 
Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

Copyright (c) 2012 Thom Whalen

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, either in whole or in part, in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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In the summer of nineteen seventy-one, the head cook at Elsa's Grill was a crazy man named Randal. I don't remember his last name. Maybe I never knew it. It doesn't matter because his name wasn't important. His craziness was what mattered and it took me a while to find out how crazy he was and why.

Elsa's was a mom-and-pop diner in Wemsley, a small town in upstate New York, halfway between there and nowhere. Elsa's was no different than any other little family-owned restaurant anywhere else in these United States.

The grill was ageless. I never knew if it was a real grill or just a sheet of three-eights steel thrown on top of an old gas stove. But it had seen more liver and onions than I could stomach, even in my worst nightmares. And I have had some bad nightmares about the summer I worked at Elsa's.

The deep fryer was a real commercial model – you don't mess with homemade equipment when you're keeping five gallons of lard at three hundred and sixty degrees for twelve hours a day – but it was old. I think it had first seen service in World War Two. I could see a bit of camouflage paint on the back side when I got ambitious enough to mop behind there. Tan and brown, not black and green, so it hadn't been Vietnam. Even the army, screwed up as it usually is, never used desert colors in the jungle.

Mrs. Everett was fond of auctions. She never planned to acquire more equipment but, every so often when she saw something on the block and bidding was slow, she shouted a few bids and accidently bought something.

Like the slicer where we make the slaw. We all knew which auction had sold that one and we were pretty sure that it had seen service in the morgue in the big hospital in Syracuse before it came to Elsa's. Cabbage heads weren't the first heads that it had sliced, if you know what I mean. I'd swear that thing was haunted. Randal lost a thumb tip to it once. Not a lot of his thumb, just an eighth. But it bled like a river. We served red cabbage slaw that day.

Elsa's Grill wouldn't have been my first choice for a summer job – it wouldn't have been anyone's first choice – but I was starting at Columbia in the fall and needed money bad. I was on scholarship – no way could we afford Columbia's tuition without aid – but that didn't include living expenses, which would be high in New York City.

I started work three days before my last day of high school because Mrs. Everett said that she needed someone right away and she wouldn't hold the job even a single day. It was the first time that I had ever ditched class and I didn't like that. But I didn't have any choice about it.

She wasn't there when I knocked on the back door at ten on Monday morning. And then knocked again. And then again five minutes later.

"You looking for me, kid?" a voice said behind me.

"I'm supposed to start work today." I turned to look at a grizzled face.

This was Randal. He never introduced himself to me. He didn't have to. He could rely on other people mentioning his name as soon as he was out of earshot.

Looking at him, I knew that he wasn't normal but I couldn't say why. He had an easy grin and stood in a relaxed slouch, but the impression that he gave was the opposite of casual disinterest. He seemed to notice too much, to be unstable, too quick to act.

"Yeah," he said with a slight grin. "Mary said we were getting fresh meat today."

Mrs. Everett's first name was Mary. No one knew why the diner was called _Elsa's_. I asked Mrs. Everett once but even she professed ignorance. And she didn't profess ignorance about much, let me tell you.

He unlocked the door. "You start when I get here. But you write ten on your time sheet. That's the rule."

That was Randal's rule, not Mrs. Everett's. He had a lot of rules. Most of them made sense from his point of view, if not from anyone else's. As the summer wore on, I was to learn that his rules were how he coped with a world that challenged him more than the rest of us.

Randal was a stocky man. Not fat. Physically powerful.

He didn't eat much off the diner's menu. That was another one of his rules. "What the customers eat, the cook doesn't." Actually, that one made sense to me. Everything on the menu was loaded with fat and starch. And sugar. You'd be surprised how much sugar we poured into the dressing for the slaw. Even the fries were coated with sugar before they were cooked. We served nothing healthy to our clientele.

Randal ate a lot of the diner's food, but he made his own recipes from the ingredients that the kitchen provided. He marinated cabbage and onions in vinegar, fried the julienned potatoes on the grill, and stripped the breading off the chicken breasts. Nothing from the deep fryer was ever going to pass between his lips.

I don't know if Mrs. Everett was aware of his creative ways or not. He never told me that it was a secret but he never cooked for himself when she was in the diner, either.

I just kept my mouth shut and did as I was told. And if I wasn't told explicitly, then I did as I saw Randal do.

That first day, he handed me an apron and told me to wear it like he did. It was full length, but he folded the bib down and the bottom up to make a short apron that stayed out of the way. He didn't care if his tee shirts got greasy. They were stained permanently grey across his gut so a little more grease smeared there was unnoticeable.

The uniform wasn't complete until a paper hat was perched on my head. "State law," Randal said as he pulled a hat from the box.

I was surprised that Randal knew the state law, much less gave it any weight. He had the aura of a scofflaw.

He set me to work chopping cabbage, slicing tomatoes, and thawing meat. He showed me how to disassemble a head of lettuce by banging the stem on the table to break all the leaves at the base and then pulling it out – a skill that serves me well any time I need to use a whole head of lettuce at one sitting.

The prep never varied from one day to the next because the menu was fixed. Mrs. Everett didn't believe in daily specials. "Every item we serve is special," she said as often as she could.

But I suspect that she didn't serve specials because Randal wouldn't cook them. "I cook what I cook and nothing else." He was not a flexible man.

At eleven, a woman, maybe in her early thirties, appeared. She was wearing a knee-length black skirt, tight white blouse, and sensible shoes. Obviously the waitress.

"You're the fresh meat?" she asked.

I nodded.

"I hope you cook better than Nate," she said.

"Who's Nate?" I asked.

"That's the one you're replacing. Right now he's on a bus somewhere in Mexico. Good place for him. He always burns the grilled cheese. You got to watch the grilled cheese. It goes from good to burnt in a flash and I don't serve black grilled cheese. Nobody ever tips a waitress who serves them a black grilled cheese. And don't you try to scrape the black off, neither. That makes a mess and I don't serve messes to anybody."

"Because it messes with your tips?" I said.

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't let nothing or nobody mess with my tips. You remember that."

"Okay."

In some restaurants, the waitresses share their tips with the cooks. That gives the cooks an incentive to please the customers.

Elsa's was not one of those restaurants. Our only incentive for pleasing the customers was to avoid the wrath of the waitresses. Which turned out to be incentive enough.

As the waitress tied a frilly apron about her slender waist, she said, "Are you a virgin?"

My mouth dropped open. The only sound that I could utter was a low, "Aaaah."

"That's okay," she said. "It's a condition that's easy to cure."

She walked out to the front.

I looked at Randal.

He shrugged. "I never get between a man and the woman that's tormenting him." That was another of Randal's rules.

Half an hour later, Mrs. Everett arrived. "I see you've met Randal and Gwen," she said. "You can learn a lot from them. Pay attention."

"Yes, ma'am."

A trickle of customers soon became a flood as the place filled for lunch. I spent the next two hours learning to stay out of Randal's way. He was a black belt with a spatula and handled a chef's knife like a samurai sword. He could cut a three-quarter inch slice of meatloaf to the nearest thirty-second as quick as a blink.

"See how it's done?" he asked when lunch was over.

"Sure," I said.

"Great. I take my break from one-forty-five to two-fifteen so you're on."

He threw his paper hat and greasy apron on the office desk as he walked out the back door.

As far as Randal was concerned, I was trained.

Gwen jammed an order on the wheel and said, "Grilled cheese." She looked at me, alone in the kitchen, and added, "Don't burn it." Her voice was strict and hard. "I'm going to check both sides."

That grilled cheese was the first order that I cooked by myself at Elsa's. When it was on the grill, I watched it like a hawk to make sure that I didn't burn either side. I wondered if that made me any less of a virgin in Gwen's eyes.

Though not nearly as popular as the chicken and fries, the liver and onions were popular enough to surprise me. Even as I remember back, I'm still surprised. A scoop of coleslaw on every plate. Pickle spear with every sandwich. Gwen didn't have to remind me about the garnishes too often in that first half hour even though I was terribly distracted. Every time she shoved another ticket on the wheel, I wondered if she were the nurse who would cure my virgin condition. She was at least ten years older than me, but she was trim and had nice features. I found her looking more and more desirable as the day wore on.

She had me hooked but good.

By the time Randal came back, Gwen looked more like Jane Fonda than Jane Doe in my imagination. Barbarella had nothing on her.

Mrs. Everett left when Randal came back from his break. As soon as she was out of sight, he put a chunk of roast beef on a hamburger bun and smothered it in fried onions. The customers got hamburger on hamburger buns and roast beef on sandwich bread and fried onions on liver but Randal didn't eat what the customers ate, ever.

It also turned out that he never ate on his break. Breaks were his time. He preferred to eat on Mrs. Everett's time.

My break followed Randal's. When I started, Randal asked me if I wanted to work split shifts instead of taking a short break – we weren't busy between lunch and dinner and I wasn't needed – but I wanted to earn as much money as I could so Randal and I both worked long days. Nobody got overtime pay. I was exhausted at the end of every day.

Dinner was busy, but not as busy as lunch. We served more meals in the evening, but dinner was spread out over a longer period so we didn't have to rush as much as during the noon hour.

After close, Mrs. Everett reconciled the accounts and then took the day's deposit to the bank. Gwen tidied the front while Randal and I cleaned the kitchen. She left before I lifted the chairs onto the tables and mopped the front. The twenty-pound cotton cord mop was too heavy for the women when it was wet, so the one and only task in the front that fell to the cooks was mopping their floor.

As Randal's assistant and the junior member of the staff, I expected to be stuck with all the cleanup but it turned out that he wasn't shy about pitching in and doing his share. I respected that.

By the close of business at ten that night, I had more questions than answers about Randal. I didn't know if he had ever been married. I didn't know if he was a drug addict. I didn't know if he had ever been in prison. I didn't know if he'd ever killed a man. I dared ask no questions of him, though. There was an air of imminent violence about him at all times.

I hoped that I would learn more about Randal as the summer days marched past.

In fact, all my questions would be answered.

* * *

By the end of the first week, I felt like an old hand. I'd cooked everything on the menu, including the liver and onions. I hardly ever burned a grilled cheese sandwich or forgot a hotdog in the steamer. I barely noticed the accumulation of grease on my face and the slickness of my hair at day's end.

No single task was difficult, but a lot happened at the same time and the situation changed from minute to minute so it was easy to lose track of one thing or another.

When I did mess up, Gwen made certain that I understood and regretted my error. Her tongue was sharp and she took my shortcomings as a personal affront.

Another waitress, Julie, served on Gwen's days off and took half the tables on Friday and Saturday dinners. Those were the busiest nights of the week. Half the husbands in Wemsley, the half who still loved their wives, gave them a break from the stove and took the family to Elsa's Grill. And that was when young swains treated their sweethearts to burgers and shakes – the most exciting food in town.

On Friday and Saturday, Elsa's was filled with love.

I liked working with Julie. She neither terrified me nor raised my lust. She was a soft-spoken, middle-aged woman who mothered the customers and forgave the cooks' failings. Meaning my failings; I could never identify any failing on the part of Randal. I'm sure he must have had a few that would have been obvious to an experienced chef, but as far as I was concerned, he was the world's most perfect short order cook.

Sunday night, after reconciling the day's receipts and cashing out the waitress, Mrs. Everett called me into the office. I leaned the cotton-yarn mop against the counter and squelched across the floor.

"You've been here for a week," she said. "You're doing all right. I'm going to keep you. How many days do you want?"

"As many as you can give me."

"You can't work seven days a week. Take Tuesdays off."

"Yes, ma'am."

That marked the end of my probation period and set my permanent schedule.

I returned to the mop and began swabbing the front.

As Mrs. Everett was leaving, I overheard her tell Randal, "We've got a new girl starting tomorrow. Don't give her a hard time."

I didn't hear what Randal said – maybe nothing, he didn't always answer when spoken to – but I thought Mrs. Everett's comment strange. I'd never heard Randal give either Gwen or Julie a hard time. He barely spoke to them.

Maybe it was code for something beyond my experience.

I wondered if the new girl would be working in the front or if we were getting more kitchen help.

Then I wondered if Mrs. Everett had warned Randal not to give me a hard time, too. She should have warned Gwen.

When Randal locked the front door, he looked at me in the dark and said, "You go to university?"

"I'm going to start in September."

"You going to be a lawyer?"

I was not surprised that Randal would think of lawyers when he thought about educated people. He looked like a guy who was familiar with the sharp end of the judicial system. I was sure that both prosecutors and public defenders were familiar with his grizzled face and sharp eyes. "I'm going to major in math," I said.

"Math? You mean like algebra?"

"Sure."

"I dropped out of algebra once. After less than a month, I couldn't take it any more. It all sounded like bullshit to me."

"A lot of people don't like math."

"Is there a lot of money in math?"

"I don't think so."

"Then why are you wasting your time with it? Lawyers make a lot of money."

"I like it."

"You know anything about motorcycles?"

"No."

"Too bad." He sounded disappointed in me.

Randal walked away into the darkness. I turned in the other direction. My family lived in the better part of town.

* * *

"That's Phil. He's a virgin."

I felt my face flush. I was fast learning to dislike Gwen. Really dislike her. But I still wanted to sleep with her. It was a pure paradox. My desire for her grew in direct proportion to my dislike of her. And the real stab in the gut was that the more I disliked her, the harder it was to imagine seducing her. As my lust grew to monumental proportions, my ability even to talk to her shrank to minuscule size.

I was in torment. Pure torment.

The new girl – a lovely face with long blond hair and sea-green eyes – giggled that innocent, evil giggle that's issued to every high-school cheerleader along with the pom-pom socks and the scarlet letters.

"If he burns your grilled cheese, make him cook another one," Gwen said as she led the new waitress out to the front.

"That's a body to die for," Randal said. "I'd throw myself on a grenade to keep that one from taking the shrapnel."

"Yeah," I said. Not my wittiest retort but I was pleased that I could make myself say anything while still gripped in the throes of humiliation. A small part of my mind noted that when Randal said, _to die for_ , he meant it literally, not metaphorically. There was significance in that, but I couldn't figure out exactly what it implied.

I heard a sharp yap from out front.

"Barkley's here." Randal was peering over the counter.

I didn't need to be told to throw a piece of liver on the grill. Mrs. Craughton brought her yappy little beagle, Barkley, to Elsa's twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, before the lunch rush. But only if the weather was fair; Barkley didn't go out in the rain. Their order never varied; the old lady ate a Denver omelet and Barkley got a small piece of liver, no onions.

I could think of nothing better to do with liver than to feed it to a dog. Dogs will eat almost anything. And like it. Most people are smarter than that.

Gwen didn't bother announcing the order; she just said, "Craughton and Barkley," as she shoved the ticket on the wheel. Even that was superfluous. By the time she had finished gossiping with the old lady, her food would be cooked. I was pretty sure that Craughton came for the gossip, not the omelet. Barkley came for the liver.

"Craughton and Barkley," Randal muttered. "Sounds like lawyers."

If I'd known the word, _dikigorosophobia_ , back then, I would have wondered if Randal were a dikigorosophobe. But in my young, naïve years, before I'd undertaken a formal study of psychology, I thought only that he was a strange man. Cool in his strangeness. I hadn't yet realized that he was, as a professional would say, crazy as a loon.

Barkley got his treat on a paper to-go plate because Mrs. Everett was afraid that the other customers might be turned off if they saw a dog eating breakfast off the same plates on which they were served their lunch. I figured that she was probably right. I didn't want to eat off any plate that had been licked clean by a dog, no matter how well it had been washed afterward.

Randal didn't use the dishwasher. I didn't know which auction it had come from, but it seemed to work well enough. When Randal was serving himself, though, he took a clean plate and cutlery from the drying rack and washed them again by hand before using them. He wasn't fastidious – I saw him do things that almost turned my stomach – he just loved his little rituals.

Randal wore his hair short. After lunch, Mrs. Everett said, "If you don't get a haircut like Randal, you're going to have to wear a hairnet. State law."

My hair wasn't long – collar length, not shoulder length – but I nodded. "Okay." Tuesday was my day off, so I could get a trim. I wasn't about to wear a hairnet around Gwen or the new girl. Not even on a dare.

When Mrs. Everett was gone back to the front, Randal said, "Don't worry about the haircut if you don't want. The hat satisfies state law."

I was surprised. Randal didn't strike me as a man who concerned himself with the law to any great degree. The court would appoint lawyers to do that for him, when necessary.

"Mrs. Everett likes short hair, I guess." I didn't want to get fired.

He knew what I meant. "Don't worry about her. She won't fire you without my say so. Learn to cook and do it well and you won't get fired even if you grow your hair to your waist like a little school girl."

I knew what Randal thought about long hair. His opinion, more than Mrs. Everett's warning, ensured that I wouldn't let it grow too far past my collar.

"You go to Woodstock?" he asked.

I wondered where that came from. "No. I was only sixteen. My parents wouldn't let me go."

"It was hippie Mecca."

He was still thinking about my long hair. "Were you there?" I dared for the first time to ask him something about himself.

He shook his head. "I was otherwise engaged. I just heard about it."

"You like rock and roll?" I risked a personal question. My daring knew no bounds that day.

He looked into the distance for a long minute, before saying, "It's okay." He kept staring. "Yeah. Yeah, I like it," he added with a barely noticeable increase in enthusiasm.

I inferred that he wasn't a fan. I was with him on that. I liked rock music all right, but I didn't seek it out. I'd never been to an actual rock concert. If my parents had let me go, Woodstock would have been my first. It would have been a great way to start.

"At least Woodstock wasn't Altamont," he said. "That was a bad scene. They put a Hells Angel on trial for killing that kid out there but the Angel walked because someone had a picture of the kid shooting a gun at the stage."

"Yeah," I said to be agreeable. I'd barely heard about the Altamont Free Concert. Woodstock had been staged in our backyard in the summertime so we'd all been talking about that one. Altamont was staged on the far coast when we were buried to our knees in snow so it escaped our notice until the newspapers reported the killing. Someone not too bright had asked the Hells Angels to provide security during the concert. It had gone bad.

"Gotta watch the cops," he said. "Innocent until proven guilty don't work if they think you did something. You're not safe unless you can prove yourself innocent. That Hells Angel was lucky. It's smart to be lucky." That was another one of Randal's rules, though it took me years to figure out what he meant.

He turned away and threw a handful of fries on the grill for his lunch and the conversation was over.

That was a milestone. It was the most informative conversation that I'd had with Randal up to that point.

The new girl worked only lunches that week. I was always busy when she walked through the kitchen so I never had a chance to learn her name or welcome her to Elsa's properly.

Her first impression of me was whatever Gwen was telling her between customers. I didn't think that was good.

* * *

Tuesday was my day off and Wednesday was Randal's, so I didn't see him again until Thursday morning.

Wednesdays were bad days at Elsa's Grill. Mrs. Everett cooked and I assisted. She had owned the place for as long as most of us could remember so she was the most experienced cook in the place. In principle. In practice, though I'd only been working for ten days, I was already a better short-order cook than Mrs. Everett would ever be. I wasn't great, but she was terrible.

She wore her apron full – bib hanging from her neck and hem halfway down her shins – not folded down into the efficient flap that hung from Randal's and my waists.

Her biggest failing was that she could cook only one order at a time. Everything on one order had to be plated and set out for the waitress before she would throw the next one on the grill.

When she cooked, she stood in front of the grill, one arm stretched out to the right, holding the spatula at the ready, and the other arm stretched out to the left, leaning on the counter to steady herself while she stared fixedly at the food.

She did that to block anyone else from getting close to the grill and start the next order and confusing her. She had learned, long ago, that if she didn't Bogart the grill, any other cook in the kitchen was going to barge in and take over. Even a cook who'd been working there for only a couple of weeks.

Cooking with her was nothing like cooking with Randal. Lunches were mostly burgers so when orders piled up, Randal would scan ahead to make sure that we needed at least a dozen burgers, as many as would fit on the left side of the grill, and then use the right third to cook omelets, grilled cheese, liver and onions, or whatever else was required to complete the orders. We only worried about counting the patties that we cooked when the rush abated and we got down to the last few orders on the wheel.

I once saw Mrs. Everett ask Randal which patties were going to be used for which orders. He looked at her like she was insane, grunted something that probably would have been rude if it were intelligible, and turned back to his work.

For the most part, she knew better than to try to stand between Randal and the grill. He would have reacted badly and she didn't want to get hurt.

Me, though? Different story altogether. I was the new guy so she told me to get out of her way and let her cook. She considered me expendable and, despite what Randal said, could fire me on the spot any time she wanted. I needed to keep the job to pay for college so I got out of her way.

Every time an order was called, I hoped that it would be chicken, a dog, chili, or a sandwich because then I could move some food. Mrs. Everett couldn't block my access to the deep fryer, steamer, bain marie, or sandwich counter when she kept herself steadfastly stationed at the grill.

Wednesday lunches were light. Most of our customers were regulars who knew better than to come to Elsa's on Randal's day off. Thus, on those days, the ratio of tourists to townsfolk rose sharply and that suited us. We didn't care if a tourist never came back because nobody spent more than three days visiting Wemsley. They stayed just long enough to get a fishing license and fill their quota, before moving along to somewhere more exciting. That being anywhere from Ottawa to Buffalo.

But the tourists did get nasty when they had to wait for more than an hour to get a grilled cheese sandwich and fries. Some of the words they used, I'd never before heard in that context. Not when I was only eighteen and had yet to set foot on a college campus.

Gwen took Wednesdays off so the new girl was working lunch with the relief waitress, Julie. Either of them could have kept pace with Mrs. Everett on the grill but they needed each other for moral support when the customers began yelling insults; and for backup when the customers looked like they might get violent.

This gave me my first chance to have an actual conversation with the new girl. When I saw her go on break after lunch, I told Mrs. Everett that I was taking mine. I didn't make a deal about it being at the same time as one of the waitresses and Mrs. Everett either didn't mind or didn't notice. Either way, I was golden.

The new girl's name was Katie. Though we had been working together for a few days, we had never been introduced. When I followed her out the back door, I said, "Hey, Katie. I'm Phil."

She nodded. "I know."

We all took our breaks at a picnic table that was stuck out of sight on the far side of the restaurant from the front door. There was enough overhang to give us shade on sunny days and to keep us from getting wet when it rained. I guess in the winter, when it was cold, the staff would eat inside at the prep table but I only worked during the summer when it was warm enough to sit outside.

Katie was eating a chicken breast and fries that I'd cooked to order for her. I had a Ruben sandwich. Randal never ate what the customers ate, but the rest of us did.

"How's the chicken?" I asked.

"It's okay," she said.

It was just like every other piece of chicken that I'd deep-fried in the last week. I wanted to be able to tell her that I'd done something special for her, but there's nothing that you can do with pre-breaded chicken pieces except put them in the fryer for the right amount of time. Any less time and the center is uncooked; any more time and the outside is burned. Either way and Gwen would give me hell when the customer complained. We didn't use timers; we knew when it was cooked by the sound of the sizzle in the fryer. It didn't take long to learn how to keep Gwen off my back. She gave me plenty of incentive.

"Good," I said. I couldn't think of anything else to say so I said nothing for a couple of minutes.

"Are you really a virgin?" she asked.

I shrugged. "That's what they say." As I spoke the words, I thought that I couldn't have said anything that sounded more lame.

But she laughed. "I never thought of virginity as a matter of public opinion."

"I never thought of it as a matter for public discussion," I countered.

"Gwen's something else, isn't she?" Katie said.

"Yeah."

"She sure likes to give you a hard time."

"She's probably afraid to give Randal a hard time so that leaves me."

"I think she likes Randal."

That took me aback. I couldn't imagine anyone liking Randal. Respecting him, for sure. Being curious about him, yes. Hanging around to see what he was going to do next, certainly. But actually liking him? Not so much. But, I couldn't imagine Gwen liking anyone either, so maybe they were a match. "Randal's a strange dude," I said.

"He's like a cowboy," she said. "Like Clint Eastwood. Quiet and dangerous."

I looked at her and wished that I were quiet and dangerous. I wasn't sure how to do that but I was pretty certain that it didn't involve talking a lot, so I squinted my eyes and nodded slowly, like Clint would do. I wished that I had a serape and a little cigar in my mouth.

I kept squinting at her for a minute, but she looked at me like I was strange so I stopped.

It's hard to project a Clint Eastwood image when you're mostly Woody Allen inside. Maybe I could compromise and be Dustin Hoffman. I looked vaguely like him and girls go for puppy dog guys. And in four years, I was going to be a graduate.

"I'm going to Columbia in September," I said.

"That's cool."

I glowed.

"I bet it's easy to get grass there. Cocaine, too."

"No easier than anywhere else, I'd guess."

"It's got to be easier down there. That's where they make it."

"In Columbia?"

"In a lot of places in South America."

"No," I said. "I'm not going to Columbia, the country. I'm starting at Columbia University."

"Oh." She looked disappointed.

"I'm going to major in math." Dustin Hoffman was a mathematician in _Straw Dogs_. Mathematicians could be tough. I tried to look grim and tough for a minute.

She turned her attention back to her chicken breast.

"Do you have plans for the fall?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I'm going to be a dental hygienist. They make a lot of money, you know."

"I didn't know that," I said. "Where are you going to study?"

"I don't know yet."

I understood. Late acceptance. "Where have you applied?"

"No where yet. I have to look into that."

Real late acceptance. "It might be a little late to apply for a program for the fall," I said. "I guess you're thinking about starting in the second semester."

"Can I do that?" she asked.

"I don't know." I didn't want to discourage her by telling her that I thought that doubtful. "But there's always next year for sure."

"Sure." She looked at the restaurant. "I guess I could work here for the winter."

"That's right. You could save money for when you go to school."

"Right." She kept looking at the restaurant. "I'm not sure how long I want to work here, though. I'd rather be a dental hygienist than a waitress."

"Waitresses can make good money." I thought about all the tips that she and Gwen didn't share with the cooks.

"But being a waitress isn't as classy as a dental hygienist."

There was no right answer to that, so I squinted my eyes and nodded slowly.

"I better get back to work," she said. "I got to start earning money for dental hygiene school."

"Yeah," I said. "Me, too."

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

"For Columbia," I said.

She squinted her eyes and nodded slowly. When she did that, she looked more like Clint than I did.

When I went back inside, I was pretty sure that I was no closer to curing my unfortunate condition of virginity than I had been before I tried chatting Katie up. Maybe I was even further away.

* * *

On Thursday morning, I was waiting for Randal to arrive when I heard a teeth-rattling roar coming around the corner.

Every morning, I came to Elsa's at ten sharp and waited for Randal to show up. Waiting was boring but I didn't want Randal to arrive first and have to start the prep by himself. That flag wouldn't fly. If he told Mrs. Everett that I wasn't working out, she'd fire me on the spot. Nobody ignored Randal. Especially not Mrs. Everett.

Usually I had a fifteen-minute wait, but sometimes I had to wait for almost forty-five minutes.

Today, it was only five after ten when the roar of a big motorcycle with a small muffler heralded him.

Randal appeared astride a chopper: a custom Harley with ape-hanger handlebars, extended forks, and a sissy-bar seat. Everything was chrome and leather, except for the red and orange flame painted on the gas tank.

"Nice bike," I said when he killed the throaty roar and restored a measure of peace to the neighborhood.

"Just got it."

"It's loud."

"Dual tuned pipes." He nodded back at the chrome exhaust pipes that rose high beside the fat rear tire. "Plays a nice melody when you're blowing down the highway. A lot of bass." He kicked the stand to the ground and dismounted. "Been a couple years since I rode. It's good to be back in the saddle."

"I've never ridden on a motorcycle."

"You're a virgin in so many ways, it's sad." He shook his head morosely.

His comment stung.

"You got to build your skills." That was another of Randal's rules. I'd heard him say it a lot while I was learning to cook.

"Right," I said. I really wanted to build my lovemaking skills, but lacked opportunity. He didn't have any rules about how to get a girl. I was going to have to figure that out for myself.

"Let's get cooking." He unlocked the door and we got to work.

The lunch was no different than usual until there was a shout and a crash from the front. Randal didn't turn to look, he just said, "Burger, chilidog, fries, and rings. Get the dog down and I'll start the rings and bag the fries. We'll give her the next burger off the grill."

A minute later, Gwen was at the counter, saying, "I need a replacement burger, chilidog, fries, and rings." She looked upset but Randal was already giving her everything but the rings.

"Rings will be three more minutes," he said.

"You didn't even look," I said when he returned to the grill.

"That was the last order out. The crash was too big to be just a drink. Had to be the whole order." As he was talking, he was already pulling the next order from the wheel and plating it.

Mrs. Everett came back and told me to get a mop out front and make sure all the grease was off the floor. "Sprinkle a little TSP right on it," she said.

It was kind of weird being out front in my greasy apron and tee shirt and paper hat. All the customers watched while I rolled the bucket out to where Mrs. Everett was standing and made sure that the soiled patch of floor was clean enough to eat off.

Gwen's face was red and Katie was keeping a low profile, wiping down the soda fountain with a rag.

An hour later, while I was in the office with Katie, cashing her out, I asked, "What happened out there? Tray slip?"

"No. Some dirty-looking guy said something to Gwen. I couldn't hear what. But she said something back to him and he must of not liked it because he dumped her tray. Just reached out and slapped the bottom. Swept it right off her hand. There were burgers and fries flying. It was lucky that it all went to the floor and not all over some customer. The chilidog was the worst. It smeared. So Gwen told the jerk to get out and never come back. I don't know if it was someone she knew already or if some tourist was getting fresh with her and she shut him down. I asked but she didn't say. Just that it was just some guy and I shouldn't worry about him because he wasn't ever coming back. Anyway, I cleaned up the worst of the mess and Mrs. Everett went back to get you. After that, it was business as usual."

When she left and I returned to the grill, Randal asked, "She say what happened?"

"Some guy dumped Gwen's tray."

"Accident?"

"Deliberate."

Randal said no more to me but when Gwen was cashing out that night, he cornered her in the office for a few minutes. I couldn't hear everything that they were saying, even though I about strained my ears trying, but I pulled the name, _Billy_ , from their dark muttering.

As she opened the door, Randal said, more loudly, "If you wait a while, I can take you home on the bike."

She laughed dryly. "On that hog? I'd rather walk."

"Then I'll walk you home."

"I'll be fine. Don't worry. It's as good as over."

" _As good as_ isn't the same as _over_."

She gave a jaunty salute and walked out into the darkness.

"I can finish up here if you want to go with her," I said. "You can give me the key and I'll be here in the morning to let us in. I always get here first."

He looked tempted for a minute then said, "Naw. It'll be okay. No one's going to mess with her again. Not if he knows what's good for him."

"Who?" I dared ask.

"Nobody," he said. His dark expression discouraged me from pressing the point. Curiosity kills more people than it does cats.

* * *

Two days later, Saturday, Gwen came in with a shiner. She'd tried to cover it with makeup, but it's pretty hard to hide that much bruise around the eye.

I didn't see it at first. Most mornings when she came in, she made some cutting comment to me. Sometimes telling me not to be shy with the salt on the fries or that I should take the onions off the grill before they turned completely black; more often asking me if I was still cherry or telling me that offering a girl a joint would get me laid quicker than offering a wedding ring. She was quite a card, that Gwen.

She was probably right about the joint. I imagined that girls who smoked up shed their panties pretty easily. Grass and sex seemed to go together, those being the twin pillars of hippie culture. But I didn't partake. Columbia was a competitive school and I wouldn't make the grade if I dulled my edge with grass. Maybe if I were in literature or drama or something but not in math. Stoners didn't win Fields Medals.

I wondered if I could give a girl a joint without smoking it myself. I'd never been to a pot party, so I didn't know the etiquette of such things. Gwen probably did, but I wasn't about to ask her. She already figured me for a dork. I didn't need to prove it.

It's a cruel world that forces a guy to choose between math and sex.

So that morning, I found it strange when Gwen walked past me without looking at me or putting me down.

When she hung the first order of the day, from Craughton and Barkley, I caught her eye. She stared back at me like a deer in the headlights. First I noticed that her face looked lopsided, then I realized that her left eyelid and cheek were swollen. Looking closer, I saw that her left eye was tinged red and her eye socket was bluish underneath her makeup.

I was stunned.

She broke eye contact and turned away before I could think what to say.

"Gwen has a black eye," I said when I turned back to the grill.

"What?" Randal asked, turning to look out at the front.

"I'm no expert, but it looks to me like Gwen has a black eye."

Randal left the grill and went to the counter to stare at Gwen. "Order up," he said, though I was still cooking Barkley's liver.

She came to the counter. "Where's the order?"

"What happened?" he asked.

"Ran into a doorknob," she said. "Where's my order?"

"Billy's the biggest knob I know," Randal said.

"I took care of him," she said.

"He still wasting good air?"

"I can handle my own problems."

"If he's still out there somewhere, breathing, then it's not handled."

"It's handled all that it needs to be handled."

"Do you know where he's staying?"

"He's going to stay away from me so you got to stay away from him. You can't afford to get tangled up in this."

"I already am."

"No. You're not involved." She looked past Randal's shoulder. "Hey, Cherry Boy, you got my order, yet?" She had taken to calling me _Cherry Boy_. To prove the moniker apt, I blushed cherry red every time she said it. My blush amused her so she was never going to stop.

"Coming up." I put the liver on a paper plate and Mrs. Craughton's food on china.

"Give it to me," she said.

Randal looked like he was going to say something else, but decided against it. He turned, grabbed the two plates out of my hands and pushed them across the high counter. "Order up."

She put the food on her tray and left.

Barkley yipped when he saw her coming with the liver.

I wanted to ask who Billy was, but Randal looked angry. My better judgment told me to keep my mouth shut. An angry Randal is a scary Randal. Actually, any Randal is a scary Randal, but an angry Randal is over-the-top scary. Whoever Billy was, he was in trouble if Randal found him.

I was being careful to say, "Hi," to Katie when she came and, "Bye," when she left, but had found little opportunity to talk to her since that first time. Most days, her shift ended before I took my break. It was only on Gwen's days off that she worked a longer shift and needed to take a break when I did.

Today, though, I took my break a bit early to make sure that I was going out the back door at the same time as her.

"You taking your break?" she asked as I held the door open for her.

"Yeah."

"That looks good."

I looked down at the chili-cheese-dog in my hands. I'd put grilled onions on it. I was beginning to see the wisdom in Randal's rule that cooks didn't eat what the customers ate. We could do better than that.

"You want one?" I asked her. "You can have this one and I'll whip up another one for myself." Mrs. Everett wasn't around and Randal didn't care what I cooked for myself.

"No, thanks," she said. Then she looked down at the bit of gastronomic delight in my hand and reconsidered. "Well, maybe I could have a bit. Not half, just a couple of bites."

"Sure. Why don't I meet you at the table." I dashed back inside and cut a third of the dog off and put it on a plate for her.

I was half-afraid that she'd be gone by the time I got back – I'm embarrassed to say that it wouldn't have been the first time that a pretty girl had ditched me – but she was sitting there, waiting, lovely as a movie poster.

I imagined her in a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in _One Million, B.C._ The thought made me blush; and blushing made me blush even more.

"You didn't have to run," she said, misinterpreting my red face. "I wasn't going anywhere."

She spoke as though she knew that pretty girls were likely to disappear on me when I wasn't looking. My face grew hotter.

She laughed lightly. My potential humiliation was a joking matter to her.

"Gwen has a black eye," I said, blurting the words out in my haste to cover my embarrassment.

She stopped laughing. "I know. She said that she ran into a doorknob but I don't see how that could happen. They're too low to run into with your face."

"Randal thinks that a guy named Billy hit her."

"Billy?"

"I'm pretty sure that he's the guy that dumped her tray a couple of days ago."

"He's called Billy?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"Makes sense, I guess. If he could dump her tray, he could sure hit her. He looked nasty enough for it."

"So you don't know anything about it?"

"Not as much as you do, apparently."

Darn. "So she didn't say anything about getting hit or Billy or getting her tray dumped?" I asked.

"No. We don't have as much time to chat out front as you and Randal in the kitchen."

"Randal and I don't chat much."

"Oh."

The pause lasted long enough to get awkward. I ate a few bites of my chili-cheese-dog and Katie nibbled at hers.

"So, did you get a chance to look at the deadline for applying to dental hygiene programs?" I asked.

She looked at me like I was speaking gibberish. "Dental hygiene?"

"Yes. You said that you wanted to be a dental hygienist."

"I told you that?" She frowned. "I guess I did. But when I thought about it, I didn't think that I'd like poking around in people's mouths all day. It would be kind of yucky."

"I can see that. Being a waitress is more interesting in a lot of ways."

"Oh, I don't want to be a waitress. Not after the summer. I think I'm going to quit in September and hitchhike to San Francisco. They've got communes out there. You can live on them for free. I'd like to be free like that."

"There are communes here, too," I said. The only thought in my mind was that women practiced free love in communes. If Katie wanted to live on a commune, that had to mean that she wanted to practice free love, too. I wanted some of that so bad that it hurt.

"Yeah. But it's cold in the winter here. San Francisco is in California. It's warm and sunny out there in the winter. You can swim all year around."

I'd never been to California, but I was pretty sure that San Francisco was in Northern California and that wasn't quite so warm and sunny as in Los Angeles.

"And they have a nice zoo there. I saw that on a TV show. I could live on a commune and go to the zoo and commune with the tigers. I'd like to be friends with a tiger."

"Sure. As long as it's in a cage." A tiger would be more likely to see her as dinner than as a buddy.

"Oh, they don't have cages there," she said. "That was what the TV show was all about. How it's a special zoo because the lions and tigers and bears aren't in cages. But you don't have to be scared of them because they know that they're in a zoo and won't hurt you."

I tried to figure out what she was talking about.

"And the other good thing about San Francisco is that it's right next to Tijuana. You can walk right across the border into Mexico any time you want."

"I think you mean San Diego." I remembered my American geography. "San Diego is in the south, right next to Mexico. San Francisco is in the north, closer to our latitude."

"Oh, no. It's in California. I'm sure about that."

I didn't know much about girls, but I knew enough to know that it would do me no good to try to teach her about California geography. If she ever got out there, she could explore the state for herself.

"You're right," I said. "Exactly right. San Francisco is in California, all right."

She beamed.

"That was good." She swallowed the last bite of her share of my chili-cheese-dog.

"Any time you want one of your own, just let me know and I'll make one for you. Grilled onions and all."

"Thanks," she said.

"As long as Mrs. Everett isn't around. I don't know if she likes us going off the menu."

"Anyway," she said. "I better get going."

She left.

I went back into the kitchen, thinking, _That went pretty well_. It was my second real conversation with Katie and she hadn't told me to get lost yet. I was halfway to not being a virgin any longer.

It was a terrifying thought, but I was a brave boy.

* * *

Nothing much happened over the weekend. I was waiting until Wednesday – Randal and Gwen's day off – to make my big move with Katie.

Once again, after a dead slow lunch, I contrived to take my break at the same time as her. She wanted a BLT so I loaded it up with double bacon. There's no such thing as too much bacon. I made a cheeseburger for myself.

At the table around the back, I opened the conversation by commenting, "I think you'd like San Diego better than San Francisco." I'd spent an hour in the public library, getting my facts straight so that I could make sure that she didn't hitchhike to the wrong part of California. San Diego wasn't exactly the radical center of the country but I did find a magazine article that said that one part of town, Ocean Beach, was the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego. That sounded like what Katie was looking for.

"San Diego?" she said, looking disinterested.

"Yes," I replied, trying to inject some enthusiasm into her. "You said that you wanted to move to California and drop out."

"I don't know," she said. "That doesn't sound like much fun. I was thinking that maybe I should be an artist. I saw on TV that there's some guy who just drips paint onto canvases and sells it for millions of dollars. I could do that."

"Jackson Pollock," I said.

"What?"

"Jackson Pollock was the artist who made drip paintings."

"That's the guy?"

"Yes. He's dead. He died in the fifties. Drunk driving."

"Good. If he's dead, then he's not making any more paintings. I don't have to worry about him taking my customers." She looked thoughtful. "I know that I won't be able to sell my paintings for as much as he does, but if people will pay a million dollars for one of his, they should pay a thousand dollars for one of mine, right?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"I'd only have to sell one every month or two and I'd be rich. Even if I have to buy the paint myself."

"Sure. Pollock used house paint. You can buy it by the gallon. It doesn't cost much if you buy the cheap stuff."

She smiled happily at me.

That was good. I was looking for a happy smile.

"I was wondering if you'd like to see _The French Connection_?" I almost stuttered, I was so nervous asking her out.

"The French what?"

I took a deep breath. " _The French Connection_. It's a movie. It's playing at the Paramount this week."

"I never heard of it." She looked suspicious. "What kind of connection is French?"

"It's a movie about smuggling drugs."

"From Columbia?"

"From France. That's why it's called _The French Connection_."

"I didn't know that they grew drugs in France."

"They didn't grow them there. They just smuggle them through there."

"Oh. Aren't drugs against the law in France?"

"I think so."

"So, instead of just smuggling the drugs directly here, they'd rather smuggle them through an extra country?"

"Right."

"Oh." She frowned, trying to understand that.

"It's a good movie. It's getting great reviews. Gene Hackman's in it."

"Oh. I guess I'd like to see it sometime, then. I should ask my sister."

"Your sister?" That confused me.

"If she'd like to go to the movie with me."

"What about me?"

"What about you?" She raised her lovely eyebrows at me.

"Would you like to go with me?"

"You want to come with Mary and me?"

"No. Just with you. Not with Mary. Just you and me going to the movie."

"Oh." Comprehension dawning across her face. "You're asking me on a date."

"Yes."

She studied my face. "No. I don't think that would be a good idea."

"I see." My heart fell to the bottom of my chest. It showed on my face.

"No," she said. "It's not like that. I'm sure that you're a great guy and all. But we're working together now and then you're going to university and I don't think that I'd want to move to New York with you. It wouldn't work out. We'd just end up broken up and mad at each other."

I was asking for a first date and she was already talking about getting a divorce. I wanted a girl who moved fast but I didn't exactly have this in mind.

My mistake was beginning this conversation by asking her about her long-term plans. It put her in the wrong frame of mind.

She finished her double-bacon BLT and smacked her lips. "I don't think you put enough lettuce and tomato in it. It tasted too much like bacon. Break's over. Time to get back to work."

She left me at the table, a broken man. It wasn't only that I could see no end to my virgin status; it was hard to hear that a girl didn't like me well enough to want to break up with me in a few months.

That rejection was hard to take.

* * *

On Friday morning, a police cruiser followed Randal into Elsa's parking lot.

The Wemsley Police Department consisted of a handful of officers under the direction of Wemsley's intrepid Chief of Police, Mike Albertson. I'd never had a run in with the man but everyone at high school said that he hated kids, whether they had done anything or not.

One story in particular had circulated to everyone. A kid had been working late at the Handy Hardware. They'd been doing inventory until almost midnight and he was beat. He was so tired that he couldn't walk all the way home without sitting down on a bench in the Community Park for a few minutes to rest. Albertson drove by and saw the kid sitting there so he stopped and started hassling him over nothing. Said that he knew that the kid had been painting graffiti on the back wall of the A&P. The kid said that he didn't do it – that he'd been working all night; that he didn't even have any paint on him – but Albertson was having none of that. He said that he was going to send the kid to juvey over in Syracuse for six months. Said that the judge always believed cops and automatically convicted any kid on the cop's word alone. Then, Albertson said that he'd give the kid a break. If he liked painting so much, he could spend the rest of the night painting the fence at Albertson's house and he wouldn't arrest him. So the kid had to spend all night painting Albertson's fences. The next morning, he had to go straight to school with his clothes all covered in paint. The final slap in the face was that Albertson made the kid pay for the paint that he used.

Everyone swore it was true. No one could tell me who the kid was, but they all had a good friend who knew the kid.

I wasn't so sure. I figured that the guys who told stories about Albertson weren't all innocent little lambs. But I still made it a policy to have nothing to do with Albertson or his cops.

So far, that had been easy. The cops and I traveled in different social circles.

I waited by the Elsa's back door as Randal's chopper rolled to a halt.

The cop car trailing him had its lights flashing but its siren was silent.

Randal killed the engine and kicked the stand down but remained sitting astride his bike, his hands draped across the handlebars, as though he didn't have a care in the world. The hard look in his eyes said that if anything transpired that didn't meet his approval, he was going to kick the engine back to life and head for the open road.

The officer stayed in his car for a couple of minutes, talking on his radio. When he finally got out, he swaggered slowly over to Randal, one hand resting casually on the butt of his pistol, his other thumb hooked into his belt.

"What's your name, son?" The cop couldn't have been more than a couple of years older than Randal. Maybe not even as old.

"Randal," Randal said. "Yours?"

The cop ignored his question. "You got ID?"

"I do." Randal made no move to get it out.

"Let's see it."

"It's in my left hip pocket."

"Get it out."

Randal stood astride the bike and used his left hand to slowly draw his wallet from his pants. He sat down again before offering it to the officer.

"Take you license out of your wallet," the officer said.

Randal did.

The officer examined the document carefully and then said, "Registration for the bike."

Randal shook his head. "I ain't done all the paperwork yet. It's in the mail."

"Is it your bike?"

"Yup."

"Nice bike."

"Yup."

"You build it?"

"I bought it. About a week ago."

"I see. From who?"

"A guy named Billy."

"Billy who?"

"Billy Paul."

The cop looked at Randal for a minute, assessing his situation, then said, "You better get off the bike."

"I'm comfortable here."

The cop shifted his weight. Now his hand wasn't resting on his gun butt; his fingers were wrapped around it as though ready to draw. "Off the bike, son. Now."

"Yes, sir, officer," Randal said and swung his leg over the gas tank. When he stood erect, his body was balanced forward on the balls of his feet, looking like he was ready to spring at the cop.

"Stand easy, son," the cop said.

"I'm at ease," Randal replied, raising his hands slightly and turning his palms out. But he looked like he was a coiled steel spring – taut and dangerous.

I wondered if Randal were crazy enough to attack a policeman.

"We're going to wait for the chief to get here. He's got some questions for you."

"I got time." Randal returned his hands to his side. His posture relaxed in some way that was too subtle for me to explain, but he looked like he was no longer cocked with a hair trigger set. No less dangerous, just less volatile.

The cop didn't return to his radio. He must have called the chief before he got out of his car.

The two men faced each other silently for a long time. Neither felt any need to speak. They communicated perfectly on a base animal level. Maybe it was chemical, like pheromones.

I wanted to leave, but I was afraid to draw attention to myself by moving. Besides, I had to start the prep for lunch. I would have gone inside but Randal had the key.

An unmarked car pulled into the lot and a man climbed out. I recognized him from the stories that were told around the school. Chief Albertson was a homely man. Middle-aged, squat and heavy, with a badly-scarred complexion and a mean scowl permanently chiseled on his face.

Randal didn't move but his attention expanded to encompass both policemen.

"Name?" the chief asked.

"Randal," Randal said.

The officer handed Randal's license to the chief.

The chief ignored the document and kept his eyes on Randal. "You armed?"

"No."

"Knife? Razor? Anything?"

"No."

"Where'd you get this motorcycle?"

"I bought it from Billy Paul."

"When?"

"Last week."

"You got a bill of sale?"

"No. It was a gentleman's agreement."

The chief snorted. "Proof of payment?"

"Paid cash."

"You get a receipt?"

"I got a handshake."

The chief snorted again. "Do you know where Billy Paul is now?"

"Around somewhere, I guess. Unless he left town."

"He couldn't get too far. You have his bike."

"He knows how to catch a bus. He could be in California for all I know."

"You know where he was staying?"

Randal paused. "I never asked. I figured he had a friend here. Or rented a room. His accommodations didn't concern me."

"He had a tent set up in the Smoke Pond campground."

"If you say so."

"He hasn't been there since last week."

"Maybe he's out hiking."

"He left his tent."

"Warm weather this time of year," Randal said. "It hasn't rained for a while. It's no hardship to sleep under the stars."

"He hasn't paid the fees for his campsite since last Friday."

"Who would have guessed that Billy Paul would be a deadbeat?" Randal said.

I had never heard a voice so deadpan dry.

The chief stared at Randal hard. "He's gone and you have his bike."

Randal shrugged. "Did he report it stolen?"

The chief stared hard at Randal.

Randal waited impassively.

Finally, the chief said, "Don't leave town."

"You know where to find me," Randal replied. "We start prep at ten every morning and the doors open at eleven. Except Wednesdays. That's my day off."

"Don't leave town," the chief repeated. "And if you run into Billy Paul, you tell him to come see me. I've got his stuff in storage. He'll want it back."

Randal snorted.

The chief climbed back into his car and drove off.

The other officer handed Randal's license back to him and said, "Like the chief says."

When the officer left, Randal unlocked the door. Inside, he said, "Glad you were here, kid. The cops are more courteous when there's a witness around. A word of advice. Don't let the cops get you alone."

That was another of Randal's rules: _Don't let the cops get you alone._

I suspected that, despite the chief's warning, Randal would have another rule about getting out of town when the going got tough. I wondered if I would get to the restaurant one morning soon and have to wait for an hour and a half until Mrs. Everett showed up to let me in.

* * *

It had been a week since Gwen suffered the black eye. The swelling in her face was gone but I could tell that she was still bruised under her makeup.

Lunch was over and the afternoon doldrums had set in when Gwen came to the order counter and said, "Hey, C.B., where's Randal?"

Gwen had shortened her nickname for me to C.B. I didn't like that any better than the full version but there was nothing that I could do about it. Objecting wouldn't stop her; it would only give her that much more satisfaction.

Katie didn't call me C.B., but she giggled a little every time she heard Gwen say it.

She wouldn't go out with me, so why should I care if she laughed at me?

