And to that trick was added another, more subtle still. When he came to the house where his mother had lived it was almost supernaturally unchanged, exactly as in the photographs he'd seen of the place. He stood in the middle of the street and stared at it. There was no traffic in either direction; nor any pedestrians. This corner of the Grove floated in mid-morning languor, and he felt almost as though his mother might appear at the window, a child again, and gaze out at him. That notion would not have occurred to him but for the events of the previous night. The miraculous recognition in that locking of eyes—the sense he'd had (still had) that his encounter with Jo-Beth had been a joy in waiting somewhere—led his mind to make patterns it had never dared before, and this possibility (a place from which a deeper self had drawn knowledge of Jo-Beth and known her imminence) would have been beyond him twenty-four hours before. Again, a loop. The mysteries of their meeting had taken him into realms of supposition which led from love to physics to philosophy and back to love again in such a way that art and science could no longer be distinguished.

Nor indeed, could the sense of mystery he felt, standing here in front of his mother's house, be separated from the mystery of the girl. House, mother, and meeting were one whole extraordinary story. He, the common factor.

He decided against knocking on the door (after all, how much more could he learn from the place?) and was about to retrace his steps when some instinct checked him and instead he continued up the gentle gradient of the street to its summit. There he was startled to find himself presented with a panoramic view of the Grove, looking east over the Mall to where the far fringes of the town gave way to solid foliage. Or nearly solid; here and there the canopy broke, and in one of the gaps quite a crowd appeared to have gathered. Arc-lamps had been erected in a ring, bearing down on some sight too far off for him to see. Were they making a movie down there? He'd spent so much of the morning in a daze he'd noticed almost nothing on his way up here; he could have passed all the stars who'd ever won an Oscar walking these streets and not registered the fact.

While he stood watching, he heard something whisper to him. He looked around. The street behind him was empty. There was no breeze, even here on the brow of his mother's hill, to carry the sound to him. Yet it came again; a sound so close to his ear it was almost inside his head. The voice was soft. It spoke two syllables only, joined into a necklace of sound.

—ardhowardhowardhow—

It didn't take a degree in logic to associate this mystery with whatever was going on in the woods below. He couldn't pretend to understand the processes at work upon and around him. The Grove was clearly a law unto itself, and he'd profited by its enigmas too much to turn his back on future adventures. If pursuit of a steak could bring him the love of his life what might following a whisper bring?

It wasn't difficult to find his way down to the trees. He had the oddest sense, making the descent, that the whole town led that way; that the hillside was a tipped plate, the contents of which might at any moment slide away into the maw of the earth. That image was reinforced when he finally reached the woods and asked what was going on. Nobody seemed much interested in telling him until a kid piped up:

"There's a hole in the ground, an' it swallowed him whole."

"Swallowed who?" Howie wanted to know. It wasn't the boy who replied but the woman with him.

"Buddy Vance," she said. Howie was none the wiser, and his ignorance must have registered, because the woman offered supplementary information. "He used to be a TV star," she said. "Funny guy. My husband loves him."

"Have they brought him up?" he asked.

"Not yet."

"Doesn't matter," the boy chipped in. "He's dead anyhow."

"Is that right?" Howie said.

"Sure," came the woman's reply.

The scene suddenly took on a fresh perspective. This crowd wasn't here to watch a man being snatched from death's door. They were here to claim a glimpse of the body as it was put in the back of an ambulance. All they wanted was to say: I was there, when they brought him up. I saw him, under a sheet. Their morbidity, especially on a day so full of possibilities, revolted him. Whoever had called his name was calling it no longer; or if he was the crowd's lowering presence blocked it. There was no purpose in his staying, when he had eyes to gaze into and lips to kiss. Turning his back on the trees, and his summoner, he headed back to the motel to wait for Jo-Beth's arrival.

