So into the tempos and climates of it again, bodies familiarized now. Fragments. Like things glimpsed at night from a moving train, Dragging whisper-sound of palm on flesh. Deep, deep, slow-thick into the clench of honey, clovery oils, nipples pebbled, lift-clamp of thigh, arythmic flesh-clap fading into tempo reattained, held long and longer and longest, then beginning quivorous hesitation at the end of deepening, richening beat, a shifting of her, mouth agape, furnace breath, tongue curl, grit of tooth against tooth, hands then cup and pull the rubberous b.u.t.tocky pumping, her bellows breath whistling exploding the words against my mouth-"Love you. you. Love Love you. you. Love Love you." Then somehow opening more, taking deeper, pulling, demanding, a final grinding moaning agony of her, requiring me to drive, batter, cleave without mercy. Then slow toppling. The long slope. Hearts trying to leap from chests. Gagging gasps from the long run up the far side. Tumbling into the meadow. Tall gra.s.s. Clover and gra.s.s. Sag into sleep, still coupled, fall into sleep while still feeling in her depths the gentle residual claspings, small infrequent tightenings like that of a small sleeping hand when the brain dreams. you." Then somehow opening more, taking deeper, pulling, demanding, a final grinding moaning agony of her, requiring me to drive, batter, cleave without mercy. Then slow toppling. The long slope. Hearts trying to leap from chests. Gagging gasps from the long run up the far side. Tumbling into the meadow. Tall gra.s.s. Clover and gra.s.s. Sag into sleep, still coupled, fall into sleep while still feeling in her depths the gentle residual claspings, small infrequent tightenings like that of a small sleeping hand when the brain dreams.

Then in the morning, as I lay watching her get dressed and knowing that soon I had to stir myself too, she looked so frowning-thoughtful, I asked her if she was still working at that lousy-person syndrome of hers.

She put her arms into the sleeves of the white dress after she had stepped into it and pulled it up. "You didn't get to me all the way, Travis, because you're some kind of fantastic lover."

"Thanks a lot."

"I mean, you know, none of that sort of tricky stuff."

She came over and turned around to be zipped. I sat up and swung my legs out and, before zipping her, kissed the crease of her back about two inches south of her bra strap.

"See?" she said.

"See what?"

"Well, that was just nice, honey. So I'm in love with you, sort of. And I wasn't in love with you that first time we made it, and so it wasn't so much, and then when I liked you more, then it got to be something else. So I've got a new philosophy about the bed bit."

"Pray tell," I had said, zipping her up, giving her a pat on the rear.

She moved away and turned, hitching at the white dress and smoothing it across her hips with the backs of her hands. "It isn't all set yet. It's sort of in bits and pieces. I'm going to live as if freckled girls have more fun. And to h.e.l.l with all the whining and bleeding and gnashing my fool teeth about R. H. Holton, boy attorney. And if I've discovered that I just happen to love to make love with men I could fall in love with... people have to put up with a lot worse problems. Darling! Are Are you going to get up and drive me home? It gets later and later and later." you going to get up and drive me home? It gets later and later and later."

So I had taken her home. End of brief affair. You could staple all the wrong tags on it. One-night stand. Pickup. Handy little shack job for the travelin' man. h.e.l.l, Charlie, you know how them nurses are.

So maybe the only adventures that don't look trivial and tawdry are one's own.

It had been my impression that while deep in thought I had been packing up to get out of there and go back to Lauderdale. But I discovered I hadn't packed a thing. I was atop the bedspread, shoes off, practicing deep breathing. And the next I knew it was eight o'clock on that Sat.u.r.day night, and I wanted two quick drinks and two pounds of rare sirloin.

9.

IT WAS NOT two pounds of steak, but it was rare enough, and I had it in the Luau Room of the Wahini Lodge at about nine, after a long shower, shave, two long-lasting Plymouths on ice. two pounds of steak, but it was rare enough, and I had it in the Luau Room of the Wahini Lodge at about nine, after a long shower, shave, two long-lasting Plymouths on ice.