Randal said nothing about it. I don't think he cared what anybody called anybody.

"Randal's in the back, hooking up a new tank of grape soda."

"Tell him that someone out here needs to talk to him.

I went back and conveyed the message to him.

"Who?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, they're going to have to wait until I hook this up. You never know when we're going to get a run on grape soda."

Almost certainly, never.

I went back and peered over the order counter. The restaurant was empty but for the police chief standing by the cash.

I went back to Randal. "I think it's Chief Albertson who wants to talk to you."

"Well, he can wait just like anyone else," Randal said. "Maybe he's waiting for a grape soda."

"I don't think so."

Randal snapped the feed lines to the tank. There was a hiss as the C-O-two pressurized it. "Okay. Let's go."

"What?"

"You're coming with me. I don't talk to cops without a witness."

Right. That was Randal's rule. _Don't let the cops get you alone._ He never broke his own rules.

I followed him out to the front.

When he passed Gwen, he said, "If this takes long, you're going to have to cook."

"What about C.B.?"

"He's with me."

I didn't know that Gwen could cook. I should have guessed. It's not rocket science. It got stressful only when we got too many orders at once and the place was empty right now.

"Katie's going to have to stay late and staff the front," she said.

Randal didn't reply, just walked over to the chief. "You want to talk?" he said.

"Just to you. I don't need him." The chief nodded at me.

"He's with me," Randal said.

"What does he have to do with this?"

"Nothing. He's pure as the driven snow. That's why he's with me."

The chief cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. "You're coming down to the station."

"I'd rather talk here."

The chief looked around. "Not very private. You wouldn't want the whole town knowing your business."

"There's a picnic table around the back. That'll do."

"If that's the way you want it."

"None of this is the way I want it. I don't want to talk to you at all." Randal led the chief and me out the front door and around the building.

We sat on the benches, the chief and Randal facing each other directly across the table and me beside Randal, but at the end of the bench.

"First, I got to tell you that you can have a lawyer if you want." He turned to look at me. "You're not a lawyer, I presume." His smile was not pleasant. It did nothing to improve the homely face.

"He's in university," Randal said. "He'll be a lawyer some day."

I doubted that but said nothing. I knew my job. To be here. To say nothing. And most important, not to contradict Randal.

"Suit yourself," the chief said, "but we can get you a real lawyer if you want one. Doesn't matter if you can't pay for it. I'll get you one anyway."

"I got the kid," Randal said.

"Sure. But you know that if you talk to me now and later you go to court, they might want to use something that you say."

"I get it."

"I'm just saying that you don't have to say anything that you don't want to say."

"I get it."

It wasn't the standard wording for a Miranda warning, but it had all the elements. It would stand up in court if anyone ever asked me if Randal had been warned that he had the right to be silent and to have a lawyer present.

"Have you seen Billy Paul lately?" the chief asked.

"Not for a couple of weeks," Randal said. "Have you?"

"As a matter of a fact, I have," the chief said. "Just this morning. A tourist was trying to catch a trout for breakfast at the far end of Smoke Pond and caught Billy Paul instead. Billy'd been in the water for a couple of weeks, looks like. He was soft and mushy. Gassy, too. The tourist lost his appetite for any fish he'd caught in that pond. In fact, I think he yakked up any fish that he'd eaten in the past week."

"I get the picture. Billy fall in and drown?"

"He didn't go into the water until after he got stabbed a couple of dozen times. His belly looked like Swiss cheese. I don't think drowning is going to be the cause of death. He was in his sleeping bag along with a couple of stones to weigh him down. Which complicates the falling in part, too."

"I guess it would."

"What happened out there?"

"How would I know?"

"You got his bike."

"He brought it into town and he was alive when he sold it to me."

"For cash?"

"Right. For cash."

"We didn't find any money on him or at his camp."

"Looks like you got a motive for murder," Randal said. "Someone robbed him and stole his money."

"Maybe stole his money and his bike."

"I told you, I bought his bike."

"Anyone else see him sell it to you?"

"Nope. It was just him and me. He stopped me on the street after work one night and asked if I knew anyone who wanted to buy a chopper. I said I did. He named a good price. I didn't dicker with him, just told him I'd get the money. The next morning, he rode the bike to my house and walked away with the money in his pocket and it was a done deal, just like that."

"And you didn't see him again?"

"Probably he hitched back to his camp and whoever picked him up cut him up and robbed him and dumped him in the pond."

"You were in 'Nam."

"You been checking up on me."

"Sixty-seven to sixty-nine."

"That's right," Randal said.

"Two tours?"

"One tour."

"Then you should have been sent back in sixty-eight."

"It got extended."

"How'd that happen?"

"Bad luck."

"You get put in the brig over there?"

"Something like that." Randal set his jaw hard. "I don't talk about it."

"I bet you don't." The chief raised an eyebrow. "You ever kill a man?"

"I was door gunner on a Huey. I poured thousands of rounds of suppression into Charlie-infested jungle on every mission. You do the math."

"You ever kill a man up close and personal."

"In 'Nam, everything was personal. Even the Charlie that you never saw."

"Was Billy Paul in Vietnam?"

"I doubt that, sincerely. He didn't have the sand for it."

"I don't think that's a question on the enlistment forms. 'Have you got sand?' They draft who they want, sand or no."

"He would have had sand when he came back. Billy had none. He was never over there."

"How well did you know him?"

"Just to see him on the street. Never had much reason or interest in passing time with him."

"How did you meet him?"

"He was Gwen's ex. Gwen's the waitress here. I saw her with him a couple of times but I never met him in person until he stopped me on the street to ask about who he could sell his bike to."

"So he recognized you?"

"I guess so. I've been cooking here for a couple of years. Most of the people in town recognize me."

"You got a police record. You got arrested for beating a guy half to death in Buffalo."

"I got convicted for drunk and disorderly and served sixty days."

"That was the plea bargain. You got arrested for aggravated assault. Aggravated. That's the bad kind. That was what you really did, not the drunk and disorderly that you pled."

"What's proved in court is what really happened, as far as the law is concerned."

"You know a lot about the law?"

"That's just what a lawyer told me once."

"I don't hold with a lot of legal mumbo jumbo," the chief said. "In the real world, I see a violent guy who's been trained to kill and who's killed before and who's brought it home with him and who's come to my town and guess what? This violent guy shows up with a fancy bike and the owner of that bike is fished out of a pond with his guts chopped to hamburger. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put a story together."

"The owner of my bike wasn't fished out of no pond. I'm the owner of my bike and I'm right here, safe and dry."

"Who owns that bike remains to be seen."

"Not unless you got the evidence it takes to prove it in court. Real evidence from the real world, not imaginary evidence from your little fairy story."

"We executed a search warrant on your place earlier today. We'll have all the evidence that we need as soon as we get the results back from our lab in Syracuse."

"I don't think so. Not unless you make up evidence to prove something that never happened. You don't do that, do you? Fabricate evidence?

The chief flushed with anger.

Randal didn't wait for him to speak. "Now, if you've finished harassing me, I've got to get prepped for dinner."

The chief sneered and found his voice. "I'm not harassing you. When I'm harassing you, you won't have any doubt about it." He got his emotions under control and forced as friendly a smile as he could manage. "Right now, I'm just trying to find out what happened. I want to hear your side of the story. I'm sure that it's not as bad as people are imagining. You're a reasonable guy. I'm sure that you had a good reason for getting mad at Billy."

"I told you what happened between me and Billy. Nothing. I bought his bike. I gave him money. He gave me keys. He walked away. I rode. End of story. Anything else you're thinking is just your imagination working overtime. I'm going now. If you find any actual evidence that I did anything to Billy, then you can come back here and ask me about it. But don't hold your breath. You won't find anything because I didn't do anything. I can't say it plainer than that."

Randal stood and walked away.

I scrambled after him.

The police chief stayed at the table and watched us disappear around the corner.

I'd learned the answers to two of my questions about Randal. He had killed a man. Probably a lot of men. And he had been in jail. Maybe more than once.

It was obvious that there was a lot more to Randal than I had suspected. What he had told the chief had raised many more questions that burned in my brain. But I didn't dare ask him. It was both frustrating and fascinating at the same time.

* * *

I have to admit that eavesdropping is one of my least attractive qualities. But I don't do it to gain advantage over anybody. I'm curious about people so I simply can't resist hearing what they say when they don't know that I'm listening.

More than once, I've heard just enough to cause me grief. You'd think I'd have learned to keep my curiosity on a short leash but I'm a slow learner about some things.

I was prepping onions when Mrs. Everett arrived for the day.

Randal cornered her in the office as soon as she arrived. I'd never seen him looking agitated before, not during the busiest lunch when orders were flying onto the wheel, not even when he was all but being accused of murder, so I was intrigued by his ill-disguised eagerness to talk to her.

I figured that it was about time someone wiped down the fridge racks. They hadn't been cleaned since I'd begun working at Elsa's Grill. Was it my fault that the fridge happened to be right around the corner from the office door?

"...need another assistant cook as soon as possible," Randal was saying when I opened the fridge, damp rag in hand.

"If you think so," Mrs. Everett replied.

"I'll go through the applications after lunch."

"A couple of high school students came around last week looking for summer work," she said. "It won't be hard to find someone."

That was the end of their conversation. Randal ignored me as he walked back to the grill.

He wanted to replace me. That was obvious. I was the only cook here besides him and, if he were replacing himself, he wouldn't be considering high school students who were only available for the summer.

I couldn't figure out why I should be replaced. I was doing a good job. I was working hard and I was reliable. I had never been late for work and had never missed a single day.

It couldn't be my job performance, so it had to be the police interrogation this afternoon. Maybe Randal didn't want anyone around who knew that the police suspected that he had murdered Billy Paul.

That wasn't fair. He was the one who had forced me to come and listen. Now he wanted to fire me for having been there?

I reviewed what he had said to Chief Albertson and was struck by a new idea. Maybe Randal wanted to get rid of me because I'd heard him talk about Vietnam. Maybe he hadn't expected the conversation to go in that direction and he was taken by surprise.

Maybe there was some secret about his military service that I hadn't picked up on. Albertson had mentioned that he might have spent time in the brig and Randal hadn't denied it. Was that the secret?

Even if that were true, it still wasn't fair. It wasn't my fault that the chief had asked him about 'Nam. I didn't deserve to be fired because of that.

It was hard enough to muster much enthusiasm for this job at the best of times. Impossible when I kept thinking about the pile of applications sitting in the office drawer. Who was in that pile?

I'd seen guys apply for work. I hadn't seen anybody impressive. Mostly, they'd wander in during lunch, sleep still in their eyes, and ask to see the manager. Gwen would have them fill out a form and then she'd chuck it on the order counter where we would brush it aside. When lunch was over, if it hadn't been accidentally dropped in the trash or been soaked to illegibility by grease, Randal would throw it on top of the stack in the drawer.

"Hey, C.B., where's my meatloaf?" Gwen asked. It was her first order of the day and she didn't have anything better to do than bug me.

The meatloaf was usually a fast order but it was early in the day and I was still reheating the mashed potatoes from the previous evening. I could have taken a scoop out and warmed it separately, but this morning, the pot was almost up to heat so I couldn't be bothered. The difference was only a matter of a couple of minutes. Or maybe five.

She was still calling me _C.B._ so she could wait for it.

"It'll be ready when it's ready," I said.

Gwen looked at me in shock. It was the first time that I'd been anything less than polite to her.

"Customer's waiting." She was probably thinking about her tip.

I didn't get tips so why should I care? "Who eats meatloaf for breakfast? She can wait."

It wasn't really breakfast time. We didn't serve food until eleven so our first meal was lunch. But a lot of people preferred an omelet or eggs and bacon if it wasn't noon yet. Meatloaf was a rare order this early in the day. Probably a tourist.

"What's up with you this morning?" she asked. "You been hanging around Randal too long?"

I just looked at her.

After a minute, she said, "Let me know when it's ready," and turned away.

I never guessed that I could stare down Gwen. But I didn't feel that I'd won any victory. My only prize was that she left me alone for once.

As the day wore on, I began to notice a change in the climate. The frostier my attitude toward Gwen, the warmer she treated me. Between the end of lunch and the end of the day, I don't think she called me C.B. even once. And she smiled at me a bit. A couple of times she even said _please_.

I barely recognized her.

It was spooky.

Katie, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice my funk. She gave me as many bright, shiny, meaningless smiles as ever. But there was no more real warmth than on any other day. When her shift ended, I didn't bother wishing her good-bye, as had become my custom.

I was sure that my chill didn't make any noticeable difference in her life.

* * *

Nothing happened the next day to improve my mood.

On Friday morning, a guy was waiting at the back door when I arrived. Someone from my class. I think his name was Halliday, but I wasn't sure. I didn't remember seeing him at the graduation ceremony, but there were a couple hundred people in our class and I was up front with the honor students so he might have been there or he might not.

Based on his attitude in the hallways between classes, I'd bet not. He wasn't a big guy so he overcompensated by acting like a bad ass. More ass than bad. His kind weren't big on academics.

"You work here, too?" he asked when I leaned against the wall by the door.

I was feeling pretty surly, myself, facing the jerk who had been tapped to take my job. "You're the new meat," I said, not bothering to inflect it as a question. It wasn't the kind of thing that I'd said to anyone before, much less someone who probably made a habit of beating up math whizzes like me.

"You going to open the door?"

"That's not how it works," I said, deigning to explain anything to him.

"How does it work?"

"We wait."

And wait we did, in silence, until Randal pulled up on his chopper almost half an hour later.

"You Halliday?" Randal asked.

"Yeah," the guy said.

Randal looked at me as he unlocked the door. "Get him started."

I was tasked with training Halliday to take my job. Rubbing that salt in my wound did nothing to improve my attitude.

After I told Halliday to write "10:00" on his time card, I chucked him an apron from the pile of cleans.

He put the strap around his neck to hold the bib up and let the hem hang below his knees.

I shook my head. "You have to wear an apron. You don't have to look like your grandma."

He looked at me like he wanted to punch me out but restrained himself. He didn't want his first day on the job to be his last.

I would have taken a punch for that. Of course, it was early in the summer and I hadn't been punched by a grown man yet. I didn't know how bad it could hurt.

I held up my apron and showed him how I folded the hem up to the waist and tucked the bib into the pocket that was formed.

He did the same.

I tossed him a paper hat from the box and left the office. I trusted that he could figure out how to put it on his head himself.

I set him to chopping onions, hoping that he'd cry a river. If he cut off a finger because he was blinded by tears, his short order career would end on the spot.

No such luck. After a few minutes, his eyes were red but his fingers were all intact.

I had to finish off the onions. Half were minced too fine and the other half sliced too coarse. "You have to make the pieces more uniform." I chopped the larger pieces down to size.

He looked at me like I was speaking in a foreign tongue.

That was my first inkling that this new meat wasn't going to be aging in Elsa's kitchen for long.

At day's end, when I sent Halliday out to mop the front, Randal said, "Out back."

I followed him out the back door into the darkness behind the restaurant.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"About Halliday?" I asked back.

Randal rolled his eyes in the dark. I could see his whites gleam by the streetlight down the block. "Of course, about Halliday. He going to be any use?"

"Not much."

"Good men are hard to find," Randal said. "I want you to take Wednesdays off."

"I take Tuesday's off. You take Wednesdays. You want to take Tuesdays off?"

"No. I still take Wednesdays. Now you take Wednesdays off as well as Tuesdays. The standard work week is five days with two days off."

"I don't want two days off. I need the money."

"Okay. You can start working on Tuesdays as long as you take Wednesdays off."

I was confused. "What day are you going to take off?"

"I still take Wednesdays like always. I said that already." He looked at me in the darkness like I was an idiot.

"If you and I both take Wednesdays, who cooks?"

"Mrs. Everett and Halliday."

I shook my head. "Neither one of them knows what they're doing in there."

"Everett does. She's slow as hell, but she knows the menu. Even Halliday can keep up with her."

I had to agree with that. "I pity the customers."

"Only tourists come in on Wednesdays."

Nobody pitied the tourists. It was their fault for coming to Wemsley. And any local who was foolish enough to come in when Mrs. Everett was cooking would get what he deserved. I understood that logic. "I don't get it. You hired Halliday so that we get the same day off?"

"I'm going to have a serious problem real soon now. I need someone to watch my back. I'm going in country, and I need a door gunner."

"What?"

"You had my back when Albertson was interrogating me. You did good. I appreciate it. I'm going to need more of the same."

The phrase, _door gunner_ , stuck in my craw. "I'm not going to shoot anyone."

He rolled his eyes again. "We're not stepping into any firefights. We're just going to do a little recon. Map the terrain. You're a smart guy. I need you to help figure out what's going down. That's all. Just keep your eyes peeled and tell me what you think."

"I don't think I can do that," I said.

"Sure you can. Don't sweat it. It'll be easy. I'm in a fix and buddies got to watch out for each other."

From the way he said it, I knew that I was hearing another of Randal's rules: _Buddies got to watch out for each other_. There was no arguing with Randal about his rules. They were carved in stone.

In his mind, it was already a done deal. I was his door gunner now. Whatever that meant.

This was the first time that one of Randal's rules applied to anyone besides himself. That was strange. Randal's rules applied to Randal. That was probably the first rule in Randal's list. _Randal's rules apply to Randal_. If he had a rule that buddies watched out for each other, that meant that he was watching out for me more than I was watching out for him. I found some reassurance in that.

More important, he had called me his buddy. I'd never been buddies with a guy as cool as Randal. In fact, I had never been buddies with anyone who was the least bit cool. There was no way that I could say _no_ to being Randal's buddy.

"So you got three days to get Halliday up to speed," he said. "I've already told Everett that you'll be taking Wednesdays off and that Halliday'll be ready to prep for her."

"I don't want two days off a week. I need money for university."

He frowned and the reflection of the streetlight disappeared from his eyes. "Yeah, you want two days off. You need a day to spend with your girlfriend."

"I don't have a girlfriend."

"You should work on that."

"Okay."

When I went back inside, I had to re-mop half the front where Halliday had somehow managed to mop more grease onto the floor than off it.

Turning this fuck-up into a cook's assistant in three days was going to be a tall order.

I suspected that being Randal's door gunner was going to be a lot harder than he had implied. But, at that moment, I couldn't guess how hard.

* * *

Now that I knew that I wasn't going to be fired, at least not any time soon, my mood should have improved. But it didn't. I had far bigger problem than getting fired from Elsa's Grill.

I had no idea what it meant to be Randal's door gunner. There's nothing as worrisome as the unknown.

On top of that, trying to bring Halliday up to speed was worse than I feared. The problem wasn't only that he was unmotivated and hostile. The bigger problem was that he was stupid. Literally. He did not understand most of what I told him and did not remember the little that I did make him understand.

I could see that he used his hostility as a screen to hide his shortfall of intelligence. It was an interesting insight but it didn't give me any more sympathy for him. His hostility only made my job harder.

Randal was no help. _Buddies watching out for each other_ didn't extend to him helping me teach Halliday to cook.

The kitchen was a small, enclosed space but Halliday found sly ways to stay out Randal's way. He was no rocket scientist but he was smart enough to know not to cross Randal. Halliday acted tough; Randal didn't have to. A punk like Halliday knew when he was outclassed and he had enough street smarts to be scared of the guy who outclassed him.

On Tuesday, Katie joined me on my break. Since she refused to go out with me, I had stopped taking my break early. To join me, Katie had gone out of her way to stay for a half hour after she'd cashed out.

I was surprised by that.

She sat across the picnic table and watched me eat my grilled chicken and fries for a few minutes.

I'd never seen her be quiet for this long but I felt no need to entertain her with conversation. I'd played that card before and had come up busted every time.

Eventually she broke the silence. "Gwen likes you."

That was news to me. Over the past few days, I'd been growing increasingly frustrated by Halliday on one hand, and on the other, worried about what Randal was going to expect from me as his door gunner. Distracted, I'd barely spoken a dozen words to Gwen. I'd noticed that she had compensated by talking to me like I was a human being rather than ordering me about like a serf, but I'd read nothing into that.

"She thinks that you're sexually frustrated."

I almost choked on a french fry.

The last thing that I needed was for Gwen and Katie to be discussing my sex life. Or lack thereof. I thought that they'd stopped doing that a month ago.

"Are you Catholic?" Katie asked. Lightening coming out of a clear blue sky didn't shock me so much any more.

I shook my head, not able to speak with a french fry stuck somewhere in the back of my throat. I took a long swallow of Coke.

"Methodist," I croaked. _Lapsed Methodist_ would have been more accurate. I hadn't been to church since puberty. I was on the verge of becoming _ex-Methodist_ if the truth be known. For my mom's sake, I wouldn't cross that bridge until I moved away at the end of the summer. But it wouldn't be long before I publicly proclaimed atheism.

"We thought that maybe you were planning to become a priest."

I shook my head in wonder.

"You know, because you want to be celibate."

"I don't want to be celibate." The idea made me indignant but the opportunity to declare it could work to my advantage. Maybe she would get the hint. Why had she raised the topic of my virginity unless she were offering to relieve me of my unfortunate condition?

"Oh," she said. "Because you were making me think that it might be nice. You know. Not having to worry about sex any more. That's why I decided to become a nun."

I wanted to scream in frustration. This was why she wanted to talk about my sex life? To torture me? Not only was she not offering to relieve me of my virginity, she was telling me that I didn't have a hope in hell with her. North Korean interrogators had nothing on American teenage girls when it came to psychological cruelty.

"I didn't know that you were Catholic." Maybe that was why she wouldn't go out with me – because she only dated within her own faith.

"I'm not."

I stared at her. "I don't think that there are any Protestant nuns."

"I know that. I'm going to convert."

"Yeah?" I tried to imagine her wearing a wimple. Some lucky priest would get to hear her confessions. It was almost enough to make me want to follow her into Catholic service. Except that pesky celibacy thing would be make the whole exercise futile. Nobody's Hell is as subtle or as cruel as the Catholics' Hell.

"So you're taking Wednesdays off now?" she said.

"Yeah. I changed my schedule."

"You want to do something on Wednesday?"

She was asking me out? On the day I'd committed to Randal? After she had established that she never wanted to have sex again? Would the torture never end? "I think Randal's got plans."

"You're doing something with Randal?" Her eyes grew wide.

I interpreted that as awe. She never guessed that I was cool enough to hang with Randal. "That's why we're both getting Wednesdays off."

She looked confused. "Randal used to date Gwen."

First, I was nonplussed by her non sequitur, then, after I extracted her meaning, was shocked by her revelation.

"You mean... Gwen and Randal were... They... Both of them... Together?"

"Yeah. They were even living together for a few months. It didn't work out. He's crazy, you know. She couldn't stay with a crazy guy. But they still like each other."

My blood ran cold. Chief Albertson was trying to fit Randal with Billy's murder on the theory that he had stolen his bike. But that was a weak motive. If Albertson found out that Randal had been sleeping with Billy's ex-wife, and that Billy had come back to hassle her, giving her a black eye, he'd ascribe a whole lot stronger motive to Randal for wanting Billy dead.

Randal knew that it was only a matter of time until Albertson started putting the whole story together. That was why he needed someone to man the guns for him.

Me.

Randal's new buddy. His door gunner.

"So Randal likes women," Katie said.

I couldn't see why Katie was stating the obvious. Then finally, I began to follow her meandering logic.

I flushed. "So do I."

"Oh," she said. "When you wanted to go out with Randal instead of me, I thought... You know."

"Go out with you? You mean like have an actual date?" My mind was reeling from one blow after another. "But you're going to be a nun."

"I'm not a nun now. I'm not even Catholic yet."

"Then, yes, I want to go out with you, too." The best that I could manage in my flustered state was simple, honest declarative statements. "But before you said that you didn't want to go out with me."

She shrugged. "I changed my mind." Her casual tone suggested that changing her mind was no big deal for her. But I'd already figured that out.

"Okay."

"Pick me up at seven."

"Okay." I hoped that Dad would let me borrow his car.

She gave me her address and bid me adieu.

I was about to go on my first date and I had no idea what to do. Not a clue.

But even guys like Halliday go on dates so it must be simple enough. Surely there's no way that I could mess it up.

* * *

I awoke to knocking on my bedroom door. "Wha'?" I said.

"There's someone here to see you," my mom shouted through the door.

"Wha'?"

"Someone's at the door for you."

"Ooo?"

"I don't know. A man."

"Be ri' there." I yawned and stared at the clock by my bed, trying to force my sleep-caked eyes to see the black and white digits. Seven-thirty-six. As I stared, the rightmost digit flipped over with a soft click. Seven-thirty-seven.

On workdays, I set my alarm for nine but this was my day off so my alarm wasn't set at all. I expected to sleep until noon. Who would come looking for me at the crack of dawn on my day off?

I dragged a tee shirt over my head and climbed into a pair of pants then padded out to the living room in my bare feet.

Randal.

I stared at him with bleary eyes and stifled a yawn. "Hi."

"Ready?" He sounded wide-awake. I suspected that Randal never sounded tired or sleepy, even if he hadn't slept for days.

"Ready?" I sounded confused.

"Daylight's burning. We got places to go; people to see; things to do."

When he told me that I was his door gunner, he forgot to mention that we were on dawn patrol. I yawned. "I gotta shower. Gimme five."

I took ten before I came back out with wet hair, minty teeth, and shod. I was cleaner, but only marginally more awake. I'd been watching Dick Cavett until one last night, as I did every night. A young soldier back from Vietnam named Kerry had been talking about what was wrong with the war. A lot, apparently. He thought that we were losing the war despite what the government kept telling reporters on TV.

He should know. He'd volunteered to stay over there for four years and had been awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star.

I'd paid attention because I knew that Randal had been over there for a year and a half. But this guy made Randal look laid back.

Randal led me to a little red pickup parked in front of the house. Japanese. Chrome letters on the side said _Datsun 1300_. I'd never seen a truck that small. It looked to me like it could fit in the bed of an F250.

"That yours?" I asked.

"Hop in," he replied, leaving my question about ownership unanswered. Maybe it was an insensitive question.

The door was unlocked. I guess he didn't worry about anyone stealing it. If it wasn't already stolen.

"Where do we start?" he asked.

I frowned at him. Why was he asking me? I was just the door gunner. He was the pilot.

He said nothing for a minute.

I was thinking furiously. Finally, I said, "We have to start from where we're at."

He nodded like I'd said something profound.

If I had, it was by accident.

"Where are we at?" I asked.

"Wemsley, New York," he said. "Where Billy Paul was killed last week and where I'm about to get arrested for murdering him."

"Because you have his bike."

"Because he needed killing and nobody had better reasons than me to do that favor for the world. Billy was married to Gwen a few years back. She was nineteen and he was twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that. She got pregnant and he was the daddy so she married him. He was a shiftless, faithless, abusive husband and no kind of father at all. A year later, she was pregnant again. The day she went into labor, he run off with a stripper from Buffalo and left her with two babies and a pile of maxed-out credit cards."

"I didn't know that she had kids," I said.

"Boy and a girl. Nice kids. They do good in school and they don't tear up the house when she's out working. It's a blessing that Billy ran off before they got old enough to know him and learn his dirty ways." He shook his head in wonder at the way that the world works out sometimes. "Her life ain't been no bed of roses, but she's doing good, now. Then Billy showed up again a couple weeks ago. I don't know why he came back but there's something bad going down. He's not the kind to sleep on the ground if there's a feather bed around. Camping out at Smoke Pond like that, he was hiding from someone, sure as I'm standing here.

"He came into Elsa's the other day looking for Gwen. He told her that they're still married so he's moving back in. Technically, I guess he was right about the marriage. She didn't know where he was to divorce him and didn't have the money to do it, anyway. So he figured that he still got marital rights. He told her that. He said that he's got a legal right to live in the same house with his wife. She knew that he wasn't talking about just her house. He figured he had a right to her bed, too. She told him that he could stuff his marital rights where the sun don't shine. She told him that hell would freeze over before he set foot in her house again. That's when he dumped her tray."

"And then he gave her a black eye a few days later."

"He came around and tried to impose his marital rights on her."

I didn't want to know if he succeeded so I said, "How do you fit into this?" I knew from Katie that he'd gone with Gwen for a while, but I wanted to hear how he described their relationship.

"I been working with Gwen since I came to Wemsley and got a job at Elsa's. I like her."

"A lot?" I prompted.

"A lot. We dated for a while. We don't any more, but that's mostly because she doesn't have the time. Between working and raising her kids, she don't got a spare minute." He looked at me. "And because of me, too. I've got issues. I'm not the man that she needs. Not that way."

"Since 'Nam?" I was being bold but he seemed to be open to discussion for once.

"To the guys who've been there, 'Nam's not just a little piss-pot country on the other side of the world. It's in them like a piece of shrapnel stuck too deep for a surgeon to take out again. 'Nam's a piece of psychic shrapnel that gets stuck in a guy's soul forever." He looked at me hard. "If I start talking crazy about 'Nam, you get far away from me and stay away until I come back to earth again. You got me? I'm not kidding. When that piece of shrapnel starts digging at me, making me think I'm still back there, you can't be anywhere around me for a while. It's not safe."

He was scaring me. "How much does Chief Albertson know?"

"About me and Gwen? Not much yet, I don't think. But he'll figure it out. He's not stupid, just a little slow. After he hears about Billy's wife and me, it's only a matter of time until he arrests me for Billy's murder. That's why we got to find out the truth first. We got to tell him who did it so he stays off my back."

"How are we going to do that?"

"You're the genius. You tell me. Where do we start?"

"We start with Billy." It was the only thing I could think to say, but it sounded right. "We have to find out who else wanted him dead."

"That'd be just about everybody who had anything to do with him. From what I know about him, Billy never lacked for enemies."

"This wouldn't be a casual enemy. It'd be a mortal enemy who'd be willing to risk the death penalty to put Billy in his grave."

Randal nodded. "I hope that narrows the field."

Me, too.

* * *

The only person around who knew anything about Billy was Gwen. She was his widow, after all. So we started with her.

When we arrived at her house, she was getting her kids, Will and Barb, ready for school. It wasn't much work. Will was in ninth grade and Barb in seventh, so they mostly got themselves ready.

We had to wait until they were out of the house before Gwen could talk about anything important.

Finally, Barb kissed her on the cheek and raced out the door.

"Okay," Gwen said, "what do you want to know?"

"Who were Billy's friends?" I asked.

"I don't know if he had any. Until he showed up here a few days ago, I hadn't seen him for nearly ten years. Ten lovely years, I might add."

"Where did he live for those years before showing up here?"

"We didn't discuss that. We didn't discuss anything. He could have been living anywhere from Nome to Tucumcari for all I know. Maybe he wasn't living anywhere. Maybe he spent the last ten years sleeping in vacant buildings. For all I care, he could have crawled under a rock somewhere."

"What about his parents?" Randal asked.

"What about them?"

"He have parents?"

"Everybody has parents."

"You know who they are?"

"Yeah. They were at our wedding."

"You seen them since then?"

"They send the kids birthday cards every year. Christmas presents, too. They keep saying that they want to see the kids but I don't want them to know where I am because they might tell Billy."

That wouldn't be a problem now that Billy was dead. Maybe she'd give the grandparents a break.

"If they don't know where you are, how do they send the cards and presents?" I asked

"They send them to my folks. My folks send them on to me. I make the kids write thank-you notes. We send them back the same way. From my parents' house. No return address."

That all sounded very cloak-and-dagger. "Was all that necessary?" I asked.

They both looked at me like I'd said something foolish. I remembered Gwen's black eye and realized that I had.

"But you make the kids send thank-you notes," I said.

"That's for the kids' sakes, not for Billy's parents'. That's how Will and Barb learn to be polite."

"Do you know where his parents live?"

"Sure."

"We'll need their address."

"Okay. But you don't tell them where I live. You got that?"

"Yeah."

"Because they're going to ask. You can make book on that."

"I got it," I said. She wasn't going to give them a break, even if their son was dead and gone.

I waited while she wrote the address down on a piece of paper. She gave it to Randal.

"Does he have any brothers and sisters?" I asked.

"He's got a mess of them. They're scattered all over. I don't know their addresses. I don't even remember most of their names. Only a couple of them bothered coming to our wedding, and that was too many."

Billy's parents would know. I wondered how much they would tell us.

I looked at Randal to see if he had anything more to add.

He did.

"Have the police questioned you yet?" he asked.

"Not yet. You think they will?"

"I'm sure of it. As soon as they figure out that you're Billy's wife. Sooner or later, they're going to start asking who Billy knew in Wemsley. Marriages are public records. I'm surprised that they haven't been here already."

"What do I say when they come here and start asking questions?"

"Tell them the truth. You don't have to volunteer anything, but if they ask you a direct question, don't lie and don't try to hide anything. Just come out and say what you know and let the chips fall where they may."

"Anything that I say is going to make you look bad."

"Don't worry about that. I can take the heat. You just make sure that you don't make yourself look like an accomplice. Phil and me are going to find a way to prove that I had nothing to do with Billy's death. We don't want to have to prove that you're innocent, too. You should never be in the picture that Albertson is painting in his head."

"I was his wife. Aren't I going to be the number one suspect?"

"I don't think so," Randal said. "The way Billy was killed wasn't the way a woman would do it. A jury would never believe it."

"I'm scared, anyway," she said.

"You're going to be all right," Randal said. He looked as calm as a pond on a still day. But he was deep water. There was a lot more going under that smooth surface than I could guess.

Things that would scare me to death, I was sure.

* * *

"Stop right there!"

I stopped and looked at Randal. He looked back at me. Then we both looked at the house.

"I've got a gun and I'll use it!"

We were looking at a small, clapboard-clad box. Before the Second World War, this section had been a farm and this had been the farmhouse. Twenty-five years ago, soldiers returning from overseas had needed housing. Some entrepreneur had bought the property, covered the fertile fields with asphalt, and erected a stand of cheap stucco-clad houses. To save a few bucks, he'd left the original farmhouse standing and sold it as one of the new residences – the only wooden box in a sea of stucco.

Its location had not fit the plan for the rest of the subdivision so the house had an extra long driveway and looked to have no backyard at all.

I couldn't tell for certain, but a glint in the shadow behind the screen door could have been a rifle barrel.

"We just want to talk, ma'am," Randal shouted. "We don't have any guns."

"If you had guns, you'd already be lying dead in the dirt," the woman shouted back.

"We're looking for Mr. and Mrs. Paul."

"You can go look for some other Mrs. Paul somewhere else. There's plenty about."

Randal took a slow step forward. "Are you Mrs. Paul?"

"That's none of your business."

My heart was pounding, but being shot to death would be less humiliating than Randal thinking me a coward so I followed his lead. I told myself that she would surely shoot him first and give me time to hit the dirt. I could only hope that she was a good shot and wouldn't hit me by mistake when she was aiming for Randal. As I walked slowly toward the house, I kept both hands visible at my sides, and listened intently for the report of rifle or shotgun.

"Stop, I say!"

"Yes, ma'am." Randal stopped and so did I. "It's just that I don't want to shout your business to the whole neighborhood."

"What business?"

"Business having to do with Will and Barb," he shouted.

There was a long pause, then the woman's voice shouted back, "You can come closer, but don't set your foot on my stoop or I'll shoot it off. I'm warning you."

"You know, if you shoot us, the police are going to arrest you."

"I got a right to defend my property."

"Not from an unarmed man standing outside in broad daylight."

"I was just cleaning my gun and it went off accidental."

"It'd be a pity to shoot a hole in your screen door. It'll cost you to have to replace it."

"I don't care about the screen."

"Flies'll get into your house if you leave a hole."

"There's already flies in my house. Maybe they'll fly back out if there's a hole in the screen."

We were at the base of the steps leading up to the porch. Randal stopped. So did I.

"That don't seem likely, ma'am," Randal said.

We could hear the woman sigh. "No, I guess it don't. So what's your business with my grandchildren?"

"We're sorry about your son, Billy."

"What are you sorry about?"

Randal looked at me, then back into the dark behind the screen door. "Have the police been by, ma'am?"

"What's Billy done now?" she asked.

Randal paused, then said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I have to tell you that Billy is dead."

After a long moment of silence, she said, "I don't believe you."

"The police should have told you. He died over in Wemsley more than a week ago."

"How'd he die? Drugs?"

"He was stabbed. It was quick, ma'am. The first stab pierced his heart. He's at peace now."

Randal was making that up. He had no idea if Billy had been stabbed in the heart or if he had bled out over the course of an hour, screaming and moaning. All we knew was that Albertson said that Billy's guts had been chopped to hamburger. But Randal was saying what Billy's mother should hear.

It occurred to me that this may not be the first time that Randal had lied to a mother about the circumstances of her son's death. He'd been in Vietnam for a year and a half. It was likely that some of the guys he'd known over there had come home in body bags.

"Who did it?"

"We don't know, ma'am. But we are trying to find out."

"You're not the police?"

"No, ma'am. We were his friends."

"You better come inside."

When we opened the screen door, we could see that the glint of steel in the darkness was not a rifle barrel. It was the screw on a large embroidery hoop.

I glanced at her work-in-progress, expecting to see birds and flowers. Or maybe _Pinky_ and _Blue Boy_. Instead, she was embroidering a rattlesnake entwined in a motorcycle wheel – its head raised and its fangs dripping venom.

Interesting old lady.

"You said that Billy died in Wemsley?"

"Yes, ma'am," Randal said.

"What was he doing over there?"

"Camping." Randal didn't mention that his wife and children were there. Gwen didn't want this woman to know where she lived and Randal was respecting that.

"Camping?" The woman's voice echoed disbelief.

"Yes, ma'am. There's a campground there called Smoke Pond Campground. He had a tent set up and was staying out there for a few days."

"I never knew Billy to camp out. He was no boy scout."

"I'm sure that he wasn't. But he was staying in a tent at Smoke Pond when he was killed. I'm sure of that."

"Was he robbed?"

"I don't know, ma'am. The police didn't say that anything was missing."

"They wouldn't know what he had if someone already took it, would they?"

"I don't believe that they would."

Billy could have been robbed of a fortune in heroin, for all anybody knew. He didn't seem like the kind of man who would have a fortune's worth of anything, but he wasn't the kind of man who paid for everything that came into his possession, either. He might have acquired a fortune without being able to afford it. Which might have got him killed.

I remembered the opening scenes of _Easy Rider_ and wondered if Randal had searched the gas tank of Billy's chopper for contraband.

"I'd like to know who could tell me about Billy. What he was doing in Wemsley. What he might have had on him when he died."

"You are a curious fella, ain't you?"

"Yes, ma'am. Like I said, I was Billy's friend and it eats at me that I don't know who killed him. Somebody owes some payback and I'm going to find out who and cash Billy's last check."

"You go find Johnny. Johnny Paul. He's Billy's closest brother. Maybe he can tell you more than me. He's a mechanic in a garage in Russo. Dino's Service Station. It's on the highway. You can't miss it."

"Okay. Thanks, ma'am."

"But one thing."

"Yeah?"

"Don't give him any guff about being Billy's friend. He won't believe it any more than me. Tell him that Billy owed you money and you're going to collect it from the guy who killed him. Johnny'll believe that. Hell. For all I know, it might even be true."

"One thing is true, ma'am."

"What's that?"

"Billy's dead and I'm going find out who did it. I got my own reasons, but I got a mighty strong determination to see justice done. You can count on that."

"Good luck, then."

Russo was another thirty miles further in the direction of Canada. Randal and I didn't waste any time. We hit the road in his little Japanese pickup.

As we climbed into the cab, I wondered about Billy's father. Most likely he was at work on a Wednesday afternoon. But, if Mrs. Paul wasn't concerned about him, I wouldn't be, either.

* * *

"Look, Randal, I got to be back in Wemsley by six. Okay?"

"Yeah, sure, man," he said to me. "No problem."

He seemed distracted. I couldn't tell if he was actually processing what I said or if he was just saying whatever to shut me up.

"I mean it. I've got a date tonight. I need to get back to Wemsley by six." I didn't add that my virginity was at stake but surely he could figure that out. It had been a topic of conversation since I stated working at Elsa's.

"I told, you, man. No problem." He kept driving toward Canada.

It wasn't yet noon – we'd started early – so it shouldn't be a problem. But I had no idea what we were going to find when we talked to Billy's brother in Russo, so I had no guarantee that we wouldn't be driving somewhere else and then somewhere else after that, chasing a trail of breadcrumbs around New York State for the rest of the night.

Randal's freedom was at stake. I had no illusions about my ability to distract him from our quest.

"Where am I going to take her?"

"Take who?"

"Katie. I have a date with Katie tonight. At seven."

"In Wemsley?" Randal said.

"Of course, in Wemsley."

"No place. There's no place to take a date in Wemsley. You got the movie theater showing some flick that's probably in black and white and was made before the war. You got Elsa's Grill. Even you can figure out that Elsa's is off the radar, right? And you got the A&W out on the highway. That's good for twenty minutes, half an hour at the most. Besides that, you got basically nothing happening in Wemsley."

"The movie theater isn't that bad. They show first run films."

"What are they showing this week?"

I knew that because I'd done my homework. " _The Last Picture Show_."

"What's that about?"

"It's a black and white movie about a town in Texas that's about the same size as Wemsley."

"Black and white. Right. Like that's going to fly. Why's it called _The Last Picture Show_?"

"The town movie theater is closing. It's a metaphor for the death of dreams in small towns in America."

Randal took his eyes off the road for long enough to bang his forehead against the steering wheel. Then he looked across at me with the same pity that you'd give to the dorky little kid who wanted bad to play but never got picked for either team. The kid who got told that they already had too many guys because they got street rules about the number of players allowed on a team. "Don't tell me that you think that a movie about the death of dreams is going to get you laid. Don't even think it aloud."

"It's a good movie. Maybe a great movie. The critics love it."

"Yeah? I bet they didn't get laid after seeing it, either."

I had no reply to that. He was probably right. I saw Manny Farber, the critic for the _Times_ , get interviewed on TV last year and couldn't imagine him getting laid after going to a movie. Or before, either.

"So where am I going to take her?" I asked.

"What's your place like?"

"I live with my parents."

"What's her place like?"

"I think she lives with her parents."

"Call her and cancel the date. That's your best option. Believe me."

I didn't speak to Randal all the rest of the way to Russo.

It was a quiet ride. Randal's little pickup didn't have a radio.

* * *

Russo was smaller than Wemsley – almost not a town at all – so there was no chance of missing Dino's Service Station. It was the only place to get gas within a twenty-mile radius.

Randal parked at the pumps. "Fill it with regular," he told the guy who ambled out of the little office. I could see nothing but dirt through the fly-specked picture windows.

I didn't want to see what the washrooms looked like.

While the gas jockey was wiping dirt onto Randal's windshield with a red, greasy rag that had never been anything but a greasy rag, Randal said, "I heard that a guy named Johnny Paul works here."

"You heard right. What business do you got with him?"

Neither Randal nor I had any doubt that we were already speaking to Johnny. He might or might not be a mechanic like he told his mother, but his main job here was pumping gas. I suspected that he seldom did anything more complex than changing oil or plugging a punctured tire. At least, not for anyone who valued their vehicle. The who-the-hell-cares air that he brought to the simple task of cleaning a windshield would be disastrous when applied to a complex, temperamental, internal combustion engine.

"I've got sorry news about his brother, Billy," Randal said.

"What's wrong with Billy?"

"Someone killed him the week before last."

Johnny stopped wiping grease onto the windshield and looked at Randal with an expression that I could not interpret. I didn't know if he was about to collapse in tears, punch Randal in the face, or run away in horror.

He settled for asking, "You making a sick joke?"

"No. I'm sorry. It should have been the cops who come around, but they're not exactly on the ball out here."

In the absence of the authorities, it should have been his mother who was phoning all her children with the grim news. We'd been on the road for almost an hour so she should have had time. But maybe not if she had a lot of calls to make and Johnny was low on her priority list. Especially if she had to call Chief Albertson first and get the details about the release of her son's body.

Johnny didn't collapse in tears but he dropped his hands and hung his head. "I guess it was going to happen sooner or later," he said, "but it's still a shame. Billy might have got his act together if he'd had more time. Goddamn. It's a shame. A goddamn shame."

The pump dinged. Randal topped the tank to five even, then put the nozzle back into its slot and recapped his gas tank himself. I turned my head and watched him to give Johnny a moment of privacy.

"Let's go inside for a bit," he said to Johnny and led the way into the office.

I followed.

Randal took a five from his wallet and laid it on the register.

We waited for Johnny to speak first.

"How?"

"Stabbed. In the heart. It was quick. He didn't suffer any."

"Where?"

"Wemsley."

Johnny looked at Randal. "What the hell was he doing in Wemsley?"

"I don't know. He was staying at a campsite there for a few days."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"They get the guy who did it?"

"No. The cops don't know who they're looking for yet."

There was a long silence, and then Johnny looked up at Randal. "Who are you?"

"I'm Randal," Randal said. "This is Gunner." He gestured to me.

That was how I got my nickname. I guess Randal didn't think that _Phil_ sounded tough enough to be his sidekick.

"What's Billy to you?"

"An associate. Not a close friend but he had something of mine and I think the people who killed him stole it. I want to find out who did it so I can get my stuff back."

"What kind of stuff?"

"A watch. A Rolex Oyster. Belonged to my father. It has sentimental value."

"Billy steal it from you?"

"No. We were square. I let him hold it as collateral on a business deal. The deal was done a while ago so it was time for him to give it back to me."

I realized that Randal had worked out this story after meeting Billy's mother. He made it sound like he and Billy were partners in some kind of drug deal. The illicit nature of their implied business kept Johnny from asking dangerous questions. It was a good strategy.

"I don't know who killed him."

"I'm sure that you don't," Randal said. "But you can tell me who he was tight with. Somebody knows somebody who knows something. We're just starting to talk to people."
"I don't know who he was tight with. Not recently. He... He'd gone... Not gone bad. Not exactly. More like gone wild. He wanted to be wild. Live outside the rules. He wasn't an outlaw but he wanted to be _like_ an outlaw. You know. Not break the law but live outside the law. He didn't want anybody telling him what to do and what not to do. I couldn't talk to him any more. He talked about being free and being his own man and riding a different road than everyone else. It was like he was afraid of being successful and having a house and a family. Afraid of being normal. He thought that I was a fool for working a nine-to-five job here and trying to save enough to buy a house and get married. He tried to get me involved in business with him but I didn't want to give up my job. He looked down on me for working for the man." He snorted. "Like old Mr. Jackston is some kind of corporate tycoon. I don't know what Billy wanted. I don't think he knew, either, but whatever it was, he was sure that there was an easier way to get it than by buckling down and working hard."

I remembered how Johnny cleaned Randal's windshield and wasn't convinced that he worked all that hard, either. But I'm sure he put in the hours, so that counted for something.

Johnny looked at Randal with sad eyes. "You think the business that he had with you was going to make him rich?"

Randal shook his head. "It was small potatoes. Walking around money. There's no way to make a lot of money in any business without working at it."

Johnny nodded his head. "That's what I always figured."

The bell dinged.

Johnny twisted his head reflexively toward the pumps.

"It's all right," Randal said. "Gunner'll get it." He looked at me and waited.

I'd never pumped gas in my life but I wasn't going to argue with Randal. Nobody ever argued with Randal. It'd be like arguing with a coiled rattlesnake.

I sauntered out to the Buick parked on the other side of the pump from Randal's little pickup.

A middle-aged man with a cigarette stuck between his teeth rolled down the driver's window and said, "Johnny here?"

"He's in the office. He's busy. I'm filling in."

The man shrugged. "Fill it with premium. This baby deserves the best."

"Nice car," I said to buy myself some time.

"Sixty-five Skylark," he said. "Great car. Seventy thousand on her and I've never had the head off. By now, it's settled into a single unit with the block. I don't put in a drop between oil changes."

"That's great." I had no idea what he was talking about. I expect that he didn't, either. He had a rote delivery that sounded like he was just spouting off something that he'd once heard someone else say and had repeated it a lot ever since.

I wished that I'd watched closer when Johnny had filled Randal's truck. I took the nozzle out of its slot in the pump. That had to be the first step. It was heavier than I expected.

"Hey, sport, I said premium!" The driver sounded a little angry.

"Oh, right," I said. "Sorry. I haven't been doing this for long."

"This your first day, son?"

"Yes." I grabbed the nozzle from the other pump and began looking over the car.

"You open the little door at the back."

I fiddled with it for a moment and it popped open.

There was a steel cap behind it. I unscrewed it and put it on the trunk. Then I stuck the nozzle into the hole.

When I squeezed the handle on the nozzle, nothing happened. I waited. Still nothing.

"You got to turn on the pump, kid."

I looked at the pump.

"It's that lever beside where the nozzle goes. Turn it up."

I pulled and pushed at the big steel lever next to the slot. When it turned, the number wheels on the pump spun to show all zeros. When the lever was in that position, it blocked the slot. Weird. Then I figured it out. It was a safety feature. You couldn't put the nozzle back without pushing the lever back down and turning the pump off.

This time, I could hear gas flowing into the car when I squeezed the trigger on the nozzle. The wheels kept spinning on the pump.

How would I know when to stop?

"How much do you want?" I called to the driver, hoping that he would specify a number.

"Fill it," he called back.

That was no help at all. I tried listening to the gas flow, hoping that I would hear a change in the sound as it neared the brim.

Suddenly, the trigger clicked and went limp in my hand. The gas stopped flowing. The nozzle had an automatic cutoff when the tank was full. It must be activated by backpressure. That was clever.

I returned the lever to the _off_ position and returned the nozzle to the slot. Success.

I looked at the pump and told the driver, "Fourteen dollars and thirty cents." The wheel wasn't exactly on the three, it was closer to four, but I rounded it down for the driver.