Only Abernethy ever called Grillo by his first name. To Saralyn, from the day they'd met to the night they'd parted, he was always Grillo; to every one of his colleagues and friends, the same. To his enemies (and what journalist, particularly a disgraced one, did not court enemies?) he was sometimes That Fuckhead Grillo, or Grillo the Righteous, but always Grillo.

Only Abernethy ever dared: "Nathan?"

"What do you want?"

Grillo had just stepped out of a shower, but the very sound of Abernethy's voice and he was ready to scrub himself down again.

"What are you doing at home?"

"I'm working," Grillo lied. It had been a late night. "The pollution piece, remember?"

"Forget it. Something's come up and I want you there. Buddy Vance—the comedian?—he turned up missing."

"When?"

"This morning."

"Where?"

"Palomo Grove. You know it?"

"It's a name on a freeway sign."

"They're trying to dig him out. It's noon now. How long before you can get there?"

"An hour. Maybe ninety minutes. What's the big interest?"

"You're too young to remember The Buddy Vance Show."

"I caught the reruns."

"Let me tell you something, Nathan my boy—" Of all Abernethy's modes Grillo hated the avuncular most. "—there was a time The Buddy Vance Show emptied the bars. He was a great man and a great American."

"So you want a sob piece?"

"Shit, no. I want the news on his wives, the alcohol, and how come he ended up in Ventura County when he used to swan around Burbank in a limo three fucking blocks long."

"The dirt, in other words."

"There were drugs involved, Nathan," Abernethy said. Grillo could picture the look of mock-sincerity on the man's face. "And our readers need to know."

"They want the dirt, and so do you," Grillo said.

"So sue me," Abernethy said. "Just get your ass out there."

"So we don't even know where he is? Suppose he just took off somewhere?"

"Oh they know where he is," Abernethy said. "They're trying to bring the body up in the next few hours."

"Bring it up? You mean he drowned?"

"I mean he fell down a hole."

Comedians, Grillo thought. Anything for a laugh.

Except that it wasn't funny. When he'd first joined Abernethy's happy band, after the debacle in Boston, it had been a vacation from the heavy-duty investigative journalism in which he'd made his name, and at which, finally, he'd been

Out-maneuvered. The notion of working for a small-circulation scandal sheet like the County Reporter had seemed light relief. Abernethy was a hypocritical buffoon, a born-again Christian to whom forgiveness was a four-letter word. The stories he told Grillo to cover were easy in the gathering and easier still in the telling, given that the Reporter's readers liked their news to perform one function only: the ameliorating of envy. They wanted tales of pain among the high rollers; the flipside of fame. Abernethy knew his congregation well. He'd even brought his biography into the act, making much in his editorials of his conversion from alcoholic to Fundamentalist. Dry and High on the Lord, was how he liked to describe himself. This holy sanction allowed him to peddle the muck he edited with a beatific smile, and allowed his readers to wallow in it without guilt. They were reading stories of the wages of sin. What could be more Christian? For Grillo the joke had long since soured. If he'd thought of telling Abernethy to fuck off once he'd thought of it a hundred times, but where was he going to get a job, hotshot reporter turned dupe that he was, except with a small operation like the Reporter? He'd contemplated other professions, but he had neither the desire nor aptitude to pursue any other. He had wanted to report the world to itself for as long as he could remember. There was something essential about that function. He could imagine himself performing no other. The world knew itself indifferently well. It needed people to tell it the story of its life, daily, or else how could it learn by its mistakes? He had been making headlines of one such mistake—an act of corruption in the Senate—when he discovered (his gut still turned, recalling that moment) that he had been set up by his target's opponents, his position as press prosecutor used to besmirch innocent parties. He had apologized, grovelled and resigned. The matter had been forgotten quickly, as a fresh slew of headlines replaced those that he'd created. Politicians, like scorpions and cockroaches, would be there when the warheads had levelled civilization. But journalists were frail. One miscalculation and their credibility was dust. He had fled West until he met the Pacific. He'd considered throwing himself in, but had instead chosen to work for Abernethy. More and more that seemed like an error.