“Excuse me for asking, but when did those people die?”

“Fifty years ago.”

“Right,” Nate said. “That’s going to be easy,” exhibiting a sarcasm rare for him. Maybe it was his newly wounded heart-there he was skating through life, and he’d gone and taken his first tumble. He was all skinned innocence and bloodied optimism.

“Try the Internet,” I said. “Aren’t you the computer whiz? Didn’t you discover how to get on PinkWorld.com without paying?”

That seemed to momentarily brighten his disposition.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll give it a shot.”

THIRTY-TWO

Hello, who is this? Hello?”

I’d followed the usual pattern of first getting drunk-soused enough to dial his number, but not so drunk that I couldn’t remember it. It was a delicate balancing act.

“Hello, hello…”

It’s me. Tom.

I was the second most surprised person on the line to realize that the words had actually been said out loud.

“Tom? Tom Valle?”

I reverted back into silence-for a moment I did, contemplating the enormity of finally beginning a two-way conversation with the man whose life I’d personally and irrevocably destroyed.

“Yeah.”

Now it was his turn to retreat into silence, a silence so complete that I thought I could hear the second hand ticking away on the grandfather clock that sat against the east wall of his study. I’d been invited into that inner sanctum in the halcyon days of yore, when I was the rising hot shot and he the editorial conscience in residence.

“Was that you?” he finally said. “All those other times? That was you on the phone?”

“Yes, that was me.”

“I see.” Another moment of silence. “Mind telling me why, Tom? Did you wake up one day and decide to add phony phone calls to your oeuvre of phony journalism?”

Okay, it hurt. But the pain was accompanied by a sudden sense of relief. I once wrote a piece on a sect of self-flagellators; it had taken till now to understand the rapture on their faces as they punished themselves for sins against God.

“I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “I didn’t have the balls. Every time I called, I thought I was actually going to say something.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. I was beginning to think I had a female admirer.”

“No. Just a male one.”

Silence again.

“You had an odd way of showing it.”

“What I wanted to say, what I need to tell you, is I’m sorry. I am so fucking sorry. I should’ve-look, I know it doesn’t change anything, but I needed to say it. I needed you to know… I never intended…”

“To what, Tom? Get caught? What didn’t you intend to do? When you sat in your little cubbyhole and practiced your creative writing, where did you think it would lead? To a Pulitzer Prize?”

“I never thought that far ahead. Just to the next deadline.”

“I see.” The creak of a chair, the soft shuffling of papers. “I wondered if I’d ever hear from you. It was kind of ungallant of you not to drop me a line. Or something.”

“I know. I apologize. It was incredibly unfair what they did to you. It was…”

“Unfair? Not at all. I was in charge. I looked at your stuff and didn’t have the brains or the God-given cynicism. Rumor has it that was my stock and trade. I lacked the editorial wisdom to see what was right in front of my nose. I failed, grandly and publicly. Unfair? Nah.”

“They didn’t have to take you down with me…”

“No? You know, after it happened, after I took the long walk home, I had more than enough time on my hands to think things through. You were my star, Tom-every editor wants one. It’s our legacy to some extent, what we leave behind. Maybe I got as caught up in that as you did. Maybe, just occasionally, that little voice in my head looked at something I was supposed to pass judgment on and said wait a minute. Stop. It’s too perfect-Mercury’s too aligned with Mars here. Maybe I told that voice to take a hike. I think here and there I did. I forgot the oldest axiom there is. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

I felt something large and inexorable welling up in me. I put the phone down, tucked my face into my shoulder to keep him from hearing.

“Tom? You still there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve often wondered about you. Where you washed up. Are you still in New York?”

“California.”

“California. Doing what?”

“Reporting.”

A small but noticeable intake of breath. “The prodigal son, huh?”

“What?”

“Nothing. They must be rather forgiving in California, that’s all.”

“It’s not much of a paper.”

“Maybe so. But it’s a hell of a profession. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Not this time, okay?”

“That’s why I’m calling you.”

“I thought you were calling to offer your much-belated apologies.”

“Yes. And this other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“Something’s happening. I’ve fallen into a story. It’s a hell of a story, the one you look for your whole life. I know it. It goes back, it goes forward, it goes places it’s not that healthy to follow. But I am. I am following it. I wanted you to know.”

“Be careful, Tom.”

“I am. I think one person’s already dead because of it. I am being careful.”

“I’m not talking about your safety, Tom. I’m talking about the nauseating stink of déjà vu that just wafted in over the phone. I’m talking about being able to finish your sentences. You understand what I’m saying, Tom? I’ve heard this already. This is old news. This is a tired script from a tired fabulist. Rip it up.”

“It’s not like before. This is real. This is genuine. I’m telling you, something incredibly weird is-”

“And I’m telling you, Tom. It was always real. It was always genuine. The weirdness was all yours.”

“Not this time. I’m being legitimate.”

“Legitimacy isn’t about being, Tom. You either are or you aren’t. You can’t try it on like a coat. It doesn’t work like that.”

“When I’m done, when I put it all together, you’ll see. I’m going to send it to you and you’ll see.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not your editor anymore. And you’re not my star. I really have to be getting to sleep, Tom. It’s a lot later here than there.”

No, I thought. It’s a lot later for both of us.

THIRTY-THREE

I was 99 percent sure I was being followed.

This feeling manifested itself whenever I turned a corner or pulled into a parking lot, whenever I entered or exited my home, whenever I snuck outside the Littleton Journal for a smoke, or ducked into JP Drugs for some Tums, or grabbed a cheeseburger at the DQ, or drove to bowling night.

In other words, all the time.

Whenever I stopped and turned and looked, I felt as if I’d just missed him. Or them. Like seeing your shadow suddenly vanish when the sun darts behind a cloud.

That quick.

I walked into Ted’s Guns amp; Ammo and walked out with a.38 Smith amp; Wesson handgun-I was a neophyte concerning the benefits of one gun manufacturer over another, but the plurality of the name somehow made Smith amp; Wesson feel more substantial. There was a little problem, of course. As someone who’d served probation, I was legally banned from owning a gun in the state of California. Luckily, Ted, who offered Michael Moore targets gratis with each purchase, had an NRA mentality when it came to state and federal gun laws.

He refused to acknowledge them.

I went two miles outside town and practiced shooting the arms off cacti. I was accurate only about 25 percent of the time.

I started locking my front door, kept all the shades in my house drawn tight. One night I ventured downstairs, gun in hand, and rechecked the basement. Looking for what, exactly? Bugs, maybe, remembering the open phone jack; the only one I discovered was a six-inch centipede tucked inside a drainpipe. I took another look in the hole the plumber had punched into the wall. Plaster dust and the ripped paper they used for cheapo insulation in these parts. That’s it. I remembered I was going to ask Seth to fill it in-he’d done Sheetrock work on the house before. That’s how I’d first met him, when he came around to check on something for the landlord.