I hate dogs. Be working there in the dark and hear one?

Jesus. You try and set high explosives worrying if some dog's gonna jump on you and tear your ass off. You know what I mean?"

"It might be too soon," Robin said.

"The sooner the better. While the first one's still ringing in his ears. You've delivered the message. The guy goes, "Hey, shit, they're serious."

" Robin was silent.

Skip eased around a corner, watched the headlights sweep past a house with darkened windows and settle again on the narrow blacktop, an aisle through old trees. He glanced at her.

"What would you rather do instead? I can think of something, but you're afraid I might be carrying the AIDS.

What do you want me to do, get a blood test first? We're riding around with my wham bag in the trunk. It's got five sticks of dynamite, blasting caps and a loaded thirty-eight revolver in it and you're worrying about getting a social disease."

"I know why you're talking so much," Robin said, "you're nervous.

Aren't you?"

"I'm up," Skip said.

"I don't want to waste it, have to get back up again."

"What's the gun for?"

"Come on, what's any of it for? What're we doing?"

He saw her profile as she flicked her lighter, once, and held it to a cigarette, calm, showing him she had it together.

She said, "I want to be sure I know what I'm going to say to him, that's all. I want to have it down."

"What you say, that's the easy part. You'll come up with the words.

It's when you say it's gonna make the difference. The timing, that's what has to be on the button. I can set it for whenever you want up to twelve hours from now."

Skip looked at the instrument panel.

"It's now… which one's the clock? They got all that digital shit on there."

"It's ten forty," Robin said.

"They ever quit making clocks with hands on 'em I'm out of business."

"It's ten forty-one," Robin said.

He liked her tone. Drawing on her cigarette now and blowing it out slow.

"I can set it for ten tomorrow morning, any time around in there. Or how about this? I set it to go off like in eleven and a half hours from the time I place it down.

See, then you figure to call ten or fifteen minutes before that."

Robin seemed to be thinking about it as she smoked.

"If he stays up boozing all night… You know what I mean? He probably sleeps late."

"I doubt he's gonna answer the phone anyway.

That's what he's got the jig for, the Panther." Skip looked past Robin out the side window. They were going by the house again.

"Guy likes animals, he's got the Panther, he's got lions out in front..

.. Listen, we can go buy gas, spend my last eighteen bucks and come back later. We have to stop by a gas station anyway, so I can use the men's room."

"You are nervous."

"My clock doesn't have a bell and hammer alarm on it, I have to rig something up. You want me to wire it in the car? Or a place I can turn a light on, lock the door?"

"I want you to be happy," Robin said. She stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray, once, and closed it.

"After, why don't I spend the night at Mother's?"

"You mean it?"

He looked over. She was stroking her braid now as she said, "On one condition…"

Mr. Woody finished the pound can of peanuts during his cocktail hour, so he wasn't hungry till near ten. He was in a pretty good mood, seemed almost alert and was talkative. Donnell fixed him up in the kitchen, dished out his warmed-up chicken lo mein, whole quart of it on a platter, opened two cans of Mexican beer and sat down with him at the opposite end of the long wooden table.

Donnell didn't like to get too close to the man when he was eating; the man made noises out his nose, head down close to his food like he was trying to hide in there.

"Mr. Woody, there something bothering me." It was a way to get his attention, the man thinking he was being asked his advice.

"What the police will do is talk to the people were here. Try to find one will tell 'em Ginger went upstairs and then you went up there after her. I'm saying if Ginger doesn't accept your generous offer."

The man stopped eating to think about that, frowned with his mouth open, the overhead light shining on him, and Donnell had to look away.

"I doubt your friends notice you were gone, the condition they was in, flying high on the blow. But there was one lady there wasn't of your regular group. The older one, had her hair in a braid?"

"Robin," Woody said.

"You remember her?"

See? He could do that. Pick somebody out from a long time ago. Like he had put certain things in his mind in a safe place the booze couldn't touch. Especially things and people had to do with his brother. Donnell settled in, leaning over his arms on the edge of the table.

"Robin Abbott, huh? I thought to myself, Now who is that? I didn't recognize her 'cause it had been so long. Was at the party your lovely mother had to raise bail money, huh?"

"Mom didn't want to have it," Woody said.

"Mark begged her, she said no. I had to talk her into it."

"Had a way with your mama, didn't you?"

"We got along. Mark took after Dad, so she didn't trust him."

"Your daddy went out on her, huh?"

"I guess so."

They hadn't talked about the dad much; the dad had moved away and passed on. No problem there to come up unexpected. Donnell let the man eat in peace a minute before starting in again.

"Yeah, was at that bail party I met Robin. I was introduced to her and all those people and then after while I ran into her in the bathroom.

The little one out by the front hall? I walk in, she's in there."

The man was listening, because he said, "She was in the bathroom, uh?"

"Yeah, she was in there, you know, combing her hair, prettyin' up, looking at herself in the mirror. She seem like a nice lady. Without knowing much about her."

The man said, "Who, Robin?" Digging into his pile of food.

"She was something else. You never knew… Like when she was hiding out she'd come to the house. Never call first, she'd come at night and stay here a few days. Mom didn't like her. She'd spy on her and Mark."

"Catch 'em in the toidy?"

"When they were talking. Then Mom'd get Mark to tell her to leave."

"Undesirable influence, huh?"

"After she was arrested, then we didn't see her till, you know, the other night."

"What'd the police get after her for, demonstrating?

Marching without a license?"

The man raised his head from the dish.

"Was the FBI.

For the time she and her boyfriend blew up that office in the Federal Building. You don't remember that?"

"I must've been gone then," Donnell said, easing up in the kitchen chair, looking at the man grinning at him, lo mein gravy shining on his chin.

"When we were at school, you know what she'd do any time she wanted something, like if she needed money?

She'd unbutton her shirt, hold it open and let me look at her goodies."

Donnell said, "Let you look at 'em, huh?" He said, "Mr. Woody, you telling me this lady knows how to set bombs?"

The man was eating and then he wasn't eating. He chewed and stopped chewing and stared at Donnell, swallowed and kept staring at him.

Donnell said, "Wipe your chin, Mr. Woody."

Skip told Robin when she dropped him off to give him ten minutes. Robin came around in the Lincoln, crept past the house looking for him, drove on and there he was up the street, the headlights finding him in the dark. It didn't take as long as he'd thought. Robin said he looked like a burglar going home from work. Skip said, home being Bloomfield Hills. Let's go.

Straight up Woodward out of Detroit without knowing it, except now there were four lanes of traffic both ways, people in a hurry, Skip looking at the miles of lit-up used car lots and motels and neon words announcing places to eat, Skip relieved, enjoying the ride, telling Robin he'd walked all the way around Woody's house, looked in windows at empty rooms and came back to his original idea: set it in the bushes up close to one of the concrete lions.