"No, son."

I looked back at the pump and checked the numbers. "Yes. Fourteen thirty."

"No, son. That's the number of gallons that you pumped. The price is the other number."

"Oh. Right." I looked at the pump again. I hadn't noticed the dollar sign that was printed next to the upper numbers. "Six ninety-one."

He sighed. "You could have topped it up to an even seven, you know."

"Oh, okay," I stepped back toward the pump.

"No, kid. It's too late now. You've turned the pump off. You can't pump another nine cents now." He handed me a five and two ones. "Don't bother with the change."

As soon as I took the money, he turned the key. The engine roared to life. He gunned it and squealed away from the pumps.

I'd successfully pumped my first tank of gas. I hoped that it would be my last.

As I watched him get to the road, I saw his gas cap bounce off the trunk where I'd left it and fall to the road. "Hey!" I yelled, waving my arms, but he wasn't looking back.

I walked to the road and picked up the man's gas cap.

Randal was at the truck when I got back to the pumps. "Get in," he said. "We got to go see a guy in Utica."

"He lost his gas cap." I held it up for Randal to see.

Randal shook his head. "Put it on top of the pump and let's get out of here."

I put the gas cap on the flat top of the pump and then climbed into Randal's pickup.

We were halfway to Utica before I remembered that I still had the gas station's seven dollars in my pocket. I'd kept a lot more than the nine cents change. Not only did Johnny lose a brother, but the pump and register weren't going to reconcile at the end of his shift.

I didn't mention that to Randal. I just hoped that Johnny's boss was a forgiving fellow.

* * *

Utica was back in the other direction. To get there, we'd pass by Wemsley on the highway and then keep going for another fifty miles.

"Don't forget that I have to be back home by six," I said.

"Yeah, right. Your big date."

"It's after one now."

"So we still got five hours."

"Four and three-quarters."

He glanced over at me and shook his head.

I couldn't figure out why he wanted me here. So far, all I'd done was stand around and listen to Randal talk to Billy's mother and brother. And accidentally steal seven dollars. That bothered me.

It was almost two-thirty by the time we got to Utica. Two-forty-five by the time we found the K&B Liquor Store. It was downtown, a block away from Utica College. I'm pretty sure that most of the booze they sold was drunk by under-aged undergraduates.

The liquor was displayed on shelves behind the counter but the beer was kept in a glass-door cooler in the front. Randal grabbed a six-pack of Miller High Life and set it on the counter.

The clerk, an overweight guy who was probably not old enough to buy what he was selling, said, "Dollar-eight with tax and deposit."

Randal shook his head. "They might call it the champagne of beers but it's still just beer, you know."

"And I know that it's still one dollar and eight cents."

Randal fished the money out of his pocket. "For that kind of money, you ought to throw in an opener."

"Dime for a church key."

Randal looked at me. "You don't have a bottle opener on you, do you?"

"Nope."

He tossed another ten cents on the counter and took one of the stamped steel openers out of the box by the register.

"You know a guy named Hadley? Gus Hadley?"

"Gus works nights here. He'll be in at six."

"You know where he is right now?"

"Not a clue."

"He work all night long?"

"We close at two. Nothing in Utica is open all night long. You got to go to the lower end of the state to find the city that never sleeps. Upstate here, we like our sleep."

"Grab your beer," Randal said to me.

The clerk didn't raise an eyebrow at an eighteen-year-old carrying beer out of his store. That was probably their standard operating procedure.

"Looks like you're going to get to go on that date after all," Randal said as he pointed the truck back toward Wemsley.

" _My_ beer?" I asked, looking at the cold six-pack between my ankles.

"Nothing to do in Wemsley on a Wednesday night except drink," Randal said. "Surely you figured that much out."

Randal made me feel so naïve.

When he dropped me off at my house, he said, "See you tomorrow, Gunner. We'll go back to Utica after Elsa's closes."

"Why are you calling me Gunner?" I asked as I got out of the truck.

"You can't be Cherry Boy forever," he said.

I hoped with all my heart that was true.

* * *

I called Katie and asked if she could be ready at six instead of seven.

"Ready?" she asked.

"For our date."

"Oh. A date? Tonight?"

"That's right. We're going out tonight."

"Me and you?" She sounded genuinely puzzled.

"Right."

"Okay. Six, you say?"

She might not be sitting on the edge of her seat, waiting for me with eager anticipation, but I was going to take her out tonight, no matter what.

"The movie starts at seven. If we leave at six, we can grab a burger first." I'd decided to take her to see _The Last Picture Show_ despite Randal's derision. He was right about one thing, good or bad, a movie was the only thing to do in Wemsley. That and drink beer.

"Good. I'm hungry. I haven't eaten yet."

"I'll see you in an hour."

I hung up, wondering if this was normal. Was a man always supposed to ask a woman twice to go out on the same date?

I wore my best jeans and a dress shirt with a button-down collar. Katie's father answered the door and invited me to come inside and wait.

After introductions, we had little to discuss. I imagined that he wanted to ask me about my future prospects and my intentions toward his daughter but he didn't because he didn't want to give a first date that much gravitas. Looking back on it now, I suspect that he never gave anything that much thought.

Instead, he commented that the weather was cool for this time of year and I replied that it had been the same down in Utica a couple of hours ago. He didn't ask why I'd been in Utica and I didn't think that it would be wise to tell him that I was helping a friend who was about to be arrested for murder. Not the first impression that I wanted to make. Nor did I mention that I had found a liquor store there that would sell beer to minors and had a fresh six-pack to split with his daughter. That was too germane to my intentions.

It was a relief for both of us when Katie came out, relieving us from having to endure each other's company any longer.

She was wearing a pale teal sleeveless sweater, a canary yellow miniskirt with a wide white belt, and white go-go boots. Her long hair floated over her shoulders like a blonde cloud. Mascara and eye shadow made her eyes look huge and dark. Her lips were pink and full and glistened like wild berries.

She looked hip and luscious and beautiful.

I couldn't believe that I was going to be seen in public with her.

Suddenly, my best jeans felt shabby and my dress shirt, stuffy and uncool.

She swayed across the room like a model on a catwalk, said, "'Night, daddy," grabbed my arm, and guided me out the front door.

As soon as we were outside, she leaned close and spoke softly into my ear, "You look handsome tonight."

My clothes felt just fine again.

I opened the passenger door on my father's three-year-old pale-yellow Dodge Polara and watched her slip inside.

When I settled behind the steering wheel, she slid across the bench until her hip was nestled against mine and her head was resting on my shoulder. I loved driving with her hands wrapped around my right arm.

This had to be what heaven felt like.

The ten-minute drive to the A&W will last forever in my mind but I can't remember if we spoke at all. Words were of no importance.

The carhop was a girl that I recognized from high school. I think she was a year younger than me. She gave no indication that she had ever seen me before, but I think that she was impressed to see me with a girl as pretty as Katie. She smiled when she took our order.

I ate a Papa Burger; Katie ate a Mama Burger; we drank root beer; she nibbled from my basket of fries.

I was too nervous to carry my side of the conversation but that was no problem. She had enough to say for both of us.

She told me that she dreamed of forming an all-girl Rock and Roll band. She didn't know how to play any instruments, so she would be the drummer.

She was so cute.

The movie was better than I'd hoped. I dared to hold Katie's hand and she didn't pull away. Instead, she leaned her head on my shoulder, just like in the car.

The main point of the movie was that there was nothing much to do in a small town in Nowhere, Texas in the nineteen fifties except to have sex. A lot of sex, both meaningless and heartfelt. I'd seen a few movies with nude scenes, but never so much nudity in one film. At one point or another, almost all of the actresses stripped off their clothes for no reason but lovemaking. But it was shot in black and white so it was artistic.

Katie bore an uncanny resemblance to Cybil Shepherd. Others might not see it as clearly as I did that night, but to this day, I swear that they were nearly twins when the house lights came back up and I looked at her.

As we left the theater, I asked her what she thought.

"It sure is different down in Texas than here in upstate New York," she said.

I had hoped that the movie would incite her in the same erotic direction as the characters onscreen. Her words were like a pinprick in a balloon.

Then she said, "They sure like football down there."

That was what she took away from the movie? That high-school football was more important to Texans than to Yankees? What about all the necking and petting and going all the way? Did she think that it was the same up here as down there or different?

"It portrayed universal human relationships vividly, don't you think?" I asked. "A lot of the time, people here act in about the same way as in the movie, don't you think? Except for the football, I mean."

"I guess," she said. "They were mean to the retarded boy. People here would do the same thing to him, I guess."

The retarded boy? That was just a minor subplot. Did she think that was the main point of the film? "I'm not sure that they were trying to be mean to him," I said. "They didn't want him to get a bloody nose. They just didn't understand him very well."

"Maybe you're right. But the pool party was weird. I don't think anyone has parties like that one around here."

She was referring to the scene where Cybil Shepherd sheds all her clothes while standing on the pool diving board. I couldn't imagine that happening in upstate New York, either. Pity. But at least I was reassured that she'd noticed some of the sexy parts of the film.

"Yeah, I think people here are more private than that." That was safe to say. I didn't want to see Katie stripping off in public. Just in private.

When we were in the car and she was snuggling against me once again, she said, "Do you want to drive out to Smoke Pond and look at the stars for a while?"

I sure did. It didn't matter to me that they had pulled Billy Paul's body out of that water a couple of weeks ago. When Katie was clinging to my arm, murder was the last thing on my mind.

Smoke Pond is a small lake. There's a campground on one side, a boat launch at the near end, and a small hill on the far side. A narrow gravel road goes up to the top of the hill. Apparently, its only purpose is to provide a way for kids to get up there at night so that they can make out on the grassy summit.

I parked at the end of the road. I've heard that it can get crowded on a Saturday night but this was Wednesday so we were the only car in sight.

"I've got some beer in the trunk," I said. "I mean, only if you want one. It's okay if you don't. I just happen to have it with me tonight."

It had taken considerable planning to smuggle the beer from Randal's truck to my room and then back out to the trunk of Dad's car after he gave me the keys. I'd had to move it in stages through the back yard, scouting as I went. It would have been easier to keep the beer in the garage but Dad keeps the place so damned neat and tidy that there's no place to hide it out there.

The parents might have seen me toting the six-pack around and decided to turn a blind eye, but I doubted it. They weren't cool and they wouldn't have been happy to see me with booze, even if it was just beer.

Katie was happy about it. "Terrific," she said, smiling broadly. "Bring it along." She climbed out of the car without waiting for me to come around and open her door.

Smoke Pond Overlook, known around high school as Makeout Hill, is grassy because it's a stony knoll covered by a layer of earth that's too thin to support tree roots. Though it's only a hundred feet higher than the surrounding forest, one can see far from the top because there's nothing to block the view.

At nine in the evening at that time of year, the sun had set and the sky was darkening but still glowed enough for us to see each other.

"Did you bring a blanket?" she asked when we were standing on the broad summit of the hill.

"No." It never occurred to me that I'd need a blanket on a first date.

"That's okay," she said. To my surprise and delight, she unzipped her boots and took them off, then hiked her skirt up to her hips, flashing her panties, and sat on the grass. She didn't want green stains on her white boots or yellow skirt but didn't care about her pantyhose or panties.

Her nylon-clad thighs, exposed from feet to crotch looked long and lithe in the fading light.

I sat beside her. I didn't care about keeping my jeans or shirt clean. I'd happily sacrifice both for a single kiss.

The dying light washed all the color away so the world appeared in black and white, like the movie that we had seen.

My breath sounded loud in my ears and my heart was pounding.

This was the acme. Alone with a beautiful girl on Makeout Hill after sunset. A teenaged boy's life didn't get better than this. At least, not in Wemsley.

"You got an opener?" she asked, drawing a bottle of High Life from the six-pack.

I did, thanks to Randal. He knew everything about everything that mattered. I pulled the church key from my pocket and popped the top off her bottle. The beer sighed in the still night.

She took a long pull and sighed in reply. "That's good," she said.

I opened a bottle for myself and drank deep.

It tasted terrible. Bitter as gall. Astringent on my tongue. How could anyone stand to drink this stuff?

"It's great," I said and took another gulp, trying to rush it past my tongue so that I could swallow without having to taste it. I'd never been drunk so I didn't know what to expect. I only hoped that intoxication would numb my taste buds.

"There's a star." She pointed to Venus on the horizon.

"I think that's a planet," I said.

"It looks like a star. I'm going to wish on it," she said. "Star light, Star bright, the first star I see tonight; I wish I may, I wish I might; Have the wish I wish tonight." She squeezed her eyes shut tight for a minute.

I didn't bother reciting the incantation. I knew what I wished for.

I took another swallow of beer, hoping to find strength and courage in the bottle. They say that good medicine always tastes bad.

"There." She opened her eyes and looked at me with satisfaction. "Now I'm going to get my wish."

"What did you wish for?" I asked.

"That's for me to know and you to find out," she replied.

I wondered if she was wishing for the same thing as me.

"Did you make a wish?" she asked.

"I make wishes all the time," I said.

"Do they come true?"

"I'm here with you," I said.

"Oh, that's sweet." She turned her face toward mine and closed her eyes.

I knew what to do.

When my lips brushed against hers, I felt like she had powdered them with fairy dust.

She twisted so that she was facing me fully, stretched across my lap, put her arms around me and pulled me close. I could feel her breasts pressing against me through her sweater and my shirt.

The kiss lasted forever. Her lips parted and I felt the tip of her tongue against my mouth. I pushed my tongue to touch hers.

While we kissed, she caressed my back gently, from the nape of my neck to my waist, exploring my spine, shoulder blades, and each individual rib.

I followed suit. My fingers found the outline of her bra straps underneath her sweater, making me that much more keenly aware of her breasts pressing against my chest.

She pulled away from my lips and whispered, "We better get back to the car before it gets too dark to see."

I swallowed my disappointment and helped her to her feet.

She paused to slip her feet back into her boots and smooth her skirt back over her thighs.

Her bottle was empty, mine still half full, but I didn't care about abandoning it.

Stars were glowing all across the dark sky as we stumbled through the meadow to the car.

Then, a miracle. Before I could reach for the passenger door handle, she opened the back door and slipped into the back seat. She kept a grip on my hand and pulled me in after her.

She was so much smarter than me, it was breathtaking.

As soon as the door was closed, we resumed from the point where we had broken our clench beneath the stars.

My hand found a small gap between the hem of her sweater and the waistband of her skirt and I caressed that narrow strip of naked skin with my fingertips.

It was the right thing to do.

She moaned.

I pushed underneath her sweater so that my whole hand could press against the small of her back.

Her breaths were deep and her breasts heaved against me as she kept kissing me.

I felt like I was running a mile downhill. I moved my hand up her spine and encountered her bra strap. I could feel some kind of complicated clasp holding it in place. I had no idea how it worked but I tried to fumble it open.

She pulled away and slid her hands down to my forearms, pushing them away lightly. "Let's leave that alone tonight, okay?" she said. "This is about as far as I go on a first date."

_First date_ implied that there might be a second. I knew better than to wreck a good thing with impatience.

"I'm happy with this," I said and kissed her again. I wasn't lying. I was more than happy. I was ecstatic.

I was an easy non-lay.

She began kissing my earlobe, then moved down to my neck.

I learned that there was a lot that we could do without removing any clothing. And it all felt terrific.

An hour later, when I walked her to her front door, I felt like I was drifting along, two inches above the ground.

Before she went into the house, after a long, leisurely goodnight kiss, she said in a low voice, "I had a great time tonight. Thank you."

On the short drive home, I contemplated that I had not seen any lovemaking in the movie, including going all the way with naked women, that had looked as satisfying as the way I felt.

I might still be cherry, but the bit of experience that I now had under my belt felt amazing.

* * *

Riding through the night in Randal's pickup was an eerie experience. Everything was black but for the oval beams of the headlights picking out the yellow line, the gravel on the shoulder, and glimpses of trees flashing past. The engine chugged and ticked. The tires whined against the asphalt. Randal said nothing.

We were both tired from working all day and had no idea what to expect in Utica. All we knew was that Randal's life depended on what we could learn about Billy Paul's last days; and that our only lead was a stranger named Gus Hadley who had once been tight with him.

After an hour on the road, it was eleven o'clock and Randal began muttering.

"What?" I asked.

"Charley," he said. "I can feel him. Charley's out there."

"Who's Charley?"

"Charley," he said more loudly. "Charley all around."

I looked at Randal. The night had cooled off but he was sweating profusely. Great salty beads were rolling from his hairline down his forehead. He wiped at his brow with the back of his wrist.

"We're in the free-fire zone, now," he said. "Get that M-sixty deployed, stat! We're heading into an ambush. Don't you see the sign?"

"What?"

"Lock and load, Gunner!" he shouted. "Get ready to suppress."

"What?"

I felt the little pickup accelerate, pressing me back into my seat. "We're committed now. We gotta run the gauntlet. No choice. We're going for it! Hang on, soldier!"

"What?"

The pickup began to shake and rattle. We were bouncing so hard, I'd swear the wheels were leaving the road. Every bend in the highway was a unique scene in this nightmare movie.

"Incoming!" Randal screamed each syllable independently. "In! Come! Ing!" and swerved into the oncoming lane. Then back into our own lane, then across the line again. The Datsun's aging shocks couldn't keep the oscillations of the suspension in check. The springs whimpered in protest at the abuse. The little pickup rocked and rolled like a sassy woman's hips.

The road was almost deserted this late at night. Almost. Headlights came around a corner less than two hundred yards away. We were in the oncoming lane. The truck's beams pierced the darkness high above us. It was a semi, hauling a load. It couldn't stop if it wanted to.

"Bogie at twelve o'clock!" Randal shouted. "Bogie closing fast!"

He was drowned out by the bellow of an air horn. The driver was leaning on it.

With a violent twist of the wheel, he steered back into the proper lane.

The semi's bumper missed us by less than a foot, I swear.

The air horn was so loud, it drowned me out. That was a mercy. I didn't want Randal to hear me screaming like a little girl.

"You can't let 'em take me, Gunner. No matter what. You save a bullet for me. You got that. You save the last bullet for me. You can't let them take me again. Never again!"

The pickup practically soared over the crest of a hill. The speedometer pegged on the downgrade.

It didn't matter that we were on a highway in upstate New York. Randal was in 'Nam and this was combat and I knew with all my heart that I was going to die.

I had to do something.

"We got 'em, Randal!" I yelled in desperation. "We got the bogie!"

"We got it?" The pickup slowed a mite.

"We got it. It's down. We're almost back at base. There's nothing but friendlies here. We're out of the fire zone." I was using up every bit of jargon that I could remember from news reports and war movies.

"We're out?"

"Yeah, captain. We're out."

The pickup eased back down to the speed limit.

"Whadya mean, _captain_? I ain't no officer, Gunner. I work for a living."

I didn't know what to say so I said nothing.

Randal fell silent for a long time and kept driving toward Utica. There were more lights here. Farms, houses, some roadside businesses.

When we were almost there, he said, "I'm stateside, aren't I?"

"Yeah. Upstate New York."

"Good." He shook his head. "This is a good place to be."

After another few minutes, he said, "We got a man to see here. Gus Hadley."

"Yup."

Randal was bat shit crazy for sure.

I wondered if he would let me drive back to Wemsley.

* * *

"You Gus?" Randal asked. He didn't bother buying me a six-pack this time. Which was okay. I still had four bottles left from the last one. Katie was a cheap date, booze wise.

The man behind the counter was about Randal's age. However old that was. Maybe thirty. When I was eighteen, everyone over the age of majority looked old to me.

"What do you want?"

"You know a guy named Billy Paul?"

The man looked wary. "Yeah. I know Billy. What do you want with him?"

"I heard that you were tight with him."

"You heard wrong. I barely know him."

"When you were younger, I mean."

"Long time ago," Gus said. "Real long time ago. High school." He squinted at me. "You're too young to be a cop." He peered at Randal. "And you're too..." He paused to search for an apt word. He knew better than to say _crazy_.

"Yeah, I am," Randal said. "We're not cops. We just want to find someone who was tight with Billy recently. You know who that might be?"

The bell over the door tinkled. A girl who looked like a student – sandals, blue jeans, a tie-died blouse, and her long hair controlled with a thin leather headband – looked at us uncertainly.

Randal stepped back and gestured to the counter. "You got a customer," he said to Gus.

"Fifth of Old Crow," she said.

She appeared to be not much older than me but she ordered like it was a daily habit. Gus didn't hesitate to put the bottle on the counter and ring it up.

As soon as she left the store, Randal said, "So who's tight with Billy these days?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Billy's dead. Murdered a couple of weeks ago over in Wemsley. He left some unfinished business. We're settling it for him."

"Gosh. Dead?" Gus's face fell.

"Murdered."

"Who did it?"

"Nobody knows. You got any idea?"

Gus shook his head. "Just about everybody, I guess. Billy didn't have many friends left. Not that I knew about. Not for years. But he was sure good at making enemies."

"I keep hearing that."

"You didn't know him?"

"I was just a business associate."

"What kind of business?"

"Billy kind of business." Randal's tone shut down that topic. "When was the last time you saw him?"

Two young men came in the door. Before they had bought their two-four of Bud, another guy arrived. Gus didn't seem to serve anyone over the age of twenty.

It was a good five minutes before we were alone with him again. The liquor business was good after midnight in Utica. At least, it was this close to the college.

"Summer students," Gus said when we were alone again. "Most of them flunked classes last term so they're trying to make them up over the summer. Most of them'll flunk the same classes again. My best customers are on permanent academic probation."

Gus didn't seem like the kind of guy who would know much about college, but I guessed that if you worked around students for long enough, you picked up stuff by osmosis. Or maybe he had tried to get a degree and knew about academic probation from bitter personal experience.

"You were telling me about the last time you saw Billy," Randal prompted.

"Yeah. Not that long ago. Maybe a month. I hadn't seen him for a couple of years and he breezed in here one evening and said that we should go out for a beer. I didn't see any problem with talking about old times over a beer or three, so I met him at the Sundown the next afternoon. He wasn't so keen on talking about old times. He had an agenda. He wanted to crash at my place for a while. Said he didn't have any place to stay and wanted to sleep on my floor for a few days while he got himself set up here. I wasn't keen on the idea because I knew that a couple of days would turn into a couple of months and I wouldn't be the one sleeping in the bed. I had to say _no_ a bunch of times before he accepted that I wasn't his patsy any more. He left mad."

"Did he say what he was going to do while he was here?"

"No specifics. Billy had lots of big plans but they were vague. He wasn't a details kind of guy, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah," Randal said. "I was in business with him. Just that one deal, but I know how guys like him operate."

Gus nodded sagely.

"These big plans of his. Did any stick in your mind?"

"Yeah. He was mostly rambling on about the Road Snakes. How they rattle and roll."

"Road Snakes?"

"I guess it's a motorcycle club up in the Adirondacks. He talked about them like they were going to be the new Hells Angels but I think they were mostly a bunch of wannabes."

"In the Adirondacks?"

Gus laughed. "Yeah. I know. Can't imagine a more unlikely place for an outlaw biker club. He figured that there'd be a member or two in every little village. They'd add up to a force. That's what he said. That they were going to be a force."

"And they called themselves the Road Snakes?"

"He showed me a picture of their patch. A rattlesnake coiled around a motorcycle wheel. The rocker underneath said _Rattle and Roll_."

"In the Adirondacks?"

"Yeah. Not exactly rattlesnake territory. In Arizona, maybe, but in upstate New York? A blue jay perched on a sugar maple, maybe. But a rattlesnake? Not much credibility there." Gus raised an eyebrow. "But he did have a bike. I'll give him that. An honest-to-God chopper. Chrome engine and pipes that rumbled like an earthquake. I sure did like his bike."

"Yeah. I know the bike. It's a sweet ride." Randal grinned. "You know where I can get in touch with anybody who's in this so-called outlaw biker gang?"

Gus shook his head. "Billy didn't name any names. Not real names. A few nicknames like Buster and Dude. That kind of thing, but I didn't pay any attention to that. He was just blowing smoke. Trying to make it sound like this club had hundreds of members. I'd be surprised if it was more than half a dozen guys, each more whacked out than the other."

"Okay. I guess we'll go looking for them."

"Try Oak Falls. It's a little town up in the eastern Adirondacks. I think he said they had a clubhouse there."

A couple more college kids came in, looking for beer and giving us the stink eye, so Randal and I split.

Outside, Randal asked, "How much of that do you believe?"

I'd believed it all. But now that Randal raised the question, I got to wondering. "I believe the part about the motorcycle gang. He had no reason to make that part up."

"We'll see," Randal said. "We'll see."

My stomach churned. I didn't want to see any motorcycle outlaws, not even a half dozen, each more whacked out than the other.

Randal drove but the ride back was uneventful, for which I was thankful. It was almost two before I got to bed and we had to work in the morning.

* * *

Chief Albertson finally got around to questioning Gwen on Friday afternoon. This was the biggest case that Wemsley had ever seen but it still took him that long to get around to interviewing the victim's estranged wife. Albertson was no ball of fire. Hassling kids was more his speed.

I was in the back showing the new new guy, Rick, how to use the mill to mash potatoes when Gwen called me to the order counter.

The old new guy, Halliday, was already history. When Mrs. Everett had come in on Thursday morning, she'd informed Randal that she'd let Halliday go at the end of his shift on Wednesday. "He was worse than useless," she said. "He kept getting in my way, slowing me down."

The thought of Mrs. Everett cooking any slower was patently ridiculous and I had to turn away so that she wouldn't see my smirk.

Randal had more self-control. He kept a straight face and said that he'd find a replacement right away.

The replacement was Rick and I knew from the minute I started teaching him the ropes that he was even less useful than Halliday. He found the concept of mashing potatoes with a vegetable mill arcane. The knack of it eluded him. The reason why eluded me. Nothing could be simpler than throwing the chunks of potato into the top and turning the handle. We're not talking quantum mechanics. "Clockwise, Rick. Always turn the handle clockwise. To the right. To the right."

But I had to get the fresh meat ready by next Wednesday because, come hell or high water, Randal and I would be searching the Adirondack Mountains for an outlaw biker gang and Rick would be in the kitchen helping Mrs. Everett cook.

Lunch was over and Gwen was about to go on break so she had come to the counter to ask me to cook a chicken breast and coleslaw for her. She wasn't calling me _C.B._ any more, for which I was grateful. Instead, she had begun calling me _Gunner_. When Randal said it, it sounded like I was his buddy. When Gwen said it, it sounded like she was laughing at me. But when Katie heard _Gunner_ she didn't snicker like she did when she heard _C.B._ , so that was a mercy.

Looking past Gwen, I saw Albertson come in the front door. He waved Katie away and looked around. The front was mostly empty so he didn't have to look hard to find a table. When he saw Gwen, he came straight to the counter.

"We need to talk," he said to her.

"Okay," she said.

"You can come with me."

"Here is fine. I'm going to take my break in a minute."

Albertson looked at me on the other side of the order counter, then back at Gwen.

"I don't care if he hears what I say," she said to him.

"You didn't tell me that you were Billy Paul's wife."

"No? It must have slipped my mind."

"That's a pretty important fact to forget when you're talking to the police during a murder investigation, don't you think? That you're the widow of the victim?"

She snorted. "Billy Paul hasn't been important to me for years. I hadn't seen him for more than a decade. He took off when my youngest was a newborn baby and that was fine by me. I was better off without him."

"But he came back."

"He thought that he could move back in with me. I set him straight and that was the end of it."

"When was that? That you set him straight?"

"A few days before he disappeared."

"How many days?"

"I don't know. I don't know what day he disappeared. I don't keep a diary and if I did, Billy wouldn't be important enough for me to write anything down about him. All I know is that I hadn't seen him for a while when you came around and said that he was dead."

"How, exactly, did that go? You setting him straight?"

"Let's go talk outside," she said. "There's a picnic table around the back." She looked at me. "Bring me my chicken when it's ready."

A few minutes later, when I brought the chicken and slaw out to the picnic table, Gwen was saying, "...clocked me one. I had a black eye for a few–" She stopped talking when she saw me coming.

Albertson was sitting across from her, leaning close to catch every word. A notepad was open on the table in front of him.

When I set the chicken in front of Gwen, I could see that the page was half-filled with scrawl. I wondered if Albertson could read his own notes.

They both watched me until I went away. The last thing that I heard before I walked away was Albertson saying, "Go on. Billy hit you..."

It was almost an hour before Gwen came back inside. She went straight to Randal and said, "He asked all about me and Billy. Then he asked about you and Billy. I didn't have much to say about that. He didn't ask about me and you at all."

Randal nodded. "He'll be back. He's got the scent now. He'll find out where it leads, quick enough."

I snagged Katie when she was leaving for the day and asked her if she wanted to go out again.

She said that she did.

She looked kind of vague about it. But she often looked kind of vague when she was talking to me. I was happy enough with, "Yeah, okay," vague though it was.

* * *

Early Saturday morning, I was awakened by a roar outside my window. Who would be mowing their lawn at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty? I didn't have to be at work until ten. I could sleep for another two hours.

There was a loud knock on my door.

"Wha'?"

"Your friend is here to see you again," Dad said.

Friend? None of my friends would show up at this time of the morning. None but Randal.

"Be there." I began fighting the bedclothes off.

A few minutes later, wearing jeans and a tee shirt, I was looking at Randal standing in the living room.

"Come on. We got to get you set up."

"Set up?"

"Yeah. For our road trip."

"It's Saturday."

"I know."

"We work on Saturday."

"I know. That's why I'm here. We got to get you set up before we go to work."

He explained no more, just walked out the front door.

I slipped my feet into my sneakers and followed him.

There was a big black motorcycle sitting in the middle of the driveway.

"You got a new bike?" I asked.

"No. I borrowed one for you. We can't talk to a bunch of bikers if we're driving a Datsun."

I could feel my jaw drop. "I don't know how to ride a motorcycle."

"That's why I'm here. You learn today."

"Huh?" was the most intelligent comment that my mind could devise. After feeling fear settle into my gut for a minute I said, "I don't think I can."

"You can ride a bicycle, can't you?"

"Sure."

"Same thing. Just a matter of balance."

I stared at the bike for a minute. It didn't look like a bicycle. It looked enormous. "It's big."

"Sixty-five pan-head Harley. You can't ride a scooter when we go looking for bikers on Wednesday. No credibility."

I shook my head, struck mute.

"Hop on."

"Huh?"

"You can't learn to ride standing there. You got to be on the bike. Come on. Hop on."

Hop wasn't exactly the right verb to describe grabbing the handlebars and bending forward far enough to hoist my leg over the saddle.

I felt like I was straddling a barrel. This was nothing like a bicycle.

"Stand it upright so that it's balanced."

It was heavy. It took considerable effort to push it upright.

"You don't want to lean it too far over. If it falls on its side, it's going to be hard to pick up again."

Hard? More like impossible. It felt like it weighed a ton.

"Now kick the kickstand up. That's right. Here's the key." He handed me a key on a lucky rabbit's foot keychain. I could use all the luck that I could get. More luck than the rabbit who lost his foot for a keychain.

"Turn the power on, then push the starter button. Electric start on this baby. It's almost no effort to ride at all."

His encouragement sounded insincere in my ear.

I gritted my teeth and pressed the button. The bike jerked.

"Wait. Pull the clutch, first. Left hand. That's right. All the way in. Now push the button."

The starter motor whined for a few seconds, then the engine caught and began to chug with that famous Harley growl.

Just having the big bike under me had been frightening enough. Feeling it vibrate with power was terrifying. I wished that I were still in bed fast asleep, blissfully unconscious.

"Great. Okay. Brakes. Right hand is the front wheel. Right pedal is the rear. Use a little of both. Be careful you don't lock the front wheel unless you want to flip the bike. That would not be a good idea. Twist the right hand to gun the engine."

I twisted the handgrip and the engine roared.

"Not hard. Keeping a delicate touch on throttle and brakes is always better on a bike."

I experimented a little with the throttle, learning to change the bass purr to a low growl.

"Okay. Make sure you keep the clutch pulled and try the gears. That's the pedal on your left. Remember that. Left side is go; right side is stop. Except for the throttle. Okay. Click the left pedal down. Now it's in first. Get your foot underneath it and click it up with your foot. Now it's back in neutral. See the green light. Neutral. Real important to know when it's in neutral. If it's not in neutral, the bike's going to move or stall. All the way down is first then it goes up to neutral then up to second, then third, then fourth. Got it?"

I nodded uncertainly.

"Great. Then all the rest is just practice. Go ahead. Put it in first, give it a little gas, and then ease the clutch out. Just drive it a few feet and stop. Don't forget to clutch when you brake again."

The bike jerked and then stalled. All was silent.

Randal looked at me. "How would you do it different next time?"

"More gas?"

"And slower on the clutch. Crank it on again."

I pressed the button. The bike lurched.

"Clutch in, then crank it on."

The engine roared back to life.

I gave it some throttle and eased the clutch out, a fraction of an inch at a time. The bike vibrated and then began to roll forward. I grabbed the clutch and it kept rolling. I grabbed the front brake lever and it jerked to a stop.

I'd done it! I'd driven a motorcycle almost six feet. My terror didn't diminish but was shadowed by a touch of elation.

"Great," Randal said. "Do it some more. Get a feel for first."

I drove the bike out to the street, then down the block in a series of fits and starts. It wobbled precariously, but I kept it upright.

I waited until Randal caught up with me. "Now try second gear. Remember, you have to click it up twice to get past neutral."

Randal hung around until I'd ridden the full length of the block in second.

"Okay. You got two more gears above that when you're ready to go faster. I'll see you at Elsa's in an hour."

And that was the end of my motorcycle lessons.

"What about a license?" I asked.

"Talk to the DMV," he said. "Oh, and get yourself equipped."

"With a helmet?"

"With shades. You don't want bugs in your eyes."

He walked away. He didn't even watch as I maneuvered the machine around and rode it back to my house.

He had a lot more confidence in me than I did. But he wasn't the one who was going to die when I ran into a tree.

I showered and then rode my new bike over to Elsa's. It was a little less than a mile and it seemed to take me almost as long to get there as if I'd walked, but I made it.

I stalled only a half dozen times and I even managed to get up to third gear somewhere on Main Street.

I was ready to be an outlaw biker now.

* * *

The bike freaked my parents out.

That was the best thing about having it.

Dad asked where I got it.

I told him that Randal lent it to me. That it was his bike. I wasn't sure if that was true but it was close enough for parents.

Mom said that I was going to kill myself on that deathtrap.

Dad said that I didn't know how to ride a motorcycle.

I told him that Randal had taught me.

Mom said that Randal was going to get me killed.

She might be right, but I didn't tell her that riding on a motorcycle by myself was safer than riding in a truck when Randal was driving. Especially if it was nighttime and he started thinking about 'Nam.

Dad said that I couldn't ride without a helmet.

I said that I had shades to keep the bugs out of my eyes.

Dad said a helmet was the law. I get a helmet or I don't ride.

Mom asked if I was on drugs.

Overall, it was an exceptionally satisfying conversation.

I was still terrified of the bike but, on my break, I rode it over to Sears and ordered a helmet. The Sears in Wemsley is just a desk with a few shelves in the back and an old lady wearing glasses like the bottoms of Coke bottles. She has to order almost everything in from the warehouse in Buffalo.

Ordering the helmet cost me a third of last week's paycheck but it was worth it to ride the bike.

When I got back after my break, Katie saw me riding and her eyes grew wide. It made my heart pound anew.

Seeing her look at me like that was even better than arguing with my folks about the bike.

She reminded me that I had said that I would take her out again.

_She_ reminded _me_. And there was nothing vague about her tone. How great was that?

Our next date had to be on Tuesday, my next day off. I was committed to spending Wednesdays with Randal and I worked on the weekends. I couldn't ask her to go out before my day off. She wouldn't want to hang around after my shift, even on Saturday. If there was little enough to do at night in Wemsley before ten, there was absolutely nothing after that. Elsa's was the last business to close. Even the A&W closed at nine.

When I said, "Six on Tuesday," she said, "On your bike?"

Her face looked so eager, I had to say, "Sure," but I knew that the bike would be a problem. A motorcycle doesn't have a back seat like a car and there was only so much that we could do on the grass under the stars.

I couldn't show up at her house with a sleeping bag strapped to the bike. Her dad might get suspicious.

The movie playing at the Paramount was called _Harold and Maud_. I had no idea what it was about. Before work, I spent an hour at the public library but couldn't find anybody who had bothered reviewing it. That was not a good sign.

I examined the movie poster in front of the theater, but it didn't tell me much, It was just a picture of a boy about my age and his grandmother. That wasn't a good sign, either.

On Tuesday afternoon, I picked up my helmet from Sears. I'd ordered black to match the bike but they delivered metal-flake red. My head would look like a giant candy apple.

I didn't know if it was the old lady in the Coke bottle glasses or someone in the warehouse who'd got it wrong, but I had my suspicions. It might have been her bad hearing; it might have been a touch of mental confusion; or she might have decided that black was too morbid and preferred to see a young man wearing a brighter color.

I didn't know, but I had to have a helmet and didn't want to wait another week so I decided that the color didn't matter and accepted it anyway.

A lot of people in Wemsley took delivery of a lot of things that weren't quite what they wanted for exactly the same reason. We were all used to it.

Tuesday evening, Katie was wearing blue jeans and a Mexican peasant blouse. She was waiting in front of her house and hopped onto the bike as soon as I pulled up. I didn't have to go inside and talk to her father this time. I suspected that she intercepted me on the front walk because she didn't want her parents to know that she was going on a date on the back of a motorcycle.

Having a pretty girl clinging to my back was yet another reason why riding a bike was worth enduring that twist of fear in my gut every time I turned the engine over.

I gave her the helmet. She frowned but tucked her hair up and slid it past her lovely ears. Now she was the one who looked like the giant candy apple. She looked delicious.

Her arms about my chest and her breasts pressed into my back were distracting. I didn't want to stall the bike so I gave it too much throttle and released the clutch too fast. The rear tire squealed as we shot away from the curb.

Katie squealed in counterpoint and squeezed me tight.

I pretended that I meant to take off like that.

After having ridden the bike every chance I got for the last few days, I was almost a pro. I could even get it up to the highest gear on the highway.

Riding a motorcycle is great. Wind in your face. Road unwinding in front of you. No looking back.

But riding a motorcycle with a candy-apple woman clinging to you, her breasts pressed against your back, her thighs pressed against your hips, is ten times better. Maybe a hundred times better.

I only stalled it once on the way to the A&W – at the stop sign where Main intersects with the highway – but I didn't hit anything and nothing hit me so it was a successful trip.

A motorcycle doesn't have any place for a carhop to hang a tray so we had to get off and eat at one of the tables under the awning.

Katie asked me about the bike. I said that I got it from Randal. I made it sound like I'd bought it. Then I told her a bunch of technical stuff about it. I made most of that up but she didn't know or care. I told her that Randal and I were going to ride up into the Adirondacks tomorrow. That impressed her.

She asked what we would do if it rained.

I hadn't thought about that. "Do you think it's going to rain?" I asked, looking at the cloudless sky. "Did you hear a weather report?"

"I don't know. I was just wondering."

"We gotta go, rain or shine," I said. "We got business."

She nodded, her eyes bright, but she didn't ask about it. She liked the mystery.

I was shocked by how good the movie was. It was nothing like any movie that I'd ever seen before. Or since, for that matter. Every scene, from the first to the last was a surprise. Nothing happened the way that you'd expect. It was funny in a sly way; romantic in a weird way; and uplifting in a morbid way.

I asked Katie what she thought about it.

"Maude was kind of old for Harold, don't you think?" she said. "I think he should have gone out with Sunshine instead. She was pretty and she didn't get weirded out by him."

"I think that Harold probably started going out with lots of pretty girls after Maude," I said.

She squeezed my hand. "You're probably right." She sounded relieved to hear that.

"Do you want to ride out to..." I almost said _Makeout Hill_ but caught myself. "...Smoke Pond?"

"I don't know," she said. "It's pretty cold to go that far on a motorcycle." She was wearing only the peasant blouse and hugged herself.

I wished that I had a jacket to drape over her shoulders – really wished it because the lack was keeping me from getting her to Makeout Hill again – but I was wearing only a cotton dress shirt myself. I couldn't afford a leather jacket like a real biker but I would to order a denim one from the Sears lady on my next break.

Then I got a brilliant idea. "Why don't we ride over to my place? It's only a few blocks. I'll borrow the car for the rest of the evening and then you won't be cold."

"Okay," she said.

The bonus was that I could put my remaining beer in the trunk.

Out on Makeout Hill, I drank another beer and she drank two.

It was our second date so she let me take her blouse and bra off when we necked in the back seat.

I was in heaven.

* * *

The weather was good on Wednesday – clear, sunny, and cool. _Fresh_ was a good word to describe it.

Riding with Randal was a challenge. He didn't slow down any. Maybe he'd forgotten that it was my first week on a bike or maybe he figured that slowing down would be patronizing and insulting to me. I don't know. I didn't ask. I was too busy trying to keep up with him without dumping my bike on the corners.

At least, if he wigged out again and imagined himself back in 'Nam, I didn't have to know about it.

For all I knew, he was pushing it because he thought that we were racing through ambush territory.

If that were true, I'd rather be ignorant.

It was the first time that I'd seen him wearing a helmet. It was like a Nazi storm trooper helmet, but chromed.

I looked like a candy apple; he looked like an outlaw. If things got rough, I knew who was going to get his ass kicked. It wouldn't be Randal.

When we started climbing into the mountains, my bike coughed, sputtered, and died. I rolled to the side of the road and kicked down the stand.

Randal didn't notice and disappeared around the next corner.

It was several minutes before he came back and found me poking ineffectually at the engine. I had no idea what I was doing. I just hoped that I would accidentally poke it in the right place and wake it up again.

"You got gas?" Randal asked.

Gas? I'd been riding the bike for a week and had not once thought about putting gas in it. That made me feel stupid.

"I don't know," I said. "Where's the gas gauge?"

"Don't have one. You got a reserve tank. That's why there's two filler caps. That handle there." He pointed to a small silver knob on the front end of the tank.

I poked at the knob. He leaned over and showed me how to operate the petcock. "That opens the reserve tank. Try her now."

The engine roared to life as soon as I cranked it over.

I was thankful that this hadn't happened when I was riding around with Katie. I'd hate for her to think I was a dufus.

Oak Falls was a pretty little town nestled in a forested notch between two pretty little peaks.

Randal pulled into a gas station on the edge of town and we filled up. He didn't need as much gas as I did.

"I'm looking for a motorcycle club called the Road Snakes. You know where I can find them?" Randal asked the gas jockey.

He shook his head. "Nope. Never heard of them."

Obviously they weren't prominent citizens in town.

"There a motorcycle shop in town?" Randal asked.

"Jerry's our mechanic," the man said. "He fixes motorcycles sometimes. But if he can't do it, he sends them over to a guy in Old Forge. What's his name? Can't remember right off, but he works in a garage behind the hardware store on the west side of town. You can't miss it. Just look for the hardware store and then go around back. If you get to a big, ugly, tacky, souvenir shop, then you went a ways too far. The guy there's a good mechanic from what I hear. He'll fix you up."

"How far from here?"

"Ten, twelve miles. Not far."

We raced down the highway for another few minutes and found the village of Old Forge. The hardware store was not big but it was prominent. We didn't have to go far enough to see the big, ugly, tacky souvenir shop.

The garage around back was a rust-dappled corrugated sheet metal building that smelled of motor oil and gasoline. There were bike parts and half-assembled bikes scattered around, outside and inside.

As soon as Randal and I pulled onto the little asphalt pad in front of the big doors, a squat, ape-like man shambled out.

He looked over Randal's chopper. "Nice bike." He glanced at me and then back at Randal. "What can I do ya for?"

"I'm looking for someone who knows the Road Snakes." Randal unstrapped his helmet.

"Why you looking for them?" The man's manner was instantly defensive, his posture stiff, his eyes hard, and his voice harsh.

"Just a courtesy call," Randal said. "We're riding through and want to give them our respects."

"Who do you ride with?" he asked.

"We're independents," Randal said. "Not affiliated with anyone."

He looked at Randal's bike again. "Nice ride for an independent."

"Originally it was a sixty-seven XLB Police Sportster," Randal said. "But there's not much stock left on it."

The man nodded. "So how do you know Billy?" he asked.

He had recognized Billy's bike.

Randal shook his head. "Guess you ain't heard yet. Billy's dead. Murdered down in Wemsley three weeks ago. I bought his bike a week before he was killed."

"You don't say. Billy loved that bike."

"I don't blame him. It's a sweet ride. But he needed money bad so he sold it to me. I guess it wasn't enough money to keep him from getting killed."

"Or maybe it was enough _to_ get him killed."

"Could be. We'll never know, most likely."

"So who's the kid?" The man looked at me.

"He's Gunner. I'm Randal."

"They call me Monk." He didn't step any closer or offer his hand. He didn't know who we were, yet.

I wondered why they called him that. Because of his ascetic lifestyle? Or because he was a grease monkey? Or because he resembled an ape? I wasn't about to ask.

Monk frowned. "You're here riding Billy's bike, looking for the Snakes, and saying Billy's dead. This isn't a courtesy call."

"Sure it is. It's a courtesy to let Billy's friends know what happened to him."

"We're Billy's friends? Billy tell you that when you got his bike off him?"

"It was known to a select few."

"Not to us," Monk said.

"The Road Snakes, you mean," Randal said.

"Who are these select few who're so badly misinformed about Billy's affiliations?"

"No one in particular. Just the word on the street."

"Right." Monk looked disgusted.

"It's okay," Randal said. "If you say he didn't rattle and roll with the Snakes, then he didn't. I'll take your word for it over Billy's."

Monk grunted. It only made him seem more apelike.

"We'd like to meet a few of the Snakes."

"They don't want to meet you."

"You the president?"

Monk shook his head.

"No disrespect, but I'd like to pay my respects to the president."

Monk grunted again.

"Where can I find him?"

"Halfway between here and hell," he said.

Randal stepped close to Monk and placed his face directly in his. He had to look down on the smaller man to do it. "That's not a respectful answer. Are you and me going to have a problem?"

My heart leapt and I began to sweat. They looked like they were one wrong word away from violence. If they mixed it up, I was going to have to decide if I was a spectator or go in swinging.

I didn't know much about fights between bikers but my limited understanding was that there were no spectators.

"Not unless you make one." Monk kept his eyes on Randal. He wasn't backing down.

The shop was littered with bike parts. There was a piece of tubing on the floor, close to Monk's foot. He had long arms and a slight squat. The tubing was not far from his right hand. If the situation got bad, it could get real bad.

"I stop to make a courtesy call on a club, I expect to talk to the leader. That's the way it's done. So either you tell me where I can find him or you pass a message along telling him where he can meet me. If you take it on yourself to speak for him without him knowing it, he's going to have a problem with your disrespect. You follow what I'm saying?"

Monk licked his lips. "I ain't disrespecting nobody."

"I'm sure you're not. None of us wants to disrespect nobody."

It seemed that I wasn't going to get any teeth knocked out or ribs broken after all. Not this time.

"But I can't tell Wasp that he's got to meet you, neither. I don't tell him what to do."

"I understand."

"So you can stop by the clubhouse this evening and if he's there, he's there. If he ain't, then he don't want to meet you."

"As long as you give him the message, it'll be okay. There's no downside for him to hear what we got to say."

"I'll tell him that you want to pay him a courtesy call."

"That's all I want. Where's your clubhouse?"

"Kenny Mill on Route One two miles north of Oak Falls."

"We'll drop by this evening."

We roared out of there. I left my helmet strapped to the back of my seat and did a credible job of not stalling or dropping the bike.

I don't think Randal noticed, but I was pleased with my professionalism.

* * *

From Monk's garage, we rode straight back to Oak Falls. Following Randal down the highway, I couldn't chat with him, but I knew what he was planning. It was mid-afternoon and he was going to check out the Snakes' clubhouse. Either someone would be there and we would have another tense chat with other members of the club or it would be empty and we would get the lay of the land in preparation for tonight's encounter.

I was hoping that we wouldn't find anyone there. I don't know what Randal was hoping.

He stopped back at the service station where we'd gassed up earlier and asked for directions to Route One.

The attendant pointed down the road and we were off again.

Oak Falls is smaller even than Wemsley, so it didn't take much effort to find the turn onto Route One.

Kenny Mill was identified by a faded sign hanging from a post beside the road. There was a dirt driveway winding back into the trees. A rotting wooden gate was hanging open. It looked like it hadn't been closed in decades. The top hinge was hanging loose and the bottom rail was sinking into the dirt.

Randal wasn't shy about riding down the driveway despite another faded sign warning us that this we were entering private property and advising us not to trespass.

I guess we had a right to be here. Monk had invited us. In a way.

When Randal hit the dirt, I started choking on his dust and had to accelerate to get beside him. My bike fishtailed a bit but I managed to hang on without dumping it. I was getting good at this.

The driveway was long, maybe a quarter mile. As we passed through the overhanging trees – oaks, I think – I heard a dog barking frantically, growing louder as we drew nearer.

I hoped that it was chained. Then the barking resolved into two voices. Then a third dog joined the first two. There was a pack at the end of the driveway.

I had no desire to be torn apart by dogs. If they weren't chained or penned, then I wasn't stopping my bike. I'd face a motorcycle gang for Randal, but not a pack of dogs.

When we emerged from the trees, I was struck by the decay of a fine Victorian-era house. White paint was peeling from the gingerbread along the eaves. The shingles on the roof were curling with age. Unruly bushes grew along the sun-faded blue walls, reaching past the windows to filter the light that tried to enter. A board was missing from one of the front steps.

