'How did you get here?' I asked.
'Walked.'
'From town?'
'They're holding old DWIs over my head so I cain't get a driver's license.'
'You kill your buddy Jimmy Cole?'
The skin of his face seemed to flex, caught between mirth and caution, as though he were breathing with a sliver of ice on his tongue.
'I ain't had to. Somebody else done it,' he said. 'You sent them people after me?'
'Which people?'
'Ones come in my room with a baseball bat.'
'Get off my property, Garland.'
His eyes held on my face, unblinking, his mouth a dry slit.
'Then it's somebody figures I know something. But I ain't got no idea what it is,' he said.
'I read the case file from LAPD. They say you were in that house for three hours. They say you killed them all one by one and made the survivors watch.'
'Then why ain't I in jail?'
I walked close to him. I could smell the deodorant that had melted on his skin, his breath that was like chewing gum and snuff.
'You've got a free pass tonight. You won't get another one,' I said.
His eyes, as blue and merry as a butane flame, danced on my face.
'The one with the bat? I caught him before he could get back to his truck. Check around the clinics. See if they ain't got a man won't be going out in public a lot,' he said.
He stepped back into the rain and darkness and walked out to the road, the doormat above his head, his suit molded like a blowing cape against his body.
* * *
chapter thirteen
The next afternoon Mary Beth answered her phone.
'Is anything wrong?' I asked.
'No. Why should there be?'
'Your machine's been off. I haven't seen you around.'
'Can I call you back later?'
But she didn't. That evening I drove to her apartment. As I walked up the stairs, people were swimming laps in the pool, stroking through the electric columns of light that glowed smokily under the turquoise surface, and the air was tinged with the gaslike smell of chlorine, burning charcoal starter, and flowers heated by the colored flood lamps planted in their midst.
A heavyset man in a tie and business suit came out of Mary Beth's apartment and almost knocked me down. I stepped back from him and felt the place on my chest where he had hit me.
'Excuse me,' I said.
He pushed his glasses straight on his nose and looked into my face, as though he recognized me. His hair was dark and neatly clipped, his part a pale, straight line in his scalp. His chin had a cleft in it and his cheeks were freshly shaved and his skin taut and scented with cologne.