

Mick The Manager

by Michael Driver

Smashwords Edition | Copyright 2014 Michael Driver

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Appendix

About the Author

Chapter 1

It's hard to believe some of the things I've done. But what can I say? I'm a heterosexual white male.

Even so, I've learned a few things recently. My former secretary had a lot to do with that.

I'll have to admit that I never paid much attention to her until the day she stuck her head in my office doorway and told me that her husband was on his way up.

"That's good," I said, not bothering to look up from the sales figures I was studying. The store was doing great and I loved those figures. "You know, I've never met him," I added casually.

"He's coming here to kill you," Jackie said.

That got my attention; I looked up. Jackie was terror-stricken.

"He thinks you're screwing me like you are every other woman in the store," she said.

At first, I just sat there dumbfounded. Over the years, I had had a few disagreements with husbands, although never anything really serious. Judging from Jackie's reaction, my time had come and for no good reason, I thought, but that was beside the point under the circumstances. I had to do something.

I sat there staring at my name on the door: Mick Manage, Vice President, Store Manager. I know, I know. Wiseass all you want to but it happens to be my real name. I just pity all the Fartwells out there. For a moment, I thought about changing the name on my door. I'm actually a brilliant guy—at least in some ways. That just didn't happen to be one of my better thoughts.

"Hurry, Mick!" Jackie shouted. "He was already running up the escalator from the first floor when somebody called."

Hearing that, I leaped from my chair and bolted past Jackie into the hall, looking for a means of escape. The offices were a dead-end—not even a fire door—and outside was the open sales floor where I would be a sitting duck like the target at a carnival sideshow. And it was beneath my dignity to run from room setting to room setting, from chair to sofa dodging some maniac.

So, I jumped in a trash buggy when a cleaning man rounded the corner. "Let's go, Jimmy," I said, kneeling inside and lowering the top.

"Mr. Manage?" Jimmy said in a what-the-hell-is-going-on tone.

"Move it," I said in a hoarse whisper, choking on the stench. Jimmy ignored the rest of his rounds and headed straight to the stockroom. Jimmy was smart. If he had a degree, a bank account, some investments, a big house, at least one elegant set of wheels plus a RV, a lawyer, an ex-wife, maybe a current one, and a different skin pigment, maybe things would have been different for him. Maybe I would have been pushing the buggy for him.

That's it, I thought. I should have put on his overalls, then I wouldn't have had to get inside the trash buggy.

Just as I had that too late flash of brilliance, Jimmy swerved to avoid something. From the hum, I could tell we were near the escalator, then I heard a voice say something about "killing the son-of-a-bitch." That had to have been Jackie's husband and Jimmy instantly surmised the identity of the intended victim.

As the buggy picked up speed, I wondered what was happening in the office. It had just been painted. It was too bad an apparently nice girl like Jackie had to marry a jerk like that, I thought. I wondered about the paint again.

Just then, Jimmy slowed the buggy abruptly. I had no way of knowing he was behind a group of elderly people leisurely examining colonial furniture on their way to the restroom. But I knew Jimmy had to have a good reason to slow down on such an important occasion.

"Move your ass, man," said Leroy, another cleaning man who approached suddenly.

"You're slower than a raise in this fucking place."

"Shut up, Leroy," said Jimmy. I didn't know it but he was motioning with his head toward the trash buggy. Leroy didn't get it.

"Those old douche bags can't hear shit," said Leroy.

"Shut up," Jimmy said again. Then suddenly he was moaning, "Nooooo!"

Quicker than anything else I had seen him do, Leroy lifted the top of the buggy just a little. I saw a flash of light then a glimpse of red instantly followed by ice and cold liquid dripping down my head.

"Nooooo, noooo, nooo," Jimmy scolded.

"I'm helping you do your job, man," said Leroy. "You dumb fucker."

Jimmy muttered something and shoved the buggy hard. Leroy muttered back at him and kept it up. I could tell from the clack of the wheels that we were off the carpet nearing the stockroom. The swinging doors slammed against the buggy and Jimmy abruptly stopped. We were safe in the stockroom.

The moment the buggy was still, I pushed the top and stood straight up. You should have seen Leroy's face. I didn't say anything at first, I just stood there with slush dripping down my head, looking him straight in the eye.

The whites of Leroy's eyes were yellowish. Alcohol? Drugs? Maybe it came from spending too much time looking up Suzy Chen's dress. I felt a little jaundiced about doing that myself sometimes.

I thought about saying something clever such as, "talk about dumb..." but I didn't. I just stood there.

Finally, I took a clump of ice out of my hair and placed it in the palm of Leroy's hand. "You have an appointment with Mr. Pirkle at eight o'clock tomorrow morning," I said. "He will reevaluate your work assignment and employment status." There was nothing like a little professional language to unnerve the rank and file.

Pirkle was the Operations Manager, which made him in charge of personnel since that was part of operations along with things like air conditioning and escalators. Pirkle was a chain-smoking accountant with the disposition of a hornet. But that was okay because he mostly stayed in his office controlling expenses. I'm more of a people person and spent most of my time on the sales floor, so we balanced each other. It made for an orderly, disciplined store blended with compassion and fairness that yielded high morale.

As I climbed out of the trash buggy, Leroy just stood there with ice melting in his hand. I may have been mussed and smelly but he was in shock.

Fortunately, the freight elevator was right there, open and ready to go just like me. I stepped inside, thanked Jimmy, and disappeared behind the broad smile of a modern Otis.

On the way down, it occurred to me that Colonel Springs used to have his office in a freight elevator so he could move from floor to floor taking care of business while watching the mill hands at work. It seemed very clever to me and I thought about installing a desk there for Pirkle.

After landing at the loading dock, I swallowed to push my stomach out of my throat and slammed a key in the side door next to the trucks and slipped into the parking lot undetected. Once I was behind the wheel of my cranberry red Morgan roadster (fire engine red would have been too much) I turned heads. What can I say? I was headed home to safety and a shower.

My house was a short distance from the store in one of those snooty new subdivisions for would-be or pretend-to-be young millionaires. It was very nice. It was partly two storey split level French provincial ranch style with a three-car garage. I parked between my Mercedes for those sedate, sedan kinds of occasions and my four wheel drive Jeep that was rarely used except to change its oil. From a door in back, I entered a garden between the patio and the pool.

The pool, I will admit, might seem like an extravagance but I actually used it. It was a wonderful way to relax after coming in from a hard day at the store. And the climate in Sunbelt City was such that it was usable most of the year. It also served as a convenient backdrop for parties, especially the two-person kind. There was something about a pool, particularly at night, which made otherwise timid girls think it was okay to take their clothes off. And it was all right, frequently very fine.

Just for the memories, I took a deep whiff of chlorine but I smelled myself instead. I was a sobering stench. Quickly, I entered the house through the back door and sped through room after room until I caught myself in the bathroom mirror.

It was easy to ignore the matted hair plastered to my forehead. That wasn't me. The eyes were me, and the face: a thirty-nine year old face—true years not on hold—and, yes, that didn't seem very definite. It wasn't just the lack of specific color. I had always wanted deep brown eyes to match my still dark brown hair and regretted the seemingly variable hazel that girls had often told me they liked. I wanted dark brown so much that I exaggerated the faint brown cast, observable only from certain angles in particular light. I even lied on my driver's license. Have you ever noticed that they take your word for everything down at the Department of Public Safety? The pictures they take may be awful but they let you compensate in the descriptions. I added an inch to my height to edge it over six feet and dropped ten pounds or so. Not that my weight was a problem. I was always lean and straight, if not especially muscular.

But the problem I noticed about my eyes went beyond lack of color. I just couldn't quite decide what was wrong.

Not that I thought anything was seriously wrong. Self-confidence had never been in short supply. Some people even said I was arrogant. For sure, I was keenly aware of my many strengths and abilities, although I had never wasted much time with introspection.

Still, something was missing. And after staring in the mirror awhile I decided that I wasn't going to find it right away.

After another sniff of myself, I began throwing clothes in a pile on the floor and turned on the shower. While regulating the water, I couldn't help thinking about why I was there in the middle of the afternoon. It was not the first time I was home in the middle of the afternoon taking a shower but it was the first time I was home in the middle of the afternoon talking a shower for not having done what I was usually at home in the middle of the afternoon taking a shower for.

Then I looked down toward what had long been a source of self-satisfaction. I really didn't deserve self-doubt. But something disturbing caught my eye. Age spots on my dick.

The shower was invigorating and I began to think about the situation at the store with Jackie's husband. Curiosity drove me and I dressed hurriedly to get back as soon as possible.

As a last stop, I checked the answering machine. There was a single message and I figured it was Jackie. I almost didn't bother to play it, knowing that she would simply tell me to call her and I wanted to get back and handle things in person. Jackie and I had a lot to talk about and the phone wasn't the right way to do it. But I relented.

"This is Jackie," the machine repeated. "Call me as soon as you can."

There was something unusual in her voice, like there was something other than her husband to talk about. So I called.

"Mick," she said when I called, "there are some men here from the federal government. Agents of some sort. They have cameras and guns."

Sure enough, they had cameras and guns and there was an office full of them waiting on me. A whole delegation of federal investigators, I thought, interrupting when I really wanted to talk to Jackie and find out what the hell was going on with her and her husband that seemed to involve me when it shouldn't. On the other hand, as we settled into my office, my curiosity increased about those federal guys. There were four of them: FBI, FDA, ICC and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. I had dealt with the FBI a number of times over the years when they would be looking for a particularly notorious bad check writer who had been through town or doing background investigations on former employees who wanted to fly F-16s or take groundwater samples on federal reservations. That's not the same as a Native American Reservation and I never dealt with anyone from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

It seemed terribly unusual that so many agencies would send agents snooping around a department store and I told them so straight out. Of course, they were federal law enforcement officers, so they told me damn near nothing.

The FBI dude was the first to talk. He asked if the store had advertised something called "The Beauty Bullet." As a matter of fact, I told him, an ad for that product had run in the newspaper that very day. He had to have been a real dick to figure that one out.

Despite the word "bullet" in the name, I pointed out, the product did not really have anything to do with ammo and I didn't think the Firearms people would be much interested in something that was nothing more than a vitamin tablet. They were unimpressed.

The Food and Drug guy asked if I would have a bottle brought to the office. He was the one with the camera. I called the cosmetics department manager and asked her to bring a bottle up.

That call, I found out later, caused a sensation in the store. Everyone was already keyed up about feds with cameras and guns being in my office. The call to the cosmetics manager brought to mind a similar call the year before which resulted in the arrest of the cosmetics manager (a previous one) on charges of selling drugs, literally over the counter, to very special customers.

Once "The Beauty Bullet" was in my office, the federal boys passed the container around and examined it closely. The tablets themselves were bullet shaped and they came in a missile shaped bottle. The FDA guy wanted to take pictures. He placed the container on my desk and I sort of thought we might all gather around for a group shot with the Beauty Bullet in front of us, but all he was interested in was the product.

I still couldn't figure out what the big deal was. The principal ingredients were barley and hops. I took a liquid form of it everyday and had for years and it seemed to do me some good.

The purpose of the Beauty Bullet, according to the label, was "to release the nutritive properties of nature's own health food deep into dermal cells to produce a fresher, more youthful you." I thought anybody would see that was bullshit but when I tried to be polite and used the term "snake oil," the FDA man frowned. Personally, I thought it was okay if people bought something useless like that. To me, it was just like most of the junk in the cosmetics department. People would buy a fragrance and strut around like hens in heat or peacocks with their peckers out but nothing really changed about them, it was just the idea of smelling something else.

Speaking of which, I wondered if I had remembered to use my own cologne which made me wonder if all the stench was gone for sure which made me think about Jackie and her husband-jerk. I became anxious to end the nonsense about "Beauty Bullet," but the discussion became a little more interesting when it took a different turn, so to speak.

"We'd like to see your freight records," the Interstate Commerce man said.

"Sure," I said and placed another phone call for the receiving log to be brought up. "But why?"

Instead of answering, he asked me another question. I must have been witnessing a fundamental part of federal flatfoot training. "Where did you get it?"

I picked up the bottle. "Says here it's made in..."

"We know that," FDA interrupted.

"How was it shipped to you?" ICC inquired. "What trucking company?"

"Kerplopski's," I answered with the name of the store. "It's shipped to branch stores from the central warehouse in the store's own trucks. How it gets to our central receiving room, I have no idea."

All four feds were furiously making notes.

"Do you know what route your truck takes?" ICC asked.

"Yeah. The main interstate from Capital City," I answered.

The FBI guy exchanged glances with the Booze, Smoke and Fire detective. I could tell they were in love with their jobs and apparently I had just said something titillating.

They prepared to leave—four Karl Maidens who had lost their hats. First, they made note of the corporate headquarters and warehouse addresses in Capital City. Then they each gave me a business card.

"If you are able to think of anything else, please give us a call," said a G-man.

Gee, if I knew what all of this was about, maybe I would think of something, I thought.

What I was really thinking about was Jackie and her husband and wondering what was going on. At least, I figured as the feds filed out of my office, I would soon find out; and Jackie came into the office as soon as the visitors were out the door.

"You have a message to call Mr. Kerplopski as soon as possible," Jackie said.

"I know it's late but can we go have a cup of coffee?" I said, ignoring the message. "We really need to talk."

"It will have to be quick," she said, "because I've got to run downtown and take care of a little business. And right now you've got to call Mr. Kerplopski. Irene made it sound urgent."

Irene was Mr. Kerplopski's secretary and in a lot of ways she was the pulse of the company. I had to call immediately. But his line kept being busy and so did Irene's. So I had to hang on while the store operator tried to get one of the lines at Irene's desk.

"I've really got to go," said Jackie. "If I don't go ahead and leave, I'll get tied up in rush hour. We'll talk first thing in the morning."

Hardly anything seemed more important than a conversation with Jackie. I had a hard time seeing what could be so important to her that she couldn't stay and talk. Then again, there I was tied up on the telephone.

Finally, I got through to Irene. I started with a light, but to the point, "What's up?"

"A meeting," she said. "Mr. Kerplopski wants to meet with the senior executives at nine a.m." Irene was tense.

"What's the subject?" I asked.

"He just said there would be a meeting."

"I need to know what to prepare for," I said.

"He didn't say anything about that," Irene said.

She was being evasive. I always treated Irene well. She was a secretary and she deserved the respect. Besides, by staying on good terms with her, she would generally keep me informed of some of the little things that I might otherwise miss not being at the corporate office all that often. But on this occasion, she was tough.

"What's going on?" I persisted.

"It's big, Mick," Irene finally said. "That's all I can tell you and I shouldn't have said that much."

Chapter 2

Unanswered questions confounded me the remainder of the day. During the night, they became monsters thrashing around and copulating in my brain. By the time I woke up, they had dropped litters of pipsqueak uncertainties.

Coffee helped some. A shower was better still. But hitting the road early was the best relief.

Capital City was a hundred or so miles north. Ordinarily, I could be there easily in less than a couple of hours but since the meeting was scheduled for nine, I would have to endure their rush hour traffic. I wanted a chance to check with a few people before the meeting to scope the situation in advance. So at six-thirty I pulled off the loop onto the freeway and headed north.

There was a dense early morning fog that was typical for Sunbelt. The city sprawled across a plain in the elbow of State River as it drifted to the Gulf. After a few miles, I emerged from the fog into rolling hills that very gradually extended to the almost mountainous Capital City.

The freeway was the link between the two cities and beyond; pine trees provided continuity along the route. Jesus, there were a lot of pine trees. The only other place with more was between Tallahassee and Jacksonville that had the excuse of more miles to put them in. I saw more pine trees than a hundred Paul Bunyans could have felled in a giant lifetime.

As soon as I was comfortable on the freeway, I tried to grasp an overview of the questions confronting me, the monsters and their bastard offspring. But it was simply too much for my overloaded brain to handle while coping with the distractions of driving.

Then, I tried organizing the questions into categories: (one) Jackie and her jerk husband; (two) the federal snoop troops; and (three) Mr. Kerplopski's meeting. But I failed to concentrate even with the help of a formula. The subjects virtually vanished. But I didn't care because I was caught up in the thrill of a bracing roadster ride.

Problems simply escaped when the top was down. Troubles evaporated in the exhilarating breeze of the little car. Scarlet O'Hara should have had a Morgan.

Even random thoughts failed to stick. And all constructive thought ceased after I passed a pungent road kill. It was one of those enormous dogs that grow in proportion to the cumulative amount of sunlight absorbed. Eventually, it provided a bountiful, well-done feast for a flock of fortunate buzzards.

That made me think about my own breakfast. The nutritious goodness of whole grain cereal had already passed into my upper intestine. I was hungry.

When I reached the halfway oasis of greasy food and gasoline, I pulled through the drive-in of a Burger Doodle and picked up some biscuit burgers. In the time it takes to microwave whatever it is they put in the sausage, I was back on the freeway.

The remainder of the trip was not noteworthy until I reached the suburbs of Capital City. Except for one thing.

Understand that I'm neither naive nor cranky about stuff in everyday life. It's true that I don't drive as fast as I used to, but then, I don't walk as fast either. And occasionally I push it over the legal mark. There are reasons for driving fast sometimes. I also realize that truck drivers are out there trying to scratch a living around a bunch of government regulations that means cutting corners now and then.

But I have to complain about this incident. There I was minding my own business, tooling along at the top of the speed limit in the "slow" lane, when there was a roar, audible only a moment before this huge wall zoomed past leaving me rocking and reeling in its wind. If I hadn't seen the thing, I would have thought I might have skirted a tornado. Then, just as I was recovering, it happened again with an identical truck.

The second time I was barely able to recognize the logo of the truck line. The company was a growing presence around Sunbelt. It belonged to Joe Palmer, Jackie's husband. That made it a double piss-off. The jerk was pushing his drivers to run wide open.

Rounding a bend, there was more evidence. Some poor man was slogging around in the median, mad as hell and inspecting his car that was mired in mud. Far ahead were the two speeding rigs. I can imagine what happened. It's too bad I didn't have time to stop.

Approaching the city, I was forced to stop and start and stop and start and stop as traffic thickened and halted and crept in a ritual link of businesses and bedrooms. The reality of that connection was most interesting.

Women look good at that time of day, fresh, fucked and ready for the office. Maybe ready to fuck again.

You can see the preparations up and down the freeway every morning. Endless primping in the rear view mirror; some carry larger mirrors to prop in their laps or even set on the dashboard. Lipstick, brushes, eye shadow/liner. Buttons and straps; pushes and tugs.

Many are stark awake with eyes like headlights; others operate at half-doze. Some hang in there with the help of steaming coffee.

And unless they're just plain-can't-help-it ugly, they're all good looking. Half an hour or less ago they were just stepping out of the shower, a good, basic beginning. Having washed away their husbands and boyfriends, they stand in front of the mirror and look at their body—not their face because that is done separately and they're not ready for that yet and they especially look at their breasts, partly because they're interested in them and partly because they're looking at themselves as they know other people will be looking at them and they try to imagine the impression their bust will make. True, it's likely to be packaged in a blouse or a sweater but they know the goods will be examined one way or another. Then they cup their breasts in their own hands and fondle themselves. I'm not sure what they're thinking when they do that but not being allowed to reach out at will and do it for them at just any time during the day, I think it's interesting to think about them doing it earlier that morning before they go on display.

Soon after, they're wrinkle free and cute behind the wheel of their predictable little cars headed to work. That's the time I'm talking about.

It's one of the times they're most apt to flirt. They're sitting there looking as good as they're going to look in clothes and they have nothing but time as they creep and stop and creep. They feel safe because of all the people around, well insulated short distances apart which at the same time provides a kind of rolling intimacy that can transfer further down the freeway and sometimes be caught up with again.

It's even better in the Morgan. The glances are longer, the stares more penetrating and the smiles more seductive.

It was an oddly composed fog of lust and uncertainty that enveloped me as I neared the downtown business district. But after I exited the freeway, I actually began to focus on something productive.

It had always been that way. I never studied before I went to college because I absorbed everything in class and that was all it took to be impressive in those days.

Even later, by keeping up with things daily, I was able to produce programs and memos and such with little preparation. It helps that I read fast.

Frequently, by staying current on trends and ideas, I don't even have to read at all. One time, Mr. Kerplopski wanted all of the executives in the company to read The One Minute Manager. That boring stuff is just not my style, so I retained the spirit of the concept and read it in one minute. Actually, I glance at the table of contents but that's all I needed. I was already practicing all the good ideas in the book. Most good managers do and I'm a good manager even if I give the finger to the fluffy nonsense that goes on in business. And I'm never ill prepared for a meeting. I just don't have to worry much about it. The proof is in the results and I get results.

By the time I pulled into the parking deck, I had already quickly mentally reviewed various sales trends and specific figures. More importantly, I reviewed my current agenda. I have always found it helpful to maintain a list of objectives ranked by priority. Keeping that list in the back of my mind, I've been able to pursue opportunities as they arose, frequently at unexpected moments.

When I entered the Kerplopski building, I was instantly at work. The people who worked every day in the corporate offices took their contacts for granted. But I was rarely there more often than monthly; I had to mine every chance for communication with the people who could help my store's business. It was like being a politician. I calculated everything, including coffee conversation.

The first thing I did was to check a few offices. Empty. I knew where to go. The merchandise managers maintained a conference room of their own which was usually used for buyers' meetings or vendor presentations. That's where I found everyone I was looking for plus some.

Almost all vice presidents were there except for a couple that were conspicuously missing—the VPs for finance and merchandise data systems. Their absences caused a stir.

The atmosphere was tense. Everyone had the same questions: What's going on? Where's so-and-so? Speculation supplied the only answers. And the speculation was grim.

The consensus held that Mr. Kerplopski was planning to sell the store. Hearing the other guys say that shook my heart one good time but not my confidence. I remained calm and reasonable.

There did not seem to be much basis for the fear, although there had been speculation periodically for the past four years. But it was mostly during the first of those years that people were worked up about it.

Mr. Kerplopski had had two sons. One, Harlan, appeared to be very bright and business minded. He had already taken a leadership position in certain aspects of the company and promised to become an effective president/owner someday. Unfortunately, Harlan was flattened by a drunk driver one Saturday afternoon right in front of a competitor's store where he had gone to check out a big sale they were having.

That left Mr. Kerplopski's other son, Stephen. As fate would have it, Stephen didn't care for the family business. He was an architect who lived in another state, built unusual buildings and traveled in Asia.

At the time of Harlan's death, there was considerable concern that Mr. Kerplopski would sell the store since there was no one in the family to run it. But Mr. Kerplopski was still young by executive standards and enjoyed running the store himself. That had not changed and there had not lately been much concern about him selling.

To a few others, it seemed more probable that he planned to take the company public with a stock issue. Going that route would stoke the engine of Kerplopski's expansion with enough cash to develop budding markets. Some argued against the idea, citing the change in character that companies sometimes undergo in the process, but for an owner with foresight and fortitude, going public offered advantages.

But then, I wasn't the owner and it was ownership that counted. As it turned out, none of us were prepared for what was about to be announced. The room became quiet when Mr. Kerplopski entered followed by the finance VP and a couple of other people. The rest of us were seated around one of those huge corporate boardroom tables that stretched from barely-getting-there to arrived-in-a-big-way. In odd moments during meetings, I would inevitably fantasize that Mr. Kerplopski, resplendent in a suit of polished steel and chain mail, galloped down the table on a bristling stallion, withdrew a mighty sword, and tapped me to be Senior Executive Vice President, General Merchandise Manager, and Prince of the Company inasmuch as Stephen was off somewhere on the other side of the world studying pagodas.

On this occasion, Mr. Kerplopski banished all fantasy. Instead, he sparked nightmares of the most dreaded sort, horrors of the real world that bring tangible results, even death. "I'm sorry that my son, Stephen, could not be here," Mr. Kerplopski began. "He's somewhere. I can't even pronounce the name of the place."

Mr. Kerplopski's strength was drained. He had always been robust and energetic.

"It's too bad he's not here even though he has not ever been part of the management of the company because what I have to say is important to my family as well as my store family."

Shit, I thought. He is selling the store. "I have been told by doctors," he said, "that I have an incurable cancer."

The mood in the room plunged from mere seriousness to something else. Gloom doesn't quite communicate. And it's hard to describe how I felt personally. Racing through my repertoire of emotions, I failed to find a fit.

First, there was shock and horror followed immediately by concern for Mr. Kerplopski. Here was not just another human being revealing that he was dying, but someone I respected enormously and even loved and he was saying he would soon be gone forever. I wanted to take away the hurt, restore his health and return his vitality. A great sadness settled into my psyche like the fog I had left earlier that morning except much, much denser.

All of those feelings came within an instant. It was like some sort of cosmic chain reaction I had read about where astronomers described an event in graphic step-by-step detail involving seven major levels of change each with three observable sets of consequences, then they wind up mentioning that everything they have just delineated took place within one three-quarters of a hundredth of a millisecond. I'm sure everyone felt the same way.

Thinking about a cosmic event made me think of explosions and thinking of explosions made me think of destruction that made me think of losing my job. The consideration turned selfish. It was not that I feared being destitute because I had plenty enough to get me by even a long period of trying to find the right place to go. That was the problem, finding a place that was right. Kerplopski's was perfect as far as I was concerned. I had a set-up that suited me just fine. I was very productive and a real asset to the company and the company was comfortable for me. I was afraid that I would be unable to locate that perfect fit again.

Reassurance came easily. I would be very attractive to other stores. My experience and accomplishments were impressive and I was at the perfect age to make a change. Even if the store was not being sold, I told myself, I could probably improve my income level and graduate to even more responsibility by making a well-calculated job change. I might even be able to position myself for a CEO slot in the future.

Some of the other guys were not so lucky. A couple of them had virtually grown up at Kerplopski's; employers want their key people to have a range of experience that means multiple employment. Others were in less flexible financial condition and could not last the period of time necessary to find a position.

The most unfortunate of all were the men who were past the prime age of mobility or even general acceptance but who had much to contribute and who were far from ready to retire. They would suffer most of all. They would be rejected. They would quickly begin to feel useless and undesirable. Meanwhile, striking before they were prepared for retirement, they would face drastically reduced circumstances and possible disaster.

Some names flashed through my mind. I glanced around the room. It was sinking in before the words were uttered. Mr. Kerplopski said he was dying of cancer and scores of lives were about to change for the worse. Mr. Kerplopski would be dead and the others would limp on like wounded animals. I didn't blame him for doing what he was going to do; after all, he was the one facing actual death. But the others would be afflicted with a painful life.

Abraham Lincoln's famous death mask came to mind. As it slowly rose from his face, it acquired a sinister animation that haunted the vanquished, broken, suffering foe—fellow Americans they were, too—as they trudged south from the last battlefield. Then the mask turned sad and sadder and sadder until it ceased any movement except for a tear that slowly descended as the mask melded into Mr. Kerplopski's face. And I looked at him again and wiped my own tear.

Having said the minimum that communicated the maximum, Mr. Kerplopski focused on his responsibility to the living. He would deal with it in the only way he knew how.

"As everyone knows," he began, "I have no heirs who are interested in running the store."

This would be his last chance to ride down the table and anoint me, I thought. The idea seems never to have occurred to him.

"For that reason," Mr. Kerplopski continued, "I had to determine what to do that would be in the best interest of everyone. And I have decided to sell the company to Caruthers."

Everyone was again stunned. What kind of name is "Caruthers?" I thought.

"As you are aware," Mr. Kerplopski said, "Caruthers is also a family owned department store group very similar to our own. Since all of their units are located in Neighboring State, there will be no market conflict. And the similarity in size, volume and general merchandising philosophy will make the transition to new ownership relatively easy."

As Mr. Kerplopski spoke, I was trying hard to think but could not. I suspect everyone else was the same way. It was like a roomful of guys were on toilets and nothing was happening.

"There are still some things which need to be decided," Mr. Kerplopski said. "But the general package has been agreed upon, pending a final inventory. And an agreement has been signed by both of us. That is, Tom Caruthers and myself. I'll get to more on that in a minute."

Minute...minute, I thought. After something else takes a minute to say, no telling what will be changed. But he went straight into what was then foremost on everyone's mind.

"First, let me say something about employment opportunities at Caruthers as relates to Kerplopski associates. And I use the word 'opportunities' because with a larger store, Caruthers will be better positioned for greater growth and expansion that translates into more jobs. There are obviously other advantages such as greater vendor leverage but the thing I want to emphasize now is that Caruthers needs you. Do not look upon yourselves as being flung out the door. Obviously, there will have to be some adjustments. They will not need two sets of buying staffs, for example. So some people in both organizations will be making changes without losing their jobs. Take that example of buyers. They will keep some of their buyers and place others in different positions while replacing them with our buyers and some of ours will take different positions in their company. Bear in mind, that with the increased size of the company, there will be need for merchants of proven ability such as we have at Kerplopski's. It's just that the positions they hold may be different.

"Caruthers has pledged to offer every single Kerplopski associate a job in their company. That is important to me and I would not have made the agreement without that understanding. Cutting the best deal for all Kerplopski associates was one of my prime considerations.

"It would be less than responsible not to recognize that some of you who are in greater positions of responsibility might choose to decline their offers. I think that on the whole you will find the positions to be attractive and I urge all of you to give careful consideration to them.

"But let's face it. Most of us have been together for a long time and I know how you think. That's why I understand that some of you will be disappointed, maybe even upset. But those of you here now are included in a special package of benefits separate and apart from the arrangements made for other executives. These are financial rewards that have nothing to do with Caruthers that will be provided by Kerplopski's in addition to the position that Caruthers will offer. Sometime in the next month, each of you need to schedule appointments with Bill Simeon and his staff in the financial department to discuss your individual packages and options.

Individual packages, I thought. Fourth class and lost in the mail.

"There are two or three more things we need to cover," Mr. Kerplopski said. For one thing, for those of you who have branch stores, when you make the announcement in your stores tomorrow, I want you to stress to the hourly associates that they will not miss any work and that Caruthers will continue their employment on the same terms and conditions as now exists. They do not need to be worried about their jobs.

"And that brings me to timing. Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, I will conduct a meeting with the remainder of the executives in the corporate offices, followed by a storewide meeting. The press will be briefed immediately after that. A similar schedule will be followed at Caruthers and I'm sure you will want to do likewise. The thing I want to stress about this part of it is that there should be no mention of anything about this until tomorrow morning. I want to protect the sensitivities of all our associates by making synchronized announcements. Now, I know that all of you are feeling something about this and you probably want to talk about it. That's why I suggest that you all stay here in the conference room a while and talk among yourselves—not to others outside this room until tomorrow. Bill Simeon has been involved from the outset of negotiations with Caruthers because of his fundamental involvement in financial matters. He will remain here for a few minutes to answer questions and talk with you.

"Please excuse me from this discussion. You will understand that this is an emotional experience for me and I do not feel able to speak with everyone separately at this time, although I certainly intend to do so in the weeks ahead. I want to emphasize in this regard, that this is not the last time we will be together as a Kerplopski management group. We have time remaining together and work to do as always."

As Mr. Kerplopski closed the door behind him, it felt like the closing of an old branch store except it was the entire company. It was like going out of business without a sale; somebody just turned off the lights and everybody went home.

Mr. Kerplopski's exit was so low key it was dramatic. Everyone was absolutely silent at first. What do you say?

Bill Simeon, Senior Vice President for Financial Affairs, cautiously entered the breach. Slowly and solemnly, he tried to bridge the gap between our old comfortable lives and the new uncertain realities. He attempted the argument that Caruthers was the best alternative and that the differences between the stores were so slight that we could quickly adapt.

Bill deserves credit. Had he been one of those professional personnel blondes, he would have smiled before pushing his point. Instead, Bill was reserved and he didn't try to jerk us around. He was straight but he was selling and we weren't buying. At least not all of us and not entirely.

"They'll have to have store managers," someone said.

"But they don't have to be us," I said. I didn't think they would keep any of us past a little transition time. Just enough to make an appearance for the sake of morale among the lower echelon.

Clearly, Bill had his own selfish perspective but I wasn't sure that everyone else had that in focus. For my part, I was keenly aware.

First, Bill was simply doing his job by supporting the sale. As the top financial officer of the company, other than Mr. Kerplopski himself, it was his job to support decisions and if that included a sale of the store, he was duty bound to make it seem okay.

The core issue was even more important. In the government, they call it "conflict of interest." In business, it's just getting the job done. And in this case, while Bill was hard at work on the terms of the sale, he was bound to have been building his own mansion. I realize that the old saying terms it "feathering his own nest," and unions are sometimes accused of "feather bedding," but that's a bit mild when it comes to millions of dollars. One hell of a golden parachute. Inside: Fuck you, I got mine. While outwardly he was saying, "Yes, guys, it's a fine deal for everyone."

Eventually, my mind wandered again. It couldn't seem to stay with anything very long, including this most unexpected situation. There were fleeting thoughts about Jackie and her husband and the federal agents and their nonsense. I even had a passing thought wave about my attention span and ability to concentrate. After that I became fidgety and led the exodus that ended the meeting.

The meeting had degenerated into a kind of huddle on each end of the table with separate conversations. In what seemed like a single movement, I pushed my chair back, stood up and walked to the other end. I leaned over Bill Simeon and patted him condescendingly on the shoulder. "Thanks for talking to us," I said, trying to muster the sound of sincerity to match my good manners.

Bill is a smart fellow so I doubt that he bought my line any more than I bought his but he had to respect the cover of civility. Good manners have always stood well for me in any situation. I left the conference room immediately.

One by one the others quickly followed. One of them caught me in the hallway and asked what I was going to do.

"I'll go anywhere there's an airport," I said.

I was proud of the clever reply but it was pretty empty. I had no idea what I was going to do but there was an odd aversion to leaving Sunbelt City that I had not realized before. Maybe that discovery was a start. I kept walking.

"Where you going now?" the other guy called after me. He sounded like a child who was looking for one of his playmates because he was afraid of being alone.

"To a telephone," I said instinctively. I wasn't thinking when I said it but it sounded good. And it turned out to be purposeful because I realized that I really had a call to make.

"We need to talk," I said when Jackie came on the line. "Something important's come up."

"Listen, Mick..." she said.

"We can't talk now." I cut her off. We couldn't risk talking then and I wasn't even sure what I would have said. "I'll call you when I get back. I'm not sure when that will be but if it's after you leave the store, I'll call you at home."

"Listen, Mick..." she said again.

And again I interrupted. "They're paging me," I said. "I've got to go."

Without even hanging up, I switched to another line. The operator told me that Mr. Kerplopski wanted me to stop by his office. I tingled. What would I say?

As it turned out, it was a while before I had to worry about that. I went straight to Mr. Kerplopski's office but he was on the phone and apparently he was living on the phone during the next hour or so.

While I waited for him, I hung out in a couple of different offices with some of the same guys who had been in the meeting. Just about everybody had something to say except me. I kept calling Irene. Finally, she said I should come up. When I entered his office, Mr. Kerplopski was sunk back in his desk chair. He looked tired and a little yellow. Was it medicine? I was certain he hadn't been looking up Suzy Chen's dress.

He spoke first, a welcome along with an extended hand as he rose from his chair. That made it my turn.

"Mr. Kerplopski, I sure am..." I blurted, feeling like a blunderbuss.

"C'est la vie," he responded, waving to the side as he withdrew his hand after the shake. French didn't sound good coming from him. I thought about a picture of a French girl partially clothed.

"How about lunch?" Mr. Kerplopski asked. That sounded better. Maybe not as good as the French girl but certainly better than Mr. Kerplopski's French. Maurice Chevalier flashed through my mind. God, he's dead, I thought.

On our way across the bridge to the parking garage, we encountered a group of senior executives on their way to lunch. Except for an exchange of greetings, their group stopped talking and I could feel their eyes on me as we passed. I knew I would be picked to pieces when we got back.

Mr. Kerplopski's basic big Ford—it wasn't even a Lincoln—was waiting in its reserved spot next to the elevator. I never did understand that car.

He asked if the Tower Club was okay. Absolutely. Now that was prestige. Membership was by invitation and it was limited to the economic elite of Capital City.

The Tower club was well named for the status of its membership as well as other reasons. They had a very narrow, multi-story building that was surrounded by a bunch of low shops. To their credit, in the last few years they had reluctantly acquired a couple of black members and maybe three or four women. Believe me, any testosterone saturated woman who belonged to the Tower Club merited membership.

While some of the members exercised on other floors, we were seated in a corner of one of the totally glass walled dining rooms. I enjoyed the unique view as Mr. Kerplopski scrutinized the menu. I knew from experience what I wanted, baked Cornish hens with some kind of delicious sauce, which, although it was a departure from my usual Perrier and salad, was reasonably healthful and not discourteous to Mr. Kerplopski's more epicurean eating habits. I couldn't help wondering if all that rich food had contributed to his problem.

"Tell me something, Mick," Mr. Kerplopski said after we ordered.

Damn, I thought, he's going to pick me, too. And sure enough he wanted to know what the others thought of the announcement. What could I say? Jesus. I was having a hard time thinking about everything myself and as soon as I thought that I remembered the other problems I was already having a hard time thinking about and there I was having to discuss one of the problems with the man himself. I got through it, maybe not brilliantly, but I did okay.

Then came another surprise. "You know my cousin, Herbert?" Mr. Kerplopski asked.

"Yes," I said. How could I forget Herbie Kerplopski?

"The little guy down in Coast Town?" Mr. Kerplopski asked on the heels of the first question.

"Yes, I know him," I said. The way he had pronounced "Coast Town" with a little piece of breadstick in his mouth struck me. I wondered if people unfamiliar with the region envisioned a deserted town with tumbleweeds blowing down the middle.

"Well, let me tell you something I did at Herbie's insistence," Mr. Kerplopski said.

"Yes," I said, suspicious of where this was leading. We had one store in Coast Town.

"Naturally, I've been discussing the store situation with members of the family," Mr. Kerplopski said. "To tell you the truth, I hadn't talked to Herbie about it but you know families. He picked it up from one of the others. Anyway, Herbie says he may want to buy the store in Coast Town."

"The one unit?" I asked.

"Just the one," Mr. Kerplopski said.

Christ. I could see where it was headed then. They were going to ask me to run that one store independent of the others since Herbie didn't know an escalator from a cash register.

"He thinks it would work as a single unit if it's transitioned into a large, upscale specialty store geared to those young money folks building down there now."

I tried to cover my wince by cramming one of those garliced up breadsticks into my mouth.

"Herbie asked me to negotiate a clause in the agreement with Caruthers allowing me to withhold stores of my choosing from the group sale," Mr. Kerplopski said. We worked something out and according to the understanding, it would be all right for a family member to buy one or more of the stores as long as I didn't have anything to do with running it. I don't have all that long anyway."

Here it comes, I thought, feeling bad for Mr. Kerplopski at the same time.

"You're a real marketing expert, Mick," Mr. Kerplopski said. That breadstick sure did taste good. "And you know Herbie. And the coast is the next big market south of Sunbelt City. What do you think?"

I chewed the bread stick thoroughly. It got real doughy. Eventually I said, "When was the last time it snowed down on the coast?"

Mr. Kerplopski leaned back and laughed so hard that people turned around to look and smile. If it had been me laughing it would have ruined their lunch. "You obviously do know Herbie," Mr. Kerplopski finally said.

It's a good thing he understood without a lot of explanation. I didn't want to say too much about Herbie. Nobody has any business in retailing if they have green stuff in their teeth.

"Herbie's got more money than brains," Mr. Kerplopski said.

"It's just that the building down there is too big to run as a specialty store. The market's not that developed," I said. "Now as a regular department store like it is now..."

"But Herbie wouldn't go for that," Mr. Kerplopski said. "He loathes anything less than Neiman's."

"That's too bad," I said, thinking of what I would do if I had real money.

"To tell you the truth," Mr. Kerplopski continued, "I think Herbie's a little jealous."

"Of you?" I asked.

"Yes," Mr. Kerplopski said. "Not to be headed to the graveyard so soon, of course, but the fact that I've got something unique to be proud of and a part of."

About that time I stopped eating and looked at Mr. Kerplopski. He paused and it was like it was time for me to say something but I didn't know what to say and somehow I felt like it would be interrupting him even though he wasn't talking. So I just watched him. He wasn't looking at me or anything else in particular. It was like he was looking real deep inside himself.

"The store," he finally said. "I think Herbie's jealous of the fact that I have the store. Because the store is something tangible that has established monetary value and at the same time it's a lot more than that. It's an honorable way of life that serves the community and provides for its employees. Including me," he added.

Then Mr. Kerplopski looked up and caught me looking at him instead of eating. It seemed funny that I wasn't embarrassed. It was an almost spiritual moment. After all these years in retailing I had never thought about a store in anything like those terms and it kind of made me tingle to consider what he was talking about.

Maybe you go real deep when you get near the end, I thought. And for a moment I almost looked forward to it if it meant thinking that deeply and that clearly. It's too bad people don't think that well all the time in the process of life.

As if to prove the banality of life, Mr. Kerplopski returned to the subject of his cousin. I resumed eating.

"Actually, Herbie is nothing more than an investor," Mr. Kerplopski said. "I think he just wants a store to walk around in."

"Prima donna," I said.

"Exactly," agreed Mr. Kerplopski. "But at the first sign of a loss, he'd be ready to find somewhere else to walk around. Very shallow. But what there is filled with money."

That seemed like a curious statement to me. At first he was critical of Herbie's lack of significance then he turns around and makes it seem positive to be nothing but a bag of money. I chalked it up to realism and moved on to my last bite of green beans. Mr. Kerplopski wanted dessert.

"You're different," Mr. Kerplopski said, suddenly shifting his evaluation to me.

"No offense to Herbie," I said, "but thanks." The apparent seriousness of his comment took me by surprise but he managed to laugh at my uncomfortable response.

"In many ways, you're like Harlan," Mr. Kerplopski said, "and Stephen is home so seldom that sometimes I don't feel that I really know him. You're more like a son than anyone around me," he said.

I went from uncomfortable to sweating profusely. What could I say? I had hardly known my own father but I had never dared to think of Mr. Kerplopski in those terms, despite looking up to him tremendously.

"You may not see this in yourself right now," Mr. Kerplopski said, "but I've seen enough of enough people to feel safe in saying that you're solid, Mick. Solid enough that I would be willing to bet on you."

"Thank you," I said. "I really appreciate your confidence in me, Mr. Kerplopski," I said, and I spoke up when I said it and I said it without false modesty. But I was still surprised.

A full minute of silence passed. I was somehow less uncomfortable than it had been a couple of minutes before when we were talking.

"By the way," he said after the final cup of coffee was poured. I already didn't like the sound of the "by the way," but what could I say? He was picking up the check. "In a couple of weeks or so," Mr. Kerplopski continued, "Caruthers will send some of its executives around to our stores. In some cases they will want to spend a few days with our people to get a better idea of how our operations compare."

"Good idea," I mumbled, trying at the same time to figure out what it might mean.

"I intended to say something about that in the meeting this morning. It slipped my mind. Can you please cover it with the other executives for me?"

"Sure," I said, still calculating. "Be happy to." Then it occurred to me what a great service he had done me—at least in the short run. I knew I would be pounced upon by the other guys as soon as we returned to the store and this gave me something to talk about without sacrificing a confidence.

It felt to me like we were being watched when Mr. Kerplopski and I parted in front of the elevator inside the store. He stepped on the elevator to go back to his office and as the doors closed, I turned and sure enough a couple of guys were waiting to jump me.

It didn't take long to get most of the executives back into one of the conference rooms. Everyone was eager for more news. So I told them about people from Caruthers visiting our stores in a few weeks. I didn't say anything about Herbie because it wasn't relevant and I knew Mr. Kerplopski wouldn't be saying anything about him to the others. The subject we had been given was quite enough.

No one said anything immediately and I almost wondered if my news was a dud but it turned out that they merely needed a few minutes to let it sink in. And then, man did we talk.

The consensus seemed to be that visiting executives in our stores so soon was very significant because it was like a real action that made the talk of a sale real. It went from there. Talk and talk and talk and talk. I don't want to talk about it. I didn't then, either and pretty soon I stopped talking and after a while I even stopped listening.

And after that I started getting sort of restless. And after that, I realized that I wanted to leave but I wasn't thinking very well and I didn't know where to go.

About that time, a secretary opened the door. A huge plastic plant was visible behind her in the other room. The plant reminded me of Cynthia.

Chapter 3

Cynthia hated plastic plants. She thought they were tacky. Lots of people do; but not many carry vials of acid to splash on them at every opportunity.

That's the flip side. The only real way to understand Cynthia was to experience the enormous reserve of gentleness and love that she willingly shared. So it was only natural that I should think of her in my time of distress. Besides that, she was great looking and lived near Capital City.

I always saw her when I was in town but this meeting had come up so quickly, I forgot to let her know I would be there. As soon as I saw that plastic plant, I ducked out of the room and called her. Now was fine, she said, and I never went back to the meeting.

On the way to her greenhouses, I thought about the first time we met. It was at a flower show in Sunbelt City. Now, I'm not a flower show kind of guy, but since I was president of the mall merchants association that sponsored it, I had to perform a few official duties. Among them was presenting a blue ribbon to Cynthia. Her real name, by the way, was Forsythia and she had the yellow blooms embroidered somewhere on all her clothes I found out that night.

She snickered when she saw my garden but stayed the entire week of the show, despite the fact that she was not a mall person. Or a shopper. In fact, she didn't even much care for clothes most of the time.

Her elderly bank president husband built her a complex of greenhouses and walled gardens on a hilltop outside of Capital City. That's where she spent most of her time and even moved there after the old guy died. And that's where I was headed—to the greenhouses.

Chrys came to the door. Her real name was Chrysanthemum, or so she claimed. The greenhouses and gardens were too large for Cynthia to maintain without full-time help and she hired Chrys so she could work comfortably without having to worry about what, if any, clothes she was wearing. Apparently, Chrys shard her disregard for clothing, even around me. It was disconcerting at first, but what can I say? You know the old adage, when in Rome, undress like the Romans.

Anyway, I paid absolutely no attention to Chrys' delicately scalloped white scoop neck tee shirt with spaghetti straps that was just long enough to serve as her only garment. It was the true friendliness of her smile and the warm welcome of someone who I knew, at least superficially on a personal basis, that I sought so desperately.

"Gin and tonic?" Chrys asked.

"Hmmm," I answered. That meant, yes and I'm having a hard time unknotting my shoelaces.

Chrys moved barefoot across the indoor-outdoor carpet to the short bar. While she poured and stirred, I deposited my briefcase and shoes and suit and shirt and tie next to the door.

"Where's Cynthia?" I asked.

"Out in the (unintelligible) greenhouse," Chrys said. They sometimes used Latin words I couldn't understand much less pronounce. Maybe it was Greek. It was to me, anyway. "We need a twist," she said.

From where I stood fumbling with my clothes, I could see Chrys' sandy blond mop dip beneath the top of the bar as she opened the small refrigerator. Simultaneously, the profile of her bare white ass appeared.

At last down to my shorts, I approached the bar and sat on one of the three stools. Chrys pushed a very tall, very wide glass toward me. It was a glass made to contain enough for a long walk in the gardens.

"You look real tired, Mick," Chrys said.

"It's been an incredibly hard day," I said. "Two days, I corrected myself, and chugalugged the drink.

Chrys gasped and muttered something I couldn't understand. It's not that it was Greek—the ice was rattling. I know she was surprised because I never drank that way. I think she was concerned. She looked at me carefully and when she saw I was all right, she smiled. I don't think she hated men.

We talked a little while she fixed me another drink. Then she made one for Cynthia and one for herself and I followed her into a greenhouse.

The first whiff of greenhouse air, that unique mixture of healthy plant breath and richly nutritious soil, brought back memories. I recalled the first time I visited Cynthia.

She was waiting for me that time, too, somewhere in one of the hothouses. When I found her on that occasion, she was partially clothed by flower petals stuck to her body with natural nectar. The flowers were not applied like clothing, though. There were irregular splurges of color generously interspersed with bare skin or painted with nothing but the nectar itself. I'll bet Chrys had a great time dressing her but my job was better. I removed the petals with my teeth and licked away the nectar. It reminded me of tasting honeysuckle when I was a kid. But this was no kids' stuff. And there was no she loves, me, she loves me not game. We were serious. I was slow and thorough and by the time the nectar was gone we were heaving and tense for each other.

I was tempted to think of an irrigation joke but the power of the original moment and the beauty of the memory seized me. I even started forgetting my recent problems and suddenly again became aware that I was following Chrys. The utterly smooth pebbles were like a massage that gradually relaxed my feet even as the rest of me became taut with anticipation of Cynthia. I became so preoccupied with that, that I failed to realize the slight dimming as we progressed thorough the greenhouses. It never got very dim, just enough to eliminate the glare and ease the eyes.

Chrys stopped. I couldn't see why at first but I stood behind her trying to distinguish a reason for stopping. Then I saw.

Cynthia was barely visible behind some ferns. I moved toward her, past Chrys, until I could clearly see the entire length of her body reclining on a low moss covered slope. Her legs were tightly together, holding an orchid in place. That was Cynthia. She could have never been Eve. She would have never settled for a fig leaf.

For a few moments, I stood absolutely motionless, absorbing Cynthia's gorgeously curvy body topped by a shock of brown hair that merged into ferny shadows. I was unaware of anything else until Chrys approached and stood just behind my shoulder. She watched motionlessly, too, for a few moments. Then she pulled that little tee shirt off over her head and knelt behind me. I could feel her softness against my legs as she leaned forward and peeked around me like she might a tree. She was watching Cynthia closely. Then, very slowly, she began to tug at my shorts. She would pull a bit and stop; pull and stop; pull and stop; all the while watching Cynthia carefully until my shorts were completely down. Then she hugged me around the waist and kind of hung on, her arms draping casually and her face pressed against my side, still watching Cynthia. Then she slowly pressed the tip of me down using a single finger and held me that way a moment, then withdrew her hand and watched Cynthia watching me spring back. Cynthia smiled, almost laughed and Chrys withdrew into the foliage.

"Mick," Cynthia whispered.

I approached her slowly and lay down next to her, propping on my elbow. Wedging an arm beneath her back, I pulled her toward me. We kissed until my free hand, lingering and with extended detours, made its way down her body to the orchid. Her legs opened like a flower and we made love and made love again before falling asleep.

Darkness startled me when I awakened. For half an instant I remembered the difficulties and questions I faced and feared the hour. A check of the luminous dial of my watch relieved me that the night was new and I just as quickly ignored my other situations and happily concentrated on Cynthia.

There was just enough light from somewhere to enjoy the outline of her body and a glint of skin here and there. I'm sure my own silhouette was interesting. It felt interesting and when it began to explore Cynthia she awakened equally ready.

Afterward, I lay on my back and it was her turn to be on an elbow. She was close and peered at me intently. She was close enough that her curves were touching me provocatively but we ignored that. It was talk time.

Actually, I whispered. And I told her everything so she could understand how the tensions and problems grew layer by layer, heavier and heavier over a mere two days. Not much more than twenty-four hours, when I thought about it. Anyway, I gave Cynthia some idea of what I had been going through dealing with the surreal escape from Jackie's husband to Mr. Kerplopski's sorrowful illness and the disturbing prospect of the company being sold.

All of these things were well outside Cynthia's world but it seemed to me that she had a good philosophy of life. I didn't know exactly what it was, but Cynthia seemed to have it all put together and I felt fractured about then.

She listened without interruption and never asked a question. I was always good at verbal skills. I suppose I explained things fairly well. Cynthia sure responded. The more I talked, the more she cuddled and by the time I finished, she was fully on top of me holding me very tightly and she held on for a long time after I stopped talking. She didn't say anything herself for a long time, she just lay on top of me, holding me.

"Hang in there, Mick," she finally said.

Like I said, Cynthia had a good philosophy of life but as soon as she spoke, she rolled off of me. Without her weight on top of me, I rose instantly, also.

"After all," she whispered, "you're well hung."

We sort of laughed. The joke bothered me a little, although I didn't know why. Maybe it was because I was afraid that was the end of the evening but she took me by the hand and pulled me up. As soon as we were on the pebble path, I guessed what she had in mind.

Chrys was already under the waterfall when we arrived. That's right. Cynthia had not just a hot tub but also a pool with a warm water waterfall and real rocks—and plants, of course.

We played for a while which led to fooling around for a while—the three of us, I mean. After that I began to feel satisfied with my visit. There had been the unusual and exciting followed by seriousness followed by a strenuous romp. Then Cynthia put a cap on it.

We were obviously winding down and I had to be getting back to Sunbelt City since I had a meeting early in the morning. Chrys stayed behind while Cynthia and I climbed out of the pool and dried off. I started dressing as soon as we were back in the house. Out of deference to my clothes, Cynthia wrapped herself in a towel.

When I was about to leave she pushed my back against the door and pressed herself against my body. She looked up. We were nose to nose.

"Whatever all of these difficult circumstances are that have suddenly appeared in your life, Mick," Cynthia said, "make them opportunities. Figure out how to do what you want to do. What you really want to do."

I had no idea how to reply. I just looked into her eyes. I think she liked the hazel of my eyes. And for some reason I couldn't blink. Then we said good-bye and I slipped out the door.

Man, you can really see the stars up there where Cynthia lives. And the air was good.

There's no doubt about it: I felt better. Other than the obvious, I couldn't explain why. I mean, I, felt better inside.

And the rush of the cool breeze with the top down completed the feeling. It was very late but I was awake and alive and the road was open.

As I drove, I kept thinking about the last thing that Cynthia said to me. "Figure out how to do what you really want to do." Obviously, it had worked for her. She had figured out how to get what she really wanted, but the question nagged at me. Finally, it dawned on me that before I could get that far, before I could make anything happen, I would have to figure

out what I really wanted to happen.

Jeez, why does life have to be so complicated? But there was one thing I knew. There's nothing better than clear night air in a Morgan.

The hours were wee when I reached the outskirts of Sunbelt City. A double wee was bothering me as much as Jackie by that time I took an opportunity to relieve myself on both counts and pulled in at a midget mega mart called conVENNIEmart. Such a name and such restrooms. Medical researchers would never need to grow experimental germs in another petri dish again if they knew about that place. After the restroom, I bought a bottle of rubbing alcohol and went outside to the pay phone.

Jackie was so tired she sounded drugged at first but I had no choice about calling her. And when she found out what time it was she woke up and went straight to pissed. I couldn't help the time, either. I tried to explain that but it was useless. Breakfast seemed to be the right approach.

As soon as the phone was in the cradle, I whipped out my handkerchief, doused it with the rubbing alcohol, and vigorously wiped my phone ear. Then I poured the stuff on both hands. The poor clerk peeking out the store window thought he had already seen it all.

He should have worked in my all night diner. I say mine because it's the all night diner I patronize and I have done so frequently over the years. It's not one of those chain jobs that have linked the muddle class across the whole nation with predictable mediocrity. This place—Crusty's—had character. And for that matter, it had characters. Who knows? Maybe I was one of them. But for certain, one of the main characters was the cook, Crusty. I mention that because the place also had grease. I suspect that that's understood, but along with grease you expect a certain amount of blinking on the part of the health inspectors. I had that problem licked. In return for a reasonably generous tip, I was provided clean utensils and Crusty agreed not to hang a cigarette out of his mouth when fixing my eggs.

If Jackie was put off by the place she didn't show it. The only thing evident in her face was desperation. That bothered me. There's nothing on the face of the earth more dangerous than a desperate woman.

For a moment, Jackie frowned and her eyebrows bristled. What can I say? You have to be pretty damn upset for your eyebrows to bristle. I had pulled her away in the middle of the night so she had not had time to do any cosmetic work with pencils and liner and junk. And I feared that those menacing porcupines on her face signaled an impending attack.

Just then I was saved by Lulu, the waitress. Lulu had had time to do cosmetic work. If it helped, and I have every reason to think it did, then I would hate to have seen her before repairs. Lulu was sometimes called Louie. That was usually when she had to assume her role as bouncer. Crusty couldn't do it because of emphysema or something. Lulu smoked, too, but I think it just made her eyes puffy and red and watery all the time. I mention these things so it is understood why Jackie's attention suddenly shifted. Maybe it was Lulu's missing teeth.

But Lulu tried hard. She smiled and took our order. Jackie's quill brows went back on alert and I immediately took evasive action. It's something I learned as a manager. FDR was a master at it. I remember reading how he would sometimes invite contentious people for a chat and they would leave not knowing what the hell happened,.

Anyway, I aimed to divert Jackie's attention by starting to talk myself. The trouble is, she started talking at the same time.

"Maybe we had better go one at a time," I said when we both paused. Jackie leaned forward in an inquisitive kind of way instead of threatening. I realized that it was safe, and I let her go first except for one quick, simple question. "What's this that's going on about your husband?"

"Oh," she said, casually surprised as if I had asked something as irrelevant as the weather on Uranus. "He's okay about you now."

"What do you mean he's okay about me now? A person doesn't just go from murder to brotherly love overnight."

"I wouldn't go that far, either," she said. "But I did talk to him last night," she paused, "or night before last, or whenever it was."

She shot me a hostile look that I'm sure dealt with the clock and the calendar. I really didn't care as long as time kept going.

"And I'm supposed to just accept it at that?" I said.

"It's okay, Mick," she said. "I made him understand that you're harmless."

Yeah, but what about him, I thought. Then I felt kind of insulted. Harmless?

Jackie leaned forward and occupied time and space intensely. "What did the ICC agent say?" she asked and I told her. "What did the FDA agent say?" she asked and I told her. "What did the Alcohol, Tobacco and Gun guy say?" she asked and I told her that, too.

Jackie sat up when I finished; she leaned against the back of the booth and stared straight ahead past and through everything from here to Mars. She looked anguished, about to cry or something. But she threw it all off and leaned forward again, by then determined instead of desperate.

"I'm going to go ahead and file for divorce," she said in the tone she used to tell the repairman that he would have the copy machine fixed by the time she needed it.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You've got to tell me what the hell's going on." I was beginning to feel FDR'd. "It will go fast," she said. "My lawyer already has all the papers ready. We can file in the morning—I mean this morning—and it will be over soon."

"Wait a minute," I said again. "First, your husband accuses me of fooling around with you which we both know is not true, then I take a smelly ride in a trash buggy and have to go home for a shower, then I come back here and find my office full of G-dicks and the next thing I know, you're going to get a divorce which is not strictly any of my business but at the same time it feels like it ought to be but nobody's telling me why it feels that way."

I didn't say it, but it reminded me of the time I went to a proctologist. I didn't feel anything in his office but after the anesthetic wore off, I felt like I had been sliced, which I had, but couldn't remember the cutting. Recalling this, I relaxed. Jackie looked pained. She drew a deep breath and focused. It seemed like I might be about to have an explanation.

"First," she began, "I want to apologize for what Joe did."

"It's not your fault," I said. I still didn't know what Joe had done except to rage through the store on his way to my office presumably intent on homicide. But it seemed like a start and I was patient.

"No, but I'm still married to him."

"We all make mistakes," I said. "Philosophy 101, School of Hard Knocks." What can I say? It was a cliché.

"I was hoping that things would get better. That he would change. that things could be worked out," she said. "But after what happened yesterday—day before?—I can see that it just isn't going to happen."

At that point, I felt smug. It seemed to me that I had sacrificed my dignity and part of an afternoon as a contribution to the education of a worthy young woman, who, because of my sacrifice on her behalf, had learned to change her life for the better.

"After those federal agents were in," she continued, "I can see that I have to go ahead and end my marriage. It's the only thing I can do."

"Those flatfoots convinced you of that?" I asked. I aired the interior of my mouth in disbelief.

"I have never told you about Joe," she said, "but there's something you need to know."

"Well, if the guy has such a hard on for me, I would appreciate an explanation."

Jackie seemed uncertain where to begin but confident of the conclusion. Me, I was just taking it as it came.

"I know how Beauty Bullets got shipped into this state," she confessed.

"Yeah?" I was afraid she was trying to change the subject.

"Joe. It was Joe."

"You actually know that for sure?"

"Yes, for certain. You know I haven't been living with him."

"Yeah. I remember you taking a couple of days off several months ago to move."

"Well, I haven't been living with him but I have hoped that we could patch things up, so..." Jackie said and began to sputter. "And, ah, ah, because I was trying to get back together with him and make things work out, I had spent some time with him back, oh, a few months ago."

"Okay," I said, "you kept his sack warm after you moved out."

Jackie blushed. She turned red enough to radiate heat and it wasn't from the coffee. It startled me. Then I realized it was because it had never happened to me with her before.

"Mostly, it was other women who kept him warm," she said, "which is one reason I didn't keep trying too long."

"But what' s this about Joe and the Beauty Bullet? I don't get it. And something tells me I'm glad I didn't know until now."

"Joe has always liked two things to the exclusion of almost everything else," Jackie said.

"Those being?" I pushed.

"Sex and money," she answered, averting, her eyes. "And for a long time it was like I took care of one of those things leaving him time to go after the other."

"If I was Larry King, I would have to insist that you answer the next question. Now, Ms. Palmer, I want you to look at the audience and tell us, Ms. Palmer, how..."

"Often," she said. The antic drew her sense of humor and she grinned.

"'Would you say very often Ms. Palmer?'" I/Larry pressed.

"Very often," Jackie responded but she averted her eyes again. "But you see, that just left him time for scheming. Scheme, scheme, scheme. That's all he ever did. To make money, then more money and more money and more money."

"God, he must have made piles. I didn't know he was so rich."

"There were set backs along the way. He lost lots a bunch of times and had to make it back again and every time he drove deeper and deeper into the darkness of himself."

"Is he a nut case?" I asked. I figured it was all right to ask that since she said she planned to divorce him. And after all, he had come to the store that day in an embarrassing public display. What kind of person would have done that?

"Maybe," Jackie answered. "He seemed to concentrate so hard. And he would go into these deep depressions," Jackie said. Then she almost teared up and I got nervous.

"But what does all this have to do with the Beauty Bullet?" I asked, trying to pull things back on track and speed it up.

"After a while, he started to get into larger and larger schemes involving more and more money and there were lawyers and accountants and everything and he began to pretty much ignore me. And at some point, he started to, ah, you know, fool around. I think it must have happened long before I first thought it did."

"But the Beauty Bullet," I said.

"That jumps ahead quite a bit but you can see from what I've said, the direction he was going in."

"But the..."

"The Beauty Bullet stuff came up after Joe decided to go heavily into trucking."

That comment got my attention. I was much more patient about hearing the rest of it.

"My impression is," Jackie started again, "that he gradually drew more and more of his resources into that. I think he saw himself as some sort of major captain of the trucking industry. Anyway, it takes an awful lot of money. Do you know what a single rig costs?"

"I can't imagine," I said, trying to imagine what a forty-foot Morgan would look like.

"Plus warehouses and all," Jackie said. "Lots of employees. And girls in the offices." She smiled weakly, then jabbed me. "I don't know why he was so upset about your reputation," she said.

"Believe me, I want to get to that, but first finish the part about Beauty Bullet."

"It's just that I think he got to the point where he is now and I'm pretty sure that he's overextended. Sort of over invested and he needs more money."

"So he..."

"When I was over at his house about that time, he took a call from some guy and the name of that pharmacist, Dr. Waxsizzle, who invented Beauty Bullet, his name came up a few times."

"Do you think he was talking to Dr..."

"No, it was some other guy. They were talking about Dr. Waxsizzle and I remember them talking about products and marketing and distribution. It was before Beauty Bullet came out but I remember the name Waxsizzle because it's so unusual. From the way they were talking, I think Joe was planning to invest with the other guy in this Dr. Waxsizzle's invention and Joe was going to provide warehousing and shipping as his part of the investment. There it is, you see. Another scheme."

"I see," I said. "It all makes sense now. Why there were so many agencies interested."

"I never really thought any more about it until you mentioned the ICC and the FDA questioning you about Beauty Bullet—especially its shipping route."

"Just one thing," I said. "I don't see what they're so concerned about. It looks like a perfectly harmless product. A waste, maybe, but harmless. What's going on that's illegal?"

We were silent a minute. I was interested in getting on with the part about Joe and me. To hell with Joe and Dr. Waxsizzle. But something hit me.

"Do you think he might get involved with drug running?" I asked. "Like that other trucker in the paper last week? You know. Using his truck lines to transport the stuff everywhere?"

"No. No," Jackie said. I could tell she meant it. "He has a kid brother who was ruined on drugs. He's messed up real bad. Joe wouldn't get into that stuff. But I suspect he's capable of getting into just about anything else."

For a moment I was relieved. If Joe were really bad enough to network dope, killing a mere me might not be such a big deal. Then it hit me again.

"Cigarettes," I said. "Would he bootleg cigarettes?"

"Like buy them in North Carolina and move them over the state line without paying the taxes?" she asked. Then she sort of mumbled, "Take Joe Camel over the hump."

Jackie was obviously familiar with the scheme. I didn't want to know exactly what she had overheard about it. I was already wondering what part of my precious body would be riddled with lead bullets. But before we got to that point, I wanted to know a few things.

"Okay," I began. "Let's set this down and get it straight. I can see why your husband would want to keep you but apparently Joe, being nuts and all, doesn't see it that way. And since he's known to have been fooling around a long time anyway, why would he care about us if we were doing anything together which we're not even if he believed we were?"

"Maybe deep down he does care for me and want to keep me," Jackie said. Actually, she mumbled and it seemed to me she was trying to convince herself. Then she threw it off. "Why kid myself," she said. "It's because of my Aunt Sarah."

Okay, I thought, as if I were really talking to Jackie. You're pitching in the World Series and you've got a badly psychologically abused and disadvantaged batter at the plate—that's me. So you throw a ball, a strike and a curve. You're good, Pitch. You're really good. You're world class. You deserve to be in the Series.

What I really said was, politely, "Aunt Sarah?"

Then I thought, how did a fucking Aunt Sarah get into this? Jesus. For that matter, how did I get into this? And how long is this going to take and what the hell is going on?

"Some years ago," Jackie said, "Aunt Sarah inherited her family's moving and storage business and she ran it herself for a long time but I understand she's now thinking about finding someone to manage it for her. I'll bet Joe decided that if he could stay on good terms with me he might get his hands on her business. It's just another scheme."

"It makes sense," I said. "And you need to be honest with yourself about everything. Even if it hurts a little because being realistic now will make it easier later. It helps to face everything squarely."

I took a sip of coffee. It was cold and I realized I had been lecturing myself. There was an issue I had to face.

"Give it to me straight," I said. I pushed the coffee cup aide and looked directly into her eyes.

"What?" Jackie asked. "Give you what?"

"What you mentioned a couple of times today. You know. About my 'reputation.'"

She giggled first but it turned into a deep laugh. I became more uncomfortable and self-conscious than I ever realized I could be.

"It's simple enough, Mick," she said. "Everybody knows you chase skirts constantly."

"Wait a minute," I said. "I pursue the company of individually selected women from time to time." That was not defensive. I only wanted to set the record straight.

"Don't I remember from physics class that time is a continuum?" Jackie said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"It means that you may be selective and do it from time to time but that as soon as you select one and the time expires on that episode, you select another and off you go again."

"Isn't that the way it's done?" I said.

Jackie just laughed some more. I was very uncomfortable. I glanced around. Lulu was smiling at me. Jesus. And Crusty was spicing some poor bastard's omelet with cigarette ashes. Life can be crummy sometimes.

"So what's your news from the meeting?" Jackie asked.

The question was a jolt. I wondered what it was like to be a short order cook. Then I wondered if God was a short order cook and we were the short orders. I glanced at Crusty.

"Mick?" Jackie said.

I told her. It hit her like just another load of wet hay. I suppose she was already under a ton of it. She seemed tired and depressed when we left a few minutes later. What can I say? I didn't make any of this.

After breakfast I went home and took a shower just for the hell and habit of it. Then I phoned John Bridges. I called him John; that was his middle name.

The only reason the name mattered was that John was the name of his father's father and the only reason that mattered was that it was probably the only way his father would allow his mother to get away with Lloyd. John was too young to know about this, but I strongly suspect that his mother was not only a "Seahunt" fan, but she had a fan picture in a secret place and almost certainly hid other things as well. Thus, Lloyd John Bridges.

John was just too nice to have ever understood any of that. It seems like we're getting more really nice young people in retailing these days. They're bright enough and take instructions well and perform well, they just don't have much imagination. I think it has something to do with the educational system and fluoridated water.

John was the manager of the other Kerplopski's branch in Sunbelt City. Because Sunbelt City was large enough to support two stores, they put a nice young fellow in charge of the smaller one but had him work under my direction. That way the store saved a little money on salaries and had the advantage of having an experienced hand like me running the overall show.

Generally, John and I would meet for breakfast a couple of times a week so it was not an unexpected suggestion. But round two at Crusty's brought some surprises. There was Crusty and Lulu, of course, and John was surprised when I told him I had already eaten breakfast.

"You must have been up early," he said.

I just looked at him. John was already married, young as he was, and with kids. He was so damn nice there was no way I could even hint at what had gone on during the last more than twelve hours. He was so nice that on days that he bought, we ate at Shoney's.

Man could he eat—and a trim young guy, too. But he stopped dead as bacon when I told him about the store being sold. We discussed the meeting he would have to hold with the employees at his store and I tried to be as encouraging as I truthfully could be about his prospects. But he was deeply worried. He had figured he had something good. What can I say? Didn't we all?

Then came Pirkle. I arrived just as he was entering his office. He knew something was up right away; I never got there by eight o'clock unless there was some really big deal.

He lit a cigarette, took one puff and placed it in an ashtray. I didn't like the smoke but it was his office.

I gave it to him straight. You don't try to sugarcoat shit for someone who's been around.

You have to give someone like that credit. He took it like a champ. Actually, like a Champ, that new line of super fast computers. As I talked, I watched Pirkle's wheels spinning just like in a cartoon only this wasn't funny. He continued to calculate a few moments after I stopped talking.

"Well," Pirkle said with resignation, "you and I are done for. You'll move on and do well. And I'll make it; not like I would have liked, though. Probably never work again for a regular company. Expect I'll pick up a little work for a bunch of small businesses. I'll get by."

Finally, Pirkle reached for his cigarette. It had become mostly a long ash that fell off like a leper's finger when he touched the filter. He stubbed it out.

"My insurance expense will go up," Pirkle said.

None of the area managers were thinking about expense analysis after they heard the news. They entered my office for the meeting as usual, a typical group. There was always one with their shoulders down around their knees and someone else too alive for the Pepsi generation, or should I say coke? But they all entered with certain expectations. My meetings were never very long and they always contained something crisp. And I never jerked them around; that's not to say I didn't try to motivate them, but I handled them with respect and honesty.

They filled my office with blank stares as I gave them a kind of preview of what the storewide meeting would be a few minutes later. I was generally upbeat and positive, particularly as it pertained to their continued employment and the quality of the company that was purchasing our company, but I also tried to make them understand that as soon as the final dotted line was signed, there would be a new game for everyone in a supervisory capacity.

They had to prepare themselves. I found myself making an unplanned statement. I didn't know exactly how I would do it, but I intended to provide them as much information as I could to prepare them for the expectations of the new company.

Before the day was over, I would have several other typically brilliant ideas. In the meantime, there was another meeting to conduct.

Storewide meetings were usually held in the fourth floor restaurant and featured an unstructured period of time at the beginning for everyone to sit around and drink coffee and eat doughnuts and talk. Then I came in and flipped the electrical switch on their butts. It was not cattle prodding and it was not cheerleading. I had seen some of both and hated them both as much as I also detested faking reverence for the company or anything else for that matter. What I tried to do was give them a direct shot of my own enthusiasm or I gave them nothing at all. Theatrics were okay, I figured, as long as it was not insincere. Besides, it's good for the Shakespeare in all of us. Or is it P. T. Barnum?

Sometimes I taught like a schoolteacher, but I never preached. And we never had songs or cheers or other forms of bullshit. That was under normal circumstances. I wouldn't give in to any nonsense, but this meeting would be different.

Everyone assembled on the first floor and I stood several steps up the motionless escalator. Judging from the shocked expressions of a few people, I could tell that at least one of the area managers had disregarded my request and said something about the sale of the store. I drew a deep breath; this was a meeting like no other.

I pointed over their heads to the mall entrance. I didn't say anything for a moment and everyone turned to look. There were just the usual old people walking for health and a woman with a shopping bag and a frown.

"Many of you were working here the first day a customer walked through that door," I said. "Do you remember? I do. I remember the very first customer. She still shops here. I see her every week. You do, too. And we see lots of customers week after week, year after year." I paused. "My friends, that is success. It was a great day when Mr. Kerplopski cut the ribbon and opened the store. And it has been a great adventure since that time. But things change and sometimes we have to face sadness, even tragedy. What we have to remember is that those who remain are obligated, simply by the nature of nature, to reweave the fabric and make it strong again—even stronger than before."

It sounded pretty good to me and everything seemed okay until I got to the part about Mr. Kerplopski's illness. Then it struck me again in a powerful way that his death meant the loss of what I regarded, in many ways rightfully, as my store and their store, too. Right there in the middle of my little speech I realized that with just a few exceptions, everyone there made a good team, a productive business unit, and it was about to be torn apart.

