“Man, I ain’t ever seen no shit like that in my life, and I seen some shit, let me tell you.” He snatches his book of matches from Jay’s hand, striking one to light his own cigarette. “You can quote me on that if you want to.”

He actually pauses, waiting for Jay to produce a pad and a pencil, to make sure he’s getting all this down. So this is his big moment, Jay thinks, his little piece of fame. The man’s name in the paper and everything. More than his mama ever dreamed for him, probably. Jay, playing the part, pats his pockets. “I must have left my notes in the car,” he says, trying to sound casual, jaded even, a beat reporter who’s seen everything. “What hap­ pened out here?”

“Hell if I know,” the groundskeeper says. He takes a single, lusty pull on his cigarette, sucking it nearly to the filter. He stares out across the field at the police markings, the ghostly shapes in the dirt. “It was early when I got out here Sunday morning, around eight, like I always do. I come up the walk here,” he says, pointing to the dirt road. “And I set my buggy over by the fence.” He points to the wheelbarrow resting against the fence now. “I stopped to get a little sip, you know, just to warm me up.” He reaches for the bottle now, reenacting the scene, pulling the Seagram’s from his pocket. He takes a hearty swallow, nodding his head toward the field. “And that’s when I seen the car. I mean, it was just sitting right there.” He nods toward the white markings in the grass.

“What kind of car was it?” Jay asks, remembering the woman from the boat, her nice clothes and diamond ring.

“It was a Chrysler, kinda gold-like,” the man says. “It was a rental, that much I remember, ’cause the sticker on the back said lone star rides. I got a good look at it too. I come up on it real close,” he says, tiptoeing on his bowlegs, walking through the open field like it’s a graveyard, careful where he lays his feet. “The driver-side door was wide open. The light was still on inside.” He gets within a few feet of the white police paint, the lumpy circle in the dirt, and then stops short, his voice almost solemn. “He was laying right here.”

“Who was he?” Jay asks.

The man shrugs. “Cops pulled an ID off the man, but who knows?”

“It was a white guy, though, right?”

The man nods. “Laying right there, hanging out of the car, on his back.”

Jay looks out across the empty field. There are black mosqui­ toes dancing in the white light of his high beams, crickets hum­ ming to themselves in the brush behind them. Jay turns from the view of the field to look at the empty warehouse and the dark, nearly deserted street. At this hour, the place looks like an indus­ trial wasteland. What in the world was she doing out here? “If he was on the driver’s side,” Jay mumbles to himself, repeating the groundskeeper’s description, arcing around the four X ’s t hat mark the car, to what would have been the Chrysler’s passenger side, “then she must have been riding here,” he says softly, think­ ing out loud, still trying to piece together some kind of a story. He wonders if the dead man picked her up somewhere, if the two knew each other.

When he finally looks up again, the groundskeeper is staring at him.

“How do you know it was a woman?” the man asks.

“Excuse me?”

“I said . . . how do you know it was a woman he was with?”

It takes Jay a moment to understand what the man is asking, to realize the mistake he’s made, the single clue he let slip from his mouth. The panic, when it hits him, is swift and forceful, and he actually feels himself sway just the tiniest bit. Then, remem­ bering the article from the paper, he repeats a few of the details. “The cops talked to a lady friend,” he explains. “It was in the police report.”

“Is that right?” the groundskeeper asks, a knowing smile creeping across his stubbly face. He pinches off the head of his cigarette, letting the cherry fall to the dirt and pocketing the dirty butt. “Well, I know why they talked to her.”

“You do?” Jay feels the panic again, and he has a sudden thought of Jimmy’s cousin, the boat’s captain. It’s the first time Jay has considered him since the night of the boat ride. And it now occurs to him that the old man might have seen the same blurb in the paper and gone straight to the police. He’s so caught up in what that might mean for him, wondering if the cops already have his name, that he almost misses the next words out of the groundskeeper’s mouth.

“Dude’s pants were coming down,” the man says. “What?” Jay asks, not immediately comprehending.

“The dead man,” the groundskeeper says. “The belt, the fly . . . his pants was wide open. The cops was all over it. And they was taking pictures of the ground over there.” He points to the dirt and grass where Jay is standing. “There were footprints, real small-like, you know, like a lady’s shoe.” Jay remembers the woman’s bare feet on the boat, her missing earring too. “But we don’t really know it was a woman,” the groundskeeper says. We, like he’s in on the investigation, like he and the cops are work­ ing this one together. “We don’t know what that man was into. Hell, when I seen him, he was wearing leather in August, had on gloves up to here,” he says, demonstrating high on his forearms. “Ain’t no telling what kind of freaky shit was going on. That mighta been why he was hiding out here in the first place.” He lowers his voice, speaking the seemingly impossible. “I mean, it coulda been a dude he was with.”

The groundskeeper helps himself to another Carlton. “Now ain’t that some shit,” he says. His expression has cooled somewhat, and he seems to have turned his investigative gaze on Jay, taking a second look at Jay’s soiled clothes and his missing shoe, seem­ ingly calling his whole presence at the crime scene into question. Jay doesn’t like the way the man is looking at him, or what he thinks the man may be insinuating. It would be ridiculous, the idea of Jay being in any way involved in a murder, if it weren’t so . . . plausible. Even a rookie cop knows that more times than not, the perpetrator returns to the scene of his crime.

“You with the Chronicle or the Post?” the groundskeeper asks.

“I freelance,” Jay answers, a little too quickly.

“Maybe I could get your name, in case I remember something else.”

The smirk is faint, but impossible to ignore.

The groundskeeper stares at Jay, waiting for an answer.

“Ernest Pennebaker” is the first ridiculous name out of Jay’s mouth. He delivers it as convincingly as a practiced closing argu­ ment, thanking the man for his time and reaching for his car keys. He nods good night as he

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