"You won't lose this, will you?"

"I won't." I shoved the envelope down with the grass.

"Did you find Billy yet?"

"No. But I'm close. I think."

He sat on the plastic chair and brought his knee up for a hug. The head of his cock peeked out one leg of his briefs and he absently tucked it back in.

"Where do you think Billy is?" he said. "God, I miss him."

"He's out West."

"In Hollywood?"

"Not that far west. I'm not sure. I'll know soon. Frank, I want you to clear something up for me."

"You do? What?"

"Describe the car you used to drive Billy to La Guardia."

"Describe it?"

"The make, the color."

He squeezed his eyes shut as if to rummage around inside his head for some usable brain cells. Finally he opened his eyes and said, "It's a green car. An Impala, I think. Impala—isn't that a car?"

"It is."

"Why do you want to know that? Did somebody see us? I mean, I don't want to get somebody in trouble—the guy I borrowed the car from."

"I don't think that'll be a problem. Do you know anyone who owns a new gold-colored Olds Toronado?"

He shut his eyes again. After a moment they opened, blinking. "I'm sorry, but I really don't think so. I might have been in one once. It's hard to say. I've been in a lot of cars."

It seemed possible he simply did not remember that the Olds was an Olds, or even that it was a motorized vehicle. Sorting out the particulars of his nights couldn't have been easy for him.

I said, "The night of the killing. Where did you spend it?"

He fidgeted. "Here," he said. "In there." He gestured toward the bedroom. "I told you that before, didn't I? I thought I did. Who's been asking about me?"

"Were you alone?"

"No. Who is it who wants to know about that?"

"For now, I do. Were you here around one?"

"I said I was here all that night. A guy—somebody had called around eleven-thirty, and came over at twelve—I think. Yeah, that's what happened. I remember because somebody else had just left when this guy called. He was a priest, the first guy, and he always left before twelve. In for a quick pop, then back to the rectory. I was kind of wiped out after him, but the second guy was somebody who's always been pretty nice to me, so when he called I said, sure, what the fuck, c'mon over. I smoked some while I waited, and then he came, this friendly old

fucked-up guy, and he stayed till—about two, I guess. Then I fell asleep till Billy showed up at six. It was one of those nights."

I said, "You were seen sitting in a gold-colored Olds in the parking lot at Trucky's around one. How did that happen?"

His head jerked back and he gave me a mean look. "Hey, what is this? Is somebody trying to fuck me over or what? Who said that? Somebody has me mixed up with somebody else. Whoever said that about me—that's wrong." He muttered something else under his breath and reached for a Kent.

I said, "What's the friendly old fucked-up guy's name? Maybe he can help put my mind at ease. This will stay between the three of us. Or maybe you could get us together."

He lit the cigarette and ingested its nutrients. "No-o-o-o way." He exhaled. "Forget that."

"Look," I said, "you know me a little by now. Am I discreet, or am I discreet?"

He shook his head. "Nnn-nnn. That's a no-no. Why don't you tell me something? Who was it who says he saw me at Trucky's? A cop?" He gave me a look of deep, wounded bitterness which, since Billy Blount's departure, seemed to be Zimka's one remaining nondrug-induced emotion.

I said, "No. Someone who knows you. Someone whose car was parked next to the Olds. He looked right at you and spoke, and you looked back. Remember, now? A friend of Billy's?"

He frowned at his cigarette and slowly shook his head. Then, as if he were about to remember something, he squeezed his eyes shut and said, "Well, maybe I—no. It must have been another night I was out there. Or maybe I was stoned. I don't think so, though. It's hard to remember. My mind does weird things sometimes."

"Do you know Mike Truckman?"

"Sure. Why? Who wants to know? Everybody knows Mike."

"Is Mike one of your Johns?"

"Look, I said certain things are confidential."

"Did you meet Mike that night?"

"Goddamnit-to-shit, I told you I was with these two other guys! Now, who is it that's telling these lies about me? Did Mike say that?"

"No. Give me the names of the priest and the fucked-up old guy, and then maybe we can clear this up, and I'll drop it."

"No. Oh, no. I can't do that. Hey—shit—am I going to get in trouble?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, God. That's all I need. Cops. I'm so fucked up. So fucking fucked up."

He selected a pill from the eight whites lying openly on the end table and placed it on his tongue.

1O

Frank zimka was such a blur of a human being that it was hard to form an opinion about the veracity of any statement he made. He could have been telling the truth, or lying, or, most likely, some of each. Or his brain could have been so addled by drugs, or by his grief over himself, that he no longer knew for sure what was true in his life and what wasn't, and cared about which was which only intermittently. I'd run into that before.

I went back to the office and phoned Mark Deslonde at Sears Automotive Center. I asked him if he was certain it was Zimka he'd seen in Trucky's parking lot that night, and he said almost certain—at least it had never occurred to him that the man he greeted in the Olds Toronado had not been Zimka.

I asked Deslonde not to mention any of this to anyone, and he said he wouldn't. He said if Timmy and I went out Wednesday night, maybe he'd see us. He told me he'd be with Phil, and as he said it, I could see him doing his angled-grin-and-head thing. I said, yes, I hoped we'd run into him, which was the truth, and hung up.

I called my service and was told a Chris had phoned me and said she would call back. She had left no number. I told the service I'd be at home, then drove over to Morton. I stuffed the bag of grass into the Major Gray's chutney jar in the refrigera-

tor and slipped the letter from Frank Zimka to Billy Blount into the jacket of Thelma Houston's "I'm Here Again" alongside Blount's letter from his parents. I thought about steaming that one open, but decided to wait and see if it came to that.

After half an hour of sit-ups, push-ups, and jogging in place, I set the phone on the bathroom floor and showered. While I shaved I spotted another gray hair in my mustache. I lectured myself on the special rewards of going gentle into that good night, left the gray hair, and got into my jeans and sport shirt. Then I had second thoughts, went back to the mirror, and ripped the little fucker out. There was just the one, which would have looked damned silly all by itself, an affectation.

At six Timmy let himself in with his own key. He had French bread and salad makings and suggested I "do a quiche." I laughed and opened the freezer door. I caught sight of a Mama Cadenza's frozen lasagna embedded in the Arctic wastes of my freezer compartment, found a screwdriver, and pried the aluminum tray full of hard orange stuff out of its cardboard container, which was stuck in there for good.

While we waited for the lasagna to heat up, Timmy listened to the Haydn Quartet in G Major in the stereo headset and I watched Dick Block eye his cue cards suspiciously and recite the little snatches of Albany news written on them. The Kleckner murder was not mentioned, but two sentences were devoted to the Saturday-night raid by Bergenfield police on the Rat's Nest, "a controversial bar patronized predominantly by members of the gay community."