Let me hasten to add that I am under no illusions. Some managers think that they are loved by everyone simply because everyone tries to keep his ass happy even if they don't out and out brown nose. Except maybe for the part about chasing skirts, I think I have a realistic understanding of the way I am viewed by the other people in the store. And for the most part, I am liked well enough and considered to be usually fair, which I try to be. Certainly, I know I am respected. Anyway, the point is that for the most part we all considered each other to be part of a successful team. But that was soon to end and gradually they began to see that, too.

Of course, I stressed in the meeting that none of them would loose their job as a result of the sale. No hourly worker would be terminated. I made the point and I think I got it across. I also hurled compliments at Caruthers and presented the prospective owners positively.

But there were tears and some of them were mine. I told everyone that we would have to adapt. Mainly, I guess I was talking to myself.

Soon after, everyone moved toward their departments and we opened the doors for business. The woman with the shopping bag made for the restroom. There were other customers and the news media.

Word was out and they wanted to interview me. Even under pressure, I was marketing the store.

"Outside," I suggested and in just a few moments I was standing beneath our Kerplopski's logo that would figure prominently in televised and newspaper pictures.

How wonderful Kerplopski's was, I told them. That was easy. Then I laid it on thick for Caruthers. My heart wasn't in it but that was my job. Then I did a great little sound bite to the effect that the name might change but it was still the same great store. Much of the interview made it on two of the TV stations and into the newspaper but that last sound bite was played repeatedly on the radio that day.

Then I was asked about returns. Could people expect to be able to return Kerplopski purchases after the sale to Caruthers?

It hit me like a stockroom shelf. It was the next big idea of the day. I answered the question by stressing the continuity and stability of the store regardless of ownership. Then, as soon as the interview was over, I raced to my office and called the newspaper, reserving a full page on Sunday. It was Friday at that point. The Saturday morning paper had only a tiny circulation. There was no Saturday afternoon paper and there was an early deadline for Sunday editions. I glanced at my watch and called Firman Boylston, our corporate sales promotion and advertising VP in Capital City.

"Sorry, Mick," Firman said. "There's no way I would have time to get you a camera ready ad there in time for your deadline."

"Damn," I said out loud as we hung up. Instantly, I dialed Mr. Kerplopski's number. I figured that if it was my idea I ought to get the credit for it.

"I need to talk to..." I blurted as soon as Irene answered.

"Hold it," she interrupted and snagged him on the way out the door.

Quickly and a little breathlessly, I explained to Mr. Kerplopski the nature of the questions I had from the media and feared that it meant some customers might react negatively to the sale if they questioned the stability of the store and particularly if they wondered about whether or not they would be allowed to return merchandise after the sale just as before. I told him I checked with Firman Boylston who said he couldn't help but that I had reserved space and would have a professionally produced ad in the Sunday paper anyway.

Mr. Kerplopski was grateful for the advice. Just then, Firman came in Irene's office and before he could say anything and with me hanging on, Mr. Kerplopski, holding the receiver in midair, told Firman to call my suggestion to all the markets and to prepare a similar ad for Capital City.

Sorry about that, Firm Baby, but I had to do it just like I had to grin loudly when I hung up with Mr. Kerplopski. But it didn't last tong.

Phone calls started coming in. One after the other. Time was slipping fast. I left the phone ringing and burst into the outer office.

"You've got to come with me now," I said to one of the college girls with her ass sticking out of a file cabinet.

Suddenly, I was aware of ever so many pairs of inquisitive eyes, wide and on me. I felt stabbed by what Jackie had told me last night—or that morning.

"Where we going?" the girl asked, equally surprised.

"Downtown," I said. I was stabbed again. "To the newspaper," I added for the sake of explanation. It bothered me that I yielded to public opinion but I elaborated even more. "We've got to get an ad together in a hurry and, it's got to be made from scratch."

Everyone in the office knew the girl had a degree in commercial art and the lack of a job in her field to prove it. But we gathered a lot of stares as we made our way down the escalators and through the store.

The fairly high speed ride in the Morgan was therapeutic for me and I was on top of it by the time we entered the newspaper office. I got with the newspaper advertising director and sent my college girl off with a few instructions to work with one of their people. I took an empty desk and a pad of paper.

After a while, we had our ad and then we had lunch. The deadline was met and distractions were at a minimum that far away from the store. It was then that I took time to look at my college girl. Somehow it couldn't get beyond polite, well short of interest. I didn't feel particularly stabbed, although it occurred to me that there had been a time when I would have been doing a little stabbing.

Phone messages had piled up while I was gone, but I followed my instinct and walked around the store the rest of the afternoon and spoke to every single employee individually. More messages had piled up by the time I finished but I was too exhausted to worry about it by the time some of the part timers came to work that evening.

It was seven-thirty by the time I left the store that night. A few beers and something microwaved had me in bed for a terribly sound sleep before nine.

When I woke up early the next morning, I had a strong inclination to call Jackie but there was no real reason. Then I realized that I was hungry and I thought about asking her to go to breakfast again but that didn't seem right, somehow. I chased away the big breakfast notion with cereal and dismissed the pretense of calling her about one of the phone messages. But for some reason I couldn't even explain to myself, I still wanted to call Jackie.

"You should have," she said " when I finally talked to her. By that time it was late Saturday afternoon and I had an urgent reason to call.

Most of my Saturday was consumed, as usual, in walking around the store, greeting friends who were shopping, speaking with salespeople, and generally keeping up-to-date on the store. I also spent quite a while parked on the telephone in a corner of the ladies hosiery department. It was isolated enough that I wasn't interrupted and didn't disturb anyone either—women generally, except for the occasional queen size broad trying to squeeze into size B's. They don't want to deal with a man in the selection of their panty hose, although they've been getting more forward lately. Anyway, this telephone was situated such that the cosmetics department was just ahead of it and the mall entrance beyond that with the rest of the store opening up behind where I stood. From that phone, I could pretty much keep up with the store and still get office type work done. It was kind of like Colonel Springs.

Posted there, I returned all of my phone calls from the previous day, at least as many as there were people to take them on a Saturday. The rest of the time, I roamed the store.

It was on one of those tours, not particularly trying to think but just mulling things over, that an idea occurred to me that put me in a fever for action. I figured that with a public announcement about the sale having just been made, things would start to pop very soon. It seemed logical to try to get the jump on matters by checking out Caruthers before they had a chance to examine us. That was when I called Jackie.

And that's when she said, "you should have called me." The interesting thing is that she said that in response to my opening comment about almost having called her that morning, maybe for breakfast. I had a hard time understanding her apparent interest in talking to me for no particular reason. I understood better the next day.

But at that moment, I had a specific motive in calling and it made Jackie quiet at first. Of course my voice was probably conveying the excitement of my idea as I explained the urgency of what was happening and that the Caruthers people would be very interested in seeing their new acquisition but I figured that they would be outright formal about it, probably holding meetings and organizing review expeditions and such, unless there were some wild hairs among them who would act on their own. I thought we ought to act first.

"Let's go over to Neighboring State tomorrow and check out Caruthers," I said. That's when Jackie got quiet. "Just you and me," I continued. "I don't want anyone—absolutely anyone else—to ever know about the trip because it would create suspicions about my management and besides, if we don't say anything, it will give us an opportunity to learn some stuff about them and act on it without revealing our hand, you know what I mean?"

Jackie didn't say anything. But it didn't bother me too much because in a moment, I was babbling about how to handle the trip.

"Tomorrow is Sunday," I said, planning out loud. "They won't open until noon. That will give us plenty of time to drive over there, have a bite of lunch and be waiting for them to open the doors, except we won't be exactly waiting. But we would be there at noon, do one store, then drive to one more store and do it before they close and then we could drive home."

Jackie still didn't say anything. I made up for her silence.

"They have one store that's about an hour or so from their other closest one to us. They're both on the coast. It would be a full day but we would have time to do both stores in one day and taking a look at two stores will give us more representation and create better balance in our evaluation. We'll almost for certain have the jump on everybody else in Kerplopski's and, like I say, the Caruthers people surely won't be coming over here until later next week."

"Do you like cold fried chicken?" Jackie asked. "We could save time by taking a picnic."

Chapter 4

We were leaving Sunday morning after breakfast but I knew I would soon be hungry, so I called Crusty and arranged to pick up some sausage and biscuits. Since I wouldn't be there to watch, I wondered if he would be hanging over them with his cigarette. I think the odds were against me.

Jackie was ready to leave when I arrived. She looked much better than she did the last time I saw her—in terms of fatigue and strain. In fact, she appeared rested and relaxed, even a little excited. And in a way I was too, because, even though the situation with the store was not what we wanted, it called for skill in trying to steer through unknown territory.

With the food stowed away, we were ready to travel, or so I thought. We crossed a speed breaker and slowly rolled to a halt at a stop sign not twenty feet away. Go ahead. Curse. I did.

And then, just out of habit, I glanced in the rear view mirror. There was a big guy with long sideburns in an old Dodge behind us. I pulled away from the stop sign and slowly, now and again dipping or bumping through a line of speed breakers, headed out of the apartment complex toward the highway.

"Can you stop just a minute?" Jackie asked when we neared the exit. "I need to run into the office. Won't take but a minute."

She was holding an envelope. "Rent?" I asked.

"Notice," she said. "If I'm not going to be depending on Joe anymore, I'm going to have to find a cheaper apartment."

How can it get cheaper than all these speed bumps, I wondered but didn't say anything. She seemed to have cool determination.

As Jackie stepped out of the Morgan, the guy in the Dodge pulled around us. Sure enough, Jackie was back in less than a minute.

We were off, or so I thought. This time, Jackie fumbled in her purse and produced a pair of sunglasses and a scarf. By the time we reached the highway, she looked like someone interesting trying not to look like someone interesting.

Before I made the turn onto the highway, I again glanced in the rear view mirror. And again I saw the guy in the Dodge.

"Shit," I said. "Don't turn around but did you know you were being watched?"

"Watched?" she said. Disgust can't hide behind sunglasses and scarves.

"And not subtly," I said. "Some guy is following us now."

I drove slowly a couple of blocks, almost paralyzed with uncertainty. Then, more or less just for something to do, I turned into a service station. It was one of those big new kinds that don't really have any service other than what you do for yourself but they're situated with plenty of access all around so that you can drive loopy figures around the pumps and compressed convenience store. This one had a Burger Doodle behind it which was accessible through the gas station area.

I cruised through the service station, angled my way around again from different directions, then eased into the Burger Doodle parking lot. Unlike teenagers whose driving pattern I was imitating, I was at least driving very slowly in order not to endanger customers any more than they were already threatened by the food. The Dodge faithfully copied every maneuver.

It reminded me of that game we used to play as kids, "Simon says." Only now we're supposedly adults. I thought about leaning over the side of the car and shouting, "Simon says 'Go to hell, you son-of-a-bitch.'" But about that time this ancient man doddered out of the grease pit—I'm talking about the restaurant. He was old enough to have been Simon and he was surrounded by small children. It just wasn't the time or place for games. But if I could get out of Burger Doodle, maybe, I thought, I could loose the jerk who was following us.

In the Burger Doodle lot, I suddenly put it in reverse, quickly backed a pivot, shifted to first, slammed the stick into second and third and shot past the guy in the Dodge. I felt better, not exactly Hollywood, but better. As we crossed into the gas station area, I could see the Dodge turning around before beginning to advance rapidly. He had an automatic and eight big American cylinders.

"Hold on," I shouted and put it in fourth as I headed for the street.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a pickup truck coming down the highway. I went for it anyway and made it by a fairly comfortable margin. Like I say, it wasn't Hollywood.

Then again, maybe it was. The Dodge didn't make it.

Jackie never turned around to look at the collision and I couldn't tell very much in the mirror at the speed we were going. All I knew was that we weren't being followed anymore and I told myself that it wasn't my fault if someone got hurt in the crash.

It was a while before we talked and by that time we were on the open road. First, the steel cords in my shoulders went back to their usual mush. Next, I became aware that the air was fresher. Then I was hungry.

Jackie wouldn't eat a sausage biscuit but she retrieved one for me and folded the wrapping back. Half way through my second one, she grinned.

"You really like that thing," she said, meaning the sausage and biscuit. "I guess you showed them back there."

It took me a few seconds to make the non-connection of what she said. It made me feel good.

"We're okay now," I said. "We're on our way and we can at least enjoy the day."

While we were riding and grinning, one of Joe's trucks passed us at their standard running speed of too fast squared. Our self-satisfaction momentarily turned into wind blown fear until we realized that the passing speed itself meant that we weren't an object of interest. But it did bring the subject forward for discussion.

"I thought you said Joe was all right."

"I thought he was," Jackie said, tensing.

"I don't know what you told him before, but..."

"I just assured him that there was nothing going on between me and anybody else, let alone you," Jackie said.

The way she said "let alone you," especially the way she said "you," kind of hurt, but in a way I was grateful for the hard attitude. "There's a problem, though," I said.

"What?" Jackie asked. Man was she naive in some ways.

"They've made us now," I explained. "You told him one thing and now they see us together, obviously going somewhere early on a Sunday morning. It's not the ole one plus one but he'll think it is."

"I see what you mean," Jackie said. "I'll talk to him again."

Like you talked to him before, I wanted to ask but kept quiet. We drove in silence a few miles.

"I'll just tell him that if he doesn't leave me alone, and you, too, of course," Jackie said, "I'll go to the cops about some of the business deals I know about."

In an instant, I was ready to wet my pants. There was nowhere along that stretch to stop, so I pulled over to the side of the road. I was so upset that I started talking before I stopped and didn't bother to turn off the motor.

"Look," I said, among other things, "if Joe is crazy enough to get involved in the kinds of shit he's apparently involved in and if he's mean enough to act about you the way he's been acting, if you stir him up, even let him know that you might know something harmful to him, then you don't know what he may be capable of doing."

Big brown eyes, clear and innocent that tended to see only the good in people, looked at me, me, with the reputation, me, the skirt chaser, and managed to see something else. And what they saw was not long hidden.

"Okay," Jackie said, something like the last time she said "I see." Naive isn't the word. She looked away and stared blankly ahead for a few moments. Then she turned toward me. "Thanks, Mick," she said.

That's when I knew that I had gotten through to her and made her understand the dangers she faced in dealing with Joe. And innocent as I was, they were dangers I faced, also.

It was probably that sense of excitement and element of danger that made me drive so fast the rest of the way. I didn't mean to, and every time I would catch myself, I would slow down but we arrived ahead of schedule.

We both began to relax as soon as we hit the beach. That is, I know I relaxed immediately and I'm virtually certain Jackie did, too. As a matter of fact, it was a whole new feeling for me. It was the softest time I had ever spent in my life. It was like some sort of miracle therapy. Maybe knowing that there was no chance that there would be any kind of remotely physical contact between us, made me relax enough to simply enjoy the time as its own opportunity.

We planned the time for the picnic and the beach was the logical place but beyond that, it was unimaginable. The chicken was the best I had ever eaten and the wine was perfect. So was Jackie's company. It's not that anything happened between us because it didn't. Maybe that's the point.

Nothing happened. We walked barefoot on the beach. We talked a little, laughed a little and drank a little wine but nothing else happened. We never even touched each other—not so much as a finger.

But then we weren't expecting anything to happen; we weren't looking for it and didn't want it. I think that's how the nothingness came to be. I had absolutely no expectations of myself or Jackie and I'm sure she didn't either. We were just there and we relaxed and enjoyed the time totally without pressure. We enjoyed it so much that we ran a full hour overtime and when we realized it, we didn't even scold ourselves. We just laughed and picked up our shoes and drove off to find the mall.

Ordinarily, when I visit a competitor's store, I look like what I am. Customers who don't know where I belong sometimes ask me for directions to the restroom. But on this occasion, I had no fear that I might be sized up as a retailer. The appearance was casual and the attitude was tourist.

But the mind was working; so was Jackie's. And we quickly inspected virtually everything. We even picked out individuals and whispered identifications like security, department manager, area manager and even store manager. I wondered what he was doing working on Sunday, especially such a slow one.

When we got back to the Morgan we made notes. The aisles and restrooms were spotless. We even saw a little guy picking up small bits of paper here and there. Racks were in rigid rows and the merchandise on them was unbelievably neat—opening day neat. And everyone who worked there looked uncomfortably formal.

By the time we finished comparing observations, a degree of quietness settled over us. It was not exactly a wet blanket but it was not the attitude we came there with. The Morgan was perfect therapy.

Soon, we were shouting fun comments above the wind on our way to the next Caruther's store. It was great banter and once again we arrived very upbeat and once again sank into extreme caution. The next store confirmed what we had seen the first time and even expanded the same themes.

The floors were arranged with draftsman-like precision. The displays were extremely neat but totally unimaginative. The fixtures were organized with cookie cutter uniformity. The salespeople looked like mannequins and the closing announcement was tape recorded.

I was glad to hear them say they were closing. No, I thought, it's really Kerplopski's that's closing. But at least these people at Caruther's would be going home temporarily. I wondered if they lived in dollhouses.

"That's it," I blurted loudly to Jackie on our way out. My genuine enthusiasm made a security person suspicious.

"What?" asked Jackie with mock horror and a smile toward the store detective eyeing us.

"Now we know Barbie and Ken's last name," I said. "It's Caruthers."

And being out of that store made us feel better. Not to mention hungry. So I pulled into a drugstore that was still open. It made perfect sense to me that anyone cooped up all day, especially on Sunday, in such a stilted place as a drugstore dealing with sick people and chemicals all day would leap to something real when they had the chance. It also seemed reasonable to me that a local person would know the best place to eat. Sure enough, the pharmacist instantly suggested what he said was a great place to eat with the best food around. It was called T&F Seafood. On my way out of the drugstore, one of those imps that that seem to follow me everywhere took over. I paused at a pay phone and looked up the number of the Caruthers store we had just left, knowing that the store manager, if he were working that day, would still be there. And just like at the other Caruthers store, he was there. Without giving my name, I explained that I was passing through town, had been in his store earlier and wondered if someone who lived there could recommend a very good restaurant.

"Well" he drawled and pondered a minute. "There's Shoney's out on the Big Highway."

"Want to have dinner with GI Joe and Betsy Wetsy?" I asked Jackie when I got back to the car. "I suspect Cabbage Patch Kids will be there, too."

"I don't care for those kinds of restaurants," she said. "Too many Chatty Cathys."

We turned off the Big Highway and followed the pharmacist's map to T&F Seafood. The parking lot was full of local cars and there was a weather-beaten sculpture of a mermaid out front. But as soon as we were inside, there was a real mermaid in a tight sequined skirt and bustier which barely contained her bulbous blessings. T&F had to stand for Tits and Fins.

The seafood was good, too. I had a beer in honor of the local boys who know where to eat. Jackie enjoyed it, although she made an annoying remark or two about what some guy or other would look like in an eel skin jockstrap. But we agreed that if we were in charge of the Caruthers store we just visited, we would replace the employees with people from T&F, be they workers or patrons.

Feeling full and fabulous, we headed home. We stopped at a traffic light which governed the freeway entrance and while we sat there, a tractor-trailer pulled alongside and passed gas as only a big rig can. And we took it full force as only a convertible can. I glanced up just as the truck driver looked down. I imagine they see some pretty interesting things sometimes. This time it was just Jackie and me and nowhere to hide if we had wanted to. But apparently we were of interest to the truck driver.

"Don't look now," I said.

"Joe's truck?" Jackie asked. I nodded. "And it looks like he's talking on a CB or a telephone or whatever they put in those things these days."

The light changed and we merged into the freeway. For about half-an-hour everything went fine then I started getting this uncomfortable feeling like I had become a mouse and a monster cat was about to pounce. I looked up in the mirror and sure enough it was another of Joe's trucks close behind and as soon as he saw me looking in the mirror, he edged even closer. I wondered if Joe liked to do it from behind.

"Again?" Jackie shouted above the roar of the wind because by that time I was really moving.

I didn't answer. It didn't take ESP to know and I was concentrating with every nerve cell in my body. The dragon was not only keeping pace, he was making it abundantly clear that he was merely toying with me, that he could step on me anytime he wanted.

The cords of muscle in my shoulders had long since turned to steel but somehow I didn't feel like Superman. Wait. Didn't they kill him not long ago? When I could literally feel the skin on my shoulders sizzle I knew I had to do something quick. I didn't know how much longer I could hold out.

About that time we started to pass an exit. We were over in the fast lane but at the latest possible moment I accelerated, at the same time pulling hard to the right, crossing the other lane and shooting up the exit ramp while the truck zoomed past.

Hollywood again. Except that there was plenty of action but no lights and camera. And the leading man was about to pee in his pants.

We didn't even know where we were. The pine trees didn't narrow it down a whole hell of a lot. There was a highway sign but it was full of too many bullet holes to read. Noticing that, we broke into hysterical laughter. The rest of the trip was great.

Basically, eliminating the freeway as too dangerous, we could go this way or that, being north or south. We turned north and in a few minutes we entered a small town where people still sat on their front porches drinking iced tea and watching the county road to see if something new and exciting would pass by. We did.

An old guy who pumped gasoline on Sundays to supplement his Social Security except every fourth Sunday when he had to travel to a VA hospital in order to undergo a too gross to explain procedure the following Monday morning at seven o'clock (I know that and much, much more about him from his incessant monologue) seemed to come to life when we pulled into the service station despite the fact that he was about to close. The old man was interested in talking and a few other folks, who apparently stopped by after falling off their porches, were interested in the Morgan and the intimate details of our personal lives. I was interested in a map and getting the hell out of wherever the hell we were. But the experience added an additional feature to the bizarre events of the day. Not to mention a map.

"Enter this in the navigation log," I commanded when we were safely beyond the reach of bicycles and dogs. "The Starship Morgan touched down today in a remote sector of the universe where the inhabitants seemed never before to have encountered Purple People Eaters. Withdrew expeditiously into the night."

By that time it was dark. We discussed the possibility of returning to the freeway but we decided that even at that hour it wasn't safe. So we had to get from where we were back to Sunbelt City without using the freeway or even the occasional old four-lanes.

That meant hours and hours of tedious travel over back roads we knew nothing about. But I never enjoyed a trip more. We talked endlessly about all kinds of things and laughed nearly

as much as we talked. It was a letdown to see familiar place names on the road signs near Sunbelt City, despite the fact that it was after midnight.

Certain that Joe's men were watching her apartment, I thought it would be safer for Jackie to spend the night at a motel. We approached one of those predictably clean chain inns from the back, slipping into the well lighted parking lot from a dark county road. I went into the lobby with Jackie and arranged a room for her which was accessible only through the lobby. I walked her to her door and then made sure the desk clerk saw me leave. I was concentrating so hard on doing things right, I forgot how awkward that parting moment could have been.

An impish thought seized me when I left the motel and for an instant, I was tempted to pull onto the adjacent freeway for the remainder of the trip into Sunbelt City, driving openly and alone for all Joe's drivers to see. But it occurred to me that it would only set them to looking for Jackie, so I kept to the back streets until I got near my house. For some reason, it had not dawned on me that they would be watching my house, too.

But as soon as I turned the corner, there he was. The poor dumb bastard stood out like a pimple on a model's ass. Nobody parks on the street in my neighborhood and seeing anyone sleeping in a car should have been enough to call the cops. I was sure he was sleeping and that he had not seen me, but I was afraid that if I got closer he might wake up.

It also struck me suddenly that if they were watching me they might be bugging my phone. So I backed out into the main street and drove to a twenty-four hour service station to call Jackie and make sure she was still okay. We covered that and set up a time for me to pick her up in the morning.

"Look," I said, "thanks for making the trip with me." I had to do or at least say something awkward.

Jackie laughed a tired but real laugh. "It was fun, Mick," she said. "I'm glad you thought of it."

She could have said that she was glad I asked her to go but she didn't. I tried to comfort myself that that's what she really meant. Then I wanted to kick myself for having said anything about it to start with and worrying about it after that. For such a smart guy, I can be pathetically dense.

Something caught my attention in the parking lot, though, that led to a great idea. There were a couple of trucks belonging to a traveling carnival that had become separated from the rest of the caravan. One was a flatbed mounted with an old airport type searchlight and the other belonged to a purple creature whose mother had been knocked up by a space alien—at least that's what it said on the side of the truck.

Me, my idea and a couple of twenty dollar bills approached the carnival guys. I could tell they liked the idea. It was probably a relief from standard show biz.

We each turned our headlights off when we approached my street. The truck stayed back some distance and the purple guy jumped out and approached Joe's stakeout on foot while I cruised close enough to see what would happen.

The creature doused himself with some green slime and signaled to the searchlight operator when he was ready. When the light beamed into the stakeout's car, the poor son-of-a-bitch was instantly jolted wide awake. As he scrambled to avert his eyes from the light, he looked toward the dark side of the car and got a good view of the purple creature dripping with green ooze like a stringy, wet wig.

I got a good look at his face. Talk about horror. It's a good thing the key was already in the ignition because otherwise he would never have found it with his arms and legs going in all directions like they did. And it's also a good thing there were no other cars on the street because when he did get started, he lurched forward and careened all over the street.

Apparently the carnival guys got into it because the search light operator started his truck and picked up the creature who aimed the light at Joe's man as he tried to flee. I watched until they were all out of sight. Then, in a minute or two, I saw this dot-ditty dot-dot flash into the sky. In that moment, I figured I recouped all the money I had ever wasted at carnivals trying to find chances to feel out girls.

In no time, I was asleep, drifting off with the warm, comfortable feeling of the beach picnic and Jackie's soft laughter. I awakened exactly the same way but forced my attention to business matters.

The trip would remain a secret, but I was sure to surprise some of the area managers with a couple of things I planned to say. I was concentrating on things from my own perspective so much that I failed to realize that I, too, could be surprised.

Chapter 5

With nothing but cheap motel soap, Jackie achieved a miracle of natural beauty. Dr. Waxsizzle would have been impressed. I was.

When Jackie came out to the motel parking lot, I was captivated by her appearance. It was early but the day was bright and clear. There was no mistaking what I saw. Her scarf and sunglasses couldn't hide it. Her face, her complexion was utterly beautiful all by itself without a trace of makeup. And she was poised and calm but full of fun. There were no apologies for day old clothes or the inconvenience of picking her up at a motel. She left it to my good sense to know that we were doing the best we could under the circumstances. For better or for worse, we were in it together.

A serious matter did come up. Jackie mentioned again that she would have to locate a less expensive apartment since she would not be depending on Joe for anything anymore. She wasn't trying to get a raise; she was simply talking to me as a friend. I was glad she was comfortable enough to do that and she proved it by even mentioning that she would be looking for some sort of career job using her earlier experience and her education.

Actually, I had not thought about it before, but there she was like so many other young women, working as a secretary when she was really not only capable of doing more, but had the education and skills in a particular field. I had to admit that I didn't know about Jackie's background. So many times, after I interview a prospective employee, I promptly forget anything I have learned about them that does not directly apply to the job at hand.

So it was interesting to learn that Jackie had a degree in interior design. Okay, now that can be a little fluffy, then again it can be serious. She had experience, too. And while so called "design" experience can be even fluffier than schooling in it, I gathered from our conversation that hers was real. Money. Budgets and deadlines—not just redoing a friend's house as an excuse for a shopping spree.

Our discussion was matter-of-fact, not depressing, and remained flexible and convivial. When we arrived at her apartment, we got a big laugh out of seeing the goon waiting for us. The slack-jawed dumbfoundedness of his expression made us laugh harder and he was clearly amazed that we would drive up so bright and cheery so bright and early and immediately commence a laugh fest which he correctly realized was at his expense. Of course, he had no way of knowing it was fueled by my retelling of the searchlight incident the night before. But the poor guy became visibly annoyed by our amusement.

His presence was enough to dictate caution. I waited outside while Jackie checked the apartment to make sure no one was waiting inside. We agreed that we would each call our lawyers and have them contact Joe to complain.

I got to the store just as soon as I could and began to organize my thoughts on paper. After listing the main points I wanted to convey, I began to think about the meeting in which the material would be presented. The area managers assembled in my mind and I began to feel myself talking to them and that's when I really started to roll.

Suddenly, I realized that John Bridges ought to be at the meeting, too. So I called him and suggested that he come right over.

"I was about to hold a meeting with my managers," he said.

"Postpone it," I said. "You may want use some of the stuff I'm going to cover."

John was on his way. I thought about talking to Pirkle right then but changed my mind. I pulled out a fresh pad and began a new outline. A girl in the office came in with several phone messages, mainly to call back. I glanced through the names very quickly, saw nothing unusual and put them off until later. I noticed one of the area managers lurking around the hallway outside my office but said nothing and she glanced in furtively several times but never came in. I was glad. I guess she saw me pacing around and writing furiously and thought it was not a good time. It wasn't. Suddenly, it was time for the meeting.

Walking across the sales floor to the meeting room, I ran into John as he was arriving. We barely spoke. I wondered if I appeared that grim that people were afraid of me, then I wondered if I could learn to duplicate whatever it was whenever I didn't want to be bothered.

Most everyone was already there when I appeared at the back of the room. Pirkle was already there, of course, and the maintenance manager and most of the area managers. By the time I reached the front of the room and pulled the easel out of the way and rearranged some of the other furniture, everyone else was present and seated.

As I looked up, Jackie entered the room. I was impressed again. Under the circumstances I hadn't expected her for another hour. Typically, women don't go from scratch to business meetings that fast. Looking at her all suited out and dolled up, no one would have ever guessed that she started the morning scrubbed down and plucked from a motel on the edge of town. I'm sure I smirked thinking about it. No one would think that things like that happen to Jackie and they would have been terribly shocked to know that I was the one who picked her up at that motel after a strange night on rural back roads eluding her husband's tentacles. Then I must have grimaced, inside I know did, thinking about what people apparently must have thought I was possibly doing. Ha, I thought. Phooey on you. You wouldn't think, that I would have dropped a woman off at a motel and gone my separate way would you?

It was comforting to have Jackie there. It involved more than merely an inside joke. She was the only person who understood what was going on and the significance of what we were trying to do without being obvious. It was crucial that no one know we had toured Caruthers stores because people would tend to make more of the plan and the motive than the results. So it was an uplifting feeling to have the only person present who understood all of that. As far as everyone else was concerned, I only had to maintain my customary air of authority. Deep inside, I knew I had to have something else, too. I knew I had to do a little acting, that I had to muster the conviction of someone who had had a life changing experience, but was able to describe it without sentimentality. In some ways it was like appearing to have had something akin to a religious experience but with a scientist's detached evaluation and analysis.

Step One: rearrange the furniture. I pulled a small wooden table forward and sat on it. I had never done that before so it had an attention getting function. I knew the table had stout legs. Had it broken when I sat down, the whole plan would have collapsed along with me and everybody would have been on their ass laughing.

Step Two: pause a moment to look everyone in the eye before speaking. That was elementary but it had a larger purpose. Again, it was not my customary practice merely for a managers meeting; this was a small group and eye contact was very personal and very riveting.

Step Three: lights, camera. This was a kind of like an introduction, a warm-up. I said a few mediocre things such as the fact that the store was being sold and everything changes and we have to be prepared to change with the times. That was common but it was setting the stage.

Then I transitioned. I told them that even before the sale was consummated that things would be different. I told them that I had been thinking about our situation and where and what we were as a store, particularly in relation to recent trends in merchandising and concepts in retailing that were being stressed by other stores across the country. I told them that I had some important things to say about the immediate future of our own store.

Own store, I thought.

Step Four: action. I shifted positions dramatically. "I want a rock band Tuesday night," I said.

Wham. Talk about action. Where the hell did this come from, they were thinking.

"It needs to begin playing at nine-thirty and go till one-thirty," I said. "And we'll need pizza. Lots of pizza. But no alcohol and that includes no beer in the parking lot."

I'm sure everyone was thinking about the maintenance department manager who was an alcoholic. I was certain he would be fine. It was other people I was concerned about.

"And Wednesday night I want us to have a really jazzy jazz band in here. Same hours but fried chicken."

Everyone was mystified. Their facial expressions were priceless. Especially Pirkle.

"Never thought you'd be hiring a rock band, did you, Mr. Pirkle?" I asked. "The purpose is a two-day thorough cleaning campaign. And I mean thorough. It can start during business hours tomorrow with things like dusting and rack cleaning and reorganization and cleaning of offices. At night it can be things impossible or harder to do during customer hours. Things like absolute carpet vacuuming and spot cleaning, any whole department fixture moves that need to be made and a complete overhaul of the stockrooms."

All the managers were writing furiously to keep up with my list that was delivered in a brisk, go-get-em manner. So far, so good.

"I want everyone to feel like they want to participate some how at least one of the nights but I don't want it to be mandatory after scheduled hours. And I want to pay double time and a half for everything after ten. Salaried people can make up the time in half day increments beginning next week with a weekend off bonus if both nights are worked."

That was a good punch. I could see smiles as they scribbled.

"Mr. Crosby's maintenance department will be busy during that time, also. We need to clean and buff every aisle or wax and buff, too if that's appropriate, plus spot cleaning some carpets and fully shampooing some others in high traffic areas. That's a tremendous job in such a short time. I suggest that you put Jimmy in charge of a crew on each floor for carpet and one on each floor for the aisles. That's going to mean renting some equipment and hiring some guys today—or girls for that matter, if they've got a good pair of arms. That will let you concentrate on other things. Such as bringing the day crew in a couple of hours early at five every day through next Monday. Hire a couple of more people for that, too. In five hours before opening, you can have every speck of everything off the carpets and every restroom gleaming clean."

Silently, I turned my attention from Crosby and looked at everyone else slowly and carefully. "Do you understand from this the nature of my commitment and the thoroughness of what needs to be done'?" I asked. No one answered aloud, I didn't mean for them to, but I could read the unmistakable clarity in their faces confirmed by definite nods.

Then I turned to Mr. Crosby again. "Hold it in there for six days like that. Just six days. After that we'll have to keep it taut, but we'll cut the hours back to normal and keep the people you hire. And we'll figure out some other things to help in the long run, too. In the meantime, keep the coffee pot in the restaurant going around the clock."

The coffee pot part was a crack but Mr. Crosby knew what I meant. I had confidence in him but the five o'clock aspect would be the most stressful for him. He and Pirkle and I were the only ones who knew about a special "warehouse sale" type event we had a few years earlier. Crosby had to come in real early for that, too. And on the last day he suddenly got this stricken look on his face and backed into a corner holding a mop like a weapon. He said the dust bunnies were eating purple carrots and carrying rabies in their Easter baskets. He was okay when he came back a few days later. And like I said, I had confidence in him, but I was concerned and the coffee pot remark let him know I remembered and kind of told him to be prepared to hold it together.

"In terms of the sales floor," I resumed, turning attention to the area managers, "you should end up with a grid of fixtures. It must be a grid and it must be inflexible. There are exceptions to most things but not this. And you know everything from that point on. But it's never a bad idea to check the merchandising manual. I'm talking about Kerplopski's own book. It's as good as anything I've ever seen and the stuff that's in there is as good as it gets in the industry. Just apply it to a grid system.

"And pay special attention to things that are high profile, things you can see from the main aisle. Things like running colors from light to dark. And keeping classifications together. There can be exceptions to these things but they need to be true exceptions not salt and peppered through the department. So get it right, then spend as much time as you can fine tuning it and have your people maintain it."

People were beginning to squirm. The session was damn close to saturation. But I still had to give the one-two punch.

"There's one more thing I want you to know and I want you to communicate this to your people. Everyone deserves to know what a good job they've done over a period of time here. This store has come a long way and we've even become the regional leader and the reason we're in that position is that we're doing a lot of things right—very right—and it's the people who work here who are responsible. The reason we're going through this clean up week and refining some of our merchandising is merely to bring us more nearly in line with exactly what is considered ideal among most large department stores today.

"For now, beginning this minute, we need to concentrate on just a few things. We need to plan and organize the remainder of the week, execute the cleaning and physical upgrading, and refine and maintain the merchandise presentation. And in order to do all of that, you need to advise your staff about what is going on, involve them in what's going on and clearly communicate exactly how they can best make a contribution. Ultimately, we will use this week to enhance our strengths, which are considerable, and make this entire business of selling the store, positive for everyone."

That was it; the session was over. I worried that I had talked too long, too much, covered the same ground from too many angles, but it was too late. And I think the basic intention was achieved. I ended on a positive point, even if the energy level had dropped from the frenetic beginning. What I had to say was important and I had communicated clearly. The message took hold immediately and the area managers vacated the room instantly on their way to implement our plans.

The home furnishings manager hung around a few moments. That seemed odd but I had no time to pay much attention. While Jackie remained to work on her notes that would be transcribed for the benefit of clarification and follow-up, I talked with Pirkle and John Bridges. Both looked at me with a kind of mystical serenity. It was uncomfortable and at the same time compelling. They trusted me. Was I doing the right things? Time was critically important.

"They will be here Thursday at the earliest," I said, knocking their beautiful silence in the head.

"Why Thursday?" John asked.

"Because they're a bureaucracy," I said. "If their purchase of our store took all of them by surprise, and I'm sure it did, then they've first got to figure out how to react. That will take a day by itself. Phone calls all over the place. Rampant gossip. Kind of like us. That took care of the weekend and even part of today. Plus, today is Monday and Mondays are Mondays so they're already established and have to play out. Then they've got to make decisions and prepare to execute the decisions. They're not just going to jump into cars and drive over here; they've got to figure out who's going to go where and with whom. And what they're going to do when they get here and how. Those kinds of things take meetings."

"Thursday," John repeated.

"Could be as late as Monday," I said. "Absolutely no later, but I suspect it will be late this week. High probability they'll show up Friday; much less of a chance Saturday. Those corporate types will want their weekend off. But the thing is that once we do all of that work, we'll have to hold the results in place until their visit and really forever because we've got to maintain what we do. But the first impression is critically important. And from the time of the first visit onward, we're open to a..."

"Attack," said John Bridges.

"Surveillance," said Pirkle in a peculiar tone.

It was cynical to the point of being sinister. I forced a nervous laugh. I realized that Pirkle and I agreed on the issue of bottom lines, although I'm sure my methods amazed him sometimes just as his seeming lack of methods amazed me; but it was the first time that I realized that we felt some things the same way. It was almost as surprising as Caruthers.

John Bridges was oblivious. There is no doubt that he was becoming cynical like Pirkle and I already were but I suspect it was different somehow. I had employees and that's a hell of a responsibility but a man with children has the weight of the world on him.

I glanced at Jackie and wondered what her children would be like if she ever had any. She seemed to be concluding her notes. I took a few steps. Pirkle got up, too, and made it all the way to the door without standing to full height. John pulled his shoulders back first, then stood. It was an act of quiet dignity. Maybe someone would vote for him for president.

Jackie was fumbling in her purse by then and I walked with John all the way to the escalator. As we left the meeting room, I noticed that Marilyn Briton, the home furnishings area manager seemed to keep us under surveillance as we walked. That word again. Surveillance in the department store and I had not stolen a thing. I wondered if criminals feel the way we think they feel. I doubt it. John and I talked for a few moments then I headed to my office. Marilyn was waiting there with something in her hand. Even if I had not noticed her lurking around all morning, I would have been able to pick up on something. She asked if I had a minute and handed me an envelope. No doubt about what that meant.

"Mr. Manage, I want to thank you," she began. Blah, blah, blah, the usual stuff.

Marilyn must have been a debutante; she was very correct. She had that uniquely ugly hairdo, too, that's so expensive that they all have and that cool, half-closed eyelid peer down resort ski slope of her nose that makes me want to go straight back up her nostrils with a chisel. I can't say how it affects a violent person.

"How long have you been here, Marilyn?" I asked. "A year or so, right?"

"Fourteen months," she answered instantly.

A year was an eternity to these young folks. But then, I suppose if you pull some preppy chick out of her own barnyard and fence her in on some strange farm, the routine of the new place would be a drag. Still, she might not have particularly liked Sunbelt City but she had done well in terms of the business. She had grown up in the home furnishings trade because of the two stores her family owned midway up the east coast. They wanted her to try retailing elsewhere for a while. We benefited from her experience and I feel confident that we added to hers.

"When I came here, I said I would give it a year," she said. "It's been longer than that and I'm ready to go back home. Now would be the best time. You're about to start making a big change—probably a lot of big changes—around here and it's just a good time for me leave since I would be pretty soon anyway."

That seemed honest and reasonably complete but I pushed for more. It turned out that she was a little homesick, less for her family than their country club lifestyle. She came from one of those situations where the family had a good thing going, limited in scope but profitable, and they could maintain it with little effort that left plenty of time for tennis anyone and a few drinks. Easy but boring. I suppose it's okay if that's what she wanted. I also picked up that she would be looking for the male version of herself who apparently was not available or at least not locatable in our busier environment.

"Have you given any thought to a notice?" I asked, sure that she knew exactly what she wanted to do.

"I'll stay as long as you want me to up to a month," she answered promptly.

"Who have you discussed this with?" I asked.

"No one at Kerplopski's," she said.

"How about keeping it to yourself for one week," I suggested, "then plan to stay a week after that."

After Marilyn, the rest of the morning went by fast. I kept to myself and I'm sure it was appreciated; I suspect everyone thought I had already done enough that day. The way I figured it, I had a day and a half. to catch up my own office work in order to spend time in the store the rest of the week.

Sometime after twelve, I asked Jackie about lunch. She was covered up, too, and it was pushing two before we threaded through room settings to the restaurant. We took care of some business matters before the arrival of salad and Perrier. Then I abruptly changed the subject.

"You know you said this morning that you have to find a less expensive apartment?" I said.

"Yes," she said firmly.

"Don't bother," I said. "Spend your time finding me a new secretary."

"Is there something in that salad dressing?" she asked.

"I think I'd like a blonde this time," I said. "With all the prerequisites."

"I have all the talent you're supposed to be concerned about," Jackie said. She tried to act put out with me.

"But you also have other talent and I need you to be doing something else. Something that pays more," I added.

She was suddenly serious and interested. Hungry as we were, neither of us was eating.

"Marilyn's leaving," I explained. "Two weeks. Nobody knows. I told her to keep it quiet this week but I didn't tell her why. I'd rather wait until we've seen the Caruthers' people in here and I'm sure it will be this week. I don't want anything to disturb our work this week and I don't want anybody to get the idea that it's a good thing to jump. So we get our work done, they see the Caruthers' people and we make a promotion from within and everything's okay," I said. "Very positive."

"And I'm the promotion," Jackie said.

"Yeah. I guess I forgot to say that exactly. I think it would be good for you," I said.

"I don't have much merchandising experience," she said.

"But you have interior design experience and you know all about the store and how it works and the people respect you. I can teach you some of the merchandising things. That's what I concentrate on, you know, and marketing and getting volume. You know lots of things about the merchandise itself that I don't know, things I always leave up to an area manager to know and deal with. It will work out nicely," I said. "And that way, you get to stay in the store and help during this buyout period. I'm going to need all the help I can get."

Jackie was quiet for a while. I wondered if I had pitched it wrong.

"It will pay better," I said hopefully. "We'll work out the amount, but it will be more than you need to keep yourself together."

"Maybe I should find something more permanent," she said.

"Oh, the buyout thing," I said. "Job security. You know I'll be out and it stands to reason that after the new manager has learned his way around, he will want a secretary he picked himself, so being the secretary is no safer than being an area manager. Probably much less safe. And the wider experience can't help but be beneficial no matter what else you ever do."

A couple of days later I interviewed the first candidate Jackie had screened as replacement. She was a blonde, all right, through and through, especially beneath her scalp. The girl listed her last job as administrative aide to our dear, defeated congressman, so I'm sure she was very experienced. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to explore the full range of her talents, but I do know that she knew how to cross and uncross her legs.

The position remained open and I was anxious to fill it. The interview with the blonde was interrupted by her beeper but Jackie's point was made.

The next applicant she had me interview had no telling what color hair beneath the shiny copper dye. That was Mrs. Martin. I think she was maybe fifty or so and looked sixty but she was otherwise neat and organized and came with good references. After talking with a housewife who was looking for an exciting day job and a spiffy young man in a bow tie, I settled for Mrs. Martin.

The rest of the week went as planned which meant it was long and hard but we made the best of it and even had a little fun. By Thursday, we were ready but continued to groom. Everyone kept craning their necks looking for someone from Caruthers as if they were different; as if it were possible to spot one on sight.

Chapter 6

"Suits on Saturday... Suits on Saturday." Whispers spread the message quickly. It could mean only one thing: Caruthers executives were in the store. No one else would be wearing a suit in the store on Saturday.

"Mall entrance," one of our security people dropped in passing.

At the time, I was talking to a male acquaintance, a golf pro. I didn't play golf but we had women and other interests in common. We were standing well into the interior of the store behind one of the cosmetic counters where he had just purchased a new fragrance, "Strokes for Men."

Instantly, I was distracted and he joined me in peering past Elizabeth Arden's "Red Door" to the three men in our own doorway. They bore an uncomfortable resemblance to my ex-wife's lawyers.

"So those are the new owners, huh," said the golf guy. I didn't say anything. "I guess I've got to be going," he said.

"Don't you want to stick around and shoot a three-in-one?" I asked, motioning with my head toward the three suits.

"Unless you're talking about pool, I think you mean a hole in three," he said. "That would be pretty damn good if you can do it."

I hadn't thought of it that way. I imagined the three suits lying on their backs with golf balls between their teeth while looking up LPGA skirts. God, I thought, I've been working too many late nights. I shook myself. Back to business. So I saw the suits standing on a mannequin platform with balls in their teeth and holding putters. That made a lot more sense, but maybe they needed to be stuffed, I thought, recalling a local taxidermist. Then it occurred to me that they might already be stuffed. I peeked at the mall entrance once more. No doubt about it: stuffed and Caruthers.

The uncomfortable realization that I would have to do something made me stand up straight. I stepped from behind the cosmetics counter in time to see the Caruthers bunch ambling down the aisle away from me. Screw them, I thought. I figured it might be best to let them wander around without paying any special attention to them. The salespeople knew to approach everyone, including the Caruthers people, like anyone else if they came in their areas and aside from a little surreptitious gawking everything seemed normal. Why should I do anything differently?

So I turned around to speak to my golf friend and he was gone. Blown the course. I was alone and not very grateful about it.

Soon enough I was paged and told that there were some men in the office asking to see me. I took my time going up the escalators, not even bothering, as I usually did, to climb as they rose.

The three Caruthers men were seated in my office when I arrived. They all stood up and extended a hand, apparently as curious about me as I was about them. They all carried black attaché cases and wore gray muted plaid suits, remarkable, I thought, simultaneously questioning their taste level and wondering at the lack of individuality. Despite the uniforms, there were no insignia of rank, no stars or eagles or epaulets but there was absolutely no doubt about the pecking order.

A middle age man, undistinguished but amiable with a balded forehead got the first handshake. Like me, he was a vice president, but the Caruthers organizational structure was different. Whereas I was a vice president responsible for all company interests in Sunbelt City, reporting directly to Mr. Kerplopski, this baldy guy whose name was Robert "Bob" Cromwell had the title of Regional Vice President which meant that he had eight stores and reported to another vice president who reported to Mr. Caruthers.

Cromwell had brought a store manager with him who was next in line. This was Vince Crumbley, roughly a John Bridges type of guy in terms of age and position except that he had blond hair the shade that belongs on a woman and a little fuzzy mustache. I sized him up as possibly a little sleazy, at least privately, and someone who ached to wear Italian suits.

Cromwell also brought his assistant. Jesus comfort my ass. This guy had an assistant. His name was Todd Dooley. Todd appeared to be mid twenties and insecure, never looking you straight in the eye, rarely even glancing at your face. He also had a nervous back step. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before. Now and again during that brief visit, I heard Cromwell and Crumbley refer to him as Toddler.

Positioned behind my desk, I welcomed them to Sunbelt City and Kerplopski's. They were on my turf but I did pour in a little sludge, telling them that everyone admired the things they had heard about Caruthers and looked forward to working with such an outstanding retailer. They responded with appropriate meaninglessness. Sartre flashed through my mind. Oh, the commercialization of philosophy.

Naturally, I was primarily interested in Cromwell, but for the life of me, I couldn't get much of a read. Bland would be putting it mildly. Of course, he said all the right things such as how Caruthers cared for people and would take care of their new associates just as they did their original ones, to which I responded with positive comments about the work ethic of Kerplopski associates.

"We call them associates, too," Cromwell said.

Ah, a clue, but I let it pass for the moment. I was preoccupied with gleaning comments on their travel plans. First, they wanted to see a little more of our store, then they would go over to John Bridges' branch and after that, they would head north and catch some of the Capital City stores, walking through two or three very quickly before closing. They would stay overnight in Capital City and return home Sunday. Other teams were also out that day, they indicated, and there would be various meetings during the coming week. All that was interesting but the big news was that they would return the following week for several days of observation in our store.

That concluded the session in my office. I inquired about walking with them but they were clear about preferring to look around by themselves. But I did accompany them to the escalator.

"Toddler forgot his diaper bag," Vince Crumbley said. He appeared to address Cromwell confidentially except in a slightly more than normally audible voice. Shamefully, Todd took a couple of steps backward, then headed back to my office for his attaché case.

It must have reminded Cromwell of something because he asked directions to the restroom. While I was alone with Vince, he told me, in magnificent detail, the story of how Toddler got his nickname. It seems that not long after Todd came to work for Caruthers, during the early stages of his training program, he was assigned as an assistant to a particularly tough area sales manager. Double good, double good Jesus, I thought, the area sales managers have assistants, too. From the description, I gather that this sales manager was a super butch who absolutely terrified Todd and most everybody else. Anyway, one day she told Todd to say on the floor and help customers and not leave the floor for any reason. Unfortunately, after a couple of hours, Todd needed to use the restroom. The bottom line of the story was that Todd stayed on the floor, as a matter of fact, he was all over the floor.

When the poor guy returned with his attaché case, I couldn't help but wonder if he carried a change of underwear. Cromwell returned about the same time.

"This floor all furniture?" he asked.

"Offices, restaurant, furniture, bedding and large appliances," I said.

"We don't carry furniture," he said, stepping onto the escalator followed by the others. We don't carry stuffing, I thought, watching them gratefully disappear. I called John immediately to let him know visitors would be there soon. And I called a couple of store managers in Capital City to let them know what I had been told. They had already heard a similar story from a store manager in the northern part of the state. But Caruthers buyers, who were spending liberal amounts of time in their departments examining merchandise, were already visiting all of the Capital City stores.

What we correctly concluded was that all of their Regional Vice Presidents were leading exploratory management observation teams to areas adjacent to their own regions—likely to be absorbed into their own districts—before all converging on Capital City in order to look very quickly at a number of stores to get the widest possible feel for what Kerplopski's was all about. The meetings Cromwell mentioned would include virtually all Caruthers executives and would cover nearly every aspect of their observations and create an outline for the micro examination that would follow the next week. That was a mouthful.

"Maintain, maintain, maintain," was my advice to the area managers when we met that afternoon for a very rare Saturday session. I reviewed what I knew from my conversations with the Caruthers people and Kerplopski people in other stores. Then I asked for observations from the area managers.

"The older guy, the kind of balding Caruthers man," said one of the area managers, "well, he got a new set of golf clubs for his birthday."

There was a moment of silence. The others looked at this particular area manager and I looked through my brain files. What he had just said seemed somehow important, but the oddity of it, and the even greater oddity of hearing it, swamped comprehension.

"And the other guy, the one with blond hair and a mustache," the area manager resumed, "apparently, it was his birthday recently, too. Because he got a new ten speed bike."

"Is that so?" I said. It was beginning to be a little more interesting, I just couldn't quite see how yet. "And how do you know all of this?"

"It's all they talked about," the area manager explained. "Walking through my department, they would look at stuff but all they talked about was their birthday presents," he said. "On and on. I could tell you everything about them."

Now that was really interesting. It seemed a little weird; you would think they would be talking about the merchandise, the visual presentation or something related to the situation. So this was another clue.

"What about the youngest guy?" I asked. "What about him?"

"He was following them around, ten or fifteen feet behind, looking at the floor," the area manager said. "His fly was open."

Everyone laughed except me. I felt sorry for Todd. I thought about his underwear. It was the first time I think I've ever thought about a man's underwear.

Before breaking up, I suggested that they load the early part of the week with days off and prepare to maintain the excellent merchandise presentation the remainder of the week. Contact number one had ended well, although it soon acquired the designation, "close encounter number one." I discouraged that but it was understandable. From what we knew of them, they were a bit strange but I tried to make the point that when we had more experience with them and knew them better, they would seem less unusual. I was trying to be optimistic.

As far as everything within our own set of circumstances, things really were going well. I got some sleep and after that it got very busy.

Mrs. Martin learned quickly; the problem was that I had to learn to be comfortable with Mrs. Martin. By the end of the week, the rhythm of a routine was established and we were both reasonably satisfied. By Mrs. Martin being efficient, Jackie had more time to learn her own new job and because she learned fast, also, the store remained on course.

With my own problems to handle, I didn't have much time for Jackie most of that week. I took an enormous workload on myself, checking merchandising and other details repeatedly with every area manager. That meant Jackie too, but let's be honest, in a department store, it's apparel that gets the attention. Glassware occupies shelves, drapery samples hang on the walls, rugs lie on the floor; and let's face it, how much time is a store manager going to spend rearranging the damn furniture department? Jackie took care of all of it very competently.

She also handled her divorce that week equally competently and quickly. I was amazed at her tale when she called Thursday night having just confronted Joe. I had been working very hard all week and had been at the store until about seven. As soon as I came home, I fixed a couple of drinks and some gourmet microwave fare that worked like a sedative in conjunction with a sofa. But Jackie's call woke me up instantly.

"You know that real nice little restaurant that opened a couple of months ago near the Fish Market?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. That's what woke me up. "You had dinner there?" It had not occurred to me that Jackie would be seeing anyone. It kind of bothered me.

"No, but Joe did."

"Then how..." I blurted before she interrupted.

"I stopped on the corner to throw some bills in the mailbox and while I was sitting in the car stamping the envelopes, Joe came by and recognized me. He was with a couple of men I had never seen before and they were all dressed up and the other two men had brief cases and everything so I guess he was working on one of his business deals. But he had been drinking for sure, just enough to light him up and when he saw me I think he wanted to show out in front of those other men and seeing me would definitely fuel him. So the first thing I knew, Joe was standing next to my car door saying something sarcastic—I don't even remember what, exactly—I remember him being loud and then I became aware of those other men. Damn it, I was mad as hell."

Jesus, I thought, Jackie doesn't talk this way. But she was.

"There I was licking some president's backside when I wanted to kick Joe's."

There. Jackie was back.

"But I just sat there, calmly stamping my bills without seeming to pay Joe any attention. When I was ready, I opened the door very quickly. Joe jumped back and it only got his pants dirty except that he also stumbled when he jumped and fell on the sidewalk. I got out of the car and didn't say anything at first, I just glanced down at him like he was some sort of...of...worm."

I was about to suggest unidentified meat byproducts but I didn't want to break her flow.

"And then I very calmly told him—I was really talking to the other men but made it sound like I was talking to Joe—I told him that there was absolutely no way that he would be allowed to gain control of my aunt's moving and storage business and run it into the ground while looting it for the cash to finance other deals that I implied not mentioning was doing him a favor. He stared at me while I nonchalantly dropped my bills in the mailbox and then he turned away saying stuff under his breath but I could tell those other men were nervous."

I couldn't believe that was Jackie. I tried to soothe her but I was the one who needed soothing. She was fine, or thought she was. After we hung up I spent a good hour or so thinking about what she said, gradually imagining all sorts of collateral problems, mostly dangers. The more I thought, the more awake and troubled I became. It was abundantly clear that Joe was an unpredictable and violent man. Not to mention intense and willful. Based on what Jackie had done to him in front of his business associates, it seemed likely that he would retaliate. Jackie was at risk. I became fretful; I even got up and paced around.

Finally, I called Jackie. She seemed incoherent. Was she drugged? Had she been beaten? Ultimately, I accepted that she had been asleep but she gradually woke up as I harangued her about playing with Joe's anger and her own safety. As I wound down, she began to soothe me with a steady, kind voice, appreciative of my concern but resolute and unafraid. The last thing I remember was a reassuring good night and the opening bars of the nightly news theme. It's a good thing I was asleep before the lead murder story. I saw it in the paper the next day. It was a predictable tale of an enraged estranged husband and his handgun. What a way to lose a couple of good customers.

Joe, on the other hand, proved his unpredictability by doing something civil. He dealt his anger through his lawyer who apparently was on the phone during the night with his client because before Jackie got to work the next morning, she got a message to call her lawyer. It seems that Joe's lawyer had already delivered a legitimate proposal. It wouldn't fly, but by lunch they had an agreement and Jackie went downtown to sign it.

"Done," she said when she returned. She half-whispered the single word quickly and directly into my ear without breaking stride as she passed. I didn't even see her coming, being absorbed with arrangements for a panty hose display along a main aisle. I looked up immediately but by the time I turned and focused in her direction, she was already past earshot. But I noticed that she had legs.

There wasn't much more to say about the Birchwood leg cutouts. One of them had a slightly splintery toe. I suggested fine sandpaper and moved on, seemingly purposefully. Actually, I did have a purpose: to find Jackie.

By the time I climbed the escalator to the third floor, Jackie was already redesigning a glassware presentation. I was tired but her activity energized me, at least inspired me. "Done?" I said, standing above her.

"Yes," she said from halfway inside a large carton, then she stood and faced me, her arms enfolding several champagne flutes. "The judge is supposed to sign this afternoon."

"How do you feel?" I asked as sort of an obligation.

"Fine," she said and began to set the glasses very carefully on a shelf.

"We should make use of a couple of these, you know," I said, somewhat slyly fingering the rim of one of the flutes. But I was embarrassed by my clumsy indirectness. Jackie responded with the flash of a sideways glance in my direction. "Dinner tonight?" I said, trying to recover.

"I have to be at work early tomorrow morning," she said.

"How about tomorrow night?"

"I don't work Sunday, do you?"

"No," I said immediately. "I mean, yes, that will be fine. I don't work Sunday either." I disappeared quickly on an escalator, my heart pounding a bit, realizing that I had just asked her for a real date and the answer was okay. Then it occurred to me that it also meant the end of worrying about Joe.

I should have known better. And speaking of better, the first thing I did at the grocery store that evening was to head for the good stuff. I rounded the corner of the beer and wine aisle, passing a huge display of Buzz, "the beer that duzz," and began to peruse the selection of premium wine. I quickly became engrossed in the labels and paid scant attention to a very large figure at the end of the aisle, assuming that he was loading up on Buzz for the weekend. After a while, I got the creepy feeling that the guy was staring at me, so I lifted a bottle from the shelf and turned in his direction, pretending to examine the label. Sure enough, a huge, fat, apish looking fellow was standing in the middle of the aisle, his arms crossed with difficulty over his chest. I wondered if the difficulty was due to the vastness of his belly or the probable bulk of his tits. I wondered if he would be offended if I asked what size bra he wore.

There wasn't much time to waste in idle speculation. It required less than sensitive intuition to realize that someone was standing very close and staring just as hard as the other guy. I turned only slightly to find Joe mere inches away. At first, it seemed that he had gone to all the trouble of confronting me with nothing to say. Normally, I'm a pretty good conversationalist, but under the circumstances I didn't feel very chatty. In fact, I was preoccupied with visual images at the moment, things like blood on the floor, mine of course, and I briefly envisioned a stock boy being summoned to mop up a broken bottle of red wine when it was actually my bones that had been broken.

"You know something?" Joe finally said.

"What?" I answered, going deep for voice and breath.

"I don't see what women see in you manager types. You think you're smart as a roomful of school teachers and I guess you're all formal and proper acting but you don't own a damn thing," said Joe.

There was just long enough of silence for me to see that it was Joe that was spilling all over the floor. But I couldn't tell what it was so I told him sincerely, not arrogantly or condescendingly, that I didn't understand. He was kind enough to explain.

"You fucking smart asses," he readily elaborated, "you get you an education and you get somebody to hand you a business to run while they go do something else. You've got the keys and a piss pot of paperwork and you think you're hot shit telling everybody what to do but when it comes right down to it, all you've got is a paycheck like every other dickhead. You don't own the goddamn paper your job's written on."

Joe paused for a moment or two; he was sweating and quivering slightly in anger. I was sucking air through an O-shaped mouth.

"Then there's men like me," he continued. "I never learned the fancy stuff, but I know how to figure a deal and I work my ass off. The difference is that I own what I work. It's mine, damn you, mine."

He was starting to get loud and really mad. I thought about glancing around to see if anyone else noticed but his compelling eyes caught me. They were fierce but true in a certain way. I thought about mentioning the untrue part, questioning whether everything he dealt with was something he had earned or whether he was encroaching on things other people owned. But there was enough truth to what he was saying to stop me. There were also huge fists at the end of the aisle.

"I want you to know that I don't want the bitch back," he resumed. "She's a used cunt, buddy, but that's your problem if you want to smell me every time you fuck. What I don't get, is how women can go for the likes of you when there are guys like me around. The only thing I can figure is that they're crazy."

Joe squinted and narrowed his focus on me a moment then lifted his head and dropped his gaze toward the floor as he turned away. That was it? I wondered. I was expecting more. Relieved, I couldn't help throwing a punch of my own.

"See that guy at the end of the aisle?" I asked. Joe turned around. I was careful not to look toward the other man or even motion in his direction. "You wouldn't happen to know what size bra he wears, would you?" I asked.

Chapter 7

It was a different kind of joe that I had in mind when I woke up early Sunday morning. By Saturday night, I was feeling every minute of the long, hard week. It's a funny thing about fatigue. It let me sleep like a proverbial log but waking up cut through the same log like a buzz saw. I was wide-awake; coffee was totally unneeded but the benign drug was the first thing I thought about, anyway.

That's funny, too. Some days coffee was necessary to jump-start the body; other days it was merely a ritual; but it was always important. I figured that made the modern coffee maker one of the most important inventions since air conditioning.

In no time, I had a steaming carafe of rich dark brew and was padding back through the bedroom. For a moment, I considered sitting up in bed to drink my first cup, as I liked to do during the cooler months. But I felt too vigorous for lounging and had not yet seen the world that day. With a curious mixture of anticipation and hesitation, I gingerly tugged the drapery aside and saw just enough daylight to know I wasn't dreaming. The world had opened to a beautiful new day.

Miracles never cease. Why did that cliché occur to me? Then again, maybe everything is a miracle–Ooooo. That I had made it that far, surely was. Anything more would be...icing on the cake? I was beginning to disgust myself. New, I reminded myself. I was ready for a piece of that new world and swept the drapery aside, shoved the glass door and stepped into the garden.

April was a perfect time to sit quietly in my walled sliver of paradise and enjoy the calm of early morning before it progressed to the problems of full day. I enjoyed spring mornings there and even some summer mornings. I liked to begin every day with a serene period of utter calm, usually the only tranquil moments of my entire day. I can't say that I thought great thoughts during that time, but I felt somehow nourished by it, better able to confront everything that followed.

Early light filtered through freshly leafed trees and marbleized curiously evolving patterns on the brick floor. Damn, I thought. Maybe I was Shakespeare in an earlier life.

No. I was probably a naturalist, now being deeply contented in every moment devoted to listening to the minute sounds of nature. There were a surprising number even in this urban setting and I relished each peaceful moment punctuated by the twitter of a bird or a faint murmur of unknown origin.

Somehow, I wondered, was I, at heart, guileless, if I could be so enthralled by such simple glory? And so unencumbered, if only momentarily, by the demands and expectations of a false world?

Little animals had it better, I thought. Birds could swoop and sing as they pleased. Chipmunks and squirrels could chatter and scamper about at will.

Wait a minute. What was I thinking? Those little critters had to struggle everyday just to maintain a nest and have enough to eat.

Wait another minute. That's exactly what I do. On top of which I get to have coffee and they don't know anything about the joy of java. Or a cold beer. Of course, there could be something in those berries they're all the time trying to get to. And who knows about sex? I can't imagine about that for them and wouldn't want to if I could. I'll happily settle for human females.

As a matter of fact, I'll settle for my life all the way around—the good and the bad, everything from joe to Joe. Including the endless problems, like I said, Joe. Only he wasn't endless. That part comes from the fact that as soon as one problem gets resolved, another takes its place. Actually, they overlap. It's the same for animals, too, when you think about it. Bird searches for food. Bird obtains food. Bird fends off another bird that wants the same food.

Then I took a nice, long sip of coffee and reflected on the superior, overlapping problems in the lives of human beings. Is it possible to be smugger than to have bigger problems than less intelligent creatures? They're even grades of it within human beings, aren't there? That's what we've heard. The rich are so troubled that we would not want to be them. Whew! What a relief not to be rich.

Being then content with my own little nest, I thought about another thing I liked to do at home. I walked a few feet to the sliding glass door and pushed it and the draperies open wide to let the fresh air inside. Then, I swiveled the television set so that I could see it from my chair in the garden, took remote in hand and thought I would watch the Sunday morning news.

Bad idea. I tuned in just in time to catch the news summary. And I thought I had overlapping problems. How about a famine followed by an earthquake followed by an epidemic? Of course, those people had one thing going for them: they were poor. But it couldn't have gotten much worse.

After that, the morning show had a segment on the latest innovations in luggage design. That's when I went inside to pee. When I came back, there was a commercial running about some sort of outdoor grill. That segued conveniently to the news people and an outdoor cooking segment that kind of got my attention. By the time it was over, I was terribly hungry and thinking about a thick, grilled steak and the trimmings, too I suppose, like they showed in that program, although I could have done without the fancy stuff they grilled on TV.

The thought of food made my eyes glaze, or was it my brain? Anyway, I glanced away from the tube in time to see a squirrel high tailing it over the wall after visiting my neighbor's oak tree.

No, I resolved. I want the steak and the fancy trimmings. I'm a human being. I use eating utensils and look at clocks. Which I did. Three hours before I was to pick Jackie up for brunch. I would have to eat a little something. Thank God for toaster pastries.

While I nibbled, I flipped to one of the political talk shows and tested my own attitude against both the politicians and the journalists. It was a kind of self-inspired form of political participation that occasionally could be better described as self-inflicted. But I enjoyed keeping up with public affairs.

I wondered what kind of politics birds have. Or squirrels. Okay, maybe they're superior in some things.

A lot of time remained before I was to leave to pick up Jackie. This seemed odd to me, given my usually packed schedule and frenetic activity, moving quickly from one thing to the next. I had taken a little time to enjoy some level of unity with a world that I appreciated was bigger than me. I guess that's what Sundays were originally intended to provide, time for that recognition which could separate us from other life forms.

But a little extra time remained. I felt strangely neither here nor there, like I was between something and something else and could not describe either location exactly.

It occurred to me that the central event scheduled to commence in a couple of hours and minutes had not yet much occupied my thoughts. That was unusual, too, considering that it had become so unexpectedly important to me. Until lately, I had not anticipated any sort of relationship with Jackie other than boss and secretary. Now, I thought I had better think about the day.

I tried, but my mind kept bouncing around like a pinball machine. I wonder if they weight each of the balls differently so that players can't ever feel a comfortable consistency and be successful.

There was nothing to worry about. Mrs. Timmons comes once a week so everything was clean. I must have the easiest house she takes care of; I am there so little, nothing is ever much disturbed. Other than the occasional two-person party, I do no entertaining and I have few meals at home other than a snack like I had that morning.

I would have to remember to make the bed before I left. The sheets were clean, but I was sure that it would not be an issue that day. It didn't take a psychic to figure that one out.

For some reason, I decided to look around at my house. It didn't take long; I knew everything already and had to question my sanity for looking around. Yep. Everything was ok. It was a house and it had furniture and furnishings but was not crowded with them and was very straightforward. No frou-frou junk for me. Yep. Everything was ok. It seemed unlikely that we would be coming there that day, unlikely that Jackie would be seeing the house that day, anyway.

But just in case, I wondered if I should take down Cynthia's picture from my dresser. It was some picture. She was topless when it was shot and the whole width and depth of her boobs showed, being cropped just above her nipples. The photographer must have enjoyed his work that day. I wonder if they keep a private collection of certain prints. They must. Just one of the perks of being a photographer.

Back to the question. Why should I remove the picture? It was my house. Still, I hesitated. I decided to think it over in the shower. But first, I decided to look at the newspaper and wandered down to the edge of the street to retrieve the Sunshine–that is, The Sunbelt City Sunshine, the miserably misnamed daily newspaper. It should have been called The Monopoly Obscurer. But I had to live with the thing and even grin about it publicly on cue. It was a matter of business for me. And I am sure the publisher felt the same way when he reviewed the bottom line.

After the newspaper and coffee, I remembered to put out fresh towels and make the bed. It was a miniscule chance but I had been a Boy Scout and remained an adult scout, too, and we are always prepared, if not for the same things. It was time for a shower.

Ah, a shower! Another wonderful part of the morning. Either of two things invariably happened to me in the shower, or, rarely, a combination of the two. Ideas could flow as hot and fast as the torrent of water, or I could relax to the point of complete oblivion with no thoughts at all. It was odd when the two combined because, on its face, it would seem that they would be mutually exclusive. But once in a while, out of the total void, would come such peace that the tranquility itself would be the essence of an idea and without fail it was confirmation somehow of absoluteness that embodied no need for other ideas.

That morning I had one of those odd showers. I closed the shower door thinking that surely I was about to have a multitude of helpful thoughts about the day ahead and maybe even all the other parts of my various situations. But the water flowed blissfully, reaffirming the uncommon lack of conflict that I had already sensed all morning, unusual, given the convoluted circumstances. As I stood motionless for a long time, both skin pores and brain cells were cleansed and I emerged possessed by unspeakable harmony.

Was I turning into the Dali Lama or worse, some anonymous celestial celebrating monk? I hoped not. I was supposed to meet Jackie that morning. It was a strange contentment, especially since I could not quite locate a recognizable self inside my head.

More than the mirror was fogged. I could neither see nor feel my body as I toweled. The typical bathroom exhibition of pride in broad shoulders, flat abs and a very unflat portion of anatomy failed to penetrate my consciousness. Only a cold blast that greeted me through the opening door returned customary awareness.

I grabbed a long, thick, terry cloth robe against the chill and crossed the bedroom toward the garden. Along the way, I stopped to retrieve Sensible Shoes from a bookshelf, poured another cup of coffee and settled into a garden lounge chair.

Sensible Shoes. Why had I bought it? It appeared too business preachy for my typical taste in books. Maybe the disclaimers on the jacket had caught my eye. I read them again. All profits from the book would be donated to college scholarship funds for underprivileged students. I liked that. The author claimed to be both a grandmother and a former CEO of a Fortune 500 company. That didn't move me but she also touted herself as "too old for a second career on the lecture circuit as a motivational speaker and too rich to care about it anyway." Ok. Now, I was interested.

It also helped that the jacket said the book was more than a "how to," it was a memoir. That appealed to me. Anyone who could somehow find enough in their lifetime to write a book about was worth Andy Warhol's famous fifteen minutes of reading time.

The author's preface almost intrigued me. "Customarily, you would not want to use some else's shoes," she wrote, "but when you find some as well adapted as mine to the open road, resole them for yourself and march forth." Novel approach, if a bit off putting. I wondered if anyone would actually say, or even think such a thing. "Stinky" might be more like it.

Then I looked at the chapters. "Baby Shoes." I wondered if anybody actually bronzed them anymore. Skip it. "Tennis Shoes." Skip it. "Oxfords." This was too cute for words and I hate cute. Skip it. "Stilettos." Now we were getting somewhere. Maybe this old chick had lived a little before CEOdom. Then, "Pumps," followed by "Sensible Shoes," followed by "Slippers." Back to "Stilettos."

And there I started. And yes, she had lived as a young woman before graying in the business world. At least beginning with "Stilettos," it was interesting, so interesting, I gave it more than fifteen minutes and more than another and another fifteen minutes and so on until when I checked the clock, I had to start rushing to get ready. I should have paid attention when the coffee ran out but I became too engrossed and just kept reading.

I'll admit that the sex-on-the-corporate-ladder period was titillating, but this woman had a lot more to say than that. On one level was the story of her life which actually included manufacturing shoes, and, once produced, they had to be sold that that was a fascinating, occasionally nail biting tale ranging from nearly missed payrolls to catwalk prominence.

But the meaning of her life was compelling and I found myself drawn into a plane where abstractions constituted solid reality based on surprisingly appealing values. And best of all, at least for this author, ultimate success was gratifying, worthwhile and not measured by bank balance.

I took note of the fact that before things successfully settled down for her, they were very unsettled and she roiled the pot intentionally, sort of selecting pieces of flotsam and jetsam and cementing her own collection of materials as she worked. For a while she hurried, then she settled down.

Speaking of hurry, when I glanced at the clock, it was my time to hurry, dash, in fact. First to the closet.