Unless remedial measures were taken soon, the deterioration would be irreversible.

The barking was coming from three German shepherds locked in a chain-link pen set back behind the house on one side. Unlike the house, the chain-link was shiny new.

A garage sat next to the dog pen, big enough to hold three cars, at least. I was pretty sure that it had stabled horses when it was built.

Randal killed his engine and I followed suit. The dogs barked all the louder.

He looked at me. "May as well knock, but nobody's going to be home."

I wasn't sure that he was right about that. The dogs would have alerted anyone in the house, but the windows were so overgrown, we wouldn't know if eyes were peering out of them.

"Mind the step," he said as he hopped over the missing board.

As predicted, nobody answered his knock.

We walked around the back of the house and saw why it was called _Kenny Mill_. A small stone foundation rested beside a fast flowing stream. The mill had been placed to take power from the flow. I don't know what it had milled, maybe it had ground grain to flour or cut lumber. I was pretty sure that some old sawmills were this small.

Though we were out of sight, the dogs were still barking. They were getting on my nerves.

Randal showed little interest in the ruins. History did not grip him. Instead, he sat on the edge of the foundation and looked back toward the two buildings that were still standing. "House or garage?"

"What?"

"Which do you think is the Road Snakes' clubhouse? The house or the garage?"

"I don't know."

"Party or ambush?"

"I don't know." The word _ambush_ made me nervous. The last time Randal had used that word, he had been flipping out on me. It was the Viet Cong, not the Road Snakes, that he had been fighting on the highway a few days ago.

"We better be ready for both," he said. "Hope for a party but be set for an ambush."

"How do we get ready for an ambush?" I asked.

"Not by walking into it blind, that's for sure." He looked a little like Eastwood when he squinted into the sun. "Knowing the terrain is important but knowing your enemy is critical. That's the problem in 'Nam. We went in before we knew the enemy and we never got up to speed. They surprise us every day. Damn command sitting in their air-conditioned trailers never looked Charlie in the eye. They think they can plot strategy when they got no way to measure Charlie's grit or brains. I've looked Charlie in the eye and I've looked our own brass in the eye and I know one thing as sure as I'm standing here. We're not going to win. Our boys are going to keep dying in the jungle until the President admits that America's getting its ass kicked and gets the hell out of there."

I didn't like hearing anyone saying that we were getting our ass kicked. America is the greatest country in the world. The greatest military force in history. "But for every American they kill, we kill ten of theirs. They can't keep it up."

He barked a bitter laugh. "Don't you believe it, kid. You heard of My Lai? You think that's the only time we killed old men, women, and children? A soldier shoots an old woman in the back of the head when she's kneeling in a rice paddy and the American command is going to swear that she was Viet Cong and add her body to the tally. And you know the funny part? She's South Vietnamese. She was our ally until we wasted her. The real score, the soldier-for-soldier score in firefights where the so-called enemy is shooting back, is nowhere near what command claims. North Vietnamese babies are being born and growing into men faster than we can kill them. They can keep fighting this war forever. If we stay there for a thousand years, they'll still keep fighting. They have no choice They live there. They have nowhere else to go."

I stared at him. I'd never heard anyone talk about the war like this.

"We aren't the first, you know. Before us, they were fighting the French and, during World War Two, the Japanese. They've been fighting foreigners for as long as any of them can remember. It's their way of life. They wouldn't know what to do if they didn't have foreigners to kill." Randal shook his head. "Kid, you get your student deferment and you hope to hell that we realize that we've already lost the war before your number comes up. You don't want to go to 'Nam, ever."

I looked at the house and garage and thought about the Road Snakes. I didn't want to be here, either.

"Come on," he said. "We gotta get into position."

I followed him back out to the front yard. When he kicked his bike to life and roared back out the driveway, I hoped that we were going to give up and ride back to Wemsley.

No such luck.

A half-mile down the road, Randal pulled off into a wide space and killed his engine. "We park the bikes here." He peered into the brush.

Where he was looking might have been an abandoned driveway or maybe just a game trail, but it was flat enough to push the bikes back so that they were out of sight.

Randal pulled a piece of bamboo from somewhere under of his denim jacket. When he pulled it apart, I saw that it was a knife. A long, grooved blade was secured into a bamboo handle. The longer section of the bamboo was the sheath. He hacked a few small branches off a tree and then re-sheathed the blade and returned the knife to some inner pocket.

I had no idea that he came armed. It gave me no comfort.

He laid the branches across the bikes to further hide them from anyone driving down the road. Then I followed him on foot back down the driveway toward Kenny Mill.

Though the big knife was out of sight, I couldn't stop thinking about it while we walked.

Billy had been stabbed to death. According to Chief Albertson, multiple stab wounds had turned his guts to hamburger. There was no question in my mind that Randal's knife could do a job like that. It looked like it had been made for exactly that purpose.

I only had Randal's word that he had not killed Billy. And Randal was crazy. Certifiable crazy. Not firmly connected to reality. He might have come upon Billy out in the bush around Smoke Pond and decided that he was back in 'Nam and Billy was a Viet Cong.

Randal left the driveway and pushed into the bush. "Well, come on," he called back when I was slow to move.

I scrambled to catch up to him. If he flipped out, it would be safer to be with him like one of his own squad than thrashing around in the bush somewhere nearby like Charley.

* * *

I settled down on the mossy forest floor beside Randal.

We were sitting in the bush, positioned so that we could see both the house and the garage. A screen of brush hid us from anyone coming down the driveway. It was a good strategy but I hated being here. The Road Snakes were going to show up eventually and I didn't know what Randal was going to do. He had to be planning something; we weren't here for nothing.

Our encounter with Monk had been tense enough. Even if we avoided an all out brawl, facing off against an entire gang of motorcycle outlaws would be more than my young heart could stand.

I don't know if the dogs ever stopped barking. They had been barking when we rode away and they were barking when I followed Randal on foot back up the dirt driveway.

The dogs knew that we were here and they wanted to warn everyone within hearing distance about us. They weren't satisfied with barking; they were in a frenzy, jumping frantically against the chain link fence, making it rattle and jangle.

I hoped that they would tire of that before long.

"Think the dogs will stop barking soon?"

Randal frowned at me. "Don't talk."

It was just after four. Monk had said to meet the Snakes in the evening. They weren't due to arrive for hours, yet.

A mosquito whined around my ear. I slapped at it.

Randal slapped my knee. "Be still."

"Mosquito," I said.

"Ignore it."

"I'll get bit."

"You're going to get bit a lot. That comes with the job. Be quiet. Be still. Ignore everything but the target."

I watched Randal for a few minutes. His only movements were blinking and breathing.

I couldn't stay statue still. I had to scratch when I itched. I had to brush bugs away. I had to wipe sweat off my face. I had to check my watch. I tried to do those things slowly so they wouldn't attract attention but Randal noticed. He noticed everything. His whole body was a giant antenna, watching, listening, processing signals constantly.

I didn't know if he knew that he was in upstate New York or if his head was back in 'Nam again. I suspected 'Nam because he was sweating large drops, the same as when he freaked out in his truck on the road that night.

It didn't matter as long as he was silent and motionless. It only mattered if he took it into his head to kill some Viet Cong.

After an hour, I was bored out of my mind. I had to summon every iota of self-control to keep from asking Randal questions. What was going to happen next? What had he done in Vietnam? What is the meaning of the universe? It didn't matter. I wanted to ask him about something just to break the silence. Even if it were only to hear him tell me to shut up.

I didn't because I didn't want him to think that I was a wuss. And because, if he had wigged out and thought that he was back in 'Nam and that Charley was out there, looking for us, I didn't want him to slit my throat with his bamboo-handled blade to shut me up.

I was eighteen. Thousands of guys my age were doing this for real in the jungle in 'Nam. Guys like me were getting shot through the head because they slapped a mosquito when Charlie was hiding a few feet away and not slapping at the mosquitoes that were biting him.

This was real, but it wasn't as real as 'Nam. At least, I hoped not.

The dogs kept barking.

After two hours, my stomach was growling loudly enough almost to drown out the dogs. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and it was suppertime.

Even a drink of water would help but I was empty-handed. I could hear the rush of the stream behind the barking of the dogs. All the water I could want was a couple of hundred yards away, flowing down to the ocean, and I was dying of thirst and I didn't dare walk over and take drink. Not because the Road Snakes were around yet but because Randal would think I was a wuss.

The sun was low in the sky. I couldn't see it through the trees. All the light was coming from the slowly darkening sky above.

I was feeling chill. A denim jacket isn't much good for keeping a guy warm in the bush.

Cold and hungry and scared. Boy, it was fun hanging around with Randal on my day off.

He hadn't moved in two hours. He sat and watched the buildings like they were the most interesting things in the world. Maybe he was sleeping with his eyes open. His breathing was deep and regular the way breathing gets when someone is lost to the waking world.

I thought about Billy Paul. I was here because Billy Paul had been murdered and I had never met the man. Knew nothing about him except that he had been married to Gwen back when I was in first or second grade, that he had fathered a couple of children with her, and then he had split. And that he had come back at the beginning of the summer and been trying to move back in with her. And I knew that Randal had good reason to kill him.

By all accounts, plenty of other people did, too. But who? Drug dealers seemed most likely to me. According to the news on television, they killed each other all the time. Maybe the Snakes would tell us who Billy did business with.

Or maybe the Snakes would kill us. Maybe to stop us from snooping around – a warning to other would-be snoops – or maybe just for the hell of it.

I wondered if they would bring guns or knives, or if they would swarm us and stomp us to death with their steel-toed motorcycle boots.

Mom and Dad would hate to see boot prints on my mashed up face at my funeral. They'd have to find a good mortician to make me presentable.

I couldn't stop wondering if Randal had ever killed anyone with that knife. It looked oriental. Had he bought it in 'Nam? Did other soldiers bring back knives like that? I wanted to ask him a question, just to see him do something besides sit and stare and breathe.

I wondered if I would see Randal kill someone tonight.

It was after seven when I heard the distant roar of motorcycle engines coming down the highway.

It was still light. I could see flashes of chrome twinkling through the trees as the bikes bounced down the driveway, raising clouds of dust that slowly drifted our way.

One by one, five bikes rolled into the open yard in front of the house.

The dogs' frenzy redoubled.

I dared not breathe.

A tall, slim man with a long blonde ponytail rode the lead bike. I guessed that he was Wasp, the leader of the Snakes.

A woman with short dark hair was clinging to him. She wore cowboy boots, denim jeans that had been cut off into shorts – short shorts – and a leather halter top. Her leg were long, her stomach flat, and her breasts full. I already hated Wasp for having such a gorgeous creature on his bike.

Second was a huge man. Not many men can make a Harley look small. His arms looked like oak beams and his legs like concrete pillars. His face was half hidden by long, frizzy red hair and an unkempt beard.

The woman clinging to the back of his bike was round in all the right places and in some of the wrong places, too. She stretched her miniskirt to the limit and overflowed her leather jacket. She was laughing the kind of laugh that needed no reason, only a wide space.

Third was a man who looked like an accountant. His hair was short. He wore round glasses. He made his denim jacket and jeans look like a business suit. His movements were tight and precise. Efficient.

There was no woman on his bike.

Fourth was another big man. Not as big as the man on the second bike, but bigger than most. He was cut. Every muscle in his arms was as well-defined as if it had been sculpted in bronze. His denim vest hung open to reveal six-pack abs and pecs like blocks of steel.

The woman on the back of his bike was tiny, barely five feet tall, proportioned like a perfect little doll.

I recognized Monk on the last bike.

He had no woman with him.

When they killed their engines and dismounted, the only sound that I could hear was the frantic barking of the three dogs.

The dust that drifted on the lazy breeze to our hiding place made me want to sneeze. I resisted and concentrated on the Snakes. Now was the time for me to impose on myself the same discipline that Randal had maintained all afternoon.

Every one of the men was wearing his patch on the back of his jacket. A rattlesnake entwined around a motorcycle wheel with the slogan, _Rattle and Roll_. It was the same patch that Billy's mother had been embroidering when we visited her.

Wasp took a Tupperware container out of a saddlebag and walked over to the dog pen. I could hear him shouting over the barking. "Hey, Killer, Champ, Fang! Happy to see me?" He unlocked the gate.

I was terrified that he was going to release the dogs. There was no question that they would ignore their master and charge into the bush to tear me apart. They'd been lusting for that all afternoon.

Instead, Wasp pushed them aside and slipped into the pen. He gave a command and all three dogs fell silent, sat on their haunches, and waited until he put a chunk of raw meat into each mouth.

While Wasp was treating his dogs, Monk unlocked the garage and raised the double door. The others wandered inside.

It was too dark to make out any details, but I could see a mixed assortment of chairs and a refrigerator.

The big man opened the fridge and began handing out beers.

I felt a soft tap on my leg. Randal gestured for me to follow. He rose silently and began walking away from the house, parallel to the driveway.

I tried to walk as quietly as him, but couldn't avoid snapping the occasional twig and rustling through fallen leaves.

We were far enough away that I don't think the Snakes could hear me.

But I could hear the dogs resume their barking.

* * *

Randal didn't speak until we were out of the bush and walking down the highway toward our hidden bikes.

"They brought women. It's a party, not an ambush."

"Maybe the women are part of the ambush."

"No. Every witness counts. They wouldn't have involved any more people than necessary. Four or five would have been enough to take the two of us. Eight is too many."

"So we're safe?" I could only hope that the Snakes knew as much about ambushes as Randal.

"From an ambush. That's not the only risk here."

He said no more and I didn't want clarification. I was already scared enough.

We got to our bikes and mounted up. I followed him back to Kenny Mill.

When we rolled down to the end of the driveway, the dogs were still penned, still barking. The word, _indefatigable_ , came to mind. I bet they were going to curl up and sleep like logs after everyone left.

Monk, Wasp, and the big man stepped out of the garage – I should say _clubhouse_ – to meet us.

"This is Wasp and Friendly," Monk said.

_Friendly_ sounded good. I hoped he lived up to his nickname because he could squash me like a bug if he grew unfriendly.

"Randal and Gunner," Randal replied.

"Bucks and Jimbo are inside," Monk added. He didn't bother naming the women who were inside with the other men.

Now we were all on a first name basis.

Seeing the men close for the first time, I was impressed with their lack of hygiene. All three had long hair that didn't look like it had been washed in a while, bits of food that had been caught in their teeth for so long it was half-digested, and hands grimy with layers of dirt and grease.

I knew that Monk was a mechanic and that explained his grease. I wondered what the others did for a living.

"We were riding through and wanted to pay our respects," Randal said.

"Appreciate it," Wasp replied. "Monk said that you know Billy."

"Didn't know him well," Randal said. "Did a little business with him but we weren't full-time partners. I won't be going to his funeral."

"You got his bike."

"That was part of our business."

"He loved that bike. It was maybe the only thing he did love."

"He hated to part with it, but he needed the money. He was downright desperate for a stake. I never asked why, just gave him a good price for the bike."

"How about you, Gunner? Were you in business with Billy, too?"

It was the first time that anyone had asked me about Billy. The first time that anyone had really acknowledged me. I was taken by surprise. "No." I stammered a little. "No," I said more firmly. "I never met him. Never even heard much about him until he was dead." I shrugged. "Guess I never will meet him now."

"So you're not going to his funeral, either."

"I wouldn't have any place there."

Wasp looked satisfied. "I don't guess we would, either." He waved his hand. "Why don't you guys come in and have a beer. Meet the rest of the Snakes."

It sounded like the entire motorcycle club consisted of these five guys. I'd expected that there'd be more of them.

If Randal thought the same, he gave no sign.

Bucks was the guy who looked like an accountant. Jimbo was the gym rat. It would be easy to remember their names. Both of them were cleaner than the three who had met us outside. Bucks, in particular, looked well-scrubbed – the exception that proved the rule, I guess.

The other guys sat in the mis-matched easy chairs that were scattered around the room. I sat. Randal, Wasp, and Friendly remained standing.

One of the women, the dark-haired beauty who had been riding with Wasp, handed me a can of Iron City. I'd never seen one before. It was a steel can with a label that was mostly white, dominated by a big red oval that bragged that it was brewed in Pittsburg.

What confounded me was that there was no pull-tab. Instead there was a strange mechanism. I poked at it for a minute to no avail.

There was sharp popping and soft hissing around me. I watched one of the other women, the doll-like lady who had been riding with Jimbo, hand Monk a beer. He pulled the ring up and the can popped open. But the ring stayed attached to the can.

I fiddled with it again and figured it out. The ring was a lever. When I pulled it up, the other end pushed down on a scored section of aluminum, breaking it open and pushing it down into the beer. Weird.

This was the third beer that I'd ever had, the first one out of a can. It didn't taste any better than the first two. In fact, it tasted exactly the same. I inferred that beer was not like soda pop, each kind a different flavor. The biggest difference between them was the design on the labels.

I was sipping slowly but some of the other men in the room were already finishing their second. They poured them into their mouths as fast as they could swallow.

"Where you based?" Wasp asked Randal.

"Buffalo," Randal said.

I'd been to Buffalo a couple of times, but I didn't know the city well. I could understand why Randal had not wanted to say that we were from Wemsley – better that these guys didn't know where to find us – but wondered why he had chosen that city instead of New York or Albany or Syracuse. Maybe because Buffalo was about as far from here as you could get and still be in the state.

Wasp's eyes narrowed. "You know the Road Vultures?"

"I heard of them. I don't know them personally."

"No? They joined the Hells Angels a few years ago," Wasp said.

"I heard that."

"You said that Billy was killed in Wemsley." Monk joined the conversation. "You get his bike there or in Buffalo?" Monk looked suspicious.

"Wemsley," Randal said. "That's where our business was done. The cops in Buffalo keep too close tabs on bikers for our comfort. Nobody expects anything to go down in Wemsley."

I admired Randal for his agility in patching together his lies.

"The Buffalo cops keep an eye on independents like you?" Wasp asked.

"They keep an eye on anyone who rides a chopper," Randal said. "They're kind of oversensitive after the problems that they've had with the Vultures."

"What did you ride before you got Billy's bike?" Monk asked.

"Knucklehead on a scratch-built frame. Nice bike but it won't take another re-bore. I'm keeping it for special rides."

There was a lull in the conversation.

After listening to the sound of beer being slurped for a couple of minutes, Bucks said, "We're going to join the Angels."

"Are you now?" Randal said, mildly.

Wasp glared at Bucks and he wilted a little.

After an awkward minute, Wasp said, "The Vultures did. We thought that we'd explore the possibility. That's all. It's not a done deal."

"I see." Randal smiled. "I guess the Angels would need to know what kind of club you've got here."

"We told them that in our letter of introduction," Wasp said.

"I'm sure you did," Randal said.

There was another awkward pause. The Snakes filled the time by drinking more beer. Every time they dropped an empty on the floor, one of the women was right there to hand them a full can. Service was good in the clubhouse.

Friendly and Jimbo both crushed their cans with one hand when they were empty – not that easy with steel cans. It appeared to be some kind of ritual competition between the two. Jimbo looked stronger but I noticed that Friendly's cans were crushed flatter every time.

The other three guys didn't bother joining the competition but I suspected that Monk could have done better than both of them. He was a lot smaller but his forearms looked like rubber sheets stretched over bundles of steel cables. Mechanics develop strong hands.

The room felt tense.

If the mood turned violent, Randal and I were dead. Even with Randal's bamboo-handled knife, he wouldn't get more than a couple of the Snakes before they got him.

I could do nothing but sip my beer and wait and wish that I was back at Elsa's, frying a piece of liver for Barkley.

* * *

Wasp came to a decision. He gestured to Monk and said, "I got a problem with my carb. Come on. I want you to take a look at it."

Monk frowned. "It's too dark out there to work on your engine."

"I think it's just the air filter. Come on and take a look. If it's something more then I'll bring it over to the shop tomorrow."

"You got a flashlight?"

"Yeah. Come on." When Wasp left the garage, he didn't have a flashlight in his hand.

My heart was pounding. Maybe they were going out to get their guns. Maybe they were setting up an ambush after all. Maybe Randal and I were already as good as dead and didn't know it yet.

The big garage door was open. I could see the two Snakes conferring as they bent over Wasp's bike. It was dark and they didn't have a light. Obviously they weren't looking at any air filter.

I chugged the last of my beer. As soon as I set the can on the floor, the big woman who'd come with Friendly pushed another in my hand. The women were drinking as hard as the men, but they didn't forget their duties as hostesses.

I'd had only one can of beer but my head was spinning. I weighed only one fifty, my stomach was empty, and I was unaccustomed to alcohol. I was the cheapest drunk ever to party in the Snakes' clubhouse.

Friendly was sitting no more than a few feet away, but he was looking away from us so I asked his woman, "Why do they call him Friendly?" I was hoping that she was going to say that they called him that because he'd never hurt fly.

"He's Canadian," she said. "They got some show they call the Friendly Giant on TV up there."

I had no idea what the show was about, but I understood that his nickname was a reference to his size, not his disposition. It was probably ironic. I suspected that the Road Snakes liked their irony simple and blunt.

Monk and Wasp came back into the clubhouse. They looked over Randal like tailors fitting him for a suit. Or undertakers fitting him for a coffin.

"Hey, Friendly, Jimbo, come on out here for a minute. We need to do some heavy lifting," Monk said.

The other two didn't need any convincing. They followed Monk back out into the night. I sipped my beer and watched them. They didn't lift anything. Monk spoke to them for a minute. I could see Jimbo scratching at his crotch while he listened to what Monk was saying. After Monk was finished, they all wandered back toward the clubhouse.

Randal didn't look worried. But that meant nothing. Randal never looked worried. Especially when he should be.

Wasp was smiling but it looked forced.

I tried to prepare myself to die. To face my fate with icy fatalism like Randal would. I failed. Dying mattered to me. Especially now. I didn't want to die a virgin when I was so close to curing that unfortunate condition. My hands were shaking.

Monk, Friendly, and Jimbo were smiling when they came back inside. I didn't know if that was a good sign or bad. At least they weren't carrying shotguns.

When they sat back down, Randal reached into his jacket and pulled out a plastic bag filled with dry green leaves. "I brought a token of my appreciation for you guys." He handed the weed to Wasp. "I'm sure that you could use some tea."

Wasp took the bag, said, "We love a tea party," and then shouted, "Let's get this party started!"

I was under the impression that the party had begun some time ago, but I was mistaken. I knew nothing about outlaw motorcycle gang parties.

One of the women, the little doll-like one, turned on an eight-track stereo and Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" began booming from a pair of huge black speakers that were hanging from the ceiling in the far corners of the room.

I was hearing the bass through my rear teeth. My ears weren't involved.

There was wisdom in having their clubhouse miles from the nearest neighbors. In Wemsley, the police wouldn't bother waiting for a complaint if anyone played music this loudly. Their response would be an automatic reflex.

The big woman in the leather jacket and too small miniskirt began dancing across the room. She kicked off her boots and danced in her bare feet. Then she shed her jacket.

She was wearing nothing underneath it.

I was agog.

Her breasts looked huge and they rolled and bounced like nothing that I'd ever seen.

She caught my eye and laughed at me. She sounded like she was having a great time.

The other two women began dancing with her. They kept their clothing on. The beautiful one pulled Wasp into their midst; he began shuffling his feet in time to the beat.

Monk joined them. To my surprise, he was the best dancer of the bunch. His long arms waved and twisted while his short legs kicked and shuffled intricate patterns across the floor.

The doll-like woman was the best female dancer so she paired off with him and they put on an impressive show. I was eighteen and half drunk; I was easily impressed.

I smelled an acrid odor. Someone had sparked a joint. I don't know if it was the weed that Randal had given them or if they had their own. I'd never smoked up and had no interest in trying it that night. I was too interested in the mostly-naked woman dancing in front of me.

The Snakes understood and didn't press the joint on me when they passed it around among themselves. I didn't notice if Randal joined them or not.

The eight-track was playing the Snakes' own mix tape. "Whole Lotta Love" was followed by the Stones' "Can't Get No Satisfaction".

I wasn't getting any action, but I was getting a whole lot of satisfaction.

My beer was gone and I didn't remember finishing it. The girls were otherwise occupied so the guys were grabbing their own beers out of the fridge.

My inebriation made me bold. I staggered over to the fridge and helped myself to another Iron City. Friendly clapped me on the back as I walked past. He intended that his gesture be friendly – living up to his moniker – but he practically knocked me off my feet.

The stereo played "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida" next. Mercifully, most of the long, tedious, self-indulgent drum solo had been edited out.

Halfway through the song, the big woman turned her back to me and raised the right side of her miniskirt to her waist with her hand.

She was wearing no underwear. And her ample right cheek was tattooed with the notice, "Property of the Road Snakes", in bold black letters.

I was astounded by both revelations. I never knew that such women existed. Women who wore no underwear and considered themselves property. If someone had told me, I would have thought that they were pulling my leg.

Did she really mean it? Did she consider herself to be club property?

"You like her?" Jimbo sat beside me and screamed into my ear to make himself heard. "You like our Betty? You want her?"

I wanted her so desperately that I could taste it.

"Hey, Betty!" Jimbo screamed at her.

She smiled at him.

"The kid wants you!"

She danced toward me, shaking her breasts and rolling her barely-covered hips.

I felt faint.

Wasp looked over at me. "He can have her," he said.

"There you go, kid. You can have her," Jimbo said. "The Road Snakes' gift to you. She'll do anything you want, right, Betty?"

"Anything," Betty said and took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

She rubbed her almost nude body against me as she danced.

I felt her long, dark hair brush across my face and her breasts caress my chest through my shirt.

I could scarcely breathe.

I'm no dancer. I shuffled after her as she guided me to the back corner of the clubhouse.

There was an old mattress on the floor.

Cream started playing "Sunshine of Your Love" on the stereo.

She pulled me down on the mattress and leaned to my ear, "How do you want me?" Her breath was warm and I felt her lips brush against my skin as she spoke.

I put my hand on her breast. It was much bigger than Katie's. It overflowed my fingers.

I kissed her.

She had bad breath.

I saw small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

Her hair had grey at the roots. She dyed it.

She was thirty-five, at least. Maybe even forty. Maybe as old as my mom.

She began unbuttoning my shirt.

I looked down and saw that the soles of her feet were black with dirt.

I grabbed her hand to stop her.

She kissed me.

I wanted to gag.

Bucks, the guy who looked like an accountant, was sitting on a wooden chair, staring openly at us across the room. He was practically drooling.

Suddenly, I didn't feel nearly as drunk as I was. "Wait," I said. "Just wait."

"Oh, kid, there's no reason to wait. I want you right now."

"Wait. I got a girlfriend."

"That's okay. I don't want to be your girlfriend. I just want you for tonight. You'll still have your girlfriend tomorrow." She was panting. She sounded like she really did want me. Right now.

Friendly, the giant, was looking at us out of the corner of his eye. I knew from his posture and the way his hand twitched near his crotch, that he was going to have Betty next. And Bucks would have her after him. Unless Wasp wanted her first.

Every man in the Road Snakes had had Betty. In every way. That was what her tattoo meant.

She dropped a hand to my crotch. "Don't you want me?" she asked. Her tone was a mixture of plaintive and petulant.

Not having Betty would be dangerous. When the Road Snakes offered to share, you had to show your gratitude. Offending them by refusing their gift would be terribly unwise.

Suddenly, she rocked back. "What's this?" she cried as she felt between my legs. "You aren't ready for me? I don't excite you?" She squinted at me. "Oh! I get it. You'd rather have Randal than me? That's why you ride with him. You're his ride."

I was shocked. I flushed bright red.

She leaned close and I was assailed by a fresh gust of her noisome breath. "There's nothing that you can do with Randal that you can't do with me. I told you. You can have me any way you want me. Even like that."

"It's not that," I said. "It's not Randal. I told you, I've got a girlfriend. She and me... We're going to get married. That's all. I'm engaged. I want you bad, but it wouldn't be right. It just wouldn't be right. I can't."

"He can't, but I can," Randal said.

I looked up to see him standing there, leering down at Betty.

"Why don't you go polish my bike," he said to me.

I fled the clubhouse.

The Road Snakes hooted at me as I rushed through them.

I didn't care. I was happy that they didn't take offence when I rejected their gift of the use of the club mascot.

After an hour or so, I went back inside and drank another beer. But it wasn't the same. I wasn't one of the guys any more.

I didn't dare ride all the way back to Wemsley by myself. I was Randal's door gunner so I was stuck there until he was ready to leave. That didn't happen until three in the morning.

The capper on the night was that I was so tired that when I got on my bike and raised the kickstand, I dropped it in the dirt. By the time I felt it tilt out of balance, it was too late for me to get it back straight. When it was on the ground, I pulled at it but it was too heavy to budge.

Wasp laughed at me. "Hey, Friendly," he said. "Kid dropped his bike. You want to give him a hand."

"Step back, kid," Friendly said.

He squatted, grabbed the frame front and rear of the gas tank, and tipped the bike back onto its wheels. "There you go." He had lifted nearly three hundred pounds.

I thanked him and remounted the bike.

We all roared down the highway together, us and the Snakes. At various junctions, one Snake after another peeled off until only Randal and I were left, riding towards Wemsley, alone at last.

I'd partied with outlaw bikers, romped on a mattress with a naked biker chick, and I was still a virgin. Alive and a virgin.

I counted myself lucky.

* * *

The next morning, Randal said, "We got lucky last night," as he unlocked the back door to Elsa's.

I wondered how he meant that. Lucky with Betty? Lucky that the Snakes let us party with them? Lucky to be alive?

"How so?" I asked.

"You know why they let us hang around and party with them?"

"Because you gave them that baggie full of marijuana?"

"No. Because they want to join the Hells Angels. They thought that the Angels sent me there to check them out."

"Check them out?"

"Yeah. When I said that I was from Buffalo, they figured that I was one of the Road Vultures, sent to find out if they were badass enough to be Angels."

"You told them that we were independents. Unaffiliated."

"They figured that I lied. That we were travelling incognito so that we could see what they were really like."

"Did you plan it that way?"

"Not exactly. I figured that Buffalo would be a good place to be from. The rest fell into place automatically. We got lucky. We have to figure out how to use that next time."

Next time?

Randal retired to the office where he began calling job applicants. The second new guy, Rick, hadn't lasted a full shift when Mrs. Everett was on the grill. She had dismissed him halfway through lunch.

"Next time, try to find me someone who can sort out the difference between a piece of liver and a chicken breast," she said when she saw Randal. "That's not too much to ask, is it?"

When Gwen came in, she looked me over. "What happened to you, Gunner? You look like death warmed over. You must have had a hell of a day off."

"We partied all night with outlaw bikers. I drank four beers. I'm lucky I'm still alive."

She looked at me like she thought that I was lying.

That was all right. I wouldn't have believed me, either. I'd never strike anyone as the outlaw biker type. Some doctor in South Africa had transplanted a heart from dead guy into his patient a couple of years ago. That's the only thing that would give me the heart of a biker. A medical transplant.

"Yeah, right," she said. "It's okay. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

She joined Mrs. Everett in the front before I could think of a suitable reply.

Lunch seemed busier than usual. Probably it wasn't, but I was definitely moving more slowly than usual so that would explain why I kept falling behind.

Randal made up for my stupor. He was moving as quickly and efficiently as ever. Drugs, booze, sleep deprivation, and stress seemed to agree with him.

He gave me my break early. Katie joined me at the picnic table even though her shift was over in another hour so she wasn't supposed to get a break. She must have prevailed on Gwen's good nature. Which, in turn, implied that Gwen had a good nature that could be prevailed upon.

This job was full of surprises.

"I saw an ad for long haul truck drivers," she said. "There's company out west that'll train you and everything. I think I'd like that. I like driving."

"Eighteen wheelers?"

"Of course, eighteen wheelers," she said. "They don't need people to drive pickup trucks across the country."

I tried to imagine Katie sitting behind the wheel of semi. It was a scary thought.

"It'll be fun," she said.

I imagined Katie having fun behind the wheel of a semi. That was an even scarier thought.

"Go for it," I said. By the time she was on the road, tearing recklessly down the freeway into that black night, I'd be safely ensconced in a Columbia University dorm room in the middle of New York City far away from wherever she was driving.

"You don't think I will?" She sounded huffy.

"I think that you'll do whatever you want," I said.

"Damn right, I will," she said.

I started chewing on my barbecue beef sandwich. It was just shaved beef and barbecue sauce from a can, kept hot in the bain marie until a scoop was piled on a hamburger bun. It wasn't the best item on Elsa's menu but I needed a change and was feeling reckless.

"I had fun on Tuesday," Katie said. "I liked riding on your bike."

"Me, too," I said. "I mean I had fun going out with you." I took another bite of my sandwich. "I'd like to take you out again next week. Next Tuesday when I have a day off."

"Yeah. That'd be good. I wish you didn't have to work all the time."

I glowed inside. She was saying that she'd like to go out with me more often than once a week. That was good. But she was also saying that she wouldn't go out with me on a night when I was working. I didn't blame her for that. It would have been a late evening date and there's nothing to do in Wemsley after ten. Nothing except the one thing that she and I hadn't done yet.

"Me, too," I said.

"You were out with Randal yesterday?"

"Yeah. We were up in the Adirondacks until three in the morning. I only got a couple of hours sleep last night."

"What were you doing up there that late?"

"We got invited to a party. A motorcycle gang called the Road Snakes."

Her eyes grew wide. She believed me. "What was that like?"

"Sex, drugs, and rock and roll," I said.

She was quiet for a minute.

I didn't disturb her while she processed that. I wondered if I should have left the _sex_ part out and just said _beer and music_.

"You had sex?" she asked quietly.

"No," I said. "A biker chick wanted to but I told her that I had a girlfriend so I couldn't."

She looked at me for a minute, and then said, softly, "Me?"

I reached for her hand. "Of course, you. I'm not going out with any other girls."

"You're telling people that I'm your girlfriend?" She was careful to keep her voice neutral.

Suddenly, I was afraid that she might be angry. Did she think that I was being presumptuous?

"Do you mind?" I asked. "It doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to."

"No. I like it. I never had a boyfriend who was in college before."

That made me wonder how many boyfriends she had had. "Have you had a lot of boyfriends who were not in college?" Now it was me being careful to keep my voice neutral.

"Not a lot. Some. You know. About what you'd expect an eighteen-year-old-girl to have. They weren't serious. I never got engaged or married or anything."

"I understand," I said. In fact, I didn't. I had no idea how many boyfriends would be appropriate for an eighteen-year-old girl. I would have preferred her to have had zero, but that horse, apparently, had already left the barn.

Nor did I have any idea what it meant to have a boyfriend who was not serious. Did that mean that he made jokes and laughed while he was doing sex things with her? I didn't want to think about that at all.

I might party with outlaw bikers but that didn't make me any less naïve about normal teenage girls. In fact, it probably made me all the more naïve about them.

My silence was making her uncomfortable. "Who did you take to your prom?" she asked.

"Prom?"

"Sure. You know. You graduated this year, right? Your class had a prom. Who did you take?"

"No one. I didn't go to my prom."

She looked horrified. "You didn't go to your own prom?"

"No. They only sell tickets to couples. I didn't have a date, so I didn't go."

"That's terrible. There were probably a lot of girls who wanted to go and didn't get asked. Why didn't you ask one of them?" Her tone was accusatory. To her mind, a single guy who didn't ask an unattached girl to the prom was about the worse guy in the world. Maybe even worse than a guy who murdered his date afterward. I had committed a sin that would require serious penance. Many _mea culpas_ and rending of my clothes.

"I guess I was shy," I said. "I was younger then." My prom had been only two months earlier, but I felt much older now. I had partied with outlaw bikers. I had felt up a naked biker chick on a mattress in the corner of their clubhouse. I had drunk more than one beer. "Besides, I probably figured that all the girls in the school had boyfriends. Older guys who would take them to the prom."

Thinking back, I realized something else. I hadn't asked anyone to the prom because I thought that no girl would want to go with me. I was one of the biggest dorks in my class. I was afraid that if I asked a girl, she'd likely tell me that she'd rather stay home than be seen at the prom with me.

Now I was two months older and a lifetime more experienced. Now, I realized how foolish that was. I had a girlfriend – kind of – and I could party with outlaw bikers – sort of. I wasn't the dork that I had thought I was.

But I couldn't explain that to Katie.

Instead, I said, "If I had it to do over again, I would go to my prom. Even if I'd had to keep asking one girl after another until one said, 'yes.'"

Katie laughed. "I don't think you would have had to ask that many girls. Unless you picked one who had a boyfriend already, you probably would have had to ask only one."

"If I'd known you a couple of months ago, I certainly would have asked you."

"And I certainly would have said, 'Yes.'"

Everything was right between Katie and me.

Now I had to think of something to do for our next date – on Tuesday.

Before I went back inside, Katie said, "I've never met an outlaw biker."

"They're nothing special," I said.

She didn't say any more about it. But I could tell that she was thinking about it.

When Randal and I finished closing for the night, he said, "You figure out why they call the biker chick Betty?"

"Because it's her name?"

"Because it's short for Betty Boop. You know who that is, right?"

"Betty Boop? It's a cartoon woman."

"Not a woman. It's a cartoon dog."

"Dog?" This was news. The Betty Boop that I remembered from the cartoons looked like a woman to me. I was going to have to look at her a lot more closely next time I saw one.

"Yep. A sexy dog. That's Betty. The Road Snakes' sexy dog."

"That's not nice." I didn't like to hear any woman called a dog. Not even one who thought of herself as the property of a motorcycle gang.

"Yeah, well, you were smart to stay away from her. That dog's got fleas. She gave me crabs. I'm itching like hell." He reached down and scratched vigorously at his crotch. "I've got to stop by the drugstore tomorrow and get something for it."

For the rest of the night, thinking about my close brush with crotch crabs completely grossed me out.

* * *

"The cops are closing in on me. I can feel it." Randal looked grim.

"I haven't heard anything," I said.

"Albertson went around to Gwen's neighbors a couple of days ago. Took him long enough, but he finally figured out that maybe they knew something about Billy and Gwen. I expect that he heard plenty. Especially from the old lady next door. She thinks that there's no soap opera better than her own front window. She's got to have seen me hanging around with Gwen. And she must have heard the row between Gwen and Billy just before he got killed. Even Albertson can add small numbers like that and get an answer. Wrong answer but he won't care as long as it's enough for a lawyer to make a story out of it. He'll arrest me and call Billy's murder closed. I know how it works. No man on earth is lazier than a small town cop. He'll stop looking for the truth long before he's found it."

"What are you going to do?"

"We gotta get back to Oak Falls and find out what the Road Snakes know. Really pump 'em this time. They know more about Billy than they let on. I guarantee that. We'll be more familiar now so they'll be a little more open to us."

I didn't know if I was up for another biker party. The last one had given me enough experience to last a lifetime.

"We'll get up there on Wednesday again."

I was going back to Oak Falls whether I was up for it or not. "Katie's been asking me about last Wednesday," I said. "I think she's trying to hint that she'd like to see a biker party for herself." She hadn't said anything specific, but hanging out with bikers had caught her imagination and she'd mentioned it a couple more times in passing.

Randal shook his head. "You keep her away from the Snakes," he said. "Unless you want to share her with the whole club."

"She'd be with me," I said.

"Don't kid yourself. If you got something that the Snakes want, they're going to take it away from you. You get between them and a delectable little thing like Katie and Friendly'll break you in half and use your bones for toothpicks."

I remembered how the giant had righted my bike. "I wasn't going to take her. I was just saying what she's been saying to me."

"Yeah. Well, you tell her flat out, 'no way.' Don't beat around the bush. You don't let her even think about getting near the Snakes."

"I won't." I was a little confused. "What about the other women? The ones that were with Wasp and Jimbo. Nobody shared them."

"Candy and The Doll? They're insiders. Special cases. I don't know their arrangements but it won't be as simple as it looks. Candy's with Wasp, but she's been around the block with the other guys for sure. The Doll, I don't understand. She's not with Jimbo, just got a ride to the party with him. Near as I can see, she doesn't mix it up at all. Not with Jimbo or anyone else. Maybe she's someone's sister or something. I don't know."

Randal had gleaned a lot more information about the Snakes than I had. "You know a lot about motorcycle clubs," I said.

"Yeah," he said.

"Were you a member of a club somewhere?"

He looked surprised, then laughed. "Nope. I'm not a joiner. The only thing I ever joined was the Army and that didn't turn out so well." His face turned grim and he stared past me at nothing. "I had a buddy in 'Nam whose brother was a full-patch Diablo. We had a lot of time on our hands, Eldon and me. A lot of time. He spent hours telling me about bikers. It was like an obsession with him. It was something he could talk about to keep him from thinking about where we were."

"I see." I didn't, really. It was just another piece in a puzzle that kept growing. The more I learned about Randal, the more questions it raised. I feared that I was never going to get all the answers. "I wonder if Eldon knows anything about the Road Snakes."

"The Snakes? Naw. Five guys out in the middle of nowhere trying to be a club? They aren't on anybody's radar. Calling them small time would give them more status than they rate. Besides, it wouldn't matter if Eldon had heard of them or not. He died in 'Nam."

Gwen called an order and he looked relieved. It was clear that Randal would rather not talk about 'Nam.

"You better get prepped for lunch," he said. "I'll get that fish and chips down."

We did double prep on Sundays because those lunches were always big. Half the town came to Elsa's after church, the other half came instead of church, but everybody arrived at the same time because the non-goers slept in.

Julie worked with Gwen on Sunday lunches then she took the supper shift with Katie so that Gwen could go home early to be with her kids. Sunday suppers were slow. It was the only night of the week that Elsa's closed at eight instead of ten.

Later in the evening, Katie caught me at the order counter and asked if I'd like her to wait around after her shift and then we could ride out to the A&W for root beer.

That sounded wonderful. I knew no greater thrill than to be on my bike with my girl clinging to my back. Because, at that time, I was still a virgin.

"I'm going to order some twine from Sears," she told me over our icy mugs of root beer. "I'm going to learn to make macramé plant hangers. My friend, Shirley, told me that it was easy. You just tie knots to make it like a net around a pot. You can make a planter in nothing flat and a tourist will pay a lot of money for it."

"That sounds good," I said. "My mom likes plants. I'm sure that she'll buy one." I figured that I wasn't risking much by committing Mom to that. I estimated that the odds of Katie finishing even one macramé planter was comfortably close to nil.

"I'd like it if your mother was my first customer," Katie said. "I'll sign the bottom of the pot for her."

"She'd like that." I grinned.

Katie grinned back and sipped her root beer for a minute.

I wondered if she were smiling at the same joke as me. Then I was chilled by a new thought. Maybe the joke was on me. I saw her as oblivious but maybe I was the oblivious one. Maybe she knew exactly what was going on. Maybe she'd been having me on since the day we met. Maybe she had been laughing behind my back all the time that I thought that I was laughing behind hers.

If I were oblivious, how would I know?

I stared at her intently, trying to see through her façade but she stared back equally intently and I couldn't tell which of us was the butt of the joke.

To break the deadlock, I said, "The movie showing at the Paramount this week is called _MASH_."

"What's it about?"

I hadn't done my research yet, so I didn't know for sure. I tried to remember the poster outside the theater. "I think it's about the war."

She made a sour face.

I didn't especially want to see a war film, either, but there wasn't much else to do on a date in Wemsley. Not when the date had to be on a Tuesday night.

We did go to the movie on Tuesday, but neither one of us was impressed. I thought that it was cruel, the way Hawkeye and Trapper treated Major Burns. Since then, I've seen the film many times and think that it's a brilliant movie on every level. That I didn't like it the first time I saw it is an indication of how unsophisticated I was when I was eighteen.

Katie liked it. That was yet another clue that she was more sophisticated than me. At the time, I was too oblivious to see that, either.

Afterward, we went back out to Makeout Hill, but Katie didn't let me get much further than the previous week. As I was slipping my hands under her bra, she said, "I've been curious about what a biker clubhouse looks like."

I had hoped that she'd have forgotten about that by now. She never kept any other thought for more than a day. "Nothing fancy. It's an old garage beside a house that's practically falling down. It's kind of dirty inside." My hands tingled when I moved them across her breasts.

"I'd like to see it."

I stopped massaging her. Randal's advice was sage. "No," I said. "Never. It's not safe for a girl."

"You said there were girls there."

"Not girls like you."

She dropped the subject, but she looked pouty. It was a cute pout but not conducive to heavy petting and I soon gave up and let her reassemble her clothes.

* * *

On Wednesday, Randal and I rode back up to Oak Falls. We stopped by the Snakes' clubhouse first. It was deserted, but for the dogs. For all I could tell, they hadn't stopped barking since we'd left last week.

We had no choice but to ride out to Monk's garage in Old Forge. It was ten miles each way but we didn't know where to find any other members of the Road Snakes.

Monk greeted us like we were old friends, grabbing our hands and pulling us into manly hugs while saying, "Good to see ya again, bro."

He got some motorcycle grease smeared on my denim jacket. I didn't mind. It made me look that much more authentic. Like a real motorcycle rowdy.

"Just stopped by to say, 'Hi,'" Randal said. "See how you're doing."

"Fine, just fine," Monk said. "Got an old Indian. Great bike but her engine needs a full rebuild. Bore it out. Mill the valves. Replace all the seals. She's going to be a fine machine when I'm done with her."

Monk and Randal talked about the bike for a while. Randal seemed to know a lot about motorcycles, which was good because I barely knew which end was the front.

Well after I was bored to distraction, Randal said, "We'll get out of here and let you get back to work."

"Great seeing you," Monk said.

"Do you know where we might find Bucks?" Randal asked. "Last week he was saying how much he liked the weed I brought so I thought he'd like to have a little more."

"Sure thing," Monk said. "It was good shit."

"Well, if you want a little more, I'm happy to share," Randal said and pulled a baggie out of an inside pocket. It was smaller than the one that he'd given to the Snakes last week. That had been for everyone. This week, he'd packed personal-use-sized portions. Or maybe he habitually carried both. I never knew what he kept in his pockets. Denim jackets have big pockets.

"Appreciated," Monk said as he took the baggie. "Bucks doesn't hold a job. Lives with his mom and dad over in Divitston. Give me a minute and I'll see if he's around."

One corner of the garage was walled off to make a little office. Monk ducked in and made a call. And then another. During the next few minutes he made several. Maybe Bucks was a hard man to find. When Monk came back, he said, "Bucks'll meet you at the clubhouse. He'll be there by the time you get up there."

"Thanks, man," Randal said and we hit the road.

Bucks wasn't alone at the clubhouse. Jimbo was there with him.

It seemed that the Snakes didn't like the idea of us meeting with any member one-on-one. If they thought that we were scouting their club for the Angels, they were probably afraid that someone might say the wrong thing and screw things up for everyone.

Bucks smiled. "Hi."

Jimbo looked less happy to see us.

"Hey, man," Randal said, "good to see you again."

Bucks nodded.

"We didn't get much chance to chat the other night, so I thought that we might chew the fat a little today."
"Okay," Bucks said.

So far, Jimbo hadn't said a word. Probably because Randal hadn't spoken to him. Randal was making it clear that he expected to talk only to Bucks.

Jimbo looked at us with poorly concealed suspicion as he unlocked the clubhouse door and followed us inside.

When we were seated in a loose circle in the various tattered easy chairs, Randal handed a small baggie of grass to Bucks and another one to Jimbo. "You guys said you liked the quality, so I brought a little more along."

"Thanks," was the first thing Jimbo said since we arrived. "You want a beer? Help yourself." He wasn't thawing to us– an Iron City was automatic in the clubhouse – but neither Jimbo nor Bucks moved to the fridge so Randal and I stayed put, too.

"I like your bike," Randal told Bucks. "Suzuki 500, right?"

"What of it?" Jimbo asked before Bucks could speak.

"Just a comment. You don't see many bikers riding Japanese. The rest of you ride Harleys."

"My dad bought it for me," Bucks said.

Bucks was at least thirty years old. I tried to imagine my own father buying a motorcycle for me when I was that age. I couldn't.

"What do you think of the two-stroke engine?" Randal asked.

"It's all right." Bucks glanced at Jimbo for support.

"He keeps up with us," Jimbo added. "We got no complaints."

"No, I guess not," Randal said. "From what I hear, it's a fast machine."

Bucks looked like he was going to say something but Jimbo repeated, "It keeps up," before Bucks could form a sentence.

Randal engaged Jimbo in a conversation about Bucks' bike for a few minutes. Bucks had little to contribute, and when he did, his comments were simple and non-technical. Jimbo talked a good game, but I could tell that Randal was losing him when he got into deeper waters, technically.

Bucks dressed like an accountant, but it was soon clear that he was not the club treasurer. He was less than a hundred percent brilliant. Much less. My esteem for the Road Snakes rose a degree. It was good of them to make a place for a guy like Bucks in their group. A lot of guys like him never find anyone who will let them hang out with them.

"I like your shirt," I said to Bucks when there was a lull in the conversation about his motorcycle. He was wearing a plaid cotton shirt with a button-down collar. "Where did you get it?"

"Mom gave it to me," he said.

"She's got good taste," I said.

Jimbo was looking at me hard, trying to see if I was making fun of Bucks.

I wasn't. I was simply confirming my hypothesis. But I couldn't think of anything to say that would make it clear that I wasn't teasing him so I said nothing. I smiled and he smiled back.

"So you guys know that I bought Billy Paul's bike off him," Randal said to break the awkward silence.

"Yeah," Jimbo said. "We all heard."

"I was wondering if you knew where Billy had got it from."

Jimbo shook his head. "Monk might know, but he never told me or Bucks. It was never a topic of conversation."

Randal nodded. "No big deal. I was just wondering. Do you know how long he owned it?"

"For as long as he was hanging around here. He had it when I first met him."

