Stone Quarry

cheerful yellow counter beside yellow double doors you couldn't see through. It was warmer inside, but I didn't feel warmer. The smell was cold and the shiny vinyl floors were cold and the deserted silence was very cold.

The nurse asked me some questions about Tony and I filled in some forms. There were a lot of things I didn't know. Eve came in with my jacket. I put it on. She went around a corner, came back with a steaming paper cup, handed it to me. The hand I took it with must have been shaking; hot coffee slopped over my fingers, dripped onto the floor. Eve took the cup back, waited, handed it to me again. I held it in both hands. The coffee was bitter, with oily green droplets floating on the surface, but as I sipped it I finally began to warm.

Eve said, 'Do you feel better?'

'I'm all right.' My voice sounded loud in the stillness.

'You probably saved his life, driving like that.'

I reached a cigarette from my pocket, lit it without answering her, because we both knew that Tony might not live, even so.

The nurse behind the counter glanced up at the sound of the match. She rested a long look on me, on the cigarette, on Eve. Then she went deliberately back to her paperwork as though nothing was amiss. I wondered whether some people were born understanding the true nature of kindness, or if it was something you had to learn.

A state trooper came through the glass doors, knife- sharp creases in his pants smoothing at the knees as he sat.

'You the guy I was following?' I asked him.

'Uh-huh. Donnelly.' He had crinkly blue eyes and a wide smile. He stuck out his hand. I reached for it, then saw my hand, dirt, blood, and coffee in equal parts darkening my skin. I withdrew it, said, 'Thanks.'

'What happened?' he wanted to know.

I finished the coffee. 'Drive-by.'

'Yeah?' he said. 'Like the movies?'

'Yeah.'

'You know who it was?'

'No.'

'You know why?'

'No.'

'Anybody else hurt?'

'No.'

'Well,' he said, 'none of my business. I'm just supposed to keep an eye on you until someone who knows something gets here.'

'On me?'

'Sure.' He was a little surprised. 'You're a witness. From what I hear, you're the witness. You're gonna be a popular fella around here.'

Somehow, I doubted that.

I stubbed out the cigarette, found the men's room, lathered liquid soap on my arms, my face, my neck. I took off the undershirt, threw it away, washed again. There weren't quite enough paper towels to dry on; Housekeeping must have had a heavy day.

I wormed back into my jacket, went out to the pay phones in the corridor by the vending machines. Donnelly was sitting peacefully talking to Eve, his back to me. I could have slipped down the fire stairs and out the basement level door, and would his face have been red when someone who knew something got there. Lucky for him I had no place to go.

I called Antonelli's. A cop answered, in the voice of cops answering crime-scene phones. I asked for Lydia, hoping he wouldn't ask me who I was, and when he did, I thought briefly of lying. But that would just have led to trouble later, and there was enough trouble now.

'It's Bill Smith,' I said.

'Hold on. Lieutenant!' the cop yelled.

Then MacGregor's tired voice: 'Smith? That you?'

'Yeah, it's me. You find anything?'

'What the hell am I supposed to find? Jesus Christ, one minute I'm in my jockeys watching Star Trek reruns, next thing I know I'm racing to a run-down bar because it's hunting season in parking lots. What happened?'

I told him what I had and hadn't seen.

'Who was it?'

'I didn't see.'

'That doesn't mean you don't know.'

'I don't know.'

'Any theories?'

'Frank Grice.'