engine clamped in a vise; but he shut the drill off quickly when he saw me. His expression had relief in it, the tentative kind-you think things are going to be okay but you're still not quite certain of it.
He said, “Jerrold agreed to leave; the two of them are packing out in the morning.”
“She tell you that?”
“Yeah. Jerrold came back about an hour ago, and she hit him with it right away; then she came over to tell me.”
“She say what his reaction was, exactly?”
“Just that he seemed to think going back to L.A. was a good idea. She sounded a little surprised herself. I just hope he doesn't change his goddamn mind when he sobers up.”
“You see him when he got back?”
“Just for a minute.”
“Talk to him?”
“I tried, but it didn't do much good.”
“How drunk was he?”
“About as drunk as you can get and still function.”
“Any idea where he was all day?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Where is he now? At their cabin?”
“Sleeping, she says. Meaning passed out.”
“Well, I'd like it better if they were going tonight.”
“So would I, but I couldn't see pushing it.”
“No, I guess not.”
“If he stays passed out, it won't matter.”
“If,” I said. “Everything else all right?”
“Quiet, yeah. Talesco's the only other one around.”
“Talesco's the wrong one to be around,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“She's been playing around with him, Harry.”
He scowled. “You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“How'd you find this out?”
I explained about my conversation with Knox at The Pines Hotel, about the fight and what I had done with Knox afterward.
“Christ,” he said. “I thought the two of them had more brains than that.”
“Brains doesn't have much to do with a thing like this.”
“Well, I ought to send them packing too.”
“That's up to you.”
“You going to talk to Talesco?”
“Somebody's got to go in after Knox.”
“I mean about Mrs. Jerrold.”
“No. There's no point in it. And I don't think you should either, at least until after the Jerrolds are gone.”
“I won't, don't worry.”
He picked up the drill again, and I left him and went out and up along the path, past my cabin to the one which Talesco and Knox shared. The porch was deserted; I climbed up and knocked on the screen door, and pretty soon Talesco appeared and stared at me through the mesh with narrowed eyes. He did not look particularly happy to see me, and his voice was surly when he said, “What is it?”
I was in no mood for game-playing. I took the keys to the Rambler wagon from my pocket and held them up where he could see them. “Recognize these?”
He opened the door and came out onto the porch. His hair was mussed, as though he had been napping, and he was bare-chested; sweat matted the thick growth on his chest and stomach, put an oily gloss on the muscle- ridged skin of his shoulders. The bruise on his jaw had darkened so that it looked like a blue-black smudge.
He said, “Where the hell did you get my keys?”
“I took them off Knox in The Pines.”
“Took them off him?”
“That's right. He was drunk in the hotel bar and we had a little misunderstanding. I had to clip him.”
Talesco said “You clipped Sam Knox?” as if he could not quite believe it.
“Yeah. I also got him out of there and put him in the Rambler to sleep it off; otherwise he'd probably have been arrested. But I didn't care for the idea of him driving when he came around, so I took the keys.”
You could almost see him revising his opinion of me; something that might have been respect came into his eyes. “What was the misunderstanding about?”
“Suppose you ask Knox.”
“He all right?”
“He was the last time I saw him. If you want, I'll run you in so you can pick him up.”
“Why should you bother to do that?”
“I don't know,” I said. “You want the ride or not?”
“Yeah. Let me get a shirt.”
I waited while he did that, and then we went down and got into my car and I took it up onto the county road. Talesco did not say anything for a long while; he just sat against the passenger door, staring moodily through the windshield. Then, when we were a mile or so from the village, he turned and looked across at me.
“Knox say anything to you before you had the fight?”
“About what?”
“About why he was drinking-about me.”
“What do you think he might have said?”
Talesco shook his head. “We had a punch-out too last night,” he said abruptly. “He's the one gave me these lumps.”
“I gathered as much.”
“Yeah. He kicked the crap out of me.”
“You don't sound very bitter about it.”
“I'm not. I deserved it.”
“Oh?”
He brooded for several seconds. “Man turns forty, he gets set in his ways, he doesn't know how to live his life any different and he doesn't like the idea of having to change it. You know what I mean?”
I frowned slightly. “I suppose I do.”
“Only something happens,” Talesco said, “and he gets himself in a situation where he's got to start living another way pretty soon. It scares him, thinking about it-and all of a sudden he doesn't know what the hell is right or wrong and maybe he does something stupid.”
This was a new tack, and I could not quite tie it up with anything Knox had told me or anything I had surmised from the information. I said, “Like what?”
“Like hurting people he cares about.”
“Knox, you mean?”
“Among others.” Talesco ran fingertips over the bruise on his jaw. “He's a hell of a guy, you know; we been friends and partners for twenty years. That's a long time, twenty years.”
“Too long to let one mistake break it up,” I said.
“I been thinking that all day,” he said.
I decided to prod him a little. “Maybe you ought to think about this change in your life too.”
“I already have, I've done too much goddamn thinking about it. I've got to see it through.”
“At the expense of a friendship?”
“No, because of it. And because I guess I want it that way after all.”
He fell silent again, and I could not think of a way to draw him out short of asking him bluntly for an