The mood was the old yin-yang balance of conflicting emotions. There was the fatuous he-male satisfaction and self-approval after having roundly and soundly tumbled the hot-bodied she-thing, with her approvals registered by the reactive flutterings and choke-throated gasps. Satisfaction in the sense of emptied ease and relaxation, with texture memories of the responsive body imprinted for a time on the touching-parts of the hands and mouth. The other half was the drifting elusive postcoital sadness. Perhaps it comes from the constant buried need for a closeness that will eliminate that loneliness of the spirit we all know. And for just a few moments the need is almost eased, the deeply coupled bodies serving as a sort of symbol of that far greater need to stop being totally alone. But then it is over, the illusion gone, and once again there are two strangers in a rumpled bed who, despite any affectionate embrace, are as essentially unknown to each other as two pa.s.sengers in the same bus seat who have happened to purchase tickets to the same destination. Maybe that is why there is always sadness mingled with the aftertastes of pleasure, because once again, as so many times before, you have proven that the fleeting closeness only underlines the essential apartness of people, makes it uncomfortably evident for a little while. We had fitted each other's needs and could have no way of knowing how much of our willingness was honest and how much was the flood of excuses the loins project so brilliantly on the front screen of the mind.

The loins tell you it is always bigger than both of anybody.

Suddenly, I remembered the hundred dollars that Hoi-ton had made Penny stuff into her purse, and smiled. I would hear from her sooner than expected, because when she came across it and remembered, she would be in a horrid haste to get it back to me, as it would make a very sordid footnote to the swarmy night.

And so when I went back to my room at ten thirty something and saw the red light on the phone winking, I was certain it would be Penny Woertz. But it was a very agitated Biddy, expressing surprise that I was still in Fort Courtney and asking me if I had seen or heard from Maureen. She had somehow sneaked down the stairs and out through the back of the house while Tom was in the living room working at the desk, and while Bridget had been out picking up odds and ends at one of the Stop 'n' Shop outlets. She had been gone since a little before seven. "Tom has been out hunting her ever since. I phoned everyplace I could think of and then I left too, about quarter to eight. Right now I'm at a place out near the airport and I happened to think she might come there to the motel, because she knew you were staying there."

"Police looking too?"

"Well, not specifically. But they know she is around and if they see her, they'll take her in. Travis, she's wearing a pink chambray jumper with big black pockets and she's probably barefoot."

"Driving a car?"

"No, thank G.o.d. Or maybe it would be better if she did. I don't know. She probably did the same as last time, walked over to Route Thirty and hitched a ride. She doesn't have any trouble getting a lift, as you can imagine. But I am so afraid that some... sick person might pick her up."

"Can I help?"

"I can't think of anything you could do. If she does show up there, you could call nine-three-four, two-six-six-one. That's Tom's answering service. We keep calling in every fifteen minutes or so to see if there's word of her."

"Are you with him?"

"No. We can cover more places this way. I usually run across him sooner or later."

"Will you let me know when you find her?"

"If you wish. Yes. I'll phone you."

I hung up wondering why they didn't think about the bottom of the lake. She's had a try at about everything else except jumping out a high window. What was the word? Self-defenestration. Out the window I must go, I must go, I must go...

Then some fragment of old knowledge began to nudge at the back of my mind. After I had the eleven o'clock news on the television, I couldn't pay attention because I was too busy roaming around the room trying to unearth what was trying to attract my attention.

Then a name surfaced, along with a man's sallow face, bitter mouth, knowing eyes. Harry Simmons. A long talk, long ago, after a friend of a friend had died. He'd added a large chunk onto an existing insurance policy about five months before they found afloat, face-down, in Biscayne Bay.

I sat on the bed and slowly reconstructed the pattern of part of his conversation. My thought about the lake and the high window had opened a small door to an old memory.

"With the jumpers and the drowners, McGee, you don't pick up a pattern. That's because a jumper d.a.m.ned near always makes it the first time, and a drowner is usually almost as successful, about the same rate as hangers. They get cut down maybe as rarely as the drowners get pulled out. So the patterns mostly come from the bleeders and the pill-takers and the shooters. Funny how many people survive a self-shooting. But if they don't destroy a chunk of their brain, they get a chance at a second try. Like the bleeders cut themselves again, and the pill-takers keep trying. It's always patterns. Never change. They pick the way that they want to go and keep after it until they make it. A pill-taker doesn't turn into a jumper, and a drowner won't shoot himself. Like they've got one picture of dying and that's it and there's no other way of going."

All right, then say that Harry Simmons might probably probably admit a very rare exception. But Maurie Pearson Pike had opted for the pills, the razor, and the rope. Three methods. admit a very rare exception. But Maurie Pearson Pike had opted for the pills, the razor, and the rope. Three methods.

