He called her Greta after that, saying he had never known a Greta and liked the name a lot, coming on to her in sort of a little-boy way, which some guys pulled in order to sneak up on you. Chris did it pretty well, with a nice grin, like he didn't know he was a hunk and women looked at him coming back from the men's room.

He said Mr. Woody, "that poor, pathetic asshole," reminded him of Bingo Bear, a toy he'd given one of his nieces for her birthday. You squeezed Bingo's nose and he spoke, he'd say things like "Give me a hug… Scratch my

N.

ear… Play with me." Bingo knew four hundred words.

Mr. Woody might know a few more than that, but you didn't squeeze his nose to get him to talk, you fed him peanuts.

Chris said to her, "Have you ever looked at a dog or some animal and wondered what it thought and what it would be like to look out through its eyes?" Greta said, "All the time." And Chris said, "Mr. Woody's a person, and yet looking out through his eyes is unimaginable. Between the booze and all the smoke Donnell blows at him the man is just… there. I look at him, a guy with all his money, and think, What good is he? Do you know what I mean? He doesn't serve any purpose." Greta said, "How many people do?" but knew what he meant.

It was strange, when she thought of Woody Ricks now as Mr. Woody, this pathetic creature, it changed the way she remembered being sexually assaulted by him: being thrown on the bed and flipped over with her heinie in the air. Was that funny? Maybe it was from certain angles, or how you might look at it a long time from now. She could still act indignant, easy, and say he wasn't just sort of there, he was there, because she was there too, underneath the fat slob. What she couldn't say was that he had actually done it to her. When Sergeant Maureen Downey visited her in the hospital, Maureen asked if there had been penetration and she told Maureen, Sort of. Maureen said he'd either put his penis in her or he hadn't. And she told Maureen, truthfully, because of the state she was in at the time she wasn't sure. Maureen said it didn't matter, it was still criminal sexual conduct of one degree or another.

"If we can prove it."

Greta said to Chris last night, "He must know what he did." Chris said, Well, the man had been told, if he didn't remember. She said,

"Then maybe he's making the offer because his conscience bothers him."

When Chris said the man didn't have one, Mr. Woody ceased being pathetic and turned cold and mean and Greta got mad. She said, "Then he's adding insult to injury, treating me like I'm some kind of dinky legal matter he can settle out of court."

This morning, lying in Chris's dad's bed, looking at Woody's offer through a dull, semi-hangover headache, she began to think, Hell, even the anrtmnt was an insult. A stack of bills no more than three or four inches high. s was on the phone when Greta came in the kitchen and walked past the table without looking at him, going to the range. She heard him say,

"Just a second, Maureen." And then, "Oh, my goodness," before saying,

"The coffee's right there."

Greta said, "I see it," standing with her back to him in a blue T-shirt that covered her rear end and stopped.

"There's coffee cake in the oven. There's juice. I'll fix you an egg, if you want."

"I'm fine," Greta said, pouring herself a mug of coffee.

"You sure are." Then heard him say, "Okay, Maureen, what's that address again?"

Greta bent from the waist to open the oven and gave Chris a shot of her plain white panties.

"Five-fifty?… I'm sorry. Yeah, I got it. Five-fifteen Canfield."

Greta came over to the table with her coffee and coffee cake.

"Maureen, I'm sorry. Hold it again, will you?"

They smiled at each other. Greta could feel hers and knew his was real. Look at his eyes.

"Will you sit down?"

"I don't want to bother you."

"You already have."

She said, "Okay," and sat down across from him and began listening to his conversation as she glanced at the front page of the morning Free Press on the table. They were talking about Robin. Her name was Robin Abbott.

Chris said, "Maybe she's at work." He said, "Well, you have to find out. Go there and talk to somebody." He said, "I'd be glad to. You're kidding, but I'm not. I'd go in a minute." He said, "Call Huron Valley, see if she had a job lined up." He said, "Oh, I thought she just got out…

Yeah, if somebody had been killed she could still be in. I remember Mark, but I don't remember a Robin Abbott.

What was the guy's name, Emerson?" Greta watched him write Emerson Gibbs on the newspaper.

"Give me the mother's name… She's got dough, huh? Live out there."

He underlined the names and then drew boxes around them. Greta watched him look up and smile and then look down at the names again as he said,

"I'd sure like to go with you." He said, "I know, but you're gonna find that out.

Have you talked to Wendell yet?" Greta watched him glance at the wall clock. It was eight thirty-five. He said, "You want to talk to Robin you're gonna have to hurry.

Once Wendell gets on her…" He listened and said, "Yeah, but she's not gonna be in a very cooperative frame of mind if she's a suspect.

Hey, you know what you could do? Wendell goes with you like he's with Sex Crimes and then sneaks up on her with Mark. What a tragedy, Jesus Christ, the guy steps out for a can of peanuts… You know what I'm thinking? Since Wendell's gonna talk to her anyway. Take me with you … I mean it." He said, "That's 17? beside the point. They're not gonna send a guy from the Bomb Squad, but that's who you need. I could look around there while you're talking to her…" He said, "Yeah, I'll wait."

Greta smiled, watching him. He was performing, aware of her and maybe a little self-conscious. It reminded her of last night: still talking, high, walking back from Brownie's, but quiet riding up in the elevator, quiet coming into the apartment, neither of them saying a word as they turned out the lights in the living room. Then in the hall Chris telling her there were towels laid out for her in the bathroom. Greta asking if he was sure he didn't want his dad's room. No, all his stuff was in the other bedroom-where she'd looked at family photographs earlier and picked him out at different ages, recognizing Chris as the young boy with the blond crew cut squinting at the sun, trying to smile; the teenager with darker hair to his shoulders, not smiling. He stopped at the door to the room with the pictures. They were both so well-mannered in the hall saying good night after all the God's Owns and the bottle of Piesporter, after looking at each other in that warm boozy glow and knowing something was going to happen. So carefully polite closing their separate doors. Greta undressed, listening. In the bathroom she washed her face and hands, stared at herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, turned the water off and stood listening. She got in the king-size bed and lay there in the glow of the lamp, listening. Until that was enough of that and she shouted,

"Mankowski!" Paused and yelled, "Are you coming or not?"

He came.

And now he was saying to Maureen, "Okay, will you let me know?"

Listening and then saying, "Because I know more than any of you and if I can help, why not?" Saying, "Good. I'll see you. Maureen? Call me… Right." He reached over to hang the phone on the wall and came back to Greta smiling.

"Where were we?"

"They found Robin," Greta said.

"We know where she lives. It's a start. You know what else we know?

She did time, thirty-three months, for destruction of government property. With a bomb."

Greta said, "Robin?" and saw the older woman with the braid at Woody's, perfectly at ease with her shirt off that night; saw Robin and was aware of Chris saying, "We know," still a working cop in his mind.