"She's here," Pellam said, nodding toward the corridor. "Her mother had an operation or something." He looked at the Smith & Wesson. "I've got a Smittie at home. I do some shooting sometimes."

Buffett nodded but he was distracted. He kept looking at the gun, imagining what it would feel like when the bullet entered his brain. How long would he continue to think? What would he see? He thought: Fuck you. Terror. Buffett looked up. "Sorry?"

Pellam had been talking about his famous ancestor and he now repeated the story.

Buffet's eyes showed momentary amusement. "Wild Bill Hickok? Bullshit."

"Well, that's the story. Even if it's not true, it got me interested in American history. And started me collecting old guns."

"What'd he shoot, a.45?"

"Wild Bill? Nope. Gun of choice was an 1851 Navy Colt. Thirty-six caliber. What's that? Three fifty-seven?" Pellam nodded toward the Smith & Wesson in Buffett's hand.

"This? No. Standard thirty-eight special."

"Could I heft it for a minute?"

Buffett handed it to him butt first and as Pellam studied it the cop said, "Pellam, one thing. When you saw my wife did you tell her anything about me?"

"I don't remember. I guess I told her you seemed to be doing okay."

"Did you? Thanks."

Pellam put the gun in his pocket.

Buffett looked at the outline of the pistol. "What are you doing?"

Pellam said, "I think I'll hold on to it for a while."

Naw, naw, give it here." Buffett thought Pellam was joking.

"I don't think so."

"What're you, nuts? Give it here!"

Pellam said, "I was thinking about it, you know, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense. There's a twenty-four-hour cop up the hall, hospital security guards at the front door. I don't think the killer'd be stupid enough to try to come back-"

"Well, who the hell are you to risk my life?"

"I think I'm saving your life, Donnie."

Another blink.

Pellam said, "What were you really going to do with the gun?"

"Give it here!"

"What were you going to do with it?"

"Give me my fucking gun!" Buffett shouted. Then he spat out viciously, "I could slash my wrists. I could take an overdose."

"Well, do it. I'm just not going to help you."

"It's my gun!" Buffett cried. "Please." Tears began. He wiped them away angrily. His arms slumped and his hands fell to his lap.

"It's gotta be tough," Pellam said. "But you don't want to do that." He touched his pocket.

"You don't understand," Buffett whispered. "I'm never going to walk! I'm never going to fuck a woman again in my life. Never. I'll never have any kids. You don't understand!"

'The way you feel now isn't-"

"The way I feel?" Buffett shouted. "How do you know what I feel? How could you possibly know?"

Pellam exhaled slowly. After a moment of enduring the hopelessness in the cop's face, he said, "I'll be in town for another week. You still want the gun when I leave, I'll give it to you then."

"Yeah, what's going to be different in a week?" Buffett snarled. "I'll still be lying on my ass with bedsores, I'll still be pissing into a rubber, I'll have a wife talking to the stars and friends who're embarrassed to come see me."

"One week."

"Give it to me!"

Pellam opened the door and stepped out. One week."

This was not a place he would have chosen to be buried in. Philip Lombro would have preferred more variety: trees, hills, large rocks rising out of the ground like Stonehenge. But he decided this was a foolish thought. How could you have a cemetery with tree roots, uneven ground, stone? Cemeteries were like any other real estate; death had to be financially practical.

The cemetery outside of Maddox resembled the acreage around a prefab midwestern grade school. Beyond, he could see a development of pastel houses, all similarly styled. In each yard were two small maples, crowned with colored leaves- webby, like the sponge of HO-gauge trees in the scenery sets he bought for his nephews.

Lombro parked on the side of the cinder drive and got out of the Lincoln. He walked slowly through the trim grass. Several of the graves were caved in at the corners. He felt queasy as he looked down into these tiny, dark pits, and he wondered if with a flashlight one could see the coffins themselves. This terrified him. He hated this place and he was angry at his brother for buying plots here, instead of Mount Pleasant, where their parents were buried.

The day was milky-sunny and hot. Indian summer, he supposed, though he never knew exactly what that meant. Could it be a metaphor for the Indians' attempting a final assault after they had been conquered by the settlers? But that seemed too lofty and dark for such an innocent phrase. His feet bristled through lawn stubbly with crabgrass, and he noticed his shoes were dusty from disintegrating yellow leaves. He bent down and stroked the grass. It was unpleasantly tough; the stem of a dandelion was the only softness his fingers touched. He stood and continued toward the gravesite.

Lombro wore a dark suit and he was sweating. He would not take off his jacket. The dead, he believed, deserve all our respect.

The cemetery was not crowded. The hour was early, on a weekday, and only dedicated mourners were present. Two elderly women, locked arm in arm, stood nearby over an old grave, which was not marked by a monument but by a small, dark metal plate. Lombro remembered that every veteran was entitled to a marker like this and he wondered if the women were standing above a father who died in Verdun, a husband at Normandy, or a son at Da Nang.

When he arrived at the grave, he did not have the reaction he believed he would experience. He did not cry. He felt numb, hardly touched at all, the way a shy man freezes in front of a very beautiful woman. He looked down at the turned-over earth. He knew they used bulldozers to dump the dirt into the graves and he was glad he did not see any tread marks on the clayish earth. The gravestone was gray marble and polished so smooth, it reflected the dark, wilted flowers.

A breeze disturbed the green tissue enfolding the flowers that he held. He had forgotten they were in his hand. He set them on the dirt then decided the paper would shred in the rain and look bad. He pulled it off and stuffed it into his pocket.

He turned and walked back to his car. As he did, it occurred to him that all his life he had been a man who was not afraid to act. Being this way had made him very wealthy, a linchpin in his family, respected and-in certain circles-held in awe and fear. Yet now he believed that what he had done-killing Vincent Gaudia-had altered him. Altered him fundamentally. Not because it was violent but because it was an act beyond his world of experience. He had put in motion people and forces that were behaving in ways he could not control, in ways he could not even predict.

The gun that had fallen in the tile bathroom of Orsini's-Ralph Bales s gun-and had put the two men together had been the first link in a long, horrible chain reaction of those forces, which had the effect of making him feel small and powerless.

Lombro leaned against his car. The wind was gentle and filled with crackling, dry heat. Lombro saw Ralph Bales driving up the road now, his squat head through the gray glass of the car. Lombro reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellow envelope that contained fifty thousand dollars. He wanted the meeting to be over with as soon as possible.

He wished there were no witness.

He wished he had never met Ralph Bales.

But most of all Philip Lombro wished that the dead all around him, lying in their still beds of level, root-and rock-free earth, would all at once rise and begin to laugh and talk as if they were not dead at all but had merely been lulled into a light sleep by the glorious peace of an unseasonably warm afternoon.