"When was that?"

"A couple of years ago. Maybe three. I don't really remember. He hung around for a while."

"Who knew him best?"

"You got a lot of questions about Billy," Jimbo said.

"Yeah. I do. He wanted to join the Road Snakes, right?"

"Yeah. He made that pretty clear. So what?"

"So I want to know why you didn't let him in."

"You think we should have?"

Randal shook his head. "It's your business whether he was Road Snakes material or not. I'm not questioning your decision. I'm just curious about how you decide if someone gets into your club." He smiled. "It's an important question. I'm sure you understand."

I understood. If Randal were scouting for the Angels, he'd have to report back on what kind of standards the Road Snakes maintained.

"It was a lot of things," Jimbo said. "He wasn't loyal. He wasn't someone we'd trust to have our backs. That's a big deal. Also, he tried to act tough, but he wasn't badass underneath. There's a difference between nasty and badass."

"He was bad to the Doll," Bucks said.

"He was bad to all of us in one way or another," Jimbo added a little too quickly, giving Bucks a sharp warning look. "You never knew how he was trying to rip you off. You just knew that he was always trying. You don't need to know the details. You can take my word for it. If a guy's not loyal to his brothers, he's not going to be a Road Snake. We got each other's backs. Right, Bucks?"

"Yeah, Jimbo. We got each other's backs." Bucks sounded like he was reciting liturgy.

"That's key," Randal said. "If a man doesn't have your back, he's not your brother. Nothing's more basic than that."

"Right on," Bucks said.

I don't think that Randal had me in mind when he said that, but the suit fit me fine. I was Randal's door gunner, no question. I had his back. It made me feel both proud and terrified at the same time. In the clubhouse, mostly terrified. Every Road Snake looked like he was always one wrong word away from exploding. Everyone except Bucks. Bucks mostly looked content.

"Did anyone have Billy's back? Outside the Road Snakes, I mean. He couldn't have been all alone. He must have had someone."

Jimbo shook his head. "He was as alone as I ever seen a man. You couldn't be his friend because he was going to turn on you sooner or later. He thought that the way to be the baddest ass in the valley was to rip everyone off. Everyone. He was never going to figure it different. He just didn't get it."

"He got it in Wemsley," Randal said.

"Yeah. We all saw that coming from a mile away. His days were numbered. A lot of people wanted a piece of him. It was only a matter of time until someone caught up with him."

"You know who his connections were?"

"He talked a lot about knowing some big shot in Syracuse named Warts Weber. That might have been his connection. He always talked about Warts like there was going to be a big payday coming any day. We all figured that Billy was just trying to impress us – pretending that he played in the big leagues – so we stopped listening when he started on that line of bull."

"I don't blame you," Randal said.

"I thought that you said that you were in business with Billy," Jimbo said. "He must have talked to you about Warts, too."

Randal shook his head. "Billy didn't try to impress me with his bull. He and I had a different business in the works. Not drugs."

"What?"

"That's confidential. Need to know," Randal said. "Do you know where this Warts Weber hangs out?"

"Billy mentioned a bar named The Pioneer more than once. I'd start there."

Randal looked around. "So do the Snakes own this clubhouse jointly?"

"No," Jimbo said. "It's Bucks' grandparents' place. They left it to him when they died but they put it in a trust so he can use it but he can't sell it."

For a while, Randal chatted with Jimbo about the way the club was run. They were good questions. He almost had me convinced that he was scouting for the Angels.

After another quarter hour, he said, "Thanks for chatting with us. We gotta get going."

"Keep cool," Jimbo said.

"Yeah," Bucks said. "Keep cool."

"You, too." Randal said.

Jimbo told Bucks to grab a beer. He followed us outside.

"Bucks is all right," Jimbo said when we got to our bikes.

Randal smiled. "Bucks is cool. We got no problem with him at all. Billy we might have had a problem with, but not Bucks. He's solid."

Jimbo nodded. "He is solid."

A minute later, Randal and I roared down the dirt driveway in a cloud of dust.

I was getting the hang of the bike at last. This time, I didn't dump it.

* * *

We arrived at Syracuse in the thick of rush hour.

Riding in heavy traffic introduced me to a whole new level of terror. Most drivers don't watch out for motorcycles. They barely look out for other cars. Every intersection was another close call.

It didn't help that Randal wove around cars as though they didn't concern him in the least.

I kept hearing my mom whispering in my ear, _That machine's a deathtrap_ , and _Randal's going to get you killed._

"You don't know the half of it, Mom," I whispered back as Randal squeezed between a semi and a city bus. Lanes mean little to us motorcycle outlaws. I followed Randal on pure faith, wishing that I were back in the Adirondacks.

I think the end of my handlebar marked the side of the bus, but I didn't dare look down to see. I needed every bit of my concentration to keep control of the bike.

I don't know how Randal found the Pioneer Bar. Maybe he had spent time in Syracuse; maybe it was dumb luck; or maybe Randal had been riding in circles looking for it and I hadn't noticed, my full attention being dedicated to trying to stay alive while keeping him in sight.

The rustic-looking, faux-log building was centered in an oversized gravel parking lot on the edge of town.

There was a line of bikes in front of the bar: all Harleys, as nearly as I could tell. The bad biker's ride of choice.

I'd heard stories about brawls in biker bars. Fatal brawls that left people maimed and dead.

One of the windows in the Pioneer was broken and blocked by a sheet of plywood. Testament to the truth of those stories.

Randal dismounted and began walking toward the door.

I knew that I was about to die, but I trotted after him anyway. That was what his gunner was supposed to do – follow him into the pit of Hell and watch his back. I watched it all the way across the lot.

It was dark inside the bar; it took my eyes a minute to adjust after enduring the glare of the sun on the highway for so many hours.

I heard the roar of conversation subside to an eerie silence, broken only by the clunk of a mug against a plank tabletop.

When my eyes began to serve me again, I saw every eye in the bar starting back at Randal and me.

I never felt so out of place in my life.

Every man in the bar was wearing a leather jacket over a white shirt and rep tie. Their hair was short. They looked like they had been scrubbed clean. Bucks would have fit right in.

A man at the nearest table said, loudly, "Are you with Everlife?"

Randal shook his head.

The man beside him said, "Then I'm pretty sure that you need comprehensive life with double indemnity for accidental death and a guaranteed annuity at sixty-five." He waved a business card at Randal.

Everybody in the room laughed and shouted that they could offer a better deal and waved business cards at us.

"Lord save us." Randal turned toward me. "We've stumbled into a gang of insurance agents."

All the agents simultaneously lifted their mugs of beer and shouted, "To life!"

Randal and I took seats at the bar.

A large, homely woman shoved two mugs of draft beer at us. We hadn't ordered, but that didn't make any difference to her. Nor did it make any difference that I was three years shy of legal drinking age. Nor that I didn't look a day older than I was.

Randal threw a couple of bills on the bar. The barkeep scooped them up and replaced them with a few coins. Randal left the change lying there for her tip.

A man sat down one seat over from Randal, leaned toward him, and said, "Seriously, if you want to talk about your future, I'd love to give you some options. You're young so you can get a great deal on a comprehensive policy." He shoved his card down the bar.

Randal sighed. "Who are you guys?"

"Agents from Everlife Insurance," he said. "We have our own in-house motorcycle club that gets together once a month when the weather's good."

"You're all wearing ties."

"We feel more comfortable that way. We're the other one percent." He looked at me. "How about you guys?"

"No affiliation. We ride independent."

"Freedom of the open road, eh? That must be the life."

"Yeah. It's great." Randal didn't mention that he worked as a short order cook six days a week and was spending his one day off trying to keep from getting convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a murder that he hadn't committed.

"You ever see a television show called _Then Came Bronson_?"

"Nope. Can't say that I have."

"It was on a couple of years ago. About a guy who gave up his job and rode around on his Sportster having a different adventure every week. It was great. I love selling insurance. Don't get me wrong. I love it. But I'd dump it in a second and hit the road if I didn't have a wife and two point five kids at home." He laughed. "She's pregnant, you see. That's the point five."

Randal laughed as though the man had said something clever. Then he looked serious and said, "Some day, I'm going to settle down."

"But 'til I do, I won't be hangin' 'round," the man sang. "Goin' down that long, lonesome highway. Gonna live life my way."

Randal looked confused.

"That's the song. The theme song to _Then Came Bronson_. You sure you never saw it?"

"I'm sure."

"Great show," the man said. "If they ever show it again, you should make sure you catch it."

"Sure thing," Randal said.

"How about you?" the man asked, looking past Randal to me. "You got insurance?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"You ought to think about it. You're what? Nineteen?"

"Eighteen last March."

"Eighteen. Even better. You know, the younger you are, the lower your rate. You could get full life right now for practically nothing. And once Everlife sets the rate, that's it. You'll never have to pay any more. You wouldn't believe how little it'll cost you every month for a hundred thousand dollar policy. A song. And you don't have to die to collect. When you turn sixty-five, we start paying you. It's like free money for your retirement." He shook his head in wonder. "God, I wish I was eighteen again. Do anything you want. Not a worry in the world. You're a lucky guy."

I nodded, thinking about spending my days bent over a hot grill at Elsa's; enduring my unfortunate condition of virginity; constantly terrified that Randal was going to flip out and go 'Nam on me; hanging out with outlaw bikers who would stomp me to death if I said the wrong word. Yeah. I was one lucky fellow. I wondered what the insurance salesman's life was like. Boring. I guess boredom is worse than terror.

The bar was getting noisy. Insurance salesmen are a boisterous lot – extroverted – and they laugh loudly. I had to strain to hear Randal.

"You come here often?" he asked the agent.

"The club comes here about once a year," he replied. "We rotate towns for our meets. My office is just up the road a ways, so a couple of buddies and I come here more often."

"You know if there's someone named Warts Weber around?"

The agent shook his head. "Never heard of anyone by that name. Warts? Is that his legal name? Pretty sadistic parents that would name a kid Warts."

"I expect that it's a nickname."

The barkeep returned with a burger for the agent. There was more meat than bun to it and hot processed cheese slid down the sides like lava. Grease had soaked through the bottom half of the bun and was pooling on the plate. It was half covered by a mound of onion rings that were shiny with hot lard.

I had little appetite for that but the agent attacked it like a starving man. This was not his first burger at the Pioneer.

Between bites, he waved at the barkeep. When she came over, he said, "Hey, Wanda, you know someone named Warts? These guys are looking for Warts Weber." He looked down at us. "That's right, right? Warts Weber?"

Randal nodded.

"I gotta pull some beer for your buddies. I'll get back to you on that." She strolled toward the taps.

Randal looked at me and rolled his eyes. I knew what his expression meant. If Warts were the name of an important connection in the drug trade, no one would answer questions from strangers about him. Randal had intended to approach the barkeep less directly so as not to arouse her defenses. Now, the agent had burned her as a source of information.

I expected that we'd never hear a word from the barkeep again – or get served any more beer – but almost half an hour later, she surprised me. She stopped in front of Randal and said, "Come back at midnight. We can talk then."

Midnight? If we stayed in Syracuse until midnight, waiting to talk to a drug dealer, it would be almost dawn by the time we got back to Wemsley and we had to work tomorrow. If we got back at all.

Randal tapped me on the shoulder and nodded his head toward the door.

On the way out, half a dozen insurance agents shoved their cards at us and promised to write the most wonderful policies ever, especially for us.

Randal and I ignored them.

* * *

Randal and I visited a few other bars during our evening in Syracuse. Randal dragged me into the seediest ones that he could find, but none of them fell below the threshold set by the Pioneer. And no one in any of them admitted to having heard of anyone called Warts Weber. The bars were seedy enough to discourage ordering food so, at seven, we stopped at an A&W. I had a Papa Burger and root beer float. The carhop there hadn't heard of Warts, either, but that didn't surprise us. We asked only because we were asking everyone.

When we returned to the Pioneer at midnight, the lot was empty and the windows were dark. I was surprised. I thought that all bars stayed open after midnight. But, at eighteen, I knew nothing about bars. I wasn't old enough to go into The Ace of Clubs, Wemsley's only bar. Sam Barrett, the owner, was known to be strict about admitting minors and Wemsley was too small for anyone to get away with fake ID.

Randal and I sat on our bikes outside the Pioneer for a minute and looked at the seemingly deserted building.

"Trap?" he asked.

"I don't know," I replied. My heart had its own opinion. It was beating like a bass drum in my chest.

"Only one way to find out," he said and dismounted.

He was going to find out if it was a trap by walking directly into it. Randal was crazy. I followed him, thinking that made me as crazy as him. Back then, I didn't know that crazy was contagious. Experience has made me wiser now.

When he knocked on the door, a big man opened it. He was no insurance agent. His greasy tee shirt failed to cover the lower extremity of his hairy gut where the waistband of his dirty jeans sagged. Even so, his stained cuffs failed to reach the tops of his tattered sneakers.

"Wanda said that she would tell us about Warts Weber," Randal said.

"In the back," the big man said and stepped aside.

Randal walked boldly into the dark bar. I expected to get a bullet in the head or knife in the belly as I followed him through the door. I imagined that my guts would soon get chopped to hamburger like Billy's. That had to hurt.

For the first time, I saw the wisdom of life insurance. If I'd bought a million dollar policy this afternoon, then my parents could be rich when they woke up in the morning. They could have mourned my death in style, lounging on a beach in the Bahamas with rum cocktails in their hands.

The only light came from an open door at the far side of the bar. Randal threaded past empty tables with inverted chairs lifted on top, legs pointing heavenward like a dead forest of elf-sized timber.

After closing Elsa's every night for more than two months, it was a familiar sight. But this place felt different – hostile where Elsa's felt quiet and friendly.

The big man followed us. I figured him for the cook, mostly because he was wearing a greasy apron. I knew about short order cooks now. I knew what they looked like and I knew how they smelled and I knew that they could be crazy dangerous.

Wanda, the barkeep, was sitting beside an old wooden desk in the office. I had time to look at her more closely than this afternoon. She was big. Not so much fat as sloppy through the chest and neck. But her forearms were thickly corded and her calves were bunched with muscle. She was strong underneath the flab.

Her face was square, her features chunky. I doubted that even plastic surgery could make her pretty. Her teeth were yellow and snaggled and her neck-length hair was lank and greasy.

When we were in the office, the big cook leaned against the doorframe, blocking the exit. Maybe it was a thoughtless gesture or maybe it was meant to be as threatening as it appeared.

The desk drawer near Wanda's right hand was pulled open. I couldn't see into it but suspected that she had a pistol waiting there, just in case.

There was no reason to beat about the bush now. Randal got directly to the point. "Where can I find Warts Weber?"

"What do you want with Warts?" she asked.

"I got personal business," he said. "I don't want to talk about it with anyone else."

Wanda shrugged. "I'm Wanda Weber. Some people call me Warts. Either people who know me real well or people who don't know me at all. You can call me Wanda."

"You're Warts?" Randal said. He did not conceal his surprise.

Wanda laughed. It was an unpleasant sound. It had the character of a klaxon. "Surprised that I'm a woman? I'm a feminist. Anything a man can do, I can do better."

"That's okay," Randal said. "I just want to be sure that I'm not talking to the wrong person."

"You probably are, because you are talking to Warts Weber."

I stared at her face. Homely as she was, her skin was as clear as any I'd ever seen. Not a wart, mole, or acne scar in sight.

She saw me staring and laughed again. "That's not where the warts are, kid, but don't worry, I got plenty. If we get to know each other real well, I'll show 'em to you. Then we'll be intimate friends."

I blushed. I didn't want to see Wanda's intimate parts but I wasn't about to insult her by saying that so I said nothing.

"My name's Randal," Randal said. "This is Gunner."

"Are you randy?" Wanda asked with a sly grin.

"I'm Randal. Nobody calls me Randy."

"So what's your business with me, Randy?"

"I was told that you knew a guy named Billy Paul."

She curled her lip. "Knew?"

"He's dead. Died three weeks ago up in Wemsley."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"I was told that you knew him. I'd like to know what he was up to before he died."

"No good, I expect. Billy Paul was never up to any good."

"That's not very specific."

"You cops? I didn't have you pegged as cops." She pointed her double chin at me. "He's too young and you're too cool."

"We're not cops," Randal said. "Billy and I had a business arrangement. He owed me. Now that he's gone, I'm the sole proprietor. I figure I can hold up his end. You'll find me better to work with than Billy."

"I'd find a ratsnake better to work with than Billy."

Randal smiled. "He didn't set the bar too high."

"So who's the kid? Your bodyguard?" She laughed, long and deep and ugly. Wanda found the world a funny place.

"An intern," Randal replied.

Wanda laughed at that, too.

I didn't find humor in either answer.

When her laughter ended, Randal said, "The first order of business is for me to find out if Billy was square with you when he died."

She raised an eyebrow. "Billy was never square with anyone."

"How much did he owe you?"

"You going to make good on his debt?" For the first time, Wanda looked interested. She leaned forward and looked hard at Randal.

"That depends, doesn't it?"

"On what?"

"On if I'm taking over Billy's business or not. If his business died with him, then his debts died with him and they got nothing to do with me. But if I've got his business, then his debts are part of it and I'll make good on them."

"That's how it is?"

"That's how business works."

"What if he owed a lot of money?"

"If he owed more than his business is worth, then I'm not going to take it over. That's obvious."

"Yeah," she said. "Obvious."

She stared at us in silence for a minute.

Randal let her think.

I was sweating buckets and not just because we were four people close in a small office. Wanda's hand was twitching near her open desk drawer. It was after midnight. At this hour, in this neighborhood, there was no one on the street. The bar was located in the middle of a gravel lot with no other buildings nearby. If things went bad, no one would hear the gunshots.

After a while, she said, "I don't do business with people that I don't know."

Randal shrugged. "Everyone's a stranger when you first meet him. You got to get to know people somehow."

"Tell you what, Randy. How about you come back to my place tonight and we spend a while getting to know each other real well?"

I thought about Wanda's warts and wondered what Randal was going to say.

"Sorry. I'm married."

"You got no ring."

"It's a long, dull, complicated story. But it ends with me being faithful to her, regardless."

She looked at me with a yellow grin. "How about you, Gunner? You wanna do some interning tonight?"

It was the second time in a week that someone had offered to relieve me of my virginity in no uncertain terms and it was the second time that I preferred to keep it. A few weeks ago, I never would have guessed that could happen. "I've got a girlfriend," I said.

"She don't need to know. I ain't gonna tell her nothing." Wanda laughed. "I'm a feminist. I believe in sexual freedom."

Randal looked at me with no expression on his face. Last time, he stormed the beaches for me and he got crabs. He wasn't offering to get warts this time. I was on my own.

I shook my head. "I just couldn't do that to her."

"Jesus, it's hard for a horny woman to get laid in this town."

"So how much did Billy owe you?" Randal asked.

"Besides a lifetime of devoted passion?"

"Besides that."

"He owed me for his last two keys. Call it an even thousand."

"You gave him two keys on credit?" Randal asked.

"Hell, no. My business is strictly cash on delivery. He stole them. Grabbed them and ran off without paying. I almost caught him but he hopped on his damned motorcycle and raced off."

"When was that?"

"Last month. You say he was killed three weeks ago?"

"Just about exactly."

"Then he stole my grass a couple weeks before that. Maybe ten days."

"So what do you propose that we should do about it? I'm not going to hand over a thousand bucks for nothing."

She thought for a minute, then said, "You buy from me, two keys at a time, and pay an extra twenty percent premium against what Billy owed and you'll be square after six buys."

"Five buys. Twenty percent is a fifth."

"Six. There's interest."

"Five. I got no reason to pay Billy's interest."

Randal was negotiating. I didn't want to negotiate. I wanted to get out of here alive and never set foot in Syracuse again. Why was he negotiating? Surely he wasn't serious about buying kilos of marijuana from Warts.

"The deal's six. Take it or not, I don't care. I got all the business I need without you."

"Okay, six. But I'm going to think on it before we work out the final details."

"Those was the final details," she said.

Randal pursed his lips. "What was the rest of his business? Who did he sell to?"

"Hell if I know. He talked about some motorcycle club somewhere up in the mountains. Maybe it was them. But he didn't sell to bikers down here. They wholesale from me and do their own distribution. Billy wasn't shy about poaching on anyone so that made him scared about being poached on. Made him paranoid. He never named names."

Randal shook his head. "I'm going to have to investigate that. If I can learn enough about his distribution, then I'll be back in a week to set up a deal with you."

"You know where to find me."

The business was finished for now. The big cook stepped out of the doorway and let Randal and me leave.

Wanda didn't move her hand away from her desk drawer until we were out of sight.

They say grass can make you paranoid. They're right. I never smoked up in my life and it had already made me as paranoid as hell.

I was still shaking when I got back to Wemsley in the small hours of the morning.

* * *

On Thursday morning, the latest new guy was waiting for us show up and unlock the doors. Mrs. Everett hadn't fired him. Nor did she tell Randal to do it when we came in. That was progress of a sort.

I figured that, if he was going to be around for long, I should get to know him as a person, not just as someone to train. His name was Gilles but he called himself Gil. He had a bit of an accent so I think he might have been a bit French. Maybe French Canadian.

I set him to work on the prep, as I had for the first three days he'd been here.

He was chopping the onions a bit faster and considerably more uniformly than before. Maybe there was hope for him.

When Katie came through, tying her apron, she gave a cheerful, "Hello," to both of us.

Then a hitch. As soon as the prep was done, Gil disappeared. I didn't notice for a few minutes because I was busy with the mashed potatoes. When I finished, I saw that Gil hadn't cleaned up the slicer or the rest of the prep area. That's a mistake. It's easy to wipe down the slicer when the food is still fresh, but it needs a full washing if it's allowed to dry and bits of lettuce are sticking to the blade and carriage. I looked around the kitchen but he was nowhere to be seen.

I heard a male voice laughing in the front.

Gil was out there, leaning on the end of the counter, talking animatedly to Katie. She was leaning close to him and laughing lightly at his anecdote.

I opened the kitchen door and leaned out. "Hey, Gil," I called. "The kitchen's in here. The prep area needs cleaning."

"Yes-sa, massa," Gil replied in an exaggerated minstrel show accent. Katie laughed. He was encouraged. "I'll git on that ra-ight sooon, massa."

"Right now," I said. "Not right soon."

"Yes-sa, massa." Gil said. But he didn't move. He just smiled at Katie. She smiled back.

I retreated into the kitchen. Gilles was going to have to go.

When lunch was over and Gil had left for the day, I asked Randal, "What do you think about Gil?"

Randal shrugged. "He seems okay. Better than the last two. What do you think?"

"He's okay when he's working, but he's spending a lot of time bothering Katie. This morning, before he cleaned up the prep area, he was out in the front, talking to her."

"Tell him that kitchen staff doesn't go out to the front during business hours."

"I did."

"What did he say?"

"He called me _massa_."

Randal chuckled. "He's got that right. See if you can get him straightened out. If not, let me know and I'll tell Mrs. Everett to let him go."

"Okay."

"But try to get him straightened out first. I'd like to find someone that we can keep for a while and he's the best we've seen so far."

He was right about that. The last two had been useless.

Katie didn't join me on my break.

On Friday morning, Gil rushed through the prep, cleaned up proper, then disappeared into the front again.

I opened the door to tell him to get back in the kitchen, but Gwen beat me to it. She snapped at him. "Get out of here, Tadpole. Don't let me catch you out front bothering Katie again. She's got work to do. You hear me?"

He jumped up and turned toward the door. He was too smart to answer Gwen with a wise crack. She'd take his head off.

Then Gwen turned on me. "You keep your rabble back there where they belong," she said. "We got no use for you guys out here where customers can see you."

"Bitch," Gil muttered as he walked past me.

I smiled. It was good to have a bitch on my side.

When I closed the door, Gwen was dressing Katie down for wasting time.

After the lunch rush, when Randal and I were alone, he said, "They searched my place, yesterday."

"Who?"

"The cops. Albertson. He had a warrant. He left a copy. Like I'd want it for a souvenir."

"Did they find anything?"

"Nothing to find. I don't know if they took anything. They tore the place up pretty bad. Making a point. I haven't got it all put back together yet. I won't know what's missing until I do."

"What about your knife with the bamboo handle?"

Randal froze. Then he said, "I don't know. I'll have to look for it when I get home. I'll bet you're right. I bet they took it."

He thought about that for a minute.

"They're going to arrest me soon," he said.

I was afraid that he was right.

"You think Wanda killed Billy?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"He stole her marijuana."

"Yeah. She couldn't let that slide. She'd have had to do something about it. She'd have been looking for him for sure."

"You think he came up to Wemsley to hide from her?"

"Maybe. She probably had a bunch of reasons to kill him. Wanda's number one on the list of suspects, but the case isn't closed, yet. Everyone agrees that anyone who was in business with Billy would have reasons. We still got to find out who all Billy was dealing with."

"What do we do now?"

"Go into business with Wanda."

"I don't want to be a drug dealer."

"Me neither. But I don't want to be a convict, either. That doesn't look good on the resume."

I recalled that Randal had already served three months in Buffalo for assaulting some guy. But three months was a long piece from serving life for murder.

Gwen called out an order for chicken and Randal went to cook it.

I took my lunch break at the end of Katie's shift. Today, she joined me.

"You want to go to a movie on Tuesday?" I asked.

"No."

This was it. She was breaking up with me. I gritted my teeth and waited for her to say that she'd rather date Gil than of me. He made her laugh. I didn't know much, but I knew that women liked that.

"You know what I want to do?" she asked.

Maybe she wasn't breaking up with me.

"What?"

"I want to see the motorcycle gang's clubhouse."

"What?" My shock sounded in my voice.

"What do they call themselves? Rattlesnakes?"

"Road Snakes."

"Right. Road Snakes. You went to a party at their clubhouse, right?"

"Right. Last week." Though so much had happened since then that it felt like last year.

"I want to see where they party."

I shook my head. "That's not a good idea. Really not a good idea. I told you that."

"No, you told me that it wouldn't be a good idea to meet them. Okay. I got that. But I'm not asking to meet anyone, just to drive past their place. Come on. It's no big thing. I'm not asking to go to a party or anything. Nobody will ever know we were there. I just want to see where they hang out. Besides, they won't even be there during the daytime, will they?"

"Probably not." They hadn't been around when Randal and I first scouted the place. We'd met Bucks and Jimbo there in the morning, but only because they'd made a special trip. "It's locked when they're not there. I don't have a key."

"I don't want to go inside, silly. I just want to drive past. Not even stop. Just see it on the way by. You can do that for me, can't you? Drive past and point it out to me."

"Why?"

"I'm just curious, is all. I hear you talk about it with Randal and I want to see what you're talking about. Please."

Lord save me, I was powerless to refuse. Powerless. Especially when Gil was hanging around, trying to snatch her away from me. He made her laugh. All I could do was show her that I hung out with bad boys.

"Okay," I said. "But we just drive by. We don't stop. And we sure don't talk to any Road Snakes. We don't even see one."

She grinned. "Okay. This is going to be great."

"Yeah. Great." I figured that earlier would be better than later. "I'll pick you up at nine on Tuesday morning."

"I can hardly wait."

I could hardly breathe. But at least Gil couldn't do this for her. I had that on him. I needed all the edge that I could get.

* * *

On Sunday, I asked Randal what we were going to do next. I didn't want to have to see Wanda again, but I figured that it was inevitable, sooner or later.

"I been thinking," Randal said.

"Yeah?"

"About Gus."

I struggled to figure out who Gus was. Then, I remembered buying beer from him in Utica. That seemed so long ago. Before Wanda. Before the Road Snakes. "Yeah?"

"He strike you as legit?"

"He sold beer to me and I look barely eighteen. And he was selling hard stuff to a bunch of other kids who didn't look any older than me."

"Besides that. What did you think about his story?"

"Uh. Okay, I guess."

"First he's all, 'I ain't seen Billy since high school,' then he's telling us about Billy's personal life like him not having any friends, then he's saying, 'Billy was trying to crash at my pad last week.' He knew a whole lot about someone that he hadn't seen for ten years."

"Yeah." I struggled to remember how that conversation had gone. It had seemed natural at the time, but now that Randal was pointing out the inconsistencies, it did seem rather odd. "I guess if selling booze to minors didn't bother him, lying would be no big deal, either."

"Selling fifths of Old Grand-Dad to kids every night paints a certain picture," Randal said. "He has a lot of college students around, going to parties, and he only works nights. Makes you wonder what else he offers for sale, don't it?"

"Like maybe..."

"...like maybe Billy's pot. I can't think of anyone else who is so well-placed to distribute for Billy. He may have had other reps – I'm not saying that Gus was the only one – but I'd bet hard cash that Gus was his number one distributer."

"What about the Road Snakes?"

"The Road Snakes might distribute a little, but they strike me as the kind to use more than they sell. They're not exactly hanging around with college kids by the score."

"So what are we going to do about Gus?"

"Make him an offer. Get into his head. See what he offers in return." Randal looked at me. "You with me?"

"Always."

"We close at eight. We can be in Utica by ten."

My heart sank. I'd expected to get some sleep tonight. I was tired. But if Randal needed his door gunner for a night mission, that was not to be.

I had to tell Katie that I couldn't take her out for a root beer like we'd been doing on Sundays. I was worried that she would get upset, but she was impressed that I was hanging with Randal, so it was all right.

Just to be safe, I waited until Gil had gone home for the day before breaking the news to her. No sense giving her a chance to make plans with him instead of me.

The ride to Utica was nice. Uneventful. Just cruising down the highway, curving this way and that, sometimes the setting sun at our backs, long shadows stretching out in front of us, sometimes tacking toward the red orb hanging low before us.

When it got dark enough, I had to swap my shades for clear goggles. The bugs were thick at this time of year.

When we got to Utica, Gus looked surprised to see us. He was selling a fifth of vodka to a kid with acne and tobacco stains on his fingers. We waited. After the kid left, paper bag in hand, he said, "What can I do ya for?"

"You remember us?" Randal asked after the kid left.

"Billy's business associates," he said.

"Right. But, now that Billy's dead, there's no associate. It's all my business."

"Is that so?"

"That's so. I figure it's been a month at least, since your last deal with Billy so you've got to be out of product."

"What product?"

"You know."

"I don't know you."

"Sure you do. A couple weeks ago, I introduced myself and Gunner, here. And I know about your business arrangement with Billy, so that's all the bona fides you need. The only question is how may keys you need on Wednesday so that I can deliver enough bona fides for you to make your customers happy."

Gus stared at us. I could see the gears working. He didn't know us but he needed what we were offering. It wasn't a complicated problem, but it was hard for him to work through the trust barrier.

Greed and need won out over fear. "I can handle one."

"Only one?"

"It's a start."

"Four hundred," Randal said.

"That's way too high."

"That's business. Inflation. There's a lot of dime bags in a key. You'll do all right. And if you gotta charge a little more, your customers are gonna understand. They're college educated."

Gus sighed. "You're going to kill me."

"No. That was Billy who was killed. You're going to do just fine."

Something about the way Randal said that – _That was Billy who was killed_ – made me wonder again if Randal had done it. It had been a long time since I'd thought it possible that he had murdered Billy but I still didn't have any proof of his innocence. I had only my gut feeling and I never trusted much in gut feelings. If you had enough information, logic beat intuition every time.

The problem was that I still didn't have enough information.

An older man with a grey-flecked beard came in. He didn't pretend to buy anything, just looked at Gus with hungry eyes.

Gus shook his head and said, "Wednesday."

The man gave a sad salute and left.

Gus looked at us. "Wednesday."

The deal was done. We left.

As we mounted up, I said, "I don't understand the business. If we buy from Wanda at five hundred and sell to Gus at four, we don't make any profit. We take the risk and do the work and we lose a hundred on every key? That's insane."

"Wanda's overcharging us," he said. "And it's worse than that. We got the twenty percent loan payment on top. But that's the startup cost. We can negotiate a proper price once we're in operation. She'll let us buy at a better price when she knows us."

"But this is the same as she was charging Billy. Not the twenty percent, but the five hundred a kilo."

"How do you figure?"

"That's what she told us."

"You believe Wanda? She also said he stole two keys. Don't believe that, either. If he'd really stolen two, she'd have claimed four."

"Okay. If you're right and Billy was making a profit, why'd he have to steal from Wanda?"

"Guys like Billy don't understand the need to keep their business solvent. Maybe he spent his capital on booze and whores. Maybe he got ripped off. Maybe he gambled it away playing poker with the Road Snakes. Who knows? All we got to know is that he was so desperate that he had to rip off Wanda for a key. He was on the ropes and he went down for the count. That's what they ought to carve on his tombstone. He was on the ropes and he went down for the count."

* * *

I never looked so cool in my life, riding down the highway on my big Harley, hot girlfriend clinging to my back, she wearing the helmet, me in my Ray-Ban aviator shades.

I never felt less like a math geek. I liked it.

The sun was nearing the zenith when we got to Oak Falls. I slowed down and pointed at the Kenny Mill sign. "The clubhouse is in there." I spoke loud to be heard over the growl of the engine as we cruised past.

"I can't see it," she said.

"It's back behind the trees."

"I want to see it."

"We'd have to drive right up to it."

"So? You said there wouldn't be anyone there.

That I had. "Probably not," I said. "Probably not."

"So. Let's go."

I pulled a U-turn and pointed the bike back toward Kenny Mill.

We could hear the dogs barking in wild abandon as we rolled down the dirt driveway.

"You didn't tell me about dogs." She sounded worried.

"They're in a cage."

"Good." She hugged me tight.

I hoped that no one had decided to let them roam today.

When we emerged from the trees, the place looked deserted. I stopped the bike. "That's the clubhouse, there." I pointed to the garage. "I don't think anyone lives in the house. There's the ruin of an old mill in the back by the river. That's why they call it Kenny Mill."

"There's a river?"

"Small river. Really just a large stream."

"I want to see."

"You can't see it from here. We'd have to walk back there."

She jumped off the bike. "Let's go look."

"Whoa! We're not stopping here. You just wanted to drive by the clubhouse. We've got to go."

"We've got to see the mill. Come on." She began walking toward the gap between the garage and the house. The dogs worked themselves into a frenzy, jumping against the chain link sides of their cage and barking and growling like rabid beasts.

I killed the engine and hurried to catch up with her. "One quick look and then we have to get out of here."

"Yeah. Sure." She looked at the dogs. "Noisy, aren't they?"

"Yeah. They bark all the time."

"Poor things."

Those _poor things_ looked like they wanted to tear our limbs off and devour the pieces.

"I wish we'd brought a bag lunch," she said when she saw the ruined foundation of the mill. "This would be a great spot for a picnic."

"There's a Dairy Queen in Oak Falls," I said. "Let's go there, now."

"I want to look around a little, first."

"I'm hungry now."

"We didn't ride all the way out here just to turn around again."

_Yes, we did_ , I thought but didn't voice the words. _That was exactly the plan_. I looked around. I didn't see anything untoward.

"I bet there's fish in there." She was peering into the water. "If we had a fishing pole, we could catch something for lunch."

"Let's go to that Dairy Queen. Maybe they have a fish burger."

"I'd rather have a banana split."

"It's a deal. I'll get you a banana split."

But she was wandering around the ruin, not listening to my generous offer. "This is really old," she said. "It was a flour mill. The millstone's still here." She pointed to a big piece of round granite in the middle of the ruin. "At least, the bottom half. It was probably too heavy for anyone to want to move it."

She spent a long time poking around the ruin, talking about the old days when people had to take their grain to a local mill in a wagon.

I never guessed that she was interested in history.

"We've got to go," I said at last. "Now." And I started walking back to the bike.

She followed.

Too late.

When we rounded the dog pen, I saw Friendly, the giant man, leaning against my saddle. Between the barking dogs and the rushing water, I hadn't heard the sound of his chopper arriving. Two choppers next to mine. I wondered who had come on the other one.

The clubhouse door was open – not the big double doors for cars but the small single door for people. Wasp poked his head out. "Hi, kids," he called out and stepped toward us. "You going to introduce us to your friend, Gunner?"

I turned to her. "Katie, this is Wasp and Friendly." I turned back to them. "This is Katie."

"I'm ever so pleased to meet you, Katie." Wasp grabbed her hand, bowed over it, and planted a kiss on the back in a parody of a gallant knight. "It was good of our friend, Gunner, here, to bring you up for the party."

"I didn't know you were having a party," I said.

"Neither did we," he replied. He was talking to me, but he was looking at Katie. "But when you have guests, it's only polite to throw a party for them. Come on in and have a brew." He gestured extravagantly to the door of the clubhouse.

Katie looked at me uncertainly. She had lost her carefree attitude.

"We'd like to," I said, "but we've got to get back to Wemsley." I turned toward my bike.

Friendly was still leaning against the saddle, making no move to step aside.

There was no way that I was going to move him if he didn't want to be moved.

"I'm sure that you can spare a few minutes for a brew. I mean, after Friendly and me drove all the way out here just to be good hosts. It wouldn't be polite to run off right away, would it?"

I shook my head. "I didn't think that you'd be around. I didn't mean to bother you."

"No bother," he said. "We like to party. Jimbo happens to be staying in the big house for a couple of days and was kind of surprised to hear you come up the driveway." He nodded toward the house.

I hadn't noticed Jimbo standing quietly on the porch. He nodded back to Wasp and came down the front stairs.

Three against one. I wouldn't have liked my odds against any one of these men. Three was hopeless.

"Where's your buddy, Randal?" Wasp asked. "He going to join us?"

There was no right answer to that question. If I said he was, then Wasp would insist that we had to stay and wait for him. If I said that he wasn't, then Wasp would know that I was all alone.

"I don't know," I said. "He knows we're up here but he didn't say if he was going to meet us or not."

Wasp smiled broadly. "I got it. So I guess you better come in for a few minutes and we'll see if he shows up." He stepped aside to clear our route into the clubhouse.

Jimbo stood behind Katie. I heard my bike creak when Friendly took his weight off it and came up behind me.

I glanced around. All three men were looking at Katie.

"Come on, little girl," Wasp said and offered his arm to her.

She didn't take it right away, so he used his other hand to pick up hers and lay it on his arm.

"Is there something wrong?" he asked her.

"No," she said. Her voice was quavering a little.

"Good. Come on." He led her into the clubhouse.

Jimbo followed her and Friendly stepped around me to follow him.

They didn't care about me. There was no one between me and my bike. Nothing to stop me from mounting up and riding away. Alone.

Katie glanced back at me with wide eyes as she disappeared into the shadows.

I hurried after them. I could well be rushing to my death, but there was no way that I was leaving her with the Road Snakes, unprotected. That would be inconceivable.

* * *

Wasp led Katie to one of the raggedy overstuffed couches. When she sat down, she was looking across the room at the mattress in the corner.

She didn't have to be a genius to know what that was for.

Wasp had chosen her seat deliberately. He wanted her to see what was expected.

He sat down beside her.

There wasn't enough room on the other side for Friendly, so he sat in an overstuffed chair where he had a good view of Katie's thighs clad in skintight denim. He was staring openly at her crotch.

Jimbo was pulling cans of Iron City out of the fridge. I sat down on the other side of Katie before he could claim the spot.

"Where's Betty?" I asked. "And Candy?"

"There're not here," Wasp said as though that were not obvious. "Today the Snakes are going to party stag."

With Katie here, it wasn't completely stag but I didn't mention that. The girl in the cake doesn't count at a stag party. She isn't a guest; she's the entertainment.

"You look awfully warm," Jimbo said. "You need a cold one." He thrust an Iron City into my hand.

I wasn't sweating because of the heat.

"And you look just plain hot," he said to Katie, handing her a cold beer, too.

"Thanks," she said. Her voice was quiet. Frightened.

The Snakes didn't care.

"Plenty more where that came from," Wasp said. "Maybe in a while, we'll smoke up a bit. You look tense. It'd be good to mellow you out some."

I wondered if we would be getting mellow on the grass that Randal had given to the Snakes.

Wasp took Katie's left hand in his and stroked it gently.

"I'm kind of surprised." He leaned forward to look across Katie's breasts at me.

"About what?" I asked.

"No ring," he said. "You told Betty that you were engaged. I was looking forward to meeting your fiancée."

"This is her," I said. "I haven't got her a ring yet. That's all."

"Oh, no, little buddy. I don't think so. No ring, no engagement. That's the rule. You might be planning on getting engaged, but it's not official until you give her the ring. Until then, well, she's unclaimed. Right, Friendly?"

"Right, Wasp," Friendly rumbled. "Unclaimed."

I glanced at Jimbo. He was absently scratching at his crotch.

"Fair game and a fair lady," Wasp said. "Fairest of them all." He stroked her hair. "Here," he said, "let me get that open for you." His hand brushed against her breasts when he reached to grab the beer can from her hand. He pulled the tab and then put it to his own mouth. He took a long pull that emptied half the can before handing it back to her. "Good stuff. Drink up."

She drank a sip.

"Jimbo, you better get Katie another one. That one's almost gone. We don't want the lady going dry."

"Yes, sir," Jimbo said. "A dry lady's no fun."

Katie's ears turned red.

"She's my girlfriend," I said as firmly as I could.

"Sure, she is, Gunner. Sure she is. We know that. Don't worry. You can have your turn, too. We know how to share, don't we?"

Jimbo and Friendly rumbled agreement.

"I'm sure you don't mind waiting your turn, this being our clubhouse and all, right? That's the respect that we show each other. You respect us, right?"

There was no way to answer that, either.

"You do look hot," Wasp said to Katie. "Let me help." He took her beer from her hand and set it on the floor. Katie wore a leather jacket when she was riding with me. Wasp took her hand and pulled her to her feet. When she was standing, he slowly unzipped the front of the jacket and then pushed it off her shoulders and down, letting his hands caress her arms, full length.

All eyes were on her. I might have been invisible.

Underneath the jacket, Katie was wearing a light cotton blouse with a red and yellow psychedelic print. I hadn't seen it before.

"Groovy." Wasp tossed her jacket into an empty chair.

"You didn't tell us that she was a flower child," Jimbo said from across the room.

"A free spirit," Wasp said. "That right? You're free?"

Katie didn't answer. She sat back down on the couch.

Wasp sat beside her and handed her the can from the floor. "Better drink this down," he said. "Jimbo's coming with more."

When she put her can to her lips to take another sip, Wasp put his dirt-encrusted hand around hers, pushed the can hard against her mouth, and tilted it upside down. He held it there until it was empty. She swallowed as much as she could, but a copious flow flooded over her chin and down her blouse.

"Hey!" I yelled.

Friendly stood up.

"Don't be upset at her." Wasp waved Friendly back into his chair. "It's not her fault. We expect that she'll be a bit clumsy. All us sexy guys in one place have got her all worked up. Of course she's going to spill a little beer. But it's all right. We've got plenty more. Here. You can have my can." He knocked the empty can out of her hand and shoved his own, nearly full one at her. "Drink up, dear. Don't be shy."

"Yeah," Friendly said. "Don't be shy." Laughter rumbled in his gut.

Jimbo arrived with two more cans of Iron City.

Katie took another sip from the can that Wasp gave her.

She was weeping silently. Tears were mixing with the beer that was splashed on her cheeks.

I was shaking with anger. Friendly watched me with casual amusement. Nothing would be funnier to him than seeing a little puppy so scared that it wet itself. He was looking for an excuse to put the fear of Friendly into me. Any excuse would do.

"You're going to catch a chill in those wet things," Wasp said.

There was enough beer soaked into her blouse to make it cling to her breasts and render it semi transparent. Her bra showed clearly underneath. Red lace. But at least she was wearing one. For now.

"I better help you get out of that wet stuff." He stood and pulled her back to her feet.

When he undid the first button of her blouse, I had to do something. I stood up and grabbed his hand to stop him from moving to the second button.

Friendly and Jimbo rushed me simultaneously. They had been waiting for me to make a move. They each grabbed an arm and pulled me away from Wasp and Katie. At the party, they had competed to crush the steel beer cans. Now they competed to crush my arms. The pain was intense.

"Your boyfriend is getting impatient," Wasp said. "He's an eager beaver."

I struggled against the big men holding me but it was like pushing and pulling against two oak trees. I wasn't bothering them in the least, but I was damaging myself. If I lived to see tomorrow, I would be bruised from shoulders to elbows.

"Don't you want to keep this friendly?" Wasp asked Katie.

She nodded.

"Good, because we don't want anyone to get hurt. You don't want your boyfriend to get hurt, do you?"

She lowered her eyes and shook her head. Tears dropped off her chin.

"Good. So let's keep this all friendly, okay?"

"Okay," she said so softly that I could barely hear her.

"Tell Gunner to stop fighting us."

She looked at me. "It's okay," she said, her voice louder, but almost cracking in fear. "I'll be all right. Don't try to do anything." She looked back at Wasp and undid the next button on her blouse herself, revealing a glimpse of red lace. She lowered her hands to the button beneath her breasts and slowly undid that one.

I slumped in Friendly and Jimbo's hands. Now, they had to hold me up, instead of holding me back.

When she unfastened the last button, she pulled the tails of the blouse from her jeans.

She pulled the blouse off her small white shoulders too slowly. Wasp was impatient. He reached out and pushed it down her arms. The damp material loosened some of the dirt on his right hand and he left a dark brown streak down her left arm.

I don't know if she noticed. Her head was hanging down and her hair was blocking my view of her eyes.

The growl of a Harley roared toward the clubhouse. Someone was coming down the driveway at full speed.

Everyone paused.

I prayed that it was Randal, coming to the rescue, but knew that was impossible. He was cooking at Elsa's today and had no idea where I was.

The bike fell silent, leaving only the constant barking of the dogs.

Katie left her blouse hanging from her wrists. We all waited in silent tableau.

When the door opened, Bucks was framed in the noon sunlight.

Katie would have a fourth Snake to entertain.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Just a little stag party with our new friends," Wasp said.

"Guess I didn't get invited."

"You're here," Wasp replied.

"Monk told me. He can't get away. He promised a guy that he'd finish his brake job by this afternoon."

"We know," Wasp said. "That's what he told us." He looked at Katie, half naked, and then back at Bucks. "Well, now that you're here, come on in and join the party."

Bucks stepped inside and surveyed the scene, looking most intently at Katie with her blouse hanging at the end of her arms, her torso clad only in the bra, her full breasts barely concealed by the red lace cups. He could see the tears trailing down her cheeks. Then he looked at Friendly and Jimbo, still holding my arms.

He shook his head. "I promised The Doll. We all did."

Wasp shrugged. "We kept that promise."

Bucks shook his head. His mouth moved but he couldn't find the words that he wanted to say.

Another figure stepped into the doorway. A female silhouette. Candy.

"Bucks thinks that we promised the Doll more than just the one thing," she said. "I don't know about that. I guess it's up to each of us to decide what we promised. Me, I'm not so big on lifetime commitments. You guys got to decide for yourselves."

Everyone watched her as she prowled across the room. She stroked Friendly's face. "You can let go of Gunner," she said. "He's not going to be a problem. He's a friend, right?" She looked at me.

Friendly dropped my arm.

When she looked across at Jimbo, he did the same.

"Why don't you two come with me?" She looked at the two big men. "I'm not going to leave you hanging out in the cold."

She took Jimbo and Friendly's hands in hers and led them away from me.

"Wasp, you want in on some real action?" She looked at him.

He looked longingly at Katie's full breasts. He wanted them bad. But Katie was a one-time pleasure and Candy was long-term satisfaction. The effort of exercising self-control was visible in his face as he turned away from Katie and took a reluctant step towards Candy. He moaned softly.

As the three men followed Candy back to the mattress in the corner, she shed her leather jacket and began unbuttoning her blouse.

Bucks approached Katie and pulled her blouse back over her shoulders. The streak of dirt that Wasp had left was covered up, but still there under the sleeve of her blouse. I grabbed her jacket.

"You better get out while you can," he said. "Candy can't keep those three busy for long."

"Thanks," I said. I grabbed Katie's hand and pulled her out of the clubhouse. I could barely hold onto her, both our hands were so slick with sweat.

No one tried to stop me from cranking my bike to life and pointing it back to the highway, Katie clinging to my back tighter than she ever had before.

It should have felt wonderful, but I was humiliated. Ashamed that I had been too weak to save her from being assaulted by the Snakes.

Bucks was the white knight. Bucks and Candy.

I was the fool and coward.

I was devastated when, as we left Oak Falls, she said into my ear, "Thank you for saving me. You were heroic."

She was being sarcastic. Not just making the point but twisting the knife. She knew damned well that I had done nothing. If either of us had done any heroic saving, it was Katie who had saved me from a beating or worse by cooperating with the Snakes. By humiliating herself.

But I wasn't about to argue with her. She had endured enough for one day. We both had.

I took her straight home.

We had nothing more to say to each other.

She kissed me on her front step. I guess she was obliged to do that much. Then she disappeared through her front door. I expect that she was in a hurry to take a shower.

I thought it most likely that she would quit her job at Elsa's tomorrow so that she wouldn't have to see me when I came in to work on Thursday.

I wouldn't blame her.

I had been stupid to take her up there. I never felt so miserable in my life.

* * *

The next day, Wednesday, I wanted nothing more than to tell Randal that I wasn't up to another trip to Syracuse to confront Warts Weber. I didn't want to see her again. I didn't want to feel threatened by the apron-clad gorilla who watched over her. I didn't want to buy drugs from her.

I would have told Randal all that, but I couldn't. Not when I'd let Katie down the day before. I would have let her get gang raped. I felt sick to my stomach every time I thought about it. I would have just sat there and watched the Road Snakes destroy her. I had to prove to myself that I wasn't a coward. At least, not all the time.

Randal needed his door gunner and that was me. Even if I was unarmed and useless.

"You think we should get some guns?" I asked as I mounted my bike.

