"Sheepish nudes, I told Stony."
"So some words you just won't say."
She finished chewing the last bite of baked potato.
"Who are you trying to avoid anyway?"
Selvy looked toward the old man, who sat rigidly staring into space.
"_Tieu to dac cong_."
He gave her a delayed smile, self-consciously weary, and signaled for the check.
Outside a police towaway crew was about ready to haul the battered Cadillac. Tourists were interested in the pimpmobile. A man, two women and two children posed for pictures, using the car as background. When they were finished, two other women and three children moved into position along the front door and fender. A conventioneer wearing an enormous name tag crouched in the gutter, inserting a flash cube in his Instamatic.
Earl Mudger stood on the patio, facing east, barechested despite the chill, a mug of coffee in his hand. He liked being the first one up, coming down in the dark to start the coffee perking. He would roll his shoulders as he moved around the house, would swing his arms occasionally, feeling the stiffness ease away. Ever since he could remember, in whatever house or barracks he'd lived, with whatever people, family or military, he'd always been the first one up.
With pale light intensifying, aspects of sunrise visible through the trees, he went back into the kitchen. On the counter lay a manila folder and a spool of magnetic tape. He poured more coffee into his mug and sat on a stool, opening the folder and scanning the topmost page, a document headed: _Department of the Treasury, District Director, Internal Revenue Service_. Beneath this was a white label with a long series of numbers arrayed across the top, followed by Grace Delaney's name and home address.
Mudger began turning pages, glancing at audit forms, photocopied documents, photocopied checks and bank statements, agent evaluations, notices of "unfavorable action." He closed the folder and regarded the tape spooi. It contained confidential information on the accounts of roughly five hundred taxpayers and had been acquired by Lomax from the same source, an IRS supervisor who had access to restricted files. Among the data was further information relating to Grace Delaney's account.
Mudger finished his coffee and went downstairs. He rechecked the fit and worked some more on the handle section. Then he put on his magnifying glasses and studied the blade.
The knife was a modified bowie. It had a broad sweeping single-edged blade with a clipped point. Overall length was about eleven and a half inches. The blade measured seven and a quarter.
There was a display panel, a hinged triptych, fastened to the wall above a work table. Mudger's knives were exhibited here, some he'd made himself, others turned out by custom knifemakers.
They had sex in the front seat of Selvy's car, which was parked in the barren dells near the West Side Highway. It was an act they knew would take place as they walked through the dark streets to the car. It helped dispel certain disquieting energies. Times Square Saturday night.
"My hotel's right near that restaurant. Why are we doing it here?"
"I'm a little crazy tonight."
"Try reaching that ashtray and push it closed."
Stale cigarette butts. Smell of various plastics that made up the interior of the car. They straightened up finally. She sat on the driver's side, back resting against the door, her feet up on the seat. Selvy looked straight ahead. A silence, followed by:
"Naomi is this buxom Israeli girl who we find bathing one day in a stream that runs through her kibbutz. She has giant white breasts, etcetera etcetera, nipples, etcetera. So then along comes Lateef, who's an Arab army deserter. Well, to tighten the script, they meet and fall in love and just screw and screw and screw, doing it where they won't be discovered. Forbidden love with a capital F. I'm skipping the details, understand. There's a lot about Lateef's Arab pecker, which you probably don't mind if I glide over. Anyway one day we find them having a picnic on the Golan Heights. It's very star-crossed and tender."
"Wait a second."
He was looking in the rearview mirror. Nadine turned her head, intending to lean back out the open window and check what it was he'd seen.
"Don't do that."
Nobody said anything for the next four or five minutes. Selvy kept his eye on the mirror. He seemed engaged in deep and melancholy thought.
"It's getting daylight," she said.
He got out of the car, walked around to her side and stood leaning against the door, smoking.
"We ought to get my clothes. One thing, I won't mind leaving that hotel. More Lysol. Night clerk's insane. Pigeons in the elevator. One more week here, I'd be ready to fall on my sword."
He was interested in knowing precisely what instruments, devices, tools they might be carrying. It would put things in perspective, having that information. It would clarify the relationship, subject to adjusters.
"Glen with one _n_," she said. "If you're bent on avoiding someone, how come you're standing in plain sight outside the selfsame car that you're getting ready to drive away in?"
He reacted as though coming out of a trance, a state of detachment from his present surroundings. Yet there was an element of alertness in his features, his whole body, as though at the center of that dazed state he'd found a level clearer than any thus far accessible to him.
He was facing east, watching the tops of buildings take on color in the hazy light.
1) A gut-hook skinning knife.
2) A fillet knife with a rosewood handle.
3) An Arkansas toothpick with a buffalo-horn handle.
4) A bowie weighing fifty-one ounces, with a ten-inch blade, scalloped butt cap and brass collar.
5) A throwing knife, minus handle.
6) A hunter with a cholla cactus handle.
7) A hunter with a dropped-point blade and a stag handle.
8) A boot knife with an ivory handle.
9) A stiletto.
10) A palm dagger.
11) An English-style bowie in a strictly decorative buckskin sheath.
12) A survival model with a hollow steel handle to accommodate codeine pills and water-purifying tablets.
13) A combat knife with a mahogany handle.
14) A combat knife with a brass guard and a five-inch blade.
15) A combat knife, walnut handle, set in a leather sheath.
16) A combat knife with a double-edged point and a seven-inch blade.
17) A combat knife with a double-edged point and an eight-inch blade.
5
The coffee table was new, inset with a plexiglass terrarium full of dwarf trees and shrubs. Grace Delaney talked into the phone, girlishly twirling the cord with her free hand. Eventually she went into her swivel routine, ending up facing the window. She hadn't yet poured skin cream on her hands, so Moll stayed put, studying the bonsai, marveling at the other woman's ability to produce convincingly intimate laughter.
Grace turned toward her, placing the phone in its cradle.
"We were saying."
"You miss a sense of solid footing."
"Moll, a single unnamed source."
"We go with that all the time. That's why Percival handed me the story. We're totally irresponsible. He knows it gets picked up elsewhere once we run it."
"We ain't running it, swee' pea. It's essentially a blind item, the way you've written the thing. It's couched in the most excruciatingly vague terms."
"I use names," Moll said. "I name Mudger. I name Radial Matrix."
"It's convoluted and tricky and elusive beyond anyone's ability to salvage. It's a ten-thousand-word blind item. Clunk. It goes down like pig iron."
"What do you want changed?"
"I told you, it's unsalvageable. We can't build this elaborate dream structure using a single unnamed source who's already told you he denies everything in advance. The Senator's intent on moving you off his collection. That's about the only basis this story seems to have."
"He doesn't know I'm _on_ to his collection."
"Knucklehead, of course he knows."