"Running Dog" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeLillo Don)

4

A set of tracks ran east and west along the front of the warehouse in downtown Dallas. It was a five-story building with corrugated metal doors and flaking paint. There was a loading platform out front. A small sign: PREVIEW DISTRIBUTIONS. All the windows were boarded up.

Inside Richie Armbrister sat at a long table, tapping the keys of a pocket calculator. At his elbow a desk lamp burned. Nearby three dogs bay sleeping. In the gloom beyond was the figure of Daryl Shimmer, Richie's bodyguard, extended across an old sofa. Two more dogs near the sofa, sleeping. Beyond that, in total darkness, fork lifts and pallets and shipping cylinders, enormous ones, numbering in the hundreds.

Daryl was becoming increasingly morose and withdrawn. Physically distant. Richie noticed how he'd gradually been moving farther away. The sofa was a backward step, from Daryl's point of view. He'd spent the whole evening sitting in a fork-lift vehicle in the dark, about thirty yards away. He'd had to revert to the sofa if he wanted to sleep.

Everyone else was gone. They left singly, in pairs, in small groups, over a period of twenty-four hours, reverently, slipping out the north door. The warehouse was quiet for the first time since Richie had bought it.

There had been phone calls from a man who identified himself as Sherman Kramer. Daryl recognized the name. Kidder. A small-time operator. But with connections. Large connections.

A certain man was spending a lot of time in the parking lot across the street. Richie had watched him through a gap between two boards that were nailed across one of the windows. He spent most of his time near the Ross Avenue end of the lot, which was the far end in relation to the warehouse. He leaned against a car. Or walked back and forth. Richie thought it might be the man he'd found in his sauna aboard the DC-9. Hard to tell from this distance, looking through a dirtsmeared window.

Lightborne's phone was disconnected. No forwarding number. Richie had wanted to speak with Odell. He trusted Odell. Odell was family. Real family. The only number he had for Odell in New York was Lightborne's number. Disconnected.

He tried to concentrate on the figures before him. Avenues of commerce. That's all he cared about. The higher issues. Demography. Patterns of distribution. Legal maneuvers and technicalities. Bookkeeping finesse. He'd never even asked Lightborne what the footage was supposed to show.

He had visions of a mishandled investigation. They would fail to trace the rifle to its owner. They'd lose his autopsy report. Witnesses would move out of state, never to be heard from again. His funeral. A closed-coffin affair.

The phone rang. He watched Daryl start to rise. It rang again. Daryl came toward the table where Richie was sitting. He picked up the phone in a series of masterfully sullen movements, his face showing a blend of resentment and lingering obligation. Richie had doubled his salary on the way in from the airport and promised him a dune buggy with chromed exhausts for his birthday. This was in return for Daryl's sworn allegiance, no matter what.

"It's Kidder again."

"What's he want?" Richie said. "I don't want to talk to him."

"Same thing. A meeting."

"I don't have any can with any film. That's all I'm saying. That's the meeting. We just had it."

"He doesn't know anything about cans with films," Daryl said. "He just wants to arrange talks. Someone's coming."

"Not here. They're not coming here. Tell him the dogs."

"He says outside is okay. He has someone he's bringing. Tomorrow, after eight sometime. Outside, inside, makes no difference."

"What should we do?"

"Ask him who he's bringing."

"Ask him," Richie said.

"He says no names available right now. A respected man in the field."

"Ask him what field."

"Too late," Daryl said. "He hung up."

Richie took a bite of one of the Danish butter cookies he'd carried back from New York. He pushed the container toward Daryl, who waved him off and headed slowly toward the sofa, his lean frame slumping. One of the dogs stirred, briefly, as Daryl dropped onto the sofa. The dogs were good dogs, Richie believed. Scout dogs. German shepherds. Trained in simulated combat conditions.

That was for break-ins. Close-quarter action. What about long range? There were bullets these days that went through concrete. On the other side of the parking lot and across Ross Avenue was the General Center Building. Excellent place for a sniper. Perfect place. He could stand on the roof and blast away, firing not only through Richie's boarded windows but through the brick walls as well. He'd leave the rifle on the roof and disappear, confident that the police would smear his fingerprints.