He raised an eyebrow at me. "Not unless you want to get shot. You aren't suicidal are you?"

"No. If we get guns then we can protect ourselves if someone threatens us."

"You ever shoot anybody?" he asked.

"No."

"You ever shoot a gun at a target?"

"No."

"You even held a gun?"

"No. But I know how it's done. It's not rocket science."

He looked at me with his hard stare. "I can tell you one thing that's as certain as sunrise. If you pull a gun on Weber, she's going to take it away from you and blow your head off with it. I've seen men shot with their own guns. They die with the stupidest looks on their faces that you'll ever see."

I had no rebuttal for that so I started my bike. While we were waiting for my engine to warm up, I said, "You going to buy grass from Warts?"

"Why are you calling her Warts?" he asked.

"Because she's got warts."

"How do you know?" He laughed. "You see 'em?"

"Because she said so."

"That don't mean it's true," he said.

I was taken aback by that thought. "Why would she make up something disgusting like that?"

"Keeps men from hassling her. Going after her like they would. Trying to get her alone. She's in a bad line of work for a woman. Even a homely woman's got to be on her guard."

"We weren't hassling her. She was hassling us."

"Yup," he said. "Effective, wasn't it? I bet you haven't had a lustful thought about her all week."

He was right about that.

The trip to Syracuse seemed shorter this week than last. Time is perverse that way. It crawls toward what you want and speeds toward what you don't.

It seemed like my summer was speeding away. The only thing I had to look forward to, now, was going to university in September and that was frightening in its own way. High school had been easy enough, but Columbia University was no high school.

We reached The Pioneer as lunch was ending. It didn't look like they had a big rush like at Elsa's. That was not surprising considering the quality of their food. And the quality of their cook.

When Wanda saw me, she grinned. "You come back here to make me a happy woman, Gunner?"

"If you're happy that we're going to buy your beer and talk, then sure," I said.

"I don't need talk from a young pup like you to make me happy," she said. "I need action to get satisfaction."

"I'm still engaged," I said.

"I still don't care," she said.

"We're here to do business," Randal said. "We'll each take a pint of whatever you got on tap."

"You get a pint," she said. "This pup gets a soda. I'm not risking my license by serving a minor."

She hadn't worried about that last time, but, last time, she had no reason to put me down. Now, I had turned her down and she was getting hers back. It didn't matter that she didn't actually want me.

She returned with pint for Randal and a glass of bright pink cream soda for me. She charged the same price for both. And I don't even like cream soda.

Randal paid without comment. If I'd asked, he would have said that it was part of the cost of doing business with Wanda.

The business turned out to be anticlimactic. Wanda asked us if drinks were all or if we wanted something to go. Randal said that twelve bucks should get us two to go, including the twenty percent tip. He laid a dozen hundred-dollar bills on the counter like he was paying a bar tab. She scooped them up and disappeared into the back room. She returned in a minute with a heavy paper bag that was folded and stapled closed.

She didn't count the money in front of anybody. We didn't look in the bag. We trusted that we hadn't been given hamburgers or bricks of oregano or ditch weed. She wouldn't rip us off because we knew where to find her.

I thought that Randal would try to pump her for more information about Billy. Try to find out if Warts had killed him for ripping her off. But he didn't say a word. As soon as we had the stuff, we left. In retrospect, he was right. This trip wasn't to find information, it was to build trust. If he'd pressed her again this week, like he had last week, he would have made her suspicious. And got no further.

Neither bike had panniers so Randal strapped the bag to his sissy bar with bungee cords.

Utica's not far from Syracuse so the day was still young when we got to the liquor store. The sun was high and Gus's shift wouldn't start for a few hours. We had time to kill.

I followed Randal up to a park in the middle of the city. The sign at the gate said that it was Roscoe Conkling Park. We could look out over the city from the top of a hill inside.

We parked the bikes and carried the paper bag to a secluded spot near the top. After checking to make sure that there was nobody in sight, Randal pulled the staples out of the bag and opened it up. Two large freezer bags were packed with green weed. Randal pulled them open and smelled them. "Good stuff," he said. "We don't have a scale, but they feel like a couple of pounds each. I don't think Weber shorted us. She'd be foolish to try that on our first buy and she's no fool."

He repacked the bag and handed it to me. "You keep that safe," he said. "I'm going to grab a little shut-eye." He lay back on the grass and closed his eyes.

I clutched the paper bag tight in my hands and stared at the view for a long time, thinking about being a drug dealer. This was not something that I had wanted to be doing this summer. If we got busted, Columbia would expel me before I set foot on campus. That didn't fit my plan for the rest of my life.

After a time, maybe half an hour, Randal's soft snores turned to moaning.

* * *

It was a cool day – sunny with a fresh breeze blowing across the hilltop – but Randal was sweating in his sleep. I knew the symptoms. He was back in 'Nam. I wondered how often his sleep was disturbed by bad memories.

He began muttering. I couldn't make out what he was saying. Something about _Charlie_. Then he said, clear as anything, "Stay cool. Keep your head down if you wanna get through this."

I thought that was good advice for a lot of situations.

His eyes popped open and he looked around wildly. I don't know what he was seeing, but it wasn't me sitting beside him in Roscoe Conkling Park in Utica, New York.

"Don't do it, Roger! Don't do it! They're going to get you! Roger!" His voice had risen in crescendo until he was screaming, "Roger!" Then he fell silent. He rolled over to grab handfuls of turf and drew himself into a ball.

I could hear him sobbing.

After a few minutes, he pushed himself into a sitting position and looked at me. Sanity had returned to his eyes. "Hope I didn't freak you out too much."

"No. It's all right."

He looked around. "I'm in Utica, right?"

"Right."

"I don't sleep too well. Haven't since I got back from 'Nam. Nightmares."

"It must have been bad over there," I said.

"Yeah."

We sat in silence for a while, watching the sun sink lower toward the city.

Then Randal began talking, low but clear. He was facing away from me and might have been talking to himself. I don't think he could have told his story if he were looking me in the eye. The way he spoke, halting and uncertain, it sounded like he hadn't told his story often. "I was over there for eleven months when we drew a bad mission. A squad was getting cut up out in the jungle. They'd lost half. The rest made it to a clearing but they were still under heavy fire. We were tasked with extracting them. The clearing was small but Zip, our pilot, figured we could make it in and out. I laid down suppression to shut down the hostile fire and Zip brought us in. He was wrong about the size of the clearing. The tail rotor hit some brush. Not catastrophic, just enough to bring us around hard and tilt us sideways. When the main rotor grazed the ground, it was game over. I was in the door so I was thrown clear. Everyone else in the Huey was killed.

"Charlie opened fire again. Mowed our boys down. I was in the bush, almost unconscious, so they didn't see me until they were mopping up. I don't know why they didn't shoot me. Maybe they thought that they could get strategic information out of me because I was in the chopper instead of infantry. Maybe they just wanted a living trophy from their victory. Or maybe they figured that at least one American deserved worse than to die quick from a shot in the head. I never could tell what Charlie was thinking.

"I was marched north for two days, passed from one squad to another, until I got to a little prison camp. I think they went through Laos to go around the DMZ because I definitely ended up in North Vietnam.

"The place was hardly worth calling a prison. There was a bamboo hut, the kind that we called a _hooch_ , that was guarded by a handful of kids barely in their teens. When I got there, I brought the count up to eight prisoners. Three of them were navy, taken off a swift boat that ran aground. One was a navigator who bailed when his bomber was hit by a SAM. The other three were infantry officers. All lieutenants. Charlie was partial to killing enlisted men and taking officers prisoner.

"My first week there, they beat the navigator to death. A Viet Cong captain came to camp and supervised it. We watched through the cracks in the bamboo wall. It was brutal. It takes a long time to beat a man to death with bamboo sticks. The captain, named Thieu, spoke some English. He asked the navigator questions during the beating so I guess it was supposed to be an interrogation, but no one bothered listening to his answers. Mostly, they just wanted to hurt him. They did. He screamed until he died.

"That was the pattern for the next four months. Captain Thieu would come by every couple of weeks. They'd pick a man out of the cages and kill him hard. Not always beatings. They were imaginative. Thieu drowned one of the lieutenants with a few teaspoons of water by turning his head upside down and dribbling it into his nose. I wouldn't have believed that so little water could kill a man if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

"As we were killed off, one at a time, other prisoners arrived to take our places. At one point, we were down to four men, another time we were up to thirteen.

"For the last two months that I was there, I talked a lot with a Marine lieutenant named Roger Clayton. Roger was from Stockton, California. He wanted to be a movie director. They sometimes shoot movies in Stockton. The TV show, _The Big Valley_ , was shot there, too. Who knew? He joined the Marines because he figured that Hollywood would pay more attention to him after he served a tour in Vietnam.

"He was a good guy. Tough as any of us, but every man's got his limit. One day he couldn't take it any more. The regular guards been rough on him for a couple of weeks. Taking him out and beating him every day. He could barely walk but he said that he was going to run next time.

"We all told him not to do it but he didn't listen. Everybody figured that running was his way of committing suicide.

"The next time they came for him, he shuffled out of the hooch. Then, soon as he was outside, he shook off the guards and ran for the bush.

"The way they handled us was to have unarmed guards pull us around while a couple of other guards with rifles stood back, ready to shoot.

"When Roger ran, they cut him down before he made it halfway. Didn't even bother chasing him. One of the armed guards just shot him in the back with a single bullet and let him bleed out on the ground.

"A couple of days later, he was beginning to smell so they grabbed me and a guy named Kit and made us dig a grave right there beside the corpse. When it was about three feet deep and getting water leaking into the bottom, we had to roll Roger into it and cover him up.

"He was crawling with maggots and stunk to high heaven. His gut was bloated with gas. When we began to shovel the dirt on Roger, his gut exploded in a steaming cloud of stink and I started vomiting. That made the guards laugh. I'd take a step toward the jungle and heave. Take another step and heave. They were empty heaves. We only got fed a handful of rice a day. That day I lost the few grains that I'd eaten in the morning.

"As I heaved and moved, mostly I was trying to get away from the rotten-meat smell of Roger but I was also getting closer to the jungle than I'd been since arriving.

"I made a chance for myself. I got positioned so that the laughing guards were standing between me and the guys with the rifles. When I made a break for the bush, one of the guards opened fire, but he hit his own man in the leg. Nobody was laughing then. The wounded man was screaming in pain and anger as I disappeared into the jungle.

"There were mice around the camp. No rats that I ever saw – I guess because there wasn't enough food for rats – but a mouse could find the occasional grain of rice. I'd been watching the mice for five months and I knew what they did when they were chased. They turned somewhere unexpected then squeezed themselves into the smallest crack they could find and waited, not making a sound, until the danger went away. A mouse can squeeze into such a tight crack, you wouldn't believe it.

"That was exactly what I did in the jungle. As soon as I was out of sight, I ran sideways and squeezed under a log. The two guards with rifles came roaring past, heading straight into the jungle, following the trajectory that they'd seen me taking.

"I listened to them crashing through the bush, getting farther away with every step. But I stuck tight under my log, not budging an inch because I knew that they wouldn't give up easy.

"Sure enough, the other guards, the ones who hadn't been watching the grave digging, came creeping past, rifles at the ready, looking and listening for any sign of me. Jungle is dense. Unless they got within a few feet, they couldn't see me and, if I didn't make any noise, they couldn't hear me. They figured that I must have kept running, so they didn't look too hard close to where I'd entered the jungle. They didn't start fanning out until they were another hundred yards or so further in.

"I stayed there until dawn. Spent sixteen hours jammed in the mud under that log thinking about all the snakes and bugs that hunted at night. The krait was the worst but the vipers and cobras were nothing to ignore, either. Then there are scorpions and poisonous centipedes.

"Mostly, though, I was praying that the ants wouldn't find me. 'Nam is thick with ants that sting. Red ants, black ants, fire ants.

"I would have got out in the night, but it was too dark. Living in cities, you don't know how dark it gets in a jungle at night. You can't see a thing and I didn't dare risk crashing around in the bush when I was less than a hundred yards from the camp.

"At first light, though, I was on the move. Snail slow and just as quiet. A broken branch would be the death of me. The sun was high before I was a mile away.

"It took almost a week for me to get back to our own troops.

"There were a couple of close brushes with Charlie, but I took care of them. I got a rifle from the first one, but it wouldn't have been smart to use it. The sound of a bullet would have brought half the Viet Cong in the area down on me. It was heavy, so I threw it away after carrying it for a couple of hours.

"That NVA also had a knife. You saw it. The long, thin, grooved blade with the bamboo handle that fitted into the bamboo sheath. That was more useful than a gun when I came across the second hostile.

"When I was travelling, I tried to drink only fresh rainwater. You can do that when it's raining half the time. I ate raw rice from paddies when it was night and the farmers were asleep. You got to be careful eating raw rice. It swells in your stomach so you can only eat a bit at a time. If you fill your stomach and then it swells, you can bust your gut. Literally. Also, the swelling takes fluid out of you so you can end up dehydrated if you don't drink a lot. And I didn't want to get sick drinking out of stagnant pools.

"It hardly mattered much in the end. By the time I found a friendly patrol and got airlifted back to a hospital, I was almost out of my head with fever. It took a month of heavy-duty antibiotics to get my health back and start gaining a little weight.

"But I got lucky. Not just because I survived, but because I didn't get any permanent injury. Except the nightmares. It's been two years and it still seems like every time I fall asleep, I'm back in 'Nam, fighting Charlie all over again. I don't know if I can ever stop fighting Charlie in my mind. It happens to other guys, too, when they get back, but it seems to be worse with me. That's what the doctors tell me."

His voice had grown rougher as he spoke and he said this last in a rasp that I could barely hear. Then he fell silent.

I thought about what he did for a couple of minutes. "What about the rest of the prisoners?"

"I told some intelligence guys what I remembered about the camp. We figured out where it was and a couple of gunships ran a raid across the DMZ. They got most of our guys out."

"They should have given you a medal," I said.

"They did. A couple of them. I appreciate the gesture, but medals don't buy groceries. I let my parents keep them." The sun was touching the horizon. "Gus's shift must have started by now. Let's go do some business."

* * *

Gus was alone in the store. Outside, the sun was down but the sky was still light. Undoubtedly, the store was busier later when the sky was dark and the dorms were swinging.

Randal put the paper bag on the counter without ceremony. "We got two keys. You want both?"

"I said one."

"Four hundred."

"You can front it to me."

"Five-fifty if we front it."

"Billy never charged me like that."

"Billy isn't in business any more. There's always a cost for risk. Business one-oh-one."

"There's no risk. You know where to find me."

"I'm not discussing it. Four now or five-fifty next week."

"I don't have four on me."

"That's my problem, how?"

He licked his lips and stared at the bag for a minute. Then he said, "I got to test the product."

Randal sighed. "Give me a bag."

Gus pulled a paper bag from under the counter and Randal slid one of the plastic bags from his bag into Gus's.

Gus disappeared into the back room.

A minute later, A whiff of acrid smoke drifted through the store. Gus wasn't subtle.

Randal rolled his eyes at me and shouted, "Finish it later. We got to roll."

"Go ahead," Gus said. "We're finished here."

"We'll be back next Wednesday to pick up our five and a half."

Gus didn't reply.

As Randal was strapping the remaining key to his sissy bar, he said, "He has to take it on commission because he smokes as much as he sells and he's been buying retail since he ran out of Billy's last key. We're going to have to keep an eye on him."

"Did I understand right? We're going to make fifty dollars profit next Wednesday?"

"We're going to lose fifty dollars. Don't forget Wanda's premium. We end up paying her six hundred a key. And we do that well only if Gus pays up. If he stiffs us, we're out the full six hundred."

"He can't stiff us. We know where he is."

"Yeah, right. Like he'd never quit and take off with the whole key for himself. Like Billy did."

"Yeah. And Billy got killed for it." Guts chopped up like hamburger.

"You think? If Gus skips out on us and we track him down and kill him, we're still out six hundred bucks."

Randal was right. There was no profit in killing a man who owed you money. That led directly to another thought. "So, if Billy had ripped off Wanda for a key, would she have killed him if she caught up with him?"

"Most likely."

"Wouldn't she have wanted the money that he stole? He didn't look like he ever had much money on him."

"Wanda has to make it clear to everyone that ripping her off is a bad idea. Her rep as a woman not to be crossed would be worth more to her than the couple hundred that the key was worth. She would have killed him."

I thought about that for a minute. "She seemed surprised that he was dead. If she had done it, she would have known. And made sure that everyone else who deals with her knew, too."

"That's a point in her favor," Randal said. "I've been thinking about something else."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I been thinking about Johnny Paul."

"Billy's brother?"

"Yeah. Billy's brother."

I was stabbed by a pang of guilt. I'd accidentally stolen seven bucks from the gas station where he worked and I'd never mailed it back to him. "What about him?"

"He works with the public, just like Gus, here. Billy had to have more people to distribute for him than just Gus. I'm wondering about Johnny."

I thought for a minute. "I don't know about that. We talked to him. He didn't know anything about what Billy was doing. What little he did know, he didn't approve of. I can't see him dealing drugs for Billy."

"He didn't know us. He wasn't going to confess to being a drug dealer to a couple of strangers. My saying that I was in business with Billy wouldn't carry much weight. Anyone could say that. What Johnny said was more important. As near as I remember, he didn't actually say when he saw Billy or how often or that he wasn't getting kilos of weed from him."

I couldn't contradict any of that, but I still wasn't sure.

"I say we find out," Randal said.

"How?"

"We go up there to Russo and offer Johnny the other key. If he takes it, he was one of Billy's dealers."

"And if he wasn't, he calls the cops and we get busted."

"Nah. We'll make sure that doesn't happen."

Randal gunned his bike to life and began rolling down the street before I had a chance to ask him how he was going to work that.

* * *

Russo was way the other side of Wemsley from Utica. We didn't have time to get out there on Wednesday night. Instead, Randal and I hit the road at the crack of dawn on Thursday. It was seven-thirty in the morning when we got to Dino's Service Station. I was damned tired of sitting on a motorcycle seat. Saddle sores are no fun. And we still had to get back to Wemsley in time to prep for lunch.

Dino's was open. Johnny Paul eyed us balefully when we dismounted.

"Remember us?" Randal asked.

"You steal my money?" Johnny asked in return.

"No," Randal said.

"Yes," I said. "I forgot to give you the seven bucks that the guy paid for his fill-up. I kept it for you." I fished seven dollars out of my wallet and held it out to him. It was the same bills that the customer had given to me. I hadn't spent them.

"Yeah?" He took the money.

"Yeah. I'm sorry about that. I forgot that I had it until we were halfway back to Wemsley."

"Yeah, well I got shit for being short."

"I'm glad that you didn't get fired."

"Old Fred can't fire me," he said. "I'm the only mechanic in Russo."

I still couldn't imagine Johnny as a mechanic, but everyone kept saying that he was, so it must be true.

"It's good to be irreplaceable," Randal said.

"Yeah." He looked at Randal. "You get your watch back?"

I was confused for a moment; then I remembered that Randal's story to Johnny was that his watch had been stolen when Billy was killed.

"Naw," Randal said. "I'm still looking for who might have killed Billy. You have any thoughts about that?"

Johnny shook his head sadly. "Just about every one who knew him. Billy collected enemies like some people collect stamps. He was my brother, but that is the truth."

"Did he treat you square?" Randal asked.

"Not for as long as I can remember. He took toys away from me as soon as he was old enough to grab them. Before either one of us was in kindergarten." He shrugged. "I'm still gonna miss him, though. He was blood."

"I know how that goes," Randal said. "You don't gotta like someone to love them."

"Strange but true. It's something that I don't think that I'll ever understand."

Randal let a moment for philosophical mediation elapse before saying, "There's another thing, though."

"Yeah?" There might have been a tear or two wetting Johnny's eyelashes when he looked up.

"I wasn't directly involved in Billy's business before, but now that he's gone, I've decided to take it on."

"Yeah?" There was a spark of interest in Johnny's eye – the first since Randal had started talking about Billy.

"Yeah. So I was wondering if you might have any interest in a key."

"I don't know you."

"Sure you do. We're the guys who rode all the way back here to return seven bucks because our conscience was bothering us."

"Yeah, right." Johnny's tone was as dry as dust.

"So you going to do business with us?"

"Same terms as Billy?" he asked.

"Four hundred now or five-fifty if you want us to front you."

"Billy was three and four."

Randal shrugged. "Inflation."

"That's what I do with tires. Not with money. I pay four if you front me. If that's not good enough for you then it's nothing for either of us. Billy was ripping me off bad enough. I won't let you do worse to me than he did. He was my brother."

Randal looked pained for a minute. Then he said, "I'll honor Billy's memory. We'll front you a key for four. But you can't tell anyone else what our deal is. Got that?"

"I don't got nobody to tell because I don't know who else dealt with Billy. He kept his business private, even from me. Billy wasn't a trusting soul."

Randal dismounted from his bike and unstrapped the bag from his sissy bar. "We'll be back in a week to collect the four and drop off another key if you want it."

"Come back in three weeks," Johnny said. "This is Russo, not New York City. There ain't much traffic through here."

"Three weeks it is."

We rode off into the sunset.

It wasn't until later that I remembered that, last time, we'd been here in his little pickup truck but this time Randal was riding Billy's bike. Johnny didn't mention the bike but he must have noticed. I wondered what he thought about that.

* * *

Friday was chili day. Chili for the chilidogs came out of a can but we made two batches of the good stuff from scratch every week to give to customers who wanted a bowl. The Thursday afternoon batch lasted through the weekend and the Monday afternoons was for the weekdays.

Almost always, the last batch was gone before we made the next batch. It was good chili. Maybe the best item on the menu. The locals knew that if you were going to eat a bowl of chili at Elsa's, it was best to come in on a Thursday or Monday evening. It would be fresh and there was no risk that we'd have run out.

I put the beans on to simmer and was cutting a big chuck roast into bite-sized pieces when Katie stopped beside me. Tears were drying on my face from having chopped half a dozen onions. "My shift is over," she said. "Are you going on your break soon?"

"As soon as I get the chili simmering. Another twenty minutes, maybe."

"Oh." She watched me for a minute. "I'll wait outside for you." She went back to the office to take off her apron and hat.

I wondered what was up. I hadn't spoken to her since her close brush with the Road Snakes. For three days, I had felt nauseous whenever I thought about what had almost happened to her and my face colored in shame remembering that I had done nothing to stop it. That it had been Bucks and Candy who had rescued her.

I didn't think that I could ever look Katie in the face again.

I started cutting the meat faster. And trimming it less. We took off as much fat and other white matter as we could, but it wasn't critical. We simmered the chili for long enough that it all broke down. This batch of chili would be a little more interesting than most.

A few minutes later, I added the meat, spices, a number ten can of diced tomatoes, and the onions that I had already chopped and I was good to go.

Katie was waiting patiently at the picnic table when I rounded the corner.

"How are you?" I asked, unable to meet her eyes.

"I'm good. You?" Her voice didn't sound so fine. It sounded shaky. Uncertain.

"Fine," I said, sounding no better.

There was an awkward pause. Then she said, "I'm sorry."

I looked at her. She was looking down at her hands.

Was she sorry that she was about to break up with me? Were her next words going to be that this wasn't working? Was she going to end by promising that we could still be friends?

I couldn't blame her. Why would she want a coward for a boyfriend? She needed a man that she could respect. Not one who would abandon her to a group of outlaw bikers without fighting to the death to save her.

I couldn't imagine her wanting even to stay friends.

I steeled myself for her next words but she said nothing.

"Sorry about what?" I asked. What could be more galling than to have to prompt her to break my heart? She sure knew how to twist the knife.

"Sorry that I made you take me up there. You told me that you didn't want to go. I should have trusted you. I'm so sorry. It's all my fault."

I grabbed her hands and she raised her eyes to meet mine. They were wet. "No," I said. "No. No. No. It was my fault. I should never have taken you up there. I knew what they were like. I never should have let them get near you."

"You only did it because I made you."

"No. I could have refused."

"No, you couldn't. You wanted me. I knew that. I knew that you couldn't say, 'No,' to me. I thought it would be a lark. I didn't know that you'd almost get killed trying to protect me. I'm so sorry." Tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

I was dumbfounded. That bit of moisture melted me like the Wicked Witch of the West.

I stood up and said, softly, "Come here."

She stood, folded into my arms, and began sobbing in earnest.

I felt like a man. I don't know why, but I felt like a man.

I let her cry until my shirt was soaked with her tears.

When her weeping abated, I asked, "Do you want to go to the A&W on Sunday?"

"You still want me?" she mumbled into my shirt.

"More than ever."

She looked up at me and smiled a teary smile. "I'll go anywhere with you on Sunday."

"Not much place to go in Wemsley except the A&W."

"Then I'd love to go to the A&W."

"It's a date."

"I must look a mess." Her mascara was running down her face.

"You look beautiful." It was true.

She bent forward and wiped her tears on my wet tee shirt.

I looked down and saw her mascara smeared across my chest. That looked beautiful, too.

"I'll see you on Sunday," she said. When she released my hands, she dragged her fingers slowly across my palms as though reluctant to lose contact with me.

The grill has burners under the middle and left side. The far right is less hot so I could reduce the rate of boil to a gentle simmer by moving the chili pot further to the right. As I was stirring it, I was thinking about Katie.

The more I thought about her, the less I understood. I was never going to figure her out, no matter how long I knew her.

I also couldn't figure out what had happened in the Road Snakes clubhouse. There was a mystery buried in there that eluded me. Bucks and Candy had made the other three back off from Katie and me, at least for long enough for us to make our escape.

They were the real hero and heroine of the day.

But why? Why would Bucks and Candy care about Katie and me?

I could think of no reason.

I knew how strong lust could grip a man. Especially lust for a lovely girl like Katie. What exactly had Bucks said that had broken lust's hold on the others? I couldn't remember his exact words. I was almost wrecked by the time he came into the clubhouse. All I could recall was that it was something about a promise that they made to The Doll.

What promise had they made to that strange, fragile, beautiful, little woman?

Gwen called an order for a barbecue sandwich and a cheeseburger and my thoughts were going in circles so I forgot about the Road Snakes for the moment and concentrated on my cooking.

Not that a cheeseburger required much concentration.

* * *

On Friday morning, just before lunch, Chief Albertson came through the door to Elsa's kitchen, followed by four officers, the entire Wemsley police force, I believe.

Their guns were not drawn, but all five had their hands on the butts, not just resting there, but with their elbows held high and their fingers wrapped loosely around the grips.

Randal was at the grill. Three burger patties were frying under his gaze. He looked up at the officers.

"You know why we're here, Randal," Albertson said. "Don't cause a problem. You've been arrested before so you know the drill. Step away from the stove, turn around, and put your hands behind your back."

Randal did exactly as he was told, moving slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight at all times.

I wondered if Albertson knew that Randal had been a prisoner of war for five months in Vietnam. And knew that he had escaped, not just from the prison, but from the subsequent manhunt. And had killed men when he did it. With a knife.

The chef's knife was inches from Randal's hand when Albertson approached him.

Albertson might have been more cautious if he knew how dangerous Randal could be.

He was damned lucky that Randal didn't flash back to 'Nam but let himself be handcuffed without reaching for the knife. Then Albertson told him that he was under arrest for the murder of William James Paul and that he had the right to a lawyer.

It took me a second to understand that William James Paul was Billy.

Randal said, "I want Phil with me when I'm being interrogated, just like last time."

Apparently, I was _Phil_ , not _Gunner_ , when the police were involved.

"Forget it," Albertson said. "You weren't under arrest last time. You're under arrest now. The law says that you don't have to talk and that you can have a lawyer present if you do. It doesn't say anything about having friends there."

"Phil is going to be a lawyer. He's going to college. He's the one I want."

Randal had never accepted that I was going to Columbia to be a mathematician. He wanted me to be a lawyer because he had no use for a mathematician but he would often need a lawyer.

"Forget it. Lawyer means a licensed member of the bar. I don't care if the kid's a regular Perry Mason, he ain't licensed by the State of New York."

As they took Randal away through the front, parading him past a handful of shocked customers, he shouted at me, "Don't give up. Come and visit as soon as you can and we'll talk."

"Shut up," was the last thing that I heard Albertson say as they left through the front door.

Mrs. Everett walked past me toward the office. "I better get Gil in here to help you," she said. "And we'll have to hire someone else to help him. We're going to miss Randal."

She was certainly right about that.

It was a long day. Gil had been working here for a couple of weeks and he wasn't completely useless, but he wasn't as much help as I would have liked.

One small blessing was that when he tried to chat up Katie now, she gave him no time. He didn't know why and I wasn't about to enlighten him.

Some things weren't his business, no matter how much he wanted them to be.

* * *

Immediately after closing at ten that night, I went straight to the police station.

The officer at the front desk was the youngest of the men who had helped arrest Randal that afternoon. His badge said that he was Officer Mansour. The name sounded foreign to me but he didn't look any different from any other thirty-year-old man in town. He put down the novel that he was reading, a bestseller called _The New Centurions_ by Wambaugh, looked at me, and said, "We're closed."

"I never heard of a police station being closed," I said.

"We close at nine. Always have. Always will."

"The door wasn't locked."

"Nobody's dumb enough to try to rob a police station."

Considering some of the jokers that I'd met in the last few weeks, I wasn't sure about that. "You're still here," I said.

"We got a prisoner. Whenever we got someone in lockup, the station has to be manned.

"I want to talk to Randal."

"You can't. The station's closed. Come back tomorrow during working hours."

"I work during working hours."

He raised an eyebrow at me and didn't deign to reply.

"Come on," I said. "I'm here now. He's in there. I just want to talk to him. I'm not going to bust him out or anything like that." I didn't bother to tell Officer Mansour that Randal was capable of escaping all on his own if he chose.

"He's asleep," Mansour said.

"He'll want to wake up for me."

Mansour sighed loudly and said, "Wait right there." He opened a door behind him and looked through it. "You up for company?" he called out.

I heard Randal's voice reply, "Who?"

Mansour looked back at me, "Who are you?"

"Gunner. Phil."

"It's some kid named Phil Gunner."

"Yeah," Randal said.

"Back there." Mansour gestured through the door. "Stand back from the bars and don't give him anything. You do, and he won't get another visitor ever again."

"I won't."

"I'll be watching." Mansour gestured to a window in the door.

There were two cells. They looked just like you see on television. Concrete block walls and black iron bars across the front. There was a single cot and a stainless steel toilet in the corner.

One cell was empty. Randal was standing behind the bars in the other one. He had a wicked black eye. I wondered where that had come from. I'd seen him get arrested and he hadn't resisted at all.

"You going to keep looking for who killed Billy?" he asked.

"Sure," I said.

"The brother knows more than he's saying. He's been lying to us from day one. He knows way more about Billy's business than he claims."

"I figure that you're right."

"Keep in touch with him and see if you can get him talk."

"Okay."

"You know where I live?"

"No."

"You got a pen and paper?"

I glanced at the window in the door. No sign of Mansour, so I passed a pen and an old receipt through the bars.

He wrote an address on the front, then he wrote a short note on the back.

"Show that to the super. He lives in Apartment One. He'll let you into my place. There's a checkbook in the desk by the window. Next time you come, bring a check and a pen. I'll write you a check for a couple thousand so that you can keep things going with Wanda for a while."

Two thousand dollars was a lot of money. But maybe not when I was supposed to use it to capitalize a drug business that could get me thrown in prison for twenty to life.

"I don't know," I said. "You're going to need that money for a lawyer."

"I don't have enough to pay a real lawyer and a public defender's just going to tell me to plead guilty to something that I didn't do in exchange for a reduced sentence. My money is better spent investigating who really killed Billy."

"Maybe you should hire a real detective, then."

"He wouldn't find out any more than you can," Randal said. "Less. Licensed detectives are mostly ex-cops and the people who know what Billy was up to aren't the sort to confide in cops, ex or not."

I didn't want the responsibility but I had to accept Randal's decision. It was his life at stake. "Okay," I said. "I'll do my best but I can't guarantee anything. You know that I'm only eighteen."

"You'll do fine. I seen plenty of eighteen-year-olds in firefights in 'Nam. You just keep doing your best and I'll be out of here in no time."

There was a pause. "What happened to your eye?" I asked.

"Intense interrogation. Small town cops try to play the big shots but they don't know what they're doing. They spin out of control when the stakes get any bigger than lost puppies and Halloween pranks." He gestured to his eye. "This kind of thing right before I go to court is going to cause Albertson more trouble than he realizes."

I hoped he was right.

"Oh," he said, "and you'll find a spare key to my truck in the drawer with the checkbook. You'll need it if the weather gets too bad to ride a bike."

He was right. I didn't have any rain gear for riding a motorcycle in bad weather.

Mansour opened the door when I knocked on it.

"Okay, kid. You had your visit. Now get out."

I got out.

I was Randal's only hope, now. If I failed, Randal would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

I was terrified.

* * *

Mrs. Everett gave me a key to Elsa's Grill. I didn't know if she had retrieved Randal's from the police station or had a new one cut. It looked old, but she could have kept the new one for herself. "You'll be opening and closing now," she said.

That was but one of my new responsibilities now that Randal was in jail.

Saturday night, I was waiting for Gwen to finish in front. That was strange. Usually she left before I mopped out there. Tonight, she returned to the front and was doing something with the drink dispensers while I was mopping the back.

As soon as I had dumped the dirty water and put the mop and bucket away, she stuck her head in the kitchen and said, "You in a hurry to get home?"

"No." I was, but I was curious to know what she wanted.

"I was wondering if you wanted to have a cup of coffee with me."

"I don't drink coffee."

"A soda, then. I can't pull a shake. The machine is cleaned out already."

"Okay. Coke."

She pulled a couple of chairs off a table in the corner and we sat down.

"This is going to keep me awake all night," she said as she sipped her coffee.

"Coke doesn't keep me awake." I knew that there was caffeine in it.

"This and Randal's arrest. I haven't been sleeping well since they put him in jail."

"Me, neither," I said.

"You think he did it? Killed Billy?"

"No."

"Me, neither," she said.

We sipped in silence for a minute, then she began talking, softly, introspectively. "Randal saved me. I married Billy when I was nineteen. Three years later, I had a three-year-old and an infant and he ran out on me. Ran off with a stripper that he'd met in some bar. If I could have spared the expense, I would have sent the stripper a bouquet of roses and a thank-you card.

"Billy was no husband. He never held a job. Drank up every cent we could get. Sometimes I couldn't afford food for the kids. He was a mean drunk and he hit me more than once. I knew that he had been sleeping with any tramp that would have him since the day we married. I would have kicked him out earlier, but I was afraid of what he might do to me and the kids if I tried.

"After he left, I didn't hear from him again until this summer. I lived on welfare until my youngest could get into kindergarten, then I started waitressing. I was living in Akron then. I figured that Billy had forgotten about me and that was good. But an old friend from Jamestown – that's where I grew up – called and said that Billy had dropped by asking about me. She'd told him that I was in Akron because he said that he had some of my stuff and needed to return it to me.

"That was a lie. He didn't have anything of mine. When I was married to him, all I owned was two changes of clothes and my toothbrush. I didn't hang around, waiting for him to show up. I moved to Wemsley the next day. This time, I didn't tell anyone except my parents where I was.

"I'd been working here for a couple of years when Randal came. He'd been discharged from the army and gotten into some kind of trouble in Buffalo. He said that it was his fault. Some loudmouth said the wrong thing and it set him off. He never said, but I'm guessing that it was some crack about Vietnam. Randal's got a problem with 'Nam. Sometimes something reminds him of 'Nam and he goes right back there in his mind.

"I hadn't had much to do with men for a long time after Billy. Two small children and no money was as much as I could handle. I didn't need to be taking care of some guy on top of all that. But Randal didn't come on to me like other guys. He was just there, always helping, never pushing. Anyone else, I would have ignored, but Randal has a presence. I don't know how to explain it. He can't be ignored like most men.

"After a few weeks, we started dating. After a couple of months, he met the kids. He likes kids. You wouldn't know it to look at him, but he gets along like gangbusters with them. The kids asked me if Randal was going to move into our house. Crystal was only eight and it floored me when she asked that. I don't know where she got the idea. Kids grow up so young these days.

"Randal lived with us for half a year but it wasn't meant to be. He and I both had issues and neither of us could commit to the other all the way. He..." She paused, looking for a way to say something that she'd never put into words before. "He struggles to manage his life. He needs to make rules for himself to keep on the rails. He never tells anyone else what to do. Never asks anyone else for a thing. But he makes demands on himself that you can't see until you know him well.

"He was taken prisoner in 'Nam. I don't know much about that, but I know that it must have been hell. Demons moved into his brain back then and they still live deep down in there.

"We were both relieved when he moved back to his own place. But we stayed good friends. There was never a question that he'll be there for me when I need him. After he moved out, he kept coming around a lot because the kids were attached to him and they missed him.

"Then Billy showed up back in June. He stopped by my parents' place and laid on the charm. Told them how much he wanted to be a father to his kids and help us out.

"It was my parents who told him where to find me.

"He thought that he could just show up here and act like the last ten years had never happened. That I'd forget how bad it was when he was living with us and how he'd bailed and left us to fend for ourselves.

"Billy didn't say what he had been doing, but it was pretty obvious that he was broke and needed money and figured that I had some. It was also pretty obvious that he was hiding from someone. Probably hiding from people that he owed money to. He was desperate as hell and he couldn't hide that.

"He tried to be nice for a few minutes, but I was having none of his bull and he got mean pretty quick. You were here when he dumped my tray. He figured that he could bully me around like he did when I was nineteen and pregnant. I made it pretty clear, pretty quick, that I wasn't nineteen any more.

"When I chased him out of here, I figured that he'd get the hint and blow town, but, like I said, he was desperate. He showed up at my house. Pushed his way in. Probably he figured that I'd have to treat him better if the kids were watching. That I wouldn't want to be mean to their father in front of them.

"He miscalculated. The kids didn't know him from Adam and they didn't want him around. Randal was the closest thing they ever had to a father. They wanted me to kick Billy out.

"I could see him losing it so I told the kids to go to their room. It was bad. I tried to get him calmed down. To do whatever he wanted. Promise him anything. But he wasn't having any of it. He knew that I didn't mean it. My promises were lies. I would say or do anything to get rid of him.

"That was the night I got the black eye.

"When Billy left that night, he told me that he was going to give me a little time to adjust to him being back.

"I didn't know if Billy meant it or if it was just bluster. Billy was big on talk but didn't follow through.

"It turned out that he really meant to move back in. A couple days later, he showed up with a bag of clothes and said that he was staying. He... Let's just say that it was bad again and it would have got a lot worse if Randal hadn't shown up.

"When I was working, the kids were home alone too much and we worried about them. So we always told them to call Randal if they ever needed something. The kids were terrified by Billy so, when he and I were in the bedroom, Hannah snuck out into the kitchen and called Randal.

"Randal came over as soon as Hannah called. He didn't say much to Billy. Just moved up close to him and told him that it was time for him to leave. Randal isn't as big as Billy but he's got this way of looking dead serious. Billy backed down. He could tell that if he took Randal on, he wouldn't walk away to brag about it.

"Billy blustered to me about coming back to settle our business, but he slunk out of there without giving Randal any backtalk.

"I never saw Billy again. When I heard that he was dead, I felt relieved. I sure didn't shed any tears for him. But Randal and me both knew that the cops were going to suspect Randal. The more that they found out about Billy and me and Randal, the more they were going to be sure that Randal had killed Billy. He had all the reasons in the world to do it.

"I can't swear that he didn't. I wasn't there when Billy was killed. But I don't believe it. Randal wouldn't kill someone unless it was self-defense and Billy wasn't stupid enough to get into a fight with Randal. When I saw Billy slinking out of my house, I could see that Randal had beaten him without laying a finger on him. Billy wasn't going to come back after that." She looked at me with sad eyes. "Besides, Randal told me that he didn't kill Billy and I've never known Randal to lie."

I had. I had heard Randal tell Billy's mother and brother and the Road Snakes and Warts Weber and Gus all kinds of lies. But I believed him when he said that he didn't kill Billy.

"He's my knight in shining armor," Gwen said. "My Lancelot. He couldn't do anything wrong."

I wondered if she knew that in Arthurian myth, Lancelot had betrayed King Arthur by having an affair with his Queen, Guinevere.

"You were helping him find out who killed Billy, weren't you?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Are you going to keep looking for Billy's murderer now that Randal's been arrested?"

I nodded again. If I wasn't sure before, that moment sealed my commitment. There was no backing down. I was going to put everything I had into the search for Billy's murderer.

"Good. If there's anything that I can do to help, anything at all, you let me know, okay?"

"Okay."

"You need money? I don't have much, but you can have whatever I can give you."

"No. Not now. Randal's going to give me some money. That'll keep me going for a while."

"Okay. You remember, though. I'm here if you need anything." She reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

I had to get Randal out of jail. If that meant that I had to be a drug dealer, then so be it. I would be a drug dealer. Right up until I got caught and sent to prison. Which was likely. Most criminals can work in secret but drug dealers have to tell lots of people what they're doing – customers, suppliers, other dealers – and, sooner or later, someone's going to talk.

* * *

On Sunday morning before work, I went to the address that Randal had written on my paper. It was a small building, two stories, stucco walls painted dark green, and hallways with carpets so badly worn and stained that I couldn't tell whether the pattern was flowers or butterflies. There couldn't have been more than five or six apartments in it.

When I knocked on the door to Apartment One, the man who answered was short with spindly limbs and a protruding gut that strained the fabric of his sleeveless T-shirt. "Yeah?" The word wafted on breath redolent of stale beer.

I showed him the note that Randal had written on the back of the receipt. "Randal in Apartment Three needs me to get some stuff for him."

"Why don't he get it himself?"

"He's in jail. He was arrested for murder on Friday."

"That guy they pulled out of Smoke Pond?"

"Yes."

"Don't surprise me. That Randal gets right wild sometimes. I hope they fry 'im. Can't have murderers living in my building."

"He didn't do it."

"Says you. Cops came here a couple weeks ago with a search warrant. I had to let 'em in. If they say he did it, then they must of found sumpin' that proves it."

"I need you to let me in." I nodded to the note. "That says that I got permission."

"I'm gonna keep this so's I can prove that I was just doing what I was tolt."

"Okay."

"You wait," he said and slammed the door in my face.

I waited for a time – long enough for the super to take a shower and shave – but he had done neither when he finally re-opened his door. As nearly as I could see, the only thing that he had done in all that time was slip a pair of unlaced sneakers on his bare feet. Most likely he had drunk another beer. His beery breath didn't smell quite as stale now.

I followed him down a short hallway to a door with "3" painted on it.

He unlocked it and I entered.

He hovered in the doorway, watching me as I walked to the desk and pulled open the middle drawer. As Randal had said, there was a checkbook lying on top of some other papers. I tore a check out of the book and slipped it into my wallet.

"You takin' money out o' that desk?" the super called from the doorway.

"Nope," I said as I slid the drawer shut.

"What you takin'?"

"Business between Randal and me," I said. Then I remembered the truck key. I opened the drawer again and dug around a little. It was attached to a rabbit's foot keychain. That hadn't brought Randal as much luck as he needed.

I walked back toward the super. "I'm all done here."

He stepped aside with ill grace to let me exit, and then locked the door behind me.

I wondered if he were going to come back after I was gone and search the desk for spare cash.

"When the cops execute a search warrant, they make an inventory," I said. "They'll know if anything is missing." It wasn't true, as nearly as I knew. I couldn't imagine Albertson or his flunkies taking the trouble to write out an inventory. But maybe it would make the super think twice before pillaging Randal's possessions.

Not that he appeared to be the kind of man who thought even once about anything.

That evening, I took Katie to the A&W for a root beer float, as promised.

"I want to see the mountains," she said between sips of creamy root beer.

"We were up in the Adirondacks last week." What was her agenda? Why was she forcing me to remind her of that horrible experience?

"No. Real mountains. The Rocky Mountains. I got a picture of them on the calendar on my wall. Up in Canada, they got a place called Banff that's got lots of jobs for waitresses. It's real pretty up there. I been thinking that I should go get a job up there when the summer is over."

"I don't know if there are many waitressing jobs in the mountains in the winter. It gets cold in the Rockies in Colorado and that's a lot further south than Canada."

"Skiing," she said. "People go there in the winter to ski."

Right. I should have thought about that.

"I'd like to learn to ski. Shooting down mountains, snow flying everywhere. It looks like a lot of fun."

"I'm sure it is." I took a sip of root beer. "But you'd have to immigrate to work up there. They got laws about that just like we do for people coming here to work."

"I guess I wouldn't want to be an illegal immigrant in Canada."

"It's better to be legal." I thought about all the illegal stuff that I'd been doing with Randal. "Much better to be legal."

We spent the rest of the evening chatting about inconsequential things. She didn't suggest going to Makeout Hill and I was happy with that. I wanted her as badly as ever, but after the way she'd been treated by the Road Snakes, pushing her seemed wrong.

The next step had to be her idea.

When I dropped her off at her house, she asked me to walk her to the door.

We stood on her front step for a long time, holding each other and kissing, first gently, and then with greater passion as we lost ourselves in the joy of being with each other.

That was more satisfying than taking half her clothes off up on Makeout Hill.

* * *

Tuesday afternoon, I visited Randal in jail.

Officer Monsour was on the desk again and, again, he gave me a hard time about visiting. This time, though, his heart wasn't in it. It was just a ritual. We both knew that he was going to let me go back to talk to Randal once the formalities were over.

Once again, he cautioned me to stay back from the bars.

Once again, I ignored his admonitions. As soon as he shut the door, Randal asked, "Did you bring a blank check?"

No _Hello_ or _How are you?_ Just cut right to the bottom line. He was right. We had to get business settled right away in case Monsour came back and kicked me out.

He wrote out a check for three thousand dollars, payable to me.

No one had ever trusted me with so much before. I felt like the weight on my shoulders had just increased by another ton.

I had to prove his innocence.

"I'll prove that you're innocent," I said. "I don't know how, but I'll do it."

"That would be good," he said. "If you can. But I was talking to a lawyer for a few minutes yesterday, getting the lay of the land. He says that the most important thing is to show that somebody else had a reason to do it and that they had an opportunity. That's enough for reasonable doubt. If the reasonable doubt is strong enough, then they won't even take me to trial. The prosecutor will let me go. So that's what I need. Reasonable doubt." As he spoke, his eyes shone with a light as though the words were his salvation. "Reasonable doubt."

"Okay," I said. "Okay. I got it. Reasonable doubt."

"Yeah."

But it bothered me that he wasn't saying that he was innocent. Only that there might be a way for him to get off. Again, I had to ask myself why I thought that he didn't murder Billy. It was a logical question. According to Gwen, he had plenty of motive. He had the skills. He had seen Billy just before he was murdered and he had Billy's motorcycle. He could lie like a pro and, by his own admission, he had stabbed men to death in 'Nam. Right now, I could make the case for the prosecution easier than the case for the defense. And that was after Randal and I had been investigating Billy for more than a month.

I believed that Randal didn't murder Billy because he was my friend. That was the whole thing. I liked him so he couldn't be a murderer. That logic wouldn't carry a whit of weight in court.

Before today, I had another argument. I could have described how hard he had been looking for the real murderer. I would have concluded that only an innocent man could be so certain that someone else must have done it.

But that argument was demolished by the words, _reasonable doubt_. Had Randal really been trying to find Billy's murderer? Or had he been trying to find other people who had the motive and opportunity to kill Billy so that he could give a jury a full measure of reasonable doubt?

That's what a guilty man would do if he were smart. And Randal was smart. Maybe not educated in a formal institution, but smarter in the ways of the world than anyone I had ever met.
And he had been jailed for aggravated assault in Buffalo a couple years ago. This was not the first time that he had spoken to a criminal lawyer. He must have known about the principle of reasonable doubt back when we first started our investigation.

His innocence could well have been a cover story created for my benefit. Randal was good at making up cover stories. I had seen him put that skill to use more than once in the past few weeks.

"So we good?" Randal asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Good to go."

"There you are." He frowned at me. "Go see Johnny Paul again. Find out as much as you can before he hears that I've been arrested for Billy's murder. He won't be so cooperative when he learns that the cops think that I killed his brother. And don't forget to visit Gus. He owes us five-fifty. You got to collect that so you can make another buy from Wanda the Warted One without dipping any deeper into our reserves than necessary. You gotta build trust with these guys or they'll never tell you what you need to know."

God, I hated becoming a drug dealer.

It showed on my face. "Don't worry," Randal said. "It's going to be all right. You're just dealing a little grass. That's hardly a crime these days."

Hardly a crime? President Nixon had declared a war on drugs. A war. According to the newspapers, guys caught with a kilo of marijuana were getting prison sentences with no parole until they served twenty-years. Prisoners of the War on Drugs.

I didn't relish the thought of earning my college degree from behind bars. I doubted that Columbia had a prison outreach program.

"You might have to go to Canton to see me next time. The lawyer says that I'll be arraigned in the county court there in the next few days and I'll have to stay in the jail there until my trial. It won't be so easy to visit me. They got more rules about visitors up there."

"Okay," I said.

"I would have been transported and arraigned already but Albertson's waiting for my shiner to fade a little. I don't mind. I'm in no hurry to get moved to a bigger jail. I told my lawyer that but he said that I shouldn't tell the cops. He talked to the prosecutor and got a deal. When I let them delay my arraignment, they agreed to give my lawyer an early look at the evidence that they have against me. They have to do that sooner or later, but usually they hold off for as long as they can. I told him to tell you everything that they tell him. You can go over and talk to him. His name's Wade Adaire. He's got an office just down the street."

"It can't hurt for me to know what the cops know," I said.

