Homer’s mouth was pinched resentfully. “Army.”

“That figures.”

The essence of magic is simplicity: This was magic—he emptied the revolver and each of them went home dead center; he lowered the gun slowly in disbelief. Roger shot a crafty sidewise glance in Homer’s direction. “I think he’s gettin’ the idea. Old horse, load up and try it again.”

He emptied the cartridge cases onto the pile and bounced the unfamiliar weight of the revolver in his open hand. “I don’t think so.”

Homer pivoted toward him. “Say again?”

The thought formed in his mind as he expressed it; it took him by surprise: “It’s something I can do if I have to. That’s all I need to know.”

Homer’s puzzlement turned into accusation. He addressed himself to Roger: “What’s the matter with him?”

“Better ask him.”

Mathieson put the empty revolver in Homer’s hand. Before he walked away he said, “Nobody’s making a killer out of me.”

2

They were eight at dinner and Vasquez presided with a movie monologue filled with Byzantine digressions: He was encyclopedic, wistful, opinionated and almost sycophantic when he spoke names like Cooper and Welles.

Roger refused to be baited and Vasquez’s frustration led him into outrageous overstatements. Roger stirred in his chair. “Movies are my living, not my life. I don’t go to the things unless I have to.”

Vasquez scowled belligerently at him. “Amazing.”

Roger stood up, detesting straight chairs. “You younkers take off. We’ve got grown-up talking to do. Only bore the hell out of you.”

Ronny and Billy glanced at each other like French underground conspirators and sped from the room. Amy said, “Those two together go like a match and a stick of dynamite. Don’t be surprised if this house gets demolished.”

Jan laughed—to Mathieson it sounded brittle. Homer stood up. “You going to want me?”

Vasquez said, “An extra viewpoint never hurts.”

In the big front room Roger slumped into a Queen Anne chair. Amy sat down on the floor and leaned her head back against his knee. Homer perched on a small chair by the wall as though expecting to bolt the room. Mathieson took a place beside Jan on the couch; she gave him a glance and, hesitantly after a moment, her hand. It was cold.

There was a bench seat built into the bay window and covered with velvet upholstery. Vasquez sat straight up, centered on it. Casually he had positioned himself precisely at the focus of intersecting attentions, giving himself command of the scene.

In the corner of his vision Mathieson picked up the quick amused smile that fled briefly across Homer’s tight cheeks; probably he was accustomed to Vasquez’s seances and expected pyrotechnics tonight. But Mathieson couldn’t imagine Vasquez producing anything spectacular this time; the situation was too glum.

Vasquez began politely: “I commend your efficiency. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to break away on such short notice.”

“You had it all set up—Homer with that U-Haul truck. All we did was follow the script.”

“Nevertheless. You must have had difficulty breaking your commitment to the producers. The program you were filming.”

“Taping, not filming. Television horse shit.”

“How did you manage it?”

“It’s one of those documentary things. The life of the working cowhand. You know the kind of crap. All I was there for was the narration. Hell, I just called this kid up in Vegas that does nightclub impressions? You know, Cagney and all. Kid’s pretty good, does me better than I do me. Then I told my manager to clear it with the producers. Amos got a tongue like old-fashioned snake oil, he’ll sell it to them. That kid’s real good. It’d take a voice-print graph to tell it wasn’t me talking. Nobody’ll ever know.”

“Ingenious,” Vasquez said. “The fact remains, your lives have been egregiously disrupted. It’s an error for which I share blame. Among other things I’d like to try and ascertain what the appropriate redress might be.”

Roger said, “You and me, we share the same bad habit—puttin’ on airs. Mine’s harmless—I’m a professional Texan and I talk like one. But we’d get along a little faster if you’d come down off the Oxford Dictionary and talk plain English.” He glanced at Mathieson. “As far as blame goes, I’d just as soon not waste half the night arguing about who among us ought to put on sackcloth and ashes. Let’s us get down to the business at hand.”

Vasquez’s long jaw crept forward, pugnacious in quarter profile; he jabbed a finger toward Roger. “You’re about as rustic and unsophisticated as an Apollo moon rocket.”

“Son, just because I talk like a country boy don’t make me nobody’s fool. My daddy didn’t raise no stupid children.”

Vasquez’s finger lowered. In the corner Homer shoved his nose into his cup of coffee.

Vasquez said, “The fact remains, you came into this inadvertently, as a bystander.”

“Bystander hell. They put their men on us. Tapped our phone. Next thing you know they’d start shooting at us. Don’t be so damn exclusive—it’s our fight too.”

“If you choose to make it so.”

Mathieson said, “It’s not your fight. I’m sorry you’re involved—it was my stupid fault—but it’s not your fight, Roger.”

“Old horse.” Roger leaned back until he was almost supine. His eyes slid shut. After a moment without opening them he said, “Like the man says, we choose to make it ours. You want to try and keep us out of it? You want that kind of trouble with me?”

Amy said wistfully, “Roger surely does love a good fight, Fred, don’t you go denying him his pleasures.”

Vasquez said, “Very well. You’re in.”

“Thank you kindly.” Roger’s drawl was complacent.

Amy said, “Did any of you folks know what I used to be when I was a liberated woman before I met this here macho chauvinist pig? Happens I used to teach seventh grade in Del Rio, Texas.”

With his eyes comfortably shut Roger said, “Don’t mind her. She’s had a couple of drinks.”

“I’m making perfect sense, curmudgeon. We got two boys in this house and ain’t neither one of them likely to see the inside of a classroom for a spell. Nobody wants them to grow up like ignorant slobs like you.”

Roger opened one eye. “To whom would you be referrin’, my deah?”

“It’ll give me something useful to do. Next time anybody goes into town we pick up a few schoolbooks and we put these spoiled younkers to work.”

Jan said, “That’s a fine idea.” To Mathieson’s ear it sounded hollow: wholly without enthusiasm. He realized why. It would only isolate Jan more than ever.

Roger closed his eye. “That fresh pond down the valley—any fish in that thing?”

“A few,” Homer said.

“Trout?”

“No. Carp, I think. Meuth claims there’s a catfish or two.”

“Reckon I’ll find out for myself. While old Fred’s puffin’ around the track, I mean. Personally I got no use for exercise for its own sake.” Suddenly he got up on his elbow and peered at Vasquez. “But I’d be obliged to sit in on your strategy sessions.”

Mathieson said, “You will.”

“Certainly,” Vasquez agreed.

“That’s all right then. I always did want a crack at a passel of real live bad guys.”

3

He came out of the pool after the fortieth lap and dried himself in the sun. A sudden gnashing noise startled him: He peered over his shoulder. A door stood open and beyond it Mrs. Meuth was in the corridor swinging her electric buffer from side to side, leaving arcs of shined wax on the floor.

He took his towel around to the far side of the pool and rested a hip against the filter-pump housing. In a rack beside it were the cleaning tools—the long-handled net, the sections of vacuum hose, all of it half concealed in shrubbery. Beyond the pool’s apron the garden sloped away from the house. The pale sky seemed vast.

A cardinal took flight from the stone birdbath. Instinct startled him and intelligence informed him: Something had frightened the bird.