The crying of lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

glistening, scrambled up the side of a cupola. Oedipa spread a blanket and poured booze into cups made of white, crushed, plastic foam. "It's still there," said Di Presso, descending. "I ought to make a run for it."
"Who's your client?" asked Metzger, holding out a tequila sour.
"Fellow who's chasing me," allowed Di Presso, holding the cup between his teeth so it covered his nose and looking at them, arch.
"You ran from clients?" Oedipa asked. "You flee ambulances?"
"He's been trying to borrow money," Di Presso said, "since I told him I couldn't get an advance against any settlement in this suit."
"You're all ready to lose, then," she said.
"My heart isn't in it," Di Presso admitted, "and if.I can't even keep up payments on that XKE I bought while temporarily insane, how can I lend money?"
"Over 30 years," Metzger snorted, "that's temporary."
"I'm not so crazy I don't know trouble," Di Presso said, "and Tony J. is in it, friends. Gambling mostly, also talk he's been up to show cause to the local Table why he shouldn't be in for some discipline there. That kind of grief I do not need."
Oedipa glared. "You're a selfish schmuck."
"All the time Cosa Nostra is watching," soothed Metzger, "watching. It does not do to be seen helping those the organization does not want helped."
"I have relatives in Sicily," said Di Presso, in comic broken English. Paranoids and their chicks appeared against the bright sky, from behind turrets, gables, ventilating ducts, and moved in on the eggplant sandwiches in the basket. Metzger sat on the jug of booze so they couldn't get any. The wind had risen.
"Tell me about the lawsuit," Metzger said, trying with both hands to keep his hair in place.
    "You've been into Inverarity's books," Di Presso said. "You know the Beaconsfield filter thing." Metzger made a noncommittal moue.
"Bone charcoal," Oedipa remembered.
    "Yeah, well Tony Jaguar, my client, supplied some bones," said Di Presso, "he alleges. Inverarity never paid him. That's what it's about."
    "Offhand," Metzger said, "it doesn't sound like Inverarity. He was scrupulous about payments like that. Unless it was a bribe. I only did his legal tax deductions, so I wouldn't have seen it if it was. What construction firm did your client work for?"
"Construction firm," squinted Di Presso.
Metzger looked around. The Paranoids and their chicks may have been out of earshot. "Human bones, right?" Di Presso nodded yes. "All right, that's how he got them. Different highway outfits in the area, ones Inverarity had bought into, they got the contracts. All drawn up in most kosher fashion, Manfred. If there was payola in there, I doubt it got written down."
"How," inquired Oedipa, "are road builders in any position to sell bones, pray?"
"Old cemeteries have to be ripped up," Metzger explained. "Lake in the path of the East San Narciso Freeway, it had no right to be there, so we just barrelled on through, no sweat."
    "No bribes, no freeways," Di Presso shaking his head. "These bones came from Italy. A straight sale. Some of them," waving out at the lake, "are down there, to decorate the bottom for the Scuba nuts. That's what I've been doing today, examining the goods in dispute. Till Tony started chasing, anyway. The rest of the bones were used in the R&D phase of the filter program, back around the early '50's, way before cancer. Tony Jaguar says he harvested them all from the bottom of Lago di Pieta."
    "My God," Metzger said, soon as this name registered. "GI's?"
    "About a company," said Manny Di Presso. Lago di Pieta was near the Tyrrhenian coast, somewhere between Naples and Rome, and had been the scene of a now ignored (in 1943 tragic) battle of attrition in a minor pocket developed during the advance on Rome. For weeks, a handful of American troops, cut off and without communications, huddled on the narrow shore of the clear and tranquil lake while from the cliffs that tilted vertiginously over the beach Germans hit them day and night with plunging, enfilading