It was a hell of a party. Loud. The Senator liked noise at his parties. Young crowd mostly. He biked having young people around.

He moved sideways through the living room, from group to group, smiling, barking out greetings, clutching the upper arms of men, gripping women at the waist. Maneuvering around the cocktail table he came across a woman who reminded him of a Vestier nude he'd seen in a private collection in Paris-big-hipped, self-satisfied, status-oriented. An executive secretary.

Standing with her was a younger woman, much less monumental. Elbowing his way into the conversation, Percival wasn't surprised to see her suddenly _actuate_-the eyes, the smile, the tense and hopeful and solemn delight. Being recognized would never cease to be one of the spiritual rewards of public service.

"You are," he said.

Mouth moving.

"Museum. Fascinating, I would think."

Noise music laughter.

Of course he'd _expected_ to be recognized. It was his house and his party. Still, it was always interesting, watching people release this second self of theirs. Women especially. Becoming shiny little space pods with high-energy receptors. Percival believed celebrity was a phenomenon related to religious mysticism. That ad for the Rosicrucians. WHAT SECRET POWER DOES THIS MAN POSSESS? Celebrity brings out the cosmic potential in people. And that couldn't be anything but good. What was the word? Salutary. That couldn't be anything but salutary.

As the older woman, the Vestier, looked on, Percival led this mellow child to the short staircase at the other end of the living room. There they sat, intimate chums, with their drinks, on the next to last step.

"Now then. P'raps we can talk."

"This is the really nicest house."

"You were saying. Museum. You mentioned."

"Where I work."

"You're associated with? Museums. I am passionate. Treasures, treasures."

"The Medical Museum of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology."

"Jesus Christmas."

"Who did your decor?" she said.

"I did."

"It's so lovingly done."

She was half smashed, he realized. Roughly his own situation. A Pakistani put his left hand on the fourth step, as a brace, then leaned up toward Percival, diagonally, to shake hands. Percival thought it might be Peter Sellers.

"I really like your programs," the young woman said.

"I'm trying to think. Are you a Renoir? I see you as a little firmer. A Titian Venus. Not quite melted."

"I am just so charmed by this whole situation."

"Let me ask," he said. "An important question. But private. Calls for outright privacy. Repeat after me. This question."

"This question."

"Calls for."

"Who did the wallpaper?"

"Some Irishman with a crooked face _did_ it. I selected the patterns."

"It really. It shows so much obvious love and care."

"Important, important question. Now wait. We need to ensconce ourselves. Because it's that kind of question."

"Ho ho."

"Exactly," he said. "Now follow me. How's your drink?"

"My dreenk she all right, señor."

He led her into the bedroom. She let her body sag to indicate awe. The canopy bed, the armoire, the miniature lowboy, the grain cutter's bench, the cloverleaf lamp table, the mighty oak rocker.

"Sit, sit, sit."

He found himself thinking of Lightborne. It may have been the sight of the phone. He'd been trying to call Lightborne, who had promised him a screening. They'd talked twice on the phone and Percival had disguised his voice, in a different way, each time. He was trying to figure out how to handle the screening. Lightborne had assured him it would be private. Still, there'd have to be a projectionist in the immediate vicinity, and Lightborne would probably want to be present as well. How to view the footage without being recognized. Preceding that, however, was the problem of contacting Lightborne. Percival had been calling for two days. A disconnect recording every time. No forwarding number.

He sat at the end of the bed, watching her rock.

"You had a question, Senator."

"Call me Lloyd."

"I am so charmed by this."

"You have an extraordinarily expressive mouth."

"I know."

"English-expressive."

"I would like to ask, confidentially. Are you thinking of the presidency? Of running? Because I have heard talk. Young people find your programs extremely appealing."

"No, no, no. That's a dead end, the presidency."

"I think you'd find young people very supportive."

