"Tom, I've got Grade Four clearance. I can access all three of them. Furthermore, I talked to Jesse Land himself."

"Who's he?"

"The director of ACMUI, and a friend and classmate at Vanderbilt. He would know and he would tell me."

"That is strange, but right now all I want to do is-"

"Tom."

"Yes?"

"Listen, please. This is stranger than you think. This means that Blue Boy is unauthorized officially and must have been put together by some sort of dissident coalition from NRC and NIH with some foundation money, probably Ford-I think I picked up something from them-plus an interesting local political connection."

"Very interesting, but what are you worried about? Evidently you've already blown the whistle, told Jesse whoever."

"It don't work that way, Tom."

"It don't?"

"You don't keep up with politics, do you?"

"No."

"The way it is in politics, Tom, is that if you're head of an agency you generally like to keep your job."

"I see."

"Tom, may I give you a couple of elementary political facts?"

"Sure. You've got a couple of minutes."

She speaks patiently, patting my thigh to make her points. "Number one: Tom, you are aware that the presidential election will occur next month?"

"I was aware of that."

"You're aware that the incumbent ticket is a shoo-in, almost certain winners?"

"I suppose." I am thinking of all the political arguments at Fort Pelham, which were endless and boring and often inflamed to the point of fights.

"Tom, if this Blue Boy outfit can make it until November 7, they've got it made for good. Blue Boy can be presented as a fait accompli. They've got the clinical results, Tom, the numbers. And the numbers are going to be irresistible. And, Tom, they're not only going to be authorized if they can make it by then, they're going to be heavily funded. NIH can't turn them down. You know that, don't you?"

"Well-" I look at my watch. School is out.

This time Lucy's hand stays on my thigh. "But there's one fly in the ointment, Tom."

"Is that so?"

"That's so. Guess who?"

"Who?"

"You."

"Me."

"Tom, you're the one thing they're worried about. You're the danger. They even have a name for you-or what they're afraid you might become."

"What's that?"

"An intervener. Which is to say, the deadliest sort of whistle- blower. Tom, they have to do something about you."

"I know. They offered me a job. On the team."

"Are you taking it?"

"I haven't decided."

"Tom, for Christ's sake, they can send you back to Alabama, or-"

"Or?"

"Nothing."

"How could they send me back to Alabama?"

"Tom, you busted your parole when you crashed into the shunt site on Tunica Island. They have you."

"I see. So?"

"He thinks you've already blown the whistle on them."

"How's that?"

"It seems the deal between your pal Bob and your Father Smith has fallen through. Father Smith is not only not going to sell his hospice to them, he called the wrath of God down on him. Bob thinks you told him about the pilot and that you're going to turn loose the Catholics and fundamentalists on him. That would blow it."

"I suppose."

"Fortunately, you've got one thing going for you. No, two things."

"Yes?"

"One, Father Smith is crazy as a jaybird and everyone knows it. He spoke to Bob through a bullhorn."

"What's the other?"

"The other is, you're not exactly the type to get involved in religious crusades, and everybody knows that."

"So?"

"Tom." She has come close. There's half the seat left beyond her. We're spinning down River Road in the pickup like Louisiana lovers.

"Yes?"

"Bob Comeaux laid it out for me one, two, three. He was perfectly open and aboveboard and, Tom-"

"Yes?"

"He's got a good case."

"He has?"

"May I tell you?"

"Tell me later." I can see the widow's walk of Belle Ame over a cypress break.

"We're here. Let's get the kids." We're through the great iron gates of Belle Ame and into an English park.

Nothing could look less sinister than the gentle golden light of Louisiana autumn, which is both sociable and sad, casting shadows from humpy oaks across a peopled park, boys and girls in running suits gold and green, a bus loading up with day students, and the playing fields beyond, youth in all the rinsing sadness of its happiness, bare-legged pep-squad girls flourishing in sync banners as big as Camelot, boys in a pickup game of touch coming close to the girls both heedless and mindful.

Lucy speaks quickly, one hand creasing the flesh of my thigh to fold the words in.

"Take the job with Comeaux. You have no choice."

"I probably will. Look out for a couple named Brunette, a Mr. and Mrs. Brunette."

"Okay. You and the kids better spend the night at Pantherburn."

"Why?"

"Your phone's bugged, for one thing. Hal told me."

"So is yours, probably."

"Not now."

"Why not?"

"I fixed a device on my modem."

"You have a lovely one."

"What?"

"I said you have a lovely modem."

"You're crazy."

"Come back in half an hour. Head for the rec room over there."

