dexter usually met her, but tonight she'd told him she would get one of the men in the cla.s.s to walk with her. Only there weren't any men in cla.s.s, no one at all except her and the nun. That was fine with her, meant she got all the attention. The sister had even spent an extra hour with her. She'd made some real progress tonight.

She was still angry with Dexter. First he had to go get himself put in jail, then he had to take the rest of the money Burgess had given her, and no telling how much more, and go buy himself those fancy new clothes. She didn't care how much she had, she wouldn't spend it on expensive clothes like that. She remembered seeing a black businessman on TV once who'd said, "If it's on your a.s.s, it's not an a.s.set." That made sense to Sherree; she still shopped at the thrift store. If that was good enough for her, she didn't know why it couldn't be good enough for Dexter.

They had argued about the money. Dexter was furious that the cops had ripped his blue vest; the only way he was going to get over it, he told her, was to go buy a new one. She told him it was his own fault for driving his black a.s.s around in that Cadillac to begin with. He said she didn't seem to mind getting her black a.s.s driven around town in a Cadillac. She told him it didn't matter what he drove his black a.s.s around town in or what he covered it with, it was still one puny little old black a.s.s. He hit her. And Sherree hadn't gotten over that. She was about ready to tell him to get his puny black a.s.s out of her house.

But she didn't. She contented herself with telling his friends to get out, all the ones who'd come over after she'd gotten Dexter out of jail, to tell him what a great show it had been, on the news, in the paper and everything. And Dexter sitting around all puffed up, that brand new black leather creaking like the bones of an old millionaire and making the apartment smell like a lawyer's office.

She didn't tell Dexter to get out, because she liked his male presence there. It made her feel safe.

Sherree got Lucilla at the neighbor's house and walked home quickly. There was a chill in the air, a cold front coming through, bringing with it perhaps a bit of frost. Sherree cradled her sleeping child, holding her close to keep her warm. As she approached her building, she could see the tail end of the Cadillac parked behind the apartment. She let herself in and called out to Dexter, but there was no answer.

She went down the hallway, past the bathroom to where the two bedrooms were, and put Lucilla in bed in the first one. She woke up as Sherree put her down, and Sherree spoke softly to her, smoothing back her hair, soothing her back to sleep. Then she went into the second bedroom. The room was dark and she groped around until she found the lamp sitting on the night table next to the bed and switched it on. Dexter was not in bed as she had expected. He had probably walked over to the Solar Club so he could be a hot shot some more.

Sherree took off her clothes and went to the bathroom to run a bath. The bathroom was so small she had to close the door to get into the tub. She put a couple of drops of baby oil under the tap and lay back to feel the warm water slowly cover her body. Lucilla, who hadn't really gone back to sleep, hopped out of bed as soon as she heard the water running, picked up two of her dolls, and went into the lighted bedroom, where she crawled up on her mother's big bed to play.

Outside, Lyle, B.T., and three other uniformed policemen stalked the building, their weapons carried low at their sides. Two covered the back door while Lyle, B.T., and the other one took the front. B.T. kicked the door in. Wood splintered with a sharp crack. They rushed into the apartment and as the third man went through the kitchen to open the back door, Lyle and B.T. went into the hallway. They stopped in front of the bathroom.

Sherree was sunk deep in the tub, up to her earlobes. Her eyes were closed and she hummed softly to herself, feeling the hum vibrate her body against the water as she let the running tap tickle her toes. Inside this warm sensual envelope, the crack of the door splintering was a m.u.f.fled but intrusive sound. Sherree sat up and turned off the water. She heard the rustle of movement outside the bathroom. She stood up in the tub and pulled the string on the overhead light to turn it off. In the bedroom down the hallway her daughter let out a nearly inaudible cry and slipped silently from the bed to crawl under it.

Sherree reached over from the tub and slowly swung the door open. In the light from the bedroom down the hall, she saw Lyle and B.T. framed in the doorway, their guns pointed at her, and her hands automatically went up over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cupping them protectively just as the nylon net cutouts in her white satin body suit once had. As she opened her mouth to scream, Lucilla crawled over the lamp cord and snagged it on her foot, causing the lamp to topple from the night table.

Lyle heard the crash, the apartment went pitch, B.T. hit the floor yelling, and Lyle opened fire. He sprayed the empty bedroom doorways, the walls, the bathroom, moving his weapon from side to side, covering the entire s.p.a.ce. When he finished, the only sound penetrating the ear-splitting silence was the water lapping at the sides of the tub and the whimpering of the child under the bed.

