LITMIR.BIZ

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visions of a vine-covered cottage in Pismo Beach or some damned thing. Anyway, when I told her I had my orders and it was Auf Wiedersehen, she just flat flipped out. Started to scream bloody murder and then tried to carve out my liver and lights with a butcher knife.”

      They both laughed.

      “You guys think it’s funny?” I said indignantly. “You ever try to take an eighteen-inch butcher knife away from a hysterical woman without hurting her or getting castrated in the process?”

      They howled with laughter.

      I quite suddenly felt very shitty. Heidi had been a sweet, trusting kid. In spite of everything I’d told her, she’d gone on dreaming. Everybody’s entitled to dream once in a while. And if it hadn’t been for her, God knows how I’d have gotten through the first few months after that letter. Now I was treating her like she was a dirty joke. What makes a guy do that anyway?

      “I had a little Jap girl try to knife me in Tokyo once,” Jack said, stopping for a traffic light. “I just kicked her in the stomach. Didn’t get a scratch. I think she was on some kinda dope—most of them gooks are. Anyway she just went wild for no reason and started wavin’ this harakari knife and screamin’ at me in Japanese. Both of us bare-assed naked, too.”

      The light changed and we moved on.

      “How’d you get the knife away from the German girl?” Mike asked.

      I didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. “Got hold of her wrist,” I said shortly. “Twisted her arm a little. After she dropped it, I kicked it under the bed and ran like hell. One of the neighbor women beaned me with a pot on my way downstairs. The whole afternoon was just an absolute waste.”

      They laughed again, and we drifted off into a new round of war stories. I was glad we’d gotten off the subject. I was still a little ashamed of myself.

      It took us a good hour to get to Sloane’s house out in Ruston. The sun had gone down, and the streets were filled with the pale twilight. People were still out in their yards, guys cutting their lawns and kids playing on the fresh-cut grass and the like. Suddenly, for no particular reason, it turned into a very special kind of evening for me.

      Ruston perches up on the side of the hill that rises steeply up from both sides of Point Defiance. The plush part, where Sloane lived, overlooks the Narrows, a long neck of salt water that runs down another thirty miles to Olympia. The Narrows Bridge lies off to the south, the towers spearing into the sky and the bridge itself arching in one long step across the mile or so of open water. The ridge that rises sharply from the beach over on the peninsula is thick with dark fir trees, and the evening sky is almost always spectacular. It may just be one of the most beautiful places in the whole damned world. At least I’ve always thought so.

      Sloane’s house was one of the older places on the hill—easily distinguishable from the newer places because the shrubs and trees were full grown.

      We pulled up behind McKlearey’s car in the deepening twilight and got out. Jack’s Plymouth and McKlearey’s beat-up old Chevy looked badly out of place—sort of like a mobile poverty area.

      “Pretty plush, huh?” Jack said, his voice a little louder than necessary. The automatic impulse up here was to lower your voice. Jack resisted it.

      “I smell money,” I answered.

      “It’s all over the neighborhood,” Mike said. “They gotta have guys come in with special rakes to keep it from littering the streets.”

      “Unsightly stuff,” I agreed as we went up Sloane’s brick front walkway.

      Jack rang the doorbell, and I could hear it chime way back in the house.

      A small woman in a dark suit opened the door. “Hello, Jack—Mike,” she said. She had the deepest voice I’ve ever heard come out of a woman. “And you must be Dan,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” She held her hand out to me with a grace that you’ve got to be born with. I’m just enough of a slob myself to appreciate good breeding. I straightened up and took her hand.

      “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Sloane,” I said.

      “Claudia,” she said, smiling. “Please call me Claudia.”

      “Claudia,” I said, smiling back at her.

      We went on into the house. The layout was a bit odd, but I could see the reason for it. The house faced the street with its back to the view—at least that’s how it looked from outside. Actually, the front door simply opened onto a long hallway that ran on through to the back where the living room, dining room, and kitchen were. The carpets were deep, and the paneling was rich.

      “You have a lovely home,” I said. I guess that’s what you’re supposed to say.

      “Why, thank you, Dan,” she said. She seemed genuinely pleased.

      The living room was huge, and the west wall was all glass. Over beyond the dark upswell of the peninsula, the sky was slowly darkening. Down on the water, a small boat that looked like a lighted toy from up there bucked the tide, moving very slowly and kicking up a lot of wake.

      “How on earth do you ever get anything done?” I asked. “I’d never be able to get away from the window.”

      She laughed, her deep voice making the sound musical. “I pull the drapes,” she said. She looked up at me. She couldn’t have been much over five feet tall. Her dark hair was very smooth—almost sleek. I quickly looked back out the window to cover my confusion. This was one helluva lot of woman.

      There was a patio out back, and I could see Sloane manhandling a beer keg across the flagstones. McKlearey sprawled in a lawn chair, and it didn’t look as if he was planning to offer any help. Sloane glanced, red-faced, up at the window.

      “Hey, you drunks, get the hell on out here!” he bellowed.

      “We’re set up on the patio,” Claudia said.

      “Thinkin’ ahead, eh, Claude?” Jack said boisterously. “If somebody gets sick, you don’t have to get the rug cleaned.”

      I cringed.

      “Well,” she said, laughing, “it’s cooler out there.”

      “Which one of you bastards can tap a keg?” Sloane screamed. “I’m afraid to touch the goddamn thing.”

      “Help is on the way,” Mike called. We went on through the dining room and the kitchen and on out to the patio through the sliding French doors.

      “I’m sure you fellows can manage now,” Claudia said, picking up a pair of black gloves from the kitchen table and coming over to stand in the open doorway. “I have to run, so just make yourselves at home.” She raised her voice slightly, obviously talking to Sloane. “Just remember to keep the screens closed on the French doors. I don’t want a house full of bugs.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Sloane yelped, coming to attention and throwing her a mock salute.

      “Clown,” she said, smiling. She started to pull on the gloves, smoothing each finger carefully. “Oh, Calvin, I finished with the books for the car lot and the pawnshop. Be sure to put them where you can find them Monday morning—before you swandive into that beer keg.”

      “Have we got any money?” Cal asked.

      “We’ll get by,” she said. “Be sure and remind Charlie and Mel out at the Hideout that I’ll be by to check their books on Tuesday.”

      “Right,” he said. He turned to us. “My wife, the IBM machine.”

      “Somebody has to do the books,” she said placidly, still working on the gloves, “and after I watched this great financier add two and two and get five about nine times out of ten, I decided that it was going to be up to me to keep us out of bankruptcy court.” She smiled sweetly at him, and he made a face.

      “I’m so glad to have met you, Dan,”

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