Black House

“Ding-dong,” Jack replies, equably enough, and rings off.

Dale turns into the foggy parking lot. He sees Ernie Therriault and the biker-brewer called Doc standing outside the back door, talking. They are little more than shadows in the drifting fog.

Dale’s conversation with Jack has left him feeling very uneasy, as if there are huge clues and signposts that he (dullard that he is) has entirely missed. But what clues? For Christ’s sake, what signposts? And now a dash of resentment flavors his unease. Perhaps a high-powered Lucas Davenport type like Jack Sawyer just can’t believe in the obvious. Perhaps guys like him are always more interested in the dog that doesn’t bark.

Sound travels well in the fog, and halfway to the station’s back door, Dale hears motorcycle engines explode into life down by the river. Down on Nailhouse Row.

“Dale,” Ernie says. He nods a greeting as if this were any ordinary evening.

“Hey, Chief,” Doc chips in. He’s smoking an unfiltered cigarette, looks to Dale like a Pall Mall or a Chesterfield. Some doctor, Dale thinks. “If I may egregiously misquote Misterogers,” Doc goes on, “it’s a beautiful night in the neighborhood. Wouldn’t you say?”

“You called them,” Dale says, jerking his head in the direction of the revving motorcycles. Two pairs of headlights swing into the parking lot. Dale sees Tom Lund behind the wheel of the first car. The second vehicle is almost certainly Danny Tcheda’s personal. The troops are gathering once more. Hopefully this time they can avoid any cataclysmic fuckups. They better. This time they could be playing for all the marbles.

“Well, I couldn’t comment on that directly,” Doc says, “but I could ask, If they were your friends, what would you do?”

“Same damn thing,” Dale says, and goes inside.

Henry Leyden once more sits primly in the passenger seat of the Ram pickup. Tonight he’s dressed in an open- collared white shirt and a pair of trim blue khakis. Slim as a male model, silvering hair combed back. Did Sydney Carton look any cooler going to the guillotine? Even in Charles Dickens’s mind? Jack doubts it.

“Henry—”

“I know,” Henry says. “Sit here in the truck like a good little boy until I’m called.”

“With the doors locked. And don’t say Oui, mon capitaine. That one’s wore out.”

“Will affirmative do?”

“Nicely.”

The fog thickens as they near town, and Jack dips his headlights—high beams are no good in this shit. He looks at the dashboard clock. 7:03 P.M. Things are speeding up. He’s glad. Do more, think less, Jack Sawyer’s recipe for E-Z care sanity.

“I’ll whisk you inside as soon as they’ve got Potter jugged.”

“You don’t expect them to have a problem with that, do you?”

“No,” Jack says, then changes the subject. “You know, you surprised me with that Slobberbone record.” He can’t really call it a song, not when the lead vocalist simply shrieked most of the lyrics at the top of his lungs. “That was good.”

“It’s the lead guitar that makes the record,” Henry says, picking up on Jack’s careful use of the word. “Surprisingly sophisticated. Usually the best you can hope for is in tune.” He unrolls his window, sticks his head out like a dog, then pulls it back in. Speaking in that same conversational voice, he says: “The whole town reeks.”

“It’s the fog. It pulls up the river’s stinkiest essence.”

“No,” Henry replies matter-of-factly, “it’s death. I smell it, and I think you do, too. Only maybe not with your nose.”

“I smell it,” Jack admits.

“Potter’s the wrong man.”

“I think so.”

“The man Railsback saw was a Judas goat.”

“The man Railsback saw was almost certainly the Fisherman.”

They drive in silence for a while.

“Henry?