Chris said, "What's rule number eight?"

Greta looked at the sheet again.

"It's written out.

"No party member will commit any crimes against other party members or black people at all, and cannot steal or take from the people, not even a needle or a piece of thread."

" They looked at each other, heads turned on their pillows.

"I learn interesting facts in bed with you," Greta said.

"When I was little, Camille and Robert Taylor and I would get in bed with our dad and he'd read the Bobbsey Twins to us."

Chris said, "Now you get the Ricks brothers and other crazies." He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at Robin's journal.

"Here's the part about Mark, her opinion of him. Robin says, "Mark digs the sound, the cant, the beat of revolution. He wants to be part of it, but political science-wise knows next to nothing, zilch. He asks if I believe in the Movement, if I'm a member of the Communist Party. Why sure, Mark. He's either dumb or naive, but, man, is he loaded! I tell him to come by my tent tonight and I'll lay it out for him. So to speak."

" "Her tent?"

"This is when they were at Goose Lake. The Ricks boys slept in the limo they rented and Robin had her own tent.

She says in case she met somebody interesting."

"Mark wasn't interesting enough?"

"She was using him. Listen." Chris looked at the journal.

"She finishes with Mark by saying, "This guy is so impressionable. He's dying to be a star. If you want him, take him." Then she has written in capital letters, "TAKE

HIM FOR EVERYTHING HE'S GOT!"

" Chris imagined Robin looking through old journals, this one, reliving those days, coming to this page and the words reaching out to grab her.

It was worthless as evidence, but it let you look into her head. Chris closed the journal. It was quiet, Greta not saying a word. He was thinking she'd fallen asleep as he turned his head on the pillow, expecting to see her eyes closed.

She was staring at him. She said, "Is that what I'm doing? With Woody?"

Robin had become the ice woman, blowing her smoke out slow, stroking her braid, a thoughtful act, stroking in time to "Little Girl Blue" in the background, Robin looking at Donnell with quiet eyes, saying, "Man, it's been a long time coming."

"What has?"

"Getting on track and feeling good about it. Yeah, now, finally I can see where we're going." Saying the words with a slight nod of the head, moving with the mellow beat.

Donnell liked how she did that. The woman was in time and looking good, for her age.

"I'm not saying we don't have a problem," Robin said.

"If this Polack, Mankowski, is acting officially, and that was the impression I got, then it's a major problem. Not because he's especially bright-I don't think he is. The way he tried to set me up, get me to talk, didn't show a lot of finesse. But if he's got the whole fucking police force behind him-" "He was kicked off the police,"

Donnell said.

"I've told you that, and he don't like it one bit."

"You think he doesn't like it or you know it?"

"I know it. I talked to the dude."

"Well, if all he wants is money…" She gave a little shrug with the beat.

"He's working for himself, nobody else."

"He told you that?"

This woman could be irritating.

"It was he didn't tell me. He had, I might suspect him.

Look, the dude bumped me up to twenty-five thousand to get your bomb out of the swimming pool. He's in it for bread, nothing else, and he'll keep coming back. I know, I've seen the kind." Donnell hunched over the table on his arms.

"Listen to me. The dude will come back and he'll come back. He'll leave the police if he hasn't done it already. The man smells a score.

But that's only the one problem. I see another one. I see too many people."

"You mean Skip," Robin said.

"Exactly. Your friend Skippy. What do we need him for? See, he's the kind of problem you can tell goodbye and it's gone. Like you say to him you not interested in the deal no more, you give up on it, he leaves."

"I don't think it would be quite that easy," Robin said.

"Sit on it till he goes away. That's easy. What I'm saying to you, I don't see cutting it three ways when we don't need to. I'm looking now at the economics of it. This kind of deal come along, you do it one time, understand?

You pick a number, the most of what you can get, and that's all."

"If that's what you're worried about," Robin said, "there's no problem.

You get half of a two-way split."

"I'm thinking more than half, and your number depends on my number."

"Okay, what's your number?"

"One million. I like the sound of it, I like the idea of it. One million, a one and six oughts."

"Take off and spend it, huh?"

"Stay right where I am. It's none of your business what I do with it."

Donnell watched Robin get out another cigarette saying, "Okay, if you're satisfied with a mil let's go for two and Skip and I split the other one."

Donnell shook his head.

"I get more than you."

"Why?"

"It's my idea."

"Gee, I thought it was mine," Robin said.

Giving him that shitty tone again.

"I mean since I'm the one who called in the first place."

"Yeah, and how'd you expect the man to pay you?

Cash? He suppose to leave it some place you tell him?"

He watched her shrug, being cool.

"That's one way."

"You dumb as shit," Donnell said.

"Can you see the man go in the bank for the money? Drunk as usual, everybody looking at him? Everybody knowing his business?

What did I say to you on the phone? I said, "That gonna be cash or you take a check?" And you got mad, commence to threaten me, saying, "Oh, you want to play, huh?" Giving me all this shit on the phone. You remember? Was only this morning."

Still being cool. Look at her blow the smoke, sip the wine, getting her head straight, what she wanted to say.

Smiling at him now, just a speck of smile showing.

"What I get from that," Robin said, "you were serious.

We could actually get paid by check?"

"There's a way."

"He could stop payment."

"I said there's a way to do it."

"This is wild," Robin said.

"Far out."

She turned her head to gaze off at the piano, listening but not moving, Donnell watching her, remembering the woman in the bathroom a long, long time ago. Pants on the floor, her sweater pushed up, seeing the back of her head in the mirror, all that long hair, seeing a nice dreamy smile in her eyes when he looked at her… Her eyes came back to him from the piano.

"Skip killed a guy one time."

"You mean little Markie?"

"Before. He did it for money. What I'm saying is, you can count on him."

"I admire that kind," Donnell said, "but it don't mean we need him."

"I was thinking he could get rid of our problem, the guy with his hand out."

Donnell hesitated. The idea stopped him, hit him cold.

He didn't want to think about it, but said, "He'd do that?"

"If I asked him to."

"That's all?"

"If you say he's in."

Donnell shrugged, not saying yes or no, maybe not minding the guy being in if you could count on him and take his word. There were things to work out in this deal.

It wasn't entirely set in his mind. Though it seamed to be in Robin's, the way she was smiling for real now, letting it come…

Robin saying, "The extortion corporation, we accept checks. Hey, but we write Woody's driver's license I.D. on the back, right? In case he tries to stiff us." s played scenes, lying in bed in that early morning half-light.

He heard himself tell Jerry Baker, "I go in the guy's swimming pool, remove an explosive device and he gives me twenty-five grand." Jerry says, "You take the device with you?" He tells Jerry, "I left it there but told him not to touch it, and I know he won't." Jerry says, "You should've taken it with you." Jerry's right; he should've.