Dead or alive? Alive or dead? Not a day goes by that Willie doesn't ask himself this question.
He turns to the next page of the scrapbook, knowing he should stop, he should get home, Sharon will worry if he doesn't at least call (he
The headline over the photo showing the charred skull of the house on Benefit Street is from the Los Angeles
3 OF 'DANBURY 12' DIE IN EAST L.A.
Except the cops believed Carol, at least, was dead. The piece made diat clear. At the time, Willie had also been convinced it was so. All that blood. Now, however . . . Dead or alive? Alive or dead? Sometimes his heart whispers to him that the blood doesn't matter, that she got away from that small frame house long before the final acts of insanity were committed there. At other times he believes what the police believe — that she and Fiegler slipped away from the others only after the first shootout, before the house was surrounded; that she either died of wounds suffered in that shootout or was murdered by Fiegler because she was slowing him down. According to this scenario the fiery girl with the blood on her face and the sign in her hand is probably now just a bag of bones cooking in the desert someplace east of the sun and west of Tonopah.
Willie touches the photo of the burned-out house on Benefit Street . . . and suddenly a name comes to him, the name of the man who maybe stopped Dong Ha from becoming another My Lai or My Khe. Slocum. That was his name, all right. It's as if the blackened beams and broken windows have whispered it to him.
Willie closes the scrapbook and puts it away, feeling oddly at peace. He finishes squaring up what needs to be squared up in the offices of Midtown Heating and Cooling, then steps carefully through the trapdoor and finds his footing on top of the stepladder below. He takes the handle of his briefcase and pulls it through. He descends to the third step, then lowers the trapdoor into place and slides the ceiling panel back where it belongs.
'Do you hear what I hear,' he sings softly as he folds the stepladder and puts it back, 'do you smell what I smell, do you taste what I taste?'
Five minutes later he closes the door of Western States Land Analysts firmly behind him and triple-locks it. Then he goes down the hallway. When the elevator comes and he steps in, he thinks,
'Also cinnamon,' he says out loud. The three people in the elevator car with him look around, and Bill grins self- consciously.
Outside, he turns toward Grand Central, registering only one thought as the snow beats full into his face and he flips up his coat collar: the Santa outside the building has fixed his beard.
MIDNIGHT.
'Share?'
'Hmmmm?'
Her voice is sleepy, distant. They have made long, slow love after the Dubrays finally left at eleven o'clock, and now she is drifting away. That's all right; he is drifting too. He has a feeling that all of his problems are solving themselves ... or that God is solving them.
'I may take a week or so off after Christmas. Do some inventory. Poke around some new sites. I'm thinking about changing locations.' There is no need for her to know about what Willie Slocum may be doing in the week before New Year's; she couldn't do anything but worry and — perhaps, perhaps not, he sees no reason to find out for sure — feel guilty.
'Good,' she says. 'See a few movies while you're at it, why don't you?' Her hand gropes out of the dark and touches his arm briefly. 'You work so hard.' Pause. 'Also, you remembered the eggnog. I really didn't think you would. I'm very pleased with you, sweetheart.'
He grins in the dark at that, helpless not to. It is so perfectly Sharon.
'The Aliens are all right, but the Dubrays are boring, aren't they?' she asks.
'A little,' he allows.