"Right. My logic exactly. I'm happy to stay here in Wemsley for as long as I can because it's easier to keep in touch with you this way."

Easier for him to send me out to deal drugs. I wasn't sure if that was such a good thing for me.

But I had to do whatever it took to save Gwen's knight in shining armor from the electric chair.

Even deal drugs.

* * *

"You got an appointment?" the lawyer asked.

I looked around. It didn't look like an office where appointments were taken too seriously. There were hundreds of papers lying in disorderly stacks. Some of those corners sticking out from the bottom looked like they hadn't been touched since the Eisenhower administration.

The walls were in desperate need of paint and the linoleum tiles near the walls – the ones which had not been stomped into submission – were turning up in the corners.

Wade Adaire looked as unkempt as his office. Dumpy body, a fringe of brown-grey hair around a pate that was shiny bald, patchwork shaving on his chin that left tufts of whiskers untouched. He was probably only fifty but he looked a good ten years older than that.

I wondered if I would smell alcohol on his breath if I stepped closer.

"No," I said. "I'm on my lunch break. I got to get back to work soon."

"Me, too." He gestured to a ham sandwich that was lying on a rumpled sheet of waxed paper. "So why are you disturbing my lunch?" He held up a hand with a smear of mustard across the fingers. "Wait. Don't tell me. Let me guess. I'm good at this. A regular Sherlock Holmes." He furled his brow and examined me from head to toe, then said, "You got a girl pregnant. You need to fight the paternity claim. No problem. I'll show the court that the girl had other men coming out her ying-yang. Or coming into it, would be more to the point."

"No. I'm here–"

He held up his hand again. "Wait, I said. Let me guess." He examined me again. "Drunk driving. You don't party much so you don't know how much liquor you can hold. We can challenge the evidence. You weren't tested quickly enough so it's invalid. You weren't drunk behind the wheel, only later when more alcohol got absorbed into your bloodstream."

"No. I–"

"Shush. I get at least three strikes before I'm out." He closed his eyes and frowned in concentration. Finally, he said, "Shoplifting. You didn't need the stuff, but you're a klepto and you couldn't help it. I can get you off on mental impairment."

"No. I didn't do anything."

He jerked upright. "Of course you didn't do anything. You're innocent. All my little lost lambs are innocent. But what are they charging you with? That's the question."

"Nothing. I'm not here for myself. I'm here for Randal. You know. The guy that got charged with Billy Paul's murder."

"I know who he is but he's not here. He's in jail."

"I know that. I'm not here to see him. I'm here to see the evidence that the cops have against him."

"You?"

"Yes."

The lawyer put his head in his hands, smearing a bit of mustard into his fringe of graying hair. That did nothing to help his dignity. "Don't tell me that you're the so-called investigator that Randal keeps saying is going to create reasonable doubt for us."

"Yes."

He shook his head in sorrow. "Good God, Randal's going to get convicted. He's going to prison. He's going to be the first murderer to be executed in New York in a decade."

"No, he's not. I'm going to find out who killed Billy Paul."

"Sure, you are, kid. Sure you are. Just as soon as you're old enough to drive the Batmobile, you're going to slip into your cape and turn Gotham City upside down to prove that The Joker did it."

That didn't dignify an answer. I stared quietly at Mr. Adaire and waited for him to apologize.

It looked like I was going to have to wait for a long time.

He picked up his sandwich and began chewing on it with a satisfied expression on his face.

Finally I had to speak. "Where is it?"

"Wha'?" he asked around a mouthful of half-chewed bread and ham.

"The evidence against Randal."

He shoved a folder toward me with one hand, adding a mustard smear to other, less easily identified substances that formed a patina on the manila.

I gingerly opened the folder with two fingers, hoping to avoid contaminating myself too badly.

Inside, there was a single sheet of paper: a laboratory report that described Randal's knife with a bamboo handle and sheath. Dried blood had been found in the cracks where the blade was affixed to the handle. Type AB positive. The report noted that it was impossible to determine the age of the blood or whether the antigens and Rh factor had come from a single individual with that blood type or multiple individuals, any number of whom could have had blood type O negative.

"That's it?" I asked.

Adaire swallowed his last bite of sandwich and crumpled the wax paper into a ball, scattering breadcrumbs over his desk. "That's what they gave me. Great, isn't it?"

"What's so great about it? Randal's knife might have killed Billy Paul."

Adaire lobbed his wax paper ball toward a distant trashcan. He missed. The crumpled ball joined the ring of detritus that was scattered around the can. "Reasonable doubt, my lad. Reasonable doubt. It doesn't say that Randal's knife killed Billy Paul. It says that it might not have killed him. Might not. Golden words, my lad. Golden. They need proof positive and this is not it. We can hire blood experts who'll make hash of this so-called evidence. We can argue that knife may have been used in so many murders that it's impossible to know if Billy Paul was one of them or not."

"That's going to be your defense? That Randal is such an industrious murderer that we can't tell which one is which?"

"We're not going to say it like that." Adaire folded up his well-creased lunch bag and slid it into the inner pocket of a suit jacket that was hanging over the back of his chair. Undoubtedly he kept using the same bag over and over until it was worn out. It was cheaper than buying a lunch box. "The prosecution doesn't know the provenance of the knife. Randal may have obtained it last week, for all they know. Who knows where all that blood came from?"

"He got it from a Viet Cong guerilla. It's probably the blood of American prisoners of war."

"See? Terrific. It's a veritable fountain, spraying reasonable doubt in all directions. They got no real evidence that Randal did anything to Billy Paul."

I found it hard to share the lawyer's optimism. "What about the motorcycle?" I asked.

"What motorcycle?"

"Billy Paul's motorcycle. That's why the police first suspected Randal. Because he started riding Billy Paul's motorcycle about the time that Billy was murdered."

"I don't know anything about that," Adaire said. "What does Randal say about it?"

"He says that Billy sold it to him."

"He have a receipt or bill of sale? Cancelled check? Any proof of payment?"

"Not a scrap."

"That's not proof positive either," Adaire said with a wave of his hand. But he didn't sound quite so optimistic.

"And what about Gwen?"

"Who's Gwen?"

"A waitress at Elsa's Grill."

"Oh, yeah. I know her. I eat there sometimes. Pretty young thing."

I didn't think that thirty was so young, but I figured that when I was Adaire's age, I'd see women differently. Or maybe he was talking about Katie.

"What about her?" he asked.

"She was Billy Paul's wife. He beat her."

"Too bad. What's that got to do with Randal?"

"He was her boyfriend."

"Randal?"

"Yeah."

"They serious?"

"They lived together for a few months."

Adaire shook his head. "I guess the prosecution could make a lot out of that. You think they know about her?"

"The cops, Chief Albertson, interviewed her. Randal told her to tell the truth so they know all about her and Randal and Billy Paul."

"Well, that's still not proof positive. Just circumstantial." But now Adaire sounded worried.

"What do you think a jury would say about all that?"

"You know," he said. "I've never tried a murder case. Before this goes to trial, Randal will have to find a lawyer who has experience with capital cases. I'll ask around and get some recommendations for him."

That was how this rat was going to desert this sinking ship.

I left, fearing more than ever that Randal would go to jail. Or maybe even to the electric chair.

I was the only hope that he had.

* * *

That evening, I took Katie to see _Dirty Harry_ starring Clint Eastwood. She hated the movie. It struck too close to home for me to like it, either. I kept imagining myself lying on the ground while Clint shoved his cannon in my face and growled, _Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?_

I didn't.

Afterward, we went up to Makeout Hill and made out. Rain was drizzling down from a heavy sky so we stayed in the back seat of Dad's car.

We began by finishing off the beer that Randal had bought for me the first time we talked to Gus at the liquor store. I still didn't much like the taste and I don't think that Katie did, either. But I'd have to pick up another six-pack when I stopped by. It wouldn't feel right to feel up Katie without offering her a beer first.

I was happy to caress Katie under her bra but I didn't try to do more than that. We spent a long time holding each other, more hugging than kissing, more caressing than groping.

I enjoyed feeling close to her and I think she felt the same about me.

When it was time to go home, she brushed her fingers across the bulge in my crotch.

I gasped.

She giggled. "Some day, soon, we should drive up to Watertown and rent a motel room. Then we can do something about this."

She sounded serious.

I was near delirious.

* * *

On Wednesday, my first order of business was to stop at the bank and cash Randal's check. I told the teller, a woman about Randal's age, that I wanted to deposit seventeen hundred in my account and take thirteen hundred as cash.

She wouldn't complete the transaction herself. It was too much cash and I looked too young. She called the manager. He examined my ID carefully and then retreated to the back office. I could see him turning the pages on big ledgers.

This was Wemsley's only bank. It had been squatting here on Main Street since the dawn of America and was in no hurry to embrace modern automation.

Undoubtedly the manager was making sure that Randal had enough money in his account to cover the check. As well, he was probably also looking at my paltry balance to see if I could cover the check if it turned out to be bogus. I couldn't but that was his problem, not mine. The check was good and I wasn't leaving without a substantial wad of cash in my pocket.

Finally, he returned and asked how I wanted it.

I said in twenties. Big bills were hard to cash. Even twenties could be a problem in nineteen seventy-one.

He personally counted out sixty-five twenty-dollar bills in front of me. His movements were reluctant and he looked longingly at every bill as he laid it down.

He didn't stop watching me until I'd left his bank.

My next order of business was to visit Wanda and buy two more kilos of weed. I would take one to Gus and he would pay for the last one. I hoped that he would buy both kilos this time and I would be rid of them right away.

The worst part of being a drug dealer was having to hold large amounts of drugs. Especially when Mom didn't respect my privacy.

The weather had cleared overnight. I'd expected that I'd have to take Randal's little pickup truck over to Syracuse but the dry roads and sunny forecast meant that I could take my bike. It was the first time that I had ridden outside Wemsley by myself. It felt different than trailing behind Randal or having Katie on the back. Those times were great, but this felt like freedom. I was beholden to no one. I could go anywhere and do anything that I wanted.

It was all the sweeter because it was a special time that wasn't going to last for much longer. Randal had loaned the bike to me and I was going to have to give it back soon, certainly by the end of the summer.

Someday I was going to buy a bike of my own but that wouldn't be until after I graduated. The little money that I earned during the next four years, working at Elsa's or at other menial jobs, would have to be used to pay for my college expenses. After graduation, I'd have to find a real job and get settled in my own place. That would take another year, at least. I wouldn't have any spare cash for five or six years, but I wouldn't give up my dream. On the road to Syracuse, I vowed that some day I would have a bike.

If I survived my investigation into Billy Paul's murder. If I survived meeting with Warts today.

This buy from Wanda didn't go quite as smoothly as the first one but I got it done. She asked where the other guy was and I said that he was busy. I'd be handling things alone this week. She looked doubtful but didn't ask any more questions. I laid sixty twenties on the bar. She looked at me like I was a rube before scooping it up. I realized that such a big stack of bills wasn't subtle. Randal had been right to bring hundreds. I'd to it that way next time.

When she brought the bag back, I said, "Before you go, I was wondering if you remembered the names of any more of Billy's distributors. I could move more, faster if I had more help."

She looked around. There was nobody close enough to hear us but she still didn't look happy to be discussing this business during business hours.

"No," she said. "I don't know nothing about nothing."

"If anyone happens to mention anything about it, I'd appreciate it if you'd put us in touch. Just let them know that I'll be here a week from today."

She left without saying another word.

I had no idea how I would get her talking about Billy's murder if she wouldn't even talk about the business he did with her.

The phrase, _pillow talk_ , slipped into my head, quickly followed by a mental picture of warts on intimate parts. My parts. It was not a pretty picture.

If that was what it took to get Randal out of jail, he was going to be there a long time.

Just thinking about it made me feel nauseous.

The bag was unwieldy. It weighed almost five pounds and my bike didn't have a sissy bar, nor did I think to bring bungee cords to secure it. I set it on the gas tank between my legs and used my belt to lash it down. It was an ugly, jury-rigged solution, but I figured it would hold at least as far as Utica.

If not, there'd be enough weed pounded into the highway that hippies would be coming upstate and trying to smoke asphalt.

* * *

On the highway from Syracuse to Utica I thought more about Warts. Maybe I could get to know her a little bit. Take her on a dinner date. Talk about personal stuff but not get too intimate. Maybe even give her a goodnight kiss. That wouldn't give me warts, would it? Her lips didn't look bad. And I wouldn't have to give her any tongue. Nope. That would not be on the table.

Definitely not.

I timed my trip so that I would arrive at Utica at about the time that Gus started his shift. I hoped that I wouldn't have to nag him to pay what he owed.

I was soon to wish that were my only problem.

There was a huge crowd of kids, presumably students, gathered around the liquor store where Gus worked.

Three police cars were parked at the curb, lights flashing.

A smart guy would have kept on riding down the street. Especially a smart guy who had two kilos of marijuana in a paper bag strapped to his motorcycle gas tank with his belt.

But that would have meant driving past the cop who was standing in the street, managing traffic, and trying to keep the kids from crowding the store.

I told myself that it was my job to get as much information as I could. I didn't know what I might learn here that would help keep Randal out of prison. The truth, though, was that I could never resist snooping around, trying to find out what was going on. I think it's in my genes.

I stopped my bike at the curb, my front tire almost touching a kid with long hair and a buckskin vest.

"What's happening?" I asked.

A couple of kids turned to look at me. "They're busting Gus," the buckskin clad kid said.

"What for?"

"Everything. Possession. Dealing drugs. Selling alcohol to minors. Spitting on the sidewalk. The pigs got it in for him."

I couldn't imagine why. "How'd they find out that he was doing all that?"

A girl with long blond hair wearing a tie-dyed tee shirt and no bra shrugged her shoulders, making her ample bust bounce. "A Tau Chi Zeta brat turned him in. Her dad made a surprise visit to ask her why she was on academic probation and he caught her with a roach. She caved and spilled her guts to him. He's a big-time Wall Street lawyer and he went to the cops and raised a stink. They couldn't ignore him. That's the straight goods. I heard it direct from one of her sorority sisters. They're all pissed because the whole sorority is going to get nailed to the cross."

Buckskin kid shook his head sadly. "It's going to be hard to throw a decent party around here now. There ain't nobody else like Gus in town."

Busty girl nodded in agreement.

Another guy, a little older, with hair longer than busty girl's, said, "You can say that again. It's not just Gus, you know. They're going to find out who his supplier is. Gus isn't the kind of guy who'll take one for the Gipper. He's going to trade everything he knows for a plea deal. I'm reading law and I can give you a gold-plated guarantee about that."

My heart sank. We'd never told Gus our names or addresses but it was only a matter of time until I found a wanted poster with a drawing of my face on it in hanging in the Wemsley post office.

Maybe Randal and I could share a cell in Sing-Sing. I'd be okay as long as he didn't freak out in the middle of the night and mistake me for a Viet Cong prison guard.

I looked down at the paper bag filled with marijuana that was strapped to my gas tank. They wouldn't need to post my picture if Gus saw me in the crowd and pointed at me.

When I looked up, the door opened and Gus, his hands cuffed behind his back and an expression of dull horror on his face, was frog-marched toward a patrol car by a pair of burly cops, one on each arm.

I wanted to roar out of there, but I would attract attention if I moved. I saw the wisdom of Randal's mouse – stay small and still until after the danger has passed me by.

But, as soon as Gus cleared the door, he scanned the crowd and caught my eye.

I shrank back in my motorcycle seat and stared at him, knowing exactly how a mouse felt when a cat was poised to strike at it.

The cops paused, waiting for one of their number to come and clear a path through the crowd to the cruiser.

Gus held my eye.

Seconds passed as slowly as hours while I waited for him to speak the words that would seal my doom.

Then the cops began dragging Gus toward the cruiser again and he had to break eye contact.

Buckskin Kid, standing right in front of me, began yelling, "Free Gus! Free Gus! Free Gus!... "

Busty Girl beside him and Long Hair on the other side took up the chant. "Free Gus! Free Gus!... "

All the cops, including the two holding Gus swiveled to look at us. Hands dropped reflexively to gun butts. The cop directing traffic on the street began striding toward us. He had noticed Gus staring at me and he looked pissed. Working crowd control had taken all the fun out of his life tonight.

The rest of the crowd joined the chant. "Free Gus! Free Gus! Free Gus!... "

The bag of marijuana between my legs felt like it was burning. I had to get out of there, right now. I hit the starter button and cranked the engine to life. It was still warm and caught with a roar as soon as it turned over.

"Hey, you!" the traffic cop yelled.

I heeled the wheel over and pushed it past the busty girl's calves, then juiced the throttle and let the clutch catch a bit.

The bike jumped a foot toward a skinny girl in a peasant skirt. She jumped aside and I goosed the clutch again.

"Hey!" the cop yelled. "Stop!"

The crowd had grown. I was surrounded by kids now. They were slow to move out of my way. But they weren't quick to let the cop push through them, either.

More kids stepped aside as my front tire lurched toward them.

I could see a path to the road opening up.

The cop was pushing through the kids more aggressively, now. They were still chanting, "Free Gus!" and moved to block the cop – not because they wanted to help me, but because they wanted to cause any trouble for the authorities that they could, no matter how petty.

I glanced back and saw that the cop had drawn his revolver clear of his holster. Surely he didn't dare fire at me in a crowd like this. But it had only been a year since the National Guard had massacred unarmed students at Kent State. And not one of those murderers had been brought to trial, even for as little as careless use of a firearm. Half the country hated students and the authorities could kill with impunity. Hell, half the country would pin a medal on this cop if he shot dead an eighteen-year-old college student who was holding two kilos of marijuana.

My heart was pounding with terror.

I gunned the bike and popped the clutch, aiming for the too-small opening between the last few kids and the road.

When they heard the roar of the bike, they jumped aside. Thankfully, they were young and nimble.

I cranked through the gears, working the clutch as hard as I could. I didn't release the throttle until I reached sixty, some six or seven seconds later.

I don't know if the cop fired on me or not.

I do know that I missed a couple of cars by less than a mouse whisker. Brakes squealed and horns blasted behind me, but I lived to ride another day.

I was lucky.

But my drug dealing days were over. I didn't care if it cost Randal a year's pay.

As I blasted down the highway back to Wemsley, I could only hope that nobody would recognize my picture when it appeared on post office bulletin boards.

* * *

"Hey, Gunner, we need a T-bone," Gwen said as she poked an order onto the wheel.

In all the time that I'd been working at Elsa's, I'd never seen an order for a steak. I didn't even know that it was on the menu.

"Where do we keep them?" I asked.

"At the A&P." She waved a five-dollar-bill at me. "You got to walk over and buy one. Don't take one of the packaged ones from the shelf. Talk to Tuski and make sure that he gives you a good one."

"Who's Tuski?"

"The butcher. Make sure that he knows that you're Mrs. Everett's cook. Maybe that will help a little. But you watch what he gives you, anyway. And bring back the receipt."

I put the five in my pocket, told Gil to keep cooking, and shed my apron.

Yesterday was a weed run to Syracuse; today a steak run to the A&P across the street. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?

It was quickest to walk through the front rather than walking around the restaurant so that's how I went.

Gwen stopped me before I got to the door and whispered, "Don't carry the steak back through here. The customers don't need to know that we buy the same meat from the same place they shop or they'll realize that they could stay home, cook it themselves, and save a bundle."

"Right." Considering how seldom anyone ordered the steak, I suspected that most of the town already knew that they could cook one at home a lot cheaper.

Mr. Tuski turned out to be a middle-aged man with slightly swarthy skin and salt-and-pepper hair. He spoke with a foreign accent that I couldn't identify. I suspect that the accent was a put-on to impress the customers.

"I need a T-bone steak for Elsa's Grill," I said.

"Elsa's? Okay. I get. Wait." He disappeared into a back room.

When he returned a minute later, his bloodstained apron might have sported a dab of red that was fresher than the others or it might not. I couldn't tell.

He used a black grease pen to write "$1.15" on the brown paper package. "Special steak for Elsa's," he said and handed it to me. "Special price."

"Thanks."

I paid at the cash register in the front of the store and took it back to the grill.

When I unwrapped it, I couldn't see what was special about it. I looked about the same as all the other steaks that were on display at the A&P.

I went to the order counter and waited for Gwen to come over.

"How do I cook this?" I asked as I passed the change and receipt to her.

"Medium rare," she said.

"How do I do that?"

"Don't you know how to cook a steak?"

"I never have."

"Put it on the grill. Turn it over before the blood starts coming out the top, then take it off before the blood comes out the other side. Put it on a plate with a handful of fries and a generous spoonful of coleslaw."

I threw it on the grill and wondered how I would know when it was ready to turn. According to Gwen, it would be too late when blood started coming out of it.

I turned it when the first drop of blood began pooling next to the bone. Assuming that meant that I had left it on for too long, I left it on the other side for only a couple of minutes.

I plated it with fries and slaw and gave it to Gwen.

She wrinkled her nose and pushed it back across the counter at me. "Put it back on the grill for another couple minutes," she said. "You got blood running out of it too fast. That means it's still rare. And replace those fries with ones that haven't soaked up a pint of blood."

I did as I was told and she was satisfied with the result.

I was a real cook now. I knew how to cook steak rare or medium rare. I hoped that the next steak order wouldn't be medium well. Or that I'd be studying at Columbia by that time, which was more likely.

Gil was getting better at cooking. I had to close because it was up to me to cash out the waitresses and balance the registers, but now I could take a longer break in the mid-afternoon when it was slow.

I had time to go over to visit Randal.

When he asked how it was going, I told him about Gus getting busted and me almost getting nailed by the cops.

"It's going to be hard for you to talk to Gus now," he said.

That was what he got out of my story? That I couldn't talk to Gus? "I almost got caught," I snapped back.

He shrugged. " _Almost_ only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. What counts here is that you _didn't_ get caught."

"What if Gus talks?"

"What does Gus know? Did you tell him your name?"

"No."

"Address?"

"Of course not."

"Then he can't tell the cops who you are or where you live. What are you worried about?"

"Maybe he knows about Warts Weber. Maybe the cops will bust her next."

"Same difference. She doesn't know who we are, either. We run a cash business. Nothing is documented."

"What if the cops find us somehow? Your picture's been in the papers."

"All the better. My lawyer will say that Gus saw my picture in the paper and that's why he picked me to accuse when he was trying to buy himself a plea deal. When the cops ask us about Gus, we know nothing about him or what he's talking about."

"You think that'll work?"

"It already has," Randal said.

"What do you mean?"

"A cop from Utica was around this morning asking about Gus. I told him that I didn't know anything and he left."

I almost fell to my knees in terror. "What are you talking about?"

"I thought that I made myself pretty clear. A detective from Utica interrogated me about the marijuana business this morning. I said nothing so he decided that I didn't know anything and left."

"How'd he know to come here?" My voice sounded shrill in my ears. "You never told him your name."

"Gus told the cops that he bought weed from Billy Paul. It's safe for him to identify Billy as his supplier because Billy's a dead end. Literally. Smart move for Gus. He can trade Billy for a plea deal and nobody on our side cares. But the cops think that I killed Billy so they got to talk to me to see what I know. But I know nothing about Billy's marijuana business. They can buy that story because they think that I killed him because of Gwen, not over drugs."

"What happens when they come around to talk to me?"

"Nothing. Why would they talk to you? You're just a guy that I cook with."

"That's right," I said. "The drug business is over. It's too dangerous for me to do this any more."

He sighed. "You're probably right. It won't do either one of us any good if you get busted." He looked hard at me. "There's just one thing."

"What's that?"

"If you ever do get busted, never, ever say anything about Weber. It would cost you your life if you mentioned her to the cops. She's not very high up the chain, but she's high enough to carry some serious weight."

"What should I tell the cops? If they do interrogate me?"

"Tell them that I got the drugs. That you were just along for the ride."

"What are you going to tell them?"

"That I got the drugs from Gus. That he wholesaled a couple of keys to me. Gus and I can make a circle and let the cops run around it chasing their tails."

"Okay." It came out quavery. I was shaking at the thought of getting busted.

"Don't worry," Randal said. "It's never going to come to that. Never. I guarantee it."

That wasn't a guarantee that would make me sleep well at night. How can a man who's behind bars claim that he knows how to outfox the cops?

"One other thing."

"Yeah?"

"Billy's brother, Johnny."

"What about him?"

"You still got to talk to him. He's the key. He knows more than he's saying."

I still wasn't convinced about that. "I don't get a day off until next Tuesday."

"Anything you can do, man. I'm running out of time here, so anything you can do."

"What about the drugs?"

"What drugs?"

"The two keys that I bought off Wanda? I couldn't offer them to Gus. He was busy getting busted."

"Hang on to them until we find a way to unload them."

"I can't. I've got no place to put them. They're under my bed right now, but if Mom looks under there, she's going to freak out."

"If you're really worried about it, ditch them."

"Ditch them?"

"Throw them in the garbage. Bury them in the woods. Whatever. Just don't leave any fingerprints on them."

"They cost twelve hundred dollars."

He shrugged. "Cost of doing business."

Expensive business.

"Just make sure that you talk to Johnny Paul."

Dangerous business, too.

* * *

Tuesday, I rode up to Russo.

"What can I do you for?" Johnny asked.

"We got to talk," I said.

"I said, 'three weeks.' It's only been two."

"I'm not here to collect. I'm here to talk," I replied.

"So talk."

I looked around. There was nobody in sight. It felt strange talking outside in a gas station parking lot but it was probably safer than in the office. "One of my guys got busted," I said.

"What's that to me?" he asked. He spoke in his normal slow drawl but he suddenly looked nervous.

"I just want to assure you that it wasn't because of us. He was careless. Practically selling in the open. Not like your operation at all."

"Okay. So what's that to me?"

"There's a back door connection. He's talking to the cops. He doesn't know anything about you. Nobody does unless you told someone. But he's telling the cops that Billy sold him his drugs. That might lead the cops back to you. Not because they know anything, but because you're Billy's brother. If that happens, you don't say anything about us and you'll be fine. You never knew anything about Billy's business and you don't know who he knew and you don't know about any drugs. Then the cops'll have nothing on you."

"I know that."

"You know it and we know it, too."

"Okay," he said.

"Okay," I said. "I just wanted to make sure that there was no misunderstanding between us."

"I understand."

"Good."

We stared at each other for a minute.

"The thing is," I said, "that I'd like to talk to whoever else Billy did business with. Give them a heads up, just like I gave you. The more people know what the cops know, the more they can be ready for them."

"Makes sense. But like I told you before, I don't know nobody else that Billy did business with. Except the Road Snakes up in the mountains. They're the only guys Billy talked about. He used to talk about being in tight with them. Made out like they were the next best thing to the Hells Angels. Maybe better because he figured they were even tougher than the Angels. Maybe they were because the last time I saw him, he didn't seem so confident about him and them."

"What do you mean?"

"He seemed worried. Maybe even scared. He told me that if the Road Snakes ever came looking for him that I didn't know where he was. That was easy because it was true."

I thought back to our last conversation with Johnny. He'd claimed that he didn't know anything about Billy's business except for Gus. Now it seems that he knew all about the Road Snakes, too.

"Did the Snakes sell for him?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Beats me. That's not something that he talked about. Like I told you before, he didn't talk to me about any business except what he and I did together."

Wrong question. "Was he hiding from the Road Snakes?"

"I told you what he told me. That I wasn't to tell them where he was. If you think that's hiding from them, then it probably is."

"I think it is. Was he hiding from anyone else?"

"Not that I know. He didn't warn me not to tell anyone else where he was. But, you know, that went without saying. If you don't want nobody to know something, you better make sure that nobody knows it."

"Did any of the Road Snakes ever come here asking about Billy?"

"I wouldn't know a Road Snake if it bit me on the ass. The only bikers ever come here asking about Billy is you and that other guy."

"The one who bought Billy's bike off him." I decided to get that out in the open before it festered any longer.

"Yeah," Johnny said.

"We're not Road Snakes."

"That's exactly what a Road Snake would have to say if'n he wanted to me to talk about Billy."

I saw his point. "Do you think I'm a Road Snake?"

"I don't guess you are," he said. But he was looking hard at my bike.

"I'm not. You can trust me on that."

We stared at each other in silence for a minute Of course he couldn't trust me on that. I rode a bike. Worse, he'd seen Randal riding Billy's bike. And Randal was in jail for murdering Billy. I wondered if he knew that. Better if he didn't. I wouldn't mention it.

"I still want to know who killed Billy. You had any more thoughts about that?"

"No."

"Exactly what did Billy say when he said that he didn't want you to tell the Road Snakes that you'd seen him?"

"Just that."

"He didn't say why?"

"He said something about girl trouble. But that was nothing. Billy always had girl trouble. No matter what got between him and the Road Snakes, he would have said it was girl trouble. It was like a joke between us."

That didn't tell me much.

I poked my bike to life. "I'll see you next week," I said. "How's sales?"

"It's okay."

I had a thought. "We fronted you the key, but if you got the cash, I could give you another key now instead of fronting it to you."

Johnny shook his head. "Naw," he said. "I'll pay you next week, but I'm not going to need another key for a bit. Maybe two or three weeks from now."

I understood. If he'd sold half of the last key at a hundred percent markup then he could pay for it but he wouldn't have enough money to buy another one until he'd sold all of that one.

I thought hard on my ride back to Wemsley. It felt like I'd learned something from Johnny, but I couldn't figure out what.

* * *

Tuesday night was date night with Katie. The last time we'd gone out, she'd talked about getting a motel room but she hadn't mentioned that again and I was afraid that if I brought it up, she might say that she'd changed her mind.

Instead, I took her to see a movie called _Billy Jack_. It pretended to profess non-violence as an ideal but every problem in the movie was solved by violence. The audience was left with no choice but to cheer when Billy Jack beat up one villain after another, finally killing the son of the town plutocrat.

It was not a good movie for Katie. It featured one sexual assault with a knife, one violent rape, and one statutory rape.

It wasn't a good movie for me, either.

If Billy Jack had been with Katie in the Road Snake clubhouse, he would have beat up the Road Snakes with his fancy karate instead of cowering on a dirty old sofa while they almost raped her.

I never felt like less of a hero than when I walked out of that movie.

I couldn't understand why Katie clung so tightly to my arm.

As she climbed onto my bike behind me, she whispered in my ear, "Billy Paul was no Billy Jack."

That was undoubtedly true, but I couldn't figure out why she would make that comparison. All they had in common was the similarity in their names.

"In what way?" I asked.

"He was more like Bernard in the movie and Randal is more like Billy Jack. Bernard raped Jean and Billy Paul raped Gwen. Billy Jack killed Bernard for it and Randal killed Billy Paul."

I hadn't seen that parallel. Still didn't. "Randal didn't kill Billy Paul."

She hugged me tight. "Maybe not, but everyone thinks that he did."

"I don't."

She put her head on my back. "I know. You're a real friend."

"Do you think he killed Billy?"

"Billy needed killing. I don't know if Randal did it or not. But I wouldn't blame him if he did. Billy's murder was justice, pure and simple."

I gunned the engine and released the clutch. The bike shot away from the curb and Katie hugged me tighter than ever. I could feel her breasts pressing against my back and it took my breath away.

I didn't know where to go, so I drove out to Smoke Pond. Not to Makeout Hill like usual, but to the campground side.

There was no need to buy a pass because we weren't staying the night.

I rode slowly around the park. There were a few tents but I couldn't tell if they were occupied or not. Maybe my bike was waking up campers or maybe they were all in town, trying to figure out what the citizens of Wemsley did on a Tuesday night.

I stopped at one of the many unoccupied sites. This might be the height of tourist season, but Smoke Pond was mostly empty even at the best of times. I killed the engine.

"Do you ever think about where Billy was camping when he was killed?" I asked.

"No. Do you?"

"Sometimes. It was one of these sites. Might even have been this very one."

"I wouldn't want to camp here, then. It might be haunted. I wouldn't want to meet Billy Paul's ghost."

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

"Maybe. Do you?"

"No."

"What if you're wrong?"

"I won't know that I'm wrong until I see one."

"I wouldn't want to see one," she said. "Billy was scary enough when he was alive. I almost freaked out when he yelled at Gwen and dumped her tray."

"Don't worry about his ghost," I said. "I guarantee that you'll never see it."

"You can't guarantee something like that. You don't know."

"Besides, what could a ghost do to you?" I asked.

"Scare me. Maybe do other things."

"Like what?"

"Like what he did to The Doll."

I was confused. "What do you mean? What did Billy's ghost do to The Doll?"

"Not his ghost, silly. Him. When he was alive."

"What?" I felt like I was thick. There was something that was obvious to Katie that I wasn't getting at all.

"You know. He... He forced himself on her."

"What?"

"Didn't you hear what Buck was saying to the other Road Snakes?"

"Something about a promise to The Doll?" I was beginning to see what she was getting at.

"Right. He made them back off from me because they'd promised The Doll that they wouldn't do to a woman what was done to her."

That wasn't quite right, but it was close. I was beginning to remember what Buck had said. That they had made a promise to The Doll and that it was up to each of them to decide what their promise meant. Meaning whether it applied to Katie or not. Then Candy had distracted them by offering herself in Katie's place. Maybe Candy thought that that was included in her promise to The Doll.

But was it Billy Paul who'd hurt The Doll or someone else?

Who else? It was Billy who was hiding from the Snakes.

"So, let me get this straight. You think that Billy was hanging around the Road Snakes and he got The Doll alone and raped her and the Snakes found out and promised The Doll that they would never let that happen again."

"Don't you think so?"

I thought about it for a minute. "I do. I think that's exactly what happened."

"Only they didn't just promise The Doll that it wouldn't happen again. They also promised her justice. They promised that they'd get Billy Paul. Beat him up or–"

"Or kill him."

"He needed killing. If Randal didn't do it, then the Road Snakes did."

Billy's murder wasn't about drugs or money at all. It was about honor. The Road Snakes view of honor was a little twisted, but it was stronger than most men's. I was sure of that.

The world made sense for the first time since the summer began.

I twisted my neck around and kissed Katie. "You're brilliant," I said. "Absolutely brilliant."

"Why don't we ride around to Makeout Hill and we'll shine together under the stars for a while, then?"

That's exactly what we did. I felt like I was glowing white-hot when I was in her arms. It wasn't going all the way like she said that she'd do in some motel room in Watertown, but I couldn't imagine that feeling any better.

I was young, then, and still had a lot to learn about men and women.

* * *

Knowing, or at least having an excellent hypothesis, about who had killed Billy and why, was a huge advance, but I was a long way from proving that the Snakes had done it.

In fact, we were a long way from creating reasonable doubt in a courtroom. I didn't have a speck of evidence that Billy had raped The Doll, that the Road Snakes had vowed revenge, or that they had found Billy and done for him.

Not a speck.

And I was pretty sure that if any of the Road Snakes were brought before a jury, they'd swear under oath that none of that had happened.

On Wednesday morning, I went to see Randal.

He was gone. Officer Monsour said, "He couldn't stay here forever, much as he loved our fine food and generous hospitality. He got taken up to Canton yesterday, a couple of hours after you left. I think he's going to court today or tomorrow."

My heart sank. "His trial is starting? Already started?"

Monsour laughed. "No. He's just getting arraigned. He won't be tried for months yet. Maybe a year."

"What's arraigned?"

"A show. Sound and fury signifying nothing."

I never would have guessed that Monsour knew anything about the Bard of Avon, much less would be able to quote him. Wonders never cease. Some day pigs will fly.

Monsour continued, "At the arraignment, the judge tells him what the charges are, murder in the first degree, in this case, and then asks for a plea. If there is no deal in place, then the prisoner pleads not guilty and the judge sets a trial date. Oh, and he hears any motions that the lawyers offer. The arraignment's mostly so that everyone can get a look at each other and get the boring business out of the way early."

Officer Monsour was almost a lawyer. I could hear pigs beginning to flap their wings somewhere.

Less fancifully, this meant that I was on my own. I couldn't be running up to Canton every time I needed help.

I asked myself what Randal would expect me to do next.

The only answer to that was that I had to break into the Road Snakes' clubhouse and look for evidence that they'd killed Billy.

Some chance.

Somewhere, a pig was crashing to earth. There'd be raw bacon flying in all directions like lard shrapnel.

* * *

"What's that?" I examined the boxy, stainless steel thing from a safe distance.

Mrs. Everett looked as pleased as a cat with canary feathers in its mustache. "It's a funnel cake fryer. I found it at an auction over it Binghamton last weekend. Less than a hundred dollars and it was all mine."

"What's a funnel cake?"

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you never had funnel cake. Didn't you ever go to the state fair?"

"Sure. But I never saw anything called a funnel cake."

"Then you didn't look very hard."

"I didn't know that I was supposed to look for funnel cakes. I was too busy looking for the rides with the shortest lines."

"Rides, phooey. A state fair is supposed to be calf judging and quilt competitions. And fun food like funnel cakes. A funnel cake is like a donut but bigger and better. You use a thing like a pitcher with a funnel on it to pour a stream of batter into hot oil. It looks like a cake of giant dough worms when it's cooked."

"Sounds appetizing."

"It's delicious," she said, either missing my sarcastic tone or ignoring it. "But it's got to be fresh. That's what makes them so good. They get made right in front of you."

"Are you going to have a booth at the state fair in the fall?"

"No. We're going to make funnel cakes right here, all year round. Won't that be great?"

"What about the pies and cakes that we already have?"

"We'll have those, too. But now we'll have funnel cakes for people who want something different."

"A pile of dough worms."

"Right. With powdered sugar or jam on it."

"Where are we going to put it?"

"I thought that you could figure out a place. It needs gas so it should probably go near the stove or deep fryer. We don't want to have to pay George Feely to run the gas all over the place."

"No, we wouldn't want that." I looked at the kitchen. It was already packed with assorted pieces of equipment. "I guess you could put it over by the door."

"No. It's hot oil. You can't put it out where people will bump into it. Maybe we could put it were the fry table is."

"Then where would we bag the fries and rings? And chicken?"

She was silent for a minute then said. "I know, we could put it in the back by the prep table. If we move the table closer to the double bain-marie then we'd have lots of room. In fact, we could put the steamer and the double bain on the end of the prep table and get rid of that little table altogether. That would work."

It would work but I didn't like the idea. We'd have less room for prep on the prep table and I'd have to walk all the way around to the far end of the kitchen every time someone wanted one of those funnel cakes. It was also going to make more work for the cooks. The pies and cakes came from the bakery directly to the glass case in the front. They were the waitresses' job. This was going to be the cooks'. "What do you think Randal is going to do? He doesn't like changes in the kitchen."

"Do you think Randal's ever going to be back here? He's in jail for murder. It's going to take a miracle to get him out of there."

"He's innocent. We're going to get him out. They can't send an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life."

She looked at me for a long moment. "You believe that?"

I didn't know whether she was asking if I believed in his innocence or in the infallibility of justice, but my answer was, "Yes." As long as everyone did his best, justice had to prevail. I'd watched a lot of movies in my young life and that was how it always worked.

She patted my arm. "You are a wonderful boy." Then she looked at the funnel cake fryer. "You get Gil to help you move the prep table and put the steamer and bain-marie on it after we close tonight. You can put the small table out back and I'll have Feely move it somewhere with his truck when he comes to do the gas."

"I'll get Gil to help after he cleans the hood filters tonight," I said.

Our conversation ended when Gwen called the order for Mrs. Craughton and Barkley. Lunch was beginning.

* * *

I dreaded the passing of the days because each one brought me a day closer to Tuesday, my day off, when I'd have to ride up to Oak Falls and confront the Road Snakes again.

Not confront them in the dictionary meaning of the word. I intended to avoid them. I hadn't seen them since Buck and Candy had thwarted their attempt to rape my girlfriend right in front of me and I had no intention of ever being in their presence again. Offering to give me a turn at Katie after they had taken as much of her as they wanted had hardly been a sign of respect. I was pretty sure that the next time they saw me, they'd kick me around the room a few times just for the fun of it. Maybe shove my face in a toilet for a few more grins and giggles. Maybe hold me there until I was dead as a drowned kitten.

I had no doubt that they were killers.

My only hope of surviving intact was to get into their clubhouse, search it, and get away without anyone knowing that I was there.

The most frightening part was that the last time that I had expected to be alone up there, I had been horribly wrong. This time, I'd be smarter. I'd make sure that nobody was staying in the main house, watching me when I tried to break into the clubhouse.

I had sworn to do everything I could to save Randal, and that meant going in there and finding evidence. So much could go wrong that I was pretty sure that I was going to die trying. But I had no choice.

More important than saving Randal, I had to do it because, despite what Katie said, it was the only way to prove to myself that I wasn't a coward.

And getting revenge on the Road Snakes would be a fine bonus.

When Tuesday came, I gritted my teeth, mounted my bike, and pointed it toward Oak Falls. I tried not to think about how foolish I was being.

The day began badly. A few miles short of Kenny Mill, I heard a siren in my ear. Glancing down at my rear-view mirror, I saw flashing red lights.

If Gus had told the police enough that they had figured out who had given him his drugs, then I was about to be handcuffed and hauled away to prison. I was sorely tempted to see if a Harley could outrun a Ford Crown Victoria. All of them. The police had radios. If you ran from one, you ran from all.

Common sense prevailed.

Heart pounding, I pulled over, hoping that the highway patrol cruiser wanted only to get past me.

No such luck. The cruiser followed me to the verge and stopped when I did.

As I took off my helmet, I remembered what Randal did when he was stopped by Albertson. He stayed on his bike until asked to dismount. So I did the same.

That didn't last long. The first thing the highway patrolman said was, "Get off the bike, kid."

I did.

"License and registration," he said.

I was glad that I'd taken the trouble to get my license validated for motorcycles. It had involved nothing more than walking into the nearest Motor Vehicle Department Office and letting them stamp an endorsement on it. They hadn't even bothered to ask if I knew how to ride a motorcycle; the clerk just looked at the helmet under my arm and said, "Okay."

I handed my license to the cop. "I don't have the registration. A friend lent the bike to me."

"Yeah, right," he said. "Amazing how many guys are riding other guy's motorcycles when they get stopped."

In my case, it was true – Randal had lent me the bike – but I said nothing. That was one of Randal's rules. _Never tell a cop more than you have to._ It was a smart rule.

"So where are you going in such a hurry?" he asked.

"Oak Falls."

"What's in Oak Falls?"

"A bike mechanic." I couldn't think of any other reason that I'd be going up there.

"Your bike seems to ride pretty good to me," he said. "At least up to eighty miles an hour."

"Gosh. Was I going that fast? I'm sorry. I guess it got away from me for a minute. I thought I was keeping it under the limit. When there's no traffic around, it's hard to guess your speed."

"You don't have to guess. You've got a speedometer." He reached out and tapped the gauge on my handlebars.

"Actually, I don't. That's why I was taking it to the mechanic. It's broken so I wanted to see if he could fix it."

"It doesn't work?"

"It's erratic. Sometimes it works and sometimes it shows the wrong speed and sometimes it doesn't work at all. I can't trust it. I'm sure that the mechanic will get it fixed up in no time. Probably just a loose connection."

The cop examined my license and made notes on a pad before handing it back. I was worried that he was writing out a speeding ticket but it seemed that he'd only written down my name and address because he said, "You get that speedometer fixed, Phillip, because I don't want to see you driving that fast on my highway again. Next time, it'll be a fifty dollar ticket and points on your license."

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll be sure to keep it under the speed limit from now on."

"Okay, Phillip. You be on your way, now. Just remember. I'm watching out for you."

He was using my name to emphasize that he knew who I was and that he was going to remember me. I got the point.

"Thank you, officer." I mounted my bike, started it up, and eased it onto the highway, being careful to look in both directions.

The cop was in his car, talking on his radio when I left. Probably calling in my name to make sure that there weren't any arrest warrants pending.

I hoped there weren't. I hoped that Gus was still insisting that he got all his drugs from Billy Paul.

I was talking to more police officers this summer than I'd seen in my whole life. That gave me no comfort.

The worst part about this traffic stop was that if anything went wrong at the clubhouse and a police report was filed, the authorities would know that I was in the area and have cause to question me.

I could only hope that nothing would go wrong.

Fat chance of that.

When I got to Kenny Mill, I did as Randal had done when he wanted to reconnoiter the property. I pulled the bike off the highway and parked it in the bush out of sight. I didn't have a knife to cut fresh branches to hide it so I did the best that I could with some dead branches and leafy twigs. It took a little longer, but I got the bike hidden to my satisfaction.

I approached the house through the bush, trying not to rustle leaves or snap twigs. That also took a while. I wasn't as quiet as I would have liked but I don't think anyone could have heard me if they were in the house. Not over the barking dogs.

I sat in the bush and watched the house for a long time – only a half hour by my watch, but it seemed like half the day.

I saw nothing. The door was shut and all the windows were closed. There were no bikes in the yard but I didn't put too much stock in that. There hadn't been any bikes in view last time when Jimbo had been in the house. Maybe they kept their bikes inside sometimes.

I watched for any movement behind the glass panes but saw nothing. No glint of sunlight on a watch or jewelry. No shadows against the interior walls. No breeze disturbing the curtains. Nothing.

When I got bored, I waited a little longer. When I got really bored, I waited even longer. When I could no longer stand it, I left the bush and walked across the dry, weedy yard, climbed the steps to the front door, and knocked.

I waited and then knocked again, louder.

I waited some more and then knocked a third time, as loudly as I could.

No answer.

I walked around the back and looked for bikes.

I saw none.

I knocked on the back door but that wasn't answered, either.

Finally, I concluded that there was nobody in the house. Or, at least, nobody who was conscious.

That left the clubhouse. I wasn't surprised that there was no answer to a knock there, either. Every time I'd seen someone in the clubhouse, they'd left one of the doors open – either the big garage door or the little side door next to it. They didn't fret too much about privacy. Out here, they had plenty without closing doors.

The door was locked. The garage door, too. I wasn't a burglar. My only plan was a vague idea that there had to be some way to get into a garage. Usually, they weren't the most secure places.

This was different. The door was clad in steel and secured with a quality deadbolt lock. The garage door was also secured with a high-end deadbolt. I wouldn't be walking in easily.

It was important that the Road Snakes not know that they had been burglarized because the highway patrol officer had taken my name and address. I would be questioned if any major crime were reported in the area today.

I circled around the little building, looking for a vulnerability but found none. There were no windows and no other doors. The walls looked secure. Concrete block construction didn't leave many options for penetration, apart from breaking the concrete up with a sledgehammer. That would be difficult and noisy. Besides, I didn't bring a sledge. Or any other tools.

That left the roof.

When I looked up, fresh streams of sweat flowed down the back of my neck. I was terrified. Terrified of the Road Snakes if they found me; terrified of what would happen to Randal if I didn't prove his innocence; terrified of what had almost happened to Katie.

But I had to press on, anyway.

The roof was corrugated sheet metal. I didn't know what was underneath that. I hadn't looked up at the ceiling when I was inside. I assumed that there was something, though. Otherwise the place would be an oven in the summer and a deep freeze in the winter. If I could get up there, I could probably pry up a sheet. There would be no problem if there were insulation underneath. The bigger problem would be getting through the ceiling. Suspended ceiling tiles could be moved but a drywall ceiling would have to be broken. I couldn't do that if I wanted my intrusion to remain undetected.

All that speculation was moot. I couldn't get up to the roof unless I had a ladder. I looked around but there was no ladder lying around. That would have been too convenient. I couldn't even go buy one and come back. There was no way to carry a ladder out here on a bike.

The more I looked at the building, the more discouraged I became. My plan to burglarize the Road Snakes clubhouse in the middle of the day was a fool's errand.

I would have to go back home and devise better plan and then come back another day.

The truth was that I was more than a little relieved when I climbed on my bike and rode back out of the Adirondacks, alive and unscathed.

* * *

When I got back to Wemsley, my mom told me that my girlfriend had called. Mom loved to call Katie _your girlfriend_ because she could see that it made me uncomfortable. She was such a card.

"What'ch doing?" Katie asked when I called back.

"Just taking care of business," I said.

"You're busy?"

"Nope. Business is done for the day. I'm free now."

"Oh," she said, "because I was wondering what we were doing tonight."

A few days ago, I had mentioned a movie but she sounded like she had something else in mind. "You mean besides a movie?" I asked

"More like instead of a movie," she said.

I wasn't surprised that she didn't want to go to a movie again, but I couldn't think of anything else to suggest. "Did you have something different in mind?"

"It's a lovely afternoon," she said. "If you have time, I thought that we might get out of town. Maybe ride up to Watertown. They have more places to eat up there than down here around Wemsley."

My heart leapt. Places to eat? There were a lot of restaurants that were a lot closer that Watertown. Surely that wasn't what she really meant. The last time that Katie had mentioned Watertown, she had also mentioned getting a motel room. Was that what she had in mind for tonight? "Okay." I didn't want to say more for fear that she would hear my voice quavering.

"Okay. I'll be home any time you're ready to go."

"I'll be over in five minutes," I said.

I was.

I didn't know what I felt. Hope that my unfortunate condition of virginity was about to be cured. Fear that I was being set up for disappointment. Terror that I wouldn't be able to do it right. More than all of those, though, was puzzlement. Why would she want to do it with me? I was the one who had failed to protect her when the Road Snakes were going to force themselves on her. She couldn't really want to do it with me now. Not after that wretched show.

Maybe she was setting me up for her revenge. Maybe she was going to get me all hot and bothered and then drop me like a cold fish.

I deserved no better than that.

When I picked her up, she was carrying a large leather purse over her shoulder. Before she mounted the bike behind me, she slipped the strap over her head so that it was crosswise across her body with her purse held snuggly between her elbow and waist.

She grabbed me around the middle and whispered in my ear, "Let's go to Watertown."