I'm not looking at her now but at Van Dorn. He's coming down the outside staircase of Belle Ame, which hangs like a necklace from this lovely old lady of a house. Belle Ame, lovely lady. He's smiling, his arms outstretched. He's expecting us.

11. BELLE AME IS nestled under the levee in a magnolia grove, which hides most of the tank farm which surrounds it on three sides and the towers and pipery of the refinery which used to hum night and day like twenty dynamos before the oil wells dried up.

This is no hard-used, working plantation house like Pantherburn. There are no Sears freezers on the gallery, no bird dogs scrabbling in the hall. Belle Ame has been restored to its 1857 splendor, a slightly vulgar splendor, showy and ritzy even then, with its florid Corinthian columns from late rich Rome and the late rich South. It is even more showy and ritzy now, as much now the creature of Texaco and Hollywood as of King Cotton then. Texaco, which owned it, wanted to do something "cultural" to show they were not despoiling the state. Hollywood wanted its own dream palace of the South. More movies have been made here than on Paramount's back lot. Susan Hayward and John Carroll are its proper tenants. Clint Eastwood, a Yankee deserter, unshaven but not ungallant, was hidden out here by Southern belles, a bevy of hoopskirted starlets from Sunset Boulevard ...

Outside, between its far-flung wings, its famous twin staircases rise and curve as delicately as filigree between the columns of its slightly vulgar, thrusting Roman portico. The grounds are scattered with no less pretentious structures, garconnieres, pigeonnieres, slave quarters, and even a columned Greek-revival privy.

Texaco, which didn't need it, gave the place to a private school, which had been founded to revive the traditional Southern academy founded on Greek ideals of virtue and to avoid the integration of the public schools.

Van Dorn holds out a hand to each of us. "Old Br'er Possum Tom! Cud'n Lucy!" He gives her a kiss, pulls us close, holds us off. "Look at you two. I like. Splendid. Aren't y'all kissin' cousins too?" Van Dorn looks good, his gray-green eyes glittering, his heavy handsome pocked face not pale but slightly flushed as if he had just waked. He's wearing old air force coveralls with knee pockets and loops for tools. He extracts a big Stillson wrench. "Pardon the mess but guess who's the number-one handyman here. Have you tried to hire a plumber lately, Lucy? I've been up to my ass in cellar water. Come on in. Excuse me," he says, bowing to Lucy. "Not Cud'n but Dr. Lipscomb, I believe. Nurse Cheney is expecting you."

"I've come to pick up the kids, Van," I say, feeling better about him. "I called Mrs. Cheney."

"Sho now. Okay, come on in and I'll have 'em rounded up from the dorm or more likely from the stables."

"Y'all go on in," says Lucy. "I'll just go on over there to the rec room. I know the way." "Sho now. Tom-" He opens a hand to me and the house.

Van Dorn doesn't mind Lucy striking out on her own. Inside, he fixes his half-drunk drink and offers me one. I shake my head. We're in a splendid room, what I remember as an old-style living room but now turned into a sort of gaming room with a large round mahogany-and-rosewood poker table with red-leather inlay and slots for the chips, a Bokhara rug, a severe Derby mantel on which, however, are scattered half a dozen teal and pintail decoys. The plantation desk, stomach-high, so the busy squire, on the run between hunts, could write checks standing, has become a dry bar, with crystal decanters of whiskey and toddy glasses.

We are sitting at the poker table, Van Dorn gazing down at his bourbon, face grave. "I owe you an apology. I thought to be doing ya'll a favor, keeping the kids."

"Yes?"

"With Ellen headed for Fresno and you busy as a bird dog with your practice, I told her the kids were perfectly welcome to stay with us. She seemed quite worried. And she couldn't locate you."

"Thanks. I understand. But I've got Chandra to help me look after them. Is something wrong with Ellen?"

"I'm glad you asked, Tom." Van Dorn, still gazing at his drink, pulls back his upper lip. "I'm really glad you asked. Frankly I've been concerned, Tom."

"Is that so?"

"It's the mood swings, Tom"-he looks up, fine eyes glittering even in the soft light of the room- "which I'm sure you've noticed and which you certainly know more about than I do. But I've got news for you."

"Yes?"

"This trip is going to help her!"

"Is that right?"

"You better believe it."

"How?"

"I'll tell you how. She and Sheri are going to win the non-master pairs, she's going to go over one hundred MPs, become a master in her own right, and come home feeling great!"

"Oh, is Sheri going with her?" I feel better.

"I insisted on it. Sheri'll look after her. And Ellen will carry Sheri in the non-master pairs. Sheri's competent enough, though no super-lady like Ellen. Hell, Ellen would win it even with you, ha ha!"