"That's him."

"Why, you want to walk in?"

"Right now I'm interested in a particular piece of merchandise. I want to develop the kid. Bring him around to a different viewpoint."

"How personal?"

"I ought to visit," Talerico said. "Have a meal."

"Who from down here knows you're coming?"

"Nobody."

"Don't you want to tell somebody?"

"You're my field agent, Kidder. Keep an eye on this Richie kid. See if you can get inside his fortress. I'll be down soon. You'll show me the sights."

"Shouldn't you say something? That's the accepted way. You tell somebody you're coming down."

"I'm known for doing things unorthodox," Talerico said. "That's what makes me a legend."

His wife Annette was in the kitchen watching a Richard Conte movie in French on channel 25. Richard Conte was Talerico's favorite actor. The early Richard Conte.

He watched Annette leaning over the breakfast dishes, concentrating on the movie, trying to fathom it. No one concentrated the way she did. She got lost in things, profoundly involved. The next day, if you asked her, she wouldn't be able to tell you what she'd seen.

"Hey."

"You scared me," she said.

"Richard Conte gets shot in about two minutes."

"I didn't know you were there."

"He dies in the street."

"No, he doesn't."

"You put too much water in the Swedish ivy. I go away for a day and a half, you start watering in panic. How many times do I have to tell you? What do I have to do? Do I have to make a chart?"

"Let me watch this."

"He gets shot. He dies in the street."

"I'm too good to you," she said.

"You're not good to me. I'm good to you."

"I'm too good. That's always been my trouble."

"I'm good to you," he said. "You don't know how good."

"Ralphie used to tell me. 'You're too good to people. Don't be so good all the time.' He was right, as usual."

Talerico spread some jam on a slice of leftover toast.

"Who the hell is Ralphie?"

"Only my brother."

"That gets thrown out of college. That makes his parents ashamed. Which, that brother?"

"Stop hanging around. I don't like it when you hang around. Go out. Jog, like a Canadian."

He took a bite out of the stiff toast.

"When you water-listen to this, Annette. When you water, if you put too much water or do it too often, you cause little punctures in the leaf. You know which one's the Swedish ivy. It's hanging. It's the only one in the living room that hangs down. Now I'm going away again so I'm telling you so you'll be careful. Go easy. Don't be in such a hurry to empty the can. Too much water, the cells burst."

"You make me tired. You're why I'm tired all the time."

"I'm good to you," he said "You don't know what goes on out there."

Selvy held the magnum by the barrel. Dipping slightly, he moved his arm slowly back, then brought it forward, swiftly, tossing the gun, end over end, into the Rio Grande.

He walked back along the dirt road toward Sample's Café. There was a pickup next to his car at the side of the house. Nadine stood on the front steps, looking a little shiny.

"Changed your clothes finally," he said.

"I've decided to become a total blue-jeans person."

"Now that you're home."

"I might even sleep in them. That's an open threat. My dad's here."

"I know."

Some of the houses had been abandoned. Others were half ghosts, apparently still occupied, but with windows out completely, or with soft plastic sheeting replacing the glass, torn sheeting, sheeting rippling in the wind, and with sand everywhere, and tire tracks in the harder dirt, distinct reliefs, like tribal markings left behind to clarify local weather and geology.

Her father sat at the kitchen table, using a penknife to pick at the insides of a fluorescent light fixture. He was older than Selvy had expected, with a raw look about him, all brick and sand, and a tie-dyed blue bandanna around his neck. Functional, Selvy thought. Keep the sweat from moving freely.

"My dad, Jack Rademacher. Glen with one _n_ Selvy."

They sat around a while talking about the weather. Nadine went out to buy an ice cream at one of the general stores up the road. There was a lull. Her father kept scratching at the fixture.

"I think she came in with beer."

"No thanks."

"I don't take a drink myself."

"Lately I've kept away."

"I never have. I never saw the point."

"I have," Selvy said. "But recently I decided to keep away. As recently as a day or two ago."

"What was she doing in New York?"

"Acting."

Jack shook his head, although not in disbelief. It was a comment, bitterly negative. He mumbled something about the ballast in the fixture. Needed new ballast.

"She saw her sister."

"In Little Rock," Selvy said.

"That one's damn crazy. We lost hope for that one early. What the hell's she doing out there?"

"Nadine went alone."

"She must be selling picture frames," Jack said.

He finished what he was doing and went upstairs. Through the window Selvy saw Nadine talking to a couple of small girls, dusty kids in dresses they'd outgrown. Jack came back down, carrying an old pair of boxing gloves, which he set before Selvy on the kitchen table. They were small and discolored, not very heavily padded, the leather peeling everywhere.

"I used to fight for money. Before her sister was born. The border towns. Their mother wanted me to give it up. I had over twenty fights."

"Weren't you past the age, even then?"

"I was fit," Jack said. "I never trained. I never ran the way they do. Didn't see the point. But her mother was carrying the first. What the hell, I stopped."

He carried the gloves back upstairs, returning a moment later. There was another lull. Nadine said something that made the two girls laugh. One of them jumped several times, laughing, the tips of three fingers in her mouth.

"You know about that training base," Selvy said. "You go west to Marathon and then it's southeast of there, near where the silver mines used to he, off on some mud road."

"Mule deer, some dove and quail."

"Is it still there?"

"They pulled out in July."

"Where to?"

"Didn't say where to. Try Central America."

"Did they take everything with them?"

"They left some barracks standing," Jack said. "There were a dozen or so of those long barracks. Now there's two, maybe three."

"I'd heard they might move."

"I couldn't tell you why, exactly. They were never too free with information, were they? Always was a secretive kind of place. They had their reasons, I guess."

"Yes."

"If they didn't have their reasons, they wouldn't have plunked down in the middle of nowhere."

Selvy drove his car down to a lookout just above the river. He walked back up to the house.

That night he sat on a cot in an almost bai'e room off the kitchen. The temperature kept dropping. He heard the plastic sheeting on the windows of nearby houses whip and snap in the wind.

The girl came in.

"What's the plan?"

"No plan," he said.

"We're leaving soon, aren't we?"

"I thought you'd want to stay a while. He seems to like having you back. You want to stay, don't you?"

"Do I look like I've got long cow tits, wearing this sweater?"

"I don't know. Take it off."

"You want to go alone, don't you? Never mind. I didn't say that."

"Take it off. Then I can tell you."

She bent a leg back and kicked the door shut, lightly. She took off the sweater, and her shoes and jeans, and stood there in her briefs. Appliquéd beneath the elastic band were the words: _Not tonight-I've got a headache_. Selvy leaned back on the cot, knees bent up, to unlace his shoes.

"I'm beginning to think you maneuvered me here."