Lunch with him, at her instigation, had revealed nothing more than that he was fun and flirty and that he wanted to see her again, which was nice, but not enough. That first evening, on her own time, she’d gone through the microfilm of the year when Doug had stopped, the year he’d obviously found whatever he was really looking for, and when she’d come to the armored car robbery out on the Thruway all the pieces had come together. That robbery was almost certainly another of the “jobs” her criminal father had “pulled” before he’d been sent to prison for a different “job” several years later, and Doug Berry was almost certainly on the elder Jimson’s “trail” for some reason. It was a good thing she’d resisted the urge to use the Jimson “moniker” with Doug, as she had—frightening and thrilling herself—with nice little Wally Knurr. (It was television, of course, that had given Myrtle this easy familiarity with criminal argot.)

Suspicions aroused, and fearing at first that Doug might actually be an undercover policeman of some sort, hounding her father like Javert (which would be why he’d asked about the state trooper, Jimmy), Myrtle had looked up the Environment Protection Alliance, the so-called organization Doug was supposedly doing research for, and of course there was no such thing. (The VDT at the library, now that Wally Knurr had made its mysteries plain to her, had been a great help in this study of the Doug Berry problem.)

So he was a fake; some sort of fake, specifics not yet known. His real name was Doug Berry, however, because it said so on the credit card he’d used the first time he’d taken her out to dinner, which was the second time they’d met, now being the third time, at this drive-in movie south of North Dudson, one of the few such enterprises still extant in America. Doug Berry was his name, and this ridiculously childish pickup truck with the offensively childish bumper sticker about divers on the back had a license plate from Suffolk County down on Long Island. The Suffolk County phone book in the library not only listed a Berry Doug but even gave a second business phone number for him which, when she’d dialed it, had produced an answering machine speaking identifiably with Doug’s voice:

“South Shore Dive Shop. Sorry we’re not open now. Our usual hours are Thursday through Sunday, ten to five. Licensed professional instruction, basic and advanced courses. Dive equipment for sale or rent, air refills, tank tests, all your diving needs under one roof. Hope to see you!”

What did a diving instructor from Long Island have to do with retired (presumably) criminal and former “jailbird” Tom Jimson? That Doug’s initial request for information at the library had been connected to the local reservoir had to have some significance—reservoir, water, diving—but Myrtle couldn’t begin to guess what it might be. One thing seemed sure, though; she should keep this connection to Doug Berry alive, without letting it get out of hand.

Or into hand, rather.

And so tonight’s visit to the drive-in; their third meeting, without either of them getting anywhere. Myrtle knew Doug was feeling frustrated, but doggone it, so was she. Her natural tendency would be to find this handsome and easy-going fellow irresistible, but how could she fall into his arms unless she knew whose side he was on? What if he were, in one way or another, her father’s enemy? (On the other hand, he could conceivably be on her father’s side, in which case falling into his arms would be a double pleasure. He might even—remote hope—be the means by which she could actually get to meet her father at last.)

Her researches had done no more than show that Doug Berry was not who he’d claimed; they couldn’t go farther, couldn’t describe who or what he really was. It kept seeming to Myrtle that some sort of subtle indirect questioning during these dates should give her the clues she needed to find out what was going on, but she just couldn’t seem to think what those subtle and indirect questions might be. People in the movies and on television always come up with the appropriate delicate probe, but—

Whoops. Speaking of delicate probes. “Come on, Doug,” Myrtle said, putting his hand back in his own lap.

Doug sighed, elaborately long-suffering.

I wish I knew how to get in touch with Wally Knurr, Myrtle thought. I bet he could help me figure out what’s going on. But except for that one day at the library when he’d opened the cornucopia of the VDT to her wondering eyes, she’d never seen Wally again. Probably a salesman of some kind, she thought, traveling around, maybe even selling computers or something like that. Will his sales route ever bring him back through North Dudson? And would he have any reason to return to the library?

“Doug, please.”

“Myrtle, please.”

“Watch the movie, Doug,” Myrtle urged him. “It’s a nice movie, isn’t it?”

“I never miss it,” Doug said bitterly.

FIFTY-ONE

Tom Jimson boarded the Amtrak train in Penn Station carrying the same small black leather bag he’d carried both to and from prison, the same bag that would be all he’d need to carry when at last he got his money and unloaded his latest partners and took that plane to Mexico. Sweet Mexico.

For now, though, he was going the other way. The criminal returns to the scene of his crime, he thought, and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper teeth behind his upper lip, a gesture he made whenever he amused himself with his interior monologue. (A man no one can trust is a man who can trust no one, and therefore is a man liable to take to the diversion of interior monologue.) He found a comfortable corner of four seats—two facing pairs—and settled in, ass in one seat, bag on a second, feet on a third, hand on a fourth. The train would have to get a lot more full than this midweek offpeak run was likely to before anybody would attempt to enter the principality Tom had carved out for himself.

Before the train started moving, a big lummoxy kid came along to take the seats across the aisle. About nine feet tall, with a big square head covered by wavy blond hair, he was probably twenty years old, and was dressed in huge clunky hiking boots, white tube socks, khaki shorts—his knees were enormous and knobby and covered with fuzz, like the rest of him—a T-shirt with some kind of stupid philosophical statement on it, a red headband, and a monster backpack looming higher than his head.

Tom watched with contemptuous interest as the kid undid all the straps that released the backpack, which then took up two seats all by itself. Glancing at Tom with the self-assurance of somebody who doesn’t know anything yet, the kid said, “Watch my bag?”

“Sure,” Tom said.

The kid went thumping away down the aisle, knees working like hand puppets, and Tom watched him go, then rose to give the backpack a quick efficient frisk. He transferred the two hundred dollars cash and the six hundred dollars in traveler’s checks and the illustrated Kama Sutra to his own black leather bag (which he never asked anyone to watch), but left the kid his dirty socks and the rest of his shit. Settled in his own four seats again, he got out his paperback of W. R. Burnett’s Dark Hazard and settled down.

A few minutes later the idiot came back, carrying a sandwich and a can of beer, and said, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Tom told him, and went back to his book, and a few minutes later the train jerked forward.

Tom read while the train worked its way through the tunnels beneath midtown Manhattan, and he kept on reading when the train emerged into uptown and became an elevated and stopped at 125th Street, where nobody got on or off. Slum scenery became industrial scenery became, very gradually, countryside scenery, and Tom kept reading. He’d never been really big for nature.