He watched her drink.

"I'm having trouble with the Titian concept," he said. "Your mouth is so English. Do you know Sussex at all?"

"Tallish man? Wears striped shirts with white collars?"

"Call me Lloyd," he said.

He got up and closed the door. He stood behind her chair, gripping the uprights, and rocked her slowly back and forth.

"Except the Sunbelt would be a problem," she said. "You wouldn't find a power base down there."

The phone rang. He moved quickly to the side of the bed, realizing belatedly that it couldn't be Lightborne, that Lightborne didn't know who he was, much less how to reach him. It was his wife, back home. A picture came immediately to mind. She is sitting up in bed. Her face gleams with some kind of restorative ointment. All over the room are volumes of the Warren Report along with her notebooks full of "correlative data." She is wearing a pale-blue bed jacket of puffy quilted material.

"What do you want?" he said.

"Wondering how you are."

"Go away. Will you go away?"

"I am away."

"I'm having a noisy, noisy party and I love it."

"I don't hear a thing," she said.

"I'm in the bedroom and the door is closed."

"Who's with you?"

"Oswald was the lone assassin. When will you get it through your thick skull?"

"There's someone with you and I don't give two shits, if you want to know the truth."

"She's a girl with lambent hair," he said.

"What else? Jesus, I mean what else would she be?"

"I'll put her on."

He carried the phone over to the rocking chair and asked the young woman to tell his wife where she worked.

"The Medical Museum of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology."

Percival took the phone from her and walked back across the room. This time, addressing his wife, he whispered fiercely.

"See what you've done to me?"

"I've done? I've done?"

"I have no patience with this kind of thing."

"That doesn't make sense, Lloyd."

"It's all been drained out of me."

"What kind of thing?"

"I'm bone dry," he said.

He went downstairs, circulated briefly and came back up with two fresh drinks. He stood behind her chair, rocking.

"Senator, you had a question."

"It all started with a question."

"I'm sure waiting."

"Yes, yes, yes, yes."

He swiveled the rocker a few degrees to the right so that she could see him, and vice versa, in the mirror over the lowboy. He felt completely sober. He felt clear-headed to a remarkable degree.

"How would I look in a beard?" he said.

Ignoring the mirror, she glanced back over her shoulder, as though only the real thing, the three-dimensional Senator Percival, could serve as a basis from which to develop a mature reply. He was gratified to see she was treating the question with the attentive care he felt it deserved.

"Would you recognize me as Lloyd Percival if you saw me in a beard? Dark glasses, say, and a beard. If you saw me in an unlikely place. A more or less run-down area. Far from the splendor of Capitol Hill."

Talerico walked through the arrivals lounge. He was wearing a vested suede suit and carrying a Burberry trenchcoat over one arm.

He saw Kidder waiting in the baggage area. Definitely a type. They ran to types, these people with nine phone numbers and a different name for each day of the week. A man who looks pressed for time or money. A man who operates in a state of permanent exhaustion. He was probably no more than thirty years old. A shame. Fatigue was his medium by now. He needed it to live.

"Vinny Tal, how are you?"

"Head winds."

"Twenty minutes late. But no problem. We drive down there. You talk to this Richie. Nice and smooth."

"It's arranged."

"It's more or less arranged," Kidder said.

They went outside and got into Kidder's bent Camaro. He started up, turned on the lights, and they moved off.

"Vinny, I want to ask. Frankly. What's wrong with your face? What happened to cause that?"

"This woman I knew, about a year ago, threw lye in my face."

"That's awful. That's awful."

"Lye."

"What for? Why?"

"I was so fucking handsome she couldn't stand it."

Kidder hit the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand.

"Shit, you had me thinking."

"It was driving her crazy, just looking at me. She had the permanent hots. She had to do something. It was wrecking her life."

"You had me going. Vin."

"It always gets a reaction. The lye. It has that effect on people. Lye."

The door on Talerico's side squeaked. Something rattled around in the trunk. He was sorry he hadn't arranged to rent a car. He owned an Olds Cutlass Supreme. He was accustomed to a measure of comfort. This thing here was a coffee pot.