26.

During the night that Sherree was shot, the wind rose and brought with it a bone-chilling dampness. The old homeless man who had slept for a time in Bobby's empty apartment house wandered over to Convent Street to a liquor store, where he spent his last money on a bottle of cheap red wine. He needed something to keep him warm. All he had was the thin flannel shirt he wore over a threadbare, holey undershirt. He couldn't remember what had happened to his blanket; in all his moving about he'd lost it.

The man in the liquor store gave him a pack of matches and a couple of day-old newspapers. He went back out on the street to scrounge along the sidewalk for a few cigarette b.u.t.ts. He walked in the direction of the Solar Club, his head bent to search, stopping when the cold got to him to take a sip of wine and carefully screw the top back on the bottle. He didn't want to drink too much before he found someplace warm to settle in for the night.

He was close enough that he could hear the music from the Solar Club, m.u.f.fled until the door opened and there was a blast of bra.s.s, guitar, and drums as a young couple came out, laughing and huddling closely together once they felt the sting of the damp icy wind. As they came up even with him he said, "Can you spare a cigarette, brother?" He said it low, as if he expected to be ignored.

But the man stopped, the girl fitted under one arm, and reached inside his jacket. He took a pack from his shirt pocket and expertly shook it so two cigarettes popped up in the opening. "Yeah, sure," he said, "have a couple."

He took them quickly and squirreled them away in his own pocket, muttering his thanks, already moving down the street. He was anxious now to find a place where no one would bother him, where he could drink his wine until he was drunk and go to sleep.

He walked, having no particular destination, but retracing ground he'd walked many times before, until he saw an alleyway that seemed familiar, the kind of narrow, sheltered s.p.a.ce he liked, between two dark houses. He went deep into it. He spread one of the newspapers on the concrete and folded the other one, stuffing the inside of his shirt with some of the sections. The rest he used to cover his legs. He propped himself against one of the cinder-block pillars and took a long pull at the bottle. His body was shaking with cold and he didn't want to smoke until he'd warmed up a bit.

After a while he realized he wasn't warming up. The dampness had seeped into him and he was so cold he could hardly feel the effect of the wine even though he'd drunk better than half the bottle. He thought the wind must be coming right down the alley. He had a brief memory of being on a train track once, the wind coming down on him like a locomotive, but he forgot it instantly. He folded the newspapers and pulled them along with him as he crawled under the house.

He didn't like to sleep under houses, didn't like that he couldn't see what was under there with him. He fumbled for the matches and lit one, looking all around, up and down, his hands so cold he smelled his fingers burn before he felt them. He let the match drop and lit another. Above him he thought he'd seen a hole. The match flared; there it was, a good-size rent in the flooring. He stood up into it, pushing back a piece of cardboard someone had covered the hole with. He looked around and thought he remembered climbing through this hole before, and that he remembered this house. He put his wine and his newspapers up on the good part of the floor and hoisted himself through. He found his place along the inside wall of the dining room, spreading the newspapers again, drinking again, this time feeling warm enough to light one of the cigarettes. He finished the wine before he finished the smoke and lay down on the mat of paper to take the last few puffs. He was warm and drunk and sleepy now. He reached over to put the cigarette into the empty bottle, thinking he was glad he'd saved the other one for tomorrow. He thought he slipped the still-glowing cigarette end into the bottle but he missed. It landed on the mat of newspaper. He pushed the bottle away from him, closed his eyes, and was out. The newspaper caught fire and the flames quickly spread to a can of paint thinner. He woke up long enough to think he was burning in h.e.l.l, and then he was gone, along with most of Bobby's apartment house.

Burgess walked. He walked head bent, shoulders rounded against the cold, hands jammed into the pockets of an old sweat suit jacket. He walked Convent Street dressed in his old clothes, and he looked ordinary.

It was as much habit as it was any instinct for self-preservation that got Burgess out of the Convent early that cold and overcast morning. He was going to work, this time to Bobby's apartment house, so he could move Janine, and now Lucilla too, as quickly as possible. He had left them asleep, finally, mercifully asleep after a long and traumatic night.

He walked because he couldn't stand to hear the m.u.f.fler on the pickup truck anymore. It seemed to shout, "Here I am! Look at me!" in a way the Cadillac never did. Oh but the Cadillac had, he just wasn't remembering, couldn't remember much in the aftershock from the horror of the night before. If he could have listened just then, listened hard, he would have heard the Cadillac whisper, "Here I am; come find me."