Now, closets are the best examples of differences between men and women. God knows what Jackie saw when she opened her closet, I wondered for a thousandth of a second as I peered for a millisecond at four colors: white, khaki, gray and navy. That's all. Gray and navy suits, navy blazers, gray and navy pants, plus khakis, which I chose for this occasion, along with a blazer, and white starched shirts. That's all. Something there for every situation that could possibly be encountered in life.

Many would moan that I left out denim. Yes. I leave denim out of my life entirely. Everyone else seems to wear it. Jimmy Carter famously wore it in the White House. But then he was from Plains, Georgia and Billy Carter was his brother. No one else besides cowboys really needs it. I digress.

Today, it was starched khaki pants, starched button down white oxford cloth shirt, both one hundred percent cotton and a navy blazer. No necktie. Perfect. It's good to be male. I could get dressed blind everyday and no one would ever know.

It's too bad that women think they have to wear all kinds of fancy stuff and every color in a fashion magazine. Men never pay attention to women's clothes. They look around their clothes and through their clothes as often as possible, but never directly at them and never, for the biggest lottery payout in history, could one tell you what a woman was wearing if he was asked. So why all the fuss about clothes?

That brings me back to shoes, the universal passion of western women and Imelda Marcos. Men damn sure don't look at shoes. Every Victoria's Secret model could wear granny shoes and I guarantee you that only women would see them. But women know that men look at legs and they have discovered that high heels make their legs look longer and thinner. That may be true scientifically, but ask any man, and he'll tell you that what makes a woman's legs look longer is more skin showing. That means shorter dresses. And there again, we're not looking at the fashion but what the fashion reveals. Much more to the point.

All of this is stuff I know, stuff I live with, so that it occurred to me in a nano-second as I hurried. I dressed in a flash. Another thing men can do that women can't.

This was not the beginning I had envisioned, the hurrying around and all. Having thought about it in advance, I saw a leisurely, careful sartorial preparation with plenty of time for self-satisfactory admiration both in a mirror and in my mind as I dwelled upon it.

Instead, I flew out the door and bounded toward the Morgan like a housebound dog on an outing with its master. As always, the Morgan responded superlatively. If Wal-Mart ever closed and if I ever went in one, I would want them to say that on the public address system as I left the building, "as always, thank you for driving a Morgan."

With standard brand Christians either safely in Sunday school, hung over from the night before or hiding out at that hour, I mostly had the streets to myself and quickly arrived at Jackie's apartment. I knocked once and she opened the door, standing there completely dressed and ready to go. It was different, almost amazing and kind of refreshingly confidence building. Here was someone who could be counted on.

We headed immediately to brunch at a sprawling restaurant, one of those destination types that are worth the drive, well away from the city. It was a nice drive in early morning April air but we didn't talk much.

Jackie asked how long I had been up. I told her. I spotted a cow on the edge of the highway–a first in many years–and people on horseback headed toward it. I slowed respectfully, all the while observing as much detail as possible. Then, she asked what I had done that morning. I think I said, "trying on some old lady's shoes," or something close to that. I was trying to see as much of the ranch scene behind me in the rear view mirror as I could. Jackie was quiet.

We had been driving down a straight highway with pasture on both sides with forests forming a continuous backdrop. I carefully watched the small signs along the road for the turnoff. I rarely came out there. And then turned onto a narrow road leading beyond the pastures to a woodland that covered a long, gentle slope, passing, in these parts as a hill. The road there was narrow and twisty, the driving slow, and the air especially cool under a canopy of overhanging trees.

Finally, we arrived at the restaurant, situated at the top of the slope. What could be seen of the building was a long, low structure of mottled brown, damp looking brick and large, dark timbers. Trees obscured much of it and the building actually spread out, add-on after add-on, covering much of the hilltop. The wide, low entrance was creepy, but once inside, the warmth of affluence and culinary sensuousness was reassuring.

As prearranged, we were swept past all of that, escorted by a sincere acting, although perfectly impersonal gentleman, to the porch area on the opposite side of the building that was totally unlike what is encountered initially. The entire opposite side of the building was a meandering porch that grew as the restaurant grew. It was actually a roof over a bumpy brick floor and instead of a wall the entire side was open to nature. And instead of a wooden enclosure, this side of the slope had been landscaped into a garden which flowed with greens and florals and brick paths in a way that was always interesting, regardless of the season. But I could not help but think that spring was its best foot forward.

The tables on the porch were large and round, there being no incentive to restrict space. Jackie and I sat side by side, but not too close, with our backs to the restaurant so that we could see the garden.

What to drink? A pitcher of Bloody Maries was delivered as fast as the question was answered, along with a basket of some sort of unrequested appetizer that was mercifully not sweet.

No one pushed us to order. They did not care how long we sat there. I don't know how many times the Bloody Mary pitcher was refilled but we enjoyed every drop and every view of every plant and every chirp of every bird and every word of rambling conversation.

"Was it like this at your house this morning?" Jackie asked. She had heard me talk about my garden.

"Except there were walls," I said. It was nice not to have walls.

She saw me looking down between us. Staring was more like it.

"Are those what you would call 'sensible shoes?'" I asked. Maybe I had had enough Bloody Maries.

"They're comfortable enough to walk on bricks," she replied, giving me a straight answer, "but fashionable enough to wear with this dress," she said.

I rattled the ice in my glass and leaned it back for the last drop. She seemed to be looking at a bird.

"What did you mean that you were 'trying on some old lady's shoes?'" she asked.

I laughed, maybe defensively. "It was a book I was reading about the value of wearing sensible shoes."

"Are yours sensible?" she asked suddenly.

The question caught me. Aren't all mens shoes sensible, I wondered and maybe even muttered aloud because Jackie looked at me with a bemused superiority.

Then brunch arrived. Shrimp and eggs and onions and who knows what else all done up together in the best tasting glop of food I had ever consumed. Maybe you had to be a little intoxicated to eat it because I really don't think it looked very good, but wow, did it beat any other breakfast I ever had. They heaped more of it out of a big bowl and we finished that off, too, and paused to rest a moment and enjoy the surroundings.

It was a quiet moment, without conversation but not awkward–serene was more like it. I glanced at Jackie as she gazed across the gardens. She was tranquil, composed, quietly beautiful, and wholesomely beautiful. I breathed deeply and sat back in my chair. It was so relaxing to enjoy a moment with a woman without being expected to perform, to entertain or even to listen, much less talk. No pretense. No contrivance. Nothing unusual or manipulated.

I took advantage of that opportunity. I simply enjoyed. It was like procuring peace without making an effort. It's too bad nations couldn't do that. I'll bet it would make for restless generals. And restless generals, or colonels or sergeants can make coups d'etat. Talk about the end of peace. All citizens want is to be content, right?

Contentment begins with a full bowl of rice, right? For a while, maybe. But trouble starts with the next round of hunger. Either there is another full bowl of rice or you have to acquire it. Peace prevails if you don't assault your neighbor and take his bowl. Great society, that one. Until, after so many successive bowls you acquire a rice gut. Then one of two things happens. You either go on a diet that means little down and dissatisfaction up or you purge which means good down and bad up. Either way, you become grumpy and grumpy is the end of peace.

The server appeared and inquired about coffee. I looked at Jackie. She was still gazing at the garden.

"No," I responded. "I think we would like to take a walk first." Jackie slightly turned her head. I thought I read a cross between inquisitiveness and appreciation.

"Just a moment, sir," the server said. I assumed that he was going to produce the check and I thought that was rude. We weren't ready to leave yet. But he returned with two absolutely enormous individual containers of mimosas. "Complements of the management," he said as he set them before us. I craned my neck around but didn't see anyone and thanked the server.

Moments later, Jackie and I were ambling shoulder to shoulder along the brick walkways with our mimosas, looking at plants, the sky, the horizon, whatever, and talking and laughing and generally having so much fun I forgot we were having fun.

After a while, we looked back and saw that we had gone a long way from the porch with the end of the garden only a few yards ahead. Jackie hesitated as if ready to retrace our steps. We still had plenty of mimosa.

"Let me show you something," I said conspiratorially.

I marched abruptly toward a line of tall, thin trees, poplars, I believe. Jackie followed a few feet behind. I was probably walking too fast. I stepped off the bricks and darted behind the trees. By the time Jackie caught up, I was moving rapidly up and down along the tall dense hedge that served as backdrop to the poplars and marked the outer edge of the garden and the restaurant property itself. Jackie remained on the walkway. I searched until I found what I was looking for, a barely perceptible vertical separation of the shrubs. I thrust an arm into the narrow aperture and turned toward Jackie. She seemed about to balk.

"It's okay," I said. "I want to show you something."

Jackie didn't move. It was like she suddenly didn't trust me. She was just frozen there.

For a moment, I thought about Pompeii. What if something suddenly preserved our images forever exactly as we stood there? What would people think? What story would they concoct to explain what we were doing or about to do? More to the point, that made me wonder, what was Jackie thinking and what did she think I was doing or want her to join me in doing?

Determination. That's all it was. I was more than equally resolute, at least on this issue. Finally, Jackie yielded and made a tentative step off the hard surface. The ground was soft and littered with organic debris ideal for plant nourishment. Jackie stepped gingerly but not fearfully. With each step she assumed more confidence.

I held back enough of the hedge for her to pass through. I followed, then, once through the shrubs, I led the way along a fence line until we came to a point I was familiar with, and so, obviously, were a few others. The barbed wire at that spot was a bit saggy. I stepped on the bottom strand and pressed it to the ground while hoisting the two upper strands to form a reasonably comfortable opening. Then, I held Jackie's mimosa allowing her arms to be free for additional balance as she passed through.

Her eyes gleamed as I passed the drinks to her and helped myself through the fence. She seemed to have adopted a sense of adventure, not even knowing where we were headed but now enjoying the odd little trip.

Quickly, I found the path into the woods where we glided along a slope, moving between spacious hardwoods and pines so deftly that the escalating incline of the path was barely perceptible.

I looked at Jackie's shoes. She was right about them being fashionable and open toed, too, but apparently sensible enough because she did not have difficulty walking through the forest. Until, that is, that the path took a sudden vertical turn. I looked back and saw Jackie considering her footing carefully and took her hand, more her fingers, lightly for balance, not wholly, for the greed of lust. It was a few steps up the sharp grade, a true climb, briefly requiring a struggle for modesty, given that I held one hand and she held the mimosa in the other. I averted my eyes. After all, I was a gentleman and anyhow, we quickly made it to the top, a more or less flattened area at the crest of this low thing that passed for a hill. In other parts of the country it would have been an actual ridge. It was abundantly clear that we had reached the destination. Here, large flat rocks replaced soil and trees and shrubs stayed back, too, as if not to intrude on something special. Here, Jackie removed her shoes and traversed the behemoth slabs of granite, fully joyous of the sun and open space. Then she stopped short near the edge when she suddenly realized the view that opened before us.

The slope dropped sharply before us and in the distance, an open space of breathtaking proportions, farmland, streams, shrubs that filled the world to a distant horizon. Had this been mountainous terrain, the view would have been epic. But we were grateful for our own world the way it was and fully appreciated what we had without reservation, caring nothing of thought for what may be elsewhere.

We stood for long moments gazing out across the horizon. Then, simultaneously, we seated ourselves on the rock, our gaze fixed on this breathtaking beauty of nature. In the distance, a couple of horseback riders followed the edge of a creek, stopped, crossed it and slowly rode across the pasture toward what we could only see as the rooftop of a distant barn.

Gradually, we drained our mimosas and somehow imperceptibly we moved a little closer together. I placed my arm around her shoulder. She did not seem to notice. But it felt great to me, not because I was touching her but because I suddenly felt pure in the closeness. Me pure? Couldn't be. But it felt that way and it left me awestruck. She didn't make me feel awestruck; the feeling itself was doing it somehow. I couldn't understand it. I simply felt it and accepted it gratefully, pushing aside reservations of guilt. It was peaceful but an animated tranquility, like calm had become an activity, a self-renewing kinetic energy.

I don't know how long we were there. How can something like that be measured? Why would you want to measure it? But it had a point of termination.

"I have to pee," Jackie said abruptly. There was urgency in her eyes.

I was about to suggest some nearby shrubs but by that point she was scampering across the rocks. We quickly retreated down the slope and along the path, Jackie leading this time, surprising me with her sense of direction. Some researchers ought to look into the possibility–the bladder, surprise seat of human directional instinct.

Upon reaching the garden, Jackie handed me her empty mimosa container and outpaced me to the restaurant where she disappeared inside. I took advantage of the opportunity, as well. Restlessly trying to settle again at our table on the porch was anticlimactic.

"Do you care for coffee?" we were asked. They get it all right.

Soon, I took care of the bill, along with a really generous tip and we were off. We didn't really know where, but a thought had been playing in the deep background of my mind.

"Would you like to go horseback riding?" I asked as we sped along in the Morgan–fantastic car, not famous horse.

Jackie's eyes widened again, this time reflecting the sparkle of a sunny day. It was beautiful weather for doing something outside.

"Where?" she asked. There was restrained excitement in her voice, as if she was afraid to become too enthusiastic before confirmation that it could really happen.

"I have friends who have a farm and they have horses," I explained.

"We'll have to change," she said.

"You'll have to change," I said. "Khakis are for everything. One pant fits every occasion. Best invention since air-conditioning."

I drove straight to Jackie's apartment. I had barely settled myself on the couch when she reappeared in jeans and boots. Presto changeo.

"Are you sure you don't want to go home and change into some jeans?" she asked.

"Don't own any," I said.

A brief look of disbelief or despair crossed her face. I hope it wasn't disdain because that's my attitude toward denim, for myself, not others. As a matter of fact, those tight jeans looked great on her.

She rattled around in the kitchen a minute or two and emerged with a bottle of red wine, two glasses and a corkscrew. Then we were off again and twenty minutes later I turned off a rural highway down a dirt road and headed toward a farmhouse that we skirted on our way to the stable.

"My friends aren't home," I said. Disappointment flashed across Jackie. "But their son is," I added, "so we'll have the place to ourselves. We could go skinny dipping if it were warm enough."

"How's that?" Jackie asked.

"Well, generally, first, you take your clothes off and..."

"I mean having the place to ourselves," she explained with mock annoyance.

"If the adults aren't home–their truck is here but their car is gone–then their son will be inside all afternoon."

"On a beautiful day like this?"

"Exactly," I said, grinning. "His girlfriend is here."

"And that's a reason to say inside on a nice day?"

"I accidentally walked up on them when they were fooling around on the porch when the boy's parents weren't here."

"What's all this concern about the parents not being here?" Jackie asked, unsure whether to be shocked or concerned at nothing important.

"It's the girl," I said.

"Boys will be boys," Jackie said. "You ought to know about that." She grinned and looked at me. I didn't even bother to be uncomfortable.

"They don't approve of the girl," I said.

"What century do they live in?" Jackie said, needling the issue further.

"Her father is a fugitive exile," I said. "And Communist. And black."

"Oh."

"I sympathize with the kids, so I never said anything to his folks. Maybe they'll come around. Or maybe the kids will break up before there's any need to worry about it."

"Or maybe they'll run away and be happy," Jackie said.

"Or maybe there will be no need to run," I said. "I'd give the kids a job, if it came to that. Both of them. The girl doesn't seem put off by us decadent capitalists."

"You'd go against your friends?" Jackie asked, seemingly amazed.

"It wouldn't be against them. It would be for all of them–the parents, too. They would eventually come around. They couldn't go the rest of their lives ignoring their grandchildren."

"That's...," Jackie said and hesitated, "sort of...sort of caring."

"Caring? What do you mean?"

"It's just kind of, kind of interesting and maybe a little surprising that you would take such interest and be so thoughtful about something like that."

"Surprising?" I pushed, wanting more.

"Think about it, Mick," Jackie said and turned toward me as I turned toward the stable. "The business you're in."

"What are you talking about?"

"Retailing is so superficial," Jackie said. "It just doesn't square with thinking that sympathetically about these people's lives."

"Business is one thing," I said overcoming my gut instinct about trying to be philosophical, "but people are another."

My gut was right. It soured when my brain analyzed that my instinct was probably correct. There was something about what I had just said that was wrong. But I wouldn't worry about it now.

I bounded out of the Morgan and into the stable. By the time Jackie was inside, I was already hoisting a saddle over one of the horses.

"You can do that?" Jackie asked as I cinched the first saddle.

"Do what?"

"Saddle a horse."

"Of course. It's easier to ride this way." I looked at Jackie and saw that she was staring with her mouth a little open in some level of amazement. "But when I was a kid, I rode bareback."

"You're full of surprises," Jackie said.

We walked our horses out of the stable and led them through a couple of gates. One of them snorted appreciation. I could tell that she could tell that we were going beyond the stable area and it was like the horse appreciated the opportunity even though there would be no chance for real freedom.

Outside the gates, we mounted and rode slowly across a pasture toward a row of trees. It brought to mind windbreaks, an agricultural technique as opposed to breaking wind, a physiological phenomena. I even talked about it, windbreaks, that is, explaining to Jackie about some of my plains relatives and how they lived. Or used to live. Things change, even the wind.

I guess that wasn't exactly titillating conversation, not something you would normally think about talking about on a date. But what the hell, I was thirty-nine years old.

We rode through the wooded area and crossed another pasture, rode through another wooded area and turned up a slope. At the top, I pointed in the distance.

"See there?" I squinted. "That's where we were sitting on the rock looking out where we are now," I said.

Jackie seemed to take all of that in eagerly but didn't comment. But she seemed really involved in the situation and not the least uncomfortable with the ride. And we rode further without a lot of conversation. It was a moving meditation with the mildly fragrant grasses acting as incense except better, softer, natural, liberating, transforming the plodding, jarring gait of the horses into the motionless movement of the mind enduring and enjoying everything as if it were all unknowable but intimate.

We headed into another wooded area, denser this time, and we dismounted. The horses snorted as we neared a stream and we moved to its edge allowing them to drink. Then we moved on. I suspect that Jackie was wondering how far we would go, but she didn't object and continued without a whimper. Finally, we emerged along the edge of the woods where a lake spread before us ringed with forest but expansive enough and tranquil enough to be awe inspiring against the scale of our daily lives. It was the most appropriate of Sundays: Bach was the rustle of trees in the breeze; the choir was a spontaneous, unsynchronized cacophony of feathered melodies.

For the most part, we maintained our own thoughts and meditations. And when we spoke, it was whispered and staccato, the mere suggestion of a thought being sufficient to expand itself without elaboration. It was better that way. I don't know when I have spent so much time with a good looking woman without looking at her and finding peace without searching for it and rest without the expenditure of lust.

Did I say we were simply quiet? And for a long time. I had never wanted to stay in church so long. So long, in fact, that I was reluctant to impose common sense and require myself to respond to Apollo's decent toward the treetops. Just as quietly and more reverently than we had arrived, we departed, and just as slowly, although the return time passed in a cosmic flash and it was only as we saw the dark silhouette of the stable in the distance did we realize that the light had faded nearly to its conclusion.

Jackie stood near as I unsaddled the horses and patiently joined me in thoroughly brushing them, parting with as much appreciation as I could communicate. I hope they understood. But how do you ever know who understands what? Human beings have the most fluent communications and then use the facility to deceive one another. Maybe horses had the best of us there. They cannot lie and doubtless would see no utility in something that is not. They understand apples; maybe, too, an arm that fails to encircle their stout necks but which makes the attempt anyway.

Jackie eyed the farmhouse as we passed but said nothing. But as we neared the highway, our minds again became actively engaged in the world.

"I'm hungry," I said.

Jackie's face brightened and turned toward me. "Me, too."

"Let's go somewhere for food now."

"Not like this," she countered. "We're too dirty."

"There's always Burger Doodle. We could pick up a sack and take it home." I was desperate.

"Or we could grill," she again countered. "You have one don't you?"

"Yes, but it takes too long."

"Not really," Jackie said. She had an answer for everything. "Especially if you start with something else first. Go to the Outer Limits."

I didn't know what to make of that comment and apparently it showed.

"The shopping center on Outer Limits Road. They have a great new supermarket there."

I was too hungry to argue and, I'll have to admit, curious, as well. I wanted to see what she had in mind behind those bright eyes that now outshone every other fading light. I soon turned and turned again and very quickly we arrived at the grocery store.

Never have I seen a woman snatch up so much food so quickly. I could hardly see all the stuff she seemed to grab like she had only three minutes to secure everything necessary for life. And the fish too, although it was thankfully dead and prepared for burial in my stomach, was close to objection. But Jackie solved that, too, in short order.

"Now to the end of the shopping center," she commanded once all the food was stowed.

With no idea what she was doing, I headed as quickly as speed bumps allowed, to the last store in the lineup. Frozen yogurt. I almost shouted, I was so excited and soon we were off with big and little yogurt cones. It did the trick. By the time we reached my house, hunger had temporarily subsided and for a moment as we arrived, I was back to contented.

Then it hit me. Cynthia's picture was still on top of the chest of drawers. That was ironic, I managed to think in a billionth of a second, chest on chest. But I was scrambling to think of what to do. But it was a natural. Yes, they were natural but so was my instantly conceived plan.

As I unlocked the door from the garage into the house, I motioned toward the kitchen and swept quickly toward the central counter top island and virtually dropped my bag of groceries on its hard marble surface.

"Utensils in the drawer below," I said loudly over my shoulder as I headed quickly toward the door and disappeared.

In the bedroom, the first thing I did was seize the picture with one hand while opening a drawer with the other. Then I slammed the picture below a stack of underwear and breathed a sigh of relief. I was so suddenly at ease that I stood there a moment too long.

"Where's the bathroom?" I heard Jackie ask.

Most likely I looked guilty or at least sheepish when I answered but she didn't seem to notice.

"Okay," Jackie said when she returned a few moments later. "It's time to get the grill started."

She might as well have added, "chop chop."

"It's still going to take a while," I insisted as she streaked toward the kitchen.

"Then mix us a drink after you get it started," she shot back over her shoulder.

By the time I got to the kitchen she was rustling around with a bunch of food and dishes I hadn't seen in a while. But I didn't linger, just kept going on out to the garden and began working on the grill. When I got the coals started, I went back into the kitchen and saw a whole plate of some sort of at least halfway fancy hors d'oeuvres but I didn't see Jackie. So I went into the hallway and then into the bedroom. I thought I heard the shower and moved closer. I definitely heard the shower. Now that was interesting.

With that observation under my belt I was ready for something else there, too and moved quickly toward the kitchen again and devoured several of those little fancy appetizers. Drinks. I didn't know what to do about that, didn't know what she might want. All I wanted was a beer, easy, fast. Then I carried it out to the garden to check on the coals. In the manner of ancient cavemen, I poked and prodded the luminous little bricks, all the while wondering if I shouldn't go ahead and get one of those gas contraptions I had seen at other people's houses. But I wasn't sure about gas. I went back inside, got another beer and returned to the fire, searching for the first signs of gray. Damn, I thought, these little fellows age quickly, mentally referencing my own periodic search for gray.

"I see you found the appetizers," I heard Jackie say and turned to see her standing at the door encased in white terry cloth from head to foot. "I spotted this robe," she said. "I hope it was okay."

"Sure," I said, sort of stunned. I'm not sure I had ever seen a woman appear quite like that. Her hair was in a towel turban down to her ears and neck where the collar of the robe began, taking the terry cloth all the way to her toe tops. Her fingertips barely protruded from the sleeves and her scrubbed face seemed like an exquisite detail painted by a master artist on some sort of lump prepared by assistants. It was not the least bit sexy but it was so compelling, I found myself involuntarily aroused.

"Why don't you shower while I get the food ready and by the time you get out, maybe the grill will be ready," she said, perfectly logically.

Moving in a daze, I complied wordlessly, forgetting all about my ancient responsibilities to secure a proper fire. The waterfall was great, though, and warmer and better than any caveman ever experienced. I'm afraid I dawdled, partly because the shower really felt good, partly because I was beginning to think of Jackie somewhat differently, somewhat sexily–is that a word?–and partly because I wasn't sure what to do next. After I dried off, it was clear that I had no business wearing only a robe and I didn't want to go straight to regular clothes under the circumstances, mainly being the robe Jackie was wearing. Of course, I thought, with underwear the robe would be okay and I didn't want to stay in that but I could do it first, while I figured something else out.

So that's what I did: underwear and robe. And headed for the kitchen where another surprise was waiting and I don't mean more appetizers, then again, that's pretty close. Jackie had exchanged the robe for one of my heavy oxford cloth shirts. It was dress length on her and fit like a bag but what a sexy package. She had rolled the sleeves up and partly dried her hair and her bare legs seemed so free beneath the wide white dress. I wondered what, if anything was beneath it but the oxford cloth was too heavy for even the keenest sight to access. It seemed that my shirt must be all she was wearing because the point of getting clean would mean leaving off the dirty underwear. Unless she was wearing my underwear. What a thought. I'm not sure I could really think about that. Even if I could contemplate it, my shorts were all too big to stay up on her.

Somehow I managed to stammer an inquiry about how things were going. She glanced in my direction and responded positively but didn't slow down her preparations. I took the cue and exited immediately. Now it was clear: shorts and an old baggy shirt, that is, in addition to not wearing jeans, I didn't wear tee shirts, either, didn't own any. So I found an old, slightly frayed oxford cloth shirt, one of many that I could no longer wear to work but which I continued to launder, starch and all, and wear on occasions that most people would wear a tee shirt.

She allowed me the pleasure of actually placing the food on the grill and turning it and taking it off again. My role fulfillment. But she had seasoned everything and laid out the grilling order so that everything came off at the right time. Fish and grilled vegetables, some of it served with vinegar dressing that was really delicious. I'll have to hand it to her, it was quick and good.

Afterward, we rested in lounge chairs and sipped white wine. The lights inside were off and the garden was dark except for the light that is inescapable in cities but it was dark enough. We didn't say anything. It got late.

"It's been a really nice day, Mick," Jackie finally said. "Nothing like I had imagined."

I wasn't quite sure how to take that.

"But it's time for me to go. We've got to work tomorrow."

I didn't hear "tomorrow." I didn't feel tomorrow. I didn't want to deal with tomorrow. Today was plenty and I sort of felt like I wanted it to stay today forever. That was new for me. It didn't come with words or even thoughts. It just felt that way.

Despite the words she had spoken, Jackie didn't move for a while. But eventually, she shifted to the edge of the lounge chair, and then stood. I did, also, and Jackie went inside. She gathered her clothes and her handbag while I retrieved the keys to transport us into tomorrow. But today wasn't quite over.

The night was pleasant and not too cool, even for Jackie wearing only my shirt.

When we arrived at her apartment, I pulled along side the curb and killed the motor.

"I'll take your shirt to the laundry," she said, addressing a piece of business.

"No matter," I said. "Keep it." I sort of liked that idea.

"You can pick it up at the laundry when you go for your other clothes," she said, taking care of what could have been an awkward arrangement with no fuss at all.

"Okay," I said.

There was a brief period of silence. We were not looking at each other. Then she turned toward me and faced me squarely.

"Thanks for the day," she said. Then she added, "and thanks for not being pushy."

All of a sudden she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. It happened so fast I couldn't respond and Jackie immediately opened the door and got out and walked toward her apartment. There was not another word. I waited until she was inside and lights were turned on and I pulled away very content in some ways but disconsolate that the day was over. Tomorrow loomed and I pushed the thought of it away by thinking about today. Oddly, I tried to think about what had happened during the day, the evening, but could only feel today as a continuous moment. It felt good and I drove home utterly peacefully.

But the feeling was so strong that I must have stayed awake quite a while reveling in it. And in the morning, I woke up early and went from sleep to stone cold awake in an instant that would have left the Morgan in the dust of one of those feeling thoughts that was so powerful that no words wasted time expressing it. It was a feeling. I knew I had to act and then, at that moment, early as it was.

I punched some numbers into the phone. Cynthia answered on the third ring. Her voice was clear. She was awake already, too.

All I said was, "Cynthia..."

"It's okay, Mick," she responded immediately. "We both knew it was going to happen. And it should have happened. You're a great lover, Mick and you just might become a great man. I think it's in you and it's time you take another step."

How do you respond to something like that? "I'd like to tell you how much you have meant to me," I said, finally.

"You don't need to. You shouldn't even. It's time."

With that, we hung up. She had known, apparently all along. It was strange to think about. It set her apart, away and apart.

The picture gnawed at me. The fact that it was in my chest of drawers, the fact that it was there and had to be dealt with created an immediate urgency. I walked to the chest, not knowing what to do except that I knew I couldn't look at it again. I pulled it out and held it but didn't look. I was afraid that if I took it out of the frame, I would see it so I held the frame not knowing what to do. I didn't want to chance anyone else finding it, or having it blow across some landfill to be picked up by God knows who and stared at lasciviously, even though that's exactly what I had done. It had been given to me, after all, not to the whole damn world.

Then it hit me. The exact right thing to do. I went out to the garage and located a shovel. Then, in the garden, I found a plant that Cynthia had given to me and dug to the side at an angle, below the roots but kind of tunneling beneath the plant. Then I shoved the picture under the plant, frame and all and covered the hole. I knew that the picture would soon disintegrate and that after I had moved away at some future point, someone would find the frame and think it terribly odd that a frame had been buried in the garden. It was odd. But it was necessary.

For the first time, I was able to think about that day, today again, but a different today with different things in it. There's no way I could have predicted what was about to happen that day.

Chapter 8

Focus on organization, I told myself and forced a consideration of what I had to do that day. I had tried earlier, in the shower, eating a bite of breakfast, dressing. Everything pulled my attention away, back to yesterday.

Once in the Morgan with a little fresh morning breeze blowing past, I finally began to bear down on what I thought was ahead that day. I was one of the first to arrive at the store, unusual in itself. And I must have had something of an unusually serious air because everyone responded to me correctly, but shied away when they would normally have been friendly. Even Pirkle looked at me and moved on after barely saying good morning.

Quickly, I made a turn of the store to check the condition after what should have been a busy Sunday. It didn't appear to have been so busy. Maybe everyone else was out enjoying the day, also.

Then, in my office I tried to concentrate on planning and organization for the day. I looked at figures and started making notes for follow-up. We needed to tie down a lot of detail before the Caruthers people appeared in exactly one week.

The telephone rang just as Mrs. Martin was arriving for work. She answered before she was even seated at her desk and walked to the door of my office, still holding her handbag. She had a troubled expression on her face. "Someone is on line one who wants to talk to you," she said without good morning, first. "He says it's extremely important."

Joe made an unwelcome appearance in my mind. Could it be? But I didn't hesitate. I snatched the phone immediately.

"Manage," I said.

For a moment, all I could hear was some mumbling, as if a couple of people were having a conversation with the telephone on their end partly muffled. I didn't appreciate it.

"Mick," a vaguely familiar male voice finally said. "This is Mac MacIntyre."

"Well, hello, Mac," I said, relieved and in a tone that probably escalated as tension deflated.

"You need to come see me," he said.

"This is a hard week," I said. "Caruthers people are due here next week and we're as busy as we could possibly be. How about next week? I'll call you after they leave."

"It can't wait," Mac said. "I would come to your office, but we're better equipped to handle the situation from this end."

"What 'situation?'" I asked. Now, I was alarmed. Your banker doesn't normally talk like this.

He refused to elaborate. He just said that everything was okay but needed immediate attention. And no, he told me, it could not wait for me to conduct a meeting.

Obviously, I headed straight away to the bank. I was met at the door by some secretary, a first that made me near rigid with concern, and was quickly ushered into Mac MacIntyre's office. Mac was grinning broadly but that did not ease my concern. Mac rapidly picked up a folder from the top of a stack on his desk.

"Your boss is up early today," he said, opening the folder. "He had someone drive down here this morning from Capital City with, ahh, ahh, some things for you."

Mac withdrew a document from the folder and handed it across his desk to me. Why, I was wondering, didn't Mr. Kerplopski simply send whatever this was directly to me? I took the document and sat back in the chair and began to read.

It was not easy reading because it was in Mr. Kerplopski's own handwriting and it was a kind of note, not exactly a letter and not a memo. And it was straightforward information, expected in some ways but surprising in others.

The information was expected because it dealt with clearing a profit sharing account from store funds prior to a settlement of the sale of the store, mentioning that I, along with other Kerplopski employees, would be receiving profit sharing that would deplete the account. It was surprising in that it was a personal note instead of a form letter that might have been predictably issued to everyone, although it said that such a form letter would be sent out with the check, actually funds to be deposited directly into my bank account by the end of the week. For a reason totally unexplained in the note, Mr. Kerplopski wrote that he wanted me to know these things now because I "might not be around" when the form was delivered and he wanted me to have this information immediately.

"Not be around?" What was he talking about? Where would I be? Had he heard that Caruthers wanted me gone that quickly? Jesus, what a bastard outfit.

The amount, the note said, was determined based upon employment time, salary and other compensation as well as position in the company. But for a personal note, it was very impersonal. Bare facts.

One of those facts, at the bottom of the note, the last thing stated, was shockingly unexpected. The payout amount: $1,386,742.09.

Jesus, I thought. Then it occurred to me that Jesus wouldn't understand. I wasn't sure my eyes did, either, and I kept looking at the number. I had not even bothered to think about settling the profit sharing account. It never occurred to me that there would be all that much there–not enough to even think about.

Damn. By the end of the week, it suddenly hit me, I would be a miniscule millionaire.

Fuck Caruthers, I finally thought. If they want me gone instantly, I can instantly disappear somewhere really nice to decide what I'm going to do and then I can take my sweet time about doing it.

When I finally looked up from the page, Mac was smiling, but with seemingly pent up tension. "There's more," he said and handed me another document.

This time it was several pages and again, it was in Mr. Kerplopski's handwriting. It was not good handwriting and I settled back in the chair.

This was a real letter and it began by rambling about how long we had known each other and how much I had meant to him over the years. It really had not been all that long. I'm only thirty-nine, after all, but they had been good years after I came to Kerplopski's.

After going on like that for a while, Mr. Kerplopski got a little specific and then it began to cut really close. He said I had never lied to him, which was true, and he appreciated that, especially considering that I didn't even lie to him when I screwed up–which wasn't often–but it was such a little thing that meant so much to him. All of a sudden it came to me that he had never lied to me, either. It works both ways when it's right, doesn't it?

Richard Nixon came to mind. Damn almighty. Some assholes know how to spoil a good line of thought for the rest of us.

But then, Mr. Kerplopski got even more personal. He said I had never run around after him making nice-nice about every damn thing he ever said and how I even made wise suggestions in a quiet way without a lot of horn blowing. That was not entirely correct and it made me wince at the times it had not been. But on the whole, I'll have to admit, it was true.

I guess that people in that position have a bunch of flattering sons of bitches hanging around all the time. I didn't, I thought, but then again, I wasn't in his position.

There he was, in whatever position he was in, but surely an elevated one, writing that as time quickly drew to a close for him, he was more concerned than ever about "my people." Quaint turn of paternalistic phrase. But he meant it. He had always been impressed, he wrote, too, that Sunbelt City Kerplopski people seemed to have such respect for me and that I had such an easy way of dealing with them. "There's something good there," he wrote.

I suddenly felt wretched and pulled the handkerchief out of my back pocket. I was overwhelmed by all of this and sat there with silent tears welling one after another. I couldn't help but think about all the times I had been less to "my people" than I should have been. But I honestly tried.

Mr. Kerplopski wrote about his sons, too, very lovingly and appreciatively, gently and respectfully. That struck me. He had little concept of what one of his sons did but he appreciated that it contributed to world knowledge and cultural understanding. And he most directly connected to his dead son.

But he also said that things had to go on, he had learned when his son was killed. And now that he, too, was about to leave, things still had to go on. He wrote about me again, and again, tears welled.

He said that I should not mention anything about the letter or anything else that was happening that morning to absolutely anyone connected to Kerplopski's. Then he wrote, curiously, I thought, as if it was a disconnected thought, out of sequence, that he would acknowledge Irene and one or two other Kerplopski people in his will.

At that point, the letter took a turn. It was no less earnest, but was much more businesslike, to the point, focused. He stopped rambling and came to the point. He wanted me to have something extra, he wrote, from his personal funds and he wanted me to have it now, that day, in fact, because "time is of the essence." Why that bit of quasi business-legal jargon?

"I want you to get in touch with my cousin, Herbie," Mr. Kerplopski wrote. "Do it without delay."

So there was Herbie, again, but this time it was imperative, not at all tentative or judgmental or aloof.

"I know you will do the right thing," Mr. Kerplopski concluded. It was a little bit abrupt, coming from where he had been earlier in the letter.

I sat there looking at the pages, trying to take it all in. Then I glanced at Mac. Before I could try to interpret the look on his face, Mac thrust a small piece of paper at me. "There's also this," he said.

I took the paper and looked at it. It was a personal check from Mr. Kerplopski. Not a company check, a personal check, dated that morning and it was made out to me. The amount was five million dollars. That's $5,000,000.00. And yes, a person really does count the zeroes under circumstances like this.

To say that I stared in disbelief is to make an understatement of understatement. After a while, I looked at Mac who was grinning like a really happy person. Only I was the one who was supposed to be happy and I wasn't feeling quite anything at the moment.

Mac spoke. "The way I calculate it roughly right now," he said, "after the mill point three you're getting by the end of the week and considering your house and investment portfolio, and making an adjustment for taxes, I think you're looking at your net worth right there in your hand."

Right away, I had this vision of a big net, tied off to what I don't know, but in the middle of it was a pot of gold and the pot was so heavy that the net was stretched way down but didn't rest on anything.

"Yep," Mac said, and it didn't sound very bankerly, "you're now worth five million dollars."

Oddly enough, I didn't like that. I had never like to hear that someone was worth x dollars. Surely a person is worth more than any dollars or even all dollars. I realize that it's just an expression but that raised another point. If it's an expression, then it's words that stand in place of meaning and if the meaning was to say that I or anyone else is worth an amount of dollars means that whoever is expressing that is stuck in some mighty deep mud, deeper than I would want to be in in my Morgan. It would likely cause spinning wheels, getting nowhere and throwing mud everywhere.

Even more oddly, I thought about something that I had heard as a kid, starting out in retailing. In the store I worked in, supervisors who approved checks and other transactions, were termed "blue pencils." People would say, "So-And-So is a blue pencil" and I would see this skinny character, a sort of Blue Man Pencil on stilts with a pointy head walking jerkily toward something that needed approving. But I didn't approve of it then and I don't now.

Still, five million dollars is enough to make me forgive Mac and whoever else made the mistake of thinking or even saying that I'm a stack of money. Notice that that's stack not sack and a very tall stack, at that.

For an instant, the selfish thought that with that much money, if I invested wisely, I could have a comfortable life and avoid a lot of nonsense. But, you know, that's nonsense.

The final words of the letter hit me and I read them again, "I know you will do the right thing." But what was the right thing? Could it have something to do with him pushing me to call Herbie?

I didn't want to call Herbie, but if a man gives me five million dollars and wants me to call his cousin with bad teeth, I'll make the call. It's not illegal or even unethical. As a matter of fact, there was something about that call for which "time is of the essence" and it must might be "the right thing to do."

"Congratulations," Mac said. "It's not often that you run into a guy whose boss thinks that highly of him."

That's better, I thought. I'm no longer merely a stack of money in Mac's estimation. But the money was damn sure there. I handed the check back to him, or tired to.

"You have to endorse it," he said.

Jesus again. That's almost like writing a check for five million dollars except that you don't get to write the zeroes, just your signature, but on the back of all those zeroes. I did it correctly, though, and handed it back to him.

"I need to use a phone," I said.

"Sure," Mac said and left me alone in his office.

I sat there a moment, trying to compose myself and my thoughts. What does it feel like to suddenly be worth five million dollars? See? I'm screwing myself with the same attitude.

The lottery, you might think, is the closest feeling. And maybe it is if you come by the dough through the state commission. But I thought of my parents and a really nice Christmas present. But that wasn't quite it. Maybe it was and the kid in me was simply so far gone that I couldn't quite get it that way anymore. So maybe if you're a kid that's how it would feel.

Then I thought of something you really, really like as an adult. Women first. But you have to know that there was never a fuck in history worth five million dollars. Now, the simple removal of clothing might elicit thanks because that's not sex yet, but appreciation of a beautiful female body. It would have to be female because no female would want to thank a man for taking his clothes off. It just doesn't compare, doesn't rise to the level of appreciation, legitimate "thank you, ma'am" gratitude that can come from seeing a beautiful woman naked. But then, that's not sex, either, because the removal of clothing is not sex, although it can lead to sex and women are more than fucking, although that's what it seems to be much of the time. So it wasn't sex. And besides, I wouldn't be calling Mr. Kerplopski for sex. You don't even thank a woman for sex unless you're desperate beyond belief or don't realize that sex is giving both ways–unless you pay for it, and then, I suppose you wouldn't thank you the whore and pay at the same time. Unless of course, the prostitute happens also to be a chef. Then you might have a great deal to be thankful for and might both pay for the meal and thank its creator. So now we're all the way to God, after the main course and dessert and a few drinks, we're thanking God? For money or sex? Both, of course. You can thank God for anything and no one will ever know unless you stand up somewhere out in the open and make a fool of yourself. I was no fool. I would never tell anyone what had just gone through my head. That was the domain of philosophers or psychologists. And I wasn't about to touch either of those things. I had my hands on five million dollars and regardless of what anybody thinks, I wanted to express gratitude.

So the first thing I did was to call Irene, Mr. Kerplopski's secretary.

"Mr. Kerplopski said you would be calling," Irene said without adding anything else.

"Can I talk to him?" I asked.

"Not now. He's busy," Irene said. She was slightly short–words and stature and she wasn't growing in my estimation at that moment.

"When can I talk to him?" I pressed.

"I don't know," she said.

"What's going on?" I pressed harder.

"I don't know everything."

"Irene, I've got your address. Don't make me come up there." I was kidding, then again, I wasn't and she knew it.

"You need to call Herbie," she said, "and go see him, not me and not Mr. Kerplopski."

"You know I'm going to take care of this."

"I know," she allowed. "But you've got something more important to do first."

"I want to thank him," I said.

"I know you do," Irene said. "I'm not sure for what, but I know you sincerely want to reach him."

"Not sure for what?" I was surprised.

"He doesn't tell me absolutely everything," Irene said. "I know he's talked a lot about you lately–the last few days, especially. And I know he's talked a lot to Herbie but I really don't know what's in his mind or what's been talked about, although I could guess," she said, then added hastily, "but I don't want to know."

All this talk about Herbie was beginning to stir me up and I didn't have time to think through it and had no feeling about how it might settle down once I knew more. Maybe Irene felt the same way.

"Some of you guys, you especially, have me in a bad position," Irene tried to explain, haltingly, choosing her words carefully and slowly. "I'm loyal to first to Mr. Kerplopski and absolutely will not go against anything he tells me. But I like you, Mick and I would like to help. It's just that no matter how much it hurts, I can't violate Mr. Kerplopski's trust. When he says 'nobody,' I take it at that."

"I understand," I told her, "and I'm not trying to unseat your loyalty. That's a good thing and I respect it."

"I know," Irene said softly.

But I wasn't finished. "Is Mr. Kerplopski sick?" I asked.

"I didn't say that," Irene said quickly. "I'll tell him you called. That's the best I can do."

"But not the best I can do," I said. "Look, I'm going to send a letter up there today by a store employee. Whoever it is will put it in your hands and your hands only. Will you give it to Mr. Kerplopski as soon as possible?"

"Yes," she assured me. "I can do that, Mick."

I thanked Irene and made my next call. While the phone rang, I glanced around Mac's desk, expecting what I don't know. Maybe a stack of CDs or treasury notes or even a big wad of cash or a handful of jewels someone forgot to return to their safe deposit box. But no, it was fairly clean except for some unopened mail and a picture of his family. The three kids made me squirm but his wife was nice looking, obviously sexy to him, but nice looking to anyone's eyes. Soft dark hair like Jackie's.

"Where are you?" Jackie asked, kind of alarmed.

"At the bank," I said.

"Everybody's been looking for you. Mrs. Martin said you were here this morning and then nobody could find you."

"I had to run a sudden errand. I'll tell you about it later." I'll be back soon but I'll likely be tied up a while after I get there. I just wanted you to know."

Jackie was happy enough with that explanation and I moved to the next call except that Herbie's secretary said that he wasn't in.

"This is Mick Manage," I said. "Please tell him I called."

"You got it," the secretary said. She was husky, indifferent sounding.

I wasn't sure she had it. "His cousin said it was urgent that I speak to him."

"All right. I said I would give him the message."

"My number is..."

"He has your number," the secretary interrupted. I hung up, terribly grateful for Mrs. Martin.

"You okay, Mick?" Mac asked when I left his office. He was handing me a mirror and I didn't like what I saw. But there was plenty of reason for it to be there.

"I'm fine," I said and forced a smile. "It's just the thing like they say about all the problems rich people have. You ought to be used to it by now."

"Hey, now, just because I work at a bank don't think that..."

"'Work at,'" I mocked. "You are the bank. You and that jerk used car dealer down the street."

"Don't talk about my good customers that way. He's angling to move up to the Federal Reserve."

"Cut me some slack," I said. I was moving pretty briskly toward the door. "I'm just getting started."

But as I headed toward the Morgan on the curb, I glanced back at the row of buildings and for the first time really noticed the whole scene. Trees along the street shaded the bank and these little businesses from the morning sun and put a canopy of peace over the whole setting. I waved to the owner of a café next to the bank. I knew him as a customer, sometimes mine and sometimes his. But every time I had been his customer, I was busy, concentrating on what was being said at lunch, too busy to notice how this guy worked. He probably worked very hard–most business owners are chained solid, every bit the working stiff so often attributed to people who work for other people. But this morning, he was sitting at a table in front of his shop enjoying a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper and he seemed to have not a care in the world.

"Like I told Mac," I shouted at him in my mind, "I've got my share of troubles and I've got to shove off and go admiral the poop deck. No time for your silly rest."

He didn't answer and it's a good thing he couldn't hear what I thought. Next to him was a gift shop. I could see Jackie through the window. She was smiling. Maybe she would go have coffee at the café next door. Then a bookstore, then a candy shop, a pet store, a doctor's office, drug store, photographer, and after that I was up to such a speed I could no longer see anything and drove to the store on automatic pilot.

And went straight to my cabin when I got there. A cabin in the dark woods. But I grabbed messages from Mrs. Martin as I passed and closed the door and leafed through them. Nothing. Nothing worthwhile.

I turned the overhead light off and fumbled in the dark for the switch to the desk lamp and sat down. After Mrs. Martin called once, I told her I wouldn't be taking calls for a while unless it was Irene or either Kerplopski. That stopped the interruptions but I could occasionally hear her intercepting people outside my door. That kept them from knocking. I liked Mrs. Martin.

But I didn't like what I was doing at that moment. I wanted to thank Mr. Kerplopski but I wanted to do it in person. Instead, I was laboring over a document that would be woefully inadequate to express myself but I was doing it anyway. Struggling under the mercifully dim light directed solely on clean paper and a solitary pen. I read, wrote, reread, rewrote, and more, almost collapsing under the weight of inadequacy.

When the phone finally rang, I was appreciative and surged suddenly alert. I felt like the captain of a merchant ship about to be boarded by pirates and I was preparing to fight not knowing quite how or why. Hadn't pirates become respectable after a while? Wasn't that history?

"Has my cousin talked to you?" Herbie asked. He sounded rushed but urgent.

"I got a letter this morning," I said. I spoke firmly.

"How soon can you come down?"

"Tonight. I can see you tomorrow morning. There are some things that I've got to do today to keep things going here."

"I understand," Herbie said. He actually sounded understanding. "Better make it nine," he said, "Benzene just told me I have some people coming down for a meeting, first thing, and some of my people are going to be there so I need to be, too."

"See you then," I said. "Is your office still in Port City in the same place?"

"No. I'm exclusively in Coast Town now. It's a four storey building on the strip. Bright blue. You can't miss it. Looks like a cheap hotel."

We hung up and I had to think about all that. Benzene? Nine AM in the early morning? Cheap motel? Now that one I could understand. But benzene and nine o'clock as a second major meeting? I guess those nonretail types got an early start. That left benzene and I didn't have the intellectual capacity to figure it out.

I carefully studied what I had written. I didn't like it but it would have to do. I wish I could have simply talked to Mr. Kerplopski. I rewrote the letter in an attempt at improved handwriting and called Mrs. Martin.

"Get Jimmy up here," I told her, "bring the mail, any messages and sit with me a few minutes."

Soon Jimmy and Mrs. Martin were in my office. "What kind of wheels do you have Jimmy?" He said something I had never heard of but after reaching Morgan nirvana you just don't pay much attention to anything else. "Are they good for a trip to Capital City?" I asked and was reassured. Then I gave him instructions on how to reach Irene after he got to the store. The office would give him mileage and I gave him lunch money–a good lunch money with the understanding that lunch was to be after the delivery.

I called Irene and told her that I was sending Jimmy with a letter and I told her about meeting Herbie tomorrow, partly so that she could tell Mr. Kerplopski and partly so she would know how to reach me. She sounded pleased.

Then I turned to Mrs. Martin and we went through the mail and messages. I took some and gave her suggestions on the rest.

"We need a meeting with managers at three o'clock. Tell them it will be very short. Very short. And I need you to make me reservations in Coast Town for tonight with the possibility of staying longer. Check the file. The name of the place I like is Bonnie Beach. But if they don't have a room on the ocean side, find some place else.

For a while, I worked furiously, ripping through all sorts of stuff and leaving a pile of documents for Mrs. Martin to deal with. I also alerted Jackie to a one o'clock lunch and shortly before then, we left the building.

It was good–no, necessary–to get out for a while. I felt drawn back to the café next to the bank and the breezy ride in the Morgan helped to clear my mind of the slog of paperwork I had been mired in. The trouble is, it returned my mind to everything else which was a good thing except that it kept me thinking and consequently quiet. In the Morgan, that was okay, but once we arrived at the café, I had to let go of that, too, and become normal, or at least as normal as I am.

"This is twice that I've seen you today, Mick," the proprietor said.

"It's your fault," I scolded him. "This morning you looked like the world was your footstool, sitting outside enjoying the morning with a cup of coffee and the newspaper."

"You want to sit outside, now?" he asked. "It's not too hot today." We went back out to the sidewalk and took a seat. He sat down, too.

"It's a nice life when I'm not putting out fires," he said, as we looked at the menu. "You don't see the down side. I depend on this for my livelihood, which may not be so much now that I'm old, but I still have to live; that means I have to come here everyday instead of visiting the grandchildren. At least you get to see a lot of people and do interesting things, all day. What you didn't see this morning was me dashing back inside when the cook caught first his apron and then the paper goods closet on fire. I've been cleaning up fire extinguisher residue all morning since you passed by. The quiche is really good today."

Mercifully, there was a canopy because the birds were active and while we waited for our food, I started coming out of my thoughts. It was two amazing days in a row and who could tell about tomorrow?

"I never did thank you for yesterday," I said. "It was a very good day."

"Yes," Jackie said. She smiled–that's all, just smiled. It was enough for me to see her so comfortable with me now. It felt good.

"I have to go to Coast Town tonight," I said. Jackie appeared to be inquisitive but didn't say anything. "Mr. Kerplopski's cousin lives there and he wants me to talk to him about buying a store or two."

Jackie started to say something but I interrupted her.

"It's just nonsense," I said.

"Will you be gone long?" Jackie asked.

"Probably just overnight," I said.

"Caruthers people this week make that a little difficult," she said. "Being out of the store the week they're coming."

"I know, but the whole thing is wrapped up in timing. Now seems to be the time for everything."

"That's what has you so thoughtful, today?" Jackie asked.

"There are a lot of thoughts today," I said. I hadn't realized it showed so much.

As the quiche arrived, so did Mac Macintyre. He seemed to take note of the Morgan parked on the street and glanced around until he caught my eye and waved. He must have been returning from lunch.

"Do you remember when banks in Sunbelt City closed in the middle of the day?" I asked. Jackie nodded. "That always seemed so strange to me. To stop doing business right in the middle of the day when customers were out and about the most. Now they're open all day and part of Saturday."

What had happened in the bank that morning was greatly on my mind and I almost broached the subject several times during lunch but stopped each time, not knowing exactly what to say. It seemed like I ought to say something.

I thought about the whole subject even more as I drove to Coast Town late in the afternoon. There was still no conclusion. Of course, the drive seemed both endless and surreal. Driving alone with a headful of thoughts of all kinds but absolutely no conclusions about any of it.

Finally pulling into Coast Town as the daylight waned may not have answered any questions but it sure brought me back to the here and now. Where the north south highway dead ended into the coast highway along the strip was a different kind of reality.

Chapter 9

There's probably a tendency among all people who see the sun come up or down over a coast to wax poetic. Not me. I was there to consider doing business with a man who had green stuff in his teeth.

Actually, I was too tired to go onto the beach that morning. As far as I'm concerned, the beach is wonderful in the early AM and the late PM and everything in between when the sun is high and strong is time for sex or food or a movie or anything but beach. But that morning I was dead tired from all that had gone on before. The tension of it all had drained my strength, despite being exhilarating. So I saw the sun come up from my balcony then went to breakfast and on to Herbie's office.

I had spotted his building easily on the strip as soon as I pulled into town. It looked just as he said, like a cheap hotel. Maybe worse. It appeared to be a painted concrete box–a bright blue box, truly different from anywhere else.

Doing business on the coast is different. You almost never wear a coat and tie. I was about to find out that it's just as intense there as anywhere else, but the dressing is more casual.

That's why I took note of someone I saw as I approached Herbie's building. You see dicks everywhere you go, private and government. But while you can almost always spot them, I saw one that stood out like a circus clown on Wall Street.

It was a man in a suit and tie sitting in a fed regulation black Crown Vic staring straight ahead. Anywhere else he wouldn't have been noticed. But on the strip in Coast Town? He looked as if he might have starred in one of J. Edgar Hoover's wet dreams.

Oddly enough, the next person I encountered was a security man of a different type. He was quite young and was dressed in a knit shirt and khaki pants. As soon as I pulled off the street at Herbie's building, he stepped out of a gatehouse.

"Good morning, Mr. Manage," he said immediately. "You can park in space G-two, straight ahead beneath."

As he spoke, the gate was opening and I was wondering how he knew my name. There must have been a roster of expected guests. "Beneath" meant under the building that was on stilts. I drove past a number of vehicles parked in the open sun behind the building and eased in next to a Bentley that was parked next to another Bentley. How often do you see that? I may have been smaller but I'll bet I enjoyed driving more than they did.

Then I wondered about the Bentley thing. It stood to reason that at least one of them belonged to Herbie but I had a hard time believing that his taste could be at that level. I would have more imagined him in a pimped up Cadillac.

Ignoring the elevator, I took the scenic route up some concrete steps and emerged into a different world: elegance so simple it was opulent. Somebody had taste around there. Marble floors, open space, a shocking expanse of glass fronting the ocean, a flood of sunlight and a gorgeous receptionist.

She was young, too, very young, with an inviting smile, clothing that beckoned the eye to generous glimpses of perfect tan and an understated wariness that dared any fool to flirt. I didn't. Something was in my mind that maybe my flirting days were over. But I enjoyed the skin show and fantasized that she dropped her dress with a single tug on the shoulder bow before running outside to lie naked in the sun.

"Good morning, Mr. Manage," she said immediately.

"Good morning," I said and left it strictly at that.

"Mr. Kerplopski is expecting you. His office is on the third floor."

For that, I took the elevator and stepped again into an otherwise refined office area but this one was populated differently. Benzene said nothing. I introduced myself and she looked at me like she was thinking, "So what? Sit your butt down and wait your turn." She still didn't say anything; she didn't need to. I sat down next to a live tropical plant with much more personality than Benzene. "You're very lucky," the plant said. "You're not here all day."

It wasn't long before several men came out of Herbie's office, leaving the door open. A couple of minutes later, Herbie came to the door with a man I recognized.

I was surprised by Herbie's appearance. He looked a little older than the last time I had seen him. What I meant by that stunningly brilliant observation is that Herbie was more dignified looking than before. He had gained just enough weight to look calm instead of wispy. He was still a little short but at least his feet touched the floor and when he opened his mouth you didn't see green stuff. From the looks of the place, he must have a wallet full of it, though. His hair was neatly combed and he appeared to be firmly in control.

Seeing the other man, Addler Crawley, also surprised me. He was a lawyer in Sunbelt City, well-known in business and social circles. That accounted for the second Bentley, the gray one, as gray as its owner, a Confederate ghost returned to run amok in the New South. I couldn't imagine what he was doing talking to Herbie. For that matter, what was I doing talking to Herbie?

A moment later, Lawyer Crawley condescended to talk to Benzene. He obviously knew the secret of secretaries but the condescending part screwed up the attempt. Now I'll admit that I couldn't figure Benzene just yet, but I knew enough to know Crawley had it all wrong. Probably, though, he couldn't help it. I suspect he always talked like that to everybody.

Benzene, who had enough legitimate rasp in her throat to voice over an antismoking ad, wasn't about to be taken in by some smooth talking Slick Willie, or Unctuous William, as he might have preferred. Benzene's jaw dropped, something that I suspect was rare for that old bird. She even drew back, unaccustomed to someone speaking like that.

There was a clique in Sunbelt City, mostly thoroughbred lawyers from the old stable, who talked like Crawley. It sounded like he was talking while eating a large, whole strawberry in heavy cream. His mouth worked like it, too. There was no wonder the speech was so slow, as much time as it took for his jaw to move so far down and back up again. Nobody on earth sounded like that naturally. I suspect that they thought it sounded genteel, polished and southern professional when it was really just plain phony.

Then Crawley spotted me and it became my turn. But instead of backing up, I stepped forward and met him halfway, my hand extended and my eyes fixed on his in the same manner he and his buddies might employ against some muddle class attorney who had barely managed to emerge from night school.

"Mick, what a splendid surprise to run into you in Coast Town," Crawley orated.

"Likewise a pleasure to encounter a distinguished member of the bar in this salubrious clime," I intoned in return, tit for tat plus some. It was spring and he might have recently shed his skin for a new layer, but I doubt that he even noticed.

"My wife wants to drop in on your store a final time before it changes hands," Crawley said. I won't even try to imitate the way he talked. "My friend, you'd do well to take employment with this Mr. Kerplopski," he also said, muffing an accidentally truthful statement with a saccharine suck up.

After spreading a little more gray bombast around, Crawley took our leave, bade us adieu, prayed for us to indulge his absence, thanked us copiously for the occasion and slithered toward the elevator. In a few moments, it occurred to me later, he was probably trying to flirt with the receptionist. Some women would fall for Crawley's slimy charm; he probably crept around looking for the off-hand opportunity. A wise country gal would have taken a hoe to him but I'm sure that Herbie's receptionist was one filly that could stomp the shit out of him by hardly even raising a manicured hoof.

For a split second, I realized the awesome ocean view from Herbie's office. There was no time to linger; we were too busy renewing our acquaintance, read sizing each other up again, to worry about anything else. At least for a moment it seemed that way. But just a minute into our meeting, I asked Herbie about how his business was doing and he instantly wanted to show me his warehouses. Show me his warehouses? I had come all the way to the coast to tour a bunch of warehouses? It was his meeting and, after all, I was being virtually paid (bribed?) to humor him for a little while, so what the hell–off on a beautiful sunny day to a warehouse. I had thought that we would take a moment to try to become reacquainted, then it occurred to me that maybe Herbie hadn't changed much after all, that maybe this was just an example of his old nervous self that was still him.

After quickly punching three digits into the telephone and saying something about "revving up," Herbie grabbed a pair of sunglasses. I followed him out the door as he shot past Benzene without saying a word. We paused for an elevator and then went up instead of down. When the doors opened, we were in front of a helicopter, parked on the roof.

Herbie said the pilot had the best view in Coast Town, the oceanfront and the receptionist sunbathing on the roof. Aaah haaa. I had been right after all, except that now the fantasy was her standing up behind her desk and dropping her dress before running to the elevator.

I had never been on a helicopter before, and I wondered if drugs could top this. I didn't see how. It was exhilarating. Maybe jumping out would be more exciting, but what a downer.

In moments, we were over the bay, heading toward Port City and Herbie's warehouses. The helicopter circled the area along the docks to give us an overview. Okay, now I had seen warehouses. Let's go back. Not yet, it turned out. We headed for the roof of one of the warehouses.

Herbie, I protested to myself, I don't really need to see inside one of them. And I didn't, except for the elevator that deposited us in a parking lot next to a car that Herbie used to drive us.

That was the first chance for conversation since we left his office. "Okay, you've seen the warehouses," Herbie said, as if an echo.

Nothing else was said. He drove without saying where we were going until he stopped at a cove where nice looking boats where tied up. Then we walked, it seemed like a long way, before coming to a particularly large boat. It turns out to have been what is properly called a yacht, this one, Dr. Holliday, and by wanting to "go out for a while," Herbie meant that he wanted us to go on the boat and go...sailing?

Anyway, we "boarded." The captain met us with what on land would have been a butler. The captain took the command to get underway–nautical talk for shove off–and the butler type guy brought out trays of prepared fruit and some really great, thick coffee which we consumed on the deck along with what was for me, a unique experience and close up view of our world. Best of all, it was very clear that Herbie had planned this all along, meaning that he also wanted to get acquainted and had the means to be first class about it.

We lunched on salad, boiled shrimp, cold mineral water and more coffee. By late afternoon, when it was time to return, we had reached a comfort level and mutual understanding. It proved to be time well spent and I learned much, two things particularly important.

First, I learned, with much impact on the future, beginning that very night, that Herbie was married. It seemed to have a calming effect on him that made working with him possible.

Second, Herbie let me in on some specifics of his motivation for being interested in buying a few Kerplopski stores. Having seen what little I had already seen of his life and work that morning, some of it made a lot of sense.

What I had not seen but could imagine as he said it, was that there were very few people involved in his business, related to import, export and warehousing. Other companies employed many of the people because few were needed to maintain warehoused material, even with stuff going in and out. Many of these were unionized workers and had set financial arrangements.

There were lawyers and accountants and purchasing specialists and so forth, but these were comparatively highly paid people who made their own plans and had their own investments. Most of these worked in his office building in Coast Town and there were very few of them.

It turns out that Herbie wanted somebody to take care of like his cousin did. Later in the evening, in talking to his wife I could better understand. She had people to care for, but they didn't. And obviously at a mid point in life, they weren't going to have kids.

Herbie had devised a really good perspective on how to handle the situation–his need for caring for people–but as he thought more about it, especially after Mr. Kerplopski said he was selling the store, Herbie realized that there was something missing from his plan.

What he had intended was a huge commitment to a university. Buildings, scholarship funds, chairs, everything. He even thought about adopting some high schools and funding underprivileged kids' higher education. But he was uncomfortable with kids and could foresee all kinds of difficulties down the road.

So when his cousin announced to family members that he would be selling the store, he was interested. These store employees were adults, lots of them, who could benefit from Herbie's interest and resources.

Everything made a lot more sense after spending the day with Herbie. Little did we know, as we returned to port, how his needs and ideas were about to rocket off in a different direction. And little could I imagine that I would be riding the same rocket.

For the moment, it was the same helicopter. As we headed in, I began to consider what my role might be and I was very uneasy. I really appreciated how Herbie had changed and all but I still had tremendous reservations about splitting off a few stores and running them as a separate company.

After landing, we returned to Herbie's office and I wondered how the day would end, how things would be left when we parted. But that's not what Herbie had in mind. He wanted me to join he and his wife for dinner. I was asked to return in an hour and a half at six-thirty.

That was a little early, I thought. And, "here?" I said "here" out loud, wondering why his wife would be at his office at that time, then I wondered in a millisecond if Herbie would be working during that period.

"Ring the bell at the gate," Herbie instructed, "and ring again when you get to the elevator on the back side of the building. We'll buzz you in each time."

That was when I found out that Herbie and his wife lived on the fourth floor of his building in a penthouse apartment and liked to be back in every night by nine-thirty. Altogether different and somehow impressive.

We opened the door to his office and encountered Benzene; her handbag was already on top of her desk as the big hand neared five. Then it hit me about Benzene.

"That son-of-a-bitch lawyer that was here this morning called to let you know how much he enjoyed meeting you," Benzene said with husky sarcasm.

"Benzene," Herbie gasped. He was clearly embarrassed and I wasn't about to ease up the situation.

"If I'm lucky," I said, "when I'm gone, she'll refer to me only as 'that bastard.'"

"Benzene," was all Herbie could say.

I stepped behind her desk and opened a drawer.

"What the hell are you doing?" she exploded.

I'm sure Herbie wondered about both of us.

"I'm thirsty," I said. Then I reached over to a tray that had some nice crystal glasses turned upside down next to a pitcher of water and a bucket of ice. I dropped a few cubes of ice into each of three glasses. The desk drawer remained conspicuously open. Then, I reached into the desk drawer and fumbled around.

"What the hell are you doing?" Benzene again demanded.

"I want a drink," I said and smiled broadly at Benzene. "What is it?" I asked. "Bourbon?" I found the bottle and pulled it out and held it high in the air. "Yes. Bourbon. Care to have a drink with us, Herbie?"

The astonishment on his face was shocking. Could it be that he had not known for what must have been years?

I poured a finger into each glass and distributed them, one to Herbie, too, and he drank his and managed a smile. Benzene and I grinned broadly and took our drink then looked at each other and broke down laughing. She and I had another drink as Herbie watched, amazed.

"You're okay," Benzene said, "whoever you are."

I returned the bottle to her drawer and she and I left together. But only so far as the parking lot. I knew she could make it home but I was glad that I didn't have to see her at six-thirty. After all that, we got along like regular buddies.

When I got back to the Bonnie Beach, I called Jackie. She was still at the store. There was not much to say but I told her that I assumed that I would return sometime the next day.

When I returned to Herbie's building at six-thirty, there was barely time to glance at the penthouse, tastefully done, before Herbie's wife appeared. Talk about taste. Something major had happened to Herbie for all these improvements in his life. As it turns out, this wife was responsible. That could easily be a chicken and egg question leading to faith. If she was responsible, then how did she get there to start with? It was beyond me. Like I said, faith. It just happened.

She was good looking, too, not out and out gorgeous but very attractive. Not much shorter than Herbie, shoulder length brown hair, soft, wholesome face with rounded features and a button nose. Very nice figure. But the main thing was that she was one of those women who looked good but you knew in a flash that they were really good, truly beautiful on the inside.

Herbie introduced her as Dr. Vivian Holliday, dentist. That explained a lot–Herbie's teeth, for starters.

"Don't call her 'Doc Holliday,'" Herbie said. "She'll shoot you. Or at least cough on you."

Damn. Herbie had a sense of humor.

"And don't call Herb 'Herbie,'" Doc Holliday said.

So Herbie had become Herb along with everything else on the transformation route. I quickly checked my list of yesterday's inadvertent faux pas and found only one despite frequent mental references.

"He only did it once," Herb echoed my mind. "Unless you're in her chair, she's 'Vivian.'"

On the way to the elevator, I couldn't help but wonder if Playboy had ever done an issue featuring dentists. I pictured some good looking dentist like Doc Holliday in a short, half unsnapped smock leaning over some poor schmuck who couldn't see anything but the overhead light and who couldn't feel anything but pain. Ouch. I couldn't help myself.

Vivian turned and looked at me from the front seat of the Bentley. Herb was lucky.

"I hear that you outed Benzene," Vivian said and laughed. "I tried to tell Herb that she has a problem." She looked at Herbie and affectionately played with the hair behind his ear.

"How did she get that name?" I asked.

"Her actual name is Irene, like my cousin's secretary, except that her personality is so different. 'Benzene' kind of rhymes and the poison aspect fits."

Dinner was great, and not just the food. I actually enjoyed the company of this pair. I missed Jackie, though. She would have completed it. But maybe I needed to get to know them alone first. First? What was I thinking?

The whole day had been surprising. We seemed to get along well. I didn't know that it was going anywhere because I still opposed splitting part of Kerplopski's into a private fiefdom, especially just to make Herbie feel like Herb.

It wasn't all serious. We sort of cut up as much as respectable adults ever do and laughed and talked and teased.

At one point, I asked why Vivian didn't just set up shop in the penthouse like dentists did right in their own houses before Novocain. "The view would be great," I said, thinking as much about Playboy–no–Penthouse dentists as I was thinking about the ocean. I was definitely not thinking about the view inside the mouth, although some sleazy captions popped into my head, "oral care at the hands of..." that sort of thing.

Herb supplied that Vivian had an office in the inland Coast Town medical tower that had a good view. That gave me some ideas I could say out loud, even if they were a little outrageous.

I couldn't help suggesting that she add some non-dental associates to her office so that beach babes could bleach their teeth and hair at the same time. Maybe have some nail care, body piercing and tattoos–high class, of course.

Herb and Vivian looked at each other and broke out laughing. Well it was mildly amusing but I didn't think it was all that funny. "Just a wild marketing suggestion," I said trying to retreat gracefully.

"I had suggested something like that, myself," Herb said. That sounded unlikely, although Herbie had become Herb. I just didn't realize that Herb had that much humor in him.

"I didn't care for the idea," Vivian said. She was smiling ironically but she was very serious at he same time. "When we met, I had an ordinary practice," she continued. "After we married, I wanted to do something different but not like Herb suggested and since he is rich I didn't need to continue to run my practice to make money, exactly."

"So what are you doing?" I asked. She seemed to need prodding.

"Well, now I only work Monday through Thursday," she said. "Two days are standard practice, enough to pay for two days free practice in an economically depressed part of town. I break even on expenses but don't make anything. Then again, thanks to Herb, I don't need to make money and I have the opportunity to help people who badly need it. Did you know that twenty-five percent of children in this country don't even visit a dentist once a year? And half of people over sixty don't."

She had put my meager marketing humor to shame. Herb was clearly proud of her, just as she was of him. They sat across from me looking happy and content. I felt like some desert nomad looking at a picture of a lush, large and successful southern vegetable garden.

"I got the idea of taking some Kerplopski stores from what Vivian did with her practice," Herb said.

I was impressed but also vaguely troubled.

There was no doubt that we all had a good time that night. But we parted with me still opposed to Herb breaking off a few stores no matter how wonderful he had become or how fantastic his wife was. Not only that, we had spent the entire day together without ever once addressing this issue and I knew it had to come the next day.

That left me in a nettlesome humor that night. I thought about calling Jackie but I really didn't have an excuse. There was no news, no actual excuse that I could use for calling.

On top of everything else, I felt unsettled. How was I going to take five million bucks from Mr. Kerplopski and turn his cousin down? But what else could I do? The options weren't as inviting as the beach and since the sun was gone, I was happy to be outside and went for a walk along the edge of the surf. I just kept walking and it was late when I returned to my room, still troubled. Even so, I slept like the proverbial log–no driftwood that night–and I woke up suddenly and very early and with what could possibly be a solution to the whole problem. I couldn't believe it. Wham. It was right there in my mind and could be a reality if the details could be worked out and if Herb would agree.

When the idea hit me, I had just gotten out of bed and was standing on the balcony enjoying the ocean with one part of my brain while another part was obviously working. It was still dark but I returned to the beach and walked until the earliest glimmers of light grew to dawn. Then, I rushed inside. By that time, I had worked out a number of important details in my mind and had begun to think about how I could sell the idea to Herb.

I also called Jackie. I had an excuse and a lot to say, so I said it, babbled it, actually. Everything just spilled out in an unorganized torrent. But she listened and actually heard it as well as anyone could have. She responded, too but at the end of the call, she said something that was as important as anything I had ever heard.

"You should have called last night, Mick," Jackie said. "I had hoped you would. You don't ever need an excuse to call me."

After all my talk and talk and talk, Jackie stopped me dead with a couple of short sentences. I was becoming important to her. I had admitted to myself that I had come to have unusual feelings about her but here she was virtually telling me that she felt the same way. There was a solid feeling about it, a comfort level about a woman I had never before experienced.

Vivian and Herb popped into my mind. I think they had that feeling. I missed Jackie all the more.

Somehow, I forced myself back to the issues of the day. The shower helped. Breakfast didn't. Time was drawing near to talk to Herb and I was apprehensive.

The short drive was like a trance. I vaguely recall the gatekeeper and the receptionist with her lovely tan, wide, scooped neck top, tied temptingly at the shoulders with generous view of loose cleavage. I remember Benzene, but Herb, I will never forget. I was ready to get to the point.

"Vivian really likes you," Herb said.

Suddenly Jackie was a presence along with Vivian and Herb and my concentration was out the window.

Speaking of the window, for a moment I glanced and enjoyed the view but the brightness of the morning at that hour reminded me of how much the temperature had advanced since early that morning when I was on the beach and temperature reminded me of a need to address the rising degree of the problem I was prepared to confront with Herb.

Instead, I said, "you know, I not only really liked her but I really like both of you." Why couldn't I have muttered the old cliché about them making a nice coupe? Not only that, I built on it, commenting that I had someone very special and that it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Where were the five million bucks? I shook myself and recovered like a champ.

