His skin was fair and freckled, the kind which would never tan, only burn and then peel in great eczemalike patches. When we shook, his hand seemed to be all knuckles. He had to be at least thirty, but he looked Mattie’s age, and I guessed it would be another five years before he was able to get a drink without showing his driver’s license.

“Sit down,” he said. “We’ve got a five-course lunch, courtesy of Castle Rock Variety—grinders, which are for some strange reason called “Italian sandwiches’ up here. . mozzarella sticks. . garlic fries.

… Twinkies.”

“That’s only four,” I said.

“I forgot the soft-drink course,” he said, and pulled three long-neck bottles of S’OK birch beer out of a brown bag. “Let’s eat. Mattie runs the library from two to eight on Fridays and Saturdays, and this would be a bad time for her to be missing work.”

“How did the readers’ circle go last night?” I asked. “Lindy Briggs didn’t eat you alive, I see.”

She laughed, clasped her hands, and shook them over her head. “I was a hit! An absolute smashola! I didn’t dare tell them I got all my best insights from you—”

“Thank God for small favors,” Storrow said. He was freeing his own sandwich from its string and butcher-paper wrapping, doing it carefully and a little dubiously, using just the tips of his fingers.

“—so I said I looked in a couple of books and found some leads there.

It was sort of wonderful. I felt like a college kid.”

“Good.”

“Bissonette?” John Storrow asked. “Where’s he? I never met a guy named Romeo before.”

“Said he had to go right back to Lewiston. Sorry.”

“Actually it’s best we stay small, at least to begin with.” He bit into his sandwich—they come tucked into long sub rolls—and looked at me, surprised. “This isn’t bad.”

“Eat more than three and you’re hooked for life,” Mattie said, and chomped heartily into her own.

“Tell us about the depo,” John said, and while they ate, I talked. When I finished, I picked up my own sandwich and played a little catch-up.

I’d forgotten how good an Italian can be—sweet, sour, and oily all at the same time. Of course nothing that tastes that good can be healthy; that’s a given. I suppose one could formulate a similar postulate about full-body hugs from young girls in legal trouble.

“Very interesting,” John said. “Very interesting indeed.” He took a mozzarella stick from its grease-stained bag, broke it open, and looked with a kind of fascinated horror at the clotted white gunk inside.

“People up here eat this?” he asked.

“People in New York eat fish-bladders,” I said. “Raw.”

“Touch&” He dipped a piece into the plastic container of spaghetti sauce (in this context it is called “cheese-dip” in western Maine), then ate it.

“Well?” I asked.

“Not bad. They ought to be a lot hotter, though.”

Yes, he was right about that. Eating cold mozzarella sticks is a little like eating cold snot, an observation I thought I would keep to myself on this beautiful midsummer Friday.

“If Durgin had the tape, why wouldn’t he play it?” Mattie asked. “I don’t understand.”

25o John stretched his arms out, cracked his knuckles, and looked at her benignly. “We’ll probably never know for sure,” he said. He thought Devore was going to drop the suit—it was in every line of his body-language and every inflection of his voice. That was hopeful, but it would be good if Mattie didn’t allow herself to become too hopeful.

John Storrow wasn’t as young as he looked, and probably not as guileless, either (or so I fervently hoped), but he was young. And neither he nor Mattie knew the story of Scooter Larribee’s sled. Or had seen Bill Dean’s face when he told it. “Want to hear some possibilities?”

“Sure,” I said. John put down his sandwich, wiped his fingers, and then began to tick off points. “First, he made the call.

Taped conversations have a highly dubious value under those circumstances. Second, he didn’t exactly come off like Captain Kangaroo, did he?”

“No.’

“Third, your fabrication impugns you, Mike, but not really very much, and it doesn’t impugn Mattie at all. And by the way, that thing about Mattie pushing bubbles in Kyra’s face, I love that. If that’s the best they can do, they better give it up right now. Last—and this is where the truth probably lies—I think Devore’s got Nixon’s Disease.”

“Nixon’s Disease?” Mattie asked. “The tape Durgin had isn’t the only tape. Can’t be. And your father-in-law is afraid that if he introduces one tape made by whatever system he’s got in Warrington’s, we might subpoena all of them. And I’d damn well try.” She looked bewildered. “What could be on them? And if it’s bad, why not just destroy them?”

“Maybe he can’t,” I said. “Maybe he needs them for other reasons.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” John said. “Durgin was bluffing, and that’s what matters.” He hit the heel of his hand lightly against the picnic table. “I think he’s going to drop it. I really do.”

“It’s too early to start thinking like that,” I said at once, but I could tell by Mattie’s face—shining more brightly than ever—that the damage was done.

“Fill him in on what else you’ve been doing,” Mattie told John. “Then I’ve got to get to the library.”

“Where do you send Kyra on your workdays?” I asked. “Mrs. Cullum’s. She lives two miles up the Wasp Hill Road. Also in July there’s V.B.S. from ten until three. That’s Vacation Bible School. Ki loves it, especially the singing and the flannel-board stories about Noah and Moses. The bus drops her off at Arlene’s, and I pick her up around quarter of nine.” She smiled a little wistfully. “By then she’s usually fast asleep on the couch.” John held forth for the next ten minutes or so. He hadn’t been on the case long, but had already started a lot of balls rolling. A fellow in California was gathering facts about Roger Devore and Morris Ridding (“gathering facts” sounded so much better than “snooping”). John was particularly interested in learning about the quality of Roger Devore’s relations with his father, and if Roger was on record concerning his little niece from Maine. John had also mapped out a campaign to learn as much as possible about Max Devore’s movements and activities since he’d come back to TR-90. To that end he had the name of a private investigator, one recommended by Romeo Bissonette, my rent-a-lawyer. As he spoke, paging rapidly through a little notebook he drew from the inside pocket of his suitcoat, I remembered what he’d said about Lady Justice during our telephone conversation: Slap some handcuf25 on that broad’s wrists and some tape over her mouth to go along with the blindjld, rape her and roll her in the mud. That was maybe a bit too strong for what we were doing, but I thought at the very least we were shoving her around a little. I imagined poor Roger Devore up on the stand, having flown three thousand miles in order to be questioned about his sexual preferences. I had to keep reminding myself that his father had put him in that position, not Mattie or me or John Storrow. “Have you gotten any closer to a meeting with Devore and his chief legal advisor?” I asked. “Don’t know for sure.

The line is in the water, the offer is on the table, the puck’s on the ice, pick your favorite metaphor, mix em and match em if you desire.”

“Got your irons in the fire,” Mattie said.

“Your checkers on the board,” I added. We looked at each other and laughed. John regarded us sadly, then sighed, picked up his sandwich, and began to eat again. “You really have to meet him with his lawyer more or less dancing attendance?” I asked. “Would you like to win this thing, then discover Devore can do it all again based on unethical behavior by Mary Devore’s legal resource?” John returned. “Don’t even joke about it!” Mattie cried. “I wasn’t joking,” John said. “It has to be with his lawyer, yes. I don’t think it’s going to happen, not on this trip. I haven’t even got a look at the old cockuh, and I have to tell you my curiosity is killing me.”