He walked until the morning cold had numbed the outside of his body as much as the violent night had numbed the inside, until it was time to go to the apartment house, work off the numbness. He walked right up to it before he saw it; he smelled it first, the burned wood, ashes still floating in the air. And when he saw it, his legs went weak. So weak he had to sit on the fender of a car parked in front of the next-door house, its candied paint job covered with ash, but he didn't notice that. He tried to think but he couldn't think, his shock compounded by yet another plan gone awry. He sat for a long time, he didn't know how long, staring at the ruined building, until a tough young dude came out of the house next door and told Burgess to get the h.e.l.l off his car.

Silently he complied, head bent, shoulders rounded once again as his feet moved him in response to a command he didn't know he had given, back to the Convent. Instinct took him past Janine's building, to the other side of the yard so he could see what was going on at Sherree's from a distance. He didn't see any more cop cars. There was no one around; it was quiet, abnormally quiet.

He skirted the edge of the garden, no thought for it now. His eyes were drawn, his whole body was drawn to the scene of Sherree's death. Her murder: he didn't know why it had happened yet, but he was sure it was no accident. Habit, once again, made him cautious. He walked slowly in front of the buildings opposite, watching, and when he saw that the door to Sherree's was open, he backed into the shadowed s.p.a.ce between two buildings so he was out of sight. He didn't see the children at first, and when some sound or movement made him aware of them, it caused him to jump. They were behind him, deep into the s.p.a.ce between the two buildings, sitting in a tight circle, talking softly to each other. He tried not to let them draw his attention from Sherree's, but he couldn't help it. He watched their furtive movements, a head bobbing every now and again, their voices too low for him to hear what they were saying. He thought they must be playing s.e.x games, doctor, something like that, but now that he was looking closely he could see they were all boys. They probably had their pants unzipped, looking at each others' d.i.c.ks, comparing size and color; maybe somebody was jacking off. As he watched, one of the boys looked up, his head jerking around. He had the startled look of a child caught playing an innocent game that was nonetheless all about losing innocence.

The boy smiled, tentatively at first, then grinning as the others tore their eyes away from the inner circle. One of them started to bolt, squatted back down for an instant, and decided to bolt after all. There was a second or two of indecision, then they all took off, running in several directions, leaving behind something that had been at the center of their tight circle.

Burgess went to see what it was. He looked down into the ghost of their circle, as if looking into a kaleidoscope, and saw a design of little plastic baggies filled with gra.s.s and powder and rocks. In the shadows of the buildings he had to kneel and pick up the baggies to see that the gra.s.s was pickings from the new lawn, the powder was cornstarch, maybe baby powder, the rocks light-colored pebbles. Beside them were sc.r.a.ps of paper with amounts of money written on them.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them he thought he could see his whole life in that ghostly circle, a tight, claustrophobic life with few choices: deal drugs or be poor. And whatever the choice, live with fear and die young, younger than the people who lived outside this world of danger and violence. The choice he'd made, he hadn't expected to live to be thirty. But he had, and now he wanted to keep on living, he'd developed a taste for it, it seemed, but if he was going to keep on living, then he was going to have to run, run for his life.

He walked back between the buildings out into the yard, pa.s.sing from the shadows into the bright sun, which was burning away the overcast, taking the edge off the cold. The door to Sherree's apartment yawned wide, inviting him. He went cautiously at first, thinking there still might be cops around, detectives wearing street clothes, watching and waiting, but the warmth of the sun made him brave and he tossed caution into the clear blue sky and went to the open door.

Dexter sat on the couch in the front room, his head thrown back, his leather duds covering him like an overgrown husk, too big for the shrunken body inside them. Burgess thought he was asleep but the moment his foot touched the threshold, Dexter's head snapped upright and his gla.s.sy eyes shone on Burgess, perhaps not seeing him clearly as he stood against the rectangle of bright sunlight. Burgess could see that Dexter had been crying, wet streaks running in shiny lines off the sides of his face.

"Dexter," he said, to let Dexter know who he was, to let Dexter know he was sorry, trying to say everything in a word because all other words eluded him.

Dexter stared at him, he thought without recognition still. But then he blurted, "What you still doin round here, man?"