"Herb, I'm more personally committed than ever before to a calmer, sensible way of life and I want to tell you two things that are closely related to that."

My earnestness got his attention. We looked each other dead in the eye.

"First, the idea to split off a few Kerplopski stores is not sound in any respect."

Herb was silent. If he was stunned, he was too fine a businessman to show it. Maybe he had even had those thoughts himself. I continued.

"The second thing is that there may be a way," I said and stopped.

"What have you got in mind?" Herb asked straight as an arrow.

I drew a deep breath and launched what I knew would be the most important sales pitch I would likely ever make. I looked out the window and back at Herb.

"I had dreaded telling you my opinion of the split off idea," I said. "But our talk yesterday was important and last night had a profound effect on me. I was up late thinking about you and Vivian and her practice benefiting those people over in Port City who are too poor to go to a dentist otherwise. And I thought about your idea of helping students by helping a university. This morning I put some things together. There's a way for you to do something really wonderful, Herb, but it would require or at least likely require you to change your plans for the university unless you've got more money than God."

"What is it?" Herb asked, evidently with genuine interest. So far Herb didn't seem offended but I wanted to lay some more foundation.

"Part of what we talked about last night dealt with poor people," I said. "But Herb, there's another dimension. There is a group of deserving people–those same people you were drawn to with your idea to preserve a few Kerplopski stores–who are not desperately poor because they are employed but they don't have any real stake in anything because all they have is their labor sold on the open market. What if they owned something? What if they had a clear and permanent stake in the business that employed them? What if they became owners?"

I was becoming a little passionate and I thought I ought to cool it before I turned Herb off to the idea entirely. I looked out the window.

"You mean employee ownership of the stores?" Herb asked.

"You could end up educating a whole generation of people by improving the lives of their parents," I said, still looking out the window.

"But you are referring to employee ownership, right?" he pressed. I turned to look at him again.

"I mean you could buy Kerplopski's–all of it, the whole thing, every store, the entire business–and gradually sell it to the people who work there so they would eventually own it and you would ultimately be reimbursed. By that time you'd be dead but you would have had the pleasure of seeing a good company prosper with your personal involvement and you could die knowing that at some point in the future, a foundation you establish could do whatever you now plan with a university. And in the meantime, owners would have been established who otherwise would never have been able to own anything, except maybe a house, and not very many of them even that. You could do it, Herb. The whole thing."

I was out of breath and Herb was silent. He looked out the window, too, and I wondered if I had blown it.

For a while, I was afraid to look at him, but when I glanced sideways, a smile had begun to form and a short time later he spoke. "It may be possible," he said. "It may just be possible."

I was relieved but still tense. I thought it could go either way.

"This would be the entire Kerplopski retail business? Everything?" he asked.

"Everything."

"Buying, distribution, stores, everything?"

"Everything."

"So what you're suggesting is basically that I finance an employee purchase of Kerplopski's so that they would own the company after a while?"

"Yes," I said.

This was becoming tedious but I wanted to be patient while he worked through it in his mind. It had flashed through mine, but then I had to sort things out, too. Damn. It was going to be his money, and a lot of it. He deserved a little patience in spending it.

"My involvement would be temporary. Like a bridge?"

"A long bridge," I said. "It would take a long time for Kerplopski employees to buy their shares based on what little they make in wages but it would make a huge difference in their lives."

"It would take a great deal of money all at once and quickly–very quickly," Herb commented, maybe back stepping.

"That's true. But it could be done. It's just that splitting off a few of the stores would create a company that would be too small to compete and operate effectively. And I don't really believe Caruthers knows what the hell they're getting themselves in for by trying to take over Kerplopski's. It may work on paper for them, but the dynamic changes when their name replaces Kerplopski over the door. People don't know them. No matter what they say, people will know it's not the same and who knows how they will change their shopping habits? As it is, with Kerplopski's being successful for so long a time, there is no reason that that cannot be continued."

"It would be seamless?" Herb asked. "And management would stay in place?"

"A few have flown already, but very few. Some of them needed to. Almost all the buyers are still there, squirming like Colonel Parker's dancing chickens. The heat is really on."

"The financial arrangements could be really complicated," Herb said, again casting doubt.

"You're involvement would be needed for a very long time. Probably the rest of your life," I said. I wanted to be very clear and honest. But I thought he might like that part and he did.

"That would not be a problem," Herb said. He kind of perked up.

That's the way it went all morning except that he asked more and more questions. Kabillions of questions about every aspect of Kerplopski's that you could possibly imagine, including some I never would have thought about.

Most of his questions made sense, even if I didn't know the answers. I had no idea what outside accounting firm audited the company. It could have been Ten Thumb Tom's Cut Rate Bean Counters, advertising numbers guaranteed to please, for all I knew. This was, after all, during those great capitalist days before Enron.

Who monitored working conditions in shops that made clothing sold in Kerplopski's? I had never thought about it consciously, but the name Kathy Lee came to mind for some reason.

What types of gourmet food did Kerplopski's carry? Turns out that he imported a lot of that kind of thing. Yes, he had lots of bananas.

"What kind of grout is used in the restrooms?" he asked.

Come on, Herbie, I thought to myself, what's that shit about? But most of his questions were really good and drove the issue forward. I tried my best to help him come to an understanding of the store and gain a feel for the business.

Finally, Herb commented that it was going to come down to numbers. He supposed out loud that if it was working for his cousin, it could work for him and apparently it worked for Caruthers but he had to see for himself. That was good enough for me but there wasn't much time.

About then, Benzene appeared with sandwiches and coffee that had not been requested. "You've been in here so long, I got worried about you," she said.

"One o'clock," I said out loud mostly to myself.

"We're going to have to have a decision by Monday morning if this thing is going to fly given the timetable already set with Caruthers," Herb said. "That means that we're going to have to take a close look at numbers with little time left to prepare them and sort through them."

"I've got to make a couple of calls right now," I said. Herb motioned to his desk while Benzene set food out on a table near the window.

Fortunately, Mrs. Martin came on the line immediately. I told her to get two plane tickets for that afternoon and to reserve some cargo space. "Get an extra seat if you have to. Notebooks can stack up straight in a seat like a six foot man and will weigh about as much," I said. I guess she thought I had gone somewhere for mental treatment. "And let me speak to Pirkle, quick."

Pirkle only said one word during the whole conversation. I gave him a quick rundown of what was going on and told him he needed to come down that afternoon bringing all figures of all kinds that he could get together in a big hurry. "Okay," he said, and I told him I needed Mrs. Martin again.

It took a minute. She was already on the phone getting the tickets. I added stuff to her list. She needed to call Bonnie Beach Hotel and get two more rooms plus a small meeting room to use as an office for the rest of the week. She needed to have John Bridges call me pronto at Herb's office. "And make sure Pirkle brings my laptop, and his of course, and my cell phone." I hated that phone but I knew it would be handy.

As we started eating, I explained to Herb that two of my people would be down later that day and we would start to work immediately on getting information together. We should have something to share with your people as early as tomorrow morning, I told him.

Then it struck me at the same time that it apparently struck Herb. Secrecy.

"It's a good thing you arranged for some office space at Bonnie Beach," he said. "It would be better for my people to go down there to meet with you rather than you spending so much time here. People will start to talk if they find out. We're used to secrecy here, but if it gets out somehow that you're down here with me a lot, there could be a problem."

"Caruthers," I said. One word, just like Pirkle said, was enough.

John Bridges called. I gave him the rundown and told him to bring his laptop any figures he could get together quickly and be very secret about it. No one should know.

Then I called Mrs. Martin and cautioned her on secrecy and told her to tell Pirkle. I knew that none of them would go blabbing about anything but extra measures had to be taken. I told Mrs. Martin to tell people that Pirkle had to get away for peace and quiet to work on a project. Hey, that was the truth.

After our lunch, I stopped at a drug store and bought them out of legal pads then headed for my room. With my mind churning in so many directions, I turned down the wrong hallway and suddenly corrected with an about face that made me see a man who I thought I had just seen at the drug store. My attention was too fractured to pay enough attention.

There were also visual distractions on the beach, even in April, but I had to concentrate and opened the sliding doors to the balcony and let the fresh breeze in while I took pad number one in hand. By the time I was interrupted, I had begun to use a pad for each category and had notes on the first page or two of a couple of dozen pads fanned out on the little hotel room desk.

What interrupted was the arrival of Pirkle and John Bridges and a surprise. John had brought his wife, Maria.

"She called some friends and arranged for them to watch the kids for a few days," John said. We thought she might be of some help.

And she was–it was a great idea. She had even brought her own laptop. For what we were about to do, we needed all the help we could get.

While they got settled in their rooms, I went to the meeting room we would use as an office and rearranged the furniture, squaring up the tables so that we would each sit at one, able to pass legal pads to each other. By the time the others arrived, I had everything set up with legal pads distributed so that each person could get to work on specific needs.

We had a light dinner brought to the room and worked with little conversation beyond the minimum required to communicate about what we were doing. After a while, we realized the need to print what we were doing. It was a small forgotten detail that I offered to remedy by going out and buying a printer and some paper.

Maria wanted to go with me and off we went. I had never been alone with her before and consequently missed having a kind of one on one chance to get to know her. I was very impressed.

At first glance, who wouldn't be? Maria had the richly flowing black hair common to all beautiful Mexican women. But I had a hard time understanding how she got so many brains crammed under it.

She made additional impression on me with enthusiasm about the Morgan. She meant it, too. I could always tell when somebody was blowing oil up my tailpipe.

Either John had talked to her a lot about the store or she was terribly inquisitive enough to latch on to every little thing she encountered because she knew a lot already and learned a lot more very quickly.

First, we went to the drugstore where I had bought the legal pads but they didn't have the printer we needed so we had to go to another one. This was a drugstore. A drugstore. Since when did they start carrying computer equipment? Maybe since computers have spread everywhere but it still seemed remarkable to me.

Next, we went to the drugstore across the street. They always seem to appear next to each other like that, the way gas stations did in the fifties. And banks a little later. These drugstores are the next best or worst thing to Wal-Mart, depending on your perspective. But they aren't as big and one hasn't eliminated the others yet.

We found a printer at the second drugstore and some paper. The funny thing was that that drugstore seemed to have employed the same person I had seen at the other drugstore who was the same person I had seen at the hotel. This was a very busy man, working numerous jobs.

Actually, it had become clear, he was only working one job and I was it. I tried to explain all of this to Maria as we examined ink supplies but she didn't quite believe it until we went outside and she could see the man I described sitting alone in a car. I started the Morgan and the other man started his car. I stopped the engine and the other man pulled out of his parking space. I walked over to a newspaper vending machine and the other man pulled away. About the time I started the Morgan again, the man rounded the corner, having circled the drugstore. Maria's eyebrows shot up.

"Somebody is concerned about us doing something," I said and told her about the government agent I had seen outside Herb's office. "I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now, but I can see that something is going on," I said.

I didn't say anything about Joe Palmer's boys following me around. These were obviously a different class of bird dog. While it was possible that Palmer had hired some pros, there was no longer a reason for him to waste his money. But I was interested in who the guy might be that was following us at that moment.

Finding out might not be easy, but I wanted to try. I pulled out a note pad and a ballpoint and gave them to Maria. This was no time or place for a Hollywood stunt demonstration, but I managed to safely position the Morgan suddenly behind the man who had been following us. I read and Maria wrote. We got a tag number along with a good description of his car.

Not that it did us any good at the moment except it gave me a concrete example to demonstrate to John and Pirkle that we needed to be extra careful, especially about leaving papers lying around or misplacing a laptop. That night, there was no problem; we were chained to our work. Except for a few trips Pirkle made to the balcony to renew his blood nicotine level, no one strayed from the desks.

By the time we finished we had assembled an impressive amount of information about Kerplopski's. There were all sorts of data on the company as it stood then and in the past. All of it was organized, collated and multiple copies printed to hand over to Herb and his people the next day. But it was so late when we finished, everyone went straight to bed.

After the late hour, I was up early enough but later than I intended the next morning. I plopped one of those premeasured, prepackaged portions of coffee in the coffee maker. By the time I peed out the coffee I drank last night and examined my tired eyes and stubbly face in the mirror, the coffee was ready and I took a cup to the balcony. There would be no time for walking that morning. The sun was already up but the breeze was light and refreshing. It provided a good chance to get a grip on the coming day and I forced my mind in that direction.

A second cup was all this little coffee maker and its ration of brew was good for. When it was gone, it would be time for a shower.

As I looked across the early morning beach sparsely populated with walkers, it occurred to me that those people, few as they were, really owned the world. They were out in the morning, seizing the early moment, the best and most lasting moment of the day. The ones that came later, more or less just lay around, squinting against the sun and wasting time. Somehow, I knew that Ben Franklin had never been sunbathing on the beach. Early to rise, that one.

As I savored the last sip or two of coffee, I caught sight of John and Maria on the beach, returning hand-in-hand from an early morning walk after our long work session the night before. I saw Maria draw as close as she could to John, right up against him, taking his arm in her hand and placing her head on his shoulder as they walked toward the hotel. They didn't see me, but I watched until they were out of sight under the canopy below. I missed Jackie.

Everyone was quiet at breakfast–Pirkle, John and Maria and me. Conversation simply did not seem appropriate. We each knew that we were about to change the course of our lives and I suppose each of us was absorbed in the individual dimensions we were about to inhabit. We knew so little and had so many questions that nothing could really be said.

Afterward, we each picked up our laptop and a bundle or two of papers and headed for the parking lot. The process must have reminded John of the morning. He apologized to Pirkle for waking him so early to keep their computers while he and Maria went for a walk. It was a proud moment for me. I had chosen my associates well. Each of them could be fully trusted. The comment also meant that all of them were focused.

We piled in the rented car and drove slowly toward Herb's building, passing a different government dick along the way. I pointed him out. The others stared at him openly and defiantly but not without a little awe at what was happening.

Herb's young gatekeeper was skeptical when we arrived and was in no hurry to let us pass until I leaned toward Pirkle's window on the driver's side. He grinned when he saw me and the gate began to open immediately. I like the other car better, I could hear him think. Or was that me?

Benzene was in fine form that morning and made quite an impression on my crowd, especially in contrast to the receptionist. Maria's face was the proverbial book and one that could be sped read. Maybe what surprised them the most was how comfortable Benzene and I seemed to be. Actually, Herb had a good arrangement. The receptionist wowed visitors in one way and Benzene quickly wowed them in the opposite direction. Nobody could accuse Herb of being frivolous after meeting Benzene, even if they happened to find out about the receptionist's rooftop fringe benefit.

Herb himself, impressed my associates considerably. He was reasonably friendly but clearly businesslike. Almost immediately, three of his own associates arrived and we sat around a conference table in his office overlooking the beach. But no one looked at the beach.

All eyes were on Herb when we handed him a copy of what we had assembled the previous night. The heft was impressive, by itself. And it was exquisitely organized. Herb turned the cover page and examined the table of contents.

"You did this yesterday?" he asked. I nodded. He read. Finally, he said, "let's go over this page by page."

As he or his associates asked questions, my group made notes on our legal pads and fielded the questions, often answering so fully that no amplification was required, but sometimes uncovering areas that needed more objective substantiation. I'm speaking business, here. This was business.

Benzene brought in coffee and the process continued from cover to cover, question after question, note on top of note. At lunchtime, we adjourned. Herb closed the session with a really positive comment about having confidence in the retail team and my ability to lead the company forward. I was a little stunned but tried to act like it was just part of life. That afternoon, Herb and his people were going to work over what we had presented and we would pull together some things they specifically wanted to know more about, or needed in a different format.

Unlike the morning drive to the meeting, my associates were full of conversation. Not to mention enthusiasm.

We went straight to work and had the hotel bring sandwiches to our office room. Herb had fueled the process with the belief that it could go forward. Even Pirkle was perky. By six o'clock, we had completed solid work and by seven, we had it collated and printed, much as the day before except it was still early enough for dinner.

When we arrived in the hotel dining room, each with a laptop and three or four stacks of paper or notebooks, the staff offered to "help" us with them, meaning put them in a closet. No way. We had dinner with our data.

Despite being tired, it was a sparkly time. We even ventured a little conversation about how we would like some things in the company to change. It was clear that I would have to move to Capital City, so I suggested that John be in charge of Sunbelt City operations. Then, I told Pirkle that he would also be needed in Capital City. He seemed to appreciate the comment. Afterward, John thoughtfully offered to keep the laptops while Pirkle went out. But he declined.

"I want to watch CNN," he said. "It's famous and I don't have cable." Okay. At least it wasn't a PBS special on the exciting world of accounting. The rest of us handed over our materials and headed for the beach.

I didn't last long. I started out with John and Maria for a walk but broke it off after about half a mile. They didn't need me. The were really nice together. I walked a mile or so alone in the opposite direction before turning back. By then, daylight was completely gone.

The whole time I was thinking and thinking hard about a lot of different things. It seemed like a concrete block had fallen on the accelerator, things were happening so fast.

When I passed the Purple Pitchfork, things were beginning to get underway. It was a nightspot, popular with younger people, right on the beach. Hey, I'm a younger person. But these folks were going in two by two and that made me feel lonely.

As soon as I got back to my room, I called Jackie. "I want you to come down here tomorrow afternoon," I said. "And don't worry. You can have your own room," I said. Then we talked, or rather, I talked and talked and talked and Jackie listened, mostly. When we, I, finally stopped, I called the desk about another room for tomorrow and fell asleep early.

I slept harder than usual, and longer. But I woke up rested, alert, confident and ready. Also ready to see Jackie again.

It was Friday morning. After breakfast, Herb and his people came to the Bonnie Beach and we met in our office room. It didn't take as long that morning. They were eager for the information we had for them. By ten o'clock they had left again. Herb said they had a lot to do, but he said it with a smile and a strong voice. Things were looking pretty good. He said he would be in touch later that afternoon. I knew the cell phone was going to be needed.

Part of my morning was spent sketching a "now what" list into the future. It was Boy Scout stuff–being prepared. In the event that things came together for us, as it appeared to be about to happen, I wanted to be ready. I didn't want anyone suddenly saying, "Okay, now what?"

Lunch was spent on that, too. I threw some ideas out to John, Maria and Pirkle. I figured I would get them thinking along "now what" lines, too.

After lunch, we separated. I went back to my room and sat on the balcony with a pad. Mostly, I looked at the ocean and my watch, anxious for the time I was to pick up Jackie at the airport. And I thought about John and Maria. I assumed they were taking a nap. It was not a pornographic thought, although the nap they were taking might have been. It was a good feeling for them and an uncomfortable one for me. I missed Jackie.

When it was finally time to leave for the airport, various dicks lined up behind me as we caravanned to the airport. It would have been much more cost effective if they would have shared one car, and maybe I could have hitched a ride with them, too. I guess they thought I was about to flee the scene. I had no idea what they knew, much less what they wanted, but they were beginning to become annoying.

As the plane taxied from the runway, Jackie absorbed every thought. The flight was full and I am glad that she was able to make it. I almost tackled her when passengers entered the terminal.

Picking up luggage in an airport that small is not a big deal. Soon we were on our way to the Bonnie Beach and I was babbling, probably incomprehensibly, as I drove. Even if she couldn't hear me, Jackie seemed glad to be there and that made me happy.

The hotel, however, did not make me happy. The room they said would be available had somehow vanished.

"What happened?" I demanded. "Did this room just wash out to sea? If that's the case, it must have left a hole in the side of the building. Show it to me. I want to see the gap left by the missing room."

The desk clerk, who had doubtlessly heard and seen much in his tenure, probably had a new one to write down that day. He sought help from the manager who offered to find us a room at another hotel at his expense. But I wanted Jackie to be there.

"All right," I said. "Ms. Palmer can have my room and I will share with Pirkle. But you have to understand that this pisses me off from two directions. Losing the room I was told would be available and then having to go in with Pirkle. You can take one of the rooms off the bill for the rest of the week."

The manager eagerly agreed.

"Or you could throw one of those dicks out on the sand," I added. Everyone looked at me like I had lost my mind. It was too odd a thing for response.

Waiting for dinner, Jackie and I sat in the hotel bar and I tried to catch her up on everything, including the detectives. I pointed out a couple of them. It was a little much to believe, normally, but having been through what we had experienced with her ex-husband, she couldn't dismiss it, especially when we stood up to meet Maria and John and the dicks also rose.

Pirkle was already waiting in the lobby. We all climbed into a rental car and headed down the beach highway to a good seafood restaurant. We ate lots and talked even more. Hearing it all, Jackie got a good overview of what was going on.

The sun was long gone but it was still early by weekend standards when we left the restaurant and returned to the Bonnie Beach. Predictably, Pirkle went immediately to his, now our, room and Maria and John changed into shorts and tee shirts and headed to the beach for a walk. They were determined; Jackie and I were less optimistic due to increasing breeze and threat of rain.

We stopped by my room, now Jackie's, where my clothes remained. I changed into khaki pants but kept the tieless dress shirt. Jackie did the female version of the same thing. When we reached the beach, I rolled up my pants legs and we carried our sandals as we walked.

It was an incredibly soothing experience after days of intense activity, frenzied conversation and roller-coaster stress. Jackie and I did not talk; we simply walked slowly, holding hands but gradually coming closer to each other until our arms slipped around each other's waist. We actually walked further than we originally intended. When we paused and looked back, the Bonnie Beach was a distant silhouette. Jackie rested her head on my shoulder as we gazed down the beach.

"If we make these arrangements with Herb about buying the store," I said softly, "we'll need to have a condominium down here."

Jackie didn't comment. We simply stood there holding each other for what seemed like a long time, then again, it seemed all too brief. And we didn't say anything when we started walking again, we just commenced as if set in motion by the same low voltage electric current.

"Rain," Jackie whispered after a few steps. She brushed drops from her face and we quickened our pace, turning toward a carnival-like entertainment district lining the beach with bright lights.

We reached the canopy of a pizzeria just as the rain began in earnest. People poured in from the beach, among them, you guessed it, dicks. But the scene became a big street party complete with live music reverberating from bar after bar along the strip. The crowd was happy and we were happy with the moment we were sharing and did not want our enjoyment stolen by a bunch of killjoys with badges. Or maybe they didn't have government papers but were acting from a severe case of badge envy.

"Maybe we should try to think of them as paparazzi," I said.

"With guns instead of cameras," Jackie added.

That thought made it harder to ignore them. We tried moving as part of the crowd from vendor to vendor even after the rain subsided but they made us feel just too special. Finally, we had enough.

A couple of partiers made up in the guise of Homer and Marge Simpson came close to us, bringing a throng of spectators. The extra people helped, but it was Homer's girth and Marge's high hair that provided the cover we needed.

"Hot dog," I shouted in Jackie's ear. Suddenly, I snatched her by the arm and tugged her between vendor stalls. We dashed behind a Polish sausage stand. How better to flee a bunch of dicks? Then we skirted a nacho booth, darted behind a pretzel umbrella and found ourselves hemmed in by a wall of permanent shops.

With all the derring-do done by Indiana Jones, I bravely opened the first door I came to, stepped quickly inside and found myself face to face with a large tank of milk. I pulled Jackie inside and we huddled behind the stainless steel vat and peeped around the corner. Four very large eyes bulging from the faces of two young soda jerks were staring at us from the counter at the window; customers were waiting behind them. Nobody was saying anything, but this situation clearly could not continue much longer.

When all else fails or you're in a big hurry, try money. I pulled out a couple of ten-dollar bills and held them up.

"Take a break, kids," I ordered. Somewhat to my surprise, the boy and girl, each about seventeen years old, responded immediately. "Leave your smocks and caps," I said and Jackie and I put them on as they left.

I charged to the front counter and began helping customers. Jackie followed.

"Keep your head down," I said, thinking that the brim of the ball caps would shield our faces as we dipped ice cream.

The supposedly long sleeved smock I was wearing looked short sleeved and wouldn't button owing to the expansiveness of my shoulders compared to the kid. Jackie's wouldn't button either, but for frontal expansiveness. There's nothing like a real woman, but kids have to start somewhere.

One cone and shake after another, I was moving like a pro, cuing Jackie on how to do things. We were both having a good time.

"You seem to know what you're doing," Jackie said.

"This was my first job when I was fifteen," I said. "Better than a Burger Doodle. Everything's cold so you can't get burned."

When there were no customers at the window, I ventured a peek from beneath my cap. Amid normal people strolling past, the detectives stood out, darting about and looking around everywhere except the right place. Eventually, they moved on, to the hotel I assumed, but they clearly gave up on the beach.

A couple of gray haired gentlemen walked up to the window. I spoke to them immediately. They said they didn't know what they wanted and I let them taste a couple of flavors. Once they made a decision, I suggested nuts and caramel and candy toppings, running up the price of their cones while ruining perfectly good ice cream. I even talked them into taking a banana split to eat afterwards.

"You've been very helpful," one of them said. "Uh, uh," he seemed to be trying to read the name badge on my ill-fitting smock. I glanced down, pulled the lapel over and took a quick look myself.

"Ken," I read and said. That was appropriate. It felt like a doll jacket.

"Well, Ken," the man said, handing me a business card. "Have you ever thought about management?"

"Every day," I said.

"I think you might just have what it takes," he said. "Would you like to manage one of these shops?"

"That would be neat," I said, then wondering if kids say "neat" anymore.

"Go over to the personnel department in Port City Monday and tell them I sent you," he said and thanked me for my job performance.

I thanked him and looked at the card as he walked away. Howard Kramer. He apparently owned a whole bunch of ice cream shop and burger joint franchises.

It wasn't long before the kids returned. The door opened timidly, like maybe they didn't know if they worked there anymore.

"Well, Ken," I, Howard Kramer, said. "Have you ever thought about management?"

The kid just looked at me.

"I hope you have, because you're about to be promoted," I said as I handed the kid Kramer's business card. "Go over to the personnel department in Port City Monday and tell them I sent you."

"Thank you," he finally said.

"Now let me give you some advice," I, Mick Manage said. "Always be truthful, keep your customers happy and do everything your boss tells you to do promptly, as long as it's ethical and legal. Aside from that, the second most important thing you should do is not let managing the jerking of sodas keep you from continuing school on and on as far as you possibly can. And the first most important thing is to get the hell out of the food business as fast as you can. Understand?"

The kid nodded. I wasn't sure he would make it.

Jackie and I gratefully removed the smocks and caps and stepped behind the milk tank. I noticed a drip of chocolate syrup on her neck. It was more than a chocolate lover could resist. I leaned in to lick it off and kept kissing, moving from neck to ear to cheek to lips until it became our first passionate kiss, so passionate that it could have melted every tub of ice cream in the freezer.

When we finally stopped and opened our eyes, we looked deeply at each other. Then, we noticed the kids staring at us.

"And one last thing," I said to the boy manager-to-be. "It always has to be consensual. Always."

Jackie and I ducked out of the ice cream shop and slowly made our way down the beach toward the hotel. It was a soft time, a chance to confirm the closeness we were feeling for each other. We were really coming together and it felt increasingly good.

But the outside world intruded the moment we entered the hotel. It seemed like the detectives would never give up. And for what? I couldn't understand but they clearly had some reason, or thought they did.

I saw Jackie to her, my room, and left her at the door with a good goodnight kiss. Except that now I had to thread my way through the dicks on the way to Pirkle's, my room, where I amazed him that I showed up to sleep the night. He didn't say anything but he could hardly believe I was actually there. It wasn't exactly my first choice either and sleep didn't come easy.

The next morning, I had to go back to Jackie's, my room, where my clothes remained. I'm sure the dicks were as uncomprehending as Pirkle. Jackie was getting dressed when I arrived for a shower and by the time I stepped out in a towel she was ready to go.

Our group met for breakfast in the hotel. I asked everyone about the vultures that were everywhere and found out that it was only me they were following. Except I didn't think it really was just me. I wondered about Herb. The whole business was creepy.

After breakfast, we all piled into the rented sedan and headed over to Herb's office. It was Saturday and only a security person was visible. I was sure that Vivian was in the penthouse but she didn't come out. I introduced Jackie to Herb and we all settled into his office. This time, we were relaxed enough to enjoy the view. I think everyone had a positive feeling.

Herb confirmed optimism from his perspective. But he also added that he had been doing some reading that morning that sparked legal questions. "I've got a call in to one of the lawyers," he said, "and as soon as those questions are resolved we can move with this. In the meantime..."

"Maybe I can help," Maria spoke up. "I'm a lawyer–a mom lately, but a lawyer, too." Yale, no less, as it turned out, she said in answer to Herb.

All of us except John, of course, seemed surprised. I certainly had no idea that Maria was a lawyer. But she proceeded to answer Herb's questions. They were concerns that I had no concept of but I listened intently and learned a few things. They talked for half an hour and afterward Herb said he was satisfied except for one issue.

"If I'm going to put so much at stake," he said, "I want a commitment from you, also. A monetary commitment. It doesn't have to be much, but I want you to have some sort of financial obligation to the success of the new Kerplopski's and I want you to state that obligation now."

This may have come as a little bit of a shock, but it was something I had been thinking about from the outset. Apparently, Pirkle had, too.

"You first, Pirkle," Herb said.

"One hundred thousand," Pirkle answered immediately.

"John, you and Maria?" Herb asked.

The couple glanced anxiously at each other. They were clearly on the spot.

"Fifty thousand dollars," Maria finally answered.

"Each," I added. Everyone looked at me but no one said anything.

Finally, Herb spoke again. "Jackie," you've not been here for the talks and..."

"She'll go in for a hundred thousand," I said. I glanced quickly at Jackie but she was staring at me.

"Ok, Mick," Herb said.

"Three million," I said.

Everyone looked at me again with astonishment. I looked at the ocean.

"There we have it," Herb concluded. "Blah, blah, blah...." It was all good stuff he was saying, I'm sure but I couldn't quote an exact word of it and I doubt that any of the others could either.

We drove back to the Bonnie Beach in silence. When we arrived, it was established that Pirkle wanted to go back to Sunbelt City that afternoon and that the rest of us wanted to remain overnight and go back Sunday. Pirkle asked to take the rented sedan back instead of flying.

When we got out of the car, I pulled Pirkle aside privately and asked what he thought about things. And I learned something.

The short answer was "good." But the long answer was that when Mr. Kerplopski made his announcement about selling the store, Pirkle was disappointed. I knew that. And when I brought him to Coast Town, he was skeptical. That sure didn't surprise me; I had been plenty skeptical, myself. But what really helped me to know, was that the process we had gone through during the last few days, working as a group of friends and as a group with Herb's people, had both allowed him to learn a great deal and to become a kind of admirer of what we were going to attempt to do.

Wow. That was confidence builder for me, too. And it gave me a perspective on education and undertaking projects with lots of knowledge built into the process first.

"One other thing," Pirkle said, then shook his head and turned to walk away. "Never mind," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"Nah," he said and turned. "It's none of my business."

"Well, here's your answer anyway, such as it is," I said. "Don't give back the room when you leave because I'll need it tonight."

Pirkle grinned and walked off. I went back to the others. By that time the three of them were standing together in the shade of a hotel canopy.

John didn't waste time. "Mick, what's with this "each?" he said.

"It's a pronoun," I said. "It can also be an adjective. Works either way."

"I just..." he began

"It was the right thing to do," I said. "At least, at the very least, it was the right thing to do. So don't worry about it."

"Well, we want to..." he started again.

"Look," I said, "if everything comes out right, we'll be working together for a long time. That will be good and nothing else needs to be said," I said, "except for one thing," I said. It sounded like an echo.

"What's that?" Maria asked.

"It's time for a Bloody Mary, a really big Bloody Mary," I said and led them into the hotel bar.

We got a table and drank a couple of pitchers of Bloody Maries and got to the point of feeling really good. It was the way alcohol was meant to be consumed–just right. Eventually, I felt hungry and proposed that we change clothes and walk down the beach to a little place and have shrimp poor boys in the open air.

"The sun's mean, this afternoon," Jackie said, knowing my aversion to too much sun.

"I've got it covered," I said, trying to sound mysterious. "Let's meet back here in ten minutes."

"Fifteen," the others said at once.

When we got to Jackie's, my, our room, Jackie grabbed something that she had in the closet and dashed into the bathroom. When she emerged, she was wearing a very low, wide, square cut mini-sundress with straps that buttoned on the front and back. Ample, unrestricted and barely covered bosoms were visible, I swear, from three hundred-sixty degrees. Or was that my temperature? I fumbled around and brought out shorts that I hardly ever wore and we headed to the hotel lobby.

I took everyone into the gift shop and bought them the biggest, ugliest imaginable straw sombrero that no self-respecting Mexican would ever have worn. Then we were off down the beach, sandals in one hand, the other holding another hand.

It was a long walk but thoroughly entertaining to walk with Jackie. She was moving in every direction at once. The stupid hats both kept the sun off, and provided cover with which to have unobstructed view. I couldn't believe how horny I became.

Lunch was good, too, shrimp poor boys served under an umbrella on the beach with ice-cold beer after beer. But the walk back, after all that food and beer, was a little long and the sun was hot.

When we got back to the hotel room, I was exhausted and remembered how poorly I had slept during the night. Jackie suggested that I lie down on the bed and watch a movie and rest. She said she would join me in a minute. As provocative as that thought was, I was sound asleep before she returned.

Hours passed before I woke up, the entire afternoon, in fact. And when I woke up, Jackie was there, propped on an elbow watching me sleep. The television had been turned off. A ceiling fan slowly turned overhead. The room was cool and shadowy. It felt good. It especially felt good to see Jackie there.

"Mick," she said softly, "you didn't need to...."

"Not you, too," I said. "There's no need to...."

She leaned over and stopped me with a kiss. Then she pulled her arm back and lay on her side next to me. I turned on my side; we were nose to nose. I could feel her breath and then saw the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

I kissed her face, then her neck and cleavage. With the fingers of one hand, I lightly caressed her outside her dress then unbuttoned the strap and kissed her breast, fully and lavishly.

Then, she suddenly pulled away and sat up. Our bare legs were still entwined and the hem of her dress had worked its way to her waist. She sat with one breast exposed and calmly told me it was time to get ready for dinner. The announcement was a stunning disappointment but it took a while for me to entirely deflate.

The time was provided. Jackie went into the bathroom first and stayed a long time. It wasn't like her. When she came out wrapped in a towel, it was my turn for a shower. When I came out wrapped in a towel, she was standing in her bra and panties leaning over the lavatory getting as close to the mirror as she possibly could. She was poking at her face and applying makeup which she didn't really need as far as I was concerned. And she remained there a long time. Like I said, that was not like her.

It was a snap for me to get ready. After that I looked at CNN, the history channel and some sort of science report somewhere. Then I began to flip through the entire cable line up before I figured what the hell.

I peeped around the corner just as Jackie was sitting on the stool and had started to pull panty hose over those gorgeous bare legs. That was too much. I love bare legs.

"But I want to be dressed just right," she explained.

That was a clue I missed which was not explained until much, much later. It was one of at lest two issues in Jackie's mind that involved Vivian–whom she had not yet met. It was a women thing but I didn't know all of that then. At that moment, I was dumb enough to think it had something to do with me.

"Your legs couldn't be any better looking than they already are in their natural state," I said, gently caressing her thigh with my fingertips.

She appreciated the obvious appreciation I had for her body but continued to tug on the panty hose. "I want to do things just right for you," she said, unintentionally blurring the truth over the difference between she and I.

Not understanding that aspect of the issue at that moment, I continued to disagree. "You know the south," I said. "It's too hot here and unnecessary. Its just dinner with Herb and Vivian. It's not a big formal cocktail party."

She stopped tugging the panty hose. I thought I had made some progress but she wasn't pulling them back down, either. I was going to have to try another angle, quick.

Naturally enough, my hand returned to her thigh. "You've got a nice tan," I said. "You don't need anything else."

Was it the logic or the hand? In any event, she slowly pulled the hose from her calves. Her legs really were nice.

As I watched, she wadded up the hose and stuck them in a small bag. Women carry lots of little bags inside the big ones. They carry lots of big ones, too.

Apparently, Jackie had come prepared. She went to the closet and withdrew a perfect dinner dress. Except, damn, it wasn't low cut. She slipped that on, fussed with her hair for thirty seconds, put on some strappy sort of shoes and she was ready. At least she was on time. I could see then why we had to start so early. And she was really pretty but she had never been so picky about it before.

On the way to Herb's building, she said something about it being good that we couldn't get up any speed because of her hair being blown. Picky for some reason. Actually, I like windblown hair on a girl. But we were going out to dinner and I could see her point as far as I knew enough to see.

When we arrived at the penthouse, Herb met us and showed Jackie around a little while we waited for Vivian. She was only a couple of minutes. I liked that. They were neither sitting by the door waiting nor late. Vivian liked that Jackie liked the penthouse. I wondered if Herb had told her that Jackie was a professional interior designer.

We Bentleyed to a very nice restaurant a few minutes down the coast. Herb drove, Vivian in the front seat, Jackie and I in the back.

It was inevitable that two separate conversations developed. After some general conversation, Jackie and Vivian developed their own line of talk, no telling about what, and Herb and I started talking about the store. It suddenly became very intense and took an unexpectedly exciting turn.

"You realize," I told Herb, "that when it is announced that your cousin has another offer for the entire company that the lid is going to boil off Caruthers. They're going to be mad as hell."

Herb laughed. "I expect they will be," he said.

"That's fine. I would even like to see it," I said. "But we also need to be prepared for trouble."

"What do you mean?" Herb asked. "What kind of trouble?"

"We would have a big competitive company half surrounding us in an arc north to south that would have the additional motivation of hating us. Not just competing along the edges of our respective markets, but hating us."

"That's just business," Herb said. I'm sure he was accustomed to it.

"True," I said, "but I suspect that they will poke and prod constantly. And with the deep pockets of an ally they have, they well might even cross over and set up shop in a few of our markets to test the water."

Herb started chewing more slowly. "What do you suggest?" he asked.

"Well, it would sure help if we could make an offer to buy them," I said.

"Buy Caruthers?" Herb asked.

"Yes," I said.

Herb stopped chewing altogether. He didn't say anything. His eyes sort of rolled around like he was looking at everything and nothing.

"Kerplopski's and Caruthers at the same time," he finally said. "That would take more money than I have."

I didn't say anything. And I wasn't eating, anymore.

A grin kin of flashed across his face. His eyes suddenly lit up. "That would be a hell of a move to make," he said.

"Yes," I said. I was a little tense. I had a gut feeling that maybe the idea wasn't so off the wall.

"You don't just have imagination," Herb said and looked at me. "You've got balls."

I sort of half-laughed. The comment brought to mind all kinds of things.

"There would have to be other investors," Herb said. "And you can't go and spring that kind of offer if you're not prepared to go through with it. It couldn't be a bluff."

I could see his wheels turning and I didn't say anything right away. Then I jumped in from a different angle.

"Just making the offer to buy them would scare the crap out of them," I said. "It would also make them angry but it would scare them at the same time and the reaction would not be to act against us out of hate like it might be by just buying Kerplopski's. They would be too afraid of us to provoke anything by stepping in our markets."

Herb was chewing again but he was clearly thinking about what I was saying. It seemed to be the golden opportunity to push another idea.

"If we were prepared, as you say, to really buy Caruthers but they would not sell, then we would have prepared the investment, found the investors, and have the money in hand with no Caruthers to buy," I said, trying to explain what I was thinking. "But if we didn't use the money to buy Caruthers, then we could use it to expand in our own territory, open a couple of new stores and remodel some existing facilities and make come capital changes that would prepare us for years ahead."

Herb was thinking.

"And if we scarred them back with the offer, we would have plenty of time to make improvements in our own state to keep them at bay in the future. We could hold them off for good by getting stronger where we stand."

Herb seemed to like the line of thinking but he was quiet. "We will need Caruthers financial figures," he said, finally, "and we'll need them fast."

"Yes, " I muttered absently. I was thinking about the fact that he said we will need the figures–not would need them.

"They're a privately owned company," he said. "Their financials are not readily available to the public."

"Let me see what I can do," I said.

Herb kind of blinked when he looked at me. I was wondering how the hell I could come up with Caruthers financial information. What had I stepped into?

Herb and I were kind of quiet the remainder of dinner. Jackie and Vivian "chatted," as they would have said but we didn't pay attention to what they were talking about.

On the drive back, I sat in the front seat with Herb and let the girls keep up their conversation in the back seat. Herb and I didn't talk much. I was thinking about those figures that we needed. Jackie and Vivian apparently wanted to keep up their talk but Herb and I kind of pushed everything by saying good night in the parking space beneath his building.

Jackie was bright and talkative to me–not with me because I was still thinking–but I was glad that she obviously had had a good time and got along well with Vivian. On the way back to the Bonnie Beach, Jackie wanted to stop in one of those mega drugstores. That was ok. I looked at newspaper headlines while she looked around. It only took a couple of minutes and she was back to the cash register with, of all things, a small bottle of chocolate syrup. I had thought she needed some female stuff of some kind. Whatever, as they say.

On the way back to the hotel we discussed going for a short walk on the beach. "We'll be leaving tomorrow morning and there won't be another opportunity for a long time after that," I said. Jackie turned in her seat and looked at me without saying anything. Then she brushed the side of my face with the back of her hand and turned again in her seat.

When we reached our room, she pulled me in front of the mirror above the lavatory and looked me square in the eye. "Do you really, honestly like me without makeup?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I do."

Off came the dress. In one magnificent sweep of flowing fabric like the flash of a magician's cape, the dress was gone and she was back to bra and panties. It was the best trick I had ever seen.

"You were right about the panty hose," she said.

That gave me an excuse to look at her legs. And elsewhere.

Next came the cold cream. At least the makeup would disappear next, I thought and went into the bedroom to pull on some cut off khakis for the beach walk. I got rid of the undershirt and put the dress shirt back on, but with its sleeves rolled up. Then I went around the little wall separating the bedroom from the bathroom area. Jackie was leaned over the sink dabbing the cold cream from her face. I stood and watched intently, then caressed her ass below the edge of her panties.

"Always better bare," I said.

A minute or so later, she stood up, wiped her face with a towel, then washed it quickly with some sort of female soap and dried it, then she pulled her hair back and gathered it into a pony tail with one of those elastic things. It was quite a transformation and I liked that she could be great looking both ways, dressed up and dressed down. Undressed would be even better, I thought.

As if reading my mind, she walked to the closet and stepped slightly inside. With her back to me, she unhooked her bra, slid it from her shoulders and pulled a shirt from its hanger and put it on, turning toward me as she buttoned it. After she put on some cut off denim, she grabbed a towel and my hand and we were off to the beach.

Stopping often to kiss slowed down the walk. Soon, we stopped altogether and spread the towel on the sand just up from the edge of the incoming tide. We cuddled a bit and then settled comfortably in each other's arms that she prepared by unbuttoning my shirt and resting her head on my chest beneath my chin.

After a while, Jackie turned a little so that her face was next to mine and slightly higher, giving her a downward perspective. She must have been resting on an elbow.

"Mick," she said softly. "Last night you said 'we.'"

"What?" I asked, barely audible. My mouth was dry as if it knew more than I did and was already scared.

"You said that if things work out about buying the store, 'we will need to have a condominium here.'"

The quote struck me hard. I couldn't speak for a full minute or more. When I managed to speak, the breath that pushed the words out was thin and labored. "There's lots of real estate choices down here," I said.

"The condo is not what concerned me," Jackie said. "It's the 'we.'"

"I didn't mean to be presumptuous," I stammered. I was really uncomfortable. Presumptuousness is something I detest passionately. "I didn't mean to imply anything I shouldn't and I didn't mean to offend...."

"'Offend?'" she returned gently but with surprise. "It was not offensive, Mick." She got so close that I could feel her lips move as she spoke. "It was the most wonderful thing I ever heard."

"I just felt that..." I stammered.

"Yes," she said. She spoke the word fully aloud, then softened the next. "What did you feel?"

Her words and the way she said them gave me confidence. I was so accustomed to people doing what I asked them to do that I had neglected to give enough thought to what I really felt and what it meant. I raised on an elbow and turned to face her.

"I feel that we ought to be together, Jackie," I said and swallowed hard. "I love you."

She returned my words with the most incredibly deep and loving expression from within. Nothing needed to be said further. We simply embraced and held each other until the tide rose past our feet and began to lap at our legs. We reluctantly stood, rolled the wet towel and made our way back to the hotel, holding each other closely.

Once inside the room, Jackie caught the first shower. She emerged wrapped in a towel. It was my turn. For a moment before I started my water, I could hear a hair dryer going. Then my water drowned outside noise and I enjoyed a steamy, soapy cleansing in very hot water. It was a great sensation but nothing like when I came out of the bathroom.

First, I noticed that the lights were off. I twisted the towel tightly at my waist and held it with my hand below my waist to restrain the obvious. When I stepped around the little wall into the bedroom. I saw that Jackie had opened the sliding door to the balcony and drawn back the curtains, allowing fresh ocean breeze to fill the room.

She was in a simple white nightgown, standing next to a turned down bed. When she saw me, Jackie liberally parted the gown. She picked up something from the table next to the bed. Even in the dim light, I could distinguish the familiar packaging of Hershey's chocolate syrup. She poured some on her left breast and looked across the room at me.

I swallowed hard, and not because I'm a chocolate lover. I let go of the towel where I had been holding it down. I crossed the room and stood directly in front of her and very close. I looked straight into her eyes.

"You don't need anything extra," I said.

We were not surprisingly too late Sunday morning to make it to the beach before the sun became strong. But that's okay. Life was good and more peaceful than I had imagined. In fact, I learned something that morning. I learned that stuff in the outer world could swirl all around while peace could be maintained at the site of a person's own being.

Instead of walking, we drank coffee on the balcony. Then we ordered breakfast by room service and ate eggs benedict with a sea breeze blowing into the room. That was nice, but the peacefulness was something even better and deeper.

Somehow I managed to be calm despite knowing that a bunch of stuff was happening. And it didn't stop happening.

The telephone rang. It was Herb. It seems that he had been giving our conversation from the night before a great deal of thought and wanted to look into purchasing Caruthers, or, as I had suggested, strengthening Kerplopski's with some expansion and improvements, which, he stressed, would take a bundle more money. He told me that he had just hung up from speaking with his cousin. He made arrangements for all of us to have lunch with him that meant that we would need to fly up later that morning. He said that the copter pilot had weekends off so we would have to drive to the airport. He would pick us up at eleven o'clock, conveniently enough, checkout time. Vivian would go up also, and they would fly back, leaving us to rent a car to return to Sunbelt City.

After I spoke with Herb, I told all of this to Jackie.

"I need to talk to Vivian," she said.

I wondered why but didn't question aloud, I just gave her the telephone number. They talked for a few minutes while I was on the balcony.

"Vivian's going to wear a pants suit," Jackie said when she got off the telephone. It was another clue I still didn't quite catch.

It was my turn to get on the phone. I happened to reach John just as he and Maria were returning from the beach for the last time. I told him what was happening and that they would need to drive the Morgan back to Sunbelt City. "I'll be down in a couple of minutes with the keys," I told him.

When I knocked on their door, Maria answered. I handed over the keys. What changes, I was thinking to myself. I had never let anyone drive that car before. And I was doing it without any qualms. Just how thoroughly peaceful was life becoming?

"He gave them to me," I heard Maria say as she closed the door. I guess I could tell who would be doing the driving.

But this little trip all within the walls of the hotel had a downside. It reminded me that I was being shadowed everywhere. I couldn't even move inside the hotel without those creepy dicks.

When I got back to our room, Jackie was already out of the shower. It was my turn. And it was in the shower that I had an idea. I hurriedly dressed while Jackie was again taking a little extra time getting ready, for some reason, although I didn't need to be concerned because we were well ahead of schedule.

I called room service and asked for the supervisor. Ordinarily, that's not a good way to begin a conversation, but once the supervisor was on the phone, I took a different tact. "Do you want to make a really seriously good tip?" I asked. Like I say, when all else fails, try money. I explained what I wanted and in a few minutes he called back to say they were ready.

After hanging up, I went straight down to the newsstand in the lobby and bought a newspaper, glancing around furtively to determine who was with me that morning. As a little extra test, I went over to the guest seating area and opened the paper, pretending to read, but only for a minute or two. Then I folded the paper and walked outside where the sun was bright and just right for taking pictures with disposable cameras.

Nearing the door, I suddenly picked up speed causing the four men following me to also suddenly start walking very fast that caused them to stand out perfectly in contrast to other people. As soon as the five of us were outside in the sunshine, four hotel employees went into action as I had arranged.

Each of the room service guys targeted one of the dicks and ran up to him and made a couple of pictures square in their face real fast and then took off running in different directions. So, for that matter, did the dicks. Two of them even bumped into each other like Keystone Cops. It was a great moment in history. It was like four blows struck for liberty against the tyranny of stupidity.

A few minutes later, the cameras were delivered to me and I forked over twenty bucks for each of the room service guys, plus extra for the head guy and the cameras. It proved to be worth it.

Herb and Vivian appeared on schedule and, predictably enough, the detectives followed us to the airport. While that was troubling, I resolved not to comment to Herb about being followed until I knew more about who was doing it.

In the meantime, Vivian and Jackie resumed their conversation in the back seat and Herb and I talked. He explained some ideas he wanted to pitch to his cousin. The matter acquired sudden urgency after my comments about buying Caruthers.

At the airport, we boarded Herb's small private jet and temporarily left the dicks on the ground. Because a flight plan had to be filed, I knew we would be picked up again in Capital City but no matter. We had nothing to hide.

The small jet experience was new to me. It was definitely the way to travel. The seating arrangement made it more conducive to four party conversation than the car had been and the four of us talked, opening lines of conversations common to all of us so that there was no pairing up for separate conversations.

It was good that we all got along so well and Jackie and I were as comfortable with each other as Herb and Vivian were together; that it made the four of us compatible. But it only fleetingly crossed my mind. Much, much later, Jackie let me in on what was really going on.

I had noticed that it took Jackie a long time to get ready for our dinner with Herb and Vivian, much longer than it had taken her to get ready to go anywhere else. It turns out that she was preparing to meet Vivian and it was terribly important to her that everything be right. I had missed this altogether. She later confessed to me that she knew I was okay with whatever she was wearing and however her eyelashes might be. But for the wife of a close business associate that figured to play heavily in our future, she wanted everything to go perfectly and to get along well with her, just as I got along with Herb.

As it happened, she and Vivian hit it off exceptionally well. But prospect of an additional block of time together sprung so unexpectedly in the form of the Capital City trip to see Mr. Kerplopski created a special urgency in Jackie. She explained to me so much later, that women could tell when another woman was really okay with the man she was with–I think she meant intimate–and she wanted Vivian to pick up on this casual, comfort level which she and I possessed but which was consummated in the "we" comment I had made as well as the hotel room becoming "our" room and all that that meant.

Wow. More stuff learned from women that I never knew about. But I did know something about what we would be encountering soon.

The world where Mr. Kerplopski lived was vastly different than Herb's. Although he had inherited his business, he had effectively built it in the modern sense and was not naïve and effete. But his world was very different.

The twisty, tree lined streets that meandered through lush hills north of Capital City was about as far away from beachside penthouses as you could get. There was no security person at the gate to question us. The old wrought iron gate remained swung wide open to anyone. And the ivy covered brick mansion set back from a brick driveway was shaded by all kinds of trees and shrubs.

A butler met the door. A butler. I don't believe I knew anyone else who had a butler. Some time ago, I read that many rich young people were hiring butlers who attended special schools and performed all sorts of functions in a household. But this butler was an old man who sagged inside his starched white coat and who could no more maneuver through household accounts on a computer than anyone else who still lived in the nineteenth century.

The butler led us down a long dark corridor lined with large oil paintings. The click of Vivian's and Jackie's heels on the polished marble floor was the only sound, although I seriously doubt that the old butler heard anything. He led us to a huge "drawing room" with an unbelievably high ceiling. The grand piano at the opposite end of the room looked small in the distance.

"Your guests, Mr. Kerplopski," the butler said.

Mr. Kerplopski stood immediately, while Mrs. Kerplopski remained seated and the four of us approached them respectfully. The butler remained near the door.

There was a very formal greeting period during which I introduced Jackie. Mr. and Mrs. Kerplopski welcomed her warmly but it was a different world and a different time. It helped a great deal that the rest of us already knew each other, although I had the distinct impression that it had been a long time since the two Kerplopskis had seen each other. Later, Jackie did not admit to any trepidation but I suspect that it had to have been a little overwhelming. It was to me the first time I visited there, not that I had been often. Most store executives never saw his home. I felt privileged to have had dinner there twice.

"Please bring our guests some refreshments, William," Mr. Kerplopski said very loudly, addressing William. I thought he couldn't hear well.

Mrs. Kerplopski suddenly shot to her feet. She was a small, wiry woman with a brilliant, wrinkled face surrounded by snow-white hair. Once I had heard her say that Mr. Kerplopski referred to her wrinkles as beams from the face of the sun. I didn't doubt it a bit.

"William," she said just as loudly as Mr. Kerplopski had spoken, "we will have sherry in the morning room while the gentlemen talk."

Sherry, I thought. I didn't care for sherry. Not when I had to drink it once a long time ago and not after I got to know her in human form somewhat later.

Mrs. Kerplopski led the girls off to the morning room. I had seen it a couple of times. It was a spectacular room that admitted morning light into a thoroughly white environment. Everything in the room, in fact, was white: the walls, the draperies, the sofa, the chairs, the marble floor, the rug on the floor which had once been worn by a snow white ram somewhere in the Swiss Alps, I assumed. The only thing that was not white was the crystal chandelier that flashed spectrumized light from the sun all around.

Mercifully, William brought gin and tonic to the men. By that time we were settled deep into the old but comfortable furniture. Mr. Kerplopski listened intently as Herb explained everything to Mr. Kerplopski including the idea I sold him on about gradually turning ownership over to the employees and all the work on financial information we had done. When he got to the part about buying Caruthers, he turned to me.

"Tell him the idea you had that you rolled out on those stainless steel ball bearings you have," Herb said. The language shocked me. I would have never spoken like that in front of Mr. Kerplopski but what were cousins if they couldn't let loose a little even if a generation apart?

"We should make an offer to buy Caruthers," I said.

There was silence. Then Mr. Kerplopski's face slowly evolved a smile so big it eventually produced a sound. More really, really hearty laughter began bouncing around the sedate old walls than they might ever have witnessed previously.

But Mr. Kerplopski turned deathly quiet as Herb began to speak about the financial obligation that would be involved with a purchase of Caruthers. I wondered if he had become sullen. By the time Herb launched into the part about a wider investor base willing to cooperate with the plan of turning the store over to employees in the future, I was afraid we had lost him. For a moment, Mr. Kerplopski seemed to brighten, then he regressed.

When Herb stopped talking, it was clearly up to Mr. Kerplopski to say something. I feared the worst despite the fact that he began with an ironic smile.

"I love the audaciousness of your Caruthers proposal," he said, "in fact, I wish I had thought of it a long time ago but I honestly didn't know you would go for something like that, Herbie."

"I agree that I wouldn't have entertained the idea for a moment some years ago," Herb said, "but things change. I guess I'm living proof of that."

Mr. Kerplopski seemed suddenly thoughtful and he was very quiet. Then he took a really deep breath and continued.

"If Harlan had not died," Mr. Kerplopski said finally, referring to his son who had been killed by a motorist, "we wouldn't be here now. It's Harlan's family that concerns me. I want to leave all to them that I would have left to Harlan. I think it's only right. Of course, his children are still in elementary school and can't know anything of the business world and by the time they are out of school and ready for the world, who knows what it will be like? God knows how much it's changed in just the last few years."

"It certainly has," Herb said. "It doesn't mean its worse, but it's different and things happen more rapidly now."

Mr. Kerplopski shook his head in agreement. "And there is another matter," he injected. "Selling a few stores to Herb is allowable under the agreement I have with Caruthers. Selling all the stores to him would undo the agreement, obviously, except that a penalty would have to be paid. Monetary damages."

"I've considered that," Herb said, "from both a financial perspective and a psychological viewpoint. We can handle the penalty, it's sort of a fine, but the insult to them would probably be more damaging. That's why the idea of offering to purchase them would be so effective. On one hand it would insult them more and make them even angrier. On the other hand, it would knock them off balance, make them defensive and more respectful of us. Also more apt to stay out of our markets, as Mick pointed out."

"Don't forget that jerk from Middle State Stores that seems to be in cahoots with Caruthers," Mr. Kerplopski said. "I think he's got his hand in their hip pocket and trying to feel their ass at the same time. He would be plenty ticked off."

After all that, why not just pissed off, I thought. Herb said it for me.

"We may as well go ahead and piss both of them off really good and be done with it," Herb said. "No use in dribbling."

I was ready for another gin and tonic. So, apparently, was Mr. Kerplopski. After looking thoughtful for a minute and sitting silently, he rose, excused himself and returned followed by Mrs. Kerplopski, Vivian and Jackie. William was not far behind with a fresh round of drinks.

Everyone took seats. Mrs. Kerplopski sat next to her husband.

"Herbie, tell Mrs. Kerplopski what you told me," Mr. Kerplopski said.

Thank the goddess, Tanquery. I don't think I could have stood it otherwise.

Herb commenced his speech all over again. He didn't shorten it much but explained the Caruthers purchase idea himself rather than hand it off to me. Maybe he understood that I was grateful.

Upon hearing the idea of buying Caruthers, Mrs. Kerplopski twittered. She was, after all, a lady. Somehow, I think she wanted to raise her leg, slap her knee and let out a good belly laugh. But she twittered.

"Those Caruthers are Baptists, I believe," Mrs. Kerplopski said. "That's what the rabbi told me. No offense, Mick."

"None taken, Mrs. Kerplopski. I'm Episcopalian," I said, slightly tipping my drink glass in her direction.

"Well, Dear," Mrs. Kerplopski said to her husband, "that is a beautifully surprising proposal."

"Yes," he said, "I told Herbie that I wish I had known all along that this is something that would be of interest to him. I think that Mick sort of brought it all out this past week, though."

"Well, then, Dear," Mrs. Kerplopski said, "what do you propose that we do about it?"

"I think you and I need to talk," the elder Kerplopski said, rising. Turning to us, he said, "please make your selves comfortable for a few minutes."

Mr. and Mrs. Kerplopski left the room, walking down the corridor away from us, hand in hand. The drawing room fell silent.

After three or four minutes, I broke the silence but only slightly. "What do you think?" I said in a very low voice.

"We'll see," Herb said. "There are other avenues of additional investment, but this would be the best, if he agrees."

"If they agree," Vivian corrected. Then she noticed them through the window.

The older couple was seated in the garden with their back to us. They faced a large fountain that sprayed a large circle around a statue. Mr. Kerplopski's arm was around his wife's shoulder and he was talking to her very earnestly. Time went by. We noticed Mrs. Kerplopski stroking her husband's head affectionately. But more time elapsed with the four of us sitting quietly without conversation.

"Do you think they would mind if I played something on the piano?" Jackie suddenly asked. "I don't get a chance to play a grand very often."

I was stunned. Besides the fact that I didn't even know that Jackie played the piano, when she spoke, I felt like I suspect criminals and mischief makers feel when the cops zap them with one of those electric guns–except that I had not been up to anything and I feared that Jackie would be disturbing the peace.

"That's a great idea," Vivian injected. Herb agreed.

I remained skeptical and greatly fearful of what she might play but even more fearful of inquiring. What if she turned out to be one of those people who are otherwise normal but who, given an opportunity, surprise you with a like for country music? Worse yet, what if she also sang country music? What if she suddenly said, "Here's something by Patsy Klein?"

How could one person be named both Patsy and Klein, anyway? It would be like Mr. Kerplopski viewing a newly born Harlan or Stephen and saying, "Let's call him Bubba."

Jackie seated herself on the bench and paused to get her bearings. In a moment, some really beautiful melodies emerged from that big piano. I was shocked again but for the opposite reason. I heard Vivian murmur, "Chopin." Clearly, whatever I was hearing, which turned out to be "Polonaise," was classical music and Jackie knew something really neat. There was that word again.

This music she was playing continued, flowed actually, for a few minutes, not long, but long enough to be a little amazing. We all stood around and watched as she played. When it was over, we were all quiet, like we had experienced something moving.

Then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Kerplopski said, "That was beautiful, dear. Do you know "Rhapsody in Blue?" The Kerplopskis had heard the music and came in a door at the end of the room behind where we were standing. We were so wrapped up in the music we didn't even notice them.

Jackie smiled and began playing. This one took a long time. It was good, too, and complicated. How did she know all of that stuff? How could she remember it? When she stopped playing, Mrs. Kerplopski hugged her husband and then she sat down on the bench next to Jackie and hugged her, too.

"That was Harlan's favorite," she told Jackie quietly. "And Stephen played it so well," she said very softly.

See, I thought. I was right: no country music in the Kerplopski household. Patsy Klein, indeed. If she hadn't died, no one would even know she had lived.

"And you play it well, too, dear," Mrs. Kerplopski told Jackie firmly.

A moment later, Mrs. Kerplopski placed her decidedly old and apparently somewhat arthritic hands on the lower end of the piano keyboard and paused with great deliberation. Then she commenced playing, very haltingly at first, more like she was having trouble with her hands than remembering the notes. Then, Jackie placed her hands on the upper end of the piano and began playing at the same time. There they sat on that bench, cheek-to-cheek, old and new, just playing away. It was a bit disconcerting. Mrs. Kerplopski's hands seemed a bit stiff but you wouldn't have known it if you didn't see it because altogether, the four hands actually sounded pretty good. When they stopped playing, Mrs. Kerplopski and Jackie hugged some more and got a good laugh out of something that I didn't see as funny. Odd, maybe, but not funny.

"I hope old Schubert will forgive me," Mrs. Kerplopski said, finally. "But I enjoyed it. It's been so many years. Stephen and I used to do that piece together."

"I still play it with my mother when I see her," Jackie said.

What was that? Jackie has a mother? Why didn't I think about that?

Mrs. Kerplopski sat there holding onto Jackie with one hand and reaching for Mr. Kerplopski with the other. She took his hand and looked up into his eyes. It was time.

"We have decided to assist in this great scheme you have for the store," Mr. Kerplopski said. "Now let me say some things about it because I want you to understand what I think." Clearly, he wanted to sit down. We had been standing at the piano for a while, an entertaining while, but a while.

After resuming our positions on the furniture at the opposite end of the drawing room, Mr. Kerplopski came to the point or two or three very concisely.

"Frankly, as I said earlier, I wish I had thought of this before getting involved with Caruthers. But seeing the commitment that Herb has to the project and, I believe, a good feeling for what our store is all about, along with Mick's expertise and energy and good ideas, I believe it would be the best thing," Mr. Kerplopski said.

"And the strongest point you have made is the one about employee ownership," Mr. Kerplopski resumed. "And that's the one," he said with a spry fist striking the air for emphasis, "that I most wish I had thought of. It's such a damned good idea. And it will accomplish so much for our people."

We sat there drinking all of this in gratefully, but we knew he was not finished.

"However, there are problems with the plan which you have identified and which I mentioned, mainly, I think, in the form of a monetary penalty for failure to proceed with the sale to Caruthers. Even so, we can overcome that one and the little points about anger which you mentioned."

I wasn't so sure that the anger part was a little point. Mr. Kerplopski engineered his success at a more gentile time when people did business more forthrightly, I suspect.

"There are also problems for my family which must be overcome. I say there are problems," Mr. Kerplopski said, "because in my mind there are problems although Mrs. Kerplopski seems to think the things I see as problems are really what she calls 'opportunities.' Actually, I think that's a load of nonsense from those business psychologists," he said.

Most actually, they were both right. There were problems that were also opportunities that had become opportunities so thoroughly that the opportunities had become business clichés. Even I, who read those books at lightning speed, picked up on that.

"Here is how I think Mrs. Kerplopski and I have to look at this situation," the elder Kerplopski said. "Realistically, I have to admit that no member of my immediate family or their children will ever run this store. To have my younger cousin involved is something of an unexpected pleasure. Certainly, Stephen doesn't know a mark down from a mark up cancellation and Harlan's children are much too young to think about this. Someone remarked earlier about how things would change by the time they are ready to enter the business world and we really have no concept of what it will be like. I think the best thing that I can do is leave them an investment that, as you have planned, will cash out for them over a period of time as employees purchase the stock. My family will then make investments suitable to their needs at the time. I am not God. I cannot tinker with future, I can only do what seems to be the best thing now," Mr. Kerplopski said.

He seemed to have concluded. Herb and I were already rising when the elder gentleman spoke up again.

"There is one last thing," Mr. Kerplopski said. "I want it agreed that as long as the store exists, it will be called 'Kerplopski's.'"

"That goes without saying," Herb said, approaching is cousin to embrace him. "You are the father of a wonderful store family," he said. "And that is one thing that can never change."

I stood up and we all shook hands. It was a really fine moment in the history of the world.

"Luncheon is served," William, the butler, said, standing at the entrance to the drawing room. That was noble sounding; he should have a title. Who knows, maybe he does: William, the Butler. But who would announce him when he goes somewhere? Maybe the produce manager, if William does the marketing. "Announcing William, the Butler. Make way you common housewives and henpecked husbands. Clear the aisles you fornicating single persons of low breeding." Maybe they would even use the public address system.

Waiting for the important moment in the lives of Mr. Kerplopski and his guests to pass before announcing lunch was a discretely noble gesture on William's part. It was also good timing for another reason.

As soon as the congratulations all around were completed, I realized how hungry I was. Mrs. Kerplopski half apologized for the lateness of lunch, noting that they eat brunch instead of breakfast on Sundays and the fact that they did not know exactly when we might arrive.

William led us to the large formal dining room. We were seated at an enormous table, way too big for the six of us. The elder Kerplopskis anchored each end, leaving excessive room between. It reminded me of floor coverage at the store during a flu epidemic or on Super Bowl Sunday or the night J. R. Ewing was shot on "Dallas."

Then William began serving from a cornucopia of gourmet cooking. Eating like that every day would surely lead to death. Then again, if you know you're about to go, why not go that way? No sense starting the journey to the other side on an empty stomach when rich wine sauce is available to drench your peas, which is what some of it amounted to, but it was awfully good.

After all that, goodbyes were brief, especially knowing that we would likely soon be meeting again. Jackie and I dropped Herb and Vivian off at the airport. Herb reminded me that obtaining Caruthers figures would be most helpful and said that he would call his cousin about obtaining his help with that on Monday morning. He said he didn't want to ask about it today. By that time, it was late afternoon.

Chapter 10

"You really wowed them today," I said to Jackie after Herb and Vivian had boarded their plane. "And you surprised me, too. You were impressive."

"I didn't mean to be a show off," Jackie said.

"You weren't. It was perfect, just surprising. You really endeared yourself to Mrs. Kerplopski," I said, emphasizing one of the elder lady's favorite words.

"I have a talent you didn't know about," Jackie said, teasing me.

"You have a lot of talents," I said and grinned.

I think she blushed, but I was too busy driving to know for sure. Driving that big sedan was an odd feeling but everything was so automated that I was able to reach over and place my hand in Jackie's lap. She clutched it immediately.

"We've got a lot to think about," I said.

"And a lot of planning to do," she said.

"Maybe you had better come back to Capital City later in the week or at least next week to look for a house," I said.

Jackie lifted my hand and kissed my fingers. Not much more was said until we reached Sunbelt City. It was dinnertime on a normal schedule.

"Surely you're not hungry," Jackie said when I mentioned the time. That answered that question.

I drove directly to her apartment and helped her inside with her luggage. We paused by the front door.

"Do you want to come over later?" I asked.

"Not tonight," she said. Then she added, "save it," as we kissed. Clear communication. It's basic.

The Morgan was waiting for me when I got home. It seemed glad to see me but didn't run up and jump in my lap. I guess Maria had taken good care of it.

Once my luggage was inside, I realized just how tired I was. The couch beckoned and I responded with two solid hours. When I woke up, it was dark but still early. My head was as clear as my stomach, giving me the first good idea of the evening: food. It was legitimate to be hungry by that point and I thought I should go out for something.

It was then that an idea hit me that would work well with going out for a little fast food. I gathered up the four disposable cameras that the room service guys used early that morning. I also located some string, tape and jumbo paper clips that I stuck in my pocket. When I went out the door, I made sure that the bright, familiar packaging of the cameras was visible to the dicks observing with their binoculars. I gratefully started the Morgan and headed to the drugstore.

I made sure that the dicks could see that I was taking the cameras inside the drugstore but my plan was temporarily put on hold when I saw something surprising, something so startling that I stopped cold and observed silently. Todd Dooley was in the drugstore.

"Toddler" was no child at all. He was standing at the electronics counter having a perfectly normal conversation with the store employee obviously about some technical matter related to equipment. He was so normally confident and unbeaten down that I almost didn't recognized him.

The fact that Todd failed to see me was a great advantage. I was able to observe him long enough to be assured that he was not the mousey little boy that Caruthers thought he was. But when I spoke to him, some of the timidity returned. It was then that I had one of the most brilliant ideas that has ever occurred to me and that's saying a lot.

"Todd," I said when he had concluded his business at the camera counter.

"Hello, Mr. Manage," Todd said. He looked at me, not the floor when he said that but his voice dropped a bit from the level he had used in talking to the electronics salesman.

"It's a surprise to see you tonight," I said.

"Yes, sir," Todd said. He looked stronger without a necktie. "I had to come in for an ink cartridge for my portable printer," he explained.

"Really?" I said.

"Mr. Gray and Mr. Crumbly are having dinner," Todd said.

"They didn't invite you?" I asked, somehow actually surprised, even about them.

"No," Todd said. "They don't do that. They're senior executives. I thought I would take the opportunity to work on my printer before tomorrow so I wouldn't waste business time. I was trying to do the right thing but I guess I messed it up again," Todd said, turning suddenly downtrodden like he had been in the store.

"How have you messed something up?" I asked.

"Mr. Gray wanted the visit tomorrow to be a surprise," Todd said. "And I've gone and ruined the surprise by running into you tonight."

"Really?" I said. "Let's give Mr. Gray a surprise, instead."

"What do you mean?" Todd asked. I could tell I had his attention.

"Todd, I want to tell you something."

I drew Todd to the cosmetics counter where there were no customers. Self-respecting women were already prepared for Monday by that point on Sunday night.

"Todd, I don't know exactly what's going to happen during the next week or so, but whatever it is, I will be working in retailing, somewhere," I said.

"Yes, sir," Todd said.

"And whatever it is exactly that I am doing, I will need an assistant. I don't mean a secretary or some flunky, I mean a real assistant that actually does stuff. Projects. Someone to handle projects. As a matter of fact, that can be the job title, 'Project Manager.'"

"Yes, sir," Todd said, not comprehending in the least where I was headed.

"And I would like for you to be that project manager," I said.

"Sir?" Todd said with considerable shock.

"How much do you make?" I asked. He told me. I upped the figure significantly and threw it at him. "It looks like you'll need to relocate to Capital City after a week or so here," I said. "But no need to move twice. We'll put you up in a hotel temporarily in Sunbelt City."

"Sir?" Todd repeated.

"How about it?" I said. "You'll do better with me than you ever could with these Caruthers people," I said. "I'm about to get involved with something big and interesting and you can learn a lot and go far. I'm sure of it. You'll be plenty busy and it will take you somewhere instead of dumping you off. How about it?"

"I'd like to work for you Mr. Manage, but this is all so sudden..."

"It was sudden when it was announced that Caruthers would be buying our store, too," I said, "but sometimes you have to make moves suddenly and I think I have an eye on a course that will be very beneficial and I had to devise that all of a sudden. You'd be a good fit, Todd, and you'd be coming in at the best possible moment. How about it?"

Todd took a deep breath; he seemed to swell with confidence as his lungs inflated, maybe his first easy breath in a long time. "I'm with you, Mr. Manage."

"Good, Todd." I shook his hand. "You'll have to give notice. I want you to do this right. What do they do when someone gives notice?"

"If they're an executive, they let them go on the spot but I don't know if..."

"You're an executive, Todd," I said. "So when you give notice, we'll expect that you will be relieved immediately and you can start to work for Kerplopski's at the same moment. When were you supposed to meet Gray tomorrow?"

"We were going to meet in the hotel after breakfast," he said.

"Don't do that. As a matter of fact we'll move you over to a different hotel tonight. I want you to meet Gray tomorrow morning when they arrive at the store. You'll already be there. It's going to be quite a shock to him, you know," I said.

Todd smiled. There was a deep inner satisfaction that glowed all the way through.

"I need you to wait for me just about five minutes and we'll go on over to the store together and get some dinner at the same time, I said."

I returned to the camera counter and leaned forward, clutching the disposable cameras against my body with one hand. With the other, I lifted a newspaper from a rack and purchased it. But I made the purchase seem longer than it actually took. Really, what I was doing was concealing the cameras inside the fold of the newspaper. That completed, I went to the restroom, visibly carrying only a newspaper.

