round and well-tanned, and the age lines were faint, pleasant trails crosshatching its contours. Brackeen, watching her come down the steps toward him, felt the same stirring hunger deep in his loins that he had felt the first time he saw her, here in Cuenca Seco, those many years ago. She was a lot of woman, you, couldn’t deny that—a kitten when you wanted it one way and a hellion when you wanted it the other, a listener instead of a talker, a rock, a wall, uncomplaining and unquestioning, always there, always waiting. She was the kind of woman he had desperately needed after what had happened in San Francisco, the kind of woman he had to have in order to maintain his sanity; he owed a lot to Marge, he owed a hell of a lot to her.
Marge handed him the beer she carried, and then stood looking down at him. “What’s the matter tonight, Andy?” she asked at length.
“Why?”
“Something’s bothering you.”
“It’s nothing, babe.”
“It’s that murder today, isn’t it?”
“You heard about that, did you?”
“The whole town’s talking about it.”
“All right, so they’re talking.”
“Are you investigating?”
“Christ, no.”
“Well, what do you think happened?”
“What difference does it make what I think?”
“Do you think that drifter did it?”
“The hell with the goddamn drifter,” Brackeen said.
“God, you’re in a mood,” Marge said.
“So I’m in a mood, so what?”
“So come in the house and I’ll see what I can do about it.”
“It’s too hot for screwing.”
“You didn’t think it was too hot last night.”
“That was last night.”
“You really are in a mood,” Marge said. She turned and went up on the porch again, moving her hips. When she got to the door, she looked back, but Brackeen was sitting there in the rocker with his eyes focused on the base of the willow tree. She shrugged and went inside and shut the door softly.
Brackeen drank from his fresh beer, and smoked a cigarette, and the night wind blew cool and feathery across his seamed face. After a while he decided that maybe it wasn’t too hot. He got up from the rocker and went into the house, and Marge was waiting for him just the way he had known she would be.
Seventeen
When the last burning edge of the sun vanished in the flame-streaked sky to the west, the harsh desert landscape softened into a serene and golden tableau. Gradually, almost magically, the horizon gentled into a wash of pink and the pale sphere of the moon rose, the desert turning vermilion now—as if infrared light were being cast over it. Shadows lengthened and deepened, and there was an almost reverent hush across the land.
Vollyer stood on a high shelf of rock, the binoculars fitted to his eyes, and turned in a slow pirouette until he had described a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. It was like looking at a particularly vivid three-dimensional painting: the motionlessness was absolute. He lowered the glasses finally, reluctantly, and climbed down to where Di Parma sat drinking from one of the plastic water bottles.
Wordlessly, Vollyer sat beside him and pressed his hand up under his wishbone. The ulcer was giving him trouble again, not enough to hamper him seriously but just enough to be annoying —like an omnipresent but not especially painful toothache. As if that wasn’t enough, his eyes still ached, and even now, with darkness approaching rapidly, they were still watering. Ruefully, he looked down at the dusty, torn material of his expensive trousers and shirt, the now-filthy-gray cashmere of his jacket lying with Di Parma’s suit coat and the knapsack in the dust at their feet. I must look like hell, he thought; I must look like something off the Bowery in New York. I wonder what Fine-berg, the tailor, would say if he could see me now—or one of those bow-and-scrape waiters in the restaurants along the Loop back home. No man can be cultured or refined or genteel—or even respectable— when there’s dirt on his face and a rip in his pants. One of the game’s little axioms.
Di Parma said, “Nothing, right?” in a dull voice.
“Nothing,” Vollyer answered.
“Now what do we do?”
“We don’t have much choice, Livio.”
“You mean we spend the night out here?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh shit, Harry.”
“We’ve come too far to backtrack to the car now.”
“Snakes come out at night,” Di Parma said, and his voice was that of a complaining child. “I don’t like snakes.”
“You haven’t seen any snakes yet, have you?”
“They don’t move around during the day. Night’s when they hunt. It’s too hot in the daytime.”
“Tell me some more about the desert.”
“I don’t know anything about the desert.”
“You know about the snakes.”
“I told you, I don’t like the goddamn things,” Di Parma said, as if that explained it.
“You can see a long way on the desert at night, isn’t that right?” Vollyer said. “When the moon is up, it can get to be just as bright as day, isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know,” Di Parma said.
“It’s right,” Vollyer told him. “We’ll sleep in shifts. Because of the snakes and because Lennox and the girl might try moving after dark, figuring to cross us up.”
Di Parma drank again from the water bottle. He said, without looking at Vollyer, “How long are we going to stay out here looking?”
“Until we find them.”
“That could take a week, a month.”
“It won’t take another full day.”
“I don’t see how you can be so sure.”
“We found where they’d been in that arroyo,” Vollyer said. “We found where they left it again. We’re on their trail.”
“Maybe,” Di Parma said doubtfully. “But I still say they could be anywhere. They could’ve doubled back to the road by now.”
Vollyer looked out over the desert again. A faint glow lingered on the horizon, prolonging the twilight, but the sky directly above them was dark and clear, speckled with the indistinct and precursory images of what would soon be crystal-bright stars. “They’re out there,” he said softly. “Hiding now, maybe, but not any longer than dawn. He’s a runner, Livio, and runners have to run.”
“He’s got the girl with him. Maybe she’ll change his mind, if she hasn’t already.”
“I don’t think so.”
Abruptly, Di Parma stood, picked up his jacket, and walked a few feet away. He put the jacket on and buttoned it and slid his large hands into the pockets.
He said, “It cooled off in a hell of a hurry.”
“One of nature’s little games.”
“You think the Buick will be okay where we left it?”
“It’s well hidden from the road.”
“Suppose somebody sees it?”
“Then they’ll figure it to belong to sightseers. Or hikers.”