The alarm in Dexter's voice raised the hair on the back of Burgess' head, but he went on in, noticing the splintered door, the cushions of a chair on the floor, a few things strewn around, the drawers to a table left open. He moved the chair and sat away from the door. If he didn't look at the door, if he didn't know a search was the cause of the disarray, then he might find it hard to believe anything out of the ordinary had happened in this apartment, for he could see no signs of violence and death from where he sat. All he could see were the scuffs of a lot of foot traffic into the hallway. But he could smell death, or he imagined he could, a p.r.i.c.kly sensation up his nostrils. He held his breath, not wanting to let it in. Dexter moved and his leather clothes creaked, and Burgess breathed and smelled the leather.

"What you doin sittin around here like this, Dexter?"

"I'm sittin here with that door wide open 'cause I'm waitin for em," Dexter said. "They'll be back, you know they will. An I don' want em come huntin me down again, 'cause it was me they was after, not Sherree." His head fell back on the couch and he screwed up his eyes, but the tears escaped anyway, running back into his hair. "They can come get me now," he said, his voice tight, tear-choked.

"Case of mistaken ident.i.ty, Dexter."

Dexter lifted his head and two tears dropped off his cheekbones, landing with little thuds on the front of his jacket. "I know that. It was you they was after but they don' know that yet. They f.u.c.ked up when they killed Sherree, so they got to come back. An when they do, Burgess, I'm gon do it again."

"Do what?"

"You know, tell em. The same way. I did about the hat." And while he was admitting his weakness, he wanted to tell Burgess he'd lied about Burgess' mother and the Cadillac, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd lied to Sherree about the Cadillac too, and he could hear that sharp tongue of hers clearly inside his head, lashing out, saying one of the last things she'd ever said to him: "That Burgess think he the f.u.c.kin pope and so do you."

He said, rather defiantly, "I'm gon do what I got to do and say what I got to say 'cause I'm more afraid of them than I am of you."

Burgess felt the weight of those words. He didn't care what Dexter told the police; he didn't expect Dexter would ever have to tell them anything, but if he did, Burgess wouldn't blame him for it. Dexter had never tried to be anything other than what he was. He didn't talk big and let the fear screw into his insides like a worm-long, endless, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in. It was laughable, afraid as he was, keeping his control by making other people afraid. And here was Dexter, admitting he was afraid too. Burgess said, "I didn' know you was afraid of me, Dexter."

Dexter lifted one hand weakly, no more energy than that to protest. "I'm afraid of them," he said.

Yeah, me too, Burgess wanted to say, but even now he couldn't let Dexter see how spineless he was. "It's okay," he said stupidly. "It don' matter what you tell em." But he knew if Dexter ever talked, it wouldn't matter if he forgave him, Dexter would never forgive himself. Or, consider this, something worse: Dexter might not believe he would ever forgive him, he might only become more afraid, figuring Burgess would use it against him one day. Even if Burgess didn't, he might hang the fear over himself, a deadly game of waiting for retaliation that would eventually turn his fear into hate.

Dexter seemed to have a small burst of energy. He looked at Burgess with a wild glint in his eye. "But we did it, didn' we, Burgess? We turn the Convent round." And then his energy flagged. "But I guess they always be a Ferdie lookin to prove hisself, ain they, Burgess?"

Burgess wanted to laugh. Ferdie, as if Ferdie was to blame. Dexter was blind in his loyalty. He refused to see it was Burgess' own weakness, his inability not to run, his inability not to accept the inevitable. He couldn't stand and fight and wait for it. He was a coward, but Dexter would never see that. He felt great affection for Dexter at that moment as well as a ridiculous desire to make Dexter promise he would stay in the Convent, that he would do the standing and fighting and waiting. But Dexter was waiting in his own way already, and admitting he was weak.

Burgess stood up. "I'll be leavin soon, Dexter. I guess this is good-bye." He walked over and put his hand out.

Dexter took Burgess' hand, then he pulled himself up and threw his arms around Burgess. He said, "You get as far 'way from this place as you can get. Don' never come back."

"I won't," Burgess said, Dexter's leather jacket cold under his hands.

He walked out into the sunshine, into a day too bright and too perfect, hostile in its perfection. He wished for the gloom, the overcast, the better for running and hiding.

It was as if his dreams were coming true, the bad dreams, the dreams of being pursued. Standing there in the Convent yard, he had a moment of panic, and he could feel those hands clutching him from behind. And for a moment he had that wish that it was all over with, a wish for relief from the fear, a death wish.

And in the next moment he felt a sudden urge to run, to find a safe place, for it not to be over with yet, not to get caught, to keep death as far away as he could. He wanted to do what he'd gotten used to doing when he needed to feel safe, what had become his habit. He wanted to force his feet to walk slowly and deliberately out of the Convent, and then go as fast as he could to Thea's house.

