Blanchard wasn’t like that. He was active over there. The first thing he’d done was dig out the phone book and order a subscription to the local newspaper, the Argosy-Bee. When Hall had objected that he’d never felt a need to know what might be in the pages of the Argosy-Bee, Blanchard had cheerfully said, “We need to know our neighborhood, Mr. Hall, because it’s the springboard for our return to society.”

“Are we returning to society?”

“Absolutely! You’ve made your mistakes, but who hasn’t? You’ve suffered, you’ve repented. The world wants to welcome you back, it just doesn’t know it yet. But it will, it will.”

More phone calls followed: a subscription to a clipping service, “because we need to know what they’re saying about us, so we can correct it,” calls to the local offices of national charities to offer the possibility of money and space for future events, calls to hospitals, volunteer fire departments, Boy and Girl Scouts, on and on.

What Hall was seeing here was community outreach with a vengeance, a thing he could never have done on his own, but which, as he watched Blanchard schmooze his way through the good people, gave him at last hope for the future.

The problem was, the only thing he was really good at was fleecing his fellow man. He’d been born rich, so it might have seemed redundant, but he’d also been born with this peculiar skill. It was his only skill, and also his main pleasure.

But once you’ve become publicly successful as a voracious cheat, as unfortunately Monroe Hall had, you could never ply your skill again, because now everybody was alert. He was retired now, despite himself, and like many retirees, he had absolutely no idea what to do with himself. He had everything he’d ever worked for, except the work itself.

Wait. In a pause in Blanchard’s phoning, here came an incoming call, which Blanchard took with smooth proficiency: “Hall residence, Blanchard speaking. Who may I say? One moment, please.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece, turned to Hall, and said, “We’ll want the phone company to give us a phone with a hold button.”

“Fred? Who is it?”

“Oh. Somebody called Morriscone, Flip Morriscone. Yes? No?”

“What, is he not coming tomorrow, too? Let’s see what the excuse is this time.” Snatching up the phone on his own desk, he snapped, “Hall here,” as Blanchard hung up.

Flip’s tone was as happy as ever; apparently, the IRS visit hadn’t been overly painful, after all. “Hi, Mr. Hall. Guess what?”

“I’m no good at guessing, Flip.”

“I found you a riding instructor!”

Astonished, Hall said, “You mean horses?”

“Well, I don’t know what else you’re going to ride, Mr. Hall. Sure, horses. His name is Jay Gilly, and he wants to know if he can come by tomorrow afternoon. Around two?”

“That would be perfect, Flip.”

“Here’s the thing, though,” Flip said. “Since you’re a beginner, he wants to bring his own horses.”

“I have horses, Flip.”

“He knows that. But these are special, trained to be gentle with new riders. He’ll bring them in his own horse trailer, and take them away again after the lesson. Okay?”

“Well, if that’s what he wants to do. And I suppose he’ll talk about fees when he gets here.”

“Oh, sure. Be sure to leave his name at the gate, Mr. Hall. Jay Gilly, with a horse trailer. Two tomorrow.”

“I’ll call the gate right now,” Hall promised. “Thank you, Flip.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Hall.”

Hanging up, Hall said, “Fred, call the gate. There’ll be somebody coming through at two tomorrow afternoon. His name is Jay Gilly, and he’ll be bringing horses in a trailer.”

“Right away,” Blanchard said, and did it, and then Hall said to him, “Ever ride horseback, Fred?”

“I bet on them a couple times,” Blanchard said, “so now I don’t trust them.”

41

IT WAS ALL FALLING APART, because nobody wanted to play Jay Gilly. Mac could see the way things were trending, and he just didn’t like it at all.

They were all gathered in Flip Morriscone’s office, all except Flip, who’d had to go off to tend to another client. “Just pull the door shut when you go,” he’d told his new best friends. They’d assured him they would, and he’d grinned around at them all, said, “Revenge is sweet,” and left.

But revenge wasn’t being sweet at the moment. Right now, it was turning more sour by the second, and all because nobody was willing to be Jay Gilly. We should have worked this out before Flip made the call, Mac told himself. But in that case, he pointed out to himself, he still wouldn’t have made it, would he?

It was Buddy’s contention that Mark Sterling was the ideal Jay Gilly, vociferously backed up by Ace. Their argument was class: “It has to be one of you guys,” Buddy said. “We don’t look like horse people, us three, we look like what we are, which is working stiffs.”

“That’s right,” Ace agreed. “We couldn’t hoity-toity if you held a gun to our head.”

“Well, I’m not quite sure what ‘hoity-toity’ might be,” Mark snipped, giving a perfect example of the thing itself, “but neither Os nor I could portray this Gilly fellow for a very good reason. Monroe Hall knows us.”

“Exactly,” Os said. “We were in business together, worse luck.”

That stopped everybody for a second, but then Ace said, “He knows you. You’re buddies all the time now? Or were you in an office here and there with a bunch of other guys, sittin around a table, robbin the widows and orphans together, ten guys in a room for an hour, he’s gonna remember you?”

“Yes,” Mark said.

Os said, “He’ll certainly remember me. Last time I saw him, I threw a golf trophy at him. If he hadn’t ducked, I’d have shot that upraised golf club straight into his left eye.”

“Well, that’s you,” Ace said. “What about your pal here? What’s to make him stand out in Hall’s memory?”

“I’m the one,” Mark said, “who wrestled Os to the ground, then wasted two or three minutes apologizing to the bastard.”

“Never apologize,” Os said.

Ace said, “You could go in disguise.”

Mark looked revolted. “Disguise? Some Santa Claus beards? Those false spectacles with the eyebrows and the nose?”

“Well, a better disguise than that,” Ace said. “Like they do in the movies.”

“We can contribute the horse trailer,” Mark reminded them, “and one horse, but that’s the extent of our contribution.”

It was true. It turned out that Mark had some cousin over in New Jersey who was connected with horse people, and had arranged for the loan of a horse trailer with horse. Tomorrow morning, Mark and Os would drive to New Jersey to get the thing. But in the afternoon, who would drive it to Monroe Hall’s place?

Mac said, “Mark, I see the problem, we all do really see the problem. Monroe Hall would recognize you. But Buddy’s right, we three don’t look like horse people.”

“Well, now, there you’re wrong,” Mark told him. “Yes, it’s true, there are some upper-crust horse people. The Windsors come to mind. But mostly, you know, they’re arrivistes. And in any case, a riding instructor isn’t part of the horsey set, any more than a trainer or a groom. These are people standing in horseshit every day of their lives, the ones who actually work with the beasts. The owners are well away somewhere, only to appear when it’s time to grace the winner’s circle. Mac, you know what you have to do.”

This was the bad place where it had all been trending, and now here it was. Knowing there was no way out, no one else to whom he could hand off this intimidating task, he sighed, long and deep, and said, “Mark, tell me you know enough about those people so you can teach me how to pass.”

“Done,” Mark said.

Os, deadpan, said, “Mac, you will look smashing in jodhpurs.”