anything.
'Who was that blond guy?' she asked.
'His pal Fitzpatrick. Big Irish guy. They were loading up to spread fertilizer.'
'That's strange.'
'He said they decided to do the hard part of the job in the cool of the night. Hell, it was only fertilizer. Who knows?'
'What was going on with Trig?'
'I don't know. He was, uh, strange is all I can call it.
He had the same look on his face that the Time photographer got, when he was carrying that bleeding kid in from the cops in Chicago and his own head was bleeding too.
He was very set, very determined, but somehow, underneath it all, very emotional. He seemed like he was facing death or something. I don't know why or what. It spooked me a little.'
'Poor Trig. Maybe even the rich boys have demons.'
'He wanted to hug. He was crying. Maybe there was something weirdo in it or something. I felt his fingers in my muscles and I felt how happy he was to be hugging me.
I don't know. Very weird stuff. I don't know.'
They reached the car, and Donny started it, turning on the lights. He backed into the grass, turned around and headed down the road to the gate.
'Jesus,' he said.
'Duck!' For at that moment a figure suddenly rose from a gulch. A man in a suit, but too far away to do anything. A camera came up. Donny winced at the bright beam of flash as it exploded his night vision.
Fireballs danced in his head, reminding him of nighttime incoming Hotel Echo, but he stepped on the gas, gunned up the road and turned right, then really floored it.
'Jesus, they got our picture,' he said.
'A fed. That guy had to be FBI! Holy Christ!'
'My face was turned,' said Julie.
'Then you're okay. I don't think he got a license number, because my rear plate illumination bulb is broken. He just got my picture. A lot of good that'll do them. A fed!
Man, this whole thing is strange.'
'I wonder what's going on?' she said.
'What's going on is that Trig's about to get busted.
Trig and that Fitzpatrick guy. We were lucky we weren't rounded up. I'd be on my way to the brig.'
'Poor Trig,' said Julie.
'Yes,' said Donny.
'Poor Trig.'
The man let him up. He brushed himself off.
'I haven't done anything,' Peter explained.
'I've come to see my friends. You have no right to detain me, do you understand? I haven't done anything.'
The man stared at him sullenly.
'I'm going now. This is none of your business,' he said.
He turned and walked away. The agent had seemed genuinely cowed. He stepped away, awaiting a call, but none came. Another step filled him with confidence, but he didn't see or hardly feel the judo chop that broke his spine and, in the fullness of his tender youth and in the ardor of his love for his generation and its pure idea of peace, killed him before he hit the ground.
CHAPTER eight.
Donny reached DC around four in the morning, and he and Julie checked into a motel on New York Avenue, in the tourist strip approaching downtown. They were too tired for sex or love or talk.
He set the cheap alarm for 0800, and slept deeply until its ungentle signal pulled him awake.
'Donny?' she said, stirring herself.
'Sweetie, I've got some things to do now. You just stay here, get some more sleep. I paid for two nights. I'll call you sometime today and we'll decide what to do next.'
'Oh, Donny.' She blinked awake. Even out of sleep, with a slightly puffy face and her hair a rat's nest, she seemed to him quite uniquely beautiful. He leaned over and kissed her.
'Don't do anything stupid and noble,' she said.
'They'll kill you.'
'Don't you worry about me,' he said.
'I'll be all right.'