"Let me ask. Vin. Ever been down here? Everybody has two first names down here."

"I watch TV."

"That's in case they forget one of them. Which they aren't too bright, some of them."

"First time down."

"I have to say I frankly like it. It's humane. People walk around. They're living."

"We're almost there, or what."

"We're still in the airport," Kidder said. "This is the airport."

The car made Talerico think of his youth. Six or seven guys piling into an old Chevy. Chipping in a quarter each for gas. It was depressing to think this Kidder rode around in the same kind of car. This Kidder here.

"What kind of harassment up there? They harass people in Canada?"

"You have the FBI. I have the RCMP."

"Which means what?"

"Which means they can kick in my door any time of day or night."

"That's Russia."

"My ass, Russia. There's a thing called a writ of assistance. With a writ of assistance they come pouring in. It doesn't have to have my name on it, or my address, or whatever it is they're searching for. It's wide open. First they come pouring through your doors and windows. Then they fill in the blanks."

"It must feel good to be back in the U.S.," Kidder said.

"I'm thrilled."

"We're out of the airport. We just left the airport."

"Keep up the good work."

"That was the airport line right there. We're definitely out."

"You talk to this Richie?"

"I talked to the dipshit who answers his phone."

"You didn't get in the warehouse, in other words."

"Ta!, it's a warehouse. What's so special? You say you want to develop the kid. Does it make a difference where? You talk. You make your point."

"Tell you what I found out, asking around independently. His dogs don't bark. They're trained to be silent. They come at you without warning."

"See?" Kidder said. "Good thing I didn't try to get inside. You should have told me earlier. What if I'd tried to get inside?"

"They come out of the dark, leaping," Talerico said. "Trained to go for the throat. But silent. They don't even growl."

"What's this thing you're after?"

"Dirty movie, what else? Too hot for this Richie to handle. I'm doing the kid a favor."

"How'd you hear about it?"

"I got a call from New York."

"The relatives. Always the relatives."

"Paulie gave me a call. What? Ten days ago."

"I never met the man," Kidder said. "I know the man's reputation."

"He called me. That's how I heard."

"How did he hear?"

"Somebody named Lightborne called him. Out of nowhere. Said he was lining up bidders. Wanted to know if Paul was interested in bidding."

"Interested in bidding," Kidder said.

"Can you imagine that?"

"Interested in bidding."

They would try to talk girls into getting in the car. Seven guys in the car, not too many girls were interested. You didn't ordinarily find girls that curious. They kept a zip gun under the driver's seat. They never went anywhere without the gun. This guy Kidder here. That was about his level. His sex life is probably restricted to the back seat of the car. He keeps a Navy flare in the glove compartment.

"Tell you what I could go for," Talerico said. "I could go for some zookie."

"What's zookie?"

"Jewish nookie."

"I had to ask, right?"

"It always gets a reaction. Zookie. It has that little sound people like."

"See those lights?" Kidder said.

Twenty minutes later the car eased into the dark parking lot located across the tracks from the warehouse. A single freight car sat on the tracks. _Ship It On the Frisco!_ Kidder turned off the headlights and they sat facing the warehouse. It was cold. Talerico got out of the car to put on his trench… coat, then slid back into the seat. This wasn't what he'd had in mind.

Half an hour later they saw a figure emerge from beneath the freight car, coming up from a position on all fours. Slender young man. Black. Wearing a heavy sweater. Carrying a flashlight.

"His name's Daryl Shimmer. He looks after the kid."

"Who looks after him?"

Daryl came toward the car, looking around him every few steps. Ten feet away he put his left hand under the sweater and lifted a small gun out of his belt. He approached the driver's side.

"Shit," Talerico said wearily.

Daryl had the gun in Kidder's face. A.25 caliber automatic. Talerico could read the imprint _Hartford Ct. U.S.A._ above Daryl's long dusty thumb extended along the barrel.

