backseat was waking me up.”
I thought about that for a while. “You recognize the guys?”
“Black dudes,” she said meaninglessly. I didn’t ask her any more questions, and after a short time she fell back asleep.
I drove on through the night, into Virginia and around Richmond, stopping once more for gas. Kim slept through, though her body jerked occasionally from speed rushes.
McGinnes awoke outside of Springfield and sat up. He stared out the window for the remainder of the trip. We rolled into D.C. just after dawn on Saturday morning. McGinnes grabbed his gear from the trunk and walked back to the driver’s side, leaning his forearm on the door and putting a hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll be talking to you,” is all he said. Then he turned and walked into his apartment building, stoop-shouldered and slow, and suddenly old.
I WOKE KIM LAZARUS and got her into my place. While she showered, I put fresh sheets on my bed. She came out looking clean but still drawn. She had only enough energy to thank me and get into bed. I closed the bedroom door and walked out into the living room.
The light on my answering machine was blinking. I let it blink. I lay on the couch and pulled the blanket over me. My cat jumped up and kneaded the blanket. I went to sleep.
I did not dream. But I woke two hours later, thinking of a redheaded boy who looked so horrible in death that I was grateful for never having known him alive. And there was still Jimmy Broda. Either he was caught now, or he was running. I knew with certainty that he was frightened and he was very much alone. The thought of it made the comfort of my apartment seem obscene.
Unable to return to sleep, I rose, and with great impotence, paced the rooms of my apartment.
TWENTY-FOUR
ON THE TELEVISION news there was no mention of the out-of-state murder of an area youth.
I erased the tape on my answering machine without listening to the messages. The phone rang twice during the day but I did not pick it up. In the afternoon I gathered all the liquor, beer, and wine from my apartment and made a gift of it to my landlord.
Kim Lazarus woke up at around six in the evening. I cooked her an omelette, fried potatoes, cut a salad, and served it with juice and tea. She ate it and returned to bed, where she slept soundly through the night.
ON SUNDAY MORNING I prepared a huge breakfast. She came to the table, a bit swollen around the eyes, but with color back in her face. She was wearing Levi’s and a blue sweatshirt.
“Thanks,” she said as I poured her some coffee. One side of her mouth rose as she smiled, her thick upper lip arching lazily above her slightly crooked teeth.
“You’ve been thanking me an awful lot. It’s no bother having you here. I figure we both need to chill out for a few days.”
“What day is it?” she asked.
“Sunday.”
She ate her breakfast and cleaned her plate with pieces of toast. I refilled her plate and she kept going. She was a big-boned woman with little body fat but plenty of curves.
When she was finished, the cat, who had already taken to her, jumped up on Kim’s lap.
“Do you mind?”
“No,” she said, rubbing behind the cat’s ears. “I like it. How’d she lose her eye?”
“Catfight, I guess. That’s how I found her. She was hiding outside behind some latticework, and her eye was just hanging out, hanging by a nerve. I got her to a vet, and he took it out, then sewed the lid shut. After that she stuck around.”
“Kind of like how you adopted me.”
“Until we figure this whole thing out, yeah.”
“Don’t you work?” she asked.
“I lost my job last week.”
“Where?”
“I did ads for a retail outfit.”
“Really. Which one?”
“Nutty Nathan’s,” I mumbled.
“I know that place,” she said. “‘The Miser Who Works for You.’”
“That’s the one.”
“Your friend John work there too?”
“Yeah, how’d you guess?”
“He looks like a salesman. You don’t.”
“Well, I was—for years. Johnny and I worked the floor together for a long time.”
“Hard to stay friends and not fight over ups and things like that.”
“Oh, we fought over ups, believe me.”
“How did that happen?” she asked, reaching across the table and touching the faded purple area around my nose.
“Looking for Jimmy Broda.”
I refilled our coffee cups and put a fresh pack of smokes on the table between us. She shook one out and