a round man, cartoonishly large, Orson Welles-size. And in a suit with a vest, like some Daddy Warbucks. They were in a semicircle, facing him, like a tribunal. Next to the fat man was a man who had cop written all over him, but ranking officer. Next to him was a man, not small, not big, who didn’t give off much.

And then there was the biggest man.

Who wore a hat. Whose face, save the eyes, was covered by a wool scarf, like this was London. Who even wore gloves, gray doeskin, lest his hands somehow give him away.

It was Walter E. C. “Red” Steadman, who in a way was their king. It was the first time Jimmy had ever been face-to-face with him.

It turned out Steadman was just there for the visual effect. And the scent of almost ultimate power he gave off. Steadman nodded to the nondescript man, who delivered the word.

“You are not incorrect in your conclusions,” the mouthpiece said, “but this matter suits our larger purposes at this particular point in time.”

A hoot owl picked now to hoot. “Who?”

“And now it’s over,” the nondescript man finished. “Your part in it, at any rate. It is over. Do you understand?”

He said the last with a surprising kindness.

“What about the threats?” Jimmy said.

“There were no threats,” the high-rank cop said.

Red Steadman looked at the ranking cop to silence him. Jimmy noticed that Steadman didn’t move his neck, as if he’d been injured somewhere along the line. Or as if he was very old. The “chief” wouldn’t speak again.

“Who?” the owl said again.

“It’s over,” the mouthpiece said. “Anything that happens now will not happen to you.”

Jimmy looked like he was about to jump in with something.

“Or to yours,” the man added.

“Why are the two Russians going along with it?” Jimmy said. “Just curious.”

No one thought it was necessary to answer.

“You should, in the morning, go back to your house,” the mouthpiece finished. “Stop trying to see the bigger picture. Just live for yourself, for as long as you are here.”

It was a line Sailors told each other, the last phrase anyway.

The nondescript man turned to Angel. “And you, too. Bless you, Brother.”

Jimmy wouldn’t let it go. “Why do Sailors want people murdered, and other people, Norms, panicked, killing themselves? Why do you want all these people to die?”

Jimmy was looking Steadman in the eye when he said it.

This time, there wasn’t any thought any of them would answer. Their eyes had moved to the house behind him.

Mary stood in the open doorway.

She ran out of the house and past them.

Jimmy came after her. “Mary!”

It was steep, it was downhill, it was dangerous. And the woods had gotten even darker.

TWENTY-SEVEN

There is an angry, ugly rhythm to an argument. You don’t have to hear the actual words; the sounds are enough. They’re like blows in a fight. Three or four jabbing syllables and then the louder thud of the knockout punch. But the other isn’t knocked out. Not yet. It’s never over that quickly, no early-round knockdowns. There’s always more. You rephrase. You repeat. Redundancy is a given. You aren’t judged on grammar, maybe on the number of fricatives and glottal stops. The percussion. Or the footwork, the angry, ugly dance of it. There’s a reason arguments end in violence, in hurled glassware, in slammed doors, in slaps, in gunshots. Punctuation is everything.

Dr. Marc Hesse slammed the bedroom door on his way out, and Mrs. Mary Hesse came to the window and looked out at the night, tears running down her cheeks like commas.

Jimmy was across the street but fifty yards away, close enough to hear the angry, ugly sounds but not to see those tears. So maybe he just filled in the blanks, seeing what he wanted, what he needed to see. Just enough to hate Hesse.

The other night in front of the Victorian apartment house, with the Greek father and Machine Shop packed into the Porsche, Jimmy had remembered the ride with his own father when he was ten or eleven, when his father told him he and Jimmy’s mother were divorcing, that speech that begins, “Sometimes a mother and a father grow apart . . .” Jimmy remembered something else. When he was sixteen, he told his mother what his father had said that night, and what she had said back to Jimmy was, “Les chaînes de mariage sont si lourdes qu’il faut deux pour les porter. Et parfois trois.” They were in a car, too, the huge white