She hung up.

I drove the Bobcat over to York Street and parked across from Zinsser's building. In twenty minutes they came out carrying three suitcases. They moved quickly up the street, and I had to walk fast. I caught up with them as they were opening the door to Porterfield's Hertz car with the Wyoming tags.

"Hi, gang. Say it now, say it loud, we're gay, and we're proud." They looked at me as if I were a creature that had dropped out of the tree we were standing under. "Look, I'm Don Strachey, and all I want to do is talk. Really—"

Blount dropped his bag and bolted up the street. Zinsser, short, a bit portly, with dark angry eyes staring out over a Maharishi-style face full of hair, flung his suitcase down and came at me, one hand pushing into my face, the other grabbing at the fake fur collar of my bomber jacket.

As we grappled, I caught glimpses of Chris Porterfield standing there, suitcase still in hand, looking fed up, as if her bus were late. I kneed Zinsser in the groin, and as he doubled over cuffed the side of his head. As he went down slowly, I got behind him and whomped him in the seat of the pants with my gay clone work shoes. He grunted, and I took off up the street after Billy Blount.

At the first intersection I looked both ways and caught sight of him off to my right, a block away. I took off, gasping and wheezing and noticing a funny clamped feeling at the sides of my head. Blount hung a sudden left, and I broke into a full sprint. By the time he reached Cheesman Park, he had only half a block on me. We charged across the grass under the stars; on the mountainside, off in the distance, I thought I saw a huge,

lighted cross. I hoped it actually existed. My ears were screaming.

Beside some shrubbery at an exit on the far side of the park from where we'd entered it, I caught up with him. I lunged and brought him down. His fists flew, and he kicked and grunted, "Motherfucker! Fucking asshole motherfucker!" He was strong, but frantic—too frantic to know what he was doing—and when I pounded my fist into his midsection, he curled up and concentrated on getting his respiratory system functioning again. I sprawled beside him and worked toward the same end.

He started to get up, and I shoved him down on his stomach and fell on him. My mouth was at his ear, and I gasped into it "You stupid shit, I'm trying to get you out of this fucking mess! They want to put you back in Sewickley Oaks, and they're using this thing to do it to you, and since you acted like a damn fool and ran away, the only way you're going to stay out of that place is to help me find out who really killed Steve Kleckner!"

I yelled it and he wrenched his head away, but he'd understood me. He stopped squirming and lay unmoving except for the heaving of his back as he struggled to get his breathing under control.

After a moment he turned his face toward mine and said, "I don't even know who the fuck you are!"

"Didn't Chris tell you?"

He looked like his photograph, except he'd shaved his mustache, and the old black-and-white photo the Blounts had given me hadn't brought out the high color of his smooth skin or the depths of his black eyes. As we lay there panting together, our faces nearly touching, I thought: Shit—again. I thought about getting up and walking away and phoning Timmy to ask him if he'd go away with me to an island somewhere where we'd be the only men for hundreds of miles around. Then I could do it—thought I could do it.

Blount said, "Chris told me you were probably okay, but she didn't actually know you, and anyway you're working for my parents, who are a menace to civilization. Isn't that the truth? Isn't it?"

"The menaces hired me, yes, but I'm using their money to

work for you." A faint private smile on his face. I'm damned if I know what your parents believe, but I do not believe you killed Steve Kleckner. Did you?"

He looked as if he'd have swung at me if I hadn't had his arms pinned down. "Of course I didn't!" He spat it out.

I relaxed my grip, and when he didn't move, I rolled off him and sat up. I said, "Then who did?"

"How the fuck would I know? Was I there when it happened?"

"I don't know, I wasn't there either. If you weren't, then where were you?"

"In the shower. You knew that. I heard Chris tell you Sunday night."

"And I believed it," I said. "I'm familiar with your after-sex habits. I know Huey Brownlee."

"You know Huey? Is he okay?" He rolled onto his side and studied me, his breathing coming back, the tension draining.

I said, "Huey's fine, no thanks to you. Huey and I were acquainted prior to all this. He's a good man."

A wistful look. "Yeah. He is."

"I've met Mark Deslonde, too. And Frank Zimka."

He looked at the ground and picked at a clump of grass. "Oh. How's he doing? Old Frank."

"He misses you quite a bit. I've got a letter from him in my car. And I've got some questions about old Frank."

The sound of voices calling. I looked up over the shrubs we'd tumbled down beside and could make out two forms moving across the park from where Blount and I had come in. "Bi-l-l-y—Bi-l-l-l-yy—"

"Your friends are here." He started to stand, and I took his arm. "Look, why don't we check in with them later. We'll talk first, and then I'll drop you back at Zinsser's apartment. We'll go to a bar I heard about. Ted's. It sounds nice."

"No. You know Ted's? No—anyway, no. They'll be worried." He got up. "It's okay. You'd just better be straight— what's your name?"

"Don Strachey."

"Well, Don Strachey, if you're a cop or something—if you're

fucking me over—Kurt has a lot of friends who won't take shit-"

"Am I alone, or am I alone? If I were a cop, would I come after a murder suspect with the Hundred and First Airborne or alone in a rented Bobcat? Which makes more sense?"

He waved and shouted, "We're over here."

They came trotting. They stopped about ten feet away, watching Blount for some signal.

"He's okay," Blount said. "It's cool. He'd better be." They all looked at me.

We were just twenty feet away from the street that paralleled the bottom edge of the park. I'd seen people stand up around the pavilion when I chased Blount across the grass, and one of them must have phoned the police. A cruiser pulled up.

"Everything okay here?"

I noticed that my jacket was ripped, and I gestured with my eyes to Chris Porterfield. She glanced at Billy, who nodded. She said to the cop, "Yes, is there some problem?"

"Somebody reported a fight. You see two guys run by here in the last ten minutes?"

"We just arrived, officer," Zinsser said. "There's no curfew, is there?"

The cop said, "Eleven o'clock. I'd watch myself in here, though. Lotta fags."

"Are they dangerous?" Zinsser said.

"Only if you bend over." We could see him shaking with delight. "I'd say you're safe, Miss." We guffawed heartily.

He drove away.

Zinsser said, "The law." He spat.

Back in front of Zinsser's apartment, I retrieved the two letters to Billy Blount from the glove compartment of the Bobcat. I'd retaped the flap shut on Zimka's note and carefully glued the one from the Blounts. I'd tell Blount, in due course, that I'd read the letters, but just then I needed to solidify his trust, misplaced as it may have been in that particular matter.

Chris Porterfield was in a snit. Her strong, big-boned face frozen in hurt anger, she stomped up the stairs to the apart-