“Want me to call it in?”
“Maybe he learned his lesson. Can you hear me, Pine? Did you learn something tonight?”
“The guy’s a mess, Hubert. I think we’ve got a problem.”
“You got a point. He’p me lift him up.”
“What are we doing?”
“Cleaning up the street.”
Hershel landed hard in the trunk of the prewar Ford. His head was jammed against the spare tire, his knees against a box of tools, his face half buried by a tarp stiff with paint. For an instant he saw Slakely staring down at him, his hand balanced on the open hatch.
Don’t do it, he thought he heard himself say. Please.
The hatch slammed down an inch from Hershel’s face, the stars in the sky gone in a wink.
ROY WISEHEART CALLED Linda Gail early in the morning, before the sun was up. The receiver felt cold against her ear. She stared through the back window at the blueness of the dawn and the bareness of a tree that was wet and gnarled and looked scraped of leaves. She wanted to be back in California, wrapped inside the fog that rolled off the ocean on mornings like these.
“Jack called late last night. He wants me at a meeting in the morning,” Roy said.
“Jack who?”
“Jack Warner. Who else would I be talking about?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Jack Valentine. Except he’s dead, isn’t he? Killed in South Central L.A.”
There was a beat. “I’d like to see you before I go.”
“You want to see me? After you lied?”
“Lied about what?”
“You said you checked on Hershel. Your friend Mr. Green said you never left his house, that you were playing tennis all day.”
“It’s fifteen minutes to your house from mine. Green was on a business call for almost an hour. It was about noon. I’d gone over to your house already, but I went a second time. I also called the police. Why do you always think the worst of me, Linda Gail?”
“Because I don’t know what to believe. Never. Not on one occasion.”
“Believe that I love you. Let’s have breakfast and talk. I don’t want to fly out of here and leave things in the state they’re in. You’re going to drive me to the grave. That’s not an exaggeration.”
“Roy, you have to let me alone. I can’t think straight.”
“That’s why I want to be with you. We’ll face these things together.”
“You know what bothers me most, Roy? You know what bothers me right now, more than anything else in the world?”
“I have no idea.”
> “You haven’t asked about Hershel,” she replied. “Not once. He could be dead or out working on his truck. You didn’t ask or show the least curiosity. How do you explain that?”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the phone rang again. “Hershel?” she said.
“No, my name is Albert,” a man’s voice said. “I help out at the relief center here. Who’s this?”
“I think you have the wrong number.”
“You said Hershel. That’s the name of the man I’m calling for. Hershel Pine. I got your number out of his wallet.”