I had never heard more exciting or terrifying words in my life than _Let's go to Watertown_. I revved the engine and released the clutch, almost but not quite burning rubber.

Watertown was a two-hour drive and I didn't try to make it any shorter by speeding. I had no intention of getting stopped by the highway patrol. Not again. Not when I had Katie on the back.

All the way there, I felt her breasts pressed against me, her thighs rubbing against my hips, her hands squeezing my chest, her head resting on my shoulder.

All that stimulation didn't keep me from thinking about what we were doing. I had more questions than answers. As we neared the outskirts, I made a decision. I wasn't going to take her to any motel until I had some answers. At least, to my most pressing questions.

I needed to know where Katie and I stood.

"Where would you like to eat?" I shouted back at her.

"Anywhere."

That was no help. I didn't have any experience with restaurants in Watertown. I'd only passed through on the way to Canada once when I was about eight and we hadn't stopped until we were on the Canadian side of the border. Most of our family trips had been in the other direction, to New York or Washington.

When we got downtown, I slowed the bike to a leisurely pace and said, "Tell me if anything catches your eye."

"I saw a motel a couple miles back on the highway," she said.

That removed any doubt about why she had wanted to come here, but it still left me with too many questions.

"We should eat, first," I said.

"If you want." She sounded disappointed.

I spied a sign that said, "Betty's Family Diner" and slowed down even more. Peering through the big glass windows, I thought that the restaurant looked a lot like Elsa's Grill. That was good enough for me.

"How about here?" I asked.

"Okay." Her voice was faint, but I wanted to take her at her word.

Inside, Betty's smelled like Elsa's. Not romantic, but familiar. I wanted the comfort of something familiar. I asked the waitress – a blond, slightly older version of Gwen – for a table for two.

"Anywhere you want." She waved her hand vaguely at the half-empty front.

It was exactly what Gwen would have done.

I led Katie to a booth in the corner, as far from anyone else as possible.

I couldn't think how to start the conversation that I needed to have and she showed little interest in talking to me, so we said little while we looked at our menus and gave the waitress our orders.

I had the chicken dinner, complete with half a chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and coleslaw. It came with coffee or tea and a slice of pie – apple or lemon meringue – for dessert.

Katie ordered a green salad a la carte and a glass of water.

The silence was awkward but neither of us knew how to break it.

The longer it lasted, the harder it was to think of something to say.

By the time our food was served, I knew that I was never going to be able to talk to Katie again.

She nibbled a bit of lettuce.

"You're beautiful," I blurted out.

Her head rocked back as though I'd struck her.

"Thanks," she said after digesting my comment for a moment.

She nibbled another bit of lettuce and I ripped a drumstick from my half chicken.

"I understand," she said.

I looked at her. She looked like she was holding back tears. "I don't," I said. "I don't understand at all. Maybe you can explain it to me."

"I know you don't want me," she said. "Don't humiliate me more by making me tell you why."

I dropped my drumstick. "I don't know what you're talking about. I want you more than anything in the world. You don't want me."

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "Of course I want you. Why do you think I asked you to bring me up here?"

"I don't know why. That's what I don't understand. You can't still want me."

"Why not?"

Now it was me who was humiliated by having to explain why I was unworthy. "Because of the Road Snakes. You know."

"No, I don't," she said. "It's because of them that you can't want me any more. You saw me with them. You saw me take off my blouse for them. You know what I was going to do. With all of them. You know what kind of girl I'd have to be to do that."

"They would have forced you."

"Then I should have made them force me."

"You would have been hurt. You did the right thing. How can you think that you were anything less than perfect?"

"I should have fought them, not caved in."

"It's me that should have fought them," I said. "It's me that just sat there and let them do that to you. I would have kept sitting there and letting them do whatever they wanted. I–"

"You did what you could. If you'd tried to fight off all of them, they would have killed you. You didn't have any choice." She shook her head. "No, that's not right. You had a choice. You could have stayed outside. You could have jumped on your bike and ridden away and left me there. They told you that you could leave and you didn't. You could have left any time. But you didn't. You stayed with me. No matter what, you were going to stay and help me as much as you could. I'll never forget that. You were so brave. You even stood up to them and told them that I was your girlfriend. You were never going to run out on me. You were going to stay there for as long as you had to. And you got me out of there as soon as you had a chance. You saved me. I'll never forget what you did for me." A tear trickled down her cheek. "You're my knight in shining armor."

My world was turned upside down. I couldn't believe that Katie had thought me brave for what I had done, but she was right. I could have left her at any time but hadn't even considered it. That wasn't what a door gunner did.

I leaned across the table and smudged the tear away with my finger. "You're my lady. My perfect lady."

"I want..." She smiled through her tears. "I want you."

"I want you so bad, it hurts," I said.

"Let's get this stuff packed up to go."

I waved at the waitress. "We need the check and a box to go."

She brought both right away. I think she understood what was happening. She had that kind of smile on her face. A knowing smile. A Gwen kind of smile.

* * *

The motel that Katie had spied was called _Wright's Inn_ and the sign carried the slogan, "The Wright place to stay."

Corny. It sounded like exactly the kind of place that we wanted.

I parked the bike outside the office. "You can stay here," I said. "I'll get us a room."

"Okay." Was that a note of eagerness in her voice? A man can always dream.

The office was small, but clean. The man sitting behind the counter was black.

I don't think I'd ever spoken to a black man before. There were no black men in Wemsley. Not even the tourists who came were black. Negros. That was what my parents called them but everybody knew that they wanted to be called black now. Black is beautiful. Black and proud.

I didn't care. I was happy to call a man whatever he wanted to be called.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello." He didn't sound like the black guy on _The Mod Squad_. His voice was deep but not as rounded as Linc's.

"I'd like a room."

He peered out the window at Katie sitting on my bike. "For one?" he asked.

"Right."

"Then where's she going to sleep?"

I felt my face flush. "I meant for two."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"You got ID?"

I fished my driver's license out of my wallet and handed it to him.

"This says you're eighteen." He looked hard at me.

"I lied about my age when I got my license."

"Why would you want them to think you're under age? Because you don't want to be able to buy liquor?"

"I don't drink. I'm a Mormon." That was the only thing that I knew about Mormons for sure. They didn't drink.

"Right and you and that little saint out there are missionaries."

"That's right." I had no idea what he was talking about but I was so deep in my lies now that I had no choice but to brazen it out. "She's my wife. We Mormons marry young." I was sweating.

"How many wives you got?"

"Just the one."

"You aren't wearing a wedding ring." He peered through the window. "Don't look like she is, either."

"We don't wear our rings when we're on the road being missionaries. We don't want to lose them."

"Does she have ID?"

"No. She doesn't drive."

"If she had ID, would it have your last name on it?"

"Probably not. We just got married a couple of weeks ago and she hasn't changed all her ID cards yet."

"You got an answer for everything, don't you?"

"I just want a room."

"Ten bucks for a double for the night."

I handed him a twenty from my wallet. I was glad that I'd remembered to bring enough money.

"You got a credit card?"

"No. I've got money." I pointed to the bill in his hand.

"Then I'll need a fifty dollar damage deposit."

"I don't have fifty dollars."

He looked at the bill in his hand. "Then it's ten for the room and a ten dollar damage deposit. Non-refundable."

I knew that he was ripping me off but I wanted the room so badly, that I said, "Okay."

"And you better not mess up the room, Phillip, or there'll be an extra cleaning charge on top of the non-refundable damage deposit." He passed me a blank registration card. "Fill that out, Phil."

When I finished, he checked the address that I'd written against the address on my driver's license. Then he handed it back to me along with a key attached to a big orange plastic tag. "Room one oh five. Next building over."

He looked out the window again. "I assume that you don't need a bellhop to help you carry your luggage." He laughed at his joke and then went back to reading his newspaper.

* * *

The room was nicer than I'd expected. The double bed was larger than my parents' and the floor was carpeted. There was even a real oil painting bolted to the wall – a picture of a ten-point buck with mountains behind him. Big ones. Not the Adirondacks. Must be the Rocky Mountains.

"I like this," Katie said.

"Me, too."

She stood there for a minute. I had no idea what to do next.

"You want to peel a tomato?" she said.

"What?"

"It's a line from a movie I liked. _The Sterile Cuckoo_. The girl says that to the boy when they get inside their motel room. 'You want to peel a tomato?' It seemed like the thing to say here."

"Yeah," I said.

She grinned at me. "I'm waiting. Get peeling, Gunner."

I got peeling. She stood, quiet and relaxed, and let me do it. I was in no hurry and it took a little work to get her jeans unbuttoned. As I got down to the essentials, she looked a little apprehensive. I'd seen a lot of her, but there were a few parts that had remained clothed until now. Those parts were as good as the rest. She was lovely from head to toe.

"You're beautiful," I said. "More beautiful than anything I've ever seen before."

She grinned. "My turn." She began unbuttoning my shirt.

When my clothes were piled on the floor next to hers, she grabbed me and hugged me tight. My whole body tingled where it was pressed against her naked skin.

She kissed me long and soft and I was in heaven.

This room couldn't have been nicer if the walls were made of gold and encrusted with precious jewels.

She led me to the bed, threw the blankets and top sheet on the floor and laid me down.

I was as hard as I had ever been.

She spread her legs and pulled me on top of her, then she used her hand to guide me into her.

She brought me to a higher circle of heaven. Much higher.

Feeling her press herself against me and moan and convulse in ecstasy was even better than my own climax. That they both happened, her right after me, was perfect.

She held me tight to her long afterward, so that she could feel me relax and drift into semi-consciousness.

I must have slept because it was dark in the room when I looked around. Not completely dark – twilight dark.

Katie was lying beside me, looking at me. When she saw that I was looking back at her, she slid her hand down across my belly and whispered, "Think you could do that again, Gunner?"

This was the night that Katie began calling me Gunner. She would never again call me Phil.

We did do it again. And it was good again.

This time, I didn't fall asleep. We talked softly for a while, saying nothing but how good we made each other feel.

After a bit, she said, "I wish that I could stay here all night with you, but I have to get back home. Mom won't go to bed until I'm back and she'll call the police if it gets too late."

"Yeah," I said. "Me, too. My folks would freak out if I didn't come home all night. I don't know if they'd call Chief Albertson at home or go straight to the FBI."

"Parents," she said. "I don't know how we live with them."

"I won't be living with them for long. School starts in another month. I'm going to have to move to New York."

She was quiet for a minute, then she said, "I'm going to miss you."

"It's not so far. I can come back on weekends."

"It's an eight-hour bus ride," she said.

Everyone in Wemsley knew how long it took the bus to get to New York City.

"For you, I'd travel a lot further than that."

"You're sweet but goofy. You'd have to spend all day Saturday getting to Wemsley and all day Sunday going back. And it would cost a fortune if you did it much. It's like thirty dollars for a round trip ticket."

She was right. I couldn't afford to come home even once a month. "Maybe I should forget about Columbia and stay in Wemsley," I said. "I could apply to closer colleges next year."

"Now you're really being goofy. You're going to go to Columbia and I'm going to stay in Wemsley and we'll see what happens. If we are meant to be, then it'll work out somehow. And if it doesn't work out, then we aren't meant to be."

"Don't even think that."

"I'm just being practical," she said.

I had never before imagined Katie being practical. I didn't know that she had it in her.

"Okay," I said. I couldn't be less practical than her. "But I think we were meant to be."

"We'll see."

I was in no hurry to get dressed and get back on the bike. I'd already ridden too far today.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Around sundown. Must be nine or so."

"We'd better get dressed." My fingers caressing her belly conveyed my reluctance.

She kissed me. "We'd better or we won't get out of here until midnight." She hopped off the bed and took her purse and clothes into the bathroom.

I hadn't thought about Randal for hours but, being alone in a strange room in near darkness for a minute, made me think of him sitting in a jail cell in Canton. That wasn't so far from here.

My heart sank as I thought about what I'd have to do to get him out. I still had to get into the Road Snakes clubhouse and search for evidence that they'd killed Billy.

The problem with trying to find evidence of murder is that you already know that the murderer is willing to kill you if you become a problem.

Whether or not I could maintain a relationship with Katie while I was in Columbia would be a moot question if I were dead.

At least I wouldn't die a virgin, now. That was a mercy.

I heard water running in the bathroom. It sounded like Katie was taking a shower. I should probably do the same. I didn't want her to think that I didn't care about basic hygiene.

I wondered if it would have been any worse if the Snakes were real Hells Angels. Probably. The Snakes were a pretty small club. I had to take on only five of them. That was why they wanted to join the Angels. To be big fish. If you take on one Hells Angel, you take on hundreds of them. Everybody knew that much.

That's when I figured out how to solve Randal's problem. Right there, lying naked on a motel room bed while my lover – God, I loved the sound of that: _my lover_ – was in the shower.

Not only would I get the Snakes to confess to every detail of what they had done, but I'd make them give me the evidence that was needed to convict them. Give it to me. Just hand it over.

If my plan worked.

If it didn't, they would kill me. That was a hundred percent certain.

I decided not to tell Katie about it. There was no reason for both of us to be terrified.

* * *

Funnel cakes surprised me. They were fun to make. They tasted great. And it seemed that everyone in town except me knew all about them. Customers who had never ordered dessert before wanted to add a funnel cake to their meal. Kids came in just to have funnel cake and Coke. Sales of pie and cake from the bakery dropped off, but Mrs. Everett didn't care. The take from funnel cakes more than made up for the loss.

The next surprise was that people started ordering them to go. We always got the occasional order to take out – maybe a half dozen a week – but we sold a couple of dozen funnel cakes to go on Sunday night alone. Nothing like that had happened at Elsa's Grill before.

Mrs. Everett didn't like it. "We only get twenty-five cents for a funnel cake," she said. "I need customers to come here and eat meals, not eat at home and have my funnel cake for dessert."

I wasn't so sure about that. Eggs didn't cost much and the flour, milk, and sugar cost even less. I earned only minimum wage. At least twenty of the twenty-five cents was pure profit.

"How many funnel cakes can people in Wemsley eat?"

Her question was intended to be rhetorical but the answer in my head was, _a lot_.

"I think that we should stop selling them to go," she said. "We should only sell them to customers who have eaten their meal here."

That didn't sound like such a good idea to me. "People might not like that," I said.

"Well, I don't like them coming here just for the funnel cakes."

"It's probably just a fad," I said. "Once the novelty has worn off, you probably won't sell any more funnel cakes than bakery cakes."

"You think?"

"Probably."

"Maybe. I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

At the time, I couldn't understand how any small business owner could hope that any part of their business would go down. Now, having seen a lot of small businesses fail, I've come to realize that it's more common than one would think. A lot of small business owners aren't very good at business.

I mentioned to Katie that Mrs. Everett didn't like selling so many funnel cakes to go and she laughed. "She doesn't want anything to change," Katie said. "It makes her nervous. Most people are like that."

Katie was wiser than she looked.

"Are you like that?" I asked.

"No," she said. "I always want everything to change."

That I did believe.

* * *

My next day off was Tuesday. I rode up to Oak Falls and dropped in on Monk in the middle of the afternoon.

I suppressed my terror and forced myself to look cool.

He looked surprised to see me. He pulled his hands out of the middle of a motorcycle engine and laid a big wrench aside. "Where's your girlfriend?"

"She doesn't have any part of today's business," I said.

"She didn't have fun at the party with Wasp and the boys?" He smirked and some of the dirt caked on his cheek cracked and flaked away.

He hadn't been there, but they must have told him about what had gone down. His smirk said that he'd heard Friendly or Jimbo's version, not Buck's.

"Her part is over now. I've got what I needed."

"What's that?"

"A much better idea about how the Road Snakes party."

"Next time, invite me, too. I'm the life of the party."

"I bet you are," I said.

He and I looked at each other for a minute, then he said, "So why are you back here?"

"It's time for me to wrap up my business with the Road Snakes. I'd like to talk with all of you at the clubhouse tonight."

"We should care what you'd like?"

"You should."

"Why?"

"I'll explain it to everyone tonight."

"You won't be explaining nothing if we don't want to see you."

"You'll want to."

Monk sneered. "You think? You better be right because I'll tell you what. We'll throw another party tonight, just like the last one. You and your girlfriend are invited. And if she don't come, ready and happy to put out, then we'll just make you the life of the party, instead. Maybe with a baseball bat. How's that suit you?"

My gut was in knots but I managed to keep my voice steady. My survival depended on my ability to sound confident. "No girlfriend. No party. This is strictly business tonight. You tell Wasp, Friendly, Bucks, and Jimbo that it's time for a serious sit-down to discuss where the Road Snakes are going."

"Ain't you the bossy little piss-ant. Your boyfriend going to be there, too?"

"You mean Randal? No. His part of this business is over, too. I'm the final word, not him. The rest of this business is just between me and the Road Snakes. I'll be at the clubhouse at seven. Make sure that everyone's there."

I didn't wait for an answer. I returned to my bike and drove off without looking back.

I had four hours to wait and I didn't feel like riding all the way home and back. Instead, I rode further up into the mountains and explored various back roads. It was about as pleasant a way to spend my last hours as any other. But it wasn't enough to distract me from thinking about walking into the lions' den. I didn't bother with a last supper. I wouldn't have been able to keep it down.

At seven, sharp, I turned into the Kenny Mill driveway. I had ridden down this bit of dirt lane so often that it felt almost like coming home.

There were five bikes parked in front of the clubhouse. I added mine to the row and went inside, trying to look tough and confident.

There were no women present, just the five members of the Road Snakes sitting in a rough circle. This wasn't a party. That was good. They had cans of Iron City beer in their hands. More cans littered the floor. The Snakes had been drinking for a while. Maybe smoking up, too. They weren't on top of their game. That was good, too.

Wasp spoke as soon as I entered. "You called this meeting, Gunner. You better have a good reason." He was slurring his words a little.

I liked the way it was starting. They were wasted but acting serious. No comments about Katie or partying. It was the way a trial in a cowboy movie would start. Then they'd lynch the guy in the end.

I sat in an empty chair. Five pairs of hostile eyes watched every move that I made.

"Let me get right to the point," I said. "You made it clear that you want to join the Hells Angels. You're a small group, but you raised their interest enough for them to want to check you out and see if you're serious."

I paused and looked at each of them in turn, trying to give my words a full measure of gravitas. My life depended on the impression that I was about to make.

Five pairs of hostile eyes watched me, waiting for me to get to the point.

"I was sent here to do that," I said.

Wasp barked a laugh. "You telling us that you're a Hells Angel."

I shook my head. "Nope. I'm not even close to being an Angel. The first time we met I told you that I was unaffiliated. The Angels wouldn't bother sending a full patch member out here for a preliminary survey. He wouldn't learn enough about you in one day and the Angels don't waste their time on groups that, nine times out of ten, aren't even close to qualified. That's why they contract to me. I do the preliminary survey and report back."

"You don't say," Wasp said.

"Behind all the mythology, the Angels are a business. They party hard, but they also mind the store. They don't goof around when they're on the job. You're going to have to figure that into your decision if you get invited to join with them. I'll tell you up front, if you get the nod, you better not agree without thinking it through. It's a commitment that you don't want to take lightly. And it's not something that you can fuck up without consequences. Severe consequences." I'd never uttered the word, _fuck_ , out loud before, but it was necessary here and now. I was proud of myself for not stuttering or blushing when I did it.

It seemed to work. All the Snakes were nodding gravely as they thought about the implications of my words.

Which were pure bullshit. I didn't know the first thing about how the Hells Angels operated. I could only hope that the Snakes knew less and were buying my bluff.

"I don't get it," Friendly said. "What about you bringing that tasty little dish up here a couple weeks ago? You telling me that wasn't... That you expected us to... To do what we did?"

I was ready for that question. This was where the rubber met the road. Either they were going to accept my story or they were going to decide that I was a fraud and rip me apart. "First party, Randal and me, was to see if you played well with others. That was Randal's show and I kept a low profile and observed. Good party. High marks. No problem. You guys could keep company with the Angels without question.

"The next issue was how you got along with civilians. That's a lot trickier. I brought the jailbait up to see what you'd do with her. She knew the risks. She knew that we were coming unarmed and that I couldn't guarantee her safety. But she's cool. She was ready to play it however it went down. She was getting a payoff for her performance that was enough to make it worth her while. She's not quite the blushing virgin that she pretended. If she hadn't been interrupted, she would have made you all very happy."

The Snakes looked bemused at that revelation. Jimbo gave Bucks a sharp look. He figured that Bucks had cheated him out of a good time.

Wasp pursed his lips. "So what are you going to say about the way we treat civilians?"

"That you treat them about how we'd expect. If civilians are going to act the fool, then they're going to be taught a lesson. I assume that you didn't intend to do permanent injury to the kitten."

"No. Just have a little fun."

"And teach her a lesson," I prompted.

"Right. Make sure that she understands what we're all about."

"That's fine," I said. "But that little experiment revealed a lot more than I expected. We need to talk about that and I need you guys to be straight with me. Okay?"

"Okay," Wasp said. He looked at the other Snakes and they nodded.

"Issues came up that day that I didn't expect. Issues that are core to the Angels. Issues of honor, respect, brotherhood, and discipline. I've never before seen the essentials laid out so clearly in front of me like that."

"Before?" Wasp asked.

"Sure. This isn't my first gig. The Angels wouldn't trust my assessment if I didn't have a track record. Like I said, they don't goof around when they get down to business."

I looked at the Snakes and they were nodding slowly.

"How old are you?" Wasp asked.

I was nonplussed by the question. I'd hoped that I'd been acting confident enough to put my age problem aside. "Not old. A little older than I look, but not old enough to be a full-patch Hells Angel. That's why it's important that I have a good track record." I smiled what I hoped was a grim smile. "I can't afford to make mistakes. Like I said, the consequences can be severe if you fuck up when you're dealing with the Angels. Even if you look as harmless as me." It was time to put the ball back in their court. I looked at Friendly. "Do you think I look harmless?" I made my voice as cold as I could.

"Not any more," Friendly said.

"Good man." I smiled what I hoped was a dangerous smile. If I were a bad actor and all these smiles looked goofy, if the Snakes were just toying with me, then I was not going to survive the evening. "So let's get on with business. Tell me what happened when Buck and Candy arrived and found you guys about to go three on one with the kitten."

Friendly looked at Jimbo and then they both looked at Bucks. Their look was a warning for him to keep his mouth shut.

"You saw. Candy offered us a better deal. That's all. We didn't know about your girlfriend but we all know how good Candy can be when she puts her mind to it. We went for the sure thing."

I let the silence grow for a minute. The Snakes were fidgeting. Even Wasp. "You said that you were going to be straight with me," I said, pronouncing each word slowly but pitching my voice so softly that they had to strain to hear. "Now you're handing me a pile of bullshit." I raised my voice. "Let's go at this another way. Tell me how it went down with The Doll and Billy. And this time, the whole truth, blunt and hard, or I'm out of here." I looked at Wasp. "And let Bucks tell it. He's the one who knows." I turned to look at Bucks.

The silence was deafening. I was sure that I'd overplayed my hand and that they'd had enough of me.

I waited for them to jump out of their chairs and stomp me to death. Or whip out knives and mince my guts to hamburger. Then they'd weight my body and toss it into the nearest body of water like they had with Billy.

* * *

Wasp said, "Tell him, Bucks. Tell him the whole business just like it went down."

Bucks started talking. His voice was clear and precise but not strong. It sounded brittle. Fragile as fine crystal that could shatter into a million pieces if I touched it wrong. So I stayed silent and listened.

"I like The Doll. Love her, would be saying it right. She don't love me. I know that. But it's all right. I don't expect nothing like that from her. I'm not smart. I know that. She's nice to me and that's as good as I'm going to get. So I love her.

"Billy, he came up here and he started hanging around and partying with us. He had weed. Good stuff. He wanted us to sell it. We sell some but not as much as he wanted. We got to be careful because the cops here watch us close. They search us every time they get one of us alone. We can't carry baggies unless we're together. They don't mess with us if there's more than one of us. They're scared, then.

"Billy wasn't a good guy. He wanted in but we voted on him. We voted to keep him out. He only pretended to be one of us but we couldn't trust him. We figured that he'd just a soon put a knife in our backs as smile in our faces. If he thought that he could get away with it. He wasn't a brother.

"The Doll partied with us but she wouldn't party with Billy. She said that Billy was mean. He liked to hurt chicks in ways that didn't show. That's what she said but I'm not sure what she meant. She didn't ever do anything with him as near as I could see. Maybe she saw how he was when he was with Betty. Or maybe Candy told her. I don't know what girls talk about when we're not around. I don't understand how they think.

"Then, one day, I found The Doll at her place all beat up. I went over there and the door was open and she was inside, lying on the floor, moaning soft like. Like she was hurt real bad. But she wasn't. There wasn't a mark on her face. She was bruised on the stomach and legs and arms, but that wasn't more'n most of us get when we get rowdy. I seen Betty marked up a lot more than that. And Candy, too. And they're both okay. Not The Doll, though. She was never okay again.

"She was bleedin' a bit down below. You know. Candy said that she was a bit tore up there, but that wasn't too bad, either. It all healed up just like new.

"Candy figured that she was mostly torn up in her mind. Psychological like. I guess that's so. It must have been something that I couldn't see because, like I said, The Doll was never the same again. She... I don't know how to say it. She stopped having fun. She didn't like being alive any more. Whatever Billy did to her, he broke all her happiness up into little pieces and she can't put it back together again.

"She made us promise that we'd fix it. We had a meeting and we all promised. We knew that we couldn't make it like it was before, but we promised that we'd make it as good as we could. Justice. That was the word that everyone used. We promised that there'd be justice for The Doll.

"Justice had to start with Billy Paul. It wasn't just that he'd hurt The Doll. It was that The Doll was ours. She wasn't his to break. He took what was ours and we couldn't let that drop. Not ever. He done it deliberately. He did it to show that he didn't respect us. He wanted to rub our faces in the dirt because we wouldn't let him be a Road Snake.

"He had to answer for that. No question about it. He had to answer to us. He knew it because he'd already lit out of here when I found The Doll. We went looking for him down in Utica. He had a room down there. We thought that he'd be too smart to go back to it, but he wasn't so smart after all. He thought that he could just carry on like what he done to us was no big deal. I guess that's what he was like. Always thought that he could do anything he wanted and that he was too special for anyone to call him to account.

"But he learned different that day. We was laying in wait for him and we almost got him. Almost. But we made a mistake. We left our bikes on the street when we went to beat down his door. He came back at exactly the right time and saw our bikes and he beat it out of there before we could get to him. We tried. We looked all over town, but he was gone away.

"We kept coming back down to his room every day or two, looking to see if he come back but after a month someone else moved into his room and that was that. At least until he came up for air again. Wasp said he would. Said that Billy would have to get back to dealing his weed when he needed money again.

"We caught up with him in a campground in Wemsley. He learned that day that the Road Snakes don't take shit from nobody. Especially not from a dirtbag like him. We taught him good."

Buck was finished telling his story. He stopped talking and looked at me.

"That's the elements that the Angels are looking for," I said. "Solidarity. Standing by each other. Watching each other's backs. Not letting anybody take what's yours. Taking care of your own business. Keeping a strict code of honor. Knowing what real justice is all about. I knew that you had it and I appreciate that you laid it out so clearly. You've given me a lot of good stuff to report back on."

The Road Snakes looked satisfied.

"There's just a couple of things left that will improve your report from good to great. Make it a sure thing."

"What's that?" Wasp asked.

"First, there's the final solution. Buck didn't say exactly how you took care of your business with Billy. Is he still around to cause a problem for us?"

"If he were it'd be our problem."

"If you join the Angels, then your problems become their problems. They need to know what they're bringing into their house."

Wasp looked at Jimbo and nodded.

* * *

It was Jimbo's turn to tell his part of the story. "We got a little posse together, all five of us, and rode on up to the campground. We didn't want him to get away again, so we waited until almost dawn to be sure that he'd be asleep. We parked our bikes outside and walked the last mile to him. Bastard was snoring like he didn't have a care in the world. We didn't waste a lot of time on niceties. Friendly and I grabbed him right in his sleeping bag, pulled it over his head to keep him quiet, and carried him around the lake out of hearing of anyone else there. All the time we was carrying him, he was talking like a late-night salesman on TV, saying how we didn't understand and he had a deal for us and he was going to make everything all right with us. He even offered to pay retribution. Like we would take money from him. Like he had money to give us. When we figured we were far enough away, we set him on his feet and pulled the bag down to his ankles. Friendly held him while Wasp and me stabbed him a few times. Kept stabbing him until he shut up at last. Shut up for good. We threw a few rocks into his sleeping bag to make it sink and then tied it over his head and carried him out waist deep in the lake and sunk him. Friendly and I got all wet and it was a damned cold ride back but we didn't mind. Justice was took care of."

"I appreciate that," I said "The Angels are going to be happy to know that you can do what needs to be done when the going gets tough."

"We can do what needs doing," Wasp said. "You'll never have any concern on that score."

"The Angels got a tradition," I said. "When they deal out justice, they keep the means of execution as a permanent record. It makes others think twice about crossing them, knowing that any Angel who wants can gaze on the means of justice any time he feels like it." It was more bullshit. I expected that any Hells Angel would be smart enough to destroy evidence of murder as soon as possible.

Jimbo's eyes narrowed. "You mean that you don't believe what I said? You gotta see proof?" He knew what I really meant.

Wasp held his hand to Jimbo. "It's all right. That's not what Gunner's saying. He just wants to see for himself." He looked at me. "We still got the knives that we used on Billy. And some other stuff." He gestured to a locked trunk that was in the back corner of the clubhouse.

"Mind if I see them?"

"Show him, Monk," Wasp said.

Monk rose from his seat and shambled back to the trunk. He unlocked it with a key that he fished out of his pocket.

Jimbo watched and shook his head slowly, like he was trying to clear the fog from his mind.

There was a jumbled assortment of odds and ends piled in there. I could see two knives – a Buck folding hunter and a World War Two vintage bayonet – lying on a bloody denim jacket. With a start, I realized that it was probably Billy Paul's jacket. In fact, everything in the chest was probably taken from Billy Paul's campsite.

I touched nothing, just nodded at Monk and said, "Justice, man. There's honor in bringing justice to the world."

He closed and re-locked the trunk.

I looked at the assembly of Road Snakes. "When the Angels hear my report, they're going to have nothing but respect for you. You can expect to receive a delegation of full patch members in a little while. Not right away. There's got to be discussion and voting. But figure a month, maybe."

They were glowing with pride at my praise.

I could have left right then and all would have been perfect. I not only had the whole story in all its sordid detail, but I also knew where they kept the evidence that would free Randal. But I had them in the palm of my hand – the men who had almost raped Katie and who had humiliated me – and I couldn't resist getting just a little bit of satisfaction from them.

"There's just one last thing," I said. "I don't work for free. The Angels expect that you'll cover the cost of my report. My consulting fee is–" I did a quick calculation, "–eight hundred dollars." That would cover Randal's cost for the marijuana that he'd lost when Gus was arrested and give me a substantial start on my education. I figured that Bucks wouldn't have any money, but the other four could kick in two hundred apiece.

I was amazed how quickly the mood in the room changed.

Wasp stood up. "What are you talking about?"

"Business," I said. "I've got to cover my costs. And my time."

Friendly and Jimbo stood up in unison. There were no smiles on their faces.

"Are you trying to blackmail us?" Wasp asked. His voice was low and angry.

"No. No. It's just business. I thought you understood that. I told you up front that I wasn't an Angel. I consult for them. That we all take care of business."

"Do you even know any Hells Angels?" Wasp asked.

"Yes. Of course. They wouldn't give a contract like this to a stranger."

"So you know Sonny Barger?"

"Sure," I said. I could feel sweat dripping down the back of my neck.

"Who is he?" Wasp asked.

I had no idea. "Okay," I said. "You passed this one, too. I had to see how you'd react to this and you did exactly what a group of Hells Angels would do. You're going to be a great addition to the club."

"Get the hell out of here," Wasp said.

"Sure. I was just leaving. Remember. You'll be receiving a delegation in a month or so extending an invitation to join the Angels."

As I spoke, I was walking to the door as quickly as I dared. It was like being surrounded by a pack of wild dogs. If you showed fear and ran, they would attack. But if you didn't get out of there, they would lose patience and attack.

Monk was sitting in the chair closest to the door. He stood as I got near to him. "You take this back to Buffalo," he said and punched me in the gut, hard.

The breath whooshed out of me and I doubled over, staggering, but managed to stay on my feet.

Once I'd been hit, a line was crossed. The other Snakes stood up and stepped toward me, snarling.

The Snakes were mean drunks.

Still doubled over, I slipped through the door.

"Is he for real?" I heard Jimbo ask.

"I think it's all a put on," Friendly growled. "The whole thing."

"He just came here to shake us down," Wasp said.

"He's getting away," Monk shouted.

"Stomp him," Bucks said. "Stomp him."

Boots pounded across the floor inside the clubhouse.

It was hard to breath but I was in a race for my life. I clutched my gut and ran for my bike as fast as I could move. No time to fuss with my candy apple helmet. I jumped into the saddle, gunned the engine to life, and peeled out of there, spraying dirt and rocks over all the other bikes in the row.

The last thing I saw before I disappeared into the night was the Snakes pouring out of their clubhouse, running to get to their bikes as fast as they could, screaming incoherent war cries, loud enough to drown out the dogs that had never stopped barking and were now driven to high frenzy by the excitement.

The only thing that saved me was that none of the Snakes were fast on their feet. They smoked and drank too much and exercised too little. Even Jimbo didn't do much aerobics when he was in the gym. His heavy, weight-conditioned muscles slowed him down.

When I reached the highway, I could hear the growl of Harley engines roaring toward me. Death rode five hogs through the dark.

I had to pass through Oak Falls to get back to Wemsley. I didn't know where the highway went in the other direction and I didn't dare take a chance that it would lead me into a dead end. Literally a dead end.

I hunched low over the handlebars and twisted the throttle hard. Mistake. I almost lost control when the front tire bounced onto the pavement.

I could hear the Snakes gaining ground behind me. They were slow on their feet, but lightning on two wheels. My chances of survival would drop with every mile I rode down the highway.

I had no choice but to twist the throttle hard and ride flat out. I'd only been riding a bike for two months. The Road Snakes were experts. Even if they were mostly wasted, this race was going to be no contest.

I glanced over my shoulder. Their lights formed a dancing constellation less than a quarter mile behind me.

Lights. I had a chance if I could stay this far ahead of them until I got to Oak Falls.

I was leaning so far into the curves that I feared that my footrest would scrape pavement. The front tire bounced against the road so hard that I was sure that I was going to lose my hold on the handgrips.

I had never been so terrified in my life.

I had never been so close to dying in my life.

I twisted the throttle even further. The road streaked past under my tires. I promised myself that, if I crashed at this speed, I would die instantly. That would be better than being stomped to death by the Road Snakes. Or having my guts chopped to hamburger.

My gut ached where I had been punched. Monk had a fist like a piston. I hoped that nothing inside had burst.

There was no moon. The highway was black as velvet. I could see nothing outside the oval of my headlight. Nothing except a single light in the distance. The first streetlight at the edge of Oak Falls.

I killed my headlight and steered straight for the distant streetlight.

The road curved slightly and I had to be wandering into the other lane as I navigated a straight line but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that my taillight had disappeared from the Road Snakes view.

They wouldn't stop. They had no reason to do that. But I hoped that they would slow a little to see if I'd left the road.

I blew through Oak Falls without slowing down. The twenty-five speed limit sign was the least of my concerns. I could only hope that no one was walking across the street at this time of night. It wasn't that late – maybe nine-thirty or so – but Oak Falls didn't offer much after dark. A lone car on the road blared its horn at me when I almost clipped its front fender, but I missed so, no harm, no foul. I doubted that the driver shared my desperately cavalier philosophy.

In the center of town, I should have pulled a sharp right to go back to Wemsley.

I didn't. I skidded left instead. My logic was fuzzy at that point. Maybe I hoped that I would lose them by doing something unexpected. Maybe I instinctively didn't want to lead danger back to my home. Or maybe it was simply easier at speed to take the wider radius left turn than the sharper right.

As I tore back out of Oak Falls, I left the streetlights behind and had to switch my headlights back on.

Barely in time. An unexpected curve flared in my high beam and I just managed to heel the bike over to make the turn. Another quarter second and I would have driven straight off the highway into oblivion.

I remembered Randal's rule learned from the mouse. When you're being hunted, make an unexpected turn, then hide in the smallest crack possible and wait for a long, long time.

The road turned again and I saw a farmhouse driveway in my headlights. I locked the rear wheel and skidded into it, killing my lights just before I left the highway.

My bike bounced and wobbled almost out of control in the pitch black.

I killed the engine and kept the clutch disengaged, hoping that the driveway was long enough and straight enough and that I would stay on it.

Miraculously, I coasted to a stop without hitting anything. I could see the shadow of a house looming close, but there were no lights on. Farmers go to bed early. I hoped they slept soundly.

I put my foot down and felt grass beneath my feet. I was on someone's lawn.

Engines roared behind me.

The Road Snakes had seen which way I had turned in Oak Falls.

Had they seen me turn into this driveway? If so, I was trapped and would soon be stomped to death.

I twisted around to see if doom was coming for me through the darkness.

Lights flashed by on the highway. They did not stop, nor turn into the driveway.

I would live a little longer.

Then a miracle. Another set of lights flashed down the highway. Headlights and a flashing red roof bar. A siren wailed. The Oak Falls division of the highway patrol was on the job. I couldn't imagine that Oak Falls was big enough to support two highway patrol cruisers. It might well be the same officer who had stopped me the week before.

What to do? Randal's rule was to find a crack and stay put until the cat was asleep. But these cats were now being chased by a dog and that gave the mouse a chance to run.

So I ran.

I pushed my bike back out to the highway and listened hard. I could hear the siren in the distance, growing fainter.

I kicked my engine back to life and turned back to Wemsley.

I didn't obey any speed limits, but I didn't take any risks, either. All the time that I drove, I kept glancing behind me, afraid that if the Road Snakes had scattered, one or more of them may have escaped arrest and be backtracking, looking for where they'd lost me.

I made it home by midnight. Alive and unscathed, only by the grace of good luck.

It took me a long time to fall asleep. My heart never stopped pounding, but sometime around two, exhaustion finally defeated fear.

* * *

When I awoke early on Wednesday morning, I was bleary with fatigue but I knew that I'd never get back to sleep. I dressed and rode straight to the police station.

Officer Monsour recognized me. "What are you doing here? Your buddy Randal is long gone. You know that."

"I've got to speak to Chief Albertson."

"What about?"

"About the murder of Billy Paul."

"You know something about the murder?"

"I know everything about the murder."

"What do you know?"

"What I'm going to tell Chief Albertson."

"You can tell me and I'll pass the word along. Then he can decide if he wants to talk to you."

"No. I'll talk to him directly." I might have only one kick at the can, so I wasn't going to let my story get mangled in the re-telling. Albertson was going to hear the whole thing straight from the horse's mouth.

"Well, he's not in yet. He doesn't get in until nine."

"I'll wait."

"That'll be an hour and forty-five minutes from now."

"I'll wait." I sat on the bench that was pushed against the wall facing Monsour's desk. After a minute, I said, "You got a pad of paper and a pen. And some place I can write?"

"You going to write out a confession?"

"A report. I didn't kill anybody. I'm just a witness."

"You saw Billy Paul get killed?"

"No. I wasn't there. I've just learned some stuff since then."

"We don't have any spare desks. You're going to have to write in your lap."

"Okay."

He disappeared through a door and returned a minute later with two pens and a ruled pad. "If you want a table, you can wait in the interrogation room."

"Okay."

He led me into a small room in the back that had two chairs and a small table between them. I sat and he closed the door.

It clicked. I got up and tried to turn the knob. Locked. No matter; I had a lot to write about.

It took about an hour and a half to write out more than ten pages but I got it all down. How I'd convinced the Road Snakes that I could help them join the Hells Angels and how they'd told me the whole story of The Doll's rape and their murder of Billy Paul to avenge her and where the evidence could be found.

I could only hope that the police would get to the evidence before Wasp got smart and destroyed it.

I left out any mention of drugs, Betty being offered to me, Katie almost getting raped, or high-speed motorcycle chases in the night. There was a lot that the police didn't need to know.

When the door opened, Albertson and Monsour both came into the room.

"Officer Monsour tells me that you have information about the murder of Billy Paul," Albertson said.

"I wrote it all down," I replied, pushing the pad toward him.

"Tell me." He ignored the pad and took the other seat.

I told him pretty much what I'd written down.

When I finished, he said, "That's a pretty tall tale, son. I find it hard to believe a word of it."

"You don't have to believe it. You just have to get a search warrant for the Road Snakes' clubhouse and go get the evidence. That's what will convict them, not my story."

"Nothing in your story will convict anyone. It's all hearsay. You didn't see anything yourself. You just heard someone else telling stories. Tall tales to make themselves look good."

"I saw the knives that they used. And Billy Paul's things. I saw that with my own eyes. You have to go get the evidence before they destroy it. And then you have to question the Road Snakes individually. You'll have all that you need to convict them quick enough."

"You don't tell me how to do my job." He stared at me with open hostility.

"I'm not telling you how to do your job. I'm just giving you all the information that I can so that you can investigate further."

"I don't know why I should do that. I've got Randal dead to rights for the murder."

"You've got a soap opera motive and a knife with some unidentified blood on it. If you think that's enough, you should check with the district attorney."

"You telling me what to do, again?"

"No. I'm just telling you that what I've got written down there is enough reasonable doubt that Randal will never even go to trial."

He gestured to the open door. "Get out of my police station."

I stood. But before I left, I said, "You've got to search the clubhouse right away. If you don't act quickly on what I've told you, there'll be questions about whether you did your job. Questions that Randal's defense attorney will raise in open court."

"Get out!" This time Albertson was yelling it.

I left.

* * *

On Monday afternoon, Randal walked into Elsa's kitchen, grabbed me, and hugged me.

I was shocked. I thought that he was still in jail.

"You saved my life, man," he said. "I was three days away from breaking out when my lawyer came and told me that they'd found new evidence. The Road Snakes have all been arrested. That was you, wasn't it? It had to be you. Nobody else knew about the Snakes and Billy."

"Yeah."

He looked around the kitchen. It was the afternoon lull. "You think Gil can handle the grill for a while?"

"No problem." Gil was turning out to be a fair cook now that he wasn't distracted by Katie all the time. Not as good as me and way less good than Randal, but good enough to handle the grill by himself, even when there was a bit of a rush.

"Come on, then. Grab a drink and we'll go out back and talk about it. I gotta say, 'Hi,' to Gwen."

He was more subdued with Gwen because she was on duty and there were customers in the front. He didn't grab her and hug her but he couldn't stop grinning. I guess he was happy to be back at Elsa's.

A few minutes later, he and I were sitting at the picnic table around back – me with a chocolate shake and him with a coffee.

I told him what had happened after he got arrested. I left out a couple of details but not as many as I omitted when I was talking to the cops. I couldn't leave out that Katie had nearly been raped because that was how she figured out that Billy had raped The Doll and that was central to everything.

"Bummer," he said. "I'm sorry that you and her had to go through all that. Is she going to be all right?"

"Yeah. We talked about it and everything's square between us."

"Good. You keep a watch on her, though. If it was bad enough, she might get flashbacks."

"I don't think it was that bad. It could have been, but it didn't go far enough."

"I hope not."

I didn't tell him that I was having nightmares. I'd been having them since before Katie almost got raped but they'd been worse since. Almost every night for the past few nights, in my dreams, I was back in the Road Snakes clubhouse, me getting beat up and Katie getting her clothes torn off. It wasn't full-blown flashbacks like Randal got, but it was bad enough that I was getting a good idea about what kind of hell his life was like.

I also didn't tell him about how close Katie and I had become, but Randal was spooky sharp about that.

"So you're not a virgin any more." He grinned.

"I didn't say that," I countered.

"No. But you didn't have to. It's something that you can't hide from your friends."

That idea was disconcerting.

He asked a few more questions about what had happened after he was arrested but I mostly repeated what I'd already said. I wasn't tempted to reveal more than I wanted.

When I had answered as many questions as he could think to ask, he shook his head. "You got them to confess and show you the evidence. That's amazing. You're like the Amazing Kreskin. Getting into their heads like that."

"It started when you figured out that they thought we were checking them out for the Hells Angels."

"Yeah, but I never would have thought about taking it as far as you did. That wasn't just cool. That took pure guts."

When a guy who's escaped from a Viet Cong prison camp says that you've got guts, you can't really contradict him. All you can do is blush.

I blushed.

* * *

I read all the newspaper stories about Billy Paul's murder. There was no trial. Before the summer was over, the Road Snakes pled out to reduced charges of manslaughter. Wasp, Friendly, and Jimbo got ten years each because they took part in holding and stabbing Billy. Monk got seven for being there. Bucks got a suspended sentence because everyone agreed that he couldn't have planned anything like that. I'm not so sure. He was pretty clear when he told me the story about The Doll. I think he's smarter than he pretends. Not brilliant, but not completely out of it, either.

Personally, I think the sentences were fair. Billy needed killing, not just for what he did to The Doll, but because he was never going to leave Gwen alone.

If the Snakes hadn't beaten him to it, Randal would have had to do Billy himself sooner or later.

The Snakes did Randal a favor.

After Randal was released, I only worked at Elsa's for another three weeks before I had to move to New York and start my first semester at Columbia. I couldn't believe that the whole summer was already gone. Time flies when you're terrified.

On my last day, Mrs. Everett asked me if I were going to come back to work next summer. I told her that I was. I did, too, but no summer was as exciting as the one that I worked with Randal. Good thing.

On my last day, Randal told me that he'd be around on his next day off to pick up the bike. I'd been using it so much that I'd almost forgotten that it was just a loaner. It felt like my bike.

That Wednesday, I got it ready for him. I washed it down and cleaned it up. I assumed that he was going to return it to its real owner. I didn't know who that was but I wasn't going to return it in worse shape than I'd received it.

At about ten in the morning, Randal rode up on his chopper, looking cool as any man ever had. His cool air still amazes me. He knew how to hide his demons. Nobody could see them until they got to know him real well.

He swung off his chopper and embraced me. "Good to see you, man."

When he let go of me, I handed him the key to the loaner bike. "Here's your bike back."

He handed me a different key in return.

"What's this?"

He nodded at Billy's chopper. "The chopper's yours, now."

"I can't take that."

"Hell, you can't. You earned it. You saved my life. It's yours." He handed me his chrome helmet. "Goes with the bike." He grinned at my candy apple helmet. "You can keep that one. Katie's going to need it when she's riding with you."

What he meant was that he wouldn't be caught dead riding with it on his head.

"Are there any registration papers for it?" I asked.

He laughed. "I never got any papers for it. I doubt that Billy did, either. Who knows where he got it from. You outwitted a gang of outlaw bikers. I think you can figure out how to handle the DMV."

I guess he was right. I wondered if he had actually bought it from Billy or just taken it but I would never know. "You take care of Elsa's Grill while I'm at school," I said.

He shook his head. "Not happening. I gave my notice. I'm going to strap panniers on the back of this bike and hit the road. I've been in this burg too long already. There's a whole lot of world out there waiting for me."

He climbed on the black bike and waved. "Take care, Gunner."

I waved back as he rode away. I was too choked up to say goodbye.

That was the last that I ever saw of Randal.

After all that we'd been through, I never did learn his last name. Gwen moved on a year later. Mrs. Everett died a few years ago and Elsa's Grill closed. I couldn't look him up if I wanted to.

I still have Billy's chopper. It's an antique, now. I did figure out how to get it registered. I went down to New Jersey and claimed that the paperwork was lost. After I forged a few signatures, it was mine. The records weren't computerized back then so it wasn't hard at all.

It helped that there was no serial number on the frame. Too much custom work had been done on it.

* * *

My first day at Columbia, I turned a few heads when I tooled up on my chopper.

Beautiful co-eds swooned. Tough guys turned green with envy. At least in my imagination.

A couple of guys tried to chat about their bikes, but they were dweebs on stock Japanese road bikes. They'd never been within smelling distance of an outlaw biker gang, much less raced for their life down a dark mountain highway in the middle of the night.

When they asked my name, I told them that people called me _Gunner_. Never again did I introduce myself as _Phil_.

I didn't have time to chat with anyone for long when I arrived. I had to take care of important business.

I went straight to the registrar and changed my major. I liked math but I'd found something way more interesting. Not law like Randal suggested. That would have been a real drag. Psychology. I wanted to understand the demons that haunted Randal.

I'm still doing that. After I was granted my doctorate, I took a position as a clinical psychologist at Walter Reed, specializing in PTSD. Sadly, it's a growth industry. There's always more wars to be fought and more demon-haunted soldiers coming home.

I married Katie. To the surprise of both of us, our long-distance relationship worked out. At least for one semester. It helped that I had the chopper so I didn't have to bus back and forth to Wemsley until the weather got too cold.

After Christmas, she came down to New York and got a job as a waitress.

Since meeting her, I've never had a day when I didn't find her fascinating. I still can't tell when she's really as whimsical as she acts and when she's just putting me on. Not even with all my years of clinical experience.

My real life started in the summer of nineteen seventy-one and it has been a hell of a ride.

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

While I tried to be true to the times, this story contains one glaring anachronism. In 1971, the legal age for drinking alcohol in New York State was eighteen. It was not raised to twenty-one until 1985. Unfortunately, I was not made aware of this until after the story was published. There are so many references to Gunner being under the legal drinking age and Gus selling alcohol to minors that it is impossible to correct this error. I can only apologize and hope that this did not detract too severely from your enjoyment of my novel.

Yours, Thom
