this hour? Are you stalking me?”
“No, no,” he said. “I went to the graveyard for dawn shots. No one told me they keep the gates locked until seven. I was in the grocery. A man saw my camera equipment, he pointed you out.” Finally he studied my face. “I’m disturbing you. If this is a bad time—”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s call it a bad time. Why don’t you call my secretary and make an appointment?”
“Yes, sir.” He slid a reporter’s notepad from a vest pocket.
“His name is Liska.” I gave him the sheriff’s direct office number.
“You’re the best,” he said.
My cheap practical joke reminded me that Liska was looking for a fax. His words had been “Tell me what those dead men said to you.”
An old Raleigh ten-speed with ape-hanger handlebars was parked at my screen door. Duffy Lee Hall sat on my porch.
“I would’ve brought you a coffee,” I said.
“Had mine an hour ago. One more would rocket me to the Tortugas.”
“What’s up, home delivery?”
He slapped a large manila envelope. “I got your packets, and I printed some extras.” He spread four eight-by-tens across my table. “Were you like me and a million other ninth-graders? Did you learn to tie a noose? How to loop coils around the rope, and feed the rope back through them?”
“Sure. Fascinated the hell out of me.”
“Maybe it was a rite of passage, a ritual for all boys. Like throwing jackknives into the dirt, to see how close we could come to the other guy’s foot. Or doing forty downhill on Schwinns, defying death every way we could think of, positive we never would die.”
“All of the above,” I said. “My specialty was to fake being wounded by an enemy sniper. I would spin and fall off the garage roof, shooting the sniper on my way down.”
“Check these shots. The group Liska gave me, the coils go one way; the roll you gave me, the coils go the other way. I don’t know about you, but it was hard enough to learn the knot, much less bending it backward.”
I studied the pictures. “Two bad guys, you think?”
“More likely two than an ambidextrous hangman.” He stood to go. “That should be enough to keep you out of this one, Alex.”
“Duffy Lee, I have no desire to get into this mess.”
“But I’m just saying, you don’t want to be sandwich meat, chasing one murderer and outrunning another at the same time.”
6
Carmen Sosa had agreed to cover the domestic side of my house rental. Once a week she would wash sheets and towels at her place—three houses down the lane—and make sure that garbage cans reached the curb on proper days. Everything else, including kitchen tidiness and soap in the outdoor shower, went to my tenant. Carmen would charge me a “major wine” for each visit. I was to vary the vineyards and surprise her. “No bottle before its time,” she said. “And no trash under twenty bucks.”
I wanted to bury myself in the bed to recapture lost sleep, but I stripped and remade it and rolled a Burgess Cabernet into the laundry bag. Walking the lane to deliver Carmen’s first task to her back door, I smelled baked bread and frangipani. Carmen’s sago palm had gone berserk, grown two feet since I last noticed it. The sensory ambush launched new misgivings about my desertion of Dredgers Lane, but I fought back with images of solitude on Little Torch, my coming days in the kayak. It also helped to picture myself fanning 160 pictures of Benjamin Franklin, looking much like Jack Benny.
Back at the house, I wanted to write Liska’s fax in longhand, get it done before Johnny Griffin showed up. I began with the scene address, my time of arrival, and the presence of Bohner and Millican. My first narrative sentence read, “No footprints available at Marathon scene due to F.O.P. meeting on site.” Then I heard the screen door open, and Liska’s voice.
“Wake up, Jerky Boy,” he said. “You sleep sitting up, you’ll pitch off your chair and hit your head.” He
“No, no,” he said. “I went to the graveyard for dawn shots. No one told me they keep the gates locked until seven. I was in the grocery. A man saw my camera equipment, he pointed you out.” Finally he studied my face. “I’m disturbing you. If this is a bad time—”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s call it a bad time. Why don’t you call my secretary and make an appointment?”
“Yes, sir.” He slid a reporter’s notepad from a vest pocket.
“His name is Liska.” I gave him the sheriff’s direct office number.
“You’re the best,” he said.
My cheap practical joke reminded me that Liska was looking for a fax. His words had been “Tell me what those dead men said to you.”
An old Raleigh ten-speed with ape-hanger handlebars was parked at my screen door. Duffy Lee Hall sat on my porch.
“I would’ve brought you a coffee,” I said.
“Had mine an hour ago. One more would rocket me to the Tortugas.”
“What’s up, home delivery?”
He slapped a large manila envelope. “I got your packets, and I printed some extras.” He spread four eight-by-tens across my table. “Were you like me and a million other ninth-graders? Did you learn to tie a noose? How to loop coils around the rope, and feed the rope back through them?”
“Sure. Fascinated the hell out of me.”
“Maybe it was a rite of passage, a ritual for all boys. Like throwing jackknives into the dirt, to see how close we could come to the other guy’s foot. Or doing forty downhill on Schwinns, defying death every way we could think of, positive we never would die.”
“All of the above,” I said. “My specialty was to fake being wounded by an enemy sniper. I would spin and fall off the garage roof, shooting the sniper on my way down.”
“Check these shots. The group Liska gave me, the coils go one way; the roll you gave me, the coils go the other way. I don’t know about you, but it was hard enough to learn the knot, much less bending it backward.”
I studied the pictures. “Two bad guys, you think?”
“More likely two than an ambidextrous hangman.” He stood to go. “That should be enough to keep you out of this one, Alex.”
“Duffy Lee, I have no desire to get into this mess.”
“But I’m just saying, you don’t want to be sandwich meat, chasing one murderer and outrunning another at the same time.”
6
Carmen Sosa had agreed to cover the domestic side of my house rental. Once a week she would wash sheets and towels at her place—three houses down the lane—and make sure that garbage cans reached the curb on proper days. Everything else, including kitchen tidiness and soap in the outdoor shower, went to my tenant. Carmen would charge me a “major wine” for each visit. I was to vary the vineyards and surprise her. “No bottle before its time,” she said. “And no trash under twenty bucks.”
I wanted to bury myself in the bed to recapture lost sleep, but I stripped and remade it and rolled a Burgess Cabernet into the laundry bag. Walking the lane to deliver Carmen’s first task to her back door, I smelled baked bread and frangipani. Carmen’s sago palm had gone berserk, grown two feet since I last noticed it. The sensory ambush launched new misgivings about my desertion of Dredgers Lane, but I fought back with images of solitude on Little Torch, my coming days in the kayak. It also helped to picture myself fanning 160 pictures of Benjamin Franklin, looking much like Jack Benny.
Back at the house, I wanted to write Liska’s fax in longhand, get it done before Johnny Griffin showed up. I began with the scene address, my time of arrival, and the presence of Bohner and Millican. My first narrative sentence read, “No footprints available at Marathon scene due to F.O.P. meeting on site.” Then I heard the screen door open, and Liska’s voice.
“Wake up, Jerky Boy,” he said. “You sleep sitting up, you’ll pitch off your chair and hit your head.” He
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