No one else was there and no one else came in. It was remarkably easy to keep the dicks out of the toilet. Once in a stall, I pulled the tape, string and paper clips out of my pocket and made a chain of the cameras. Then I hooked the chain to the inside of my pants leg and walked out of the restroom carrying the newspaper. It was awfully uncomfortable, but no one would have guessed. Any reasonable or unreasonable person, for that matter, would have assumed that I left the cameras at the camera counter to be developed.

Todd followed me to the parking lot. "Have you got your laptop with you?" I asked.

He indicated the trunk and we were off to the store in separate cars. On the way, I used that cell phone.

"Pirkle," I said into the phone, "I need you right away at the store. And call Mrs. Martin and tell her to come over now. Can't wait. Can't fix hair, can't anything. And then call Jimmy and tell him to be in about seven tomorrow morning with one of his guys. See you as soon as you can get there."

Then I called John Bridges and got him moving. Pirkle met us at the door and John and Mrs. Martin arrived about ten minutes later.

I told Pirkle to wait and I took Todd into my office. We sat down and I looked at him calmly but seriously. "Do you have any objection to us looking at the information on the laptop?" I asked.

"No. Of course not," he said, "it's all Caruthers stuff on there, anyway."

"What kind of pizza do you like?" I asked. "It's a little late and that's about the best we can do while we work," I said. "We'll do better tomorrow night."

"Anything is fine except sausage," he said.

I took the laptop over to Pirkle's office and told him to order pizza for five people. "At least two of us haven't had dinner and the rest of you will get hungry before this is over, so don't be shy about ordering. No sausage. Let us know when it comes. Todd and I will be in my office."

Pirkle sort of looked like what the hell am I doing here besides ordering pizza. It reminded me. "Oh," I said. People actually sometimes say "oh." Not often, maybe, but sometimes. "Todd is starting to work as our project manager tomorrow. Here's his Caruthers laptop. See what you can get off of it and make four copies of everything you think means anything. A copy for you, one for John, one for me, and one to send Herb. We'll have to familiarize ourselves with the material over night. My guess is that there is some pretty significant stuff in here."

Alone with Todd, I took a pad and started asking him questions about Caruthers. Many questions. Questions that continued after the pizza arrived.

After the questions about Caruthers, I turned the session around. "Look, Todd, I want to tell you some things and everything I am about to tell you is absolutely confidential. Do you understand? Absolutely nobody is to hear a word of this."

Todd nodded and I accepted that with a trustfulness that was right. Then I told him what we were up to. His jaw fell open. And when he realized that the tables were going to turn on Caruthers, he was gleeful.

We stayed in my office the whole time, too, without restroom breaks. There is so much salt in pizza that it takes care of what you have to drink.

When we finally emerged, I went straight over to Pirkle's office where Mrs. Martin and John were working with Pirkle on the printing. They already had four large stacks of papers and were still printing.

"What did you find?" I asked immediately.

"Everything," Pirkle said with a look of satisfaction more like what I had seen from him in Coast Town than anything previously.

"Absolutely everything," John echoed.

I'll have to admit that it felt awfully good to know that what I had done in one fell swoop had been so successful. We still had a long way to go in a short time, with obstacles I could not have imagined, but that point was special.

Returning to Todd, I coached him on exactly what I wanted him to do the next morning at the store. He was more pleased than ever.

Then I sent Todd to his hotel to checkout and gave him instructions on where to go for a small suite where he could live until we made permanent arrangements–one of those weekly hotels with extra facilities. I told him to be back at seven in the morning and cautioned him that I personally don't like to start mornings until nine but tomorrow morning would be different. Very different.

After the printing was complete and we had everything meaningful from the laptop, we each took possession of a stack. Mrs. Martin was instructed to make sure that Herb would have her stack of papers by eight o'clock in the rapidly approaching morning. "How are you going to do that?" I asked.

"We'll figure it out on the way to the airport," John said. "But couldn't we just email it?"

"Digits leave fingerprints," I said, like I knew what I was talking about. Actually, that's true and anybody had better know it who's doing stuff with a computer. "It's what keeps FedEx in business."

"And the manager just happens to be a neighbor of mine," John said.

It was a relief to feel that the papers would actually make it to Herb by morning, especially after such a late start.

After all the papers were printed and the stacks sorted, we each took our share and headed home, except for John Bridges who would be going to FedEx at the airport. Before I left, I packed the disposable cameras in a big brief case that I kept at the store for when I suddenly needed one. This was the time of times for that case.

At home, I made coffee and sat up looking through the documents and figures we had printed. I had to be familiar with what was there and it was quite a lot. It was more than I could comprehend in the dead of night and I fell asleep on the sofa, waking up in time to go to bed for an hour. Instead, fearing that I would be too comfortable and fall asleep too soundly to be awakened by the alarm clock, I decided to shower and go to Crusty's for breakfast.

The shower helped wake me up. The cameras helped keep me awake. I slid the chain down my pants before I left. It was awfully uncomfortable.

It occurred to me that Crusty could not take the heat if one of those undercover television reporters brought a hidden camera in there. Then again, they don't put their cameras down their pants.

Then I had an another awful thought. Wouldn't it be terrible if one of those cameras dangling between my legs accidentally discharged? I tried to comfort myself that a flash would be required simultaneously with the click of the button and that was unlikely, highly unlikely. And there was no way it could rewind itself to go again. Of course, if the flash discharged, it could play havoc with the mind of some poor guy who happened to see a glint of quick, bright light down my leg. Iridescent pee? What kind of coffee could they be serving there?

This would be a good time for Crusty to have a little problem in his establishment. I calculated that there was a statistical probability that a little ptomaine or salmonella would probably strike a dick, there were so many of them in there. Given the ones who came with me and the likelihood that there were others, the proportion of them in the building at that moment was incredibly high.

I figured that some of them must be just getting off "work," if work can be something illegitimate such as spying on someone's unsuspecting or even suspecting spouse. I'll bet there were more telephoto lens devices in the trunks of more cars in Crusty's parking lot than any other location in Sunbelt City.

No matter. The eggs were good and I was sure, having paid for the certainty, that there were no Marlboro ashes in them–or Camel droppings. And the grits and hash browns could not have been better. Come again. Grits and hash browns? I was hungry.

But not by the time I left. I had to wonder about my lawyer, though. I didn't see how he could be anything but famished considering the condition of his kitchen.

The only other time I had been in Coleman Harris' kitchen was during a cocktail party, for some reason or other, and you would expect it to be clean then. But it was time for breakfast and it should have been littered with broken eggshells, pots dripping with batter, grease coating everything. On the other hand, maybe I was too accustomed to Crusty's.

I went straight to Coleman's house from breakfast, dicks trailing behind. I pulled into the driveway and knocked on the kitchen door. Hilda, Coleman's wife, opened it almost immediately.

If you've never had pity for a lawyer before, you would have if you had seen Hilda. She was standing there in what my mother called a "house coat." Something was covering her hair, but nothing, unmerciful gods, was covering her face.

"Mick?" she said in disbelief.

"I need to see Coleman," I said, brushing past her into the kitchen. That's when I saw it: nothing. I could smell coffee making but I couldn't see any evidence of food. Could it be that they were cold cereal people? How could Coleman fight effectively for his clients with nothing in his stomach? If Hilda had to be so ugly, the least she could do was cook breakfast.

"Come on in," Hilda said, "I'll get him." She could sense the urgency and led me immediately to the living room then went for Coleman.

"I need to talk to you," I said when Coleman came down the stairs, dressed except for a necktie.

I glanced around and stepped into the dining room. Coleman followed. Up to that point he had not said a word. Maybe I was too full of action, but I didn't stop simply because I appeared without warning at the back door of his house at six-fifteen in the morning. I closed the door and glanced around again, then closed the draperies. Then I unbuckled my pants. That's when Coleman said something.

"What the hell are you doing, Mick?"

"I've got a problem."

"Go to your doctor–or your shrink," he said sarcastically.

"It's not that kind of problem," I said.

I pulled the cameras out of my pants and held them up like so many fish on an angler's line.

"What the hell is that?" Coleman said.

"Dicks," I said. "I'm being followed by at least four of them. I want to know who they are and who's hiring them. These are their pictures. They think that I took them to the drugstore to be processed and they'll be finding out otherwise just anytime now. You need to take them to a trusted photographer who can develop the film without sending it anywhere. And you need to stay right with him while he's doing it. These are very persistent people. And here...," I said, fishing in my pants pocket, "here is the description of a car driven by one of them along with the tag number."

Coleman looked at the cameras on his dining room table and he looked at me. I'm not sure which he found more incredible. I zippered, buckled, said goodbye to Hilda and drove to work. Traffic was light, I remarked to myself, rarely seeing the streets at that hour.

For that matter, I rarely saw the store at that hour. Pirkle was already there, along with Jimmy and some new guy they had hired for the cleaning staff.

Todd arrived about ten minutes early. I appreciated that. He looked refreshed from our unusually late Sunday night work, intensive work at that.

While I showed Todd around the other offices, Jimmy and the new guy prepared Todd's office. Soon, it had the requisite furniture and we got Todd some office supplies from the closet and I gave him some time to get comfortable in it and make it look a little used. While he was doing that, I reviewed my mail and messages from the previous week.

At about eight o'clock, I received a phone call from Herb. He was almost speechless. He couldn't quite believe what he was seeing but there it was, an incredible amount of information. "I'm not even going to ask how you got this, let alone so quickly," Herb said.

"It was a bit complicated," I said. I was beaming brightly enough to have microwaved the telephone call all the way to Coast Town myself.

"Have you had a chance to look at the material?" he asked.

"Barely," I answered.

"I'm going to have people looking at it this morning. I'll be in touch as soon as we have a grip on it," Herb said and hung up. He and his staff had a lot of unexpected work ahead of them.

After a while, I went again to Todd's office that was adjacent to mine. "Got your letter ready?" I asked, referring to his letter of resignation.

"Brought it with me," he said, partly withdrawing it from the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket.

"Excellent," I said. "Let me show you some things in the store.

Todd and I went out into the store and I began to talk to him about what we did and how we did it, pointing out things of special interest and things that I thought he would be needing to know soon. This served two purposes. For one, it gave Todd vital information he would need in order to commence the projects I already had in mind for him. And the other thing was that it kept us secluded in odd corners of the store and out of sight of Bob Gray and Wilson Crumbly when they arrived, which, in turn, had its own purpose.

As it turns out, at the last moment, Gray sent Crumbly over to John Bridges' store. Gray arrived a little later than I would have expected. I was later told that he appeared at the door at about nine-fifteen. As always when someone showed up before the store opened wanting to come in for an appointment or other reason such as to repair something, the security person checked credentials and finding none, inquired why the person wanted to enter the building and who he wanted to see. All of this took a little time and apparently, Gray became a little testy. The security person called Pirkle who cleared Gray to go to the office.

Gray took the elevator that was located in the most remote spot in the store possible. Having anticipated that he might do that instead of taking the scenic route up the escalators that were already running, Todd and I were well out of sight.

When Gray arrived at the office, Mrs. Martin greeted him. Gray asked to see me and she told him that I was out in the store and would return to the office soon. "You're welcomed to go on in his office. He won't be long," Mrs. Martin told him, as we had discussed in advance.

When Gray asked if she had seen Todd, or "Toddler Dooley," as he said, Mrs. Martin replied that she didn't know exactly where he was but that she didn't believe that he was in his office.

Later that day, Mrs. Martin told me that when she said that, Gray looked at her like she had lost her mind, like "how the hell can these Kerplopski people operate a store with minds like this?"

But he didn't say anything. He merely went into my office. Later, we determined that he must have set his laptop down next to the chair he probably sat in.

Then he waited. That was part of the plan. He waited and waited some more. Once in a while, he would emerge from my office and inquire of Mrs. Martin if she had heard from me or ask that she page me. Her response was always that she was sure I would return soon.

Finally, Mrs. Martin paged Mr. Ferdinand to line one. There was no Mr. Ferdinand; it was merely a signal from Mrs. Martin that she believed Gray was ripe.

Todd and I went to the office immediately. Todd ducked into his office and I found Gray sitting with his arms folded across his chest in a chair in my office. Gray returned my friendly greeting with a scowl.

"I've been waiting here for you since nine o'clock," Gray said. It was a needless lie.

"I've been busy," I said. "I was gone almost all of last week and I wanted to see the store this morning before we open." I remained very cordial and I'm sure I was grinning–I had to have been, I felt it.

"This is no time in this stage of a change of business ownership to be taking vacation," Gray admonished.

"But the beach was so wonderful," I said, rubbing sea salt into his open wound.

"You should have talked to me before taking any time off," Gray said.

"You should have talked to me before appearing here this morning," I said.

"You knew we would be here this week," Gray said.

"I did not anticipate you being here on Monday morning," I said. "As a retailer, you should know that Mondays are dedicated to..."

"Don't lecture me," Gray interrupted.

"Don't give me reason to lecture you," I said.

Gray was so angry that he turned pale and trembled. I had shot him full of hot fury. I thought about a television commercial that ran when I was a kid. It featured an animated cowboy shooting sweet cereal out of his pistol. I imagined shooting cereal coated in hot sauce and making Gray eat it until he exploded. It was a daydream turned to real life.

Somehow, Gray managed to choke back his anger long enough for me to provoke him again. It would be the last time that morning.

"Have you seen Toddler?" Gray asked.

"You mean Todd. Sure," I said, "let me let him know you're here."

We had been standing up to that point. But to call Todd, I moved behind my desk and sat down. Gray remained standing which gave me the best possible angle on the scene that was about to play. I dialed the telephone.

"Todd, Mr. Gray is here." That's all I said.

Three seconds later, Todd came through the doorway with his laptop in one hand and an envelope in the other. Both were extended toward Gray.

"Good morning, Mr. Gray," Todd said with more confidence than he had ever spoken to Gray previously. "I have something for you."

Gray took the laptop and the envelope but ignored the obvious meaning of both and jumped on Todd. "You were to meet me in the hotel at eight-thirty," he said sternly.

"I decided to come directly here instead," Todd replied, keeping his eyes steadily fixed to Gray's.

Gray blinked. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, flourishing the envelope.

"It's two weeks notice," Todd replied.

Gray hesitated. "Notice of what?" he said.

"I'm going to work for Mr. Manage," Todd said.

Gray hesitated again. Gradually, he began to smile which yielded to a laugh which became a fully uproarious belly shaker. It was most unbecoming to his otherwise dignified appearance.

"What do you mean, 'work for Mr. Manage?'" Gray asked. "Caruthers is buying Kerplopski's." Gray had dropped the laugh and became increasingly intense as he grilled Todd.

"I understand that I am a free human being," Todd said, "and I choose to give you two weeks notice that I plan to work for Mr. Manage."

Gray hesitated again, long enough for rage to bloom brightly. As a matter of fact, his face became neon red, glowing brilliantly beneath his white hair, like a full-blown red rose dusted with insecticide.

"Well, Toddler, you can go to work for Mr. Manage right now because we don't want a notice of any kind from you," Gray said. He took a sideways glance at me, pursed his lips and stalked out of my office clutching Todd's laptop and letter of resignation.

Chapter 11

"Welcome to Kerplopski's," I said and shook Todd's hand, "you're now official."

Todd replied with a firm handshake and looked me in the eye. I knew he would be okay.

"Now let's get started," I said and gave him an assignment to write information concerning Caruthers employees, only those who were decent people to work with and who were also effective at their jobs and who might be desiring a change of employment, as well as other information about their associates and informal lines of communication and so forth–all in bullet form for quick digestion.

After that discussion, I took him to the sales floor to talk about a location for a gourmet food department which neither of us knew about but which I wanted to investigate. That would be his assignment.

While we were on the floor, it turned ten o'clock and a short time later, I was paged. It was Mrs. Martin telling me that the man who had been in three times the week before to see me had returned.

My mind was more or less all over the map when I walked up the escalators heading to the office. This fellow was a minor distraction in an otherwise intense day.

He had the appearance of a young executive type of some sort. I greeted him and invited him into my office, preparing myself to see a resume pop out of his pocket. He introduced himself as Carlos Selassie. I wondered if he were related to the emperor and how the Carlos part got there. But then, the world is a pretty mixed up place.

He took a seat where Robert Gray had been waiting for me fitfully. Now, it was this guy's turn. I asked how I could help him.

"I'm thinking about relocating to Sunbelt City," he began. Yep, there it was. The resume would be next. "And I was wondering if you could tell me about the city and what you think about living here."

His name should have been Jesus–that's Hay-sus, the way Latin Americans say it befitting the Carlos part–because I wanted to blurt out Jesus–that's Gee-zus, the way supplicants say it when they're pleading or pissed. Why beat around the bush? Just give me the damn resume and let's get on with it, I was thinking. But because I always treat customers with respect and patience and because he was still a customer, not having yet produced the resume, I thought it best to play it straight and narrow.

The only thing was that I couldn't figure out why the man had not made an appointment to see me in the first place instead of wasting time trying to see me when I wasn't here and why he was being so persistent with this route to a job interview. He could have contacted our corporate office. And why did he appear to be set on working for Kerplopski's?

"Well," I said, "Sunbelt City is a growing community with strong potential for future economic development," I said. "What field are you in?" I added, giving him the perfect opening to make his job pitch and get on with the purpose of the meeting.

"I'm in management," he said.

I thought of the kid at the ice cream stand. He was in management, too.

"How does your family like it here?" Carlos Selassie asked.

That one gave me pause. Why the persistence about an opinion on Sunbelt City and where did my family enter into this?

"Sunbelt City is great for families," I said. "Good schools, warm climate, lots of outdoor activities available."

"So your family is happy here?" he pushed.

For some reason, I had a mental picture of Carlos Selassie trying to flirt with a woman in a singles bar. A gorgeous nubile Nubian leaned in close to his ear and screamed "fuck you" as loudly as she possibly could, loudly enough for the band to stop playing. As Carlos retreated with a grimace, everyone stood and applauded the woman.

Unaware of this prescient vision, my visitor persisted with questions about my family. I was patient; I'm always patient with customers and always treat them with respect no matter how difficult they are. For a while, I parried skillfully, but tired of his nosey questions. Finally, I had enough.

"You are a rude person, Mr. Selassie," I said calmly, but with damning authority and finality. "I don't understand what you want or what you're up to, but it stops now." He looked surprised. "Get out of my office," I added without raising my voice. He grimaced as he left my office and I applauded myself, there being no other audience.

For one brief moment after the strange visitor left, I allowed myself a bit of self-indulgence. I had foiled something but I didn't know what. The timing was strange, too, following more than as an oddly coincidental caboose on a train wreck of dicks. I imagined the Keystone Cops bumping into each other in a line, one after the other. But I didn't have long for such foolishness and I forced myself to concentrate on what I should be doing to further our goals.

That didn't get very far, either. Mrs. Martin called to tell me that a customer was waiting in the glassware department to talk to me.

Under those circumstances, it was sometimes tempting to adopt the motto and one word philosophy of Valley Girls and say, "whatever." But I didn't. Even when it was inconvenient, I always treated customers with respect so I sped to the scene, screeching to a halt before I broke something.

There were a pair of old ladies I had spoken with many times. They wanted to praise the store for being such a fine place to shop and beat us up for delivering a broken crystal compote that had been a wedding gift for their niece. All of this was news that had to be delivered to the store manager who happened to be on the verge of big doings in the business world and who had to make time to hear all of that. Worse, they had to tell me about the wedding–all about the wedding.

Listening to the story, I couldn't help but think that the newly wed niece was an exceptionally smart young woman. I could easily solve the broken compote issue, but the niece had already solved the problem of getting along with her family: she moved way the hell out of town. Come to think of it, maybe it was her new husband that did that, smart guy. Personally, I was trapped. No comment I made seemed enough to open a trail in the brush for retreat.

Then, up from the escalator emerged Addler Crawley. He caught my eye and zeroed in immediately. I was really done for; the bigger, more aggressive predator would frighten off the old and lame pursuers and I would be lunch once again.

That is exactly what Crawley attempted to do and succeeded to the extent that he chased the old ladies away, leaving me to defend myself against him alone. But he did it with velvet tenderness and solicitude.

"Aaahhh," he said, and smiled as he approached. "Maa favoright nabas," he drawled. "Haah are you bewtiful ladies this fine day?"

I wanted to puke so I'm going to stop trying to imitate him. It's entirely too stressful when a good shovel is what was needed. But the ladies loved it. Soon, they were cooing to each other as they dawdled down the aisle away from us.

"My wife wanted to come down to Kerplopski's today before it changes hands and do a little old fashioned shopping," Crawley lied.

It didn't take a polygraph to know that falsehood. Everyone knew that Mrs. Crawley preferred to shop in Major City, presumably so she could stuff a little more arrogance up her high held nostrils. Furthermore, counselor, I thought, have you ever been known to shop with your wife? Answer truthfully. Of course not. By which I mean both that he never shopped with his wife and that he was not truthful.

But when an adversary such as Addler Crawley speaks, you listen carefully if you know what's good for you. So I gave him full attention and he chewed saliva copiously as we walked toward my office. As we entered, the new maintenance employee was leaving with a trash bag. I hardly noticed him, I was concentrating so single-mindedly on Crawley.

We settled into a couple of chairs well away from my desk. I liked to sit close to people sometimes, especially people like this one who merited so much scrutiny. The friendly bullshit over with, Crawley came quickly to the point.

"Aaah've...." No. I said I wouldn't do that. "I've been thinking a lot about you, Mick, since I saw you down in Coast Town," Crawley said, drew out, drawled, elongated, rendered ridiculous, not to mention just plain long.

Somehow, having Crawley think about me was not comforting. It was kind of like having the devil say he was praying for you. Praying to whom for what? Thinking of me how?

And Jeeezzz, the way he said it. I envisioned Crawley on a stage doing Shakespeare. I imagined him trying to do Hamlet or Macbeth. It would sound like Foghorn Leghorn lamenting a dead king in one and killing a king dead in the other. Maybe he could have done okay with Julius Caesar. How could you hurt, "Et tu, Brute?" Then, Leghorn Foghorn got in the act with "Eh, eh, aaah say, eh..." and it was almost curtains for me. I busted out laughing right in Crawley's face–not an elegant Shakespearian chuckle but a full-bellied Falstaffian laugh.

"I thought it was very funny to see you down there," I said, trying to cover as best I could and laying the ground for a disingenuous compliment to try to take his mind off my gaffe.

"Funny, why?" Crawley asked.

"We so rarely see each other in the city where we live, I thought it was a hoot that we would run into each other so far from home. And for that to have precipitated you coming to see me is just amazing," I lied shamelessly. That was the technical part of the cover, a bit crisp, toasted to the point of being charred, but cover nonetheless. Next: a big, thick slab of bacon to feed his ego and divert his attention. "And I'm so appreciative of the coincidental meeting leading to a chance for some insight from a masterful legal and business leader," I said, trebling the nausea along with the deceit.

"Well, thank you, Mick, I appreciate that very much," he said. I couldn't tell if he actually believed me or not, but at least pretended to, as any gentleman would. "That's exactly why I'm here," he said. "I was surprised to see you, there, but after I thought about it in terms of this store being sold, it made perfect sense. I can full well understand that you would be looking for an investor to help you buy this store and keep it out of the hands of some other company. But you would have to know that in order to make it work you would need at least the other Kerplopski store in Sunbelt City and maybe another one, like in Coast Town, in order to have enough cash flow to keep it going. One just wouldn't be enough to float financially. But pulling two or three stores together to buy would take a lot of money. It was smart of you to go see Herb Kerplopski."

I felt like eye of round being slathered in garlic butter and prepared for the rotisserie. And it turns out, I was right. He came at me from all directions at once.

"My thinking is," Crawley explained, "that you may well need more than a single investor to do what you want to do. It's a lot for one investor to accomplish. As you well know, a very great deal of money is needed to run a store, let alone two or three of them."

"That's for sure," I agreed, for once finding some truth flicking from the tip of his tongue.

"And I just wanted you to know that some other sources may be available to go in with you on this thing to make it happen," Crawley said. He looked at me and smiled generously.

"It may even be that you could do it all with homegrown money," he said, giving his plug a mysterious cast.

"Right here in Sunbelt City?" I asked, as if I was interested.

"Could be," he said so mysteriously that it was more like sly. There was a pause. He appeared to look at me thoughtfully. He might not have been able to read the lines decently, but he could sure act. "Can I be frank?" Crawley asked.

Let's see, I thought. Can he be Frank? He can damn sure act like he was Frank. But as to whether he could actually become Frank....

Crawley cut into my thought. I must have been taking too long with it and Crawley didn't want to give up the position on the stage that he had maneuvered himself into. For that matter, he didn't want to give up the part of Frank.

"You see, Mick," Crawley said, "I like you and I just want to pass along a little advice that you might find useful."

"Go for it," I blurted quickly. I hate those popular sayings that become clichés but this man brought out the worst in me.

"You don't have much time with what you want to do about pulling together a couple of stores," he counseled. "And I would hate to see you waste the time you have."

I nodded, seemingly appreciative of his wisdom.

"And I would hate to see you put yourself out there at someone's mercy," Crawley said. That was so preposterous, I would think it was difficult, even for him to say. But he didn't stop.

"My advice would be not to work a potential investor too long," Crawley continued. "You want to make a thorough presentation of your ideas and your facts and figures but you don't want to hang around after making your pitch," he said. "When you've finished putting your ideas on the table, step back and give the investor room to work out his perspective on the finances."

That spiel rocked me backward. It was like he knew all about me being in Coast Town most of the week. And he wasn't finished yet.

"Now, I know this is hard for a nice young guy like you to understand," Crawley said, giving me a knowing look and a confidential nod, "but there are people out there who act like investors and who will listen to everything you have to say but what they're really trying to do is use what you're telling them, all this well intentioned information, to their own advantage. And some of them just take your time up and string you along for a while and then, suddenly, they move behind your back and gobble up your project using your own ideas."

Great day in the morning coast to coast. Was this man listening to himself?

"I know it's hard to swallow," he said "but things like that happen."

Yep. I heard right. He really said it. Then he kind of leaned back in his chair and slapped his knee with one hand.

"Well," he said, "it's time to be going. I just wanted to put a bug in your ear."

He started to rise from his chair. Then he hesitated, sat back down again and leaned in close.

"I almost forgot," he lied. He had to have planned every move, every gesture of this whole act. "There's one more thing. You ought to think about collateral potential."

"Collateral potential?" I asked. It sounded close to English, even coming from him, but I didn't quite recognize it.

"In your business," he explained quietly, "there are opportunities all around to make money through means that you come in contact with incidentally in the course of the conduct of your business."

I blinked a few times. There were some English words in there but what the hell did they mean?

"For example," you sell products that have to be bought. You could buy them from certain sources and make more money personally than if you bought them from other sources. In your business, you need warehouse space. That's another opportunity. You ship things. That's another opportunity. And I know people who can help you take advantage of them."

He looked me straight in the eye. It was an education to learn that someone could lie like that, rolling out one behind the other as if on an assembly line. And then be able to hold a steady bead on another person's eyeballs.

Suddenly, he leaned back and slapped both his knees and rose. "Just wanted to share that with you, Mick," he said.

I thanked him graciously but felt like any rancher would feel if compelled to thank a wolf for dropping by to eat his livestock. As he shambled out of the office, I marveled at everything he said, especially the part about pulling together some Kerplopski stores.

He was shockingly close to the truth about an investor for some of the stores. He must have just guessed it all because he was wrong about me looking for an investor and wrong about Herb's character–but he probably just made that up to cast doubt on Herb and make the possibility of investing with him more attractive. He could easily have made that guess because he saw me in Herb's office and everyone knows about Mr. Kerplopski selling the store to Caruthers. If Caruthers, why not some other?

That last part about "collateral potential" was just creepy. It was one thing for a farmer to open a fruit stand along a busy highway on the edge of his farm but something else again to do what Crawley was talking about. Warehouses? Could he be referring to Herb's? It wouldn't make much sense to have warehouse space in Port City when most of the business was conducted hundreds of miles north.

I made an attempt to settle down at my desk. Reason dictated that I try to determine productive things to do next. But I was so agitated that I couldn't settle down. Finally, I called Jackie, brought her up to date on what had happened that morning. When I mentioned Crawley's list of "collateral potential" she seemed alarmed.

"Mick," she said as if her breath had been knocked out of her, "'warehouses and shipping,'" she repeated from my quotation of Crawley. "What does that sound like to you?"

"Like he's been down to Coast Town talking to Herb and happened to run into me there and just started putting stuff together in his mind. Crawley's basically just an unethical salesman," I said. "And salesmen know that it all comes down to a numbers game. The more contacts you make, the more chances you have of making a sale. It was just a salesman's gambit."

"It sounds to me like he's been talking to Joe," Jackie insisted.

"Have you ever known Joe to be involved with Crawley?" I asked.

"No, but..."

"Crawley's old family," I said. "He tends to operate out of those circles."

"But money..." she began, only to be interrupted by a page.

"Early lunch?" I blurted.

"Can't today. I'll talk to you later," she said and hung up to catch her page.

That left me at loose ends again. I supposed I would have to go to lunch alone except for my entourage of leeches. Maybe I could at least go somewhere expensive and let them suck their employers dry.

That's what I was thinking when guess what. Robert Gray showed up in my office doorway, laptop in hand, ready for business. He claimed to apologize for acting hastily earlier that morning and said he wanted to get back on track.

Double guess what. It suddenly occurred to me to follow Addler Crawley's playbook. I decided to play along with Gray and see what helpful information about Caruthers I could get out of him. I suggested that we start with lunch. Gray seemed to think that was a good idea and off we went like two old chums.

The first surprise for him was the Morgan. Apparently, he had never seen anything like it. He seemed to marvel–I couldn't tell if it was real–then lowered himself awkwardly into the seat with great difficulty and some pain. He then acquired the distinction of being one of the few male passengers ever accorded that privilege.

Off we went. He clearly did not like the open-air ride but forced a grin the entire trip. As we pulled up at the restaurant, I told him that the bugs in his teeth were merely an appetizer. He had no way of knowing that the place was the most expensive luncheon restaurant in town.

Speaking of bugs, his eyes bugged out when he saw the menu. But he kept the static grin and ordered the least expensive entrée he could find. I didn't. I even ordered real appetizers for both of us. And when I ordered a bottle of wine, he almost lost the grin. Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead. Clearly, that was outside the approved business practices for this Baptist bosses.

Even so, he didn't utter a word of objection. I was sure that during the time between leaving my office that morning in a snit and returning all nice and happy, he had been in touch with his boss who doubtlessly told them that it was a foregone conclusion that I was a hopeless case but to pretend otherwise and go back and find out as much as he could about Kerplopski's. That was truer than I imagined.

While we were waiting for the appetizers, Gray fired first. It was a question about my family. It was my turn to be stunned. But, like my luncheon companion, I grinned; I also dodged the question. Behind the grin, I was hollow with shock. So the guy who had been so persistent about seeing me, that Selassie fellow, was working for Caruthers.

For a moment, I was absorbed in this revelation and feared that my face betrayed me even with the grin plastered on top. When it occurred to me that if Caruthers were following me around they must be one of the parties responsible for the dicks down in Coast Town and therefore would know I had been talking to Herb.

But then reason prevailed. If Selassie had been coming to the store looking for me several times during the week of my absence, it meant they didn't know where I was. The grin then became real, because Robert Gray had once again put me on top of the game. His question had given me yet more knowledge about Caruthers and revealed an odd obsession on their part.

What the hell difference did it make about the status of my family? Gray tried again and again with questions along that line, taking a slightly different approach each time. Maybe they had heard about my "reputation."

"How often do you let the stallion out of the stable?" I suddenly asked Gray.

Surely he understood the reference but pretended otherwise. Maybe the question really did shock him. A good Caruthers person probably wouldn't know how to handle it.

I decided to tell him a story from when I was a very young man working in one of the large, nationally prominent department stores in Major City.

"There was a vice president there," I told Gray, "who was a dumpy looking guy. You know: short and fat. Looked kind of like a sleazy Danny DeVito except fatter. One day, I happened to be walking down an aisle next to him when this great looking woman who worked in advertising passed by from the opposite direction. This VP turned to me and said, 'there are fifty-three great pieces of ass in this store that I'd like to fuck.'"

"And they all put out, too," I told him, "but there are three or four I wouldn't want to do again."

Gray lost his grin altogether. The story is only partly true, but I wasn't through working Gray over with it. I drew it out by assuming a wistful, nostalgic attitude as if fondly recalling important details from a life that happened to be pornographic. Then I topped the tall tale with a cherry by linking the whole prurient situation to my business career. With a confidential nod, I assured him that the respect I gained from upper management after that incident led to the beginning of my promotions, one after the other. Then, injecting maraschino into the cherry, I leaned forward with a smile of self-satisfaction and assured him confidentially that "it hasn't stopped yet."

For a moment, I thought Gray might wet his pants, although that would have been more gratification than he could have allowed someone like Todd. But it occurred to me that maybe a dribble had been induced, if not for one reason, then another.

In any event, Gray was pliable after that. As I poured him into the Morgan, my mind raced backward to the inquisitive visitor I had that morning and the fact that Gray had picked up the same theme in his lame attempt at interrogation. I couldn't get Carlos Selassie's face out of my mind. Then it occurred to me that we had his face on camera and I sped toward the store fast enough to see Gray's eyes stretch their sockets.

After whipping into my parking space, I retrieved Gray's briefcase from the trunk and hustled him inside, depositing him in my office with a notebook full of outdated figures to study. Then, I dashed over to the security office and had the loss prevention manager locate camera images from that morning. Knowing the time of day made finding my visitor a snap. In another snap, we had a perfect screen of him speaking with Mrs. Martin.

"Print it," I said, and paged Jimmy. Then I began writing a note that I sealed in a manila envelope addressed to Coleman Harris. I instructed Jimmy to deliver the envelope into the hands of my lawyer only. I hoped that he could do something with it.

John Bridges called. He had just returned from lunch with Wilson Crumbly and said that during lunch, the tension between them eased a little, enough for Crumbly to make a couple of interesting comments.

He said that their team in Capital City seemed to have been more successful than they had been working with us in Sunbelt City. More successful, that is, in easily obtaining information. It seems that John and I were being comparatively uncooperative.

I kind of took that as a compliment. But there was a sign of trouble in the next comment that they had determined that it was necessary to speed up our progress or else take some type of action to obtain what they needed. That kind of gave me pause. What could they have in mind? But instead of wasting time trying to figure out what they meant to do, I suggested to John that we should alter our response to them. I thought it might be possible to obtain information from them while appearing to be forthcoming with information they wanted.

What John and Pirkle and I knew that no other Kerplopski management could know was that we needed more information about the Caruthers operation than they actually needed about Kerplopski's, although the Caruthers people didn't know it. On top of which, they had more sources of information than we had and certainly more people obtaining that information. If it wasn't so important, it would just seem like a bunch of gobbledygook.

But then, it was back to Bob Gray, this time with a different tact. He was on the telephone when I returned to my office, Crumbly, I suppose, and hastily hung up. With pad and pen in hand, he said he was eager to get to work. I agreed and answered his first question with legitimate information, harmlessly enough, if with mock seriousness.

Question number two called for information I didn't want to part with, so I simply lied when answering. I hated to lie, but I figured it's kind of like giving money to a robber. With a gun pointed at you, a person might not want to give up the cash but under the circumstances, it would be prudent to cooperate. The difference simply is that cash is real and my information was fake, but if the victim had a choice, he would part only with counterfeit bills. I had a choice and it seemed morally acceptable to lie under those circumstances.

Beginning with the third question I started to turn the tables and began holding up the robber. Gray would ask a question and I would offer some partial answer, then ask him something on a related aspect of his question which required him to give Caruthers information. It worked well and provided a source of information and insight that went well beyond mere facts ands figures gleaned from Todd's computer. In fact, knowing some of the key data categories on the computer, I was able to obtain descriptive enhancements that provided a level of understanding that spreadsheets lacked. It was kind of like looking into the mind of Caruthers. Creepy thought, but it helped.

And it worked best when I got Gray talking about something that really interested him. That usually occurred after asking a question front loaded with a personal compliment. Another creepy thought, but, hey, this was business and it was important.

When I made Gray feel important, complimented him somehow and touched his pride, it was like turning on a faucet. He flowed with useful knowledge about his company. People like to talk about themselves most of all and when I combined that with a compliment eliciting the story his success in some aspect of something, Gray gushed.

All the while, I sat at my desk as he sat in a chair in front of me talking, when he and his company had intended it to be the other way around. So much of what he said was fundamental to retailing as a category and so important to what Herb and our little group was about to do, that it was unnecessary to write down everything Gray said. It was easy to remember. But I was able to make a few furtive notes. Instead of taking a pad and writing furiously, which might well have tipped off what I was doing and diverted Gray to the course he was supposed to be taking, I would jot down a few words on random pieces of paper, the backs of envelopes and so forth, so that it didn't appear that what I was writing was related to what he was saying.

Occasionally, I would step out of the office, ostensibly to speak to Mrs. Martin about something, giving me the opportunity to make fuller notes that I left on a pad on her desk. At first, I feared that leaving Gray alone even briefly, would cause him to jolt back to his business. But instead, I found that a few moments alone merely gave him time to recharge his mind with the subject I wanted to hear him talk about and when I returned, he was loaded and ready to pour astonishing levels of corporate insight.

That was the good thing about being able to tap someone like Gray. Whereas Todd had some good, solid information, Gray, being a trusted member of the senior management team, had the scoop on the real poop, the way his company actually thought about things and what their plans were.

I suppose that Gray figured that since his company was about to buy my company and kick me across the mall parking lot and out of town on the last bus before sundown some day soon, it was harmless to talk to me. He sure seemed to enjoy it.

At one point, late in the afternoon, my telephone rang. Mrs. Martin had been screening my calls, so for one to get through, I knew it was important. And it was. It was my lawyer, Coleman Harris.

"I need you to be in my office tonight at seven-thirty," he said and he sounded serious.

"Tell me the time again," I said, sounding unbelieving. "I don't think I heard it right."

"Seven-thirty," he repeated.

I hesitated. Damn, I thought, it must be serious for a lawyer to have a meeting in his office at seven-thirty at night. "Okay," I finally said.

Then, I excused myself from Gray and went out to speak with Mrs. Martin. I whispered to her that I would need her to work tonight. I told her that she could leave at regular time but would need to be at her home telephone at eight o'clock and wait for my call. I told her was terribly important that we work for a while that evening and apologized for the time of night and the short notice. She was okay with it. She was a real trooper. I think she could see the concern in my face. And to me, at least, hearing my own low whisper, the words sounded clipped and urgent.

I returned to my office and reignited Gray. He was surprisingly flammable for such a blob. I kept him babbling productively but eventually worried about how late in the afternoon it was becoming and feared that hunger would eventually silence the big boy. Before she left, Mrs. Martin brought coffee and the hot caffeine seemed to dull our appetite. Gray kept it up until almost seven o'clock, when he finally looked at his watch and stopped in mid-sentence. He had no idea of the time. Then, he looked at his virtually empty pad of paper. He looked stricken. He knew he had fucked up. He just didn't know how badly.

Seizing the opportunity and taking command of the silence and Gray's reticence, I briskly thanked him, told him how much I had enjoyed cooperating with him, how much I appreciated him spending all that extra time with me and showed him to the door. He mindlessly picked up the briefcase he came in with and finally, almost exactly at seven o'clock, I was rid if him, I thought, until the next morning. There were some things even I didn't know. Hard to believe isn't it?

After Gray's departure, I hustled together all the notes on the multitude of odd pieces of paper, crammed them into a manila envelope and headed for the Morgan. There was no time for dinner before meeting with Coleman, but at that hour the traffic was nothing and I would be slightly early without hurrying. I had expected my head to clear during the drive, but I was so full of all kinds of thoughts, nothing settled in my brain. Information overload, I think they call it, along with a good dose of old fashioned hard work spiced with a little too much stress.
Chapter 12

When I arrived at Coleman Harris' office, all the other lawyers and secretaries had long since left for the day. A guard checked my identification and let me in; he called Coleman and in a couple of minutes, the stairwell door opened and Coleman appeared.

"We need to talk," he said. There was no other greeting: just that, "we need to talk."

He had a serious look on his face, so serious that I didn't say anything. He led me to the back of the reception area to a small door that he unlocked using three keys and stepped in ahead of me. He grabbed a flashlight from its evidently customary position on the wall and turned it on, pointing at the doorway floor. "Step up," he said. I entered cautiously and he closed the door.

It was a strange little room, dark, no lights except the flashlight and a battery operated lantern on a narrow table. Coleman turned on the lantern, then he shined his flashlight on a fan in the corner. I could see that the room was tiny. The fan, it turned out, was connected to something the size of a car battery. Next, Coleman flashed his light on the wall near the door and grabbed the handle of a wide panel set on a track and dragged it so that it covered the door completely. Then, he sat down next to me at the table.

"We made this room on the cheap," he said. Given his grim attitude, I was actually glad to hear him say anything short of the world is coming to an end. "In really big cities, law firms have these rooms done right, with electricity and everything so that unless you knew, you wouldn't know you were in a secure room." It was not particularly comforting to know that for the first time in my life, I was sitting in a place so special. "It's lined with lead and there are no wires of any kind coming into the room so that there is no way anyone could attach a bug. We keep it locked but there is also a guard here all the time."

"We need all of that security just to talk about these guys I told you about?" I asked. It was just incomprehensible. If I didn't know Coleman, I might think that this was some sort of ploy to jack up the fee.

"I'm afraid we need the room for this," he said and placed his laptop on the table in front of us.

"Sorry to have added that one so late today," I said, but the guy came in this morning after having visited three times the previous week when I was out of town."

"He's the easy one," Coleman said, "so let's start with him."

"At first, I tried to disregard him as some kind of nut, but by lunchtime I had figured out that he might be connected to Caruthers somehow."

"You figured correctly," Coleman said. He opened his laptop and punched up the man's picture. "You said his name is Carlos Selassie."

"Yes," I said.

"And sometimes it is," Coleman said. "And sometimes it's Carl Selassie. Other times it might be Juan Walwa or Jose Tadesse. Seems to favor Ethiopian names."

"What's with the Hispanic part?" I asked.

"Haven't looked into it to that extent yet," Coleman said, "and probably don't need to. We know is that his mother called him Henry Smith and so does the IRS."

"That's the important one, then, isn't it?" I said.

"That and Vicente Gemeda. That's how he is known by Caruthers and the Holiday Inn in Capital City, Neighboring State," Coleman said. "He seems to like those other names when he's working."

"Working?"

"Yeah, he's a hack PI who frequently works for Caruthers and the Holiday Inn near their corporate offices. Does some other stuff, too and works for some other people, but mostly Caruthers and that Holiday Inn."

"How'd you find out all this?" I asked, more than a little shocked.

"This guy was not a problem to check out. He's registered. Licensed, you know," Coleman said. For the first time, a wisp of a smile crossed his face and he sat back in the chair and faced me.

"My guess is," Coleman said, "that he was supposed to dig some dirt on you and shovel it back to Caruthers by the end of last week. And by the time this Gray person you mentioned got to town, they were supposed to know all about you."

"So they're behind schedule," I said with a certain amount of satisfaction. I'll admit I was even a little smug about it.

"Not necessarily," Coleman countered. At least he was still kind of smiling. "He apparently had all week in town to dig. He could have talked to a lot of people and if he found some of your enemies, there's no telling what misinformation or lies they have on you."

"Let 'em," I said with a purposely defiant stance. There I was, a noble knight in the service of the good kingdom not caring what my enemies dared to say about me even if my shield was a little tarnished, maybe even dented.

Coleman didn't say anything for a few moments. It's like he was giving me time to let it sink in, like he knew I was about to change my attitude on the subject. I quickly accommodated him. "But why bother investigating me?" I suddenly asked. It was the obvious question, after all.

"What do you know about Caruthers?" Coleman asked.

"Lots. We've been studying their business as intensely as possible recently," I said. I was thinking about understatement, but didn't mention it.

"I mean their management culture," Coleman said. "What's in their corporate psyche that would make them hire a private investigator to check you out? Or, for that matter, what's in the mind of one of their top executives to do that? Do they have a Mr. Caruthers like you have a Mr. Kerplopski? And would he have some sort of bent that would cause him to like to investigate people?"

Those were good questions and I had not even thought to try to delve into them. "Yes," I said. I suspect that I drew the word out to about five or six syllables like some people I knew, but I wasn't trying to be cute. I was trying to think. "There is a Mr. Caruthers but I really don't know much about him."

There could be an answer in that," Coleman said. "Or in their company culture. Every organization has an outlook that compels certain attitudes, which, in turn, compel certain behaviors and sometimes it causes executives to think that they should do perverse things that they really have no business getting involved with. We see it all the time in our practice. Why else do you think we have a room like this?"

"That all makes sense," I said, "but I don't know how it applies in this case."

"Think about it," Coleman said. "Think about what makes you different from members of their management. A lot of times differences make people uneasy."

Wow. I didn't realize just what a font of wisdom Coleman was. Maybe he should turn pop psych legal guru to the masses and go on daytime TV talk shows.

"I will," I said. "I will think about it. Maybe it would help understand other things about what is going on."

"What's going on is a good question," Coleman said and punched some buttons on his laptop. I saw one of the pictures I gave him next to another picture of the same man. "This guy works for Addler Crawley."

Coleman punched some more buttons and I saw another picture I had given him along with two other pictures of the same man. One of them was a mug shot.

"Who does he work for?" I asked, afraid that I was about to be sorry that I had.

Coleman sat back in his chair and looked at me. "Your girlfriend's husband," he said.

"Ex-husband," I said quickly and defensively. I thought that was kind of a crummy thing for Coleman to say. He knew better.

As soon as I responded, I started O shitting all over the place. While I was busy being defensive, it was occurring to me what it meant. Or, what I thought it meant.

As if reading my mind, Coleman set me straight. "It's not just Crawley and Palmer," he said, "it's Crawley and Palmer together."

I must have looked at him like his pop psych had popped. Actually, it was my mind.

"Crawley had this guy down in Coast Town for his own purposes and Palmer had his guy down there for his own purposes. Chances are, that one did not know about the other. But at some point, after Crawley ran into you at Herb Kerplopski's office, he began putting things together. Crawley is good at that. It's how he practices law, if you can call it that, and it's how he makes money. And after he put things together about you and Herb and Kerplopski's, he got with Palmer and starting putting something else together with him."

My mouth was dry. I suddenly realized it was open. "But why would Crawley get together on this with the likes of Palmer?" I somehow asked.

"Aaahhh haaaa," Coleman said, a little too loudly for the size of that room, I thought. That's because they were already working together on something else."

I was stunned. Crawley and Palmer were not each other's type. "You know this," I said. It was a question.

"I said it, didn't I?" Coleman said. He was telling me but I was not finished with it. I couldn't be through with it yet. It was like a waiter serving a steak then jerking it away and replacing it with a tougher one.

"I mean, you know these things to be facts," I said.

"Well, there's a small amount of conjecture, but, yes, we know it," Coleman said. I was seeing the conjecture as steak sauce. Maybe it would be needed to digest the thing.

"What could they possibly be working on together that could also involve Herb? I asked. "Crawley and Palmer are two such different types to work together. On what?"

"Warehouses? They both love money," Coleman said.

"But what could involve both of them and the store?" I was shocked and now worried.

"That's where the conjecture comes in," Coleman said. "We're working on that part of it. That's why I had you come in so late this evening," Coleman said. "I got some of this stuff just minutes before you arrived."

"Now what?" I asked.

"We'll keep investigating," Coleman said, "but in the meantime, it's something else important for you to think about. Maybe you can put some things together that we can look into."

If minds work by thinking in a train of thought, my freight cars had wrecked all over the place and my track was ripped up. This was too much to understand all at once and it wasn't over.

"Finally, there's this guy," Coleman said and punched some buttons on his computer brining up a single picture that I had supplied to him.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"I don't know," Coleman said.

"He's the one driving the car with the tag number I gave you," I said. "What about the tag number?"

"It doesn't exist," Coleman said. He had an expression of deep worry behind his eyes.

"What do you mean 'it doesn't exist,'" I said. "I saw it."

"I understand that it physically exists," Coleman said. "But the government denies it."

"How can they deny what's in plain sight?"

"They're the government," Coleman said. I guess I must have looked exasperated. "Think about it," Coleman said. "Who makes license plates?"

Prisoners, I thought but didn't say it. This was no time to be flippant. "The government," I said, more muttered in a trance.

"Exactly," Coleman said. "And if the government says they didn't make one with that combination of numbers and letters, what is mere physical evidence to refute them?"

"Someone who was driving a car with that license number was following me around." I wanted to be defiant and said the words but they didn't sound very solid when I heard myself say them.

"Now think about what that means," Coleman said, hacking through the fog surrounding my mind. "The government is denying that the man exists. That means that he's the government's man. And if they're not admitting, it means they're very interested in you for some reason."

I was in shock. I wanted to be wanted but not like this.

"We're going to keep digging on this but you need to think, too. You need to consider every relationship you have. From what you have said, you have recently acquired new ones, business and personal, and I don't think it is coincidental that all these guys following you around are doing it because of your long standing relationships." Coleman closed his computer. "This is not simply a jealous ex-husband. This is the government of the United States of America." He looked me square in the eye. "Mick, you need to take this very seriously."

I took a deep breath. It suddenly seemed very close in that little room, like the world was closing in at breakneck speed when only hours before, it had seemed to be expanding with me at the front of it.

"You need secure communications," Coleman said. "I will get that to you tomorrow morning, sometime before noon, so be sure you're at the store between ten and twelve."

I liked that. I liked hearing something concrete that I could do instead of just thinking about I didn't even know what trying to figure out how what I didn't know was coming down on me.

Another thing that appealed to me was that the next thing I had to do was a definite action, something that would keep me occupied with a real world activity. I hoped that maybe doing that would help clear my mind because at that moment, the fog was dense.

I thanked Coleman for all he had done and was doing and asked to make a non-confidential telephone call. From outside the secure room, I called Mrs. Martin and asked her to come to my house. It was late but not stupidly late and we had work to do.

She arrived at the same time I did and we went straight to the dining room that was almost never used. But it was perfect for this.

While Mrs. Martin waited, pen in hand, I arranged all the odd papers I had made notes on all day while talking to Bob Gray. When they were in some sort of order that made a little sense, at least to me, I began talking and Mrs. Martin began taking notes. I have no idea whether or not she knew "shorthand," a gibberish code girls used to study in high school when I was a kid but this was definitely an old-fashioned dictation session.

It was hard work for both of us. I liked having to concentrate on something, if not tangible, at least describable and understandable. The problem was that there was so much of it. There were a lot of topics and I had to flesh out each note with all the detail I could possibly remember from what Gray had said. That's why this had to be done the same day, in order to capture from my memory every detail that might be lost as time elapsed.

And Mrs. Martin worked hard too, furiously scribbling what she would then need to type. Despite working intensely and rapidly, it was eleven o'clock before we finished. I was so hungry, having had an early lunch and no dinner, that I totally ignored messages waiting for me in the telephone answering machine and headed out the door immediately behind Mrs. Martin.

"Now, I sure don't expect you see you until later tomorrow morning," I said to her. "And this is not a rush job, as long as it's done during the morning hours at some point," I said. "The rush was to get it out of my memory while it was still fresh. But it is confidential. John Bridges needs a copy. Pirkle needs a copy and we need to send one to Herb Kerplopski by Fed Ex. Why don't you ask John to take care of that part of it," I said. I didn't say what I was thinking, that maybe no one would be following John and would not know he was sending something by Fed Ex because then they might find out who it was going to and might even get hold of the typescript, itself.

Mrs. Martin had been very accommodating. I offered to take her to dinner, which is where I was headed but she declined. I was grateful. I wanted to be alone. I thought about Jackie, about calling her at least, but I was simply too tired and hungry. I ignored the pulsing red light on my telephone and headed out the door.

The Morgan seemed to know where to go without being told. It's nice to have some things work automatically. Not the transmission, though. I liked to be involved in driving. Actually, when I was deeply distracted, as I was that night, it was more like I was the automatic part of the transmission, a thoughtlessly functioning part of the magnificent piece of machinery that operated effortlessly and deposited me smoothly where I wanted to go.

As soon as I appeared at the front door, I noticed Crusty stub out his cigarette and begin preparing an omelet. He knew what to do without being told, too, as did Lulu and soon, with a mere greeting, I had what they knew I wanted without having to ask for it. Life can be nice in Sunbelt City where people know you.

And sometimes they know enough to leave you alone. Which can also be a good thing in a city small enough that you can't move around without seeing someone you know anywhere you go anytime of day or night. So I wasn't bothered, at first, left to let my over-active day numb down slowly on its own without the use of drugs or conversation. Maybe people could look at me and see that it was not a good time to intrude.

Of course, cops don't ever think that. They're always ready to protect and serve, to react and interfere. But you have to always act like you're glad to see them because often you are and you don't ever want to offend someone who can be as helpful as a police officer.

They saw me first and headed toward my booth walking really fast like I might escape over the back of the bench if they didn't get to me quick enough. But I had begun to relax already and looked forward to going home to sleep and didn't pay any attention to them until they spoke.

"Mr. Manage," one of the cops said. He spoke urgently and a little too loud for Crusty's small place. "Mr. Manage, everyone's been looking for you."

People tell me that sometimes in the store and I typically feign great concern, knowing that if someone really needed me, all they would have to do was page. But hearing those words from a cop brought me to attention in the proverbial heartbeat that skipped.

"What's wrong?" I snapped, fearing that someone had been hurt in a robbery. "Is someone hurt?"

"No, no. Nothing like that," one cop said.

"Do you know a guy named Bob Gray?" the other asked.

"Yes," I said. I probably sounded like Addler Crawley when I said it, drawing the word out to at least three lengths as curiosity, shock and reason all vied for equal functioning space in my brain at the same time.

"We've got him down at the station," a cop said. "He's been asking for you."

By the time I digested the word, "station," I could feel a smile tying my ears together. Maybe I didn't want to hear that he was asking for me. Maybe I didn't care. Maybe I simply wanted to hear more about why. Why everything.

"Have a seat," I said to the police officers. I motioned to Lulu as they slid in the booth across the table from me. Lulu already knew what they wanted and brought us all a pot of coffee to share while Crusty did his part for society.

"Do you know anything about it?" one of the officers asked.

"That was what I was going to ask you," I said. "But whatever it was, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."

I wasn't proud of the cliché, but hey, it was late. The cops liked it, though. One grinned broadly and averted his face, like he wasn't supposed to find his job funny, ever, no matter how harmlessly stupid citizens behaved. The other grinned with his coffee cup close to his closed lips and seemed to cool it by blowing through his nostrils. Ex-smoker, I guess. I wondered if anyone had ever charged him with brutality by breathing on them: Your Honor, he assaulted me with coffee breath through his nose and I haven't been able to have sex or snatch purses ever since.

"So what did Gray do?" I asked. It's a good thing I had finished my omelet because I would not have wanted to do anything but listen to this.

"I don't know the whole story," one of the officers said. "All we know is that someone at your store called the PD for help and one of the detectives responded because he happened to be in the parking lot when the call went out and as he was going in the store, this Bob Gray guy came charging out real fast, real mad and cussing and everything and must have gotten even madder because the cruiser was in his way since it was parked at the curb. Anyway, this Gray kicked the fender of the detective's cruiser and the detective yelled at the man but by that time he was in the middle of another high kick. Except that that time he went real high and his leg got caught in the antenna and the antenna went up his pants leg and nicked his nuts."

All three of us cracked up like Crusty's eggs. The cops obviously enjoyed telling the story and other people in the diner enjoyed watching us laugh. Lulu was laughing and she didn't even know why.

"He wasn't really hurt, though," an officer said.

"Superficial injury," the other said, "treated at the scene and released to the police." He sounded like a professional spokesman or television news anchor.

We all broke up again. I envisioned some poor paramedic struggling to contain his own laughter while packing Gray's pants with gauze or maybe just putting a bandage on his scrotum. All this right there on the sidewalk. Maybe they applied alcohol first, I thought and smiled at the thinking. That would have been a nice touch. I was also thinking how good it was to end the day with some good laugher, considering what all else I had endured since the calendar flipped to a new page. Now, that page was about to fall off gratefully into sleep.

But wait, as the infomercials say. With this day you also receive...

"I never did find out why someone at the store called us to start with, though," one of the cops said.

That jolted me back to the there and then. The calendar was still pinned to the wall and there was something else I had to do.

"I need to get to a telephone and call the store and see if anyone is still there," I said, a little suddenly urgently.

"You don't have a cell phone?" an officer asked me like I had committed a crime or something like not having insurance and registration papers in the Morgan.

"Not with me," I said. "I kind of got in the habit of not liking to carry them."

One of the cops handed me a phone and I dialed the store. After the umpteenth ring, Pirkle answered.

"Pirkle..." I barely said before he jumped in.

"Everybody's been looking for you," Pirkle said.

"That's what the police told me when they found me," I said. "What's going on at the store and what's all this about Gray?" I said.

"Gray is what is going on at the store," he said. "He hasn't been here since about nine o'clock, but he's still what's going on."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know an area manager was in charge of the store tonight. It happened to be Wilma and you know if Wilma has to call for help to handle something it must be bad and Gray was bad. He came in in a panic looking for his briefcase, at least his laptop computer that he said was in his briefcase. Well, Wilma didn't know anything about it but offered to look for it. He demanded to be let into your office to look for it and she said she would look for it in your office and he got real abusive and loud out in the office area where customers were paying their bills and having gifts wrapped and Wilma said that she would call security to look, too and then Gray got really nasty and started asking her if she knew who he was and saying that he was going to have her fired as soon as Caruthers takes over. By that time, customers had started leaving the office and one of the ladies in the office called security to come up. That was Rufus. He was the only one here. Well Rufus didn't know much more about Gray than that he was some sort of Caruthers person but that didn't matter much to him, anyway. He just sized up Gray as on the verge of out of control. So he marched up to him and got in his face and told him to be quiet and listen to what Wilma said and that was that Wilma would look in your office. Gray got quiet for a couple of minutes while Wilma went in and looked but couldn't find anything. In the meantime, Gray was telling Rufus all about coming to your office this morning with his briefcase and laptop inside and how he sat it down next to a lamp in the corner and he had been given Todd's identical laptop and briefcase when he resigned, standard Caruthers issue, I guess, and had kept up with it all day thinking it was his own briefcase and laptop only to discover tonight at his hotel that the only briefcase and laptop he had was the one Todd had returned. Well, when Wilma came out empty handed but still standing in the doorway of your office, Gray demanded that she call you. Under the circumstances, that sounded like the right thing to do. So Wilma went back inside your office to call you and Gray started telling Rufus about how poorly this place is run and how crazy you are and how he thinks you stole his laptop. Rufus didn't take kindly to that and told Gray that he was the crazy one for acting like he was acting which only made Gray all the madder. Well, Wilma was on the phone letting it ring at your house but hearing all this back and forth between Gray and Rufus and when you didn't answer, she decided to call me. I could hear Gray and Rufus in the background. It's not what we allow from anybody in the building, ever. So, I asked to speak to Gray and he jumped on me immediately, accusing us of incompetence and theft and I had started telling him to calm down and I was going to tell him that I would be right over there but he slammed the phone down. Then, he jerked open one of your desk drawers and Rufus told him to get out of the building that instant. But instead, he started pushing stuff in one of the file drawers around, like maybe the laptop was hidden in one of them. At that point, Rufus grabbed him and slammed him against a wall. It must have made a hell of a racket out in the outer office, along with Wilma screaming at Gray to leave and the ladies in the office called the police. Gray must have gotten a little scared by then because he started to leave but he was cursing and carrying on the whole way out of the building. A couple of times he kicked something on his way out. One of the times it was a mannequin, sent it flying down an aisle, arms and legs going every which way and of course, customers scattering the same way. I gather from the police that he kicked one of their cars and was arrested on the sidewalk right after he left our building."

Our building. How many times had I said our store, our building, our merchandise, our this, our that? But it had never felt like it meant what it felt like to hear it that time. It was like it really sank in that it really was our building.

"I sent Rufus down to the police station because they were going to need someone to give a statement," Pirkle said. "Then, I called Brad to come in here. It seemed to me that the one thing Gray said that might be reasonable was about leaving his briefcase in your office and I figured that we would have whoever it was on tape leaving the outer office area with it. So I called Brad, since he's the security manager and he installed the camera system. He's in his office now, reviewing the film."

"Is Wilma, okay?" I asked. It sounded to me like she had been through a lot. I wasn't worried about Rufus.

"She's going to be fine. The police took a statement from her at the store and I told her to go on home."

"I'll be there in ten or fifteen minutes," I said and we hung up. Or, more accurately, Pirkle hung up and I stared blankly at a set of buttons complex enough looking to be able to send someone to the moon or at least talk to someone there.

A cop saw my dilemma and took the phone from me, pushing a button as he did so. "You really ought to get at least one of the simple types of cell phones," he said. My mother the cop.

"Gray caused a scene in the store," I told the police officers, bringing them up to date. "My people told him to leave, he refused, even started rummaging through my desk whereupon our security guy pulled him back, against the wall, actually. The police were called, apparently making Gray think it was time to go but he cursed and carried on the way out, kicked a couple of mannequins, then the police car. You know it from there."

"What was causing him to act out?" an officer asked.

"Yeah, that's the point, I guess," I said. "He was looking for his briefcase and laptop computer. That part could be legitimate. I remember him bringing it in in the morning but I don't know what happened to it through the day. I would have thought he would keep up with it. Now, he's accusing us of stealing it. I can see being worried about something like that but making a scene in the store was no way to handle the situation. Our people are at the store right now looking at security tapes, trying to see if they can tell who left with it."

"Damn," an officer said. "All he had to do was ask you to do that to start with and he wouldn't be sitting in jail."

"Exactly," I said and as soon as I said it, I realized that there must be something on that computer that he didn't want known. We had already been through everything, printing off of Todd's computer but we had done it so quickly. I wondered and I must have been staring blankly for a minute.

"Are you okay?" an officer asked.

The question, obviously addressed to me, stirred me back to the current moment. "I'm fine. It just occurred to me that the way he was acting, you would think that maybe there was something on that computer that he didn't want anybody else to see."

"Probably some pictures," a cop said. They both grinned.

Or something else, I thought. But what? Gray wasn't the porn type. At least I didn't think he was. Of course, you never know.

I thanked the officers, paid Lulu for all of us and drove directly to the store. Pirkle and Brad were in the security office. I told them about running into the officers at Crusty's.

Brad didn't say anything. He was carefully watching the screen and occasionally making notes on a pad of paper. Pirkle and I were also quiet after my brief explanation about meeting the police. We were simply waiting for what we knew was about to be revealed at any moment.

"Here it is," Brad said finally. He stopped the action, backed it up and put it in slow motion. "There. Going into your office, Mr. Manage. You see?"

"Who is it?" I asked.

"The new cleaning guy," Pirkle said. "The one that started to work this morning, went to lunch and never came back. Now we see why."

As Pirkle spoke, the man was on the screen leaving my office with Gray's briefcase. Simple as that.

"He saw an opportunity and he took it," Brad said, "literally took it." Brad stopped the tape and looked at me.

"That's an answer to one question," I said.

"What else?" Pirkle asked.

"Have you thought about why it was that Gray put on such a show over this laptop?" I asked. "Especially when all the poor bastard had to do was approach the problem like we did and he would have his answer just like we got them without going to jail." Pirkle looked at me. I could see that it hit him, too, but he didn't say anything. I did. "There must be something very, very special on that laptop." None of us were thinking dirty pictures.

"What do we do now?" Brad asked.

"I think you ought to see if you can get that detective back out here who arrested Gray tonight and show him the film," I said.

While Brad was making that phone call, Pirkle and I stepped out into the hallway. "We didn't have much time to really look at all the documents we printed from Todd's computer," I said. "I wonder what we missed."

"Maybe Todd could help," Pirkle said. "Maybe we should put him on it with us tomorrow morning. Maybe he could point out something interesting in some of the files if we go through them one at a time with him."

"It's worth a try," I said, "but it will take a long time to get through all of that and I'm afraid that it could well be something that he would not know about or not understand if he saw the documents. Whatever is causing Gray so much grief is not likely to be something that they would have let Todd know about."

At that moment, Brad shot past us. "Detective's at the door," he said over his shoulder.

That was fast. But if you've got a blue light on your dashboard, I suppose you can do lots of remarkable things.

The detective was terribly interested in the tape showing the theft of Gray's briefcase allegedly containing a laptop computer. He used that word "allegedly," not me. Why he used that word would become interesting before the whole matter was over.

In the meantime, the police detective gave us the perspective of law enforcement. Whereas we had been looking at the whole situation as one situation, the cop broke it down into two separate criminal activities with two separate criminals.

"What's Gray charged with?" I asked.

"Disorderly conduct, resisting arrest. The usual," the detective said. "That's from us. You can add trespassing if you want to. When Rufus and your manager, Wilma, told him to leave and he ignored them and began another activity on the premises, that was trespassing. Do you want to press charges for that?"

I hesitated. Usually, I have an answer decisively and quickly. Here the answer would be decisive, but with consequences in the future that I could not foresee at the time. And that moment was a concern for me. I had never encountered a situation where we had invited a guest into the store, that is, Mr. Kerplopski invited Caruthers executives into the store, only to see the guest behave like a drunken, out of work brother-in-law who foraged a little too greedily in the refrigerator. Come to think of it, some of that applied to me from Caruthers viewpoint.

But ultimately, it came down to the same clear-cut issue we face everyday in the store. Shoppers either do right or they do wrong. And if they do wrong against the laws of the state, we prosecute. Even if they're cute little chicks with lot's of money.

"We'll press charges," I said. "He was trespassing and he ignored a legitimate order to leave."

"Good," the cop said. I have to think that it's demoralizing to have citizens complain and then not follow through when they're faced with a decision after the officers have gone and done their job, sometimes at a serious risk.

"Now, we have to get this guy who stole the briefcase," the cop said. "And allegedly a laptop computer."

"Why do you keep emphasizing the word, 'allegedly?'" I asked.

"Did you see the computer?" he asked.

That was my answer. And down the road a mile or two, it had consequences.

"You say this was his first day at work?" the detective asked.

"Yes," Pirkle said, "but the fact that he left the store without permission during his work period, meant that he terminated his own employment at that moment by committing job abandonment."

I liked that. Pirkle was on top of this and it made the store look better.

"You've got the guy's name and address, at least the name and address he put on his application," the detective stated like a fact with an unstated question mark behind it, meaning that we had better have all of that.

"It had better be his name and address," Pirkle said, "because otherwise he's obtained a driver's license fraudulently. We have a copy of that, too."

The cop grinned. We were performing well for ordinary citizens about midnight when we should have been asleep, getting rest in order to come back the next day and make more money to pay more taxes to pay somebody to fight bad guys. This police officer deserved breakfast at Crusty's. But not tonight, I thought. Another morning.

"We'll wait a few hours," the officer said, "give him a chance to get home from the club and get to sleep, then we'll jerk him out of bed and find out who he passed it to. He'll remember."

"You don't think he still has it?" Brad asked.

"Naah. He wouldn't dare," the officer said. "Particularly if there was a computer inside. He'd want to get rid of it right away. He'd make enough on it to have a good time in some dive, tonight, though."

"What's going to happen to Gray?" I asked.

"We'll keep him until he sees a judge in the morning," the officer said. "Then he'll plea and if it's not guilty as it probably will be from what we know of the guy, the judge will set a trial date. It's all misdemeanors so it will be in front of the judge at city court, but it will be a month or so from now."

I was trying, for the first time, to think what it might be like for us and Caruthers in the meantime except that from the way things were going, we didn't have anywhere near that long to deal with Caruthers. I was so glad to be me.

"Do you want to talk to Gray?" the officer asked. "I can arrange it right now, if you want to."

"No thanks," I said. I had had enough of him for one day. One terribly long day. I wanted to go home and go to sleep.

But somehow, I wasn't quite ready to sleep when I got home. My mind was cranking and I just had too much on it to go from sixty to zero in fifteen—fifteen steps from the bathroom to the bed.

I thought about Jackie, thought about calling her, looked at the clock and decided against it. Then I listened to messages.

"Where are you?" One after the other. "Where are you?" From almost everyone I knew except Coleman Harris. Even Bob Gray was in there with four or five messages. He was getting pisseder and pisseder as the night went on.

Pisseder? Where'd I get that? It had been that kind of day. And long before now, I'm sure Gray had concluded the same thing. Like I said, I was so glad to be me.

But I was still awake. After that kind of day and two beers, I was still awake.

I decided to call Jackie after all. And, as usual, I was glad I did.

First, it was "where have you been?" Then came "you need to carry your cell phone." Next, it was "you didn't get my message?"

That, I had not expected and no I didn't get the message other than on the answering machine. Turns out that she left a message with Brad and another with Pirkle for me to call her. But after I explained all that happened, she understood why I didn't get the message and why I had not called.

By the time I got through telling Jackie all about everything, being careful to leave out certain details, which, I told her, would need to wait for secure communications, it was well into the dark hours of morning. Closer to light than midnight.

I suggested that we meet for breakfast. My late night breakfast seemed like it had been last year sometime. She tried to make me understand what time it was and that I needed sleep.

I told her that if I got to sleep, I was afraid I would not wake up until late, which is what happened. That is, if you call seven o'clock late. That's what I call it because I like a little quiet time in the morning that means getting up earlier. I didn't have it that morning. Waking up that late meant that I had to forego my quiet time. But I had breakfast. Had to have that, and coffee but for the first couple of hours that morning, reality felt like a faint carbon copy of itself. Can anyone remember way back before copy machines when we used carbon paper? I even felt smudged that morning with a grimy stain of the previous day. Somehow, I managed to reach the store at my usual time, telling myself that I was ready for another day of no telling what.

Chapter 13

Reality took on a hard edge when I arrived at the store but even then it was stained from the day before. I suddenly wanted to wash my hands.

Mrs. Martin arrived at the same time I did that morning. It was late for her but she was carrying a stack of papers that meant that she had stayed up well into the night typing what I had dictated late in the evening. What a trooper.

Pirkle was already closed up in his office with Todd. They were already going through the documents we printed from his laptop.

While Todd looked at documents, Pirkle came out and gave me the latest on the briefcase and laptop theft. He had just heard from Brad.

The cops visited our former cleaning associate during the wee hours and took him downtown for questioning, as they say. But aside from admitting the theft, prompted by viewing himself on tape, he didn't have many answers. It seems that he sold the laptop within minutes of taking it. He had a name but the only address was a tree behind an old warehouse. The cops would be investigating, they said.

A tree? Sounded like fertilizer to me.

There were no telephone messages waiting for me. That felt a little odd, not that I wanted any but I was searching for normalcy. Never mind, I told myself, I would read through the papers Mrs. Martin had typed before deciding what to do with them.

I barely made it into my chair when there was a tap on the door. It opened immediately and Jackie stuck her head inside. She looked at me but didn't say anything. It was more like an inspection than a look, like maybe she was looking for something.

"Hey," I said, and started to stand up. She motioned me back down.

"I just wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay," she said. "Maybe we could have dinner tonight?"

"Yes..." I said.

"Talk to you later," she said, cutting me off and closing the door. Seeing her made me feel a lot better. And hearing her and seeing how she acted. She understood stuff.

I looked at the stack of papers in front of me. First, I thought I should bring John Bridges up to date. I told him straight out that we had to be careful what we said in the future but I could tell him about Gray last night.

"That may explain Crumbly," John said. "He's been really nervous. Jumpy. And he said that he expects a call from Gray and that we should page him immediately."

That made me laugh. "He's probably still in jail, waiting for the judge," I said. "I can't imagine that he would be calling Crumbly today at all. As a matter of fact, I wonder who he will call and what's going to happen with him. Caruthers is bound not to like what happened one bit."

"I don't like him one bit," John said, "and now I don't like him one bit and he's jumpy on top of it."

"Let me know if anybody calls him. He may hear something, some way or other," I said.

While I was still talking to John Bridges, there was another tap on the door and this time Mrs. Martin came in with a carafe of coffee and silently placed it on my desk. She had such a good understanding of things. I was able to have two cups before store opening time approached. I took the precaution of locking the typescript in my desk.

Given the events of the last evening, I thought it would be wise to be open with our associates about what had happened. I announced a storewide meeting and everyone assembled in the restaurant a little before ten o'clock and I laid it out for them briefly, but giving them the essential facts so that rumors would not overtake the truth. I also didn't want them to fear that someone from Caruthers would pop up from nowhere and abuse them. Of course, that immunity didn't necessarily apply to me.

After the store opened, I moved around the floor talking to our people. In the meeting, they heard me say that Wilma and Rufus and been right and had performed exactly as they should have done and that the police sided with them by arresting Gray. They heard me say that both of our people would be in to work later that day and that they were both fine, simply resting after a long, unusually difficult night. But I wanted our folks to feel me being okay and the best way to do that was to interact with them. There weren't many customers at that hour and it was easy to move around and talk with our people.

