She finished sponging the horse and began to rinse him with the hose.

"It's just that everybody lets me down," she said. "I keep hoping and I keep being disappointed."

There was birdsong in the still heat. No whisper of wind. Only the sound of the water running and, now and then, the exhausted buzz of an especially intrepid insect.

"I spend too much time," she said, "thinking about things."

"The mayor and some people have hired me, too."

"To do what?"

"To sanitize the Dell."

"The Dell? You mean run them out?"

"Something like that."

"What about Steve?"

"If you're right, the tasks may be synergistic."

She laughed, though not very warmly.

"Synergistic," she said. "My God! You don't talk like someone who nearly killed two men this afternoon."

"Clean mind, sound body," I said. "I'm going to leave for awhile."

"Leave?"

"Yes, I… "

"You're running away. You're afraid that The Preacher will get you for this afternoon."

"I'll be back," I said.

"You won't be back," she said. "I don't even blame you. You can't face down the Dell by yourself."

"No," I said, "I can't. I'm going home to recruit some people."

She shook her head.

"I don't believe you," she said.

"Nothing I can do about that," I said.

"I won't pay you any more," she said. "You earned what I've paid you this afternoon. But no more."

"Sure," I said. "While I'm gone, maybe you can count more on the Potshot cops than you think you can."

"About as much," she said, "as I can count on you

Chapter 14

IT WAS MORNING, early. I was drinking coffee with the chief of the Potshot police in an unmarked airconditioned four-door black Ford Explorer, parked outside the bank on Main Street. There was a rifle and a shotgun on the back seat. Between us in the front seat was the inevitable computer rig.

"When I started with the Middlesex DA's office," I said, "there wasn't a cop in the country would have known what the hell that was."

"Modern crime fighting," Walker said.

"You been a cop before?" I said.

"Yep."

"Where?"

"Someplace else."

"So why'd you end up here?"

"I like it here."

"Sort of hot," I said.

"At least you don't have to shovel it," he said.

"Yeah, but it doesn't melt in the spring either."

"You get used to it," Walker said.

"You get used to it," I said.

Walker shrugged and drank some coffee.

"I hear that Roscoe and friends hired you," he said.

"You got somebody undercover at the Rotary Club?" I said.

"Small town," Walker said. "I heard they want you to clean up the Dell."

I didn't say anything.

"What about Steve Buckman?"

"I'm still working on that," I said.

"Two jobs at once," he said. "A real Boston rocket."

I shrugged modestly.

"How you planning to go about that?" Walker said.

"If I were going to try and take out The Preacher and his friends, why would I tell you?"

" 'Cause you might need my help?"

"How much of that should I expect if you're in The Preacher's pocket?"

Walker nodded. His khaki uniform shirt was pressed into sharp military creases. He wore big aviator glasses and a big walnut-handled Colt revolver on a tooled leather belt complete with cartridge loops, each loop attractively set off by a big brass cartridge with a copper-coated tip.

"Me telling you I'm not ain't going to convince you," he said.

"No it ain't," I said.

"I do what I can," he said. "I've got four guys, kids really, like the uniform and the chance to carry a piece. Preacher's got forty, none of them kids. I got to obey the law. Preacher can do what he wants. If I'm going to put him in jail, I need witnesses that will testify."

"Frustrating," I said.

Walker shrugged.

"Why not go someplace else?"

"Like I said, I like it here. You going up against the Dell alone?"

"Am I going to have trouble with you?" I said.

Walker drank some more coffee, and looked out through the tinted windshield at the heat shimmers rising from the asphalt.

"I don't want some kind of goddamned range war here," he said.

"Me either," I said. "Am I going to have trouble with you?"

"Not if you're legal," he said. "Maybe I'm not as crooked or scared as you think I am."

"You bought yourself a little credence yesterday," I said.

"Coulda been phony," he said. "Just trying to find out what you're up to."

"Coulda been," I said. "I'm going out of town for awhile. In case you want to keep an eye on Lou Buckman."

He looked very sharply at me, but he didn't say anything. He simply nodded. I didn't say anything either. According to the time and temperature display outside the bank it was 7:27 A.M. and 105 degrees. We finished our coffee in silence, and I got out of the car. I stood for a moment with the door open. There seemed to be something I should say, but I didn't know what it was. Neither did Walker.

Finally I said, "Good luck."

"You too," he said.

Chapter 15

IT SEEMED THE better part of valor not to take on the Dell by myself. And since I had smacked two Dellsters around in the public street, it seemed that if I stuck around I might have to. I had my bag packed. I had said my good-byes, such as they were, to Lou Buckman and Dean Walker. It seemed best not to say good-bye to Bebe Taylor. I had my gun unloaded and packed so I could check it through. If the Dell came for me now I'd have to kick them to death.

I checked out of the hotel. Got in my rental car. Turned up the air-conditioning and headed for the airport. For quite awhile I was on a two-lane highway, and everywhere I looked there was only desert.

A lot of the landscape was cactus and sage and scrub growth that looked brittle and sharp. It was a landscape in which no horse could gallop. It was a landscape through which a horse would pick his way, slowly, weaving in and out through the hostile vegetation. You just couldn't trust the movies.

After my initial foray, I concluded that all in Potshot was not as it seemed. There was something going on with Lou Buckman that I didn't get. There was a lot going on with Dean Walker I didn't get. And there was something about Potshot that I didn't get. More annoying, I didn't even get what it was I didn't get. It was just a sense that in almost all my dealings with almost everyone I'd talked with, there was another story being told that I couldn't hear.

I sort of trusted The Preacher. He appeared to be a vicious thug and I had no reason to think that he wasn't. It was nice to be able to count on somebody.

I finally reached the interstate and turned on. Another hour to the airport and less than five hours home. There was something exultant about being alone on the highway under the high, hot, empty sky two thousand miles from anything familiar, heading straight for the horizon. And the fact that Susan was eventually beyond that horizon made the feeling tangible as it flickered along the nerve tracks. There were few words in the language better than "going home." Home, of course, was Susan Silverman. It was good that she was in Boston, because I liked it there. But if she moved to Indianapolis, then that would be home. I could make a living. There was crime everywhere.