That's what he wanted to do, but what he needed to do, while everything was still quiet in the Convent, was talk to Janine.

27.

She was still sleeping, her body curled protectively around Sherree's little girl. Burgess put his hand on her shoulder, lightly at first then with a bit more pressure, as if to hold her down. He was afraid he would startle her and she would jump or cry out and Lucilla would wake too. But only her eyes opened, wide and alert, and she got up, hardly moving the bed at all, and followed him into the living room.

They sat close together on the red plush sofa and he talked to her, his voice low and urgent with the effort of keeping it down. He told her about the fire at the apartment house, and even though she had liked the idea of moving there before, she showed no emotion now. He told her she could take Lucilla and go stay with his mother for a while, but she didn't agree or disagree. He told her he couldn't depend on Dexter not to give him away, but she didn't panic and tell him he had to hide the way she once had, grabbing his arm, her eyes dark circles of fear.

"There's no tellin what gon happen now," Burgess said. "The best thing prob'ly is for me to go 'way for a while." He waited for some indication from her that this was the right thing for him to do, but there was none. He went on, telling her he didn't know where yet, but when he got there she and Lucilla could come too. "Maybe," he said, "we jus give up on this town, start someplace new altogether, the four of us." He put his hand over her womb.

Janine heard him out with a sinking heart. They weren't the exact words, but they were close enough. It was as she had imagined all those times before: it was what had happened to her mother, coming true for her too. There would be the phone calls and the road stories, and then one day there would be nothing and she would never know what had happened to him, and she would be living out her mother's life all over again and putting the seeds for it to happen again and again in her own child and Sherree's child too. The idea of being alone could make her feel sick, but the idea of pa.s.sing this sickness on was unbearable.

Janine put her eyes on Burgess, steady and determined. "I got two children to think about now, Burgess," she said, "and I can't be thinkin 'bout where you are and if you really gon send for us. I can't be waitin like that. Waitin poisons a woman, sure as if you fed it to her 'fore you left."

He tried to persuade her and she tried to let herself be persuaded. She tried to imagine a life someplace else; she tried to imagine another city, Detroit, Chicago, New York. But she couldn't imagine another city: she could make herself see the ladies in their fringed dresses drinking pink drinks out of little straws, but she couldn't imagine herself being one of them. All she could imagine was being alone.

She watched him walk through the door and she thought her insides were going to just sink out of her body and try to go with him. She told herself she was going to have to get used to being lonely, no Burgess, no Sherree, only these children she was going to have to be there for, and she promised herself right then that they were never going to think that being alone made you weak. She was going to reach deep down inside her and find that power she knew she had, but first she was going to have herself a good cry, one last good cry, and she was going to think of it as washing all the weakness out of her so that she would never have to reach so deep for that power again. It would just float to the top on her tears.

There must be a limit to how many shocks a man could take in a day. Janine had let him down; he couldn't believe she wouldn't go with him. He thought all women wanted to get out of the Convent, any way they could. But she was saying it was her home and she was going to stay, even after he said they could all leave together, he wouldn't make her wait. She told him, "Burgess, I don't want to end up someplace alone, someplace I don't know, where I don't know no one at all. Not with two little kids."

She doesn't have much faith, he was thinking as he walked to Thea's house. Walking those blocks in the brisk air, he still had Janine's voice running around in his head: "I'm not gon make it harder than it already is, draggin two kids G.o.d only knows where; I'm not gon spend my life runnin."

And at the very thought of running, his back crawled and he quickened his pace, his resolve to run strengthened more by what was ahead of him, the unknown, a future abruptly cut short, than by anything that might be behind him.

Thea opened the door and Burgess realized his hands were sweating inside his jacket pockets. He didn't know what to expect-dislike, disappointment, disgust, distrust. He was holding his breath. He only knew what he most dreaded to see on her face after he saw it wasn't there: fear. He let himself breathe; she was not afraid of him.

She held the door for him and he walked into the large foyer. This house had become so familiar to him that he had begun to enter it without really seeing it anymore, the way you would enter your own house, knowing so well what it looked like that you no longer noticed it. The way his mother must have been entering it for years and years now.

