“You done good,” he told him. “I saw that goal you made.”

“I fell down,” Blake said.

“We all fall down,” Wingstaff said. “Then we get up, and we keep on playing.”

“I’D LIKE TO DROP IN on Gary Merker’s mother,” I told Cherry as we walked back to his pickup.

“She’s a treat and a half,” Cherry said. “You might want to go in and talk to her alone. I don’t think she’s very fond of me.”

I glanced over at Cherry as he hit his remote key and unlocked his truck. “And that would be why?”

Cherry opened his door and waited till I had the passenger side open and was getting in before he said, “This would be, like, ten years ago, I guess. I had to arrest him once, at home. Hauled his ass out of the kitchen just as he was about to sit down to his momma’s lasagna. Stolen cars or something. Guy’s eating with one hand, picking his nose with the other. Anyway, he kicks up a fuss as I’m taking him through the living room, and I have to shove him up against the wall, and his forehead, it kind of makes a hole.”

“In the drywall?”

“Yeah. Not a huge one, you know, maybe like a good-sized yam. Like that. He was okay, though. Just the wall that looked like shit.”

We drove about ten minutes and Cherry slowed in front of a small, one-story white house, the only one with an empty garbage can out front, like Mrs. Merker never got around to bringing it in after trash pickup. The house, which looked to have been built sixty or more years ago, sagged in the middle. The streetlights were bright enough to reveal shingles that had curled, and rot had settled into the boards around the windows.

“There a Mr. Merker?” I asked.

“Naw. Run off when Gary was a little guy. Must have known what the little shit would grow up to be, figured get out while the getting was good. No father-son picnics for those two. See if she’s patched the wall. As you go in, it would be on the right side.” He smiled, eager to know.

“Sure,” I said.

“I’ll park a ways down the street,” Cherry said. “You have fun now.”

I got out of the car, and had only taken a step when my cell phone rang. I reached for it, flipped it open, and saw my home number displayed.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi, Dad.” Angie. “How’s it going?”

“Okay,” I said. “Finding out some things. How’s it going there?”

Angie didn’t speak for a moment. “Mom cries.”

I swallowed. “Does she say anything?”

“Nothing. Not to me or Paul. She goes into the bedroom, figures we can’t hear her, but I stood outside the door, and she was crying.”

“Is she there? Can I talk to her?”

“She went out. She said she had to go to the mall or something, but I think she’s probably just driving around. Which, actually, sort of sucks, because I wanted the car tonight. I think she’s scared, Dad.”

“Scared?”

“Yeah, like, about a whole bunch of things. I think she’s worried about you, about what you might be getting mixed up in, and she’s scared her job is falling apart, and I think she’s scared that you guys are headed for the dumper.”

I felt a lump in my throat. “I don’t want that to happen.”

“Yeah, well, like, neither do I. And I don’t think Paul’d be all that crazy about it either.”

“How is Paul?”

“He’s okay, I guess. That reminds me, somethin’ kind of weird. This woman came to the door, like, she could have been a football player or something. And there’s a car in the drive, there’s another one exactly like her behind the wheel, and this really ugly woman in the passenger seat.”

Who the hell would that be? Not Mrs. Gorkin and her daughters?

“Anyway, the one that came to the door, she asks is Paul there, and I say no, because he wasn’t, right? And so she hands me this envelope, has a hundred bucks in it, and she says, ‘This is for work,’ well, actually, she says, ‘Dis iz for verk.’ She has this kind of accent, you know?”

“Okay.”

“She tells me to give it to Paul, that he should remember they did the right thing. These were the burger ladies, right?”

“Yeah.” I felt cold, standing outside Mrs. Merker’s house. “She didn’t threaten you or anything, or say anything about Paul?”

“No, nothing like that. Well, except, she said, tell Paul, he was wrong about the freezer. That the meat was okay.”

I breathed some cool night air in through my nose. “Honey, if she ever shows up again, or there’s any trouble, call the police. Or Lawrence. His number’s in my book.”

“Okay. When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to stay in Canborough overnight, then head on to the Groverton area in the morning. Maybe tomorrow night, I’ll be back.”

“Okay. Be careful?”

“I will, honey.” I thought a moment, and said, “Tell your mother, when she comes home, that I love her.”

“You tell her, Dad,” Angie said. “Bye.”

I closed the phone, slipped it back into my jacket, and collected my thoughts before completing my journey to Mrs. Merker’s door.

I knocked three times. Old flyers advertising sales long since past were littered about the shrubs. There was a dim light, probably from a television, visible through the front door blinds.

I heard a bolt slide back, then the door opened six inches. A wizened old woman, slightly hunched over, peered through the opening over her smudged reading glasses. “Fuck you want?” she asked.

“Mrs. Merker?” I said.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I don’t suppose Gary’s around, is he?” I was pretty confident that he wasn’t, that this was a good way to break the ice with his mother, but suddenly I felt a wave of panic, that maybe he might actually be there. I didn’t feel I was quite ready to speak one-to-one with him yet.

“He hasn’t fucking lived here in years,” his mother said. “What you want him for?”

“Well,” I said, realizing that I was making this up as I went along, “I was hoping to get a message to him.”

“A message? What fucking message?”

“Could I come in just for a moment? I’m very sorry to bother you, to drop by unannounced this way.” Like maybe, if I’d given her a call, she’d have had a chance to put on a pot of tea for me. Maybe make some scones.

She opened the door wider, and I realized I’d have had to give her a lot of notice if she’d wanted to pick up a bit before company arrived. The room could have been a newspaper-recycling depot. Yellowing papers and magazines were piled high on nearly every available surface, even on the plaid couch. There was a spot opened up, at the end, where Mrs. Merker must have been sitting to watch the television, which was tuned in to an old episode of Fear Factor.

“I love it when they eat fucking bugs!” she cackled.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Those are the best.”

She had her back to me and was headed for what I guessed was the kitchen. “I’ll be back in a second. I was just going for a cracker when you knocked.”

“Sure,” I said.

As she disappeared into the kitchen I glanced at the right wall. About halfway along, there was a large, garish painting of a seaside, in a thick gold frame. It was the kind of art you saw sold out of vans at major metropolitan intersections. Tentatively, I took hold of the bottom corner and tipped the painting away from the wall, peered underneath, and saw the hole in the drywall.

“You a friend of Gary?” she said from the kitchen.

“Well, not real close, but, you know,” I said, letting the picture settle back against the wall.

She reappeared with a red box of saltines, her blue-veined hand rooting through the cellophane to get hold of one. She took one out, bit off half of it. “I like crackers,” she said. She chewed a few times, crumbs spilling out from the corner of her mouth. “These are pretty fucking stale.” She tossed the other half in, chewed.

“Have you heard from Gary lately?” I asked.