I felt a p.r.i.c.kling of the flesh on the backs of my hands. But it was a clumsy fit, no matter how you looked at it. The suffering husband making a narrow save each time. Or the kid sister? Was there a third party who could get close enough to Maurie?

What about motive? The big ones are love and money. The estate was "substantial." What are the terms? Check it out through soft-voiced D. Wintin Hardahee. And n.o.ble suffering Tommy had had made the discreet pa.s.s at Freckle-Girl. So on top of that we have a dead family physician labeled suicide, and he had treated Maureen, and does that make any sense or any fit? Penny believed with all her st.u.r.dy heart that Dr. Stewart Sherman could not have killed himself. made the discreet pa.s.s at Freckle-Girl. So on top of that we have a dead family physician labeled suicide, and he had treated Maureen, and does that make any sense or any fit? Penny believed with all her st.u.r.dy heart that Dr. Stewart Sherman could not have killed himself.

The tap at my door had to be Penny bringing back the two fifty-dollar bills, and as I went toward the door I was uncomfortably aware of a hollow feeling in the belly that was a l.u.s.tful antic.i.p.ation that maybe she could be induced to stay awhile.

But there were two men there, and they both stared at me with that mild, bland, skeptical curiosity of the experienced lawman. It must be very like the first inspection of new specimens brought back to the base camp by museum expeditions. The specimen might be rare or damaged or poisonous. But you check it over and soon you are able to catalog it based on the experience of cataloging thousands of others over the years, and then it is a very ordinary job from then on, the one you are paid for. The big, hard-boned, young one wore khakis, a white fishing cap with a peak, blue and white sneakers, and a white sport shirt with a pattern of red pelicans on it. It was worn outside the belt, doubtless to hide the miniature revolver that seems to be more and more of a fad with Florida local law. The smaller older one wore a pale tan suit, a white shirt with no tie. He had a balding head, liver spots, little dusty brown eyes, and a virulent halitosis that almost concealed the news that his young partner had been wearing the same shirt too long. "Name McGee?"

"That's right. What can I do for you?" I was stripped to my underwear shorts and barefoot.

"Well, for a starter, just turn around real slow with your arms out, then you can go stand by the window." He flipped his wallet open and gave me the glimpse of the little gold badge. "I'm Stanger," he said, and, indicating the younger one, "he's Nudenbarger. City."

"And for a starter," I said, "search warrant?"

"Not unless I have to have one, McGee. But you make us go through the motions, everybody gets p.i.s.sed off, and it's a hot night, and it all adds up the same way anyway. So you-if you want to-you can like invite us to just poke around."

"Poke around, Mr. Stanger. You too, Mr. Nudenbarger."

He checked my wallet on the countertop while Nudenbarger checked the closet, the suitcase, the bathroom. Stanger wrote down some bits of information copied off credit cards into a blue pocket notebook, dime-sized. He couldn't write without sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. Credit cards hearten them. The confetti of the power structure.

"Plenty cash, Mr. McGee."

Cash and credit had earned me the "mister." I moved over and sat on the bed without permission. "Seven hundred and something. Let me see... and thirty-eight. It's sort of a bad habit I'm trying to break, Mr. Stanger. It's stupid to carry cash. Probably the result of some kind of insecurity in my childhood. It's my blue blanket."

He looked at me impa.s.sively. "I guess that's pretty funny."

"Funny peculiar?"

"No. Being funny like jokes. Being witty with stupid cops."

"No. The thing about the blue blanket-"

"I keep track of Beethoven's birthday, and the dog flies a DeHavilland Moth."

"What's that?" Nudenbarger asked. "What's that?"

"Forget it, Lew," Stanger said in a weary voice.

"You always say that," Nudenbarger said, accusingly indignant.

It is like a marriage, of course. They are teamed up and they work on each other's nerves, and some of the gutsy ones who have gone into the dark warehouse have been shot in the back by the partner/wife who just couldn't stand any more.

Stanger perched a tired b.u.t.tock on the countertop, other leg braced with knee locked, licked his thumb, and leafed back through some pages in the blue notebook.

"Done any time at all, Mr. McGee?"

"No."

"Arrests?"

"Here and there. No charges."

"Suspicion of what?"

