It was, of course, the kind of deadpan repression that masked absolute hysteria.

I lifted one hand and flapped it nastily at Freddie, whose Neanderthal face made no acknowledgment but watched with bovine intensity while I backed the Jeep out of the drive.

I turned down the narrow curvy asphalt lane; my mind had gone into neutral, I wasn’t even attempting to lay plans. Paralysis; I suppose I had consigned myself to execution. I formed the vague idea of buying a half-gallon of tequila, taking it to Joanne’s room, and getting splendidly drunk. I thought of a rock patch back in the Peloncillos which I had always meant to explore but had never gotten around to; it welled up in me an almost nostalgic yearning for all the planned things I had never done and, now, never would do. Books I meant to read, places I meant to see, old friends I wanted to see again. Joanne’s image blossomed in my mind, vivid and sharp—the warmth of her body, the lusty bark of her laughter, flash of eyes, toss of head. Riding the Jeep through a low dip in the road, I had the sudden feeling she was sitting just behind my shoulder, and all I needed do was turn around and look into her smiling violet eyes, encircle her with my arms, fold her close against me, hearing her husky laugh, scenting the fragrance of her hair.

It came to me that the sharp sense of loss was stronger in me than my own private fear of danger. That lonely sense of imminent loss stunned me: I hadn’t let myself believe she had come to mean so much to me.

The feeling of having her just behind my shoulder became so strong that my eyes shifted involuntarily to the rear-view mirror. Of course there was nobody in the bed of the Jeep. What I did see in the mirror was the shark-toothed chrome snout of the big dusty station wagon, bearing down on me from behind.

Mike Farrell got out of the car and took me at gunpoint in the Jeep to the boarded-up old house in Las Palmas, and a few minutes later I was sitting there in a lawn chair holding Mike’s gun and waiting for Mike to struggle back to consciousness.

Mike sat up with a pained grimace. “Jesus.”

“How do you feel?”

He cringed when I spoke; his eyes dipped toward me, bloodshot. “I got a headache right down to my toenails.”

“You hit the door with your head.”

“You knocked me down and got my gun, huh? Trust me to do that right.” He gave a nervous, braying cackle.

The heat was close and oppressive. When he looked at the gun I had, he flinched.

I let him have a good look at it. Then I said, “What happened to Aiello, Mike?”

“I swear to God I don’t know.”

“What happened to the stuff in his safe?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Then why are you shaking like a jackhammer?”

“Because my head hurts, goddamn it.” He looked away from me. The room was enormous, with baroque arches and domed ceiling. Mike sat like a taut-wound watch spring, his face down, heavy with thought. When he looked up again, he studied me with skittish caution and an apologetic, cowardly half-smile. His face was sweat-drenched and greenish; his baggy trousers, unpressed and too big for him, gave him the pathetic look of a diminutive circus clown. He must have lost weight in prison.

Suddenly he said, “What he had in that safe, Crane, it was enough cash to make a fast down payment on an aircraft carrier. They think I’ve got it, don’t they?”

I said quietly, “How do you know what was in the safe?”

There was soft insinuation in my voice but he didn’t react. He said, “Aiello showed it to me,” in a morose off-hand tone. I went over to the window near him and perched on the sill—Mike’s head turned on bulging neck tendons to keep me in sight. I dangled the automatic over one knee. As a cop I had learned to sit above a man when questioning him.

I said, “How much?”

“What?”

“How much does it take to make a down payment on an aircraft carrier?”

“Someplace between two million and three million. Closer to three.” Seeing my look of disbelief he added quickly, “I swear it’s the truth—look, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you and me and Joanne, we’re all in the same fix. We got to get together on this. Maybe we can work it out if we put our heads together.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about what’s going on,” I observed.

“Look, Crane, I didn’t make the hit on Aiello and I ain’t got the money.”

I said, “Let’s hear the whole thing.”

“Okay—but first you got to tell me what you were doing up at Madonna’s. You working for him now?”

“No.”

“And I just take your word for that?”

“Suit yourself. Here’s one for you: what makes you think they’ve fingered you for it?”

“How else can they add it up? It’s what I’d think if I was in their shoes.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story.”

“If I get bored,” I said, “I’ll yawn.”

He swallowed and squeezed his hands. When he rubbed them together the sound was scratchy and dry. He kept staring abysmally at the gun in my hand; finally he said, “Look, all I want is off the hook and unless things have changed a lot in a couple hours, you’re in the same boat. Can we help each other, Crane?”

“How do I know unless you tell me what you’ve got in mind?”

“I hope to hell you can help,” he muttered. “I got nobody else.”

“You’ve got yourself.”

“Yeah,” he said, off-key. “I been having myself for years.”

I didn’t say anything. He tried to glare at me but he couldn’t hold my eyes. He lifted his shoulders and let them drop; juices seemed to run out of him and he said in a weary voice, “Let me tell it my own way. I got to start way back at the beginning or you won’t understand it. I been rehearsing this for two hours this morning. How much you need to know.”

When I made no answer he gave me a spasmodic shrug. “Look, I was a sax man, a pretty good sax man, and I used to be clean. I had this four-man combo and we booked around town, little toy wages but I had talent and I figured I’d make it. More talent than a lot of Charley the Stars ever had, but they eat. I didn’t know that then.

“I figured if you could blow good and hit all the notes that move, all you had to do was wait for some A-and-R scout from Columbia to sign you up.

“Things were going okay. We moved into the better clubs and cut a few sides and the money got good. I was young. I married Joanne about then—everything felt groovy. Jesus God how innocent we were! Did you know she was a virgin when I married her? She was nineteen years old.

“But then I lost two good men, the bass player got drafted and the piano man went to the Coast, and I had to break in a couple idiots that didn’t know their brass from their oboes. So okay, so we keep working, but all the time I keep seeing forty-year-old horn men dying from malnutrition and TB and alcoholism. Good bands are a dime a dozen. All of a sudden I could see I don’t want to spend twenty years playing crumb joints and have nothing to show for it except a mountain of debts and creases in my neck and maybe a habit for booze or hard dope. I had to do better than that for Joanne. You get what I mean? Or am I trying to describe a color to a blind man?”

He had warmed up; he was enjoying the sound of his own voice, but I had to let him go on at his own pace. I nodded at him and said, “I understand.”

“Okay. So I got sick and tired of the life we were leading, that’s all. Jesus, I was in love with Jo. But the way we lived, Sweet God. I figured she deserved better.”

His voice ran down and he sat scowling. I didn’t prompt him. After a while he said sourly, “You know, you really ought to pay extra for the story of my life.”

He looked up with a twisted smile and resumed:

“Then they went ape for rock. They brought in all these stupid long-haired kids where the drummer plays the melody in the band and all they know how to do is jiggle a lot and make enough noise to make you stone deaf. Now I’m too old to get in that bag, see? I’m a musician for Christ’s sake. It’s the last goddamn straw.