And thinking that made him remember something he'd said to his mother long ago. They were arguing, he couldn't remember about what exactly, but it would have been about where he'd been or who he'd been with or what he'd been doing, before she found out the answers to all those questions. She had told him, "You better watch out what kind of life you live, watch out how you end up." And he'd said to her, with all the haughtiness and condescension an angry and arrogant sixteen-year-old can spew without thought and without regard, "Look how you ended up, what kind of life you live. I don' know how you do what you do, go work in that white b.i.t.c.h's house every day." And for a moment he could feel the anger, he remembered it so well.

But today as he entered the house, he looked at it differently, without that exact sense of familiarity, more of a first-time look but without any rush to take it all in at once as he'd tried to do when he was a boy coming here for the first time, amazed at how big it was, amazed by all the things in it, amazed because he'd had no idea before of anything like it. He looked at it today slowly and deliberately, no rush, no amazement, yet with a certain bewilderment that he had come to take it so for granted, that he, like his mother, had come to work here, but under different circ.u.mstances, better circ.u.mstances, for it had not felt like a comedown in life to him; it had felt full of possibilities. He looked now with an eye to what he had accomplished, a professional eye. It was a last-time look, a long look that searched for more than what could be seen within these walls. And he began to see that what his mother had said had nothing to do with where you ended up physically, but with possibilities, and in this last look he saw all the possibilities fade.

Thea was waiting for him, standing there patiently while he took it all in. He was going to have to tell her he was leaving, but he didn't think he could do it right now, right here.

He asked her where Bobby was. The question seemed to distress her. She pushed her hand through hair she hadn't bothered to comb, messing it up more. There were dark circles under her eyes. She said, "There was a fire at the apartment house."

"I know. I went by there this morning."

"Oh." She hesitated before she said, "The other tenants got out, but someone was in the apartment."

"Who?" Burgess demanded, not knowing what he expected but steeling himself for yet another shock.

"Bobby thinks it's some homeless man who'd used the place before."

Burgess relaxed.

"I think Bobby's over there now," Thea added, and took a step toward the door as if to let him out.

"I come to talk to you," he told her.

"Oh," she said again, surprised, then, "Let's go in the back," and he was relieved because he'd thought at first she wanted him to go.

She led him through the foyer, past the living room, past Mr. Robert working in the library. Mr. Robert looked up, but Burgess only nodded to him; he would have to speak with him later. She led him through the hallway, and as they went past the kitchen the sound of the vacuum cleaner got louder. He glimpsed his mother tugging the machine, her back to them. Thea hesitated just past the door as if she thought he would want to step in and say h.e.l.lo. But he went on ahead, out the back door to the porch.

He stopped there for a moment. Before him materialized the two of them, children, squatting down to throw the baseball cards against the wall. Thea was funny, the way she sat, one foot under her, the other knee bent, her arms hugging her leg, her chin resting on her knee. She would rock back and forth, and the more excited she got, the harder she rocked. She rocked a lot when he threw a card too hard and knocked it away from the wall. When he looked at her, she would try not to smile.

Innocent games. Forbidden games. He felt a hot spot of rage in his chest. There was no time for old anger now.

He opened the screen door, touching Thea's back between her shoulder blades so she would precede him. Roux came bounding out of nowhere, jumping on her, jumping on him, not heeding in the least her command to get down. He hung back to watch her try to control the dog, just about her height when it stood up on its hind legs. Her harsh commands did nothing to settle it down. She pushed it away so she could walk, and when she got over to the gazebo, she sat and petted the animal, talking softly until it was content to sit on the floor next to her.

Burgess sat across from her, leaning toward her, his forearms on his thighs, his hands clasped.

She knew nothing of Sherree's death, had heard nothing of any kind of killing in the Convent: she'd been up most of the night at the apartment house. So he told her about the cops going into Sherree's with their search warrant, looking for guns or drugs, any excuse, but really looking for Dexter, mistaking Dexter for him, but not even getting Dexter, getting Sherree instead.

"They didn' find nothin," he said, " 'cept Sherree's little girl under the bed." She stared at him, her eyes sunk deep inside circles of fatigue. "Even if you heard 'bout it, they's so many killins in the project, you might not of thought nothin 'bout it."

"It's outrageous," she said. "People will be outraged." Her voice wasn't tired; it was sharp in the dry windless air. All around the gazebo it was quiet and still, as if the very trees, all the foliage and the life it held, had been paralyzed by the sun shooting its rays through the cloudless perfect sky.

"Which people?" he asked.

"All people," she said impatiently, then thought, this is no time to talk around things. She said, "White people too."

"I be surprised if even black people be outraged very long."

"Why wouldn't they be?"