I wheeled it out into the storm and down to the pool. Scrabbled around and found the two shotguns and the wet sap. Dropped the shotguns in the barrow and put the sap back in my pocket. Checked that the kid’s corpse still had its shoes on and heaved it into the barrow. Wheeled it up to the house and down the driveway. Squeezed it past the Bentley and rolled it around to the back of the truck. I opened the rear doors and heaved the corpse inside. Scrambled up and dragged it well in. The rain was clattering on the roof. Then I lifted the first guy’s body in and dragged it up next to the Kliner kid. Threw the shotguns in on top of them. Two stowed.

Then I took the barrow up to where I’d piled the other three. They were sprawled on the soaking lawn with the rain roaring on their hideous suits. I wheeled them back to the truck they’d come in. Got all five laid out inside.

Then I ran the barrow back through the deluge to the garage. Put it back in the corner where I’d found it. Took a flashlight from the workbench. I wanted to get a look at the four boys young Kliner had brought with him. I ran back through the rain to the truck and stepped up inside. Switched on the flashlight and crouched over the forlorn row of corpses.

The Kliner kid, I knew. The other four, I pulled back their hoods and tore away their masks. Played the flashlight beam over their faces. Two of them were the gatemen from the warehouse. I’d watched them through the field glasses on Thursday and I was sure of it. Maybe I wouldn’t have sworn to it in a court-martial, but I wasn’t interested in that kind of a judicial procedure tonight.

The other two, I did know for sure. No doubt about it. They were police. They were the backup crew from Friday. They’d come with Baker and Stevenson to the diner to arrest me. I’d seen them around the station house a few times since. They had been inside the scam. More of Mayor Teale’s concealed troops.

I scrambled out of the truck again and took the flashlight back to the garage. Locked up the doors and ran through the rain to the front of the house. Scooped up the two bags they’d brought. Dumped them inside Hubble’s hallway and hit the light. Looked through the bags. Spare gloves and masks. A box of 10-gauge shotgun shells. A hammer. A bag of six-inch nails. And four knives. Medical type of thing. They could cut you just looking at them.

I picked up the crowbar from where they’d dropped it after breaking the lock. Put it in one of the bags. Carried the bags down to the truck and hurled them in on top of the five bodies. Then I shut and locked the rear doors and ran through the lashing rain up to the house again.

I ran through and locked up the garden room. Ran back to the kitchen. I opened the oven door and emptied my pockets. Laid everything out on the floor. Found a couple of baking sheets in the next cupboard. I stripped down the Desert Eagle and laid the parts carefully on one of the trays. Piled the spare bullets next to them. Put the knife, the sap, the Bentley keys and my money and papers on the other tray. I put the trays in the oven and turned the heat on very low.

I went out the front and pulled the splintered door as far shut as it would go. Ran past the Bentley and got into the Kliner Foundation truck. Fiddled with the unfamiliar key and started it up. Reversed carefully down the driveway and swung backward out onto Beckman Drive. Rolled down the slope to town. The windshield wipers beat furiously against the rain. I skirted the big square with the church. Made the right turn at the bottom and headed south. The place was deserted. Nobody else on the road.

Three hundred yards south of the village green, I turned into Morrison’s driveway. Drove the truck up to the house and parked it next to his abandoned Lincoln. Locked the door. Ran over to Morrison’s boundary fence and hurled the keys far into the field beyond. Shrugged my jacket tight around me and started walking back through the rain. Started thinking hard.

SATURDAY WAS ALREADY MORE THAN AN HOUR OLD. Therefore Sunday was less than a day away. The shape of the thing was clear. I had three facts, for sure. Fact one, Kliner needed special paper. Fact two, it wasn’t obtainable in the States. But fact three, the warehouse was jammed with something.

And the writing on those air conditioner boxes was bothering me. Not the Island Air-conditioning, Inc. Not the printed bit. The other writing. The serial numbers. The boxes I’d seen had handwritten serial numbers in printed rectangles. I’d seen them quite clearly. The Jacksonville cops had described the same thing on the boxes in Stoller’s speeding truck. Long handwritten serial numbers. But why? The boxes themselves were good cover. Good camouflage. Hauling something secret to Florida and beyond in air conditioner boxes was a smart move. No product was more plausible for the markets down there. The boxes had fooled the Jacksonville cops. They hadn’t thought twice about it. But the serial numbers bothered me. If there were no electrical appliances in the boxes, why write serial numbers on them? That was taking camouflage to absurd lengths. So what the hell did the serial numbers mean? What the hell had been in those damn boxes?

That was the question I was asking myself. In the end, it was Joe who answered it for me. I was walking along in the rain thinking about what Kelstein had said about precision. He had said Joe had a very attractive precision in the manner in which he expressed himself. I knew that. I was thinking about the neat little list he’d printed out for himself. The proud capital letters. The rows of initials. The column of telephone numbers. The two notes at the bottom. Stollers’ Garage. Gray’s Kliner File. I needed to check the list again. But I was suddenly sure Joe was telling me if I wanted to know what Kliner had been putting into those boxes, it might be worth going up to the Stollers’ garage and taking a look.

27

FIRST THING I DID BACK AT THE HOUSE WAS ROOT AROUND in Charlie Hubble’s expensive kitchen for coffee. Started the machine burbling away. Then I opened up the oven. Got all my things out. They had been warmed for the best part of an hour and they were bone dry. The leather on the sap and the key ring had stiffened up some. Other than that, no damage. I put the gun back together and loaded it. Left it on the kitchen table. Cocked and locked.

Then I checked Joe’s computer printout for the confirmation I thought was there. But there was a problem. A major problem. The paper was bone dry and crisp, but the writing had gone. The paper was completely blank. The swimming pool water had washed all the ink off. There were very faint blurred smudges, but I couldn’t make out the words. I shrugged to myself. I’d read it through a hundred times. I’d rely on my memory of what it had said.

Next stop was the basement. I fiddled around with the furnace until it kicked in. Then I stripped off and shoved all my clothes in Charlie’s electric dryer. Set it on low for an hour. I had no idea what I was doing. In the army, some corporal had done my laundry. Took it away, brought it back clean and folded. Since then, I always bought cheap stuff and just junked it.

I walked upstairs naked and went into Hubble’s bathroom. Took a long hot shower and scrubbed the mascara off my face. Stood for a long time in the hot water. Wrapped myself up in a towel and went down for the coffee.

I couldn’t go up to Atlanta that night. I couldn’t get there before maybe three thirty in the morning. That was the wrong time to be sure of talking my way inside. I had no ID to show and no proper status. A night visit could turn into a problem. I would have to leave it until tomorrow, first thing. No choice.

So I thought about sleeping. I turned the kitchen radio off and wandered through to Hubble’s den. Turned the television off. Looked around. It was a dark, snug room. Lots of wood paneling and big leather chairs. Next to the television was a stereo. Some kind of a Japanese thing. Rows of compact discs and cassette tapes. Big emphasis on the Beatles. Hubble had said he’d been interested in John Lennon. He’d been to the Dakota in New York City and to Liverpool in England. He had just about everything. All the albums, a few bootlegs, that singles collection on CD they sold in a wooden box.