In the back of my mind, I felt sorry for John Bridges having Crumbly with him. But I appreciated the opportunity to talk to our people without a Caruthers suit standing at my elbow. It was a thought I shouldn't have indulged.

As I rounded the hosiery aisle, I caught a glimpse of a man I had never seen before. He was clearly no detective, not even one with a badge. He was wearing a suit and he had an expression on his face like he wasn't looking to buy another one. As a matter of fact, I instinctively knew that he was looking to buy something that didn't have a price tag, something that had been taken off the market: me.

Speaking of me, and who wasn't, I heard my name on the paging system. I sidestepped to a column where a telephone nestled among display fixtures of really short sock like things that women wear when they want it to look like they're not wearing socks. I answered the page. It was John Bridges.

"Crumbly got his call, but it wasn't from Gray," John said. "He was all shaken up, eyes as big as saucers."

"Did he say anything?" I asked.

"Sort of. And I'm afraid it could be important," John said. "He mumbled something about it being necessary to step up the acquisition date. I don't think I was supposed to hear that but it was like he couldn't help saying it. He kind of stared straight ahead as he mumbled."

"Hmmm," I said, not knowing what to say but thinking that a doctor noise might sound reassuring in the face of what could be a bad prognosis. Clearly, someone had just informed Crumbly about what happened to Gray. But they also said something else important and it sure would have been helpful to know what, exactly. It dealt with Caruthers moving faster at this critical point that could mean that we would be out maneuvered and possibly by only a matter of days.

About that same moment, I glanced toward the main aisle and saw the man in the suit standing impatiently next to a cardboard cutout of a woman with shapely legs wearing pantyhose. Maybe that's why he's so uncomfortable looking, I thought. Maybe he's either wearing pantyhose and finds them uncomfortable or he's not wearing them but wants to, or he wants to look at the cardboard woman and is afraid to. Any way you cut it, I figured, this guy, whoever he is, is a pain and I've got to deal with him because he's waiting for me, even though I'm not wearing pantyhose. Maybe if I told him that right away, he would go somewhere else. That just might work, I told myself after hanging up with John Bridges. I think if some guy walked up to me and announced that he was not wearing pantyhose, I would get the hell away from there as quickly as possible. Which is what I wanted this guy, whoever he was, to do. I had had enough unusual nonsense for a while. All I wanted to do was run a store. No, a company of stores.

As I took a couple of steps toward the tall, lanky man standing on the aisle, I thought about what we really wanted to know about what Crumbly had been told and I decided that I should be cordial with this buzzard faced looking guy and try to find out what he knew. Chances were excellent that Gray had complained about me to his superiors and I thought that maybe there was some sort of chance that I could stall for time by appearing to be nice and helpful. There were no odds anywhere against this bird being Caruthers.

With all that in mind, I put on my best smile and thrust a hand forward. "Mick Manage," I said. "Welcome to Kerplopski's."

"Burke Hester," he responded with his own brittle beaked bird version of a smile. "Regional Vice President, Caruthers," he said.

"Glad to meet you, Burt," I said and blundered.

"Burke," he corrected, thrusting his beak forward into my space. I thought I saw a bit of worm on his lip. Maybe it was a bump.

"Burke," I said, correctly, but avoiding the really hard k that propelled a little moisture with it when it came from him. "It's really good to see that Caruthers can react so decisively and promptly."

"We try hard," Hester said.

He took what I said as a compliment, as I had intended him to. But what I had been thinking was more along the line of one grubby bastard after another. And I really had not expected them to have someone in Gray's place literally overnight.

"I've been handling things for Caruthers in Capital City," Hester explained. "I got a call early this morning that I needed to come down here."

"Well, it was handy that you were that close," I said, trying to appear happy to see him. "I know you want to go up to the office and talk, but let me show you a little of the store on the way," I said.

I made a real meet and greet of the walking tour. Our people were very obliging, kind of practiced, by now, in the art of fake happiness and laid it on thick when I introduced them to Hester. He seemed pleased by it all and kind of relaxed and seemed to enjoy the attention. I think we made a good impression that would be very helpful when the time came for me to start tapping him for information.

At least half an hour passed before we reached the outer office area. Approaching the office meant walking through our furniture department.

"Now, I realize that Caruthers doesn't carry furniture," I said, twisting the appearance of cooperation into an acrobatic act, "and Kerplopski associates will be most willing to try new uses for the space, but you might want to consider the volume we do in this market on home furnishings, even big ticket items like furniture," I said. I felt like a damn circus performer. I wondered if circus animals regarded their "trainers" as their pet animals. Then I wondered if an organ grinder's monkey thinks of the organ grinder as his pet performer. After all, it's the monkey who takes the money.

I have noticed that my mind can take some unusual directions. But I was soon brought back to the present by a means that even my mind could never have conceived.

"Sugar Lamb," I heard. It was spoken a little too loudly. In fact, that it was spoken at all should have been an embarrassment for someone and that someone, I was about to discover, was me.

"Sugar Lamb," I heard again. I turned in the direction I thought it was coming from. Apparently, I was wrong. "Sugar Lamb," I heard yet again.

By that time, everyone in the vicinity had begun to look around and the general consensus seemed to indicate a specific direction. I looked that way and saw her coming.

"Sugar Lamb," she said again in a really big voice when she realized that she had my attention and that I saw her. "I've been looking all over this store for you," the woman said.

As I looked in horror, an elderly woman, somewhat stooped and walking with the aid of a cane, approached as fast as her old bones could move. It was both too fast and way too slow. It was too fast in that she was making progress and too slow in that it would take longer to get this over with, whatever was about to happen.

The woman's stout body was covered in an old-fashioned gingham dress the likes of which I had not seen in many years and then only in the country—way out in the country. Usually, when country ladies came to the big city to shop, they put on some sort of nicer print dress overlaid with all sorts of finery. This woman had the finery on top of a gingham dress and even included on of those awful animal things on her shoulders, one of those fur pieces that used to make me cringe when I saw them, the poor fox or whatever, tail, legs and head and body and all chasing itself around the woman's shoulders. And she had on old fashioned ear bobs of a sort that would never have been called earrings at the time they were sold forty years ago. An enormous string of beads emerged from under the animal pelt around her neck. You couldn't find this stuff in a second hand shop anymore. And she topped it with an old fashioned hat that would have once been the envy of every other old lady in Sunday school. And beneath it, she had blue hair. I didn't know they even made hair rinse like that anymore. She probably had bottles of it in her antique dresser drawers.

"You don't remember me, do you Sugar," the old woman said has she drew near.

I stared. I guess my mouth was hanging open but I couldn't help it. The woman was wearing enough makeup to paint a barn. As a matter of fact, I wondered if that's where it came from. And a red barn at that. She had on enough rouge and red lipstick to brake a train. I recall having seen that kind of makeup before when I was a child, living in the country. There was a time back in the fifties when all that stuff was worn regularly by regular women.

"Just look at little Mickey all grown up," the woman said very loudly.

Little Mickey? I thought. I had not heard Mickey in more years than the mouse had keteers and I didn't want to hear it then.

"I can see you don't remember me. I used to be your neighbor down the road apiece when you were growing up. My, my, my, how long has it been? You're all growed up to be an important man now in a great big store. I was just telling Francy Mae not two days ago that as soon as I got to Sunbelt City I was going to look you up and go back and tell everybody all about seeing you, and now here I am."

Everyone was staring in disbelief, especially me. The woman did not seem aware that she was causing a scene. But she was right about one thing. I didn't remember her at all.

I glanced at Hester. If he was a bird of prey, he had not yet decided whether the creature he was eyeing was edible. I think he actually felt sorry for me, if that was possible. Or maybe it was my imagination.

Somewhat stiffly, I told the woman that I was, in fact very busy, but, in order to defuse the scene that had developed, I invited her into my office "for just a moment" to catch up on old times. Why did I feel like a lying schoolboy? I didn't remember the woman at all. I didn't even believe that I was old enough to have remembered somebody as old as her. I hardly even felt that we were from the same planet let alone the same old neighborhood.

Holding the door of my office open, I indicated that the old lady should toddle in first. I followed and turned to close the door, partly fearing to be alone with her but more fearing that people would linger outside trying to hear God knows what. I thought about telling her that she had the wrong store, that she wanted the manager of a store at the other end of the mall.

The door closed and I turned around to face an even bigger shock. The woman was standing there holding her hand out to be shaken exactly like a man would do. In fact, this was a man.

"Bill Watson," the woman-man said. "Coleman Harris sent me," he said, handing me a business card: Sherlock and Associates.

I'm glad he mentioned my lawyer's name, otherwise I don't think I would have tolerated any of this. I had already thrown one private dick out of my office and could happily accommodate another in similar fashion even if she was eighty something and could barely walk. Instead, I somehow, despite all the shockwaves, indicated that he/she should have a seat. I got behind the safety of my desk. What else was going to happen?

"Coleman gave us a rundown on your situation," Mr. and Mrs. Watson said. A sort of mildly husky voice softened to a whisper came from the lipsticked lips moving across from me. "We thought you ought to have these."

The detective opened her shopping bag and he removed four manila envelopes and placed them on my desk. I hesitated to touch them. The dick opened one and handed me the contents, a cell phone and a piece of paper with instructions and numbers.

"There's a phone here for you, Mr. Pirkle, Ms. Palmer and Mr. Bridges," the detective said. "Another of our operatives is delivering one this morning to Mr. Kerplopski in Coast Town."

I was beginning to understand, but there was a quick explanation. "We realized that you needed some secure means of communication. Just, whatever you do, don't say the telephone numbers out loud and be careful about listening devices. I think Coleman talked to you about that. The phones are secure but your voice is vulnerable. Sometimes a whole lot is learned from one side of a conversation," I was cautioned.

There was also advice to stay in touch periodically with Coleman, always by the telephone I had been given. And I was told that detectives working for Coleman were looking into various aspects of the situation and would be in touch with me from time to time.

The whole thing was a little too cops and robbers for me. But I was grateful for the help and tried to let him/her know. Still the getup was a little much.

"Isn't all this," I gestured, "going to a lot of unnecessary trouble just to deliver telephones to me?" I asked. I wondered if I would be billed for the time it took to apply all that face paint. Even so, I hoped that he wasn't so accustomed to it that it had become second nature.

He laughed a man's laugh. It was reassuring. "I just dropped in on my way to a day trip on a bus with a bunch of old ladies," he said. Now, I wasn't so reassured. "It'll be a two-fer," he said, as if that made everything okay. And maybe it did.

"One person on that bus of old ladies may not be an old lady," he said, "two, if you count me. But there is a guy that we think is dressing up like an old lady and going to old lady events like this bus trip trying to hear about who has money. Then he and his buddies pull a confidence scam on the old broads and steal from them."

"Isn't that a job for the police?" I said. I guess you could say I was skeptical.

"Insurance companies want this guy," my dick said. "And where there's a bounty, there's a way."

I guess I'm glad I asked, but I was still uncomfortable despite the fact that it was none of my business. I wondered if, at the end of a long day on a bus, if whiskers might be long enough to poke through all the makeup.

"And on the same bus," my guy/gal said, "there will be another old lady who really is an old lady but who we think is trying to commit insurance fraud while suing her doctor at the same time. The doc operated on her hand and she's claiming that she hasn't been able to use it much since. But we think she can. And if I can catch her knitting, or even talking about it, like I think I can, then we'll bag her, too. We'll be doing our part to reduce medical costs," the actor/actress said with obvious satisfaction. It's good for dicks to be enthusiastic about their work, but it can be a little scary sometimes.

I showed the dickette to the door. For the benefit of people in the outer office who hung around waiting for more, I did a little acting of my own. I thanked the old lady for updating me on neighbors from my childhood and kind of laid it on a little thick. But if this woman was real, so were all the neighbors I suddenly named that she knew all about. And then, ready to leave, she reached out and pinched my cheek, tugging a little in the manner of old women who embarrass the hell out of little boys. I thought that was overdoing it a bit.

I also thought that Hester would be in the audience we were playing to but he wasn't in sight. It was so much the better, actually, because I seized the opportunity to talk to Jackie and Pirkle. We huddled in my office and I gave them a rundown of the situation about the telephones. And I asked Jackie to take one to John Bridges as soon as she could get over to the other store.

When our little meeting ending, I thought about Hester. Odd duck, that bird. Just as I was thinking about having to deal with him that day, my new cell phone rang. It was Herb calling from his new cell phone. It reminded me of kids playing with walkie-talkies. But this was no lemonade stand we were talking about.

"Did you know there's evidence of criminal activity in the documents you sent?" Herb asked.

For a moment, I was speechless. News like that is something on the order of somebody calling to say your wallet's been found when you only had a funny feeling before that it might be missing.

"I can't say that I'm surprised," I said. Then I told him about the theft of the laptop computer and what had gone on the night before with Gray, and then this new guy, Hester, showing up this morning. "Oh, by the way," I said after all the other news, "John told me that the Caruthers guy at his store slipped and mentioned that Caruthers may be looking to speed up the purchase."

This time it was Herb's turn to be speechless. He was computing more stuff than I realized.

"We suspected that that computer had something on it that they didn't want to be known, and from the way Gray was acting, we thought it must be something pretty big and pretty bad," I said. "So Pirkle and the new guy I hired from Caruthers have been going through our copy of the documents for the past three hours, looking for something like it sounds like you found."

"Good," Herb muttered. He sounded distracted. "Keep looking."

"What kind of crime are we talking about?" I asked.

"Price fixing," he said, "and conspiracy, of course. You can't have price fixing without also having a conspiracy."

"Hmmm," I said. There was the doctor again.

"But we think that there might be something else," Herb said. He still sounded distracted. Then he was silent again.

I was beginning to wonder if the doctor needed to hmmm one more time. If three's the charm, I thought, then maybe it would also be the best prognosis.

"It would be good if that stolen computer doesn't turn up real soon," Herb finally said, almost as if he were talking to himself. Maybe it was the cell phone connection.

"How so?" I asked.

"Because as long as it's missing, Caruthers is worried." Herb said. "They're clearly off their game and they know that their game may even be in jeopardy."

"Right now, there's not much to worry about as far as the computer being found," I said. "Aside from the guy to stole it, the only other suspect is a tree."

Herb didn't even respond to that. But it set my mind off, or rather, up. Without real thought or elaboration, it flashed through my head that if Caruthers were doing some price fixing, it might be part of a more complex web—tree, if you will—of illegal activities.

"My staff is going to work through the night on this if they have to examine all the documents and see what else they can find," Herb said but I heard it almost as if it were an echo of his thought instead of real speech. More than hearing words, I was listening to an odd quietness. Later that night, I would reach the same point and for the same reason, but I simply had not had time to think myself to that spot yet. And at that moment, there were more immediate intrusions.

First, I ducked into Pirkle's office, where he and Todd were still going through documents from Todd's old computer. It was quiet as a library in there and the way I burst into the room was like the mere action of entering the scene was loud. But I spoke in a whisper.

"I just got word that there is evidence of price fixing and conspiracy somewhere in some of those documents," I said, maybe a little excitedly but in hushed tones. "If that's there, there's more of something else, too," I said. "My guess is that one thing grows from another or connects to other things so that if you can find one thing, others should become evident. We need to find this stuff," I said but slipped quietly back into the hallway. It was time for another challenge.

Evidently, Hester was not going to be it at the moment. No one had seen him in a while. I got word that he had poked around the store, even talked to a few people, but had not been seen at least in the last half-hour. That could be an opportunity and I retreated to my office and began pouring over the typescript of my notes on talking with Gray yesterday.

A certain perspective became evident from the observations I made while talking to Gray. It was more of a tone, and it didn't sound good. Caruthers saw itself as some sort of superior company, no, more than a company, an entity that was somehow imbued with specialness that made it acceptable for them to dominate everything they came in contact with, twisting everyone they encountered into servants of their will. It was disgusting, it was highhanded, it was condescending, it was offensive but it wasn't illegal.

Caruthers apparently had official policies to match. That is, their extensive written operating procedures matched their odious attitude. There was a rule governing every conceivable aspect of their business in excruciating detail. But the upshot of all of these rules caused people to rely on instructions instead of their own common sense, relieving them of the responsibility exercised by reasonable human beings. It's easy for ethics to go out the window at the same time under those circumstances.

About that time, in swooped Hester. I carefully, methodically and slowly stacked the Gray papers I was reading. It was almost like pushing the pea, make that insect, under Hester's beak but his vulture's eye couldn't, of course, read them. Still, it felt a little like taunting the bird even if he didn't know it.

I swear I thought I saw a little worm on his beak, but he wanted to go to lunch. I suppose that creatures like that are always hungry for something. But I got the impression that he had something on his mind and was trying to be friendly about it. Sensing a trap, I was eager to check it out.

There was no conversation about whose car to take. Hester was leading this expedition and we walked to his car parked too close to the building where customers should have been allowed to park. It was one of those little Beamers like little executives trying to pretend affluence would drive. It would be easy to say that visiting vehicles of this type once in a while made me appreciate the Morgan even more but the truth is quite different: I could not appreciate the Morgan more anyway and without the temporary tribulation. Does a king need to visit a peasant's hovel in order to appreciate his castle? The only problem with the Morgan was that I always felt superior and it was probably some sort of sin to feel that way, but it was a sin that would have to wait to be addressed—hopefully in another lifetime.

So there we were in this little Beamer heading out of the parking lot, presumably in search of road kill. I could not have been less happy, but the fascination kept me interested. Where and what the trap would be had me so alert that nothing else much mattered.

Hester didn't ask directions. That really surprised me. While he was out of sight much of the morning, he must have been circling the city.

We headed downtown on the freeway, he exited smoothly and took a route that twisted, street by street, up the only real hillside in the whole Sunbelt City area. I knew then where we were going. He had found one of the foremost tourist restaurants.

Sure enough, that's where he landed. Sunbelt Cuisine was soul food meets South Florida. Whereas Tex revised cooking methods and improved the less healthy aspects of Mex interpreted for gringos, this restaurant garnished turnip greens with orange slices, grated a little coconut into the cornbread and called it soul with sun. I called it something else.

Hester ordered sweet tea. I ordered unsweetened tea. That was okay for me. I don't think I would have ever willingly tried the signature cocktail, basically a screwdriver with a slice of tomato. Actually, I thought about ordering one and pulling the tomato off and flinging it at the waiter, demanding that it be fried. I wouldn't have really done that to the waiter. The real question was why they did what they did to the food and their customers.

We were seated outside under a canopy, another signature of this place. To have so many signatures, they really didn't write very well. But it was a tourist destination and Hester claimed to be captivated with the view.

The hillside overlooked the place where two rivers joined. Geographers called it confluence; drivers called it congestion. Antiquated bridges, badly in need of modern replacement, permitted a tortuous traffic flow among old parts of the city.

In an earlier time, Sunbelt City, then called Southern City, grew up as the natural place for traders and cotton planters to assemble, where the rivers joined economic forces on the way to the Gulf. Riverboats were loaded with bales of cotton and slaves and commerce swarmed. Had we been on the hillside looking at all of that, it might have been called picturesque but hardly a beautiful or inspiring sight worthy of tourism. For that, to my thinking, you would have to go back to the days prior to General Andrew Jackson, prior to Spanish tourist excursions, even, to the time when tiny wisps of smoke could be seen rising from Indian lodges—not casinos—and when mostly just trees, lots and lots of trees were parted by placid rivers disturbed only by a few men looking merely to feed their families. Archeologists are yet to unearth any evidence of real estate agents among Indians. They did not slide open the glass doors of their timeshare condos and sit on their balconies thinking about their investments. But I wondered if they had time to really appreciate the simple beauty of nature that they must have witnessed.

I glanced at Hester. No beauty there either. He seemed more sure of himself than Gray had and more willing to be open to at least examine things. After all, I told myself, he had enough imagination to go out on his own and at least find the tourist spots in Sunbelt City and enough pluck to take me somewhere in my own town. And he had obviously used some of the time that morning while I was busy to go out and locate the competition and the major retail centers in town and be able to discuss them intelligently. This was not Gray and I decided to give him enough room to take his shot first, to see where he aimed and what direction he was coming from.

He started with bullshit. He babbled about how well developed Kerplopski's was in the Sunbelt City market and how well I seemed to be moving the company forward in our area of the state, how much in control of things I seemed to be. When he said that part, I thought I saw a feather move over the corner of his eye. It must have been an eyebrow furrowing.

Then he launched into how there would be a place for me in the new management alignment. At the top, I thought, but I hastened to quiet my own mind and hear him out. That turns out to have been about it. He commenced a riff on variations on the theme, how someone of my caliber would be needed in the area, how Caruthers was not about to let competent management run away, about how clear it was to everyone in his company that things would go better for everyone if I were left to run things there.

It was a lavish suck up and of course I didn't buy any of it. As a matter of fact, it revealed just how short a leash he was on, like a mascot the team fears would fly into no telling what direction were it not for the wire attached to its leg. The spiel smacked of plans hatched with others to butter me up long enough to let them snatch the meal.

Then, he turned in the direction of my biography, trying to make it appear that it was a natural consequence of having complimented me so elaborately. It was like he was saying, you came here and were successful, so what did you do before you came here?

I was okay with the professional part of that. Where a person works is part of the public record and there is nothing wrong with discussing it. But then he mentioned that old lady who came to see me that morning.

"I felt for you," Hester said. That was about the only believable thing he said the whole time. "I'd hate to have that happen to me," he said. But then he tried to swing around using the old lady as a base, to hit in the direction of my personal life.

Hester would say a little bit and pause, waiting for me to say something, to fill in the gap. And when I was silent, Hester would say a little more and pause again, still waiting for me to flesh out his questions with some answers.

When Hester talked about his wife and kids and paused, waiting for me to respond with something about my own life, instead, I talked about his wife and kids, too, as if I knew that they were the most wonderful wife and kids I had never met. I couldn't tell whether he was annoyed by that or shocked or angry.

I couldn't understand the fascination with my personal life. Except that it was clearly established that I was not married, so far as I knew, they knew nothing. But so what?

Much later, I think I discovered the answer. The owners of Caruthers, I ultimately discovered, were religious fundamentalists who could not countenance deviation from their version of morality. Every single management person in the entire Caruthers organization was a white male, married with children. And not a one of them owned a Morgan. But I suspect that a few of them had girlfriends or boyfriends. Wouldn't knowing that just roast their chestnuts on an open fire?

Well, I figured, I gave Hester a chance and he didn't come through with anything helpful on his own. I would have to prod a little.

"What would you say are some of Caruthers more successful ideas or programs that other retailers might not have?" I asked.

"Collateral partners," Hester responded instantly.

A bell went off. Where had I heard that term "collateral" before and very recently? Crawley used it. Only his use was "collateral potential." This partner thing sounded suspiciously close.

"Collateral partners?" I repeated.

"Take what we were talking about right here in Sunbelt City. You have all these close ties to the community and you know what's going on and the people involved in those things. What we do is ask each manager in each market to develop some of what we call 'collateral partners' who are organizations, usually nonprofit organizations or for profit companies who join with us to assist designated nonprofits in some way."

This sounded awfully high-minded and better than anything I had yet heard about Caruthers. It sounded like really solid charitableness and I told Hester so.

He liked that. So he talked some more about it. I liked that.

"It helps Caruthers, too," he said. "We can't forget that we have a business to run and the object of everything is to help that business."

"How do these collateral partners help business?" I asked.

"Two ways, two levels," Hester said. "Where money comes in, cash, you know, donated in small amounts. Little donations left at the store add up. And when it's all put together, Caruthers gets to make a big contribution to some nonprofits with money given to us, but Caruthers gets the tax break."

Holy corruption, Batman, to the nearest cave and put your suit on quick, this guy's a public menace and he's talking all about it. Of course, I couldn't say that, but I sat up straight. I suspect my eyes got big, too. I looked at Hester and he was staring with half closed eyes at the river. It reminded me that I didn't want to seem over eager, so I averted my eyes to the river, slumped a little and turned my face to the river, also.

"And how do these 'collateral partners' help the local stores?" I asked as nonchalantly as I could despite the fact that my heart was beating a little rapidly. Maybe it was the elevation. I wasn't used to the hill.

"Different ways," Hester said, "depending on who the partners are and what nonprofits are being used. In some cases it's just publicity, then again, you might get a building built that the store can use somehow. I have known of where the partner provided cash to do something that didn't take as much as the partner provided and the store got that outright. It's pretty slick when that happens," he said and parted his beak in what passed for a smile.

I wondered if most species of vultures had nostril hairs. The one I was looking at did. But I reminded myself to act like none of this mattered.

"A lot of times, though, it's just a matter of picking up a little free work around the store," Hester said.

"Free work?" That sounded interesting, too.

"Yeah," he said. "Like the partner's employees doing things like unloading trucks or gift wrapping while they think they're benefiting the nonprofit."

"Oh, sure," I said, as if I would have ever thought of that.

The waiter came by, just then. I think he had given us a little extra time because Hester had not touched his greens or the orange slice garnish. I could understand that, but it helped by giving us extra time by keeping the waiter away. Naturally, he had devoured the other white meat. Hesitantly, the waiter lifted away our plates that had been made to look like armadillo hide. I thought that was a little disgusting.

But when the waiter inquired about dessert, I had to chime in. Normally, I wouldn't have touched it, but Hester was talking and I didn't want him to stop just yet.

"Their cobbler is world famous," I said. I had never heard of it before, but I noticed it on the menu and figured that Hester would go for it. I went for the peach and strictly avoided their specialty key lime cobbler.

He did. It was a little like shooting fish in a barrel. Or, in this case, like fishing in the sky. Throw up some bait and watch the grisly bird swoop down to grab it. Of course, he wouldn't realize there was a hook until much later. This was going to take some figuring out on our part.

"That's a clever way to get work done off the clock," I said and immediately regretted it. I couldn't believe I had slipped up and been that direct. I also couldn't believe Hester's reply.

"We don't do much off the clock with our own people," he said. "Mostly, it's the partners."

Little or much, it was still some and having hourly wage earners ever work without pay is not only wrong, the federal government thinks it's wrong and fines mightily for it. The admission was startling. I wish I had a wire, then again, we had documents.

"How do you keep up with it?" I asked.

"The regional vice presidents work the programs with the individual store managers. It varies a lot by location," Hester said. "You're situated just perfectly here in Sunbelt City for a partner program.

"Sounds interesting," I said as the waiter delivered peach cobbler with a big scoop of ice-cream.

"There are lots of other programs at Caruthers that are unique," Hester said. "Things that are productive for us by way of other people. Things like internships, cottage industry manufacturing, a management training program, a high schooler development program. There are lots of things. You'll be impressed Mick, just as Caruthers is impressed with you."

I looked into my dessert bowl and thought I saw a turd. I was sure I heard one. I poked at whatever was in the bowl and got a little juice sprayed on my hand. It felt like it did when I was a kid and I picked up a frog that promptly peed on me.

"This was good," I said, "but it's awfully sweet and I'm afraid I just can finish it."

"Yes, good," Hester said with the sound of considerable satisfaction. I looked at his bowl and it was already empty. He should have eaten the greens. He pushed back from the table and looked again at the river but it was easy to see that his mind was on his stomach and he was content.

On the way back to the store, he babbled about Sunbelt City and me and what great things that were going to happen. I let him rattle without pressing any questions. He had already given me lots to think about and my mind was racing over all of it. Only one thing remained and it was simply a matter of curiosity.

"What's going to happen to Gray?" I asked.

"He took early retirement," Hester said.

That was quick, I thought. They cut losses in a hurry and moved on. And they hadn't stood by him for a moment. Then again, the conversation was not entirely over.

Instead of parking in the parking lot, when we arrived at the store, Hester pulled his little Beamer up to the curb where Gray had kicked the police cruiser the night before.

"I've got to drive back to Neighboring State for a meeting tomorrow morning," Hester said. "I don't know exactly when I'll be back and next time it could be someone else."

That comment made a lie of everything he had been saying about our store and what great things were going to happen with Caruthers and Kerplopski's and me and Sunbelt City all together. I knew it when he said it, but it was interesting to hear him poof it all into meaninglessness himself.

"By the way," Hester asked, "what did you tell your associates about Gray?"

"The truth," I said.

Feathers on the bridge of Hester's beak stood on end. His eyes narrowed into slits.

"Don't you think you should have portrayed Caruthers in a better light?" Hester squawked.

"Don't you think Gray should have?" I said.

I looked at Hester's angry face. I wasn't about to do otherwise but I didn't expect anything more.

"Caruthers wants you to drop the trespass charge," Hester hissed. It was like he had a snake for a tongue.

"It's not a matter of what Caruthers wants," I said. "Trespassing is part of the truth and our people deserve to know it."

"We'll see about that," Hester said.

I got out of the Beamer, glad to be debeaming and Hester flew off. He accelerated with one of those erk sounds that gets everyone's attention. I smiled. I couldn't help it, knowing that he would have an angry flight all the way back by himself. And I smiled for another reason.

Stepping away from the entrance and to the back of the sidewalk against the wall of the store, I pulled out my secure cell phone and dialed John Bridges. He answered promptly.

"Is Crumbly still there?" I asked.

"Yes," John said.

"Are you getting anything out of him?" I asked.

"Not anymore," John said.

"What's it like with him?" I asked.

"Dancing barefoot on hot asphalt," he said.

"Get rid of him," I said. "And tell him not to come back."

"Okay," John said. I could hear brightness and relief in his voice.

It turns out, John told me later, that Crumbly was with him during this conversation and John hung up and told him to leave. Crumbly protested. Then John reminded him that Gray had been charged with trespassing. He said that at that point, Crumbly was all arms and legs getting out of his office and out the front door.

As that was happening, I was on my way back to my office. I calculated that about the time I got to the fourth floor escalator that Crumbly would be on the phone with Hester. I had a mental vision of feathers flying out of the Beamer as it headed down the freeway and a trail of bird shit coming out the exhaust pipe.

Arriving in the office, I stuck my head in Pirkle's door. He and Todd were eating club sandwiches from a platter of them cut into fourths. Excited work always creates a good appetite and the sight of real food sparked mine. But I was short on time. My chance was blown. Or flown.

"Have you ever heard of 'collateral partners or partnerships?'" I asked. Todd nodded vigorously. I gave them a rundown on what Hester had said.

Todd cleared the wedge of sandwich down his throat and told me that he had worked on some of those. But the way it had been presented to him was so benign that he thought that he was only working on some charitable project. He had no idea of the larger implications and previously had no reason to even think about them. That's the way it worked.

Then I questioned Todd about personnel practices at Caruthers. Using my conversation with Hester as a basis, I expanded my concerns to Todd and began to develop areas where there were serious deviations from lawful conduct. Lawful conduct. I don't think I had ever used that phrase before. I simply wasn't something that had ever concerned me and it had an unpleasant feeling. Then again, we were dealing with Caruthers. I suddenly wanted to take a shower. But I couldn't. I had work to do and it was down in the sewer with Caruthers nonsense.

Leaving Todd and Pirkle to their sandwiches and documents, I returned to my own office and closed the door. I really didn't want to talk to people. But Mrs. Martin appeared with messages. It surprised me how eagerly I attacked these routine matters and cleaned them up, including telephone calls, within fifteen minutes. I was left in my closed office, alone again. And still feeling dirty, so dirty that I didn't need to roll up my sleeves, but it helped my mind a little.

Applying notes from my talks with Gray to what Hester had told me and vice versa, I began to come up with things that I could spot in the documents printed from Gray's computer. I realized that we were going to make progress on this and that it might mean something.

A while later, Pirkle and Todd knocked briskly on my door. They came in excited about what they had found. We reviewed it, compared it to what I discovered, made notes about which documents contained what and by late afternoon, we believed that we had solid evidence of serious legal infractions.

Alone again, I called Herb on the special cell phone. He made notes about our findings. He said that they were onto some other things that his people had spotted in the documents and that he would pass along what I gave him and that they would continue that night to work on it.

"This is good," Herb said, "very good. But you need to talk to your former Caruthers guy, Todd, I believe. He needs to understand that if this goes the way it's looking that we will be forced to move on the information and that could mean some heat on him from his old people at Caruthers. He needs to understand all that and be okay to go forward. He may need to be interviewed by some law enforcement people and may need to testify. Make sure he's going to be okay with all this stuff."

"We've talked before about that," I said, "but given where we are now all of a sudden, I talk to him again."

Then there was a brief pause. A pause using that cell phone seemed like an eternity. I don't know why. I felt like I was a special agent wasting money. But I shook myself out of it. Special agents don't worry about wasting money, do they?

"There's one other thing," Herb finally said. "We've been working on this Caruthers stuff so hard, we haven't had time for the Crawley-Palmer issue. It may not mean anything to us, to what we're doing about Caruthers but I wonder."

I didn't answer. Not that he had asked a question but he sure as hell had reminded me of some and I didn't have answers, either. That's the way we left it when we hung up.

I sort of felt like, at that point, that anything that happened based on the documents from Gray's computer and my conversations with him and with Hester would come as the result of initiative by Herb's people who were working on these issues. That sounds like a lot, but in my mind it was a thought that came in an instant and in the next instant I set it aside. That segment was over. There was nothing more I could do with it for the time being. Still, I was restless and my skin sort of itched, as if it sensed that what had been tight, tense and fast was about to become stretched tight as a drum and beating at least ten times a second.

By that time, it was very late in the afternoon. I knew that Pirkle and Todd had been working furiously since early morning and they needed some rest but I had to talk to Todd. When he came in my office, he actually looked bright eyed and eager, like rest was the last thing on his mind.

"People get pissed off sometimes," I told him. He didn't cower when I said that. I think that maybe a few days ago he would have but maybe he has learned some strength in the last couple of days.

"Sometimes they have a right to be pissed," I said, "but a lot of times when they are, it's their own fault and they want to blame somebody else, anyway. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

"Caruthers is going to be awfully angry with me," he said. "I know, but it had to be."

"Right now they're angry most at Gray," I said. Todd had not taken time for all of this to play out in his mind. I told him about Gray taking 'early retirement' and he understood, then, that Caruthers was blaming Gray, not him, for loosing the laptop. "And the computer itself is the least of it," I said. "The minute that something comes out based on what was on that computer, Caruthers is going to be a thousand times more furious than it is now and it's going to be against Gray. At first, that is, until at some point they learn the truth."

Todd stared at me. Things were beginning to sink in beyond what had just transpired. He was beginning to see this through into the future.

"Eventually," I said, "if this plays out the way it easily could, you may need to be interviewed by some kind of law enforcement officers. You might have to testify in court. This is all going to turn out okay, before the end, but at some point it could get hot for you as far as Caruthers is concerned."

"I'll be okay with that," Todd said. "They will be getting what they deserve."

"You've had a long, intense day," I said.

"But now that we've been through all those documents, tomorrow I can get back on what you assigned me," Todd said. There was eagerness in his voice and he was sitting on the edge of his chair, like he was ready to leap up and get to work.

I realized then, that I was the one who was tired, exhausted, even, wrung out like my mother's dishcloth. I wondered what my mother would have said about the he-lady that had visited me that morning. It made me laugh and I enjoyed it. I think Todd thought I had drifted off onto some weird other plane. Maybe he was right about that, too.

As Todd was leaving my office, the cell phone rang. It was Coleman Harris and suddenly, adrenalin pumped me back to the pulsing present.

"We've got some detectives working on this situation," Coleman said. " You know that."

"Yes." I sort of gave a quick laugh. "I met with one this morning. Nice lady."

Coleman missed a fraction of a second with his response. It wouldn't have been noticeable to anyone else, not even to another lawyer, not even to Addler Crawley.

"One of them wants to talk to you tonight at eight o'clock in my secure room," Coleman said. "And bring your girlfriend, ah, Jackie, ah Palmer. Okay?"

"Okay," I said.

"I won't be there," Coleman said. "I'll be getting with them tomorrow morning."

"Okay," I said. "We'll be there."

As I disconnected the call, I looked at the clock. I was both hungry and tired. If I went straight home and left immediately, I would have time for a short nap if we didn't eat someplace too fancy. I paged Jackie and gave her my plan and asked her to call me at six-thirty to wake me up.

It was surprising how restful that brief sleep turned out to be. When Jackie called, I woke up immediately and lucidly. My customary group of paid observers followed me to Jackie's apartment and on to dinner.

For a moment, I thought about going somewhere very expensive that would pinch these dicks where it hurt, then it occurred to me that expense was no object for them. They were on somebody else's dime.

So we opted for my original plan and headed for my favorite barbecue restaurant. It was not far from Coleman's office and the food was served quickly. Individual preparation isn't required to pile some barbecue on a plate and rick up a couple of mounds of vegetables. Plain, good cooking—that's what I wanted after having been to lunch with Hester—food unadorned by anything but taste.

It didn't take long to eat, either. And afterward, we rolled on to the secure room at Coleman Harris' office.

Chapter 14

Jackie and I pulled up immediately in front of Coleman's office. At eight o'clock there was no one around except us, our retinue of dicks, the office watchman and whoever it was that we were to meet. He was a dick, too, but he was our dick, although not the one from that morning, and he turned out to be a little different than I would have imagined if I had given it any thought.

He said his name was Howell Herman. I'm not sure I believed it but I wasn't secure enough in my disbelief to call him Howie. It didn't matter, anyway. He was just another of how many? I would be glad to see all of that stuff end.

Like he was reading my mind, he claimed that he was there to get to the bottom of our difficulties, make our lives better and move on. He started this process by furrowing his brow.

I got the impression that he scrutinized everything and he acted like he didn't necessarily believe anything. I kind of thought that if he interviewed a dozen witnesses who said they saw a bank robbery, that he would want to look at the video before he was sure. Maybe that was a good thing. I think he must have been an ex-cop.

He started by telling us that he had talked to Coleman but didn't quite get it all. Some of it just didn't seem to connect; he said and wanted to hear our story from the beginning. The facts, folks, just the facts.

So I began at the beginning and gave him just the facts, although not necessarily all of them in every resplendent detail, but enough that any boilerplate PI should be able to connect the dots. As I talked, I could see how some of the dots might seem like they were from different pictures. First, Joe Palmer coming after me, then a bunch of feds looking at a beauty product, and the store going up for sale. Herb Kerplopski and Addler Crawley. All that would not seem to rest on common ground.

Howell took notes furiously. His furrowed brow reminded me of the way a brain looks with all those ridges and valleys. He asked a lot of questions, too. He was definitely paying attention.

When we brought the story all the way up to the present, we mentioned that we had been followed there. I described the vehicles and Howell picked up his phone.

"Let's check 'em out," he said. "Chances are that they change guys sometimes and we'd like to know who they are." Then he got on the phone and told someone to come out and have a look. "We could run them off, but we might be better off to leave them alone right now. We might get more in the long run if we let them keep following you. And it could also give us more witnesses to depose, if it comes to that," Howell said.

It was an impressive performance and I was beginning to feel sort of confident that we might be getting on the right track. Then a freight train roared down that same track.

"We don't really have much," Howell said. "It's a bunch of loose ends, gibberish. We've got a lot of work to do."

Howie was beginning to disappoint. And it occurred to me that maybe it was a complete waste of time being there. Why not simply go our own way without worrying about what others were doing, even if others were an army of goons commanded by an evil genius and a vengeful malefactor? I wondered if this would make a good video game, but it was too adult for that and not bloody. Only dictators, generals, presidents and children play with carnage; the rest of us are too busy making a living.

And no sooner than I lamented our situation did it change yet again. Howell reached into a brief case, pulled out a small tape recorder and set it on the table. I sat back in my chair, expecting to endure some sort of demonstration that the dick was earning his keep by showing us what someone else was actually doing.

Howie pushed a button. It got my attention because the voice was familiar. But it was still a so what moment as far as I was concerned. I listened but didn't react.

Jackie, on the other hand, leaned forward, then moved to the edge of her chair. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something but didn't.

Howie turned the tape recorder off. "Do you recognize the voice?" he asked.

"Yes," Jackie said, "but I don't know the name..."

"Addler Crawley," I said. But it was still so what as far as I was concerned.

"So that's who that is," Jackie said, apparently happy to have solved a personal mystery. "I never will forget the first time I heard that voice."

"When was that?" Howie wanted to know.

"Several months ago," Jackie said. "It was also the first time I heard Dr. Waxsizzle."

"You mean several years ago, don't you?" Howie said. The Grand Canyon appeared between his eyebrows.

"No, it was just a few months ago," Jackie said. "Joe was on the telephone talking to somebody—Dr. Waxsizzle, it turns out—and put it on speaker phone when he looked through a stack of papers for something they were talking about. Mr. Crawley talked mostly but Dr. Waxsizzle talked, too, while the speaker phone was on."

"You're sure it was Waxsizzle?" Howie asked. He appeared to be genuinely mystified.

"Yes," Jackie said. "It was definitely Dr. Waxsizzle. That was the whole point of the conversation, stuff about Dr. Waxsizzle's products."

"A few months ago?" Howie asked. He was a little insistent about it.

"Yes," Jackie said, again. "We separated not long after that."

The furrows in Howie's face got even deeper, if that was possible. He reached into his briefcase again and pulled out a file. After leafing through it for a moment, he stared intently at a particular page.

"You're certain it was Dr. Waxsizzle?" Howie asked, yet again.

"Yes," Jackie said.

"You're absolutely certain?" Howie pressed. He had to have been a cop. Must have gone out on disability with facial crevices.

"Well, I didn't see him because it was on the telephone, but Joe addressed him as 'Dr. Waxsizzle' and so did Mr. Crawley," Jackie said, "and I have no doubt whatsoever about when all this happened."

"That's interesting, because," Howie said, playing out the information exactly like a cop would have done, "a coroner in Mid-Atlantic State says that Waxsizzle died about two years ago."

Now, I was on the edge of my chair and no longer remotely bored. Howie flashed a piece of paper and plopped it on the table. It was a death certificate and the name on it was Waxsizzle. How many of them could there be?

"We'll have to check this out very carefully," Howie said and stopped. He looked at each of us without saying anything. It was as if he was giving us a chance to add something pertinent but what could we say? He was also probably giving Jackie a chance to change her story about the timeline. But she heard what she heard when she heard it. It was a little like an archeologist turning up an inconvenient fossil. There it was but how do you explain it?

"Moving on," Howie said when he gave up on us adding anything more to the question he unexpectedly raised. "I want to play a little segment of Crawley talking and see what you may know about it." He turned the tape recorder on again and adjusted it, started it, backed and forwarded it and finally let it play. "There," he said, finally, as he stopped the recorder, backed it up and played something again. "Do you year that phrase, 'collateral potential?' Any idea what it means?"

It was a good question, one I had also asked, and I tried to explain it to Howie. He seemed terribly interested in the fact that I had wondered about it and directly asked Crawley for an explanation. Howie made notes furiously as I talked. It didn't seem like an issue that a dick would ordinarily pay any attention to and I was impressed that he had picked up on it.

"He uses that phrase a lot," Howie said.

Jackie picked up on the theme and told Howie about how Joe conducted his businesses, which seemed to fit the "collateral potential" concept. We speculated to him about Joe possibly running untaxed cigarettes out of the mid-Atlantic agricultural states. That got his attention and he made notes furiously again.

Then I told him that that very day, I had encountered the term "collateral partners." Every line in Howie's face disappeared instantly. He suddenly looked very Irish. There was more rapid note taking. When he looked up from his pad, he gradually began to furrow. Thinking about work will do that to a person.

"Well," Howie finally said. He seemed suddenly relieved, kind of like a kid who just completed a math test he had been dreading. "We may have a lot of work to do, but at least we know where to find the work."

It was my turn to furrow, but not for long. The cell phone rang. It was Herb. At one point, he asked again about Todd's cooperation and willingness to confront trouble over what was on the laptop. "He understands," I said, "and he'll do what he has to and be okay with it." But mostly, I listened. There wasn't much need to say anything until the end, and then only, "we'll be there."

No sooner than I said those words than Howie jumped on, just like a cop. Once the outcome is determined, all else be damned and don't bother to listen to anything because it only gets in the way of the decided conclusion. And forget being sensitive enough to understand when things change.

"I think it would be helpful if you could have an accidentally on purpose meeting with this Carlos Selassie," Howie said.

"It's not likely," I said. "That was Herb on the phone. Jackie and I have to fly to Coast Town tomorrow morning and after that, we will likely be in Capital City for a few days."

I could see behind Jackie's immediately widened eyes. She was thinking about all the packing of all the outfits she would have to do on extremely short notice.

"Things are starting to happen very quickly," I said for Howie's benefit. "And the pace is only going to increase day by day. We appreciate everything you are doing but there simply isn't much time left to do it in."

"I can see that we will need to get our people on this intensely and immediately," Howie said. "Time can be everything and we have a lot to do."

"Tell me something," I said. "Just out of curiosity, how did it turn out today for your man who stopped by my office dressed up like a woman?"

Howie's face lit up. "It turned out great," he said, "and a little surprising. He may have told you he was after another man dressed up like a woman, a scam artist. Well, he got close enough to him on the bus to record him convincing a real little old lady to give him access to her checking and savings accounts. When they made a rest stop, he went in the womens restroom but forgot to sit. An old lady saw shoes pointing in the wrong direction and made such a fuss about it that when the man came out of the restroom, there was a big argument and the manager of the place got involved and after a while a policeman came in. When our guy saw what was happening, he called in to our office and we called the police department that called their cop. He had to go out to the patrol car to talk and when he came back in he walked up to the suspect and pulled his wig off. It had to have been a hoot. And as far as that old lady who was faking an injury for insurance money, it was another hoot. Our guy secretly got pictures of her knitting, recorded her talking about all the craft work she does and snapped her helping another old woman with the straps to her camera bag. At one point the conversation turned to playing sports when she was a kid and the old women around her talked about what they had done and how strong they remained, even now. And our guy got an idea. He put one of those really thick Vanity Fair magazines down between the suspect and another lady who had been talking about how strong she was and our guy suggested that they arm wrestle. And damn, if they didn't do it. Our guy pulled out his camera right out in the open and took pictures just like he was a tourist, or something. Besides the pictures, there were so many credible witnesses on that bus that neither of those two stand any kind of chance in a court. They'll roll over in a minute."

Everyone laughed. Then, Howie added an observation that brought us back down. "Very unlike this situation," he said and we stopped laughing.

I stood up and looked at my watch. "I have to make a couple of phone calls while we're in this room," I said.

Howie stood up, too. "We'll make the most of what little time we have," he said and kind of tipped his head in a quick jerky motion in my direction. It was kind of like a secret society salute. Like a good soldier, he knew an order when he heard it and marched immediately.

I began punching numbers into the cell phone, Mrs. Martin first, to put her on getting plane tickets for Jackie and me for as early as possible in the morning. Plus tomorrow night at Bonnie Beach. I could see that Jackie was wondering what was going on. Next I called John Bridges and talking to him while Jackie was sitting there let her in on a little information. John and Maria would need to be ready to be in Capital City Thursday morning, if I called them. Pirkle got the same instruction except that I also told him to have Todd ready to come up also if I called.

That wasn't really much and Jackie was eager for more. On the way home, I filled her in on everything Herb said. And I had been right about what she was thinking earlier. It was about packing. But while she was packing that night, there would be something else to think about. If, as it appeared, everything about the store was about to come to a conclusion, what was going on with Joe? And somehow the whole mess seemed to be related—but how?

The next morning, I started the day early at the store, trying to handle some things before leaving town for what could prove to be a few days. But that had to end as the flight time approached. I wouldn't dare leave the Morgan in the airport parking lot, so I had my bag in the Jeep and drove it to pick up Jackie.

The Jeep was oddly comfortable that morning, boxy, heavy, secure—a padded steel cocoon from which would emerge something different. I realized as I drove, that it would be the last time I would be making the trip under what had been "normal" conditions. True, the dicks streaming behind, were not normal, but then, they represented the past that was about to end.

Jackie must have sensed all this, too, her own version of it. She was silent as we drove, but there was a peaceful expression on her face. We were not driving off into the sunset; an adventure was waiting for us and we had no idea what, exactly was ahead. To be serene under those circumstances was remarkable. I think I was more apprehensive than Jackie, and it gave me considerable comfort to see her bright, calm face, eager for whatever came next.

Desperately, I hoped that what popped up next would be the last time. The Sunbelt City airport was small compared to what you find in big cities. Jackie and I emerged from the one and only concourse into a large round room and stopped at the threshold.

I was pulling her enormous piece of luggage. It was a happy shade of blue and was embossed with some sort of faint floral design—tasteful but feminine. It's sometimes shocking to me just what men are prepared to do in order to be with women.

There we stood with me grasping the handle of this rolling boutique on top of which were piled my own two small bags and another of Jackie's. We surveyed the gate signs arrayed around the outer walls of this transitional orb, looking for our exit to the future.

Rows of seating were planted all the way from each gate to the edge of the entrance to the huge room. But we were looking over the seats to the gate signs placed high above each. No sooner had we arrived and began surveying the gate signs than I sensed someone near. Looking down, I saw Addler Crawley.

"Good morning, Mick," he said. Slippery unctuousness oozed between each elongated syllable.

"Good morning," I said in return. And I said it enthusiastically, too, out of habit, until my mind took over.

Proper manners required an introduction between Crawley and Jackie, giving him an opportunity to impress. What he didn't know was that Jackie regarded him with the same kind of curiosity that fascinated people who met Richard Nixon.

While Crawley was focusing on Jackie, I took the opportunity to really look at him. It was kind of like a moment out of another moment, a phrase in parentheses set in brackets.

Crawley had what some people call a weak jaw, an angular falling forward instead of a set definiteness. I wondered if he could move it from side to side and maybe even open his mouth that way, too. It would make sense if he could, given the words that came out seemingly from all directions.

His eyes were small, dark and set behind his face so that he looked out, as from behind something—a fence, some leaves, the law, a hole in the law? Or was it just a hole? I took it as a given, a safe vantage point, that he was coiled out of sight back in that hole. Whatever it was gave him that "lean and hungry look" that Shakespeare made famous on behalf of somebody.

But what struck me as most important was an impression that went deeper than what could be directly observed. Maybe he was aggressive, but he was also mistrustful. How can someone of that nature be otherwise? And I thought I saw, on that occasion, a nervous hesitation. I wasn't sure. I needed more rest, myself, and I was keyed up at that time, so I wasn't entirely trustful of my own senses, much less of those belonging to someone like Crawley.

"Where are you two headed on a beautiful spring day?" Crawley asked.

The question posed generally instead of directed specifically to Jackie signaled that the conversation was about to shift. Whether or not it showed, I took a deep breath and steeled my nerves.

"We're going to Coast Town," I said. I had to say something.

"The beach will be nice this week," Crawley said. "You're still young enough to enjoy it."

I wondered if he was thinking of Jackie on the beach when he said that but it was probably money, judging from the direction he turned with his reply.

"Mick," Crawley said.

Flick, I thought. He flicked one of his fangs and began speaking with it. I wondered what he was doing with the other one. Scraping his palette maybe, before the next meal, which I did not intend to provide.

"You're young enough to have a good long life ahead of you. Don't waste it on less than you could have. Don't settle for a smaller part than could be yours. Don't get tied up in a situation where you're beholden to someone who demands everything from you all the time. I can put some investors together to buy a big enough stake to work and you could run the whole thing without interference."

I'll have to hand it to Crawley, he was on cue. He understood about having a large enough business to work instead of being so small it would be swamped by competitors. And he comprehended the frustration someone like me potentially faced with demanding investors. What he apparently missed was that he was completely loathed.

I wanted to walk down the beach of life freely, I thought, at the same time wanting to puke from having thought those words that way. I wanted to be able to avoid stepping on the rat snake as much as the rat.

Crawley's tongue may have flicked, but so did my foot. Off with the blood and guts of snakes and rats. Off with dung of undetermined origin. Get away from me, I thought. Instead, he scribbled something on the back of a business card.

"Take this, Mick," Crawley said, thrusting the business card at me. "My mobile telephone number is on it. You can reach me anytime whatsoever. You may hear something you don't like and I can do better. I can deliver a package you can prosper with, Mick, and wind up a rich man."

Just then, our flight was called. Gratefully, we were able to fly, as in flee, leaving Crawley standing alone. I didn't want to look back, but as we headed toward the gate, I forced myself to think about Crawley. He could not have been in the gate area without a boarding pass that meant that he had a ticket to somewhere. But where? Clearly, it wasn't Coast Town. I remembered him scribbling his cell number on the back of a business card. While he was doing that, I thought I vaguely took note of a briefcase that he set at his feet as he wrote on the card. If there was no other luggage, it would indicate that he would be on a commercial airliner with baggage checked at the ticket counter. The thing was, that from Sunbelt City, airliners only flew directly to big hubs in Big Regional City, Way West or Mid-Atlantic. And from there, a person could fly anywhere, so there was no telling where he might be going. Mid-Atlantic stuck in my mind and I couldn't help but wonder.

No matter, Jackie and I were off. A quiet feeling of deep satisfaction mixed with anticipation overtook us with Crawley left on the ground below and a new beginning ahead of us.

Quiet may have been the operative word for the flight. It was one of those really small shuttle planes—really small. And we didn't know the four other passengers, except that we knew they were not among the dicks who had been haunting us. Still, not knowing who people were, made for a lack of conversation; but that was okay. We had our thoughts and from time to time, we exchanged smiles and squeezed hands.

The helicopter was waiting for us when the plane landed. It took us directly to a dock where we boarded Herb's yacht. But Herb was tied up in a meeting.

So there we were, set for a day of yachting—I wanted to think that I could get used to the idea—but some things weren't quite right. For one thing, we were overdressed for the occasion. I spoke to the steward and he showed us to a stateroom. I immediately attended the lavatory, as I told myself someone rich might say, and it only took a moment.

When I came out, Jackie had already stripped to her bra and panties and was bending over her suitcase. Light from a porthole gushed against expansively exposed breasts straining with gravity against the flimsy fabric of her thin bra. I rushed to the porthole cover and slammed it shut. Jackie looked up with a start.

"Someone might see," I said. Maybe I said it a little sheepishly; maybe it was because I wanted to see; maybe it was because I wanted to see even more; but whatever the reason, Jackie looked at me quizzically, as if thinking who the hell would be out on the water to be able to see.

I didn't say anything. I just gulped and unfastened my belt. And I slowly changed into khakis while watching Jackie locate what women call Capri pants and a nice knit top that kept me keyed up by revealing just a little cleavage.

Before then, that morning, I had so concentrated on the store situation and all the odd parts of it, that I had failed to think about all the wonderful parts of the other situation I was in and was so grateful for. Under the circumstances, I couldn't pursue a little special time with Jackie at that moment. But it gave me something to look forward to at the end of the day and periodically, I looked at Jackie and felt a reminder of it all day.

If I couldn't have Jackie right then, I figured, surely I could have some food. I spoke to the steward again, and sure enough, that wish could be fulfilled. Soon, we were eating shrimp and eggs under a canopy on deck. And there were mimosas to wash it down. We passed on Bloody Maries.

About the time we were finishing brunch, Herb emerged from an office cabin with two men in suits—way overdressed for the yacht, but then they weren't staying. Herb introduced them, some sort of accountants or lawyers or somebody from Herb's world. They each lugged huge briefcases with them as they deboarded. Deboarded? Left the yacht.

And as soon as the two men were gone, we weighed anchor and shoved off. If the two men with tons of papers had shoved off into the water, I wondered what the fish would think of all the paper. They would probably try to eat it only to find it was bulk without nutrition. So why bother? All the fish wanted to do was eat and swim and make baby fish once in a while. But human beings had to have lots of paper in addition to the food and sex.

Herb was expansive. As we moved toward open water, we sat on deck and talked. Maybe he was glad to be away from guys with papers for a while. He seemed relaxed and content. It made talking easy. Soon after we began talking, Jackie excused herself and returned moments later with guess what—paper. She took lots of notes that, I must admit, later became terribly useful.

Herb asked a lot of questions about how I intended to organize the company with who doing what and what changes would be required and who in key positions might be expected to stay and who might leave and with what consequences. I could see he had been through a lot of stuff, good and bad, conducting his own businesses. And he had the papers to prove it.

As it turns out, the conversation was more purposeful, for a number of reasons, than I realized at the moment. Mine was merely a warm-up act. Before the end of the day, I would begin to realize how everything fit together.

**Chapter 15**

Herb had the real news. As we reached some visibly unmarked spot on the surface of the ocean only known to the captain and understood, I hoped, by Herb, the yacht slowed, maybe even stopped. A change in Herb's demeanor occurred about the same time.

Becoming noticeably more serious, Herb leaned forward and took the deck. If it were most anywhere else it would be called the floor, but I tried to pay a properly nautical respect to our surroundings. If the yacht were Congress, Herb might be said to having assumed the podium. I wondered if he was a member of the port party or the starboard party. Starboard I assumed, given that so many business people are, particularly in the southern states.

Me, I'm a port party sort. Actually, there are a lot of us like that in business and we don't get enough recognition. It's really okay to be a little port and business, too. What would the country be without business, even without good five-cent cigars and General Motors as we knew it?

Speaking of port, the steward came around inquiring about refreshments. Jackie and I asked for water with lemon. This was no time for alcohol. Herb was just about to launch his speech and nursed a bottle of water of his own.

He started by talking about the fact that we were on the edge of something really great that would change all our lives. Now there's a thought. We had been so busy—at least I had—that I had failed to take time to let the significance of what we were doing sink in. Everything had been moving so fast that the big picture had become fuzzy and I can tell you for certain, that a leader has to keep the big picture in sight. I could have kicked myself or jumped in the water or something but there are times you have to take the truth and not worry about where it came from because if you lose time worrying about it, you lose the moment you have to do what you have to do to get back on track.

Then Herb got down to details. He began by telling us that at that moment, his people were in a hotel conference room near Capital City with his cousin's people. Okay, people, let's stop right there for just a minute. That's what I wanted to say but didn't. So, I'm saying it now, for whatever benefit.

This particular time out concerns the "my people, your people" outlook. It's so overdone it may as well have been a roast in my mother's oven. And coming from Herb, especially after making such a fundamentally helpful observation of the big picture, it was simply shocking. I realize that "big picture" is a cliché, too, but it was the fact that he had just been so on target and had swung all the way down to something so common, grated as much as the concept he was abusing.

He was talking about a bunch of accountants and lawyers. Some people have a hard time thinking of them as people. And to identify with them is a stretch, if, as was the case for people like me, larger groups of less affluent people are who we think of. And that made me think and after a moment, I realized that I was being too hard on Herb. Aside from the relatively few warehouse workers required to maintain the buildings and their contents, Herb employed only a handful of people and they were mostly accountants and lawyers and those were the people he worked with everyday, aside from Benzene and the receptionist with the all-over even tan. He had to broaden his thinking to include the people I identified with and I had to broaden my thinking to include accountants and lawyers. I suddenly realized that I would be working with them more than ever and that Herb realized a void in his life and that is why he wanted to have the store, in order to have a broader group to call his people.

All of this may seem a bit touchy, but it's the kind of thing that plays in the back of my mind and this subject has bothered me for years. Now, maybe, it's off my chest. If what I was hearing was what I thought it was, I was about to pin on other problems.

Herb told us that an agreement between he and his cousin, Mr. Kerplopski could be reached as early as that very day, if not, tomorrow. Transfer of control of the company would be immediate with final financial disposition after an inventory of merchandise to be conducted within thirty days. Damn, that was fast. And we would need to be ready to fly to Capital City to sign the agreement within a day or two at most.

The really interesting part was yet to come. The sun was bearing down and our water was warming as fast as we were. Herb suggested that we go to his office. His office? We were on a yacht, remember?

So Jackie and I followed him down the deck and into a more or less open room that felt much like a porch. After a while, I figured out that there was a hidden, built-in desk which left room for a conference table so understated that it did not dominate the room or the atmosphere of relaxation. Working there was like doing business on a large verandah, complete with sea breeze.

Herb pulled out a laptop computer and set it on the table. "I want to show you something else that is going on right now, also," he said and punched up a PowerPoint presentation. "Another of our lawyers is over in Neighboring State Capital talking to lawyers from the United States Justice Department. He'll be showing them this PowerPoint."

We looked at the screen as Herb flipped past a title page with some stuffy sounding name, something like "Documents Related to Criminal Activity Associated with Caruthers, a Corporation." It may have been lawyerly, but in its own way, it was exciting.

Then there was a contents page with sub-headings that looked a little complicated. "I've got this on a CD to give you," Herb said. "You'll want to look at it in detail later, but let me give you a sample now."

He punched up a document that had bright yellow highlighting over the words, "agree that we will not fall below a mark-on of fifty-five percent above invoice price." The context was that someone at Caruthers had made an agreement with someone at a prominent statewide chain of a dozen junior apparel and accessories stores concerning the consumer selling price of a popular line of handbags that appealed to older teens and twenty-somethings.

"Do you remember the Unabomber?" Herb asked.

Now there was a question. It zoomed in from above the clouds without so much as a thunderclap to serve as a warning. Sort of like what the Unabomber did except that victims heard his thunderclap at the last moment—the last thing ever heard. What could the Unabomber possibly have to do with Caruthers? They might be a sorry outfit, but I seriously doubt that they went around murdering people.

"Do you remember how his family figured out who he was and then sent a lawyer to the FBI offering information but cutting a deal to protect the dignity of the uninvolved family and try to keep the bomb maker from being blown away in one of their famous blunderbuss standoffs?"

He may as well have put up a graphic of Ruby Ridge. Of course we remembered all of that but for the life of me I couldn't see how the Unabomber figured in all of this.

"Well," Herb said. He had a strange smile on his face. I wondered if Alfred Nobel had an expression like that when he invented gunpowder but before he figured out what unabombers would do with it.

"We're taking the opposite tact," Herb said. "We're not only not being dignified, we're telling them we want them to do something they hate to do, namely, make a press release that Caruthers is being investigated for felonies."

"They would do that?" I asked. The idea was shocking enough, but to think that Herb either came up with the idea or at least approved of it was really shocking.

"We're holding out some bait," Herb said. "For now, we're giving them this PowerPoint demonstration but the screens they see here, and the only thing on the CD we're offering at this point, contain segments pulled from the documents. Before we give over the actual documents, we want an agreement about them making a public statement. Without the whole documents, they have nothing. And right now, we know plenty enough that would help them, that would save them lots and lots of time. But they need entire documents."

"Clever," I said but didn't say more because I was still trying to think about what it all meant. Herb didn't give me time to figure it out on my own.

"There's a lot more to it in two ways," Herb said. "One of them is simply the detail involved, the magnitude of what we uncovered."

I felt the sea breeze in my open mouth.

"Take that example I just gave you," Herb said. "It refers to an invoice price that would be the basis of the price Caruthers and this other store charged customers for the goods. The other company apparently took the agreement at face value but Caruthers didn't. They went out and got a rebate off the invoice. Because of their size, they could demand something like that form the vendor, allowing them to make money by keeping the prices high through an agreement and even more money with a discount that the other store didn't know about. And the thing is that there are lots and lots of examples of that kind of thing and other things in those documents."

"How did you find all that in such a short time?" I asked. "We were reading and studying as fast as we could but there was so much to make headway against."

"We had a secret weapon, a young man fresh out of school that had begun working in our accounting department," Herb said. "He saw us pouring over stacks of paper and asked what we were doing. I didn't want anything to get out about what we were doing and didn't want to answer with anything that would clue anyone so I just said we were looking for specific things but it was like looking for needles in the haystack.

"Then he said that if we would scan the documents into a computer, we could do keyword searches. I told him that that was a great idea except that we had too little time to scan that many pages that by the time we did that, our deadline would have passed. He said he knew someone at the university over in Port City that had access to a high-speed scanner.

"I sent one of our senior people with him, and they were back in an hour and half with all those documents on a single disc. Actually, they duplicated the discs and we had eight people on computers doing keyword searches and finding stuff right and left."

"That's a hoot," I said, trying to imagine the scene.

"Everybody was on a laptop in the conference room and they were calling out information as they found it so that everyone else could know what had been discovered and use that information to look for more. We started with the tip off that you called in and went from there, fairly rapidly."

"Amazing," I said, beginning, maybe for the first time in my life, to really appreciate the significance of technology.

"It was all relational. We could see patterns emerging, and before we realized it, we were knee deep in it."

Caruthers shit, I thought. Herb didn't want to say it that way, but they were knee deep in Caruthers shit.

"So after that, while some of our people assembled the evidence, indexed it and so forth, I went in my office with a couple of senior lawyers and we discussed everything. That's when one of them hit upon the PowerPoint idea and we laid our plans."

Lawyers flashed through my mind. I've never cared for lawyer jokes, although I realize that some lawyers are jokes. And I know that some of them abuse the trust other people put in them in various ways. I knew a young woman who paid a lawyer in a divorce using the only assets she had. And of course there are lawyers who encourage litigation as opposed to settlement simply to be paid. But if you think about it, lawyers are really a civilizing influence. Better to let lawyers argue using thick books and long words than have the rest of us slinging fists and firing guns.

"But there is another wholly separate angle to this," Herb said. "It involves how crime at Caruthers can directly benefit us financially—on two levels."

I felt my eyebrows dig a trench in the direction of my nose. I thought about Howie the Wonder Dick but I was intent on what Herb was saying.

"If Caruthers can be shown to be engaged in criminal activity, their agreement with my Cousin is null and void," Herb said. "And if their agreement is no longer in force, there is no penalty to be paid for failure to complete the sale of the store to them. That's one thing. The other thing is more volatile but it could potentially bring considerable financial reward."

Herb suddenly got real intense and leaned forward. He was smiling, still, but behind the delight sparkling in his eyes, I could see wheels turning. For a moment I thought about his teeth, but the wheels captivated my attention. Herb was clearly enjoying this part of the business deal making.

"If Caruthers is put on the defensive because of criminal activity, they lose Kerplopski's and maybe they lose the confidence of customers and whatever investors they are obligated to. And maybe, just maybe, they might be so rattled and so knocked cockeyed that they can be pushed back as an expansion threat and maybe even purchased at a reasonable price."

Herb sat back with something of a grin on his face. It was sort of like a wispy smile, generated by the wheels, for sure, but I wanted to think, influenced also by the great sea breeze blowing through the cabin. In other words, with nature involved, not merely an artificial structure set up by an ordinary mortal. And if he had wanted to show his teeth, he could have.

With some decent reason to feel fairly confident, Herb suggested that we have a beer before lunch. It hit the spot, as we sat under a canopy on the deck. Lots of boiled shrimp followed.

As we ate, I noticed that a couple of small boats kept circling us in the distance, traveling slowly and in opposite directions. I mentioned this to Herb.

"They're ours," he said. "Under the circumstances, I thought it might be best to take some precautions."

Circumstances soon intruded. The steward approached with news that Herb had a phone call holding. Jackie and I waited silently. I looked at her for what seemed to be the first time that day. Serenity suited her; she seemed perfectly calm and quiet inside as well as out. And wow was she beautiful, that quiet classic kind of beauty that could be counted on to last forever. It's like her outward appearance carried the theme of her inward beauty that made it unnecessary to augment.

There was that concept again, quiet calmness. Maybe I was the only one somewhat on edge. I felt like an actor about to step on stage to begin his role. The reason I knew this was that I had done it a number of times, although many years ago. It was not fear, because preparation makes you know that you're ready to perform, but you're a bit keyed up, anyway, definitely alert, sort of extra on your toes. Maybe, too, I was thinking so deeply that it was more knowing than thinking that once all of the preliminary functions had been completed, it would be on me to carry out the performance. Of course, I wouldn't be alone. The cast was great. But there would still be a lot on me and I was feeling it.

Herb's news brought a little more tension. He had word from the lawyers talking to Justice Department lawyers that the Justice people had asked a ton of questions during the PowerPoint session. And yes, some of them involved where the documents came from and just who was involved in printing them and how they had the right to do that. And after all that, the Justice people took the CD into their office to examine during lunch, leaving Herb's lawyer outside, waiting. And that's where we were—also waiting.

An occasional shrimp made for good company during this period. There wasn't much conversation, only incidental comments and good, cold water with lots of fresh lemon. And the sea breeze, the O so wonderful sea breeze. Until after about half an hour, the steward returned to say that there was another phone call.

When he returned from this one, Herb stepped briskly and started talking immediately. He was clearly excited and justifiably so, contagiously so. Before he finished talking, Jackie and I were also excited.

"They're going to raid Caruthers," Herb said. He almost shouted.

I stood up like a jack-in-the-box. I couldn't help it, I was so excited.

"They're going to wait until five minutes after their meeting is supposed to begin tomorrow morning and federal marshals will appear with warrants. They'll take all the laptops and desktops with them and leave FBI technicians with the mainframe."

I was absolutely amazed. Pictures ran through my mind like video of marshals surrounding the corporate office, breaking in on the big meeting and hauling off the equipment. Herb must have read my mind.

"The media will be tipped after the raid takes place," he said, "but we were told that they would have plenty of time to assemble outside to tape the removal of computers. After lunch, but well before the evening news, they will issue a short statement saying that Caruthers is under investigation for price fixing, income tax evasion, money laundering and conspiracy."

"Damn," I said. "That sounds like the big league. Felonies all over the place."

"More than enough for our purposes," Herb said.

I thought about the assortment of federal dicks that came to see me about the Beauty Bullet. All of this stuff about Caruthers was in a different league altogether. Man, when the worm turns, it can do a belly flop.

"You know the feds will want to talk to you and your former Caruthers employee," Herb said.

"We're ready," I said. "Bring 'em on."

"Tomorrow," Herb said. "They'll be here tomorrow afternoon to talk to you and some agent or other in Sunbelt City will visit your young man tomorrow, also."

"That's fast work," I said.

"And good timing," Herb said. "Tomorrow is Thursday. At some point tomorrow afternoon or evening, we'll fly to Capital City, and then, Friday morning, history will change for Kerplopski's, too.

That comment brought it all home in a very personal way. To say it was sobering would be beyond understatement.

"It's too soon for champagne," Herb said, but this certainly calls for another beer."

He disappeared for a minute and soon after he returned, the steward followed with cold brew. I've never tasted better.

And we immediately fell to talking about what exactly would happen in Capital City on Friday. I noticed that Jackie was taking notes again and occasionally adding something to the conversation, as well.

All of a sudden, Herb's eyes got big and he jumped up. "I've got to let the lawyers in Capital City know about Friday," he said. "I can't say anything about the Caruthers raid, but I can tell them that the criminal activity clause is in effect."

With that, Herb hurried off deck. Jackie and I were alone. We decided to make the most of the moment and had one of those long, lingering kisses like happen in the movies except that this was real life and I was glad to be alive.

When Herb returned to the deck, Jackie and I were no longer in each other's mouths but we were all hugged up. Herb seemed glad to see us happy and it was somehow not the least embarrassing.

"Well, that's about it as far as anything we can do today is concerned," Herb said. "We have to wait until the news hits tomorrow morning before we can make another move. By then, the attorneys in Capital City should be ready."

I get the impression that Herb was about to call it a day on the water and head for home, but it turns out that there was one other situation. The steward came with some odd news.

"Benzene contacted us. She said that an investigator from Coleman Harris' office is on shore with some sort of report he wants to give Mr. Manage. He said that he's got a Cigarette boat standing by and he would like to bring it out to us if we would give our location."

"Who is Coleman Harris?" Herb asked.

"My lawyer," I said. "I can't imagine what he may have for us that is important enough to bring out here."

"Give our location but tell him to clear through the outriders first," Herb said,

Outriders? Wasn't that a wild west term? Herb must have liked shoot 'em up bangs when he was a kid. I supposed he was referring to the two boats that circled us at a distance.

"If he's in a Cigarette boat, he'll be here in a flash compared to what it would take us to get back to shore," Herb said.

I wondered if a Cigarette boat was anything like a Morgan would be if it were a boat. The yacht was nice but it was a bit of a limousine.

After a few minutes, in the distance, we could see this long slim boat appear out of nowhere near the "outriders" and moments later, it was along side the yacht. Someone waved and held up a bundle. We waved back and the steward lowered a bucket on a rope—a line as the sailors say—and we hoisted the package aboard. The Cigarette boat retreated, trailing a spectacular wake. It was no Morgan, more like an Indy racecar.

We settled down again beneath the canopy. I opened the package quickly and thumbed through the stack of papers. Some were copies of documents but mostly it was a typescript of some sort. A cover letter explained that a report had been dictated from the field and typed verbatim, rendering a rough draft that would be formalized later. In the meantime, we had this crude report from a field dick, along with some documentation. The report dealt with Addler Crawley. Herb asked me to read it aloud, which I did. A somewhat smoothed out version would run something like this:

Crawley always flies first class. It's a matter of principle for him. On a flight out Major Regional City, he was seated next to none other than Dr. Waxsizzle who was flying first class because his back hurt and he liked to squirm around and stretch from time to time.

The two struck up a conversation, according to witnesses seated nearby. One can infer that this meant that Crawley flattered Waxsizzle into talking and then began to take a keen interest in what he was hearing.

