She said, “I think you’ve left out a few things.”

“I might’ve, I don’t know.”

Helene sat curled in the sofa, facing him. “You stayed at her house last night?”

“All three of us did.”

“Yeah…”

“I told you, the guy saw us in the restaurant and he knows where she lives. We thought he might come around.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. Then I run into him again, tonight. He knows who I am. This’s the third or fourth time he’s seen me, we’re getting to know each other. But he didn’t tell the colonel or Crispin, Crispeen. He could’ve told them later, but-no, he catches me in the room? Shit, he’d have told them right away. But he didn’t… Why?”

“Where did you sleep?”

“What?”

“Last night, at her house. Where did you sleep?”

“In a bed, where do you think? That house, there nine, ten bedrooms upstairs.”

“Who with?”

“Roy and Cullen had a room and I had a room… What, you think I sneaked in her room during the night?”

“She could’ve come to yours.”

Jack took his time. “As a matter of fact, she did. She wanted to talk.”

“She get in bed with you?”

“She sat on the edge. You know, on the side.”

“Hey, Jack? Bullshit.”

“It isn’t like what you think. She’s a dedicated person.”

“You mean dedicated people don’t get it on?”

“I mean I really don’t know, since this’s my first experience with people who give a shit about anything outside of themselves.”

“She probably calls it going all the way.”

“Helene, she’s not like a nun that teaches third grade, she spent nine years taking care of lepers. Now she’s got a gun. I asked her if she’d be willing to use it. She said it isn’t something you plan. But if she’d had a gun when the colonel murdered the lepers there’s no doubt in her mind she would’ve tried to kill him. Even knowing his men would shoot her on the spot.”

“Maybe,” Helene said, “she wants to be a martyr. I mean a real one, go straight to heaven.”

“You think you’re kidding, she might go for that.”

“I wasn’t kidding.”

“But she isn’t a fanatic. She might sound a little strange sometimes, but she knows what’s going on, she’s very aware of things. She says you have to take sides, make a commitment, and then, I don’t know, whatever happens happens. Like the guy in the bathroom, the Indian. He’s on the other side. He’s willing to kill, but he’s also willing to die for whatever it is he believes in. He sees it coming and accepts it, Jesus, didn’t kick or scream or anything.”

Helene handed him her empty glass. “Why are you telling me all this, Jack? Why haven’t you called Lucy or one of your buddies?”

“I’ll see ’em tomorrow.”

“I think you want to hear yourself,” Helene said. “Hear what it sounds like out loud.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re not telling it to impress me. Like the first time, when we met and you were dying to tell somebody about your secret life. This is a lot different.”

“You bet it is. These guys are awake.”

“But you’re in it for more than the money, or the excitement.”

“I don’t know…” Jack got up, went to the refrigerator with their glasses, poured a couple more ice-cold vodkas, and then stood there, holding them. “On the news this evening, I look up, there was Tom Brokaw asking Richard Nixon, for Christ sake, what he thought about our giving the contras a hundred million dollars. Asking Nixon, who used to have this gang of burglars working for him and didn’t do one fucking day of time. Nixon says, sure, they need our help. Brokaw says, but couldn’t that lead to our military involvement down there? Nixon says, no, it will prevent having to send our young men later. And Brokaw says, ‘Thank you, Mr. President.’ He doesn’t say, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? Why would we send our young men? You want to go, go ahead. And take all those asshole advisers in the White House with you.’ No, Brokaw says, ‘Thank you, Mr. President.’ ”

“What else’s he gonna say?”

“I know, but I got mad. Asking that fucking crook his opinion. He didn’t even do trash time in a country-club joint.”

Helene said, “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you’ve taken sides.”

Jack opened his eyes to a sight that, fantasized, could carry a convict through the day and into the night: Helene coming out of the bathroom in just her tiny little panties. He told her she better get back in bed, quick, before she caught cold.

“You’re suppose to pick somebody up at ten?”

“Cullen. We’re going to Gulfport.”

“I thought you went yesterday.”

“We did, but the guy wasn’t there. Here.” He raised the sheet.

“It’s twenty to.” She began doing a twisting exercise, feet apart, hands on her hips, her breasts a half beat behind her shoulders. “You realize we didn’t make love? We fell asleep? I don’t believe it. I think you’re getting old, Jack.”

“I’m ready-you’re the one got up.”

“Do you know that’s the first time we ever slept together and didn’t?”

“I think you’re right.”

“We may as well be married.”

“There’s a kitchenette down the hall, next to the embalming room…”

“Oh, God, this place.”

“If you want to put some coffee on.”

Jack took a shower and put on a work shirt and cotton pants, picked up his jacket, and walked down the hall. The kitchenette was dark. He saw the doors to the prep room open, the light on, then saw Helene as he heard Leo’s voice.

“No, that’s arterial, the Permaglo, it takes the place of the blood. What I’m injecting now, through the trocar, is cavity fluid. It’s a chemical you use to firm up the organs.”

Leo had a body on the embalming table. A man, it looked like. Helene was standing at the head of the table in her black dress, watching.

“You want to shoot some inside the mouth, too, so you don’t have any sag.”

“It’s fascinating,” Helene said.

“See this? It’s a trocar button.”

“Oh, to fill in the hole.”

“Right, so you don’t have to suture it as you do incisions and lacerations. Then you cover ’em with a special wax we use.”

Jack said, “I don’t suppose anybody made coffee.”

“Hey, there he is,” Leo said. “I was just showing your friend here how we prepare the deceased.”

“This’s Helene, Leo.”

“Yeah, we met.”

“If nobody made coffee,” Jack said, “I have to leave.”

Helene said, “Oh, nuts. I wanted to see how you do the cosmetics.”

“Stick around,” Leo said. “I can drop you off later. Sure, no problem.”

“I’m going to Gulfport,” Jack said. He walked off. Helene was asking, what’re those? And Leo was telling her eye caps, you slip ’em under the lids.

People were acting weird. Everyone he met.

Or it’s you, Jack thought. The way you see them.

Franklin de Dios, watching Lucy Nichols’s house, saw the old car arrive: the light-colored one he believed was a type of Volkswagen and needed repair, something to make it quiet. He knew whose car it was.

It turned into the driveway. Thirty-five minutes passed. Now the dark-blue Mercedes sedan, two people in it, came out of the driveway and turned toward St. Charles. Franklin de Dios was parked on a beautiful street named Prytania, near the corner where it joined Audubon. He gave the Mercedes the head start of a block before he got after it: up to Claiborne Avenue and then to the interstate, number 10, going toward the east… going far out of the city and across the lake on a beautiful day, following the Mercedes in the rented black Chrysler Fifth Avenue. If he could buy any car he wanted it might be one like this. Or the Cadillac he drove for Crispin Reyna in Florida. He had never driven a Mercedes. He had driven a truck and an armored troop carrier after he had learned to drive in 1981. A man who worked for Mr. Wally Scales in Honduras had taught him to drive and said in front of him to Mr. Wally Scales he was a natural-born driver with a respect for the machine, not like those others who became crazy behind the wheel and destroyed whatever they drove.