"Faked-up things. Impersonation, conspiracy, extortion. Somebody gets a great idea, but the first little investigation and it all falls down."

"Often?"

"What's often? Five times in a lifetime? About that."

"And you wouldn't mention it except if I checked it would show up someplace."

"If you say so."

"You have been here and there, McGee, because for me there is something missing. Right. What do you storm troopers want? What makes you think you can come in here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you don't object at all."

"Would it work with you, Stanger?"

"Not lately. So okay. Would you say you left about noon and got back a little after one today?"

"Close enough."

"And sacked out?"

"Slept like death until maybe eight o'clock."

"When you make a will, Mr. McGee, leave a little something to Mrs. Imber."

"Who is she?"

"Sort of the housekeeper. Checking on the job the maids do. Opened your door with her pa.s.skey at four o'clock, give or take ten minutes. You were snoring on the bed."

"Which sounds as if it was the right place to be."

"A nice place to be. Let me read you a little note. I copied this off the original, which is at the lab. It goes like this:... By the way, it was sealed in an envelope and on the outside it said Mr. T. McGee, One-O-nine. So we check some places and find a place with a One-O-nine with a McGee in it. Which is here, and you. It says: 'Dear Honey, What do I say about the wages of sin? Anyway, it was one of his lousy ideas and overlooked, so here it is back. Woke up and couldn't get back to sleep and went into the purse for a cigarette and found this. Reason I couldn't get back to sleep? Well, h.e.l.l. Reasons. Plural. Memories of you and me... getting me a little too worked up for sleepy-bye. And something maybe we should talk over. It's about something SS said about memory and digital skills. Have to go do a trick as a Special at eight, filling in for a friend. I'll drop this off on the way. No man in his right mind would pick a girl up in the hospital lot at four fifteen on Sunday morning, would he? Would he? Would he?' "

Stanger read badly. He said, "It's signed with an initial. P. n.o.body you ever heard of?"

"Penny Woertz."

"The hundred bucks was the wages of sin, McGee?"

"Just a not very funny joke. Private and personal."

Nudenbarger stood looking me over, a butcher selecting a side of beef. "Get chopped up in the service?"

"Some of it."

Nudenbarger's smirk, locker-room variety, didn't charm me. "How was she, McGee? Pretty good piece of a.s.s?"

"Shut up, Lew," Stanger said with weary patience. "How long did you know Miss Woertz, McGee?"

"Since we met in the bar last night. You can ask the man who was working the bar. His name is Jake."

"The room maid said you must have had a woman in here last night. So you confirm that it was the nurse. Then you took her back to her apartment at about noon. Did you go in with her?"

I did not like the shape of the little cloud forming on the horizon in the back of my head. "Let's stop the games," I said.

"She mention anybody she thought might be checking up on her?" Stanger asked.

"I'll give you that name after we stop playing games."

Stanger reached into the inside pocket of his soiled tan suitcoat, took an envelope out, took some color Polaroids out of it. As he handed them to me he said, "These aren't official record. Just something I do for my own personal file."

He had used a flash. She was on a kitchen floor, left shoulder braced against the base of the cabinet under the sink, head lolled back. She wore a blue and white checked robe, still belted, but the two sides had separated, the right side pulled away to expose one breast and expose the right hip and thigh. The closed blades of a pair of blue-handled kitchen shears had been driven deep into the socket of her throat. Blood had spread wide under her. Her bloodless face looked pallid and smaller than my memory of her, the freckles more apparent against the pallor. There were four shots from four different angles. I swallowed a heaviness that had collected in my throat and handed them back to him.

"Report came in at eight thirty," he said. "She was going to give another nurse a ride in, and the other nurse had a key to her place because she'd oversleep sometimes. The other nurse lives in one of those garden apartments around on the other side. According to the county medical examiner, time of death was four thirty, give or take twenty minutes. Bases it on coagulation, body temperature, lividity in the lower limbs, and the beginning of rigor rigor in the jaws and neck." in the jaws and neck."

I swallowed again. "It's... unpleasant."

"I looked in a saucepan on the stove to see if she was cooking something. I picked up the lid and looked in and the sealed-up note to you was in there, half wadded up, like she had hidden it in a hurry the first place she could think of. That part about remembering you and getting all worked up would be something she wouldn't want a boyfriend to read. Think the boyfriend knew she spent the night here in this room?"

"Maybe. I don't know."