"I know you people looking for some motion picture. We don't know where it's at. Now Richie there, it's all he can do to piss inside the bowl, the way you people keep pressuring. We're saying get back. We don't know the whereabouts. We don't want to know. We're walking away. It's all over, we're saying. You locate the motion picture, more power to you. Don't even tell us about it."

"Listen, hard-on," Kidder said.

Daryl bit his lower lip.

"Get that thing out of my face. That's in bad taste, a pointed gun. That's ugly."

"Who you talking?"

"Scumbag."

"I fucking shoot."

"Anything I hate, man, it's being pointed at."

Overlapping dialogue. Volume increasing all the time.

"You ought to put some meat on your bones," Talerico said quietly. "You're awful thin. I hate to see that."

"Shut up all around."

"You ought to eat more of that soul food."

"Get that gun," Kidder said. "If you don't get that gun. Point it out of here."

"Who you talking?"

"Dipshit. You hard-on."

Daryl had the gun right in Kidder's cheek and he was biting his lower lip again. Kidder was screaming at him, coming up with names Talerico hadn't heard in years.

"You ought to spend more time with people," Talerico said softly. "You're alone too much. I don't like to see that. It's unhealthy. Look at you. You don't know how to behave around people. You ought to get out more. And you ought to eat more. You ought to put some meat on those bones."

Another figure appeared. This one at the side of the freight car. He came walking toward the Camaro. Daryl, keeping the gun in Kidder's face, directed the flashlight into the car.

"They're ready to listen, Richie."

"I heard that yelling. We don't need that here. Yelling."

"This trouble's yours," Kidder said. "This is yours."

"I came out to show we don't have anything to hide. I came out in good faith. I don't know anything about the item you want. You keep putting pressure. It's aggravating."

"The pressure's in your head," Talerico said.

"I didn't even bring the dogs, to show good faith. To make an appearance. I thought this would lessen the mystery. You wouldn't want to get in there so much if you saw me, if you saw there's nothing special and that I don't have the item."

"He wants his Bugs Bunny teeth kicked in," Talerico explained to Kidder.

"This is yours," Kidder kept shouting. "I'm looking at you right here."

Richie was wearing an oversized peacoat. His hands were stuffed into the deep pockets. He nodded in Talerico's direction. A gesture meant for Daryl-shine the light on the other one.

Talerico turned the right side of his face toward the light. The dead side. The side with the chilled meat. His fierce eye stared blankly.

"I'm not even here," Kidder was shouting. "The whole thing's over."

"He wants to eat this gun," Daryl said.

"You stupid bastards. You cuntlaps. You don't know where you're standing."

Talerico had heard this kind of dislocated shouting before. It reminded him of his cousin Paul. When Paul faced trouble, he got meaner, he got deadly. And sometimes he shouted things that connected to the situation only in the loosest of ways, if at all. Talerico had seen his cousin terrorize people- cops more than once, men with guns-simply by displaying rage that bordered on the irrational. He was obviously possessed. Too real to deal with. Once they see you don't mind dying, they're in serious trouble and know it.

All in all, Talerico was impressed by this aspect of Kidder. Kidder was tough. He didn't take shit. He screamed and ranted. The closer he got to dying, the more he seemed to control the situation. The more he intimidated the opposition.

It wasn't bluff, either. That was clear. It was genuine outrage and meanness and fury. Kidder was definitely impressing him. He didn't think a man that exhausted could summon such insanity.

"I want to make like a statement here," Talerico said.

"I feel we welcome that," Richie said. "Whatever we can exchange in the way of views, that means it's looking up."

"You died five minutes ago. You've been dead five full minutes. You're so dead I can smell you. That's my statement."

"I don't want to know who he is," Richie told his bodyguard.

"Look at the eye," Talerico said.

"If you know who he is," Richie said, "don't tell me."

He turned and headed toward the warehouse, slipping around the freight car and out of sight.

"Eat and run," Kidder screamed.

"You're going, aren't you?" Daryl said.

"I'm looking right at them."

"You're going. You want to go."

