He’d want to know about this.

The pickup was backed up to the garage, which was open, and the door from the garage to the laundry room was propped open. Earl was either loading up the truck or taking things into the house. It made no sense to ring the front doorbell, so I entered the garage, mounted the two steps to the laundry room door, and called in, “Earl?”

No answer. Maybe he was lugging plants or something through the kitchen and out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. Most of the houses in this neighborhood had the same basic floor plan; you could go blindfolded into one you’d never been in before and find your way around.

I took half a step into the laundry room, called his name again, and noticed that in the space where I would have expected to find a washer and dryer, there was nothing. How long had Earl lived here? I guessed he was the kind of guy who liked to hang out in laundromats.

A gust of warm air went past me into the garage. The house was hot. Humid, really. “Earl?”

I heard some banging about in the basement. He was making enough noise that he couldn’t hear me. I took a few more tentative steps into the house and could see moisture dripping down the insides of the windows. The basement door was only a couple of steps away, and I stood in its frame, feeling the warm humidity drifting up from there.

“Earl?” I shouted over the banging.

And then it stopped, abruptly. There was a moment’s silence, then Earl’s voice: “Who is it?” There was an edge to his voice.

I walked halfway down, to the landing where the stairs turned. “Earl, it’s okay, it’s Zack. I just had this detective over to my place, asking about that guy-”

“Don’t come down here!”

But by then I’d reached the bottom step and could see that Earl’s windows were not fogged as a result of some manufacturing defect.

He was on a short ladder, stripped to the waist, working on a string of lights suspended across the room, dangling a few inches below the unfinished ceiling. There was a network of temporary ductwork that looked like dryer hose, but ten times as thick. I could hear ventilation fans, and the glare from the dozens of light fixtures was nearly blinding. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust, but when they did I was able to focus on what appeared to be hundreds of long-leafed plants that took up nearly every square inch of floor space. I’ve never been much of a horticulturalist, but I knew enough to know these were not prize-winning orchids.

I don’t know much about guns either, but I recognized what Earl had in his right hand, pointed straight at me.

“Jesus, Zack,” Earl said. “You ever heard of fucking knocking? And what’s this about a detective?”

AS I LOOKED ABOUT THE ROOM, dumbstruck, Earl hurriedly pulled on a shirt and then ushered me up the stairs to the kitchen. He got two beers out of the fridge and motioned-actually, more like directed-me to take a seat at the table. He set his handgun on the table where I could have reached it if I’d wanted to. I didn’t.

“What’s this about a detective, Zack?” Earl asked. He did not look amused.

I was having a bit of trouble collecting my thoughts. “A police detective, he just left my place.”

“What was he asking?” Earl took a nervous swig of his beer. “Was he asking about me?”

“No. He was asking about that guy they found down by the creek.”

“Are you sure? You’re sure he wasn’t asking about me?”

“No,” I said, more emphatically this time. “I’m telling you the truth. It was about the guy in the creek.”

Earl nodded, slowly, but he was still eyeing me warily. “I heard about that. On the radio.”

“Yeah, well, it did kind of make the news. It was that guy with the petition, who talked to us the other day.”

Earl downed some more beer. “Okay. I remember him. You found him?”

I nodded. “The cops say he was murdered. So they had a lot more questions for me, since I came across him when I was out for my walk.”

Earl was shaking his head, like he wasn’t listening to me. “Shit. Thank God it was about that and not me. I’m running a business over here and can’t afford to have the cops finding out about it. So, why are you over here then, if it wasn’t about me?”

“I just came over here to tell you about it. Thought you’d be interested. Looks like maybe I caught you at a bad time.”

Earl took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He ran his hand lightly over the gun. “So, Zack. You gonna turn me in?”

“Jesus, Earl.” I finally twisted off the cap of my own beer and had a swallow. “It’s so fucking hot in here.”

“There’s a lot of humidity in a greenhouse kind of operation,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s why I keep a lot of beer in the fridge. And bottled water, soft drinks, that kind of thing.” He got out his cigarettes, some Winstons, tucked one between his lips and lit up. “I notice you didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“About whether you’re going to turn me in.”

“Look, Earl, it’s not like I’m worried about the pot, exactly. I mean, everyone’s doing it, I gather, not that my own kids are.”

“Of course,” Earl said.

I ignored that. “What worries me is you’re in a line of work that requires you to keep a gun around. That’s not a good thing, Earl. Most people, unless they’re cops, don’t need to pack heat.”

Earl said quietly, “Lots of people, not just cops, need guns.”

“The thing is, are we going to be having midnight shootouts on the street here? Is everyone else in the neighborhood at risk of getting caught in the crossfire?”

He pursed his lips and tapped the barrel of the gun with his index finger. “It’s just a bit of insurance,” he said. “That’s all. You don’t have to be worried.”

“I just don’t like guns, is all.”

“So if I tell you that you don’t have anything to worry about because I’ve got a gun over here, are you going to turn me in?”

I breathed in deep through my nose, felt a trickle of sweat run down my forehead. “No,” I said. “I’m not going to turn you in.” And instantly wondered whether this was a promise I could keep. I decided to lighten things up. “I guess there’s a lot of chips in the cupboard, in case you get the munchies, too.”

Earl snorted. He waved his pack of Winstons. “This is the only thing I smoke,” he said. “I’m trying to look after my health.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“Look at us. You’re having a beer. I’m having a beer. I’m having a cigarette. The beer gives us pleasure, mellows us out, might even kill us if we abuse it. And this cigarette”-he waved it around with dramatic flourish-“will very likely mean the death of me someday.”

“I feel you’re making your way toward a point.”

“All I’m doing downstairs is meeting a need. I’m providing a service. Just like,” and he gestured toward me, “writing pornography, say.”

“Earl, I don’t write pornography. I write science fiction.”

“But if you did write porn, it would be the same thing.”

“But I don’t, and it wouldn’t be.”

“Okay, but you’re missing my point. People have needs, and no matter how many rules you pass, how many laws you make, they’re going to have them met, one way or another. People are stressed out more now than ever before in the history of the human race. Pressures from work, pressures from home, we’re trying to raise kids the same time as we’re looking after elderly parents, we wake up every morning with something new that hurts that didn’t hurt yesterday, like you’re bleeding from the ass or you can’t feel your toes, or maybe you’re getting cancer.” He waved his cigarette around, took another drag. “We don’t know whether there’s a hijacked jet out there with our name on it. Maybe the whole fucking world is going to blow up tomorrow. Some guy with a dirty bomb is gonna walk into the stock exchange. Who the fuck knows? People need some relief, and that’s all I’m in the business of doing.”