Nolan nodded. He cleared his throat, said, “Uh, you were in the Peace Corps, weren’t you?”
“Yes. Guatemala. I was in the Central American jungle, with very primitive people, who believe in evil spirits and that sort of thing. We built them a school. It was a good experience, but it was as much escape as service, and I realize now that my joining the Peace Corps was somewhat hypocritical. I’m back in college again, taking a degree in English this time, because I want to help where I’m needed most, and where my own moral need is greatest. I hope to teach in the slums, the ghettos. In Chicago, if at all possible. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He did.
“No,” he said.
“I want to go into the jungle where it’s my father’s kind who are the evil spirits. His kind who need warding off. With education, with patience, with love, maybe a person like me can teach the underfed, the underprivileged, educate them into understanding that hell is what the heroin dealers offer, to realize the absurdity of spending five dollars a day on a game of chance when your family is starving, to know what it is to...”
He stopped listening to her. Bleeding-heart liberals gave him a pain in the butt. She was doing her best, he supposed, but she was starting to sound like the naive, condescending child she was.
“I’m sorry Uncle Harry is dead,” she said after a while, “and please thank whoever it was that sent you. But that part of me is gone now. I won’t miss Uncle Harry. I’ll admit I miss my mother. My brother, too. And I miss the father of my childhood.”
“I knew you when you were little,” Nolan said. It was a shot in the dark, untrue, of course. But he tried it.
“You did?”
“I came around to your summer place once. On business.”
She found a smile somewhere and showed it to him. “I won’t lie and say I remember you, but I guess you could’ve seen me when I was a child. I can remember that Daddy was secretive about that place, about Eagle’s Roost.” She grinned, forgetting herself. “He bawled Uncle Harry out one time, bawled him out terrible, for bringing business people around to the lodge. I can remember it so clearly. Maybe you were one of the men with Uncle Scary, uh, Harry that time. Maybe that was the time you saw me.”
“I think it was,” Nolan said. “I remember how mad your father got.”
“Oh, he could get mad all right, but we had good times at the lakes. My best memories are there, at Eagle’s Roost, we were a family there more than anywhere else. Up so high, away from everything, where we could look down at both those pretty blue lakes. We had a sailboat, a little one, for two people, you know? And Daddy and I would...” She stopped. “That was a long time ago.”
“Your lodge was up around Lake Geneva, wasn’t it?”
“Well, the lakes, Twin Lakes, actually, but in that area, yes. It’s kind of a unique place, sort of a shame no one’s using it now, been all shut up for several years. Got the best view in the whole area, up on that hill on that little piece of land between the two lakes. Eagle’s Roost... a beautiful place, but just a memory now, one pleasant one I have, anyway.” She got up. “Would you like another cup of tea before you go?”
“Yes, please. Never mind the Hydrox.”
They drank the second cup of tea quickly, in silence.
Finally she said, “Did you wonder about my name, on the mailbox?”
“Not really,” he said.
“I changed it. Legally. I’m not a part of that family anymore. I’d been meaning to change it for years, but always thought I’d be getting married one day, and, well...” She touched her hair. “I’ve other things to do for the time being. Do you think it odd, me changing my name?”
“No,” Nolan smiled. “I’ve done it a few times myself.”
He rose, handed her his empty cup and left.
6
It was no problem finding Eagle’s Roost. The narrow strip of land between Lake Mary and Lake Elizabeth had only the one, steep hill. Standing at the bottom and looking up, Nolan thought the hill looked like the Matterhorn, but in reality it was only a hundred some feet, going up at an eighty-degree angle, flattening out level on top. From the foot of the hill all you could see of what was up there was the tall row of pines lining the edge and sheltering the lodge from view, the breeze riffling through their needles. But it was there, Nolan knew, Eagle’s Roost was up there.
Nolan and Angelo left the black Chevy a quarter of a mile away, back behind a bend on the blacktop road. Both men were carrying Smith and Wesson.38s; Angelo’s was a Bodyguard model, a five-shot revolver with a two-inch barrel, good for shooting people close up, but not much else; the four-inch barrel on Nolan’s revolver assured far greater accuracy and he didn’t like working with supposed professionals who didn’t observe such simple facts. But he felt he could use some support, so he’d let Angelo come along anyway. They circled the bottom of the hill, staying down low, moving carefully through dense foliage like soldiers in a jungle.
It was noon, but the sun overhead was under a cover of clouds, so the heat was modest, tempered by gentle lake winds. The sun would come out now and then, but mostly the day was pleasantly overcast, a day of floating shadows that rolled cool and blue and gray across the green Wisconsin landscape. Nolan could smell the lake in the air and envied, for a moment, the people out boating, skiing, swimming. Then he squeezed the.38 in his hand, as if to reassure the weapon of his intent, and pressed on.
“Fucking bugs,” Angelo said, swatting.
Nolan hadn’t noticed them. He pointed, said, “Over there.”
They could see the lake now, as well as smell it. This was Lake Mary and Elizabeth was over on the other side of the steep hill. A combination boathouse and garage, possibly with sleeping rooms on the upper floor, was maybe twenty yards from the bottom of the hill, some hundred yards from the lake front. But what Nolan was pointing to was the driveway extending from the boathouse and cutting through the thick foliage to a big wrought-iron gate that opened onto a road that ran through a subdivision of summerhouses nearby. The big padlocked gate was the most awesome feature of a five-foot brick wall that separated the grounds of Eagle’s Roost (which even from this distance could be seen spelled out backward in wrought-iron on the gate) from those of the subdivision.
“Go back to the car,” Nolan said. “Drive down through that bunch of houses and wait by the gate. If I screw up and Charlie gets away from me somehow, he’s probably going to come tearing out through there.”
Angelo nodded. “No other way out?”
“Just those steps we saw on the other side of the hill. If Charlie’s wounded, and I think he is, he won’t be coming down an incline like that. Besides, a car’d have to be waiting to pick him up, and where would that come from?”
“Maybe he’s got people helping him.”
“Risk it.”
“Okay, then. I’m on my way.”
“Angelo.”
“Yeah?”
“Family guys are probably going to start showing up, and I’d appreciate you keeping them away, for a while. I want time with Charlie alone.”
“I’ll do my best, Nolan. But it’s not you I work for, remember.”
“Do it for the sake of our friendship.”
A grin split Angelo’s chubby face and he said, “Well, since you put it that way...” And he trudged off through the high grass and weeds toward the blacktop.