"They don't know the words. They're someplace else completely."

Daryl bit his lower lip. He squeezed the trigger and Talerico jumped into the door and bounced back and then found the handle and had the door open. He walked quickly, head down, his ears belling electrically. He went past the warehouse and then made a left. There were banks, shops, hotels. Very little traffic. No cabs in sight. He'd have to call for a cab.

He made a right and saw the Southland Hotel. It was roughly ten p.m. Very dead here in the urban core. He'd get a cab to take him to the airport. First plane out. New York, Chicago, Toronto. His overnight bag was in the back seat of Kidder's car. He went over the contents mentally. Nothing there that might be traced to him. Not even a monogrammed shirt.

A cab pulled up at the hotel as Talerico approached.

Sooner or later, in this line of work, in acquisitions, you were bound to find yourself in a stress situation, especially if your business took you to a part of the U.S. where everybody owns a gun of one kind or another, for one purpose or another.

Cowboys.

Earl Mudger stood outside Lien's, a Vietnamese restaurant located above the Riverwalk in San Antonio. He'd stopped off here, instead of flying directly to Dallas, in order to have dinner with an old war buddy, George Barber, who was now attached to the Air Force Security Service, stationed at Kelly.

He was glad he'd thought of it. They'd enjoyed themselves in all the time-honored ways. Affection, sentiment, vague regret. He was waiting for George to get his car from a nearby lot and take him to the airport for the short flight to Dallas.

George had filled Mudger in on the latest hardware. It was a complex sensation, hearing that specialized language again, studded as it was with fresh terms. It reminded Mudger of Vietnam, of course. The brand names. The comfort men found in the argot of weaponry.

It also reminded him of the surreal conversation he'd had, long distance with Van, just before he'd left home to come down here. With Tran Le on the extension, translating when necessary, Mudger had listened to Van explain that he wanted to approach the subject by air. They'd traced the subject to an old encampment somewhere between U.S. 385 and the Rio Grande where it loops north above Stillman. It wasn't enough for Van to say he wanted a helicopter. He tried to specify type, size, trade name, model number and technical characteristics.

All this nomenclature, which wasn't even English to begin with, eventually defeated Van, who said he'd settle for whatever Mudger could come up with. Thanks largely to George Barber's efforts, Mudger came up with a two-man patrol helicopter, a Hughes 200, one of the types used by U.S. customs agents to keep up with border smuggling. As an afterthought, Mudger asked George if a stretcher pannier could be fitted externally to this type of aircraft. It could.

Tran Le wanted to know what a "subject" was.

George drove up and Mudger got in the car. Vietnam, in more ways than one, was a war based on hybrid gibberish. But Mudger could understand the importance of this on the most basic of levels, the grunt level, where the fighting man stood and where technical idiom was often the only element of precision, the only true beauty, he could take with him into realms of ambiguity.

Caliber readings, bullet grains, the names of special accessories. Correspondents filled their dispatches with these, using names as facets of narrative, trying to convey the impact of violent action by reporting concatenations of letters and numbers. Mudger loved it, both ironically and in the plainest of ways. Spoken aloud by sweaty men in camouflage grease, these number-words and coinages had the inviolate grace of a strict meter of chant.

Weapons were named, surnamed, slang-named, christened, titled and dubbed. Protective devices. Bearings of perfect performance. Reciting these names was the soldier's poetry, his counterjargon to death.

"I guess I ought to hit it," George said, "or you'll miss your plane."

Mudger didn't really care. This operation was slop. Maybe it was true, what people seemed to suspect. Without PAC/ORD behind him, things were slipping badly. No doubt PAC/ORD itself was helping manage the process of deterioration. This whole thing should have been handled by now, without his presence becoming necessary. The other thing, Van and Cao and the adjustment, was an even greater mess, at least potentially, having the foreordained character of some classical epic, modernized to include a helicopter. But he was the one who'd let it go on. That was stupid. He wanted to be in his basement shop, right now, pounding a heated steel blank with a double-faced hammer.

Early man roaming the tundra. You have to name your weapon before you can use it to kill.

Lomax was motionless in the cashier's shack.

It occurred to him that one day soon areas such as this would be regarded as precious embodiments of a forgotten way of life. Commerce and barter. The old city. The marketplace. Downtown.

What are we doing to our forests, our lakes, our warehouse districts? That's how it would go. What are we doing to our warehouse districts, our freight yards, our parking lots?

He was tired, hungry and cold. The man who handed out tickets and collected money had left some Ritz crackers stacked on a piece of wax paper. Lomax edged them away with his elbow. Other people's food. Other people's refrigerators. He'd always been vaguely disgusted by things he'd happened to see in other people's refrigerators.

He heard a man shout. The sound had the tone of an insult. Briefly someone's head became visible over the top of a car parked about fifty yards away. The voice again, screaming insults. A second figure appeared, moving toward the car.

Lomax sucked in his breath and removed the automatic from his waistband holster. He put his left hand on the door handle, ready to push it open if necessary. It was possible his silhouette could be detected in the very dim light cast by a streetlamp not far away. He remained motionless for several minutes. Some more screaming. No one else around. The old city. The abandoned core.

The second figure moved off, toward the warehouse. Lomax opened the door of the shack. There was a gunshot. He moved quickly to the nearest car, crouching down behind it. Someone passed within twenty yards of him, moving quickly, a man, head down, as if he were walking into a stiff wind. Lomax looked over the trunk of the car. Someone was walking in the opposite direction, slowly. Also male. He disappeared behind the freight car.

Lomax stayed where he was for three full minutes, listening. Then he headed toward the car where the shooting had taken place. He held his gun against his thigh. That arm he kept stiff, not swinging naturally as the other arm was. He saw himself leaving the scene. A jump in time. He saw himself getting off a plane at National in Washington. He saw himself selling condominiums on the Gulf Coast.

Both doors were open. On the ground on the driver's side was a man, breathing deeply. Lomax crouched five feet away, his gun directed at the man's head.

"Who are you?"

The same worried breathing. The deadweight respiration of a deep sleeper.

"Who are you?" Lomax said.

"Fuck off. I'm hit."

"I know you're hit."

"The slug's in my throat. I feel something."

Lomax leaned to his right for a better look. The man had been shot on the left side of the face, below the cheekbone. With the doors open, the car's interior light had come on and Lomax could see powder burns rimming the hole in the man's cheek. There was blood all over his mouth.

"What's your name? Who are you?"

"Mind your own business. Let me breathe."

"I can get you an ambulance. Would you like that?"

"If I start choking, put your finger down my throat. I'd appreciate your doing that. I hate that feeling of choking. I fucking dread it."

"No promises," Lomax said, "unless you tell me who you are."

"I'm Sherman Kantrowitz."

"Who are you, Sherman? Who were those other people?"

"I'm the son of Sophie and Nat."

"Who were those people?"

The same uneven deep breathing. The search for a rhythm.

"Who do you work for, Sherman?"

"I want to swallow but I'm afraid."

Lomax saw himself playing eighteen holes a day. The sun is shining. There's a sweet breeze from the Gulf.

Tran Le.

The fields were tawny and sparse. Three-quarters of the wheel and more. Winter's pure alcohol in the air.

Tran Le standing by the window.

Her eyes were large and dark and had a special dimension inward, an element of contriteness, as of a child always on the verge of being punished. Without this softening depth, her face might have had too much contour. The lines of her cheekbones and jaw were strong and exact, and she had a full mouth, wide and silver-pink and sensual, and a little greedy in a certain light, a little coarse. Again a counterpoise. It mocked the childlike eyes.

She moved from window to window now. Small lamps swung on the patio. A cane chair stood beneath a tree. The end of a red canoe jutted from one of the stables. She crossed to the other side of the room. Leaves turned slowly in the pond. The scarlet runner hung over the edge of a small shed. It was quiet, minutes till sundown, a tinted light in the fields. She watched the ponies graze.