“Yeah, what were you going to do about it?”

“Who do you think called the sheriff’s department in the first place?” he asked. “You think that nice lady cop just happened to show up? I knew getting someone from the county cops would defuse the situation, so I got them there. I’d have put a bullet through Jim Doe’s head if I had to, but I was hoping to avoid it. I thought you’d want me to avoid it.”

“Wow, that’s kind. No one’s ever refrained from killing a cop for me before.”

“Look, you were in a tight spot, I don’t deny it. But we’re already in a tight spot. You didn’t choose to get into this, and I’m sorry that you’re in it, but you are. You are just going to have to accept that. And when things got hairy, I got you out, didn’t I? You were in trouble, and I fixed the situation. Right?” He grinned at me. “I did, didn’t I?”

He did, but I didn’t quite want to admit it yet, even though I was pleased, maybe even delighted, that I no longer had to believe Melford had betrayed me. The truth was, the Gambler and Jim Doe were looking at me now, and they’d be looking at me regardless of whether or not I was spending time with Melford. Going it alone just didn’t make sense- not when having Melford around would actually keep me safer.

More out of frustration with myself than Melford, I kicked at the dirt and then walked around to the passenger side. “I’m not happy about this.”

“What can you do? You can either watch the world come tumbling down on your ass or you can get the hell out of the way of the rubble.”

“Keep the aphorisms coming. They’re cheering me up.”

Melford studied me, looked me up and down. “You’re very cynical. On the other hand, you’re also perfectly presentable. All washed up, blood off your face. I’m glad to see you’re ready to go.”

“Go where?”

“To play detective.”

Chapter 25

HIGH NOON was on the TV, but B.B. didn’t much feel like watching it. He could remember once liking that movie, thinking that Gary Cooper was cool and efficient, bucking up to do what he had to do, but now it seemed dull. Cooper was old compared with his earlier movies, as tired and irrelevant as his character. And as westerns went, it didn’t stack up against the really good ones. Now, Shane. That was a movie.

Feeling good about himself, his future, his phone call, B.B. strolled over to the closet to examine himself in the full-length mirror- not out of vanity, but to make sure his linen suit wasn’t too wrinkled. Always the problem with linen. “Wear it once and throw it in the trash,” Desiree liked to say. He’d been keeping on his sunglasses, even inside, since calling Doe, but now he removed them. The suit looked good, and the black T-shirt, too- crisp and right around his neck. He hated a T-shirt with a sagging neck. The hair was okay. A bit long in the back and thinning in the forehead, but that was that. The leather brown color was more real than nature herself.

He did a half turn to make sure his ass didn’t look big. When he moved he caught a glimpse of the phone on the nightstand. The one on which he’d placed his defining call to Doe. The one on which Desiree hadn’t called him. Where in the hell was she? What was she doing?

Now that his revenge against the Gambler was in play, he needed her to keep an eye on things, make sure all went as he intended. He supposed that maybe if the kid kept moving, she might not have had a chance to check in yet, but he didn’t quite buy it. Nor did he believe that something had happened to her. Not Desiree. No, she was punishing him. She was still angry with him over that business with the boy.

All he’d wanted was to help him, give him a ride, a good meal at the house, and then get him to wherever he wanted to be. How could it be that even Desiree doubted his motives, that even she saw something sinister where there was only kindness? And what would she say about his wanting to taste wines with Chuck Finn? He shook his head. No, his plan was perfect. Get rid of her by promoting her. It would be a hard transition, but he’d live with having to pick up his own dry cleaning. Hell, maybe he could give Chuck a little part-time work as a valet.

Everything was on the verge of falling apart, and everything was on the verge of being fixed. How ironic and how pleasant that it all hinged on doing to the Gambler what he ought to have done two or three years ago.

Just like that, there he was, only for a second, back in his Las Vegas apartment, falling back hard, knocking his head against the wooden frame of his futon, blood from a cut on his forehead dripping in his eyes, blood from his nose dripping into his mouth. Above him, broom handle brandished like a Homeric warrior, the Gambler squinted in joyless intensity.

For too long he’d held off on dealing with the Gambler, who now was making money, enjoying power, and oblivious to the fact that he lived by B.B.’s grace. No more of that. Doe would solve the problem, and if he dug his own grave in doing so, then B.B. could live with that.

Something- something bad- had evaporated, fled his body. It had been weeks, maybe months, since he’d felt this energetic. B.B. replaced the sunglasses, stepped outside the room, and gave his eyes a minute to adjust to the blazing sun. It was another scorcher today, close to triple digits and humid enough for fish to swim through the air. Reflected light shot off the cars in the parking lot. With one hand to his forehead, he gazed across the courtyard and at the mostly empty pool. This wasn’t much of a vacation motel- the guests were people who stopped for the night out of desperate fatigue. Still, the owners, a bunch of Indians, like more and more hotel owners these days, optimistically kept the pool up, waiting for that better class of clientele that would surely arrive when Ganesha so ordained.

Right now, the only adult by the pool was an enormous woman in a lavender one-piece, a year or two on either side of forty, lying with shades over her eyes, chewing gum, smiling into the heat. B.B. gave a slight sympathetic shake of his head. The poor pathetic thing, a baking seal with a bleached blond bob, legs like condoms overfilled with curdled milk. Across the pool from her, playing loudly, were two boys he’d seen before. The two aimless, neglected boys who, if left to follow their sad course, would lead empty, disappointed lives. These were boys, he knew, in need of mentoring.

Part of him felt he ought not to be looking for new mentees. He had Chuck Finn waiting for him at home, after all. But he was here, and the boys were in need of a guiding adult presence. It would be wrong, selfish, to fail to do what he could.

B.B. crossed the parking lot and shuffled over to the woman on the chaise longue and blocked her sun. She lowered her sunglasses and squinted up. He smiled his most ingratiating smile. “Excuse the interruption,” he said, “but are those your boys?” Of course they weren’t, but B.B. knew the drill. Show her some respect, and she’d defer to his charitable impulses.

“They bothering you, too?” She wrinkled her nose as though she had to sneeze.

He shrugged. “I’m just wondering.”

“They ain’t mine,” she told him. “I wouldn’t let my boys act that way if I had any. I think they’re with their father, and I saw him leave early this morning in his truck. Left them alone, I guess. He was kind of cute,” she added thoughtfully.

This was all good news. No parent around to impose misguided values on the children. No hypocritical guardian of right and wrong to impose the pinched morals that denied boys what they needed.

“I’ll go talk to them,” B.B. told her brightly, as though volunteering to do the dirty work. “Ask them to quiet down.”

“Kind of you.”

An awkward pause. “I like your sunglasses,” he told her, not able to think of anything else to say.