Time for the pills. Time for the gun.

The phone startled him. Without thinking, he scrambled to his feet and grabbed the receiver. "Hello," he grunted.

"Where the hell are you?" It was his father, with a tone he knew so well.

"I'm, uh, not feeling well," he managed to say, staring at his watch and now remembering the ten-thirty meeting with a very important inspector from the FDIC.

"I don't give a damn how you feel. Mr. Colthurst from the FDIC has been waiting in my office for fifteen minutes."

"I'm vomiting, Dad," he said, and cringed again with the word Dad. Fifty-one years old, still using the word Dad.

"You're lying. Why didn't you call if you're sick? Gladys told me she saw you just before ten walking toward the post office.What the hell's going on here?"

"Excuse me. I gotta go to the toilet. I'll call you later." He hung up.

The Valium rolled in like a pleasant fog, and he sat on the edge of his bed staring at the lavender squares scattered on the floor. Ideas were slow in coming, hampered by the pills.

He could hide the letters, then kill himself. His suicide note would place the bulk of the blame on his father. Death was not an altogether unpleasant prospect; no $lore marriage, no more bank, no more Dad, no more Bakers, Iowa, no more hiding in the closet.

But he would miss his children and grandchildren.

And what if this Ricky monster didn't learn of the suicide, and sent another letter, and they found it, and somehow Quince got himself outed anyway, long after his funeral?

The next lousy idea involved a conspiracy with his secretary, a woman he trusted marginally to begin with. He would tell her the truth, then ask her to write a letter to Ricky and break the news of Quince Garbe's suicide. Together, Quince and his secretary could scheme and fake their way through a suicide, and in the process take some measure of revenge against Ricky.

But he'd rather be dead than tell his secretary.

The third idea occurred after the Valium had settled in at full throttle, and it made him smile. Why not try a little honesty? Write a letter to Ricky and plead poverty. Offer another $10,000 and tell him that's all. If Ricky was determined to destroy him, then he, Quince, would have no choice but to come after Ricky. He'd inform the FBI, let them track the letters and the wire transfers, and both men would go down in flames.

He slept on the floor for thirty minutes, then gathered his jacket, gloves, and overcoat. He left the house without seeing the maid. As he drove to town, flush with the desire to confront the truth, he admitted aloud that only the money mattered. His father was eighty-one. The bank's stock was worth about $10 million. Someday it would be his. Stay in the closet until the cash was in hand, then live any way he damned well pleased.

Don't screw up the money.

Coleman Lee owned a taco but in a strip mall on the outskirts of Gary, Indiana, in a section of town now ruled by the Mexicans. Coleman was forty-eight, with two bad divorces decades earlier, no children, thank God. Because of all the tacos, he was thick and slow, with a drooping stomach and large fleshy cheeks. Coleman was not pretty, but he was certainly lonely.

His employees were mainly young Mexican boys, illegal immigrants, all of whom he, sooner or later,tried to molest, or seduce, or whatever you'd call his clumsy efforts. Rarely was he successful, and his turnover was high. Business was slow too because people talked and Coleman was not well regarded. Who wanted to buy tacos from a pervert?

He rented two small boxes at the post office at the other end of the strip mall-one for his business, the other for his pleasure. He collected porno and gathered it almost daily from the post office. The mail carrier at his apartment was a curious type, and it was best to keep some things as quiet as possible.

He strolled along the dirty sidewalk at the edge of the parking lot, past the discount stores for shoes and cosmetics, past a XXX video dive he'd been banned from, past a welfare office, one brought to the suburbs by a desperate politician looking for votes. The post office was crowded with Mexicans taking their time because it was cold out.

His daily haul was two hard-core magazines sent to him in plain brown wrappers, and a letter which looked vaguely familiar. It was a square yellow envelope, no return address, postmarked in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Ah, yes, he remembered as he held it. Young Percy in rehab.

Back in his cramped little office between the kitchen and the utility room, he quickly flipped through the magazines, saw nothing new, then stacked them in a pile with a hundred others. He opened the letter from Percy. Like the two before, it was handprinted, and addressed to Walt, a name he used to collect all his porn.Walt Lee.

Dear Walt,

I really enjoyed your last letter. I've read it many times.You have a nice way with words. As I told you, I've been here for almost eighteen months, and it gets very lonely. I keep your letters under my mattress, and when I feel really isolated I read them over and over. Where did you learn to write like that? Please send another one as soon as possible.

With a little luck, I'll be released in April. I'm not sure where I'll go or what I'll do. It's frightening, really, to think that I'll just walk out of here after almost two years, and have no one to be with. I hope we're still pen pals by then.

I was wondering, and I really hate to ask this, but since I have no one else I'll do it anyway, and please feel free to say no, it won't hurt our friendship, but could you loan me a thousand bucks? They have this little book and music shop here at the clinic, and they let us buy paperbacks and CD's on credit, and, well, I've been here so long that I've run up quite a tab.

If you can make the loan, I'd really appreciate it. If not, I completely understand.

Thanks for being there, Walt. Please write me soon. I treasure your letters.

Love,

Percy

A thousand bucks? What kinda little creep was this? Coleman smelled a con. He ripped the letter into pieces and threw them in the trash. "A thousand bucks." he mumbled to himself, reaching for the magazines again.

Curtis was not the real name of the jeweler in Dallas. Curtis worked fine when corresponding with Ricky in rehab, but the real name was Vann Gates.

Mr. Gates was fifty-eight years old, on the surface happily married, the father of three and the grandfather of two, and he and his wife owned six jewelry stores in the Dallas area, all located in malls. On paper they had $2 million, and they'd made it themselves. They had a very nice new home in Highland Park, with separate bedrooms at opposite ends. They met in the kitchen for coffee and in the den for TV and grandkids.

Mr. Gates ventured from the closet now and then, always with excruciating caution. No one had a clue. His correspondence with Ricky was his first attempt at finding love through the want ads, and so far he'd been thrilled with the results. He rented a small box in a post office near one of the malls, and used the name Curtis V Cates.

The lavender envelope was addressed to Curtis Cates, and as he sat in his car and carefully opened it, he at first had no clue anything was wrong. Just another sweet letter from his beloved Ricky. Lightning hit, though, with the first words:

Dear Vann Gates,

The party's over, pal. My name ain't Ricky, and you're not Curtis. I'm not a gay boy looking for love. You, however, have an awful secret, which I'm sure you want to keep. I want to help.

Here's the deal: Wire $100,000 to Geneva Trust Bank, Nassau, Bahamas, account number 144-DxN-9593, for Boomer Realty, Ltd., routingnumber 392844-22.