Waxsizzle told him—and there were documents supporting this interpretation—about some of the things he had invented, some of the chemicals he was working on, and some of the products he had developed. Some were on the market in a modest way, many were tested but not produced and some were merely ideas that he thought would work.

Crawley pulled out a legal pad and began taking notes. He wrote down a lot of product information and chemical names and ideas for products. At one point, Crawley asked him if he had invented bikini wax. Waxsizzle laughed and said that everyone thought he had so he went ahead and whipped one up. "I tell people it's used by Brazilian women around the world," Waxsizzle said and added, "in my dreams." Both men got a good laugh out of that but Crawley had something else in mind.

He started asking Waxsizzle a lot of questions about his lab, his financing, his production facilities, his contacts, and his financial arrangements. All of that was as cluttered as Waxsizzle's mind. There were no outside financial backers, no professional marketing people, and no modern facilities. Mostly, it was just Waxsizzle and a devoted assistant working in a cramped lab.

Waxsizzle also told Crawley about his wife of many years and how she had stood by him without flinching while he pursued his vision and how she never let him down and how he loved her so much and treasured her above all else. But he also confided in Crawley that he was ill and feared that his own poor heart would take him away from his sweetheart all too soon.

It didn't take Crawley long to latch onto all of that and he began to explain to Waxsizzle how he could "protect" his wife and provide for her in a far more comfortable fashion than he had ever thought about before. He could also provide professional management to the good chemist's business activities, freeing him to concentrate on his preferred research efforts. It was wrong, Crawley assured him, to waste time on mundane tasks or even marketing when only rarely gifted individuals such as himself could produce the scientific breakthroughs underlying the products. He had Waxsizzle glimpsing products lining shelves of stores coast to coast with his own picture smiling from each label. He would no longer need to worry about the expense of flying first class and he would not need to be concerned about his wife's well being in the event that he died. He assured Waxsizzle that she would be well cared for.

Apparently Waxsizzle was thoroughly charmed because he signed documents that Crawley literally drew up with his pen on a legal pad. In those documents, he gave Crawley control of all his affairs, everything, it seems except when he would die. And to the extent that even that could be addressed in advance, he signed a will such that Crawley had everything as long as he took care of Mrs. Waxsizzle. Crawley had all the documents witnessed and notarized right there on the plane and included a document signed by the pilot as to the location of the aircraft when the documents were signed.

And he may as well have added "sealed and delivered" because somewhere above Mid-Atlantic State, Waxsizzle blew out his candle, melted down and died. Crawley didn't cause it, either. An autopsy showed prolonged exposure to a variety of toxins typically found in munitions plants and chemical labs. Crawley couldn't possibly have been responsible. In fact, if anything, he made Waxsizzle more comfortable in his last moments knowing that his affairs were in good hands and that his wife would be cared for.

Crawley wasted no time fulfilling his new obligations. From the plane, he drove straight to the modest cottage where Waxsizzle's wife answered the door. He personally broke the news to the distraught woman. Crawley informed Mrs. Waxsizzle of the arrangements he concluded with her late husband and assured her that everything would be taken care of. From there, Crawley drove to Waxsizzle's lab where he flattered the former right hand assistant and promoted him to chief chemist in what he promised would become a large, vigorous company.

A week later Mrs. Waxsizzle was in a nursing home and the chief chemist was taking direction from a cold-blooded MBA and marketing consultants. And whenever public relations demanded it, a new Dr. Waxsizzle met visitors in a suitably decorated office. That's right, a new Dr. Waxsizzle.

Crawley looked at pictures in an entertainment agent's portfolio and picked out a mostly retired actor who looked like Orville Reddenbacker with an Albert Einstein hairdo. In addition to a new, legally changed name, the new Dr. Waxsizzle was provided with an off-shore medical degree, liberal vacation benefits with which, as long as he used his old name, and slicked back hair, he could visit his family on the west coast. But the new Dr. Waxsizzle was expected to be available for business meetings as necessary and to keep a sometimes grinding schedule of personal appearances for product promotion.

End of report. Except for pages and pages of documents, that was it. That was what this dick sped out to the yacht to deliver. When I finished reading, the three of us sat there without saying anything. It had been a most entertaining narrative, something a weird fiction writer might have come up with and knowing that it was apparently true, made the weirdness all the more shocking. But the bottom line was so what? How did this concern us?

Now we knew about the Dr. Waxsizzle that Jackie had heard on the telephone when Joe Palmer was talking to Crawley. Joe, of course, would not have known that his drink was being stirred by swizzle stick number two and it wouldn't have mattered to him if he had known. Results were the important thing. But the bottom line remained, so what?

"Well," Herb finally said, "Crawley is what you might call the ultimate opportunist. I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like this."

I was simply thinking about how glad I was that I was never swayed by any of Crawley's bullshit. He had always seemed uncomfortable to me.

"There's nothing more we can accomplish here," Herb said. "Let's head back in." He stood up, then said, "by the way, you've never seen all the ship. Want a little tour on the way to find the captain to turn us back around?"

I stood up but not with great urgency. A boat is a boat is a boat, I figured. Not only that, I was still thinking about Crawley. But if Herb wanted me to see the rest of the yacht, the stuff guests don't ordinarily visit, then it would be interesting.

Jackie wanted to stay put. She was pouring through the documents that came with the dick report and didn't want to leave it at that moment. I followed Herb and left Jackie alone reading.

After three or four minutes passed, Jackie screamed my name. It was so totally unlike her to do something like that that I flat out reacted without taking time to discriminate between an inflection of horrible fear and an inflection of urgency or shock. I didn't know whether a big shark had jumped aboard and was threatening her or if she had just noticed the delicious crabmeat salad I had almost overlooked at lunch. Whatever it was brought me running as fast as I could with Herb right behind me. The steward and captain appeared shortly afterward. What we found was Jackie, still seated on a deck chair and still looking at documents. There was no shark. Or crabmeat salad, either, for that matter.

Everyone else acted as if a plague had suddenly descended and stayed away. But I ran right to Jackie. She looked up at me with an almost quizzical expression and thrust a paper toward me. I looked at it and I almost immediately saw a name and signature that surely is what had ignited something in Jackie but at that heart pounding moment, I didn't make the whole connection and I wasn't sure what it meant.

"Joe Camel," Jackie said. If you can't draw a picture, speak. Sometimes the written word doesn't penetrate as well as sound. "The chief chemist is named Joe Camel," she said.

As I sat down, I noticed that the captain and the steward left the deck. With no blood to clean up, they had nothing to do. I still had a lady in distress, even if I didn't quite understand why.

I stared at the document, searching for some clue. The name was actually Camel, not Campbell and the signature was Joseph Camel, a full name kind of signature a person might use on a legal document. And it was fluid, maybe even hurried, but well practiced like it really belonged to the person signing it and was not a labored attempt at falsification. But I still didn't grasp the significance.

"Remember?" Jackie asked. "I heard Joe talking about taking Joe Camel 'over the hump.'"

Now, I was shocked. Maybe not screaming shocked, but shocked. Joe Camel was not only a real person, he happened to figure prominently in the Dr. Waxsizzle situation.

Back when we were trying to figure out what Joe Palmer was up to, and Jackie mentioned hearing Joe talk about taking "Joe Camel over the hump," we assumed he was talking about transporting untaxed cigarettes. Now, it appeared that there was a very different explanation. We couldn't tell what it was, and it might not prove to be important to us but it had been important to Joe Palmer at a time that he seemed to be involved with something shady and was trying to make a shade out of me, so it deserved attention, especially after Crawley had come knocking so often and we had discovered a link between Joe Palmer and Crawley.

I handed the document back to Jackie and stood up. "I need to get a message to Coleman Harris," I said and headed off to find the captain and send my message. It was pretty straightforward: look into the connection between Joe Palmer and Joe Camel and whatever connection that connection might have to Addler Crawley.

This could be the critical crux. I could just see Coleman getting the message out to his dick agency that afternoon and then conferring with them in his secure room before replying to me in about twenty-four hours. I could see them pondering details and wondering what the hell they meant. But as odd as it all might be, unless one or another Joe had gone loony, there were no men in dresses involved.

When I returned to the deck, Jackie was filling Herb in on details. He was suitably awed, then angry. He was considerably more than merely annoyed that Crawley would try to present a legitimate business deal with the secret intention of bringing in elements that were probably illegal and certainly unethical.

"If Crawley wants to be an entrepreneur or financier or whatever he fancies himself as," Herb said, then he's got to play straight with people. He's potentially got a lot to lose because of this situation. If word gets out..." Herb let the thought trail off without conclusion.

I let a few moments pass, not wanting to intrude on the serious thought Herb was giving to one of our adversaries. But something else needed to be added, so I added it.

"On the other hand, if he's trying to be a crook, he's off to a pretty good start," I said.

Herb looked at me as if he were incorporating what I said into his thoughts, but they remained his thoughts. Nothing was said for three or four peaceful minutes floating atop the ocean.

Then the steward arrived to remind Herb about the time. Herb's eyes widened and it was apparent that he had been jogged back to the present moment.

"Let's go back in," he told the steward who went immediately to tell the captain.

"It's been a wonderful way to conduct business," I said, "out here, I mean, even if the business were sort of unusual." I thought about Crawley and then I thought about the shrimp.

"It's nice to do this sometimes," Herb said. "And it makes a legitimate deduction."

I wondered if there would be anyway I could deduct something off the condo we would be buying.

"Look," Herb said, "Vivian and I have a social commitment tonight over in Port City. Were it not for the seated dinner part, we could have brought you and Jackie along."

"That's okay," I said and I meant it. Seated dinner. No thanks. We would be just fine with each other and without the stuffiness, I thought.

"But if you would like to take the yacht out and spend the night in the Gulf, you can," Herb said.

For just a moment, I had this vision of Jackie standing in the bow of the yacht with a wispy piece of sheer nightgown fluttering in the breeze before it blew off entirely, leaving her naked and beautiful in the moonlight.

"The crew is expecting to go back out for the night," Herb added, I guess so that I wouldn't think we would be expected to sail it ourselves.

Instead of worrying about that, my delicious vision of Jackie nude on the moonlit deck was replaced by sailors peeping around trying to get a look.

"No thanks," I said, maybe a little emphatically. "We've got reservations at the Bonnie Beach and we'll be fine there."

"Suit yourselves," Herb said. "We'll have to watch some news reports tomorrow. I'll call you as soon as I know something."

Not much more was said for the rest of the trip back to the dock. I can't say it was exactly a voyage because it didn't take as long to get back to shore as it did to get wherever we were floating around. Herb and I were quiet in our own thoughts and Jackie was busy typing something on the laptop.

We helicoptered back to Herb's office/residence in Coast Town and he had someone drive us down to the Bonnie Beach. It was still fairly early by sun standards which meant, among other things, for me, at least, there was too much sun to be on the beach.

And business had to come first, anyway. While Jackie typed, I called John Bridges and updated him, making sure that he and Maria were ready to leave for Capital City on short notice. Then I called Pirkle and basically had the same conversation with him.

Then, I looked outside again. There was still too much sun, although it was beginning to lose intensity.

Then, I looked at Jackie. She was sitting at the desk using correct posture for typing and using the business facilities provided in the suite as they were intended to be used. But I was tired of thinking about business.

Walking up behind Jackie, I pulled her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck. She hesitated slightly, smiled and continued to type.

What I wanted to do was just straight out go directly outside her shirt and cup her breasts in my hands, then go from there. But that seemed a little unnecessarily crude. Just because I had been thinking about it all day didn't mean that it ought to be my first move. Instead, I reached around and with a single finger, tugged her shirt outward at the neckline and peered straight down from above. Yep. They were still there, all right. Except for the flash of a smile, Jackie didn't seem to notice and kept typing.

Next, I slowly unbuttoned the top button on her shirt. She didn't stop typing. Ever so slowly, I continued the process, one button after another, pausing only to press lightly against her breasts and making it appear to be coincidental, an accidentally on purpose lie under an acknowledged but unstated cover except that in this case the cover was slowly coming off.

I thought I detected a wisp of a smile on Jackie's face as I progressed down the row of buttons but she continued to type, apparently never missing a key. Dispatching the bottom button, I slowly pulled her blouse open. Then, I tugged the shirt off her shoulders. I could only get as far as her elbows without interfering with the typing but she stubbornly resumed immediately as soon as the shirt was off.

There she sat in a bra, typing God knows what with only the faintest trace of a smile acknowledging that anything else was going on. I stood back a minute and observed. There she was sitting there typing away cool as could be wearing nothing on top but her bra and paying no more attention than if she were all dressed up for work.

Maybe that was it, maybe she wanted to play office. Maybe she wanted me to go put on a suit and play the boss, pacing back and forth, dictating but lasciviously watching his secretary type while she sat there in her bra. And maybe after that, the boss would stand her up and unzip her skirt and pull her panties down and bend her over her typing chair and pull his dick out and give it to her with his suit on. But none of that appealed to me. And although I would have liked to have pushed the laptop aside, I didn't want to put Jackie on top of the desk, either. There we were in a nice Coast Town hotel on the beach with the balcony door open and a fresh breeze blowing clean sea air into a suite with a perfectly good bed four feet away.

While Jackie was still typing, I unfastened her bra. The typing slowed. I slipped my fingers beneath the loosened bra and cupped her breasts fully in my hands. She struggled lamely to type and breathed deeply. Simultaneously, I pushed her hair aside with my face and kissed her neck as my thumbs lightly massaged her firm nipples.

Typing stopped. As Jackie withdrew from the keyboard, I took the opportunity to slide the bra off her shoulders, down her arms and away. She twisted in the chair to turn her face toward me and we lingered over a slowly passionate kiss.

Then she stood. As we held each other, my hands found their way to the button and zipper of her Capri pants and momentarily they were on the floor. Conveniently in the vicinity, my fingers slipped beneath her panties and played in the soft tangle of hair.

As Jackie stepped out of the crumpled heap of Capri pants, I lightly tugged her panties downward until they, too fell to her ankles. Jackie stepped out of them, also, and stood completely naked in the room, still fully lit by the sun. I was overcome with lust intertwined with love and began to work on my own buttons. Jackie helped by going straight to the belt buckle.

We somehow managed to pull the cover back on the bed before falling atop the sheets and writhing there in a purity of pleasure that, like the ceiling fan above plying light coolness, swept us from utter bliss into a brief, but deep sleep. When we awoke, the fan was still wafting sensuousness over our motionless, interconnected bodies. It was the coolness from the fan that first caught my awareness, then the already awakened gaze of Jackie's brown eyes close upon my face, and in an instant, I felt my dick enjoy the softness of Jackie's thighs as it lengthened again. A corresponding smile told me that Jackie approved, and did so with no wan half-smile but a full, open mouthed grin that emitted a soft note of anticipation. Soon, I had entered a deliciously wet spot and slowly, methodically, this time, and lovingly rhythmically caressed each other into a mutual explosion of love. We rested again, too, but only very briefly this time, just long enough for our hot bodies to soak up a little coolness, taking note that the room had become much dimmer.

We showered together and enjoyed the soapy sensation of each other's body until it was obvious that I was eager for more. Jackie wisely left me hanging and stepped out of the shower to dry herself. I followed almost immediately. It was a pleasure to watch every move she made over her naked body and finally to watch as she leaned over the lavatory to scrutinize her face up close looking to improve what I can't imagine. And all the while, on the other end, was a beautiful ass that deserved its own special attention. I was prepared to give it, too, but it would have to wait.

We decided not to get dressed up for dinner, in fact, we hardly got dressed at all. Jackie put on shorts with a scoop necked spaghetti strap stretchy tight white knit top that gave me palpitations with every step she took. As I put on cut-offs, I wondered if that would be all, but at the last moment, she grabbed a shirt and pulled it closed with a single button.

Off we went, hand-in-hand, two miles down the beach, walking fast on the hard packed sand at the edge of the surf. We passed hotel after condominium on the upper edge of the beach, then the relatively long stretch of shops and small bars that gave character to the place. Our destination was a rough hewn restaurant—more of a shack—with a spacious outside dining area where heaps of boiled, broiled and fried seafood could disappear in the open air along with pitchers of cold beer.

"What do you make of what we learned today about Addler Crawley, Dr. Waxsizzle and Joe?" Jackie asked as our appetites gradually slowed as the mound of shrimp diminished.

"Amazing," I said, "even for Crawley."

"The fact that all three of them are involved together, somehow, I think is interesting," Jackie said. "But I wonder how exactly."

"Now that you mention it," I said, "I wonder if Crawley was headed up to Mid-Atlantic State this morning when we saw him at the airport." I also wondered if horseradish made a person think more clearly, but I didn't say it.

"And then to push about wanting to invest in the purchase of the store," Jackie said.

"I wonder if he knows something's up," I said. And at that point, I wondered if hot sauce could also make a person think more clearly because that was a breakthrough thought that I barely recognized and there was nothing to attribute it to but the hot sauce.

Then it really hit me, slammed hard out of nowhere, but, as I say, the hot sauce or the horseradish. "We haven't been followed," I said a little too loudly. Somebody turned around to look but whoever it was wasn't a dick unless he was on vacation because he had not been following us. Nobody had been.

Jackie's mouth was ajar, clam and all. She gulped. "You're right," she said.

"It had been so long and so intensive, I just never noticed when it wasn't happening anymore," I said.

"You don't suppose that maybe it's just because they don't know where to find us, do you?" Jackie asked.

"Not a chance," I said. "Not a chance. Think about how thorough it has been before. Something spooked them or something is up someway or other."

"Maybe they know where we are and knowing means they don't have to keep up every minute," Jackie said. "Or maybe they just don't care anymore. Maybe it doesn't matter anymore."

"That would be nice, if it's true," I said. "But they knew generally where we were before and still took every step with us. When we were down here last time they knew which hotel room we were in but still followed us around like puppies, make that mad dogs. But knowing didn't stop them then and it shouldn't matter less now."

We tried to ponder that for a while but with no other information, there was nothing else to think, only to wonder about. After so much silence as we each thought about things, when I muttered, "I hope you're right," it sounded like dialogue from somewhere off stage.

Between the eating and the thinking, we slowed down a good deal. There was considerable reluctance to leave the restaurant. We were outside, after all, in the open air on a nice night with a pleasant breeze and when we finally got up and left, we moved languorously at first, an arm around each other's waist as we walked back down the beach, ever so slowly this time in contrast to our rapid walk to dinner. Maybe the lovemaking would be the same way when we got back, slow and steady and thorough and complete and utterly satisfying, I thought but I didn't keep thinking it. I didn't dwell on it. The languid movement and complex blend of feelings created a special moment that had to be savored for its own delicious benefit.

That's why I didn't like cameras, especially those in the possession of snapshot crazy amateurs who shoot every scene they encounter and want the human populations in those scenes to turn around and smile for the camera. Personal moments are meant to be lived and treasured within the deep well of appreciative memory, not staged and recorded for future reference.

And turning back toward the Bonnie Beach after dinner, was one of those very special moments for us. Jackie and I had connected very deeply and we had learned to prize each other and relish each other's company without trampling on those internal private spots that must remain hidden if a person is to maintain individual integrity, a quality without which a person ceases to have value either to himself or to a group, including a group of two. It's simple arithmetic: one and one make two, never one, not even in modern math. And I was old enough to count and wise enough to know I had the answer right.

Along the way back, one and one walked to the edge of infinity and peered, at least to the degree we could understand it, across its dark vastness. A little of it washed our feet with just enough warm wetness to confirm that we were on the right track but we could not possibly comprehend all that lay unknown before us. We could only deal with that creeping and retreating and recreeping foamy shallow that beckoned us toward the all-consuming depths.

Jackie and I stood in that one spot for a long time, transfixed by our separate thoughts, doubtlessly playing along the same direction but of necessity allowing the swirl of cleansing water to play between us, surrounding each of us closely but privately. There was no need to whisper thoughts, much less shout them.

After a while of starring across the water, we began to stir, slightly and vaguely at first, then gradually with more vigor and determination. We began walking again, in the edge of the surf and Jackie took her shirt off. That tight stretchy knit top she wore beneath seemed barely able to contain the jostle of her breasts. All in all, it was more than I could deal with if I had tried to think of it that way. But I realized that this was but one moment leading into another and into another and into the future and that each of those moments could be savored for all it was worth which would make the next moment not only possible but better.

In the meantime, I was simply enjoying the view on both sides, the ocean on one side and Jackie on the other. In particular there was the play of shards of light glistening atop waves as they rushed ashore on one side and the sway of Jackie's breasts held inside the scoop necked enclosure that was so low cut and so wide that it gave the pleasure of vastness in both dimensions.

I enjoyed the sights on both sides and alternated glances in both directions but finally stared openly and wondrously at Jackie's cleavage, stared, in fact, between each breast as far as sight could penetrate. Her nipples were shadows beneath the edge of her neckline and the protruding points of stretchy knit were clearly defined and I watched the edge of the neckline knowing that the delicious skin immediately adjacent brushed the edge of her nipples, which, if I strained and stared long enough, I knew I could glimpse.

And sure enough, as she turned toward me in one moment, an arm reaching toward me and simultaneously pressing against her breast, the knit top pushed outward and there, completely visible was an entire nipple. I playfully pressed it's firm point with the tip of my finger then pulled the whole top down, briefly exposing her entire breast. Jackie was quick to cover herself playfully, although where we were walking, no one else could see.

As we came nearer the Bonnie Beach, I turned our direction toward the row of festive shops and specialty food vendors. I wanted to check on our young friends at the ice cream and yogurt shop. Both were working the counter as we approached and I overheard them using good suggestive selling techniques to build their sales. I could see a "manager" nametag on the boy's tag. When Jackie and I walked up to the counter, his jaw dropped.

"I see you're the manager now," I said.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Thank you very much for this opportunity,"

"What about school?" I said.

"Yes, sir," the kid said. "I'll be in Port City University this fall."

Well, I thought, tempted to think well of myself. By day, I fight demon dicks and their evil manipulators and by night I assist the youth of our nation to become better shopkeepers, and, if luck holds, no shopkeepers at all.

Jackie and I each ordered small size vanilla yogurt cones. The point of this was to check on the kids, anyway, and I really didn't want to have all that seafood swimming in milk. But it was fun to kiss the drips off each other and I could see a couple of drips that I could hardly wait to lick.

As soon as the hotel room door closed behind us, I was after them. That shirt was in the way. It had to go.

One drop was on the outside of the stretchy knit, right on her left boob. A quick flick of the tongue dispatched it, but remembering what I learned as a kid, that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing well, I stayed with it until I had just about sucked the fiber out of the knit. I didn't want to damage it, though, because I wanted Jackie to wear it again.

The other drip was right down her cleavage. That meant that the knit top had to be peeled away. Given that there were no awkward fasteners involved, I was able to accomplish this part of the mission with ease and left Jackie topless, her back against the door and her quickening breath heaving her bare chest up and down as rhythmically as I applied my tongue to the task at hand. Soon, there was no trace of anything except beautiful skin.

And what does bare skin need? More bare skin. A twist of the button on her shorts, the quick unzip of her zipper and two strategically placed thumbs hooking both shorts and panties, along with a quick tug, took care of that.

Jackie slowly applied herself to my own buttons. When I began giving her assistance with the project, she stopped and turned first to the light switch controlling the dim entrance light. She killed it altogether. While I tossed my shirt aside, she moved to the balcony door, pulled back the curtain and opened the door. There was just enough light coming from outside to make a shadowy, somewhat visible platform of the bed.

Despite intense interest in what we were doing, I forced myself to be slow and thorough, and complete. Somehow, despite the four miles we had walked, the large dinner, pitchers of beer, the yogurt and all of this framed by great sex before and after, somehow, unbelievably, I didn't fall asleep immediately.

We lay uncovered for whatever long time atop the sheets beneath the slowly turning fan, our bodies all bound up with each other in what must have looked like an awkward pile but which was an utterly comfortable and supremely comforting mass. We didn't talk for much of that time, Finally, softly, Jackie broke the silence, but only after I had made the first move, a barely perceptible nuzzle against her cheek.

"Tell me something," she said. "Why did you not want to spend the night on the yacht? I mean, it turned out wonderfully that we didn't, because this has been the best time ever, but why not the yacht?"

"Because a long time ago, I read about a divorce trial involving the Pulitzer family. Part of the testimony came from crewmembers of their yacht. And I remember reading about how one of the crew talked about what he saw through the port hole in the cabin of Mrs. Pulitzer."

Jackie laughed a kind of softly ironic laugh that was tinged with affection. She pulled me closer to her, if that was possible.

"It just seemed creepy to me to have a bunch of guys going by peeping into the bedroom. And on top of that, I didn't want those guys seeing you in your panties like they said they saw Mrs. Pulitzer and this other woman, too, a young woman married to an old geezer whose fortune had been made in paper products. She was in her panties, too."

"Together?" Jackie asked.

"Yes," I said.

Jackie laughed again, softly, but I was uncomfortable with the whole thing.

"Suppose they had passed by our cabin," I said. "They could have seen us like this. That would be just too damn creepy for me to handle, too bad a feeling to talk about."

"But not this," Jackie whispered, "not the way this really is, now, for us, not them."

She slowly stroked the back of my head, then the back of my neck. What peacefulness.

Jackie woke me up with a kiss. It was the tender, loving, lingering brush of her lips on my forehead that initially brought me back to consciousness. Then I became aware of light filling the room and opened my eyes to see Jackie silhouetted in the balcony door. I was vaguely aware that she was wearing underwear and more keenly aware of disappointment in that awareness.

"It's time to get up," she said. "This is going to be a big day."

That made me more fully awake and I could see that she was fully up and running and must have been for quite a while because she may have been in her underwear, but she had obviously been getting ready to go somewhere. She was even wearing makeup at that hour. I still didn't say anything. I just stared at her trying to figure out what everything meant.

"You ought to go ahead and get ready and then start going through the notes I made on the computer yesterday," she said. "Open the today folder and you'll see the stuff I'm talking about. There will be time for me to type in your suggested changes later when I get back. Okay?"

"Yes," I finally said. "But where are you going?"

"To look at condominiums," she said and turned to the closet and started pulling out some clothes.

"Now?" I asked. It was a little hard to understand all of this. "What time is it?"

"Something after six-thirty," Jackie said.

"And you're going out to look at condominiums now?" Like I said, it was hard to comprehend all of this.

"No, at seven," Jackie answered like it was a completely normal thing to go look at real estate at seven but completely out of the question any other time. "Keep your cell phone handy so we can stay in touch. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"How are you going to go look at condominiums?" I asked.

"I have an appointment with an agent," she said.

"At seven o'clock?"

"Yes," she said.

I couldn't imagine when she could have set up an appointment, but as yet without coffee or a shower, I wasn't about to get involved with trying to figure out anything that didn't pour into a cup or out of a faucet.

When I got out of the bathroom, Jackie was gone. I got dressed and walked over to the laptop, then turned around and headed out the door to find some breakfast.

Chapter 16

The hotel dining room would be good enough, I thought and headed there with the idea of trying to think a little while I ate breakfast and then, I intended to head back to the balcony and have a cup of coffee and do some more thinking in the fresh air while Jackie was out. I still had a hard time figuring out that business with the real estate so early in the morning but I had my own business to worry about.

That was what was on my mind as I was led through the restaurant toward a table. Along the way, I noticed the back of some guy's head. It looked vaguely familiar. As I passed his table, I stopped short.

"Carlos Selassie," I said out loud. "Henry Smith." It was a more or less uncontrollable response.

Carlos looked up in surprise. Now, that was important. At first, when I recognized the guy, I assumed that the dicks were back at it again, then it occurred to me that if that were the case he could not have been settled into breakfast before me. Not only that, he was sitting with his back to the entrance. Dicks who are working, want to face the entrance.

Not only that, but the look on his face was almost worth everything I had been through with him before. He was genuinely shocked to see me and as soon as he adjusted to the sudden fact of me standing there, he stood up, too.

"Mr. Manage," he said, with as much involuntary reaction as I had. "Please have a seat."

I hesitated. I was tempted, because my inclination was to grill this jerk. Then again, did I want to put myself through all that? And for what?

"I promise not to ask any questions about your family," Carlos said.

That was an important thing for him to say and I have to stop and analyze that for a minute. At the time he said it, I only had a fleeting moment for analysis, but somehow the neurons fired away so quickly, I was able to cram a whole lot of thinking into a flash.

First, he was being honest. That was a good opener, a good rebeginning, especially given our history. Not only that, he was acknowledging a number of things without having to say them and part of what he admitted, even if obliquely, amounted to a kind of confession. That was interesting in itself, but I thought it might lead to more.

Maybe more important than anything else, what he said was humorous. If he could poke fun at what he had done, there might be hope. If nothing else, the remark was clearly meant to be funny, and it was. So much so, under the circumstances and magnified by the tension it reduced, I actually laughed out loud spontaneously.

"Thanks," I said, and sat down.

The hostess, who had wandered ahead in search of a table, retraced her steps and left a menu with me. I was hungry but even more curious.

"I guess you're down here to talk to Herbert Kerplopski about buying Kerplopski's," Carlos said.

I stared at Carlos and I probably blinked a few times. I was about to conclude that I had been wrong and that the dick was still being a dick. This little bit took a while to think about and I didn't say anything. I guess the neurons were overwhelmed.

"That's the word, anyway," Carlos said after I didn't say anything immediately.

"The word?" I said. I was struggling with this.

"The word on the street," Carlos said. "It's what people are saying. Everybody except maybe Caruthers."

"Whooa," I said. "What is all this?"

I didn't intend to be disingenuous. I was simply surprised way out of proportion to my capacity to sort all this out so quickly.

"Everybody thinks you and Herbert Kerplopski are going to try to buy the store. Some people say its only a couple of stores down here on the coast and others say you're trying to get together enough cash to buy the whole chain. Everybody's got one version or another of the same tale except Caruthers. They're not worried. They say that if you and Herbert Kerplopski buy a couple of stores, they'll swamp you with their greatness and you'll be gone in a year. They're hell bent on making the deal themselves, but they hate you fiercely. Oh, God, how they hate you."

Hate? Me, the wonderful Mick Manage? I understood how some people I have worked with over the years would not like me and even some current employees. But hate? That seemed a little strong. Still, I had to take what he was saying seriously. Often, I understand, we fail to see ourselves as others see us and if people saw something in me to hate, I might have been the last to be informed of the fact. Invocation of the deity for emphasis may have been what tipped the credibility of the argument. And if it was solely Caruthers that was doing the hating, maybe so.

"They say you've been condescending toward them," Carlos said.

"I was merely defending my associates and my store. Sometimes, I felt like I had to defend myself and my honor, too," I said.

"But they see it as being obnoxious."

"I can understand that," I said, and I did understand it because some of the time I was obnoxious and some of those times they didn't even realize it. "But they were obnoxious, too. And overbearing and stupid and, yes, also condescending. Or they tried to be. That's when I really had to put up a defense."

"The thing is," Carlos said, "is that they didn't want any defense. They wanted everyone to step out of the way and behave like their people behave."

"They shouldn't have expected that," I said. "At Kerplopski's, people are involved."

"They weren't planning for it to continue to be Kerplopski's," Carlos said.

I looked up but didn't say anything. Carlos seemed like he was ready to say something but paused. There was a break in the conversation. I still had not ordered breakfast but now there was more than food on my mind.

"I feel sorry for their people," I finally said.

"They had no idea they would encounter anyone like you," Carlos said. "They think you're dangerous."

I would have thought I merely seemed to be a thorn in the side. I was tempted to take a little pride in all of this hatred stuff.

"As a matter of fact," Carlos said, "I imagine that determining how to deal with you is one of the big topics for the meeting they're having today."

That did it. Now I was flattered to some sort of new level. A meeting just to deal with me? How uniquely compelling as a motive for continued life.

"If Caruthers does buy the store," Carlos said, "from what I've heard, you'll be fired the moment Mr. Kerplopski's pen touches the first sales document. They plan to have someone parked outside your store with a cell phone waiting for the word to go in and fire you. You'll actually be gone before Mr. Kerplopski."

"Dangerous, huh?" I said.

"I think they're right, Mr. Manage," Carlos said.

Everything this man was saying got my attention. I looked at him with a fixed focus, trying to get my self ready to comprehend what I was about to be told and interpret what I was about to see as I was being told.

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't think you give a damn about them or anybody else who doesn't fit in your world and I think you could easily brush us all away like so many crumbs from your breakfast toast."

That was Carlos Selassie talking. He actually said that. I knew there was something to think about in what he said, but I didn't have time right then to do the necessary amount of thinking. But I had to react.

"Isn't that the way most people operate?" I said. It was more statement than question.

"It's a matter of effectiveness," Carlos said. "You're far more effective than most people at that."

By that point, I knew there was plenty in what I was hearing that needed to be thought about, but at the moment, I simply had to file it away and do the thinking in the future, maybe on a balcony overlooking the Gulf.

"Effective," I repeated.

"Think about your choice of words, 'the way people operate.'" Carlos threw my words back at me and with strong emphasis. Operate.

"Isn't it true? Don't most people do that?" I asked.

"Most people don't operate," Carlos said. "Maybe you do and maybe that's what makes you dangerous. Most people just react."

"I don't buy that," I said. I could feel myself becoming a little defensive and I didn't like it. "Don't most people plan? Isn't that operating? It may look like a reaction but it's really how everyone functions."

Suddenly, I had this uncomfortable feeling that he was lumping me with the likes of Addler Crawley. Now, there was an operator. And I surely did not function like that.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's bad," Carlos said. "It's just that it's cut to the chase effective."

"So motive accounts for something?" I asked.

I was trying to question his motive at the same time. So I guess I was operating.

"Oh, yes," Carlos said. "And in some ways, I can admire how you operate."

Yep. I was operating, all right. An operator had recognized my operation even if I didn't.

"Take the way you threw me out of your office," Carlos said. "I respect that."

I seriously doubted that, but I didn't say anything. I was beginning to think that maybe the time had come to terminate the conversation.

"What you don't realize," Carlos said, "is that I've used the same ploy any number of times and I've never been dispatched so quickly having received so little information. Not any information from you, in fact. None at all."

"It's hard to believe anyone would put up with that," I said. "With what you were saying when you came to see me in my office."

"But they do," Carlos said. "And the fact that I didn't get anything after spending all that time—all those days in Sunbelt City waiting for you—and then to get nothing for the effort made Caruthers so angry that they won't hire me anymore. My hope is that after a while, when things calm down and they have had a chance to think about how so many other people in their company have been stymied by you that they may be more understanding and let me do some more work for them."

"I didn't realize I made such an impression," I said.

"You do," Carlos said. "Then, and again today."

"How so?"

"You addressed me by my real name," Carlos said. "You checked me out. Most people don't do that."

I had to laugh. This had become a little tedious, but it was funny, too.

"So you're not working for Caruthers now?" I said.

"No," he said, "that's why I'm here. I start work at the Bonnie Beach this afternoon. It's just front desk work, but it's work."

I guess I must have looked at him like I was shocked. Either that or he was a mind reader.

"You shouldn't be surprised that I would be forced to do something other than investigative work," Carlos said. "You're largely responsible. You've not been good for my business."

"It may be too bad for you about Caruthers but for me and lots of other people are going to benefit a good deal from them staying out of our lives," I told him.

"It's not just Caruthers," Carlos said. "I lost another good client because of you."

"Who would that be?" I asked. No, the way it came out was more of a taunt, an almost sarcastic, unbelieving taunt that sounded so effective to my ears that I said it again. "Who would that be?"

"Addler Crawley," Carlos said. He looked up from the last bite of bacon and eggs he was about to eat in time to see the extreme shock on my face. He even savored my confusion by slowly grinding the bits of pork into utter grease while watching me try to comprehend what I had just heard. My face must have been a sight because he sort of laughed before adding, finally, that the work he did for Crawley never involved me.

"I suppose I shouldn't be telling you all of these things because of professional ethics," Carols said.

Professional ethics? I was surprised that he could even pronounce the words. Then the thought occurred to me that I might be complicit, maybe even unethical myself, because I was listening. But how could I not listen? And not only that, I was eager to hear more.

"How did you get involved with Crawley?" I asked.

"I like acting," Carlos said.

I wondered if he thought what he had done in my office was acting. Still, the irony was almost a belly shaker even if the actual fact wasn't humorous at all. I thought about the she-man who visited me and wondered if Carlos ever acted in drag.

"And I take little parts over in the Neighboring State theater company. Crawley was in the audience one night, but I didn't know it and didn't know anything about him. Then, one day I got a call asking me to do some work on a case in Sunbelt City involving a guy who lived in Neighboring State and had a business in Sunbelt City. He turned out to have been a competitor of Addler Crawley, but at the time, I was dealing with someone in Crawley's office and didn't actually meet him until a good deal later."

"What were you doing for him?" I asked.

"I had to keep an eye on him for a while and try to see if he was talking to somebody else, a third party. That went on for a while. Finally one day, I was told to smoke cigarettes and stub them out on a fence post outside the man's house. It made a little pile of butts one night," Carlos said.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"I never could figure that out," Carlos said. "Sometime later, I heard that Crawley bought the man's business. I could never figure out why he didn't just approach the man himself from the beginning instead of wasting time being sneaky. But I learned something from it and from thinking about it and I've confirmed it since then a number of times."

"What's that?" I asked.

The arrival of breakfast interrupted the answer. I couldn't even remember ordering anything, I had been concentrating on Carlos so closely. But what the waitress brought was something that I would have ordered, so I guess I had.

"So, what did you learn?" I asked again.

"That sometimes you just have to wait and sometimes it may take a long time before you understand enough to make sense of things," Carlos said. "Especially with Crawley. He's got something going on now that I can't figure what he's doing."

"Crawley has an agenda," I said. "I would imagine he always keeps an active agenda."

"Right now, you're at the head of his list," Carlos said. "I think he would really like to buy your store, not that I think he has enough money. But who knows? Maybe he really could put enough investors together. But I would be willing to bet that the store is not an end in itself, that maybe he only wants part, a couple of stores or so for some reason. And right now, he's also got something else going on in Mid-Atlantic State that's taking even more time and effort than you're getting from him."

I thought about having seen him at the airport the previous morning and wondering if he were headed to Mid-Atlantic State. I was just glad we were not on the same plane with him.

"It's the Waxsizzle business," I said. "He's been doing that for a while."

"Except that recently there have been problems," Carlos said. "And now the word is that he's circling the wagons up there."

"Did Dr. Waxsizzle get one of his lines wrong?" I asked. "Did he miss a cue?"

"It's more serious than that," Carlos said. "It has something to do with his head chemist."

"Joe Camel," I said.

"So you know," Carlos said.

"Know what?" I asked.

"About Joe Camel."

"I know he's the head chemist," I said, secretly proud to have recently acquired that bit of trivia for my own knowledge base.

"Did you know he has become unhappy?" Carlos said.

"I thought he would have been very happy with being head chemist after the real Dr. Waxsizzle died," I said. "Since Crawley apparently has been putting capital into his new acquisition, I would think that the head chemist would be terribly busy with all kinds of projects, old and new, not to mention being comfortably fixed and most secure."

"But unhappy," Carlos said. "Wouldn't you be if someone came in and took over the business you had been operating with your father?"

"Father?" What the hell, I was thinking.

"You didn't know that Dr. Waxsizzle was Joe Camel's father?" Carlos asked, as if it were a newspaper headline I overlooked.

"No, I didn't know that," I said. While trying to conduct this conversation and get even more information, I was secretly trying to determine what ramifications this might have on our own situation. It seemed like the kind of thing that should be important but I couldn't see how, exactly.

"I thought that Dr. Waxsizzle was devoted to Mrs. Waxsizzle for many years," I said. A good dose of skepticism never hurts, or, as a motto I once read, "a little doubt'll do ya."

"He was," Carlos said, "except that Mrs. Waxsizzle couldn't have children and his lab assistant at the time, could. He was shocked when Crawley ended up with the company and even more put off by Crawley running things the way he does. Crawley probably didn't know Camel is the old doc's son."

"Wait a minute," I said, again with some serious skepticism. "You knew this and Crawley didn't?"

"I just did my job," Carlos said. "He wasn't paying me to tell him things I learned about other subjects."

Now, I'm no admirer of Addler Crawley by any stretch, but what I was hearing simply made my stomach turn. If I had not been so hungry, those eggs and hash browns would have soured right there on the plate. Carlos Selassie was the kind of employee that every employer wished they had not hired.

Carlos wasn't ready to stop. For some reason he was pouring what he knew out to me, although I couldn't figure out why. And he apparently didn't even know that some of it was stuff I would be interested in. Maybe he was just trying to impress me.

"From what I picked up," Carlos said, "Joe Camel had struck up a friendship with some guy named Palmer who was doing some sort of business with Crawley, and there was talk in the lab that Camel and Palmer were doing some sort of business behind Crawley's back."

I remember the very bite I was in when Carlos said that. It's one of those memorable moments that can't be forgotten and you remember everything about the moment forever. There was a piece of thick cut potato encrusted with pepper and spices on the left side of my mouth with a little soft scrambled egg next to it. My jaw was on an uptick when Carlos' words hit me. I chewed very slowly after that, trying to think but it wasn't getting me anywhere.

"What sort of thing were they doing?" I asked.

"I don't know," Carlos said. "I got fired before I could find out anymore. But some of the lab people thought it might have something to do with tobacco because Joe Camel had been working privately on something having to do with it. I don't use the stuff myself."

"And Crawley didn't know about it?" I asked, trying for confirmation.

"That's all I know," Carlos said. He pushed his chair back from the table. "I have to go now," he said. "I have to get settled into my apartment if I'm going to work this job for a while. Good luck on buying Kerplopski's," he added as he stood up.

"There is something I don't understand," I said. I had stopped chewing and looked at him with what felt like open skepticism. I don't know if it showed. "Why are you telling me these things? I haven't hired you or anything."

"But maybe you will," Carlos said. "I'm putting my money on you in all this. I think Caruthers is going to fall apart and who knows what will happen to Crawley? Explode? He never provided as much work for me as Caruthers, anyway. And I'm betting that you'll come out on all of this and you'll have plenty of work to offer and maybe you'll let me do some of it."

I just stared at him. I didn't say a word.

"Maybe I'll see you when you checkout," Carlos said. "Good luck, in any case," he said.

Somehow, I forced myself to mutter a "thanks" and sat there at the table trying to comprehend it all. I was more successful with eating breakfast, despite the fact that it had gotten cold by that point.

With the last bite of food, it struck me that sitting there pondering this information was going to get me nowhere. True, I might be able to figure some of it out, but I needed help. Moments later I was in the room on the cell phone talking to Coleman Harris. I told him what I had just been told and speculated on the significance of Joe Palmer and Joe Camel doing God knows what business together. Coleman was considerably tolerant of my rambling story and even seemed genuinely interested. He said he would get with the detectives on all of it and get back with me.

Next, of course, I thought of calling Jackie with the news but something held me back. I couldn't explain it, but I just couldn't seem to get the energy together to go inside and call. By that point, I was enjoying the balcony and the solitude and was actually very focused on the Palmer-Camel scenario. Not that it did any good, but I was turning over various possibilities.

After a while, the cell phone rang. It was Jackie wanting to know if I could meet her in ten minutes in front of the hotel. This was more food for speculation but one that had a cap on how long before questions were solved. And sure enough, ten minutes later, I was crawling in the back seat of a homely Cadillac that was intended to signify prosperity. Jackie was in the front seat with the real estate agent chauffeur.

This overly tanned, overly friendly lady drove us a short distance to an overly decorated, overly accessible condominium. Needless to say, it was overly priced. It also overlooked a stretch of beach near the hotel and therefore near the commercial development that featured lots and lots of tourists splayed in the sun and splashing in the water. For someone whose idea of getting away was to live in the middle of a public festival, it would have been nice, if expensive. It would have been like paying for the privilege of perpetual ruckus right outside the window.

I said virtually nothing during the whole tour of this place. Toward the end, Jackie took my arm and pulled close to me and sort of hugged my arm. Then we climbed back into the Cadillac. I was in some sort of daze, a kind of shock of the kitsch overdose of bad taste and popular lifestyle. Despite the ocean only steps away, it was sufficient to make me yearn for my little postage stamp, walled garden where only birds could intrude.

As I was thinking these things, it suddenly occurred to me that we were traveling down the beach highway away from hotels, and shops and restaurants. There began to be more space between the houses and condominiums and these, in turn, had begun to be smaller and less prominent looking. These things, I figured, would make them more expensive. I prepared myself for an uncomfortable meeting with a price tag.

The real estate agent maneuvered off the highway onto what appeared to be a private road. Jesus, I was thinking, what would a gated community on the beach cost. But as it turns out, there was no gate, it's just that the beach jogged a little and at that point there were a cluster of three small buildings further back from the ocean than was typical of waterfront buildings in Coast Town. Dunes stretched out between the little buildings with the beach beyond that.

The buildings were on stilts with parking space beneath, offering protection for the Morgan and they had been planned so that despite being clustered, they were independent of each other enough to make it feel as if they were farther way, and all pointing at slightly different angles toward the water. Not only that, the condominiums were small, tiny even. I couldn't help but speculate on how that might ease the price a little, too. They were so small on the inside, that the walls would have felt like pincers except for the spacious windows on the ocean side that made them seem like part of the landscape. And the balcony was large, larger than any I had seen in Coast Town. Again with the price, I couldn't help but figure the difference between inside building and outside building. It was basically a porch made out of rough wood but so large that a person could have a table and chairs out there and basically live on the balcony. There was even enough room to have cots for sleeping in the fresh, open air.

Jackie discretely shooed the real estate agent outside. The interior tour took about five seconds given that it had two small bedrooms, a tiny sitting area combined with dining space adjacent to a miniscule kitchen. But the balcony, that was a different matter. We stood out there and watched in the distance, as waves rolled onto the beach. It was utterly peaceful. Utterly. And the way they were built, we couldn't see another condo from the balcony.

"The new law doesn't allow building between here and the water," Jackie said. "We're back far enough to protect the beach and more likely keep from being destroyed in a storm." She spoke softly, confidentially, not to mention convincingly.

"How much?" I finally got up nerve to ask. Jackie told me and I had to laugh a little. "It was a set-up wasn't it?" I asked.

Jackie hugged my arm again. She buried her face in my sleeve then looked up with the cutest possible expression and admitted it. "You needed something for comparison," she whispered, knowing full well which of the two I would select. And the price really was another factor. When you can pay less and get more of what you want, you've got a bargain. I haven't been in retailing all these years not to know the definition of bargain.

I told Jackie to have the real estate agent send papers to Coleman Harris. Then I told her we needed to get back to the Bonnie Beach and talk about something.

"I had breakfast with Carlos Selassie," I said.

Jackie looked at me like I was from Mars. She didn't say anything, but I could tell she was thinking plenty, keeping it to herself during the entire trip back to the Bonnie Beach. I'll bet that real estate agent was terribly concerned. To her, having just received encouraging instructions to send documents to the prospect's lawyer, the potential buyers must have seemed unusually unhappy, with the key person in the arrangement switching suddenly from interested and vibrant to melancholy and withdrawn, not a good sign for someone you're trying to sell.

The expression on Jackie's face didn't show any sign of recovery after we sat on our balcony at the hotel. I gave a rundown on my morning conversation with the loose dick. Jackie didn't talk; she didn't ask questions. She simply listened, and by the end of my monologue I could see that she was more alarmed than before.

That's what worry based speculation will do for you. A little bit of knowledge leads to worry about what you don't know which makes you speculate which makes you worry even more because you're worrying about what might be and anything might be, plenty of which is pretty awful when you think about it which you can't help but do, all of which leads to toddy time all the time for lots of people. Speaking of which, I felt like having a good, stiff Bloody Mary, but restrained myself.

Jackie, on the other hand, sought a different kind of relief and went into the bathroom. While she was in there, I flipped on CNN. Headline News ran through the predictable line-up of floods, fires, wars, crimes and war crimes. Then came an announcement of breaking news at the headquarters of a southern department store chain.

I bolted to the bathroom door and pounded on it simultaneously calling "CNN, CNN, CNN." Jackie was out in a flash.

The cell phone rang. It was Herb. "I've got it now," I said and hung up.

Like everything else, it was predictable enough, footage identical to what we've all seen repeatedly, especially since the white collar crime wave. Holy hard drives, Batman, white collars were dirty again. Lots of men wearing badges and emblazoned vests and jackets were toting computer equipment out of a building and loading it into government vans. They looked like so many ants hauling giant grains of sugar away from the package they had just invaded.

The news anchor seemed uncertain about what this breaking story involved and gratefully handed off to a reporter who knew little more. The reporter explained that the G-ants were taking computers out of the corporate offices of Caruthers and went on to explain something about the Caruthers retail business but he had no idea why the government was obviously investigating them. That's all they knew at the moment but it was enough. Like the old saying that was older than photography, a picture is worth ten pages of copy—or something like that—but sometimes words are just plain necessary to clear up the pictures.

Jackie and I looked at each other and grinned. They were odd grins, or they felt that way, at least. Least may have been they key concept here. What would have been more?

The cell phone rang. It was Herb; he was ecstatic. "Keep watching," he said. "There'll be more soon. We probably need to plan to leave for Capital City right after lunch. I'll call you again in a little while but keep watching for more."

That was something about more if it wasn't more itself. If we would only watch, we would see more, whatever it would turn out to be. In the meantime, I felt a little strange. Basically, I was responsible for CNN broadcasting an event to the entire world. Even if the world didn't understand what it was seeing, it felt strange to have caused the world to see something, anything. I suddenly felt very self-conscious for no good, or at least obvious, reason.

It occurred to me to call Pirkle and John to alert them to the news. John said that Maria had called him already. It felt strangely comfortable to hear that one of our own was already on top of the news.

For a while Jackie and I settled on the balcony, listening to CNN in the background. We let CNN do the talking and we simply took in the ocean view as news people related item after item from foreign policy and war to school board monkey business and summer pet treats. I can't say that hearing about a dog and a chicken who regularly enjoyed sharing a scoop of ice cream covered in wheat germ made me hungry, but after a while it happened, despite the big breakfast.

Being unable to leave the television, we ordered lunch through room service. I was so hungry that I had them bring up fried shrimp double pronto to be an appetizer while they prepared the entrée. But no beer. And it appeared about ten minutes later, a generous platter of it, delivered on a rolling cart with a jug of iced tea. We wheeled the whole thing onto the balcony and ate right off the cart as we listened.

CNN cycled through a couple of times with minor changes as diplomats changed their rhetoric and body counts were revised but without mention of Caruthers. I was beginning to wonder if the first story had been a dream. But, no, Herb and Maria also saw it.

When the entrée arrived at the door, we let the room service guy set the table for us in front of the television. Jackie in all her womanly wisdom had barely sampled the fried shrimp, leaving lots to weigh down my appetite. Still, I was able to enjoy the broiled fish, salad and potato. Whereas I had been hungry, I was left only wanting news. I glanced at the complimentary sliver of key lime pie that I had not anticipated.

Suddenly, CNN cut to a justice department news conference being conducted in Neighboring State. There was the Caruthers story again, only this time, it was much bigger and all fleshed out. We were back in business.

Some female "spokesperson" stood anxiously behind a microphone encrusted podium and shifted from foot to foot while someone said something off camera. A whole string of big guys with guns under their jackets stood stiffly behind her. Then the woman read a statement saying that an interagency task force of FBI, IRS and United States Marshals had cooperated to gather evidence against Caruthers.

"Interagency task force." So that is what visited me in my office, I thought, only I had had the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms guys, too, but no marshals. Who needed measly marshals when you had Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?

Then, the spokeswoman said the words that would initiate a chain of events that would change our lives. "We anticipate uncovering further evidence of income tax evasion, price fixing, fraud and conspiracy," the spokeswoman said.

Wow. Even though I knew all of this, hearing it from a justice person on CNN was like hearing that a good personal friend had won a big election or, I imagined, being in a ballpark when some guy hit a pennant winning homerun. This stuff wasn't entirely of my doing, but it was close enough to give me an adrenalin rush.

Then, in answer to a question, the spokeswoman stated specifically that indictments were expected and, yes, they had sufficient evidence before the raid, but expected new evidence after analyzing the computers seized in the raid.

CNN cut to a repeat of the earlier footage where agents were removing the computers. This time, the voiceover had enough information to call down eternal damnation on Caruthers whose own spokesperson had no comment except to say that the company and its executives had done nothing wrong and had broken no laws and looked forward to proving that in court.

Yeah, right, I thought. Everybody looks forward to being tried by the federal government. Sure. Spend a fortune before going to jail for years.

Jackie and I looked at each other and grinned. We sat there, not moving, but felt energy building inside.

"Well, I guess that's it," I said.

The cell phone rang. "Well, I guess that's it," Herb said. "All we needed was confirmation from the feds for my cousin to invoke a clause in his agreement with Caruthers to get out of the contract if there was an indictment for any reason. I'll call you in a little while when we're ready to leave."

I told Jackie what he said and called John Bridges and Pirkle. They would need more time than we would to get to Capital City given that we would be flying.

Jackie was already moving around the room packing her stuff. I was still sitting at the table in front of the television. I seemingly divided my attention between Jackie and CNN but I was not really thinking at all, just sitting there in some sort of stew, as if I moved it might have meaning and I didn't know what I meant by anything at that moment. But it wasn't confusion, it was lack, and I knew that once I did something, I would need to keep doing something for a long time and whatever I did would be important to people. I guess I was reluctant to start and didn't know what to start with.

Finally, I glanced at the sliver of key lime pie. I reached for it and ate it quickly. I had never much cared for key lime pie until that moment, but it was good and it kind of revived me. I looked at Jackie. There was a sort of half-smile on her face as she packed. She must have felt me watching her because she looked at me and blushed. I quickly ate her slice of pie, too, and stood up, intending to do my own one minute pack job.

CNN froze me in mid-movement with the announcement that there was breaking news out of Mid-Atlantic State. Before I could half think that surely this would have nothing to do with us, the anchor interrupted with news that "authorities are searching for a missing chemist, Joseph Camel."

I glanced at Jackie. She was staring at the television; her mouth was agape and she was motionless.

"An FBI spokesman refused to comment on whether or not foul play is involved in the disappearance," the anchor said. "According to federal authorities, Camel, the chief chemist at Waxsizzle Laboratories, is thought to have been involved in some, quote, unusual research."

So far, so bad, but legitimate. It was maybe only twenty-five percent hype at that point, but then, the circus began. For more on the story we turn now to some rookie I've never heard of whose only previous story required him to stand in knee deep water in some woman's kitchen. Okay, he didn't say quite all of that but he did say some of it and he did try to engage the reporter in some sort of conversation.

"What's this all about, David?" the anchor actually said.

"We're getting conflicting reports," the reporter said in his best, most serious voice. "Law enforcement officials told me that Camel might have been working on chemical processes that are potentially harmful, perhaps even dangerous and they urge caution for anyone who encounters Mr. Camel."

"It sounds ominous, David," said the ringmaster.

"It's certainly serious," the reporter said. More serious than a kitchen flood, he might have added. "But we're getting a conflicting perspective from Camel's employer. "Dr. Waxsizzle denied that Camel is involved in anything that should raise alarm. This is what he had to say only minutes ago."

The smiling, grandfatherly face of the acting Dr. Waxsizzle—apparently CNN wasn't yet in on the deception—appeared with reassurances that Joe Camel was a brilliant chemist whose whole life was dedicated to producing beauty products for everyone, slick twats for some and lots of money for Addler Crawley. Okay, I exaggerate in the spirit of big top entertainment, but that's basically what he said. Then he added something about him being "harmless." I wondered if he meant that the snake oil he concocted didn't contain venom, and then I wondered if Orville Reddenbacker had ever been asked if an unpopped kernel could suddenly explode in someone's stomach. Then, I wondered if the CIA had ever tried to kill Castro with exploding popcorn. Then, I wondered who invented popcorn in the first place? Orville Redenbacker's great-great grandfather? Then, I realized I was too far off base and had to get back quickly before I lost my mind.

There was nothing like CNN to rescue a wandering mind and bring it back to reality, no matter how kooky it might have become. It was time for some incisive journalism.

"Well, who's right and who's wrong?" the anchor asked the reporter.

"That's a good question," the reporter said.

I retreated to the edge. I was about to wander again.

"There are a number of federal law enforcement agencies working on this case, including the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm people, and I put that very question to one of them."

I suppose I should have felt comfortable with that, given that I had my own relationship with the ATF folks. But it didn't help, at least not immediately.

"An agent told me," the reporter confided in the world, "that Joseph Camel had the skill and knowledge to be involved in unimaginable pursuits and actually might be."

Huh?

Then, the reported added, "the federal agent told me that Mr. Camel should be considered dangerous, if not armed."

What the cold fusion did that mean? I guess it didn't really matter. It was enough that he had "disappeared" and that the feds were after him. And for Jackie and I, it meant a great deal more, even if we didn't know exactly what.

We had sense enough to be concerned, worried, even. We looked at each other with an odd mixture of alarm and wonderment.

The cell phone rang. It was Herb. He had just seen the CNN report and he was concerned. In a way, that made me feel a little better. It was only a matter of about an hour before Herb would spin my propeller on the subject again, but at that moment, it was a matter for Jackie and me and we couldn't figure it out, much less determine anything to do about it. What could we do, after all?

Chapter 17

While Jackie packed, I ruminated on the balcony. It was likely the last time I would ever stay at the Bonnie Beach. It was one of those anti-sentimental moments that had come so infrequently in my life up to that point but which were about to make a burst of appearances, one after another.

Not only did it not bother me not ever to return to the Bonnie Beach, the reason I would not be returning was so terribly satisfying in every respect. In fact, a key element of the reason joined me presently and stood with me gazing across the beach toward the water. The future felt as open and unknown as that water. But it was welcome, whatever it was. And I could still keep those great memories of walks on the beach below and some nights inside, as well.

We didn't talk. I liked that about Jackie. We didn't need to talk all the time. But then the cell phone rang. Someone wanted to talk.

It was Herb and he only wanted to say that he and Vivian would be over to pick us up in a few minutes. He gave me some details about arrangements in Capital City that I had to call to John Bridges and Pirkle. But first, I had to call room service. Jackie had packed so much stuff, we couldn't carry it all ourselves.

When we arrived at the front desk to check out, I looked around for Carlos Selassie but didn't see him. So I inquired but the clerk didn't know him.

"Maybe someone else back there knows him," I said.

Another clerk overheard us and spoke up to say that no one by the name of Carlos Selassie works here.

Okay, I thought, maybe he's using one of his aliases. So I described him, but again, the clerk said no one meeting that description worked there.

In the back of my mind, I worried that I had been setup for some reason. And if that were the case, there would be the necessity of plowing back through everything all over again looking for motives and clues. It was depressing to think about and I didn't have time to think about it but it seemed important enough to require thinking but I was really loaded with a to do list that was about to bloom to book length.

So I pressed the desk clerks even harder and began telling them what he had told me about starting to work there that afternoon. They all gathered and seemed intent on what I was saying.

"Maybe he's in an office somewhere, doing some training," I said. I was desperate.

But about that time, seeing a group of desk clerks gathered around me, a manager approached. So I started over with him, asking about Carlos.

"Mr. Selassie called a short time ago," the manager said. "He told us that he was pursuing employment elsewhere."

There was the answer. It failed to satisfy but did so in such a way that I had no choice but to let the matter drop as far as the hotel was concerned.

Personally, I felt cheated. The whole thing could still have been a setup, despite the fact that he had not seemed to be following me around and had been facing opposite the dining room entrance and could hardly have planned to have breakfast with me. And he gave me lots of information. But who's to say it was accurate information? While he obviously had employment arrangements with the hotel, who's to say that the hotel had not been duped as well as me? So I remained in an unexpected quandary.

After all that, we piled into the Bentley for the ride to the airport. It's a good thing that big car had a big trunk, given all the luggage we had, and not just Jackie's; Vivian had a pile of it too. I wondered if anyone had ever tied a heap of luggage to the top of a Bentley. It might be an easy way to get into the Guinness Book of World Records if a person cheap enough to do something like that could get their hands on a Bentley.

Then I thought about Jed Clampet and clan arriving in Beverly Hills with luggage and Granny tied to the top of a Bentley. Then I envisioned it on top of a Morgan but that was too much of a nightmare to handle and I shook myself out of it.

Herb and Vivian were in high spirits and for a while, I let go of Carlos Selassie and all the questions and problems associated with him and everyone he knew. I held Jackie's hand in the back seat as Herb cruised the big gray ship down the highway. Vivian kept up some banter, often straining to look over her shoulder into the backseat as we talked. It was a good moment and I savored it then and into the future because that is where we were headed.

Once we were in the air, conversation turned again to the missing Camel and the whole situation surrounding his disappearance. I didn't bring it up; it was Herb's choice of topics and the more he talked about it the angrier he became. The upshot was that he thought that we should talk to the FBI about what we knew after we arrived in Capital City. The fact that Crawley had tried to do business with him and attach some sort of sleazy goings on to his thoroughly legitimate business was too much for Herb.

It was then that I told him about breakfast with Carlos Selassie. I knew that Vivian was dying to talk to Jackie about the condo we were buying but the conversation that Herb and I had was too compelling to ignore. And the new information about Selassie cut too close to the Camel situation to be anything but riveting. But it got Herb even more agitated and by the time I got to the part about him not working at the hotel as he said he was going to, Herb was ready to take action.

As soon as the plane was on the ground, Herb got on the cell phone to the FBI and made arrangements for them to talk to us. But that would happen a dazzling hour into the future.

We limoed to a Capital City hotel that was so fancy I had never been past its ground floor restaurant. Soon, Jackie and I found ourselves in a suite large enough and fine enough for a Hollywood celebrity. After gawking a bit, I was uncomfortable. This place was clearly too much, although the view from way up on top of the city was interesting and I looked forward to seeing what it would look like at night. This was another experience that I planned to be brief.

"We need to be out of here Monday," I said.

"Where are we going to go?" Jackie asked.

"We need a house," I said, skipping a step or two ahead of the game. I could see a glint in Jackie's eyes. "An acceptable house," I said, "but not too fancy."

"Not too expensive," Jackie said. It was a good interpretation.

"In the meantime..." I said and trailed the thought away into air.

"In the meantime, we can find one of those business type suites that we can rent by the week until we're ready to move," Jackie said. Such decisiveness and work knowledge. It made me more comfortable about being in such extreme elegance and expense for a few days.

As it turns out, there was good reason for being where we were. Space was one thing. There was an office area large enough for Jackie and I both to work in and there was enough room in the main room for several people to gather for a meeting. Over the course of the next few days, we made good use of the facilities.

Herb and Vivian had a similar suite next door and after we had been in for a while, Herb called and asked us to come over. A couple of FBI agents were already there.

By the time we had finished talking to them, the afternoon was rapidly drawing to a close. The feds had listened intently and asked bunches of questions. They seemed to key on things that made a connection between Caruthers on the one hand and Crawley/Waxsizzle/ Palmer on the other. Not to mention Camel. And they were very interested in what Carlos Selassie told me at breakfast that morning, a breakfast that seemed so long ago that it felt like it had been a different day, maybe even a different week.

It was very late in the afternoon before we finished with the FBI interview. I had a hard time thinking that it had been worthwhile. It seemed to me like a long-winded exercise that blew us back to where we started. But Herb seemed more relaxed afterward as if he were glad to have had a chance to state his viewpoint on the whole thing.

For Herb, Addler Crawley was a keystone element of the problem, Caruthers aside. It was as if he could deal with Caruthers, like them or not, and expose their criminal misconduct for what it was and move on. But for Herb, Crawley was a special matter. He kept emphasizing to the FBI agents that legitimate business people don't hire meddlesome little dicks to skulk around looking for soft opportunities and don't attempt to initiate deals with the intention of dragging a clearly dubious party into the mix and take it even further by trying to push into someone else's deal with their own, again, dragging the same dubious baggage with them.

For me, Crawley had been merely a loathsome annoyance. But listening to Herb, it occurred to me that maybe he was more important than I had realized, with tentacles that affected me in ways I had not considered.

Crawley seemed to me proof of evolution. Here was a case where the bad had evolved to survive, as well as the good, with Crawley representing the bad. Crawley was a slippery fish who had evolved a protective coat of slime that enabled him to both slip into and out of situations that defy the brute force of people like Joe Palmer. And I suspected the same layer of ooze would let him slither through the bars of justice, leaving less well adapted creatures to languish in prison while they were free to wiggle into new situations.

The FBI probably felt the same way, I figured, because they didn't have much to say, preferring to keep whatever they thought secret. They're good at keeping secrets, having had expert practice at keeping themselves secret for so long and even now, twisting first one way and then another in order to keep the slimmest possible profile, so slim, in fact, that they, too, can slip through the same bars of justice as Crawley.

That makes sense, I thought. They're all lawyers, including the FBI these days. Legislators are mostly lawyers who hire other lawyers, the famous "staff" we read about in the newspapers that ought to stand for staphylococci, to write the laws they enact, endorsed by mostly governor and president lawyers who then hand the laws over to other lawyers to investigate, enforce and evaluate. Is it no wonder that it's lawyers who know how to navigate all that and come out the other side with a bag full of money?

When the G-lawyers left, private ones took their place. Herb took the whole proceeding in stride, as if it were part of life, which, for him, it probably was. But when the lawyers hired by Herb on one hand and his cousin on the other, came in, everything changed and for me, it was like being in a shower that suddenly switched from cold to hot. Actually, I'll have to admit, it was warm.

Unlike some lawyers who are hired to do deals and only seem to be able to find reasons not to complete the transaction, these had been charged with cooperation and they had worked everything out. It was a little as if some scientist had figured out how to pack dill pickles and sweet pickles in the same jar. They're all chopped up, too, and it's called relish. But as wonderful as it was, there was an unsettling moment for me.

Jackie and I joined Herb and Vivian on one side of the table with the lawyers arrayed on the other side. Papers, already signed by Mr. Kerplopski, were rotated around the table, shuffled, signed, passed, shuffled, signed, passed and so forth all the way around and in no time, or speeded up time, the whole event transpired literally like a clock spinning quickly around its face.

"There," Herb said with considerable satisfaction. "It's done."

Done? Over? I pondered this for a millisecond of disbelief. The store had changed hands that quickly and there had not even been a trumpet blast, let alone a trip to the throne to be ceremoniously anointed.

"There's one more thing," Herb said.

Ah, ha, I thought. Here it comes. They're going to give me the reigns of the white steed I will mount to lead our troops into battle against other retailers.

"We've got some papers here for John and Maria and Mr. Pirkle to sign, along with Jackie, since they are putting in some money, too," Herb said.

A little checking found them in the hotel coffee shop and soon they were in Herb's suite, along with Todd. While they were on their way up, Herb mentioned that we had been invited to Mr. Kerplopski's house for dinner. That little detail satisfied me. I wanted something to mark this occasion and apparently, so did Mr. Kerplopski.

After papers were signed, the lawyers departed and Herb brought out a bottle of some sort of fine red wine. He made a toast to success of our new venture and we all clinked glasses. Then we tipped them through a couple of refills.

The conversation was quite. I think we were all a little awed at what was about to happen.

During the course of our conversation, I noticed Vivian and Jackie whispering in a corner. Soon, Vivian disappeared and Jackie excused herself. I knew what that meant, and so did Herb. We continued with the group conversation for a few minutes more. Finally, I suggested that my people meet in my suite at nine o'clock in the morning. That, they understood, meant it was time to leave.

Jackie was already in the shower when I returned. I took advantage of the time to look out the window at the darkening skyline, as lights began to appear brighter in the distance, near and far. The hotel room was dark and I could see clearly, and, for a moment, I perceived clearly without thinking and calmed without effort.

In the meantime, Jackie was knocking herself out. I thought she was gorgeous without doing anything but she put a lot of effort into getting ready that night. Of course, it was nothing for me to get ready. It was simple: shower, shave, suit. I waited until what I thought was the last minute and then had to wait on Jackie for a few more. But when she stepped out of the bedroom, she looked like she was ready to be immortalized by one of those few photographers who become almost as famous as the people they shoot.

When I answered the door and saw Vivian, I understood better. She was awfully dolled up, too. It was all that whispering. And when we arrived at the Kerplopski mansion, I understood even better.

When the butler showed us to the drawing room, it was obvious that Mrs. Kerplopski had gotten especially fixed up, too. It was to the point that I had to wonder if Mr. Kerplopski might want to hang on a little longer.

He looked good, too, so much so that I had to think about it a while. It was complicated by the fact that in some ways he looked older than he did when I last saw him which had only been a few days. On the other hand, he looked better and I decided it was because he seemed to have suddenly relaxed like a rubber band that had strained to contain a stack of papers for a very long time and suddenly went off duty. This rubber band had performed its mission for so long, the ageing process was abundantly evident and upon release, quit the effort gratefully but not without having sacrificed during the toil.

Soon, it occurred to me that the butler bearing hor dourves and cocktails was as close as I was going to come to an anointing ceremony. I was wrong, as it turns out, but I was satisfied, which, as it happened, made it all the sweeter when the big moment came, having given up the need for it.

Dinner must have been delicious but I don't really remember. I was too distracted, numbed almost, with the realization that so much was about to be placed on me. My mind was simply too busy to pay attention to my mouth so I hope I didn't say anything uncharacteristically untoward.

After dinner, I came more into focus. That was partly due to the conversation and partly due to a departure from custom.

For this event, the women did not separate from the men after dinner. In the distant past, this would have involved cigars and separate topics of conversation. The cigars had long disappeared and this time, the only subject of conversation was equally of interest to all of us. Two decisions emerged from that conversation that impacted the immediate future.

The first grew out of an "its too bad that..." thought, interestingly enough expressed by Mrs. Kerplopski. Bear in mind that when she said it, there was something in her eyes, behind them actually, that gripped my attention with the same force that Vivian probably used to remove a stubborn tooth and it hurt just as much as if she wasn't using Novocain.

What Mrs. Kerplopski said, exactly, was, "It's too bad that this is happening so fast that you can't have time for a proper changeover, a dinner of some sort." As she spoke, I could see something very intense about what she was thinking. I didn't know what it was; I simply knew it was powerful.

But Herb followed her deeply thought comment with a quick, wispy one of his own. "Yes," he said, "that would be a good way for me to meet store executives."

"Or for Mr. Kerplopski to bid farewell," Mrs. Kerplopski said instantly and just as instantly I saw a flash of explanation for what I had sensed. It wasn't exactly that she was angry, but she was alert to doing something in all of this to benefit her beloved old husband and Herb's self-centered comment annoyed her.

But then, Mr. Kerplopski injected his own idea and it spoke more eloquently about the man than all the words some Shakespeare could ever write. "And it could be for all our people," he said. "And if we did it late Sunday, lots of our people could be there, even from around the state."

There he was thinking about involving all of his people, not leaving anybody out, even when the event should have centered on him. I thought about one of those old British explorers, a guy named Shakelton, I think. He believed in sharing everything with his crew, eating the same food, taking the same assignments and all that. You can imagine how it affected the crew.

"That's true," I said. If it were held from, say, six to nine, all the Capital City folks could come and many from around the state who didn't work that day, too, and they would still have plenty of time to make it back home at a reasonable hour."

"That's grand," Mrs. Kerplopski said, almost jumping forward in her seat. "Of course, Sunday is virtually day after tomorrow, now," she said and her voice dropped when she said it, along with her eyes. It's like she had to add a little retreat to her own hope in order not to be crushed when the whole idea crashed.

"It's not much time to organize an event that big. There would be food and location issues, big issues starting this late," I cautioned.

At that point Mr. Kerplopski left the room without saying a word. The rest of us said plenty without coming to a consensus. When he returned a mere ten minutes later, Mr. Kerplopski announced that a city park with a very large covered pavilion would be made available to us and that the mayor would attend. Irene, he said, at that moment, was calling the caterers they had worked with in the past to come up with a menu suitable to the circumstances, a variety of barbecue and all the sides and stuff.

While we were quick to praise what he had set in motion, it took some thought to comprehend it all. And I learned something valuable.

The mayor, I thought, and Irene. I had thought about Irene a good deal lately, although I had not said anything. All that accomplished and the only finger he lifted was to dial the phone.

After that kind of inspiration, why not some more ideas? I didn't speak the first one. The press, I thought, fatefully as it turned out. If there's going to be an event of that significance, why not get some good publicity for the store at the same time? Given the slowness of a Sunday evening, it shouldn't be difficult to attract a few media people with a simple press release.

But the other idea required some discussion. It wasn't something we had thought about before, but I thought it would appeal to Herb, given his desire to have personal participation and feel a connection to our people, our facilities and our markets. I turned to speak directly to him.

"On Monday," I said, "let's you and I, and Vivian and Jackie, too, if they want, let's start a tour of all the stores. We can begin right here in Capital City, then move northwest, picking up those stores, the sharply turn southeast getting over to Border City before turning back southwest toward Sunbelt City and then on south ending up in Coast Town and that area. I've been in all the stores, but I think it's important to sort of show the flag in the beginning and you can get a feel for the people and the stores and all."

I didn't have to sell the idea. Herb jumped on it. Like I figured, it was just what he was looking for.

It wasn't long before we were gathered around the grand piano with Jackie playing something that sounded complicated, stirring and melodious all at the same time. It was like a whole bunch of notes crammed into a soda can and shaken before the top was popped. It turned out to have been Mozart.

It shows you how little I know. I was thinking that the evening had been an opportunity to share a quiet solidarity among the principals of the new Kerplopski's before the glorious start of a new day. I was enjoying the warm glow of our new enterprise instead of heeding the voice of skepticism that was surely calling from somewhere deep inside, "not so fast, Mick."

Chapter 18

There was a knock on the door of our hotel room the next morning at about eight-thirty. At the time, I was pacing nearby, a bit keyed up in anticipation of going to the store for the first time as president. I was not surprised by the knock on the door, assuming it to be Herb or John. We had all, including Jackie and Vivian, planned to go downtown to the flagship store together, arriving at nine o'clock. It was a little early to leave, but I thought that Herb or John may just be as excited as I was and wanted to wait the last few minutes together.

But I took a moment to glance through the peephole before opening the door. You can't be too careful. You never knew who you might encounter. In this case it was a couple of men I didn't know, certainly not Herb or John or Pirkle, but I opened the door anyway because they were wearing suits. There's something inevitable about men wearing suits. If they're dangerous, they're likely to be more dangerous than thugs in tee shirts and if they're thieves, you can count on it that they will steal a whole hell of a lot more. But you may as well go ahead and open the door to them because if they want to talk to you, they will talk to you and they have the means to compel the conversation, bars on the door be damned, not to mention peepholes. So I opened the door.

"Mick Manage?"

"Mick Manage."

Nice concise language and a topic very important to me. It was followed by a gesture worth a thousand words. One of the men suddenly thrust a document at me with such lightening speed and electrifying precision that he need not have said more, and I need not have read the thing, although he did and I did.

"This was filed in court moments ago," he said and turned immediately to leave.

I'm no lawyer but it was instantly clear that Caruthers was alive and twitching if not alive and well. But it took a couple of minutes to get my poor layman's mind through the jargon. I was still standing in the doorway when Herb appeared in his own doorway. He walked over to me, obviously aware of the obvious.

"Caruthers has filed suit to stop the sale," I said.

He took the document into my room and picked up the hotel telephone, settling into a chair as he dialed and reading as the phone rang. It didn't ring long and soon he was reading the document to someone over the phone. That didn't take long either, and about the time he said we needed to fax it somewhere, Pirkle and Todd appeared. Todd took it to the hotel fax machine and the rest of us, soon joined by John and Maria and Vivian and Jackie, sat around the coffee table talking.

The telephone rang soon. Herb took it. He listened briefly. "Go ahead," he said and with that a whole bunch of lawyers started doing whatever lawyers do. "We're advised not to go to the store until the matter is cleared up," Herb said.

Given that we didn't know exactly when that would be, we took the faint chance that it would be that day and decided to wait it out in the hotel. It was hope, nothing but hope because there was a good chance that it would be the following week before we could proceed. But if by chance, it turned out to be cleared up that day and we had dispersed to our homes, it would be a lot of trouble to come back the next week. But if we stuck it out that day, we would be virtual prisoners in the hotel because we could not go into any Kerplopski store and if we went anywhere else, given the news that all of this was generating, we would be subject to questions from anyone we met and we didn't want to answer any questions.

We really didn't want to talk about any questions but we had no choice. Finally, someone raised the uncomfortable question about whether to continue planning the Sunday event. Wow. What if we went ahead with the event and the court didn't allow us to even go into our store on Monday or Tuesday or anytime that week? Awkward and embarrassing aren't even words for that.

Herb decided to call Mr. Kerplopski and they discussed the matter but only briefly. "We stick to our plan," Herb said when he hung up.

That may have been that, but the group of us suddenly became aware of ourselves and it wasn't entirely comfortable. We had been talking but it dawned on us collectively how odd the prospect felt given the fact that the day was just beginning.

It was about that time that Jackie's own cell phone rang. No one paid much attention at that moment, although I noticed that she happily responded with, "Oh, hello, Aunt Sarah."

I turned my attention back to the conversation of the group and a moment later Jackie seized everyone's attention with a shriek, much like the one on Herb's yacht except that this was a hotel room, not the deck of a boat on the open sea, and sharp noises don't work as well. I thought that it was a good idea that if there had to be naval battles with big ships firing big guns that it was good that it took place out in the middle of the ocean instead of a hotel room or some such place. But I didn't think that long because Jackie jumped up and ran into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Everyone else returned to their increasingly awkward conversation but I was concerned about Jackie. After giving her a few minutes alone, I cautiously opened the bedroom door. Jackie paid me no attention. By that point she was clearly having an amiable if intense conversation, presumably with her Aunt Sarah. I was relieved. The last shriek she had brought news of Joe Camel and we didn't want anymore of that. I returned to the others confident that everything was okay except that time went on with Jackie still in the bedroom. It was getting fairly awkward in our group and Vivian suggested having a brunch tray sent in while we decided what to do with our time.

As it turned out, Jackie had made that decision for the girls. She emerged from the bedroom to announce that since she and Maria needed to find houses, she had arranged for them to meet real estate agents in half an hour. Vivian was specifically invited, as well, although I suspected that Jackie would rather have handled the mission alone. As it turns out, she had thought about all of that and neatly arranged for them to split up after a while, when the futility of a joint mission had become clear to all.

But that was later that day. I was still curious about the telephone conversation that had provoked Jackie earlier. She drew me into the bedroom and told me about it.

It seems that Aunt Sarah had seen some of the news about Kerplopski's and ostensibly called to see how her niece was faring in the situation. It had obviously been a while since they had talked. She had no idea that Jackie was so intimately involved in the whole Kerplopski situation. But before Jackie could explain about me and how I had dragged her into the innermost events of the matter, Aunt Sarah interrupted her.

"Now, dear, don't you worry about anything," Aunt Sarah told her. "You'll soon be working right here in the moving company as soon as your husband buys it from me."

That's what produced the shriek. And that's when Jackie ran into the bedroom with the phone.

Joe had recently made a proposal to buy the moving and storage company from Aunt Sarah but neglected to tell her that he and Jackie were divorced. Things had happened so fast that Jackie had not had time to call some of her relatives and update them on her rapidly changing life. It was a lesson learned. What if Aunt Sarah had gone ahead and made the deal with Joe, thinking that she was helping her niece?

Jackie straightened out the matter and stopped her aunt from selling to Joe. Not only that, they then began to talk about Jackie buying the moving company, something that could be easily accomplished over time as incremental purchase payments provided income to Aunt Sarah. She was eighty years old, she said, and it was time to retire.

All of that talk played excitedly through Jackie's mind, adding more interest and complexity to a mind already racing in many directions as many new developments unfolded in her life. It was understandable that Jackie paid scant attention when Aunt Sarah mentioned that Joe had leased a couple of her vans. Given all else that had been said, renting a couple of trucks seemed like a minor thing, hardly worth mentioning at all.

And that's the way I took it, too, when Jackie gave me the rundown on the conversation. She had saved the moving and storage business along with her Aunt and in the process, probably gained a business to run. All of this was in the meantime a sideline of bigger, more immediate doings including Jackie about to go out on another house hunt. It was a lot to think about, and I also missed the importance of the leased moving vans.

All of the talk done, our days diverged until dinner time. And they were busy days for all of us. Maybe I should amend that because Herb ended up taking the afternoon off.

Given that we had a day of enforced waiting with nowhere to go, no office to establish and no store to visit and given that the women were all gone house hunting, I thought that the rest of us men should hone our plans in order to be most effective as soon as we could go in the store. It seemed to me to be the best use of time. It got a little tedious but Herb hung in there while the rest of us got extremely specific about issues we expected to encounter and the personalities of individuals involved, the existing Kerplopski executives. By dinnertime, I thought we had rehearsed everything as well as possible and were really sitting on ready.

Herb didn't make it much past lunch. We had sandwiches brought in by room service. But by then, the women had had enough of house hunting as a group. I didn't know it directly, of course, because Jackie wasn't calling, it's just that that is what she had told me would happen. I envisioned our three women as gorgeous caveman molls, their curvy bodies draped in heavy, awkward, but fashionable leopard skins, embellished with bone, make that tooth, necklaces. Hey, I'm a retailer; that's what I think about. They paused at the crest of a hill and momentarily put down their clubs and conferred on the best way to bag a rabbit or some other small game, hopefully not too disgusting because they were, after all gorgeous, if cavewomen. Then they went in three directions.

Vivian appeared at the door, by this time having changed from her cave costume to some sharp modern duds and she didn't need a club to fetch Herb. He was more than willing. I wondered if they ever played dentist and if so, if she ever let Herb be the dentist. "Now, open wide," he would say but I didn't want to think about anything after that. It just didn't seem right. We didn't see Herb again until a little after five o'clock.

And when he appeared, it was after three quick, sharp, hard raps on the door. Big news spilled as the door opened.

"The judge threw out the Caruthers suit," Herb blurted. "Dismissed. Gone."

"Forever?" I asked. There was probably more excitement in my voice than the question implied. I hated to be so skeptical but I just didn't trust those bastards.

By that point, Herb had already crossed to the center of the room and stood with a more anticipated what's next than what's happened. He was clearly satisfied that the situation was in hand.

"They could appeal," he said. "But the lawyers said there's no way that any appeal court would stop us from taking possession."

For me, at least, that assurance required taking a deep breath. I was more concerned about the next step than I was celebratory about the last one.

"That raises a question," I said, "about going to the store. We had not anticipated that it might be a Saturday, given that it's too late today."

The issue put Herb back on the serious wavelength. However eager he might be about something, he wanted to make sure that things were done properly.

When in doubt, ask Irene, I thought and said it, too, then picked up the phone after glancing at the time. "She's probably still there," I said and she was. And her advice was perfect.

Chapter 19

Saturday morning was the perfect time to get started at the store. But in some ways, it felt a little creepy. Let's just say, it was low key.

A guard was the first person we encountered. We arrived at the associate entrance at eight-thirty, awfully early for most people but like a time zone on a different planet under these circumstances. It's not an uncommon situation among old downtown areas of modern American cities for Saturdays to be deserted but most people never experience it like this.

The guard, apparently as lonely as the Maytag repairman, was expecting us and constituted the sole greeting party for the new owners. He performed this role quite amiably but I suspected that the position needed to be eliminated. We had ADT there, anyway, and, as Herb seemed to read my mind, maybe that store didn't need to be open on Saturdays.

As our party moved across the cathedral-like expanse of the first floor, I felt a bit like I was leading an archeological expedition into the long hidden tomb of some centuries dead monarch. The lighting at that hour was reduced to a minimum that only added to the reverential atmosphere. The elegant chandeliers, the old style fixturing and subdued paint colors completed the feeling. We could only speak in hushed tones, if at all.

I led the group to the elevators, not wanting to tackle five flights of immobile escalators. When the door opened onto the sixth floor, it seemed much more like my own store as we threaded our way through furniture settings toward the executive offices. Irene was busy at her desk as we entered and she greeted us warmly. Herb was impressed. I couldn't help but think of Benzene.

And, of course, I thought about Mr. Kerplopski. After we talked a few minutes as a group, I pulled Irene aside. She knew what was on my mind.

"I'm going to stay with Mr. Kerplopski as long as he lives, then I'll retire, too," she said. "He's going to need some administrative assistance and we already have an office set up at his home." I didn't even have to ask the whole question to get my answer. But she added something helpful.

"But I talked with Mr. Kerplopski," she said, "about helping you, also, for a while. And I can do that for a few weeks until you get settled."

I thought about Mrs. Martin and hoped that she would want to move to Capital City. And the sooner the better to take advantage of what Irene could teach her. And me for that matter. I figured that she knew as much as anyone else in the world about how Mr. Kerplopski had been successful and I hoped to be able to absorb some of that knowledge very quickly. I needed all the help I could get.

In an odd way, looking at the downtown store on a Saturday when it was virtually abandoned, certainly by all the corporate people, gave me a chance for perspective. Over the years, as downtown traffic diminished, as it had in most larger cities, in favor of outlying malls, Mr. Kerplopski had wisely and gradually converted the old downtown store building into a corporate office building as the sales floor shrank in response to diminished sales. By doing it that way, he had created a modern corporate store environment without gong out and buying an office building. As I showed the others around the building, explaining who worked where and what they did, I gave myself a review that would come in handy. And seeing the space empty of its citizens let me think about them in ways that were different than if they had been there. Why did we have so many clerical positions in advertising, I wondered. It was something to look into. Not that I planned to whack away at the staff. In fact, I thought it important not to do that, but maybe, in the course of a few months, some shifts could be made to get people where they were more needed. It helped to have a chance to think like that without everybody crowding around.

It sure helped the others to have that tour. Herb was new to the whole process but I could see his wheels turning as we moved through the building. And I could tell that Todd was taking it all in from the standpoint of someone who was new but who would be working with all these momentarily invisible people. Even John and Pirkle who had been with Kerplopski's for a while had never had the opportunity to get the inside scoop on everything before.

All this took a while. We moved slowly and I found myself talking a lot. An awful lot. But everyone seemed spell bound and I noticed that as I talked, I was analyzing and questioning even if there weren't many questions coming from the others.

When we got to the floor that housed the computers, I was at a loss and made no pretense otherwise. We found the young man who was in charge that day and asked him to guide us through. I had lots of questions and we took time to examine some of the spreadsheets they produced. I was better at explaining these than the young man, at least in terms of how they helped the merchants.

By the time we finished all of this it was two holy cow o'clock and I realized for the first time how hungry I was. The store restaurant was closed on Saturday. It turns out that most all of them were closed downtown on Saturday except for the one stately old hotel that had managed to hang on over the years as a quality, read very expensive, hotel and residence.

We were able to have a private dining room that permitted free conversation to flow as well as exceptionally good food and wine. But after a while I began to have a nagging feeling of lack, like I was missing something. Maybe it was the restlessness of the restaurant staff who probably had no idea that we would be there that long. Finally, I put the two together and got our group to go back to the store, intending to resume in the small conference room adjacent to Mr. Kerplopski's office.

It was now my office and that thought, as we walked back to the store, gave rise to what had been nagging at the back of my mind. And here it is: while I really didn't think it would be a good idea to go in and make a bunch of changes to things right away because change always upsets people, hell, we were doing the utmost change possible right then and there with the sale of the store. You just couldn't have any bigger change unless you brought Caruthers in or something like that. That and the fact that a few things really had to change if I was going to be in charge meant that some change was essential. In other words, offense be damned, people were going to have to get used to some things or leave. Realizing that made me feel better. Made me feel more comfortable about moving ahead and taking charge.

When we got back to the store, I put the others in the conference room to let them talk. I showed them where the coffee maker was hidden in a cabinet and left the room. I wondered if Herb ever made his own coffee. I'll bet he did.

Irene was on the phone when I went in the office. I walked quickly past her into my office and closed the door. Then I picked up the phone and called Mrs. Martin. She had actually hoped that I would ask her to move to Capital City but told me that she had tried not to get her hopes up. I figured she could stay in one of those pay by the week hotels until she found somewhere to live. All of that made me feel better, too, like I was going to make the place my own.

Speaking of which, I told myself, something would have to be done about my office. And quickly. I glanced at my watch. By that point, it was four can't believe it o'clock. I called Jackie and told her that I needed help right away. She was alarmed at first, but burst into laughter when I told her exactly what I needed: a painting that was about three feet by four feet. Then I rattled off three more with their dimensions estimated from where I was sitting. When I rose to get closer to one of them, the heavy, complicated telephone tugged back at me. That would have to change, too, I thought.

I told Jackie that I really needed these paintings very quickly. I didn't know what to think about the reality of the request. I felt mighty determined but at the same time, even Mick Manage has to respect some limits. As I would discover in just a few hours, there was a special reason that Jackie would be able to come through—literally deliver—on this so all fired important need of mine. It didn't mean anything to me then, but as it turned out, it was important that, at the time I called, Jackie happened to be in the hoity-toity shopping area of Nearby Village, a hoity-toity community of the hoity-toity not far from Capital City.

She merely walked a few doors down the sidewalk to an art gallery and bought original paintings that were exactly what I needed. Now was almost as important as what. And the gallery owner was more than willing to make now a reality with his van, delivering them within the hour.

In the meantime, I opened the door to my office, instantly catching Irene's eye. She stood immediately. I moved toward her desk, intending to thank her for agreeing to stay for a few weeks. But she was quicker, and charged from around her desk toward me, past me even, into my office.

"You're going to need to make some changes in here," she said, "to suit yourself. Mr. Kerplopski had his ways and you will have yours."

I almost said something, but I didn't.

"These are his paintings," Irene said. "Keep them until you find what you want. Mr. and Mrs. Kerplopski have others at home and they plan to donate these to a museum."

Museum, I thought. Museum? These paintings are museum type stuff? I didn't have much of an art language and I'm sure "stuff" isn't a word you would find in an art museum but I was surprised. I bent forward toward a sketch of some sort mounted and framed simply. I realized that simple didn't reflect on quality but I was stunned again to realize the signature on this thing. Even an art nobody like me understood "Rembrandt."

Suddenly, I realized that I had not said anything to Jackie about not spending too much money on my paintings. Evidently, Irene read alarm in my face.

"Don't worry about it, Mick," she said. "You'll learn lots about all kinds of things including art. You'll find that all kinds of organizations will want you on their boards."

That's something I had not thought about. It was most peripheral at the moment, but having been clued, I would be alert and give it some thought.

From the sublime, as they say, to...to the here and now, Irene changed the subject. I was always grateful for Irene. I would miss her and had really only worked with her for five minutes.

"Everything is ready for tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow?" I said like I didn't know what it was. I wondered if doomsday prophets ever had that reaction. I wondered if they ever went to the dentist. I didn't think I would ask Vivian.

"The spur of the moment store dinner that was such as good idea," Irene said. "We had to use several caterers to piece the meal together in such a hurry, but it's done. You and Herb should arrive together and I will come with Mr. and Mrs. Kerplopski. We'll be there fifteen minutes early. You and Herb need to follow half an hour later."

Now that's what you call planning. It was actually very thoughtful and it gave Mr. Kerplopski a chance to say good-bye to people without being crowded by the new crew.

Speaking of good-bye, Irene asked if there was anything else she should do before she left. Again, thoughtful, but no. Just please come back everyday for a few weeks, at least, I thought but didn't say it quite that pitifully. She knew I appreciated her.

And I appreciated a few minutes alone in my new office. I sat in the chair and fingered the cord on the telephone. That would be an easy fix. Then it occurred to me that I would need a different chair, something suited to my own backside, and that would take some looking, trying out even.

I looked around the room and quickly decided on the rearrangement of some of the furniture. Except for the chair, none of it would need to be replaced. I wanted to strike a balance of letting all visitors see that I had made the place my own space without spending much money. I wanted that to be an immediate example—a message of utility and thriftiness—for all the store executives who would soon be dropping by.

At the moment, the position of the furniture gnawed at me. I wanted it moved quickly. Then, I remembered that I had left the others in the conference room. I bounded out of my chair. Opening the door, I noticed that Herb and John were deep into some conversation and that Pirkle was paying rapt attention. Todd caught my eye and I motioned to him.

In just a few minutes we accomplished all the furniture moves I wanted and about the time we were finishing, someone from the gallery showed up in the doorway with a small, wrapped painting. Over the next few minutes, one by one, he brought the others up. Judging from the care he exercised with each of them, I feared to think what they must have cost.

I pointed out the "Rembrandt" on the drawing that Todd and I carefully wrapped using the materials we removed from the new paintings. We searched the other paintings for recognizable names but I just didn't know enough to understand the meaning of Wyeth and Homer, at least not an artist by that name. Like Irene said, I would learn.

That about did it for the store that day, but, as it turns out, my day was just beginning. Jackie had been busy.

She had made us reservations at a small restaurant in Nearby Village. But the reservation was a bit late. That gave us plenty of time to drive slowly through the residential area of Nearby Village. She insisted on driving. After we went down one street and back up the next, slowing to admire some point of architecture or landscaping, I got the point.

"Which one of these is going to be ours?" I asked.

Jackie grinned. "Well..." she said, drawing out her response like maybe she was trying to decide how direct to be, given that I zeroed in on her game before she had a chance to say anything. "Two or three of them are available."

Available, I thought. Read expensive. She had picked up the term from the real estate person. If something is for sale, you just buy it if you want it. If something is available, you have to be ready to pay somebody to allow you the honor and privilege of buying it while at the same time paying somebody else to part with what you're also paying to buy. I thought about how fast a person can go through five million dollars. A few days ago I was newly rich. Now I was living like I was newly rich but really wasn't.

I glanced at Jackie again. I couldn't decide which was brighter, her smile or her eyes. It was all worth it.

"I appreciate what you did about that condominium on the coast," I said. "Showing me some expensive wrong address first, then going for the just right model. But this time, why don't you just show me the one you want the first time."

"Ok," Jackie said and grinned and turned down another street.

All of the houses in that area seemed awfully big, set way back from the street with big lawns stretching down to shaded streets. Big houses meant big prices, especially in Nearby Village.

Moments later, Jackie turned down a quiet street. After a couple of blocks, an unusually dense stand of trees appeared and immediately beyond that a wall made of old brick rose near the street. Stress old. And there was an old growth of ivy to complete the old money look.

Jackie pulled over at the curb. Was this it? You couldn't see anything for the wall. That was it all right. But I followed Jackie to the closed iron gate. The driveway wound away from the house making it difficult to see anything besides trees and ivy.

I tried to imagine the Morgan driving through the gate but I couldn't quite imagine where it would park. It would have to have a house, too, I thought.

I didn't say anything. I think that worried Jackie.

"We've got an appointment tomorrow morning," she said. I knew she was looking at me.

"Sunday morning?" I said. It occurred to me that if you were paying that much for something the real estate agent would fall all over themselves to let you pay as quickly as you wanted to.

"Nice neighborhood," I said. "I'm hungry."

We drove back to the little commercial area nestled deep inside Nearby Village. We parked on the street in front of the restaurant.

Jackie politely but firmly ensured that appetizers and drinks were provided quickly. I started feeling better.

Then we started talking. Looking back on the conversation, I would say that Jackie was masterful.

She started by asking about the paintings and laughed when I told her that Rembrandt was the only name on Mr. Kerplopski's art that I recognized.

"You won't recognize any of the artists that painted what you bought, either," she said.

"Why's that?" I asked. This simple question could have gone three ways, I figured. The opening it presented might have been ignored, which most people would do, or, taking the route many people would choose, it could have become the road to poking fun at my ignorance, an easy shot, for sure. Instead, it paved the way for some uniquely Jackie wisdom.

"It seemed to me that they were going to be temporary," Jackie said. "Buying paintings for someone is a little like buying a tie for a man. Any would do in a pinch, but taste is very individual and I assumed that you needed something to get by and would replace them later with what you really liked."

"That was thoughtful," I said. And it was. I appreciated it.

"And it meant that I didn't need to spend much," she said.

"How much?" I asked.

"Under a thousand dollars," she said.

"For all together?"

"And delivered immediately," Jackie said.

I was really feeling better by that point.

"Did they work out ok for you?" Jackie asked.

Oh, yeah, they worked out very well, I told her because I had been fearful of ten times that amount. I was really feeling better and now that Jackie had me on a good plane, she flew it off in another direction.

"How did you like the house?" she asked. "What you could see of it."

"I liked the trees," I said.

Jackie laughed.

"But with the wall, you couldn't see much else," I said. Then I mumbled what I was thinking, "pricey neighborhood."

Jackie grinned. "You need to remember who you are," she said. "And the people and the business you represent."

There was some more Jackie wisdom and I needed to hear it. If I could please the world and have trees at the same time, it would be a good mission.

But there was one more mission that night and I stepped into it the moment we stepped onto the sidewalk. We went out the front door of the restaurant but instead of turning in the direction of the car, Jackie steered us sharply in the other direction. I had had a couple or so drinks but I knew I wasn't so messed up I couldn't tell where we were parked.

But it wasn't the car Jackie had on her mind and as soon as we passed the restaurant, I knew why. Two doors down was a jewelry store.

How could I have forgotten? I stopped right there in the middle of the sidewalk and started making all kinds of apologies, stumbling all over myself. The ring, of course.

But there was no "of course." Jackie broke down in laughter. I couldn't understand why anything. Why no ring. Why laughter. She pulled me further down the sidewalk.

We passed a tobacco store. If Jackie had been me, she would have said, "close but no cigar." But I'm glad Jackie was Jackie and I'm glad I didn't have to hear what I would have said.

Then we came to a piano store. I barely comprehended before Jackie pulled me toward the window, heavily obscured by a deep canvas awning. The light in the closed showroom was mostly dim but in the middle of the store, light focused like a halo around a gigantic grand piano.

"Steinway," Jackie whispered. "Concert grand."

"That's what you want instead of a ring?" I half asked, half said. Finally, a glimmer of comprehension made its way through the fog of my limited understanding.

Jackie smiled and nodded. Her eyes were brighter than any light.

"Wow," I managed to say.

As we walked back to the car, it was like I was in a trance with all that had happened that day. Store. Paintings. House. No ring. Piano.

And not just any piano, but a Steinway. And not just any Steinway but a concert grand. Now, I may not know much about a lot of things, and I may not be able to recognize the names of many artists except Rembrandt and Picasso, but I knew enough to know that a Steinway concert grand was hugely more expensive than any diamond I could find anywhere near Capital City. In fact, it would be like buying yet another house. No wonder I was in a daze.
Chapter 20

After waking very early Sunday morning, waking Jackie and then napping and waking again, there was still plenty of time before Jackie had us scheduled for brunch. By that point, I was very relaxed, despite having two very important events to deal with that day, seeing the house Jackie wanted to buy and the Kerplopski event late in the afternoon.

But I was ready so early and so much in advance of brunch that I decided to call John Bridges and maybe have a cup with him in the hotel coffee shop while the women prepared for the day. I called his room; Maria answered and said that John was on another phone but that I should come over to the room.

When I arrived, Maria answered the door in her robe and said that John was ready except that he was still on the telephone but surely would be off soon. She explained that John's mother had been ill and he was talking to her. Maria left me on the couch and returned to the bedroom where John was talking on his cell phone. I sat there a few minutes alone.

In a situation like that, don't most people sort of look around and take stock of what they see? Well, there wasn't much to see in a room that was virtually free of all things that the hotel had not placed there, lamp, table and so forth. The only point remaining was the coffee table in front of me. A brief case was open in front of me and some file folders had been removed to the top of the table. I would never think of looking in a brief case or even opening a folder, but I could not help but notice that one of the folders was labeled "history," and another, the top most folder, was labeled "university speech." Lying outside the folder and on top of that folder were a few printed brochures.

That's where I got really specific with my looking around. I'm relating all of this to justify my curiosity and to pre-defend myself against anyone who would say I was snooping. I wasn't. This was right out in front of me and given that the brochure or pamphlets or whatever you want to call them were printed, I thought it would be okay to have a look. So I picked one up.

The cover grabbed my attention. It said that the document was a speech delivered by John Bridges at a Regional University history conference. It was dated five years ago. I turned the cover and started reading.

I had barely read the first paragraph when Maria appeared to say that John would be out in just a minute. Then, she mentioned the speech. My split second reaction was a little bit guilty, but she cleared the whole thing up for me by suggesting that I take a copy.

"Thanks," I said. "I would like to read it." I was surprised to find that he had done something like that and I didn't say anything else. But Maria volunteered information.

She said that because John had been an honors scholar in history in college and remained active afterward in a history alumni group, he was invited to make some brief remarks at a history conference at Regional University. They had some hotshot historian as the main speaker and John was supposed to speak for less than ten minutes.

This was interesting stuff to me. I had no idea about this aspect of John or his interest in scholarly stuff like this.

She had gone with him to the meeting when he gave the speech. She said that after he stopped speaking when normally there would be light, polite applause, instead, there was silence with just a little ripple breaking out as he sat down. She said he had been deeply embarrassed and she sat there feeling hurt for him while they endured the much longer speech given by the professional historian. And after that guy stopped speaking, he received the light, polite applause. But at the conclusion of the event, people came up in a throng around John to thank him and talk to him. Later, the university sent a letter of appreciation and asked for permission to print the speech for distribution throughout the history department and elsewhere.

All that was terribly interesting to me but before I could say anything else, John appeared and we went down to the coffee shop while Maria got ready. Like us, Maria and John were going to have breakfast and go look at two or three houses Maria had located.

We had just ordered coffee when John's cell phone rang. It was his mother again. John told her he would call her back in less than five minutes. He seemed both annoyed and concerned and explained to me that she had been ill and was facing surgery and was having problems coping with the idea. He excused himself to go back to the room and make the call.

That left me alone. I pulled the pamphlet out of my pocket and resumed reading John's speech. Such formal language. And such a scholarly tone. I had never even thought about stuff like that and there he was writing it. I was impressed, but a little uncomfortable, too. He had said some pretty harsh things in that speech. It was five years ago, but still.... I couldn't quite finish the thought.

But by that time it was time to check on Jackie and go have brunch. I was hungry but Jackie had made reservations somewhere. Imagine that. Reservations for brunch when all I would have to do at Crusty's was show up.

Fortunately, I suppose, this brunch restaurant was in Nearby Village so it would be close to the house we were going to look at. It was not fortunate from the standpoint of price. But the food was good. Really, really good, even if a little rich. Wine sauce at that hour seemed a little rich and the eggs Benedict were special. Sometime or other when I was in Sunbelt City, I thought, I should go into Crusty's and order eggs Benedict just to see what would happen. I bet myself that I would get my regular omelet. That would be after Lulu had a puzzled expression on her face for just a moment.

The waiter was another difference at this restaurant. Obviously, customers paid handsomely for him to have a full set of clean straight teeth. But I would take Lulu anytime. I wondered if she would be willing to move to Capital City. Crusty, too. Those days were over.

And new ones were beginning in a completely new location, new residence and all. Which looked pretty good in the mid-morning sun as we approached the ivy accented walls of the house. At that hour, I could tell that the trees provided a lush green shadow for the whole property.

The real estate agent was waiting for us when we pulled up at the curb. I guessed her to be the sister of the waiter, so polite and smiling and expecting a big payday like her brother, the waiter. Vivian should have been there to appreciate all the gleaming white teeth. No. Vivian should visit Lulu, come to think of it.

After opening the gate, we got in our car and followed the real estate agent up the driveway which led away from the house, giving trees a chance to cover the back half of the driveway which then turned toward the house. All of this land potential had two problems in my estimation. First, it was land in an expensive part of town that would add expense, and second, there would be maintenance involved. But I didn't say anything.

The first good sight of the house was impressive, I would have to admit, although from another perspective, it was a bit lopsided. There was a huge part of the house and then, on its side, was a much smaller part, almost like it was two different ideas stuck together. I assumed—wrongly as it turns out—that the big part included the garage. I was thinking too conventional, too lowbrow for this place.

The three-car garage was on the other side of the house. The Morgan and its companions would have a nice place to say, I thought. And between the garage and the house was a garden complete with a stone area large enough to handle an assortment of outdoor furniture. I liked that and I'm sure Jackie knew I would and intentionally arranged for us to enter the house from the stone deck or patio or whatever you would call that area.

And we entered the house on the big, bulbous end. I was amazed as soon as the doors opened. It was one huge room with high ceilings and an extraordinary fireplace on one end. On the other was a Steinway concert grand piano that did not seem too large in its surroundings, which, curiously, did not include any other furniture. It was truly special even if I was so crass as to think of the piano as furniture.

As the real estate agent walked ahead toward the other part of the house, Jackie pulled me back and cupped her hands over my ear. "The piano stays with the house," she said.

I could feel my eyes getting bigger. They saw Jackie grinning and I'm sure I was too. Especially broadly after the real estate agent explained that the odd construction of a huge room and comparatively compact remainder which included only two bedrooms and two bathrooms was one reason the house had been on the market for a while.

"Market for a while," was good news, too because it meant that the price would be lower than customary. Coupled with the fact that the piano would be part of the deal meant that I would be saving quite a bit. Jackie iced the cake for me when she said that because of all the ivy, maintenance on the grounds was practically nothing. That's when the real estate agent chimed in with an explanation of the house.

It seems that it had been built by a concert pianist who liked privacy, but who died, leaving as his only heir some nephew in Seattle who didn't have any use for the property, leaving it with a management company that didn't want the expense of moving the piano.

Done. But I didn't say that. As good as the price might be, relatively, it would still be a lot and I wanted to shave off as much as possible by not being too eager.

Right about then, when a possible sale was being mentioned, a well-timed look of disgust flashed across my face. I wasn't trying to produce an effect, it was simply a reaction to seeing the wheeled garbage can that invariably is part of any house in America these days, no matter where you live. It made me think about my adventure in the trash buggy at the store and the expression on my face it elicited probably saved me a few thousand dollars.

After looking back at the house, we drove through our new neighborhood. The more I saw in the clear daylight, the more I realized that we had concluded a bargain and done the right thing in the process.

Done the right thing? How could I think that? I didn't even know what we were doing. Everything in the last few weeks had happened so fast that I had no perspective as I had thought I had in the past.

The past. That made me think of John Bridges. There was a thinker and a thinker about the past, too. And where was he? Did he know where he was, what he was doing? He had followed me into this, whatever it was, and did he know where he was going, much less where he was now?

Jackie stopped at a small public park deep inside Nearby Village. No one else was there but I assumed that people used the park, at least a little. Everyone in the Village had a big house with lots of land around it, in other words, parks of their own. But probably some people used this public park. Maybe it was young people who wanted to be together away from parents.

Nah. I corrected myself. That's something that kids might have done when I was young. I had to bet myself that they didn't go to public parks anymore and sit in a swing. Swing meant something else these days and young people would have an updated version of the same thing to do. At least I realized that what I realized was no longer reality even if I didn't know what reality was anymore. Maybe not knowing was a start, or at least, a stop along the way toward understanding.

Jackie and I were just right for that moment and that moment was just right for us. I was glad we stopped. We sat in this old fashioned swing on a chain suspended from an inverted U frame planted in the ground. I had not seen a swing like that in a long time but I decided that we should put one in our garden.

It was a warm morning but not too warm for me to have an arm around Jackie's shoulder. This was contentment, if only for a moment, like the beach had been for its moment.

I wondered if life was just a series of contentments interrupted by problems, otherwise known as work, otherwise known as life. Maybe we referred to the wrong thing as life. Maybe life was the contentment part.

I thought I could have stayed in that park swing forever. But then came an interruption, or life, or whatever, as some of the young people say. There it was again. It was as if, for my part of the interruption, I was on the edge between two worlds, one going and one coming.

For a moment, I saw myself as some kind of space giant, many thousands of miles tall and I had one foot on a planet that was going one way and the other foot on a planet that was going the other way. As long as they were close, I could stand there, tall in space. But I knew that as the planets passed each other, I would be gradually stretched and I would no longer be able to stand so tall until I was as spread out as could possibly be and then I would fall off. I would die. That's life.

But by that point, there would be other space giants standing tall on their own conflictive planets. In the meantime, I would cherish the contentment as long as it could last and maybe I could make the interruptions work toward sustaining the contentment.

After a while, Jackie said that it was time to go. There it was again, life or at least its interruption. Evidently, this shindig that evening was one of those events that caused Jackie to spend more time getting ready. I could hardly see what more she could do.

"I want a nap," I said, as soon as we were back at the hotel.

Except that Jackie could see that that's not really what I wanted. She hesitated and looked at the clock.

"How long will it take you to get ready?" I said. I used that kind of fake mocking tone that so clearly means otherwise. And I grinned. And she grinned and started unbuttoning her shirt.

When I woke up, she was doing something in front of a mirror. I took a shower and she was still doing something in front of a mirror.

About that time, Herb called. Evidently, Vivian was in the same mode as Jackie and he suggested that we get something to eat. That turned out to be a good thought, because as he had foreseen, we weren't going to be able to eat that night while everyone else was.

We met in the hotel restaurant. He and Vivian had spent the day with Mr. and Mrs. Kerplopski. No business, he said, just family social. It had been nice, he said, sort of like an old fashioned family day that didn't come around too often anymore.

"A lot of things don't come around often," Herb said. I thought for a moment that he might go for some gusto and order a beer.

I probably nodded. I had had my own thoughts that day.

"It's amazing how all this has come together so quickly," he said.

I probably nodded again.

"And I'll tell you something else that doesn't happen often," he said.

What's that? I probably didn't say it but left a space in the conversation for it.

"John Bridges," Herb answered himself. "The guy is a real thinker. Has a real grasp of the importance of history."

It turns out that Herb had already read the speech and all of that came out of a conversation they had while I was fixing up my office the day before.

"We're about to make some history of our own, tonight," Herb said. He was really excited.

It's odd. As I was about to be anointed, something I had privately wished for, I had become thoughtful. And Herb had wanted his part of the dream, too, and had thought a lot about it, and as it neared attainment, he was excited. There was room for both. But first, there was excitement.
Chapter 21

On Sunday evening, as planned, associates from all Kerplopski stores descended on a park in Capital City. The event started according to plan.

Several caterers set up beneath a tent to serve their specialties, various kinds of barbecue and all the appropriate trimmings, good, simple food. Additional tables had been dispersed amid existing picnic tables to accommodate the crowd.

Mr. and Mrs. Kerplopski arrived first with Irene. The plan called for Herb and the rest of our group to arrive half an hour later, giving Mr. Kerplopski time to greet his people without competing for attention with the new management. It was an ideal concept and it gave everyone a chance to have time with Mr. Kerplopski. For most, it would be the last time.

Few had ever heard of Herb and none had ever met him. Although many, particularly the executives, were not shy about coming forward to meet Herb and speak to me, many of the others, the so-called "rank and file" who were about to become owners, were reluctant. I suggested to Herb that we separate and move through the tables as people were eating, in order to be sure that we met everyone.

Herb had been right about us not eating. This was one of the few times in my life when I really didn't think about food. While everyone else worked their way through various kinds of barbecue, stew, salad and beans, we worked our way through the crowd.

After everyone had had a chance to eat, someone handed me a plate heaped with barbecue, potato salad and beans. Those beans would have been one way to launch my new position.

But at that moment, Mr. Kerplopski moved to the microphone. Despite the size of the crowd and the open-air setting, a hush fell on the gathering. This was not one of those occasions where some aggressive people trying to call attention themselves wrapped with a spoon to get attention. By simply standing, Mr. Kerplopski instantly gained rapt attention. It was so quiet that each passing car was heard individually.

Mr. Kerplopski began by thanking the mayor for providing the park on short notice and gave him a chance to stand and take some polite applause. Then Mr. Kerplopski got down to business.

The tears had been shed; that part was over. What he did during the next ten minutes was moving without being maudlin. Instead of dwelling in the past, he quickly reviewed their collective history as a prelude to a better future and then worked his way very positively to the current situation. He could not have paved the way more solidly. With that, he introduced Herb and me.

This was my moment, the one I had envisioned as a brilliant knight bristling with armor and gleaming sword. But as I moved toward the microphone, it wasn't the same Mick Manage that previously envisioned the event as a medieval ceremony of some sort. I had changed a lot in the last few weeks. Herb had already changed as dramatically, no less impressive as the butterfly emerging from wormdom, with a mind that took flight, as well. Herb followed his cousin's lead by picking up on the theme of past, present and future. He didn't talk long either, but it was an effective way of introducing himself to his new associates and providing them with reason to have confidence in his stewardship of their company.

Herb then asked me to speak. As I took the microphone, a motorcycle sputtered by on the street. I could have eaten those beans, after all. But the moment was proverbially anticlimactic for other reasons. Somehow, where I would have been arrogant before, I now felt truly humbled, so much so, that for a scary moment, I felt tongue-tied, normally not one of my afflictions. I realized that I would not be undertaking my new work with the same breezy attitude of the past when others were frequently incidental. Others were now the point. Recovering my senses and my tongue, I put them together long enough to continue the theme of past, present and future. In the process, I realized keenly what I had felt earlier in the day about being between generations, a notion that added the texture of perspective to what I said, but also added caution. I hope I didn't come across as flat; it's entirely possible to be optimistic while remaining cautious.

Herb surprised us all by requesting John Bridges to come forward and say something. I had real reservations. This was a guy whose speech I read earlier that day lambasted paternalism as a business model and made out history to be the enemy of poor people. No matter how true that might have been, Mr. Kerplopski was the living, if retiring, essence of paternalism and I, for one, appreciated everything he had done. Yes, including the five million dollars, so okay, I am biased, but aren't we all?

As John moved through the crowd toward the microphone, Herb explained that he was beginning to know John during the last few days and he hoped that everyone would come to know him. Paternalism again—new century style? Anyway, he said that he thought John had something worthwhile to share.

I couldn't help but be worried. And I worried for John, too. If this sudden, unplanned event blew up, he could be hurt as well as the rest of us. This is why I don't like surprises.

As it turned out, I was surprised. For about five minutes, he was not the John Bridges I am accustomed to. He was a deeply thoughtful person with an amazingly relaxed stage presence, and easy but terribly compelling manner of engaging the audience. And that started even before he spoke.

Once he began speaking, he communicated with awesome effectiveness. Part of it was the words he used and the way he used them. If I was transported, I'm sure everyone else must have been. I got lost in what he was saying, enraptured, even and after he stopped, my brain was suddenly filled with meaning.

So what did he say that was so all fired fantastic? Well, here it is in a nutshell, but mostly not with his words, at least not put together like he had them, because I can't talk like that. Here goes: The pace of change has accelerated in recent years to the point that Southern history is now dead except for a few isolated quagmires, swamps and so forth, and they're drying up, too. That leaves the South more like the rest of the country. The way of life in the old industrialized areas withered and blew away, some of it south, some of it across the border and some of it just away. Meanwhile, the west is changing too and here we all are ready for some direction, for once, a concerted, joined, section-less all unified direction. So that leaves us with the need to choose a direction. Then, John said that what we have here at Kerplopski's is a chance to demonstrate a path to a better life for all people, not just some of us, and that what we are about to embark on is a journey that could prove to be a pioneering trek across uncharted territory that could pave the way for many to follow.

Whew. Like I said, I don't have the polish to pull it off like he did but even just listing the concepts involved, let alone grappling with them and turning them in to a meaningful thought leaves me speechless. I can see why nobody clapped when he finished talking to that history convention. Jesus. All that was a lot for a person's brain to absorb.

But when John finished, I knew two things. I was looking at the future and understood something of its larger meaning and even the context it will come wrapped in. And I was looking at the future leader of our company, too. And it helped give me a sharper sense of direction that could be applied as a unifying force to all the little aspects of business. It was the future of the big picture. I think that's what leaders have to have, a sense of mission and a clear vision of something bigger than what they are dealing with at any given moment.

I should not have been worried about John saying something inappropriate. On the other hand, the reason for that could have been the change that had obviously begun, allowing John, only a few years after the earlier speech, to address an altered social consciousness instead of paternalism. It could be, I thought, that we were witnessing the last gasp of paternalism. We were witnessing the last days of Mr. Kerplopski and I sure didn't have his sense of paternalism. True, I cared for "our people." I actually cared more now every day, but it was more from the standpoint of helping them get what they needed to take care of themselves instead of taking care of them directly. That didn't feel paternalistic. Maybe it's just because I wasn't a father, but I don't think so.

Something else bothered me, too. I wondered how could there be an altered social environment that seemed hopeful for the future, while, at the same time, wealth was being more heavily concentrated in fewer people. It wasn't just me seeing higher walls around bigger mansions; there were articles in the newspaper fairly often, so I knew that it was no joke that the rich were getting richer and the poor getting poorer. If what we were about to begin would play out as planned, our effort would be a step away from concentration toward broad participation. But I wasn't sure about how we squared with the larger picture. It would have been a lot more comfortable to me, if there were more people on our path.

Maybe I needed to ask John about that. But that was for private conversation at another time. I damn sure wasn't about to open anything up at that event. Sometimes good sense is keeping your mouth shut.

But my brain wasn't shut down, so I wondered. And as I thought about these questions, my eyes unconsciously followed John back to his seat. And along the way, they caught sight of some movement in the distance.

At first, all I could see was a large white truck with some colorful writing or logo on the side. That wouldn't be exceptional except that it seemed to be coming into the park. For a moment, I reasoned that it was a catering truck. But their trucks were already there and it didn't seem that they would need anything nearly as large as the one approaching.

I looked away to answer someone's question about John. I suspect that some people were concerned that I would be shuffling my close associates into the highest positions and wondered if John might not be part of that plan. He was, to the very limited extent that I intended to make position changes. His speech and the way he handled himself afterward made everything much easier. Previously unknown to many people in the company, he had introduced himself with confidence and dignity, gaining instant respect and recognition for wisdom.

I looked back toward the truck. In the time it took to answer the question, it had made one of those hairpin turns used to break speed and I could see the side of it clearly. I was startled.

I glanced at Jackie. She caught my eyes and followed them all the way out to Aunt Sarah's Moving and Storage van. Her own eyes got big and she looked back at me. I turned toward the truck. It was clearly headed toward us.

Mercifully, it was moving slowly, terribly slowly. That gave Jackie and me plenty of time to walk to the edge of the parking area. We acted instinctively, as if the mere fact that it was an Aunt Sarah's truck made us the responsible greeting party. And as the vehicle neared, we understood why our instinct had been right: Aunt Sarah was driving the truck herself.

Seeing Jackie—she didn't know me yet—Aunt Sarah stopped the truck, quickly got out and ran toward Jackie. She was not quite shrieking, but obviously excited and upset. A crowd gathered, anxiously trying to find out what was happening.

"I've got 'em, I've got 'em," Aunt Sarah said, although "said" doesn't quite say it. But you can't say she "cried," because she wasn't crying. It's like she was more determined than fearful, but she was plenty excited.

It took a while to sort out, but that scrappy old lady had had a busy afternoon. She was watching the six o'clock news and saw that Kerplopski's associates were having a gathering in a city park. Television crews on hand showed the crowd arriving, along with Mr. Kerplopski and the mayor. All this made her think about Jackie. Thinking about Jackie made her think about all the trouble with Jackie's ex-husband. Jackie's ex-husband made her think about the fact that she had rented Joe Palmer a couple of trucks and parking access at her warehouse. Thinking about Joe made her think about the fact that the law was looking for him and some other person in business with him; she was vague on exactly who Joe Camel was.

The television news moved on to something else but Aunt Sarah's mind couldn't get away from the Joe Palmer issue. It kept gnawing at her that she had rented trucks to him. I guess she must have been angry with herself and wanted to make amends. But she wasn't thinking straight about how to go about it.

All of a sudden, Aunt Sarah jumped up from the television and struck out for her warehouse. She arrived, finding the gate unlocked. None of her employees worked on Sundays, so the facility should have been locked and empty of people. It didn't take long to spot a truck with its back door open. She parked her big, old Cadillac some distance away and crept up to the truck from the side.

As she talked, I was getting this mental picture of what Double O Seven might look like as an old American lady, complete with Cadillac. Would she romance one of the young villains, perhaps taking him on a ride to see her gerontologist, stopping along the way for a lube job purchased with a senior citizen discount, doubled on ladies's day? Or would she take him for a cozy dinner somewhere that they could fortify themselves with vegetables and fiber? No. None of this. Aunt Sarah was a no nonsense, direct action take charge American lady to be dealt with.

She crept toward the open truck and peeped around the side. Here's where a special chemical came in handy. The soft blue cast of her hair made it less likely that her otherwise white, highly coiffed mop would reflect light as she surreptitiously peered inside the truck. That's enough playfulness about this; it was serious business, especially for a nice old lady to be sleuthing around a couple of desperate and dangerous men.

Seeing Joe Palmer and the other face she recognized from news reports, Aunt Sarah crept back to her car and retrieved a padlock. Later, she explained that her father had taught her always to keep an extra padlock handy.

Aunt Sarah crept back to the truck and peeped in one last time. She saw Joe Palmer and Joe Camel looking intently at something on a table in front of them, a small light making them clearly visible. Then, she slammed the door of the truck closed and clamped the padlock in place.

Joe Palmer went wild but Aunt Sarah didn't let him deter her. She figured that he could kick and scream all he wanted to because he was safely locked inside. But having captured the dastardly evildoers, she didn't know what to do with them. All she could think about was Jackie and thanks to the television news, she knew where to find Jackie at that moment.

Soooo....here we are. And because the mayor was present to simultaneously represent the city at a legitimate function and spruce up his image in the mind of the public, a couple of police officers were also there. When you need a cop you need a cop and nothing else will do and we needed a cop or two.

It took them a couple of minutes to understand what was going on—it's no wonder—and a couple of more minutes to understand Aunt Sarah, also no wonder. But when they got it, they really got it.

A television station was there, too, with a reporter and a cameraman. They had been invited to stay for dinner after covering the news event and they were right with the cops while Aunt Sarah was telling them what happened. As soon as they realized what it was about, the cameraman scrambled to recover his gear. The reporter called his station and they prepared for live coverage, breaking into regular programming.

One of the officers took the padlock key from Aunt Sarah. Everyone stood back and got quiet. By that point, nothing could be heard coming from inside the truck, either. The officer unlocked the lock and quickly lifted it off the latch. Everything was quiet. If there were birds in that park, even they weren't saying anything but I noticed that the other police officer tensed and took a stance like a wrestler about to grab an opponent. Actually, that comparison is apt, except that the wrestling is of the show variety and it would be like in this corner, the good guy cop showing off his style while preparing to confront the bad boy bully.

The first officer jerked open the truck door. Nothing happened. It was dark inside; that's all anyone could tell as the crowd leaned in for a better view. Suddenly, they got a closer look than they wanted.

Joe Palmer erupted from the back of that truck like a late starting horse out of the gate determined to catch up. He appeared so suddenly and was running so fast that the crowd did not have time to get out of the way before he slammed into the middle of it running full force, the two police officers close on his heels. A few of the Kerplopski associates stepped out of the way just in time as Joe headed straight for them. Joe didn't care about them. He treated them just like a runner might treat a baseball player who got in his way as he was headed toward the base, running straight at them, intending to slam them aside as he made his way toward freedom.

What Joe did not know was that the Kerplopski crowd had been standing in front of a picnic table. Fortunately for all, it was one of those lightweight folding types that a caterer had brought. When the Kerplopski associates stepped aside at the last moment, Joe kept running and slammed into that table as hard as was possible. He sent the table flying and the table sent him flying. The whole mess, including Joe, the table, potato salad and baked beans wound up in a heap. And on top of the pile were the two police officers.

It's a good thing there were two of them because Joe had a lot of fight in him, even after colliding with the table. But the good guy team bested the bully, with a knee in the back as he lay face down, cursing loudly as handcuffs were applied. And all of this while the camera rolled, as they say.

The officers pulled Joe to his feet. Surprise of surprises. The first thing he saw, as he blinked bean juice away, was me. And Jackie. That had to have hurt, along with knowing that he had been captured by an eighty year old lady and perp walked on live television with a dollop of potato salad stuck to his head.

The camera swung around just in time for another odd capture. Joe Camel had hung back in the truck while his headstrong colleague ran headlong into trouble. Chemist Camel had a different plan. While the crowd was preoccupied with the sensational capture of Joe Palmer, he simply moved to the edge of the truck and quietly started walking away. A couple of people noticed. Given that both police officers were preoccupied, they told the mayor who went straight for Joe Camel.

Also unwilling to be captured easily, Joe Camel exercised his own plan. Appropriately enough, it involved smoke. As they mayor approached, the chemist threw something on the ground between him and the approaching mayor. There were flashes of bright light and a whole lot of thick smoke, enough to completely hide him. But instead of being put off by this, the mayor, to everyone's amazement, walked into the smoke. When it cleared, he was standing with his hand on Joe Camel's arm.

Not yet quite out of tricks, Joe Camel reached to his confined shoulder with his free hand and seemed to claw his clothes very quickly and forcefully, across the whole front of his body. A bright fire seemed to erupt, quickly turning into a show like a bunch of sparklers going off all at once, followed by more smoke. The mayor didn't yield his hold and after a couple of Kerplopski guys saw that the mayor was hanging on, came forward to grab Joe Camel's other arm.

Thanks to all the morning shows running and rerunning video of the unusual captures, Kerplopski's was positively known all over the country. And because the video required a little background, Caruthers became infamous everywhere. So, of course, was the cursing, food smeared Joe Palmer and the magic act stink bomb chemist, Joe Camel. So, too, was the local television reporter who narrated the scene with egg salad in the corner of his mouth. Some of us would live to enjoy notable success in the future, others would disintegrate into further ignominy, punctuated by periodic revivals of the event on oddly humorous video programs.

**Chapter 22**

Arriving at work for the first time Monday, seemed a little strange, also. It's hard to believe that my arrival at work was a television event, but it was, providing footage to couple with yet another rerun of the capture. And there were newspaper reporters and photographers as well as some radio people sticking recorders in our faces.

Given the crowd of Kerplopski well wishers who thronged around us as we entered the building, it was a little like one of those movie star mob scenes you see on television. This was a one-time event for me and I easily recovered. Think of how difficult it must be for people who endure it every day of their lives. No wonder there's so much weirdness among those people.

And it didn't stop once we reached my office. There were flowers everywhere. One particularly large arrangement caught my eye. It was one hundred percent composed of forsythias and there was no card attached; there did not need to be. But at one point, Irene spotted me poking around the edges looking for one. She drew me aside privately.

"Two very nice looking young women brought it in early this morning," Irene said. "They wouldn't leave a name."

There was other stuff, too, more every few minutes. Vendors, it seems, were generous, but others sent stuff, too. There were wrapped packages and envelopes with God knows what in them. There were bottles of liquor, baskets of fruit and jars of exotic food and special sauces and condiments. Restaurants sent messengers with invitations and gift certificates. Later, I reminded Irene that we had a policy about accepting gifts and asked her to respond with the appropriate thank you note to all but to dispose of everything according to store policy. In the meantime, a caterer sent an array of brunch food that Irene spread out for the people jamming my office. That was the policy for fresh food.

Telephone messages piled up. Irene had to bring in secretaries from elsewhere in the store to handle the phones. The constant ringing provided a little more background noise to the roar of a crowd of people talking at once. It was into this bedlam that Mrs. Martin appeared. I appreciated her responding on short notice, as she always seemed ready to do. There would not be a great deal of time for Irene to work with her that day, but Mrs. Martin would at least see the job at the pinnacle of chaos. It would be all better from that point.

Initially, all of us, Herb and Vivian, John and Maria, Pirkle and Todd and of course, Jackie and I had gone to my office upon arrival at the store. After about an hour, Herb and Vivian remained with Jackie and I while the others went to their own new offices and then out into offices throughout the store to meet everyone in their own workspace. Around ten o'clock, Vivian left to return to Coast Town and Jackie departed for Sunbelt City to pack and arrange our future.

Herb and I remained in my office, meeting a steady stream of mostly Kerplopski executives who wanted to pay their respects, read brown nose. Actually, I shouldn't be so harsh. It was simply the courteous thing to do and I sure would have done it. I noticed that a number of the most senior executives, accustomed to visiting Mr. Kerplopski's office, reacted to the sudden change in furniture arrangement and décor. It's like they hadn't expected it and seeing it had it's intended affect. I was greatly pleased with my off the cuff, purchase of inexpensive art. Well done, you artists, whoever you are, future Rembrandts all, at least as far as I was concerned.

Nothing stopped the stream of visitors. Herb was getting a workout. If he wanted the kind of personal relationship with people in a company that his cousin had enjoyed, he was being blessed and overly blessed in one continuous display of...of...let's just stick with respect. Mercifully, Irene brought in sandwiches and kept the mob at bay for a few minutes. That's about the only time I had to really notice Herb. He seemed deeply satisfied. He was smiling when it wasn't required, when no one else was looking.

Ah, the smile. It felt fixed to my face, even when I didn't want it, even when the occasional job seeker took advantage of the crowd to wiggle inside. A number of resumes showed up that day, too, thankfully unaccompanied by their writers. I could smile at them later. Or not.

But the smile dropped off my beaming face at one point. Irene came into the office as one of the Kerplopski executives was leaving. She handed me a resume and said that the person was outside the door and insisted that he knew me personally and I would want to see him. I looked at the resume. That's when the smile fell off. I could hear it hit the floor with a thud.

"Is there a security person nearby?" I asked.

"Right there in my office," Irene said.

I stood up. "Show the applicant in," I said. "But leave the door open and stand in the doorway. If there is the slightest problem, nod to the security person."

Irene left the office, closing the door behind her. A couple of moments later, it opened and Carlos Selassie entered. He was smiling like I had been earlier. But not now. He seemed to hesitate at what must have seemed like a stone cold reception. He held out his hand. I didn't.

"You're not welcome here," I said. "Leave now."

Carlos paused as his smile hit the floor, too. "I bet on you," he said. "I bet my job in Coast Town that you would win this and that I could come work for you."

"I don't want anyone like you working in this company," I said. "You were told to leave. In this state, failure to respond immediately by moving to the nearest exit can result in arrest for trespassing. This is your last chance. Leave now."

Carlos looked at me with a hurt expression but turned toward the door. A middle-aged ex-football player with dyed hair and a bad back was standing nearby.

"This slimy nonsense that we've been dealing with has got to end," I said to Herb. Nobody else was in the room then. "We've got a business to run now and I don't want to pollute our work. It's not worth taking the chance that somebody might have reformed."

Herb grinned. He was with me on things. That was good. We would be together almost constantly for the rest of the week and in frequent communication for the foreseeable years ahead, so it was good that we saw eye to eye.

We began our tour of stores the next morning, starting right there in Capital City. During the course of the week, we looped through the state to every store, repeating roughly the same meet and greet routine in each, concluding with the store in Coast Town. But it was a good thing to do, both for us and the other Kerplopski people. And it certainly cemented Herb to the company. It was everything he expected and hoped for and it was everything I told him it would be.

But that was only the opening, the first item on a to do list. After that, like I said, there would be a store to run—a company, actually.

And we had lives to lead, as well. Fortunately so, or else would the work have been worth it?

Jackie worked hard that week, too, packing up in Sunbelt City and dealing with lawyers and real estate people on the purchase of the house in Nearby Village and the condo in Coast Town. She even had us in possession of the condo in time for us to stay there at the end of the week after the store tour. That was the first time we were in our own place together. We were set for the future.

Epilogue

I should say that Jackie and I lived happily ever after. Right? Ever after hasn't happened yet, but we're off to a good start in that direction.

But life is not without its challenges. Taking a look at where things stood three years after Herb bought the company and I started running it, might answer some questions.

Mr. Kerplopski never set foot in a store again after leaving his own store. Mostly, he stayed at home during the remaining months of his life. Irene came there every day Monday through Friday just like she always had at the office and helped with his affairs until, at the very end, he was too ill to leave his bed. At that point, a nurse was on hand to assist Mrs. Kerplopski. When the old gentleman died, the store turned out in great numbers for the funeral, but the store, of course, did not close for the funeral. He would never have wanted that.

The occasion presented an opportunity to meet Stephen who returned in the nick of time and who departed again soon afterwards. Jackie began visiting Mrs. Kerplopski, when she could grab time from her busy schedule, and they enjoyed afternoons at the piano.

Irene also visited Mrs. Kerplopski often, and continues to assist the elder lady with her affairs. Aside from that, Irene has provided excellent advice and counsel to me and Mrs. Martin and I have kept Irene's hand in the store in a variety of ways that permit her to be retired but also provide a little income for her and invaluable judgment for the store.

She has also spent a few days a couple of times at our condo in Coast Town. That afforded a chance for her to meet Benzene whose vices haven't killed her yet. I am told that, while they got along, the meeting was mostly an exercise in curiosity for both women and was not repeated the next time Irene visited the coast. I send Benzene a bottle of excellent spirits every year and enjoy a little conversation with her once in a while when I call Herb.

The rooftop sunbathing receptionist, by the way, abandoned Coast Town for College Town where she is in law school. It ought to be against the law for women who look that good to be lawyers. I know that because a lawyer told me.

Speaking of lawyers, Maria, still concentrating her energy on her young children, has taken a part-time position in a Capital City law firm. That's good, because when the kids are old enough, she will have an established base for a rise to partnership in the firm. About then, with John's continued ascension in our company, they will be one of Capitol City's power couples.

John's influence grows daily. We're not talking here about some sort of crass assertiveness, but a natural outgrowth of his indwelling wisdom. People know they can rely on him and he undertakes all sorts of visionary improvements, leading, as I know it will, to one day buy his own artwork for what is now my office.

And he will have a strong organization to work with. Pirkle will surely be retired, if not dead, long before I step aside for John. But in the meantime, he has made valuable contributions to some of the operational aspects of the organization. And Todd continues to progress, as well. He has turned out to be a real gem, continues to absorb the business, and one day will hold a significant position of leadership.

All of this is possible, of course, because of the opportunity provided by Herb Kerplopski. And to think, I almost blew it for all of us simply because at one point Herb had been an annoying nerd with green stuff in his teeth. Vivian, by the way, has expanded her free dental clinic work to other cities, with an organization that provides funding for equipment at the disposal of dentists who volunteer at least one day a week.

But even that worthwhile undertaking can be traced to Herb's deep pockets. He continues to make bunches of money with his business and is so occupied that he has little time for the store, less time than he anticipated for personal enjoyment of it. I guess that means that paternalism is dead and if there is no one to be nice to us, we need to be good to ourselves. But Herb has been generous with his time when I have asked for his advice. I've learned a lot from him, especially about the financial end and I'm not talking about bottom line stuff; I'm talking the big picture from the puppeteer's viewpoint. I know how to make a profit but I had never really dealt with manipulating the funds after they're made. I had always given that over to "the company." Now I am the company, along with hundreds of Kerplopski employees who trusted me to lead them to the benefits of ownership. It was employee ownership that was the point of all this, anyway, and the program is progressing as planned.

There were a few strategic questions. One of the challenges we faced was what to do about Caruthers. They went to pieces after their failed attempt to buy Kerplopski's. The pressure of dealing with a variety of criminal charges and all the bad publicity was just too much for them. They were so busy defending themselves that everything else began to crumble.

About a year and a half after we took Kerplopski's away from them, Caruthers became an unavoidably critical issue for us. We had been keeping a close eye on things, given our concern about having a large, aggressive department store company wrapping the northern and western sides of Caruthers. So, thanks to Herb, we were able to strike a deal with Middle State Stores. They bought a cluster of Caruthers stores nearest their own and we bought the remainder. Sweet, huh? How things can change. It's all a little like medieval history, isn't it? I wouldn't know except for John.

I am so terribly thankful for all these wonderful people, most of all Jackie. She is incredibly busy. With the retirement of her aunt, Jackie is now Aunt Sarah's Moving and Storage except that she doesn't look anything like Aunt Sarah. She also has an interior design business.

Jackie fills our house with beautiful music. She has not told me this, but I think she derives some kind of special strength from sitting behind that big piano and playing all that music that I don't understand any better than art but which I appreciate.

It makes me wonder what someone like Addler Crawley appreciates. He probably appreciates not going to prison as did Joe Camel and Joe Palmer for various tax avoidance schemes not to mention charges relating to chemicals. Joe Camel wanted to add bad stuff to cigarettes and Joe Palmer wanted to handle the distribution. Ouch. Crawley claimed not to know anything about it and he probably didn't. But something tells me he knew other things that the Joes were not in on that were equally bad, but Crawley missed the prison party and survived for other schemes.

In fact, Crawley seemed never to have missed a step. Soon after the debacle with his chief chemist and erstwhile transportation director, Crawley renamed the company—but not its products—and sold it to other investors who doubtlessly failed to make the connection between their new purchase and bad national publicity.

Strictly as topping to the main deal, Crawley apparently used his inside knowledge of Joe Palmer's business to gain control of it on the cheap and sold it to a large trucking company and pocketed whatever was left after the government got whatever of its share it managed to pull out of Crawley's grasp. Before that deal was completed, acting in her Aunt Sarah persona, Jackie sued Crawley in his persona as a failed shipping magnate for what he owed the moving and storage business. He settled; Crawley had not wanted to pay and my guess is that he had taken that tact with countless other creditors who simply took the easy route of not pursuing their claims. There is no telling how much extra money that made Crawley. If I could hazard a little more speculation, I would imagine that he was able to use the tax laws to make even more on the same transaction. Wiggle one way and make money. Wiggle another way and make more money, all the while wiggling on the same spot as the first wiggle.

Then Crawley disappeared, at least from our lives. I'm sure that he resurfaced somewhere, but we were too busy to pay much attention to those people who no longer plagued us. That's how it was three years later.

And that's how it was one quiet night in Nearby Village when police officers suddenly appeared at our door. There were three patrol cars in our driveway. By the time I opened the front door, a couple of officers had circled to the back of the house on foot. The officer at the front door was cordial but tense.

"Mr. Manage, we think you should find someplace else to stay tonight," the officer said. "Maybe for a few nights."

"What..." I said and trailed off the question. Jackie had heard a bunch of car doors slamming and appeared at the door behind me.

"No one called you?" the officer asked.

"No. About what?" I asked. "Why would we need to stay somewhere else tonight?"

"I don't know a lot about it," the officer said, "but there is somebody who escaped from prison and the guys at the station are worried about you."

Nearby Village is kind of a small community of mostly rich people. People know each other and worry about each other if they're not suing each other or engaged in business combat. Even then, nobody wants to see anybody else get hurt.

Hearing police officers say they're worried about some prison escapee worried me. A lot. And it could only mean one thing.

"Joe Palmer," I said.

"Yes. That's him," the officer said. "We can leave an officer at your house tonight until you can get private security tomorrow morning. And if you stay in our jurisdiction overnight, we can leave an officer outside your hotel room door until you arrange for personal security tomorrow."

Now this was bothering me even more. I might be prominent in our community, even in Capital City, because of business, but this was still, in my little mind, a small town, small time lifetime and here these officers are talking about little me getting a bodyguard, of all shocking things.

"How did he escape?" I asked. Why I asked, I don't know. You would think I would get a move on.

"A truck," the officer said. That figures. How else? "He had help. Two men."

"Anybody I know?" I asked.

"They only have one name, right now," the officer said. He fished in his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. "A guy named Carlos Se...Selas..."

"Carlos Selassie," I said, trying to be helpful. If the officer was trying to save my life, the least I could do was help him with an unfamiliar name. I almost asked if the other guy had big boobs, but this was serious stuff and I kept my thoughts to myself. Still, I just stood there, not moving.

"Mr. Manage," the officer said, "they're armed."

That got me moving. And while I was moving—it wouldn't take us long to pack clothes for one night—my mind was moving, too.

Carlos would have an agreement with Joe that he would disappear after helping with the escape. That meant that Joe and his former and forever goon would be coming after us with guns. He would be caught and would be sent back for more years, unless he was successful, in which case he would likely be executed. Either way, it would be essentially over for him. But a determined schemer like Joe would believe he could recover after a few extra worth it years in the big house.

When you're really pissed off, instead of shrugging things off with a neo-complacent "whatever," you take action and let the chips fall "wherever." It appeared that this time Joe was literally dead serious

Jackie and I each carried a suitcase and a small bag out of our house. I didn't want to leave the Morgan, but the officer insisted that we go in the patrol car. As we moved toward it, I caught sight of the large, rolling trashcan. My body didn't pause, but my mind did. I thought about Jimmy's trash buggy. Things had changed. This time, I had others to think about.

Appendix

Speech to Regional University History Conference

by

John Bridges

Southern devotion to the concept of itself and homage to paternal guidance determines many socio-economic and political characteristics of the region. The South disillusioned itself, inbred itself, idealized itself, impacted itself. The result was predictable. Plantations disintegrated but masters flourished. Metamorphosis was shallow, based on the slim assumption that disadvantaged masses in the schizoid society would mistake the thrusting of a preoccupied populace for the vigor of a rejuvenated consciousness.

The swords of the old oppressors were broken but the instruments of their manipulation merely changed. They dipped their pens in fresh blood to write new terms for old abuses. Their whips cracked through social contracts that translated the shocking past into a tolerable present. They were removed from unfashionable absolutes and elevated as symbols of hope for all. Hardly anyone could own hundreds of slaves but some could hope for a job in a mill and a few could aspire to business positions. Still others were wretched as wealth became more potently concentrated than before, sucking the life out of the rural poor and giving birth to new forms of urban repression. As tensions fractured these conditions, the complex panoply of benighted culture reset skewed relations by force and allure. Readjustments were neither completely physical nor wholly charismatic, although concerted actions could not have been taken without pervasive acceptance within society.

Repeatedly, southerners ratified their oppression by acquiescence, not because they were masochists, but because they were comfortable with certain aspects of the status quo, even complicit in the social order. Conformity to the economic and social restrictions initiated by the wealthy and usurped by other whites, first created a financial elite then sheltered the remaining white population with cultural chauvinism. As the general white population assumed responsibility for protecting the social structure, they evolved an interpretation that solidified their own social position leaving intact the financial fortress of the elite and freezing the status of the pariah, the Negro.

Having preempted the elite from the necessity of guarding themselves, the ordinary white population succeeded in preserving a unique social system for many years. That the system was fundamentally social and singularly southern are facts that constantly bear upon themselves. It is not sufficient merely to assert that the South was unique without offering evidence from its abundant history, but within the social structure itself, there is explanation for southern uniqueness.

The original southern social context was a hearty pioneer individualism that became exaggerated, romanticized, idealized, falsified and adopted by subsequent generations of economically and culturally diverse groups too remote from the truth to comprehend its meaning. They fell inexorably in love with their fictional self-portrait and bequeathed their error to yet more distant, more diverse generations.

When the lie was periodically threatened, ever increasing numbers of white people rallied to defend the false honor of their way of life. As their defense increased in frequency and vehemence, it crystallized a romantic vision of the South and view of allegedly proper southern behavior and attitudes. A general consensus evolved of what naturally constituted the South along with the concomitant belief that it should be allowed to exist unmodified by other concepts. These beliefs were hardened into what Wilbur J. Cash called the "savage ideal" which, he explains, left no room for individual expression of ideas or creativity and promoted a monotonous conformity of attitude and action.

Law and custom established the ideal, rigid and terrifying, full of official and vigilante recrimination for offenders. Those who supported the established order feared, as totalitarian masters elsewhere, that departure from the designated course would undermine their authority, their status, their claim to superior social and economic position. All manner of intimidation, psychological and physical, subtle and brutal, was effectively applied.

The result was social stagnation, economic repression, and a wholesale denial of our "inalienable rights" manifested in endless offenses lasting by degree to the present moment. Only when the weary hearts and minds of many had borne the intolerable burden excessively long did the relief of justice begin to appear. The massive struggle, once begun, assumed momentum dependent upon the dedication of present and future generations to the arduous task of supplanting, with genuine egalitarianism, decades of the most reprehensible error. The problems faced by southerners were not exclusively racial or financial. The whole social, economic and political complex was a conglomerate difficulty defying facile solution. While progress has been gradual, it has proceeded slowly against intransigent opposition by those benefiting from the old system.

Conflict is a key element. History is an interpretive record of human conflict derived from man's sense of separation from the unity of the universe. This is not to imply that there is no harmony among men, but to suggest that differences impel history. Deciphering the tangled conflicts of history is one of the chief difficulties confronting us, but it must be done. Understanding history is the first key to solving the problems that occupy our attention today.

Beware. Approach interpretation cautiously and be especially wary of ideological tangents that identify a single element claimed to be the only valid test of history. Economics is a prominent focus of interpretation that some have not only elevated above all others, but laud as the sole legitimate consideration. This hardened attitude is founded upon the incorrect perception of man as an exclusively materialistic creature whose existence is completely comprehensible within the context of economic concerns such as production and exchange.

Admittedly, economics is a highly significant element in the study of human society but the primary emphasis should be the entire society. There are complex social matters greatly influenced by economic factors but dependent upon the elastic human nature with its passions and prejudices, complexities that render society beyond the capability of a single idea to interpret. History is too full of the nuances and phenomena of humanity to be understood except through a broad study of social influences including economics.

As those of us concerned with the future search the past for guidance, we must recognize the important role of social influences as well as the tremendous significance of economics. The two aspects are sometimes allies, sometimes antagonists but always dynamic elements of our history, our contemporary society and our future. As we gradually achieve a more realistic approach to our problems, we will see that creating more equitable economic conditions for all citizens can better alter the prejudices of society.

**About the Author**

After a management career of more than forty years that included tenure at several top retailers, **Michael Driver** became a freelance writer, emphasizing employment issues, diversity, labor, management, leadership and public policy. Through the years, he simultaneously engaged in a variety of communications endeavors, including public relations, script analysis and politics. His short stories have appeared in a variety of publications.

http://www.MichaelDriver.com

For detailed information and updates, visit:

http://www.ForwardCommunicationLine.wordpress.com

Follow Michael Driver on Twitter: @mdMichaelDriver

<http://www.twitter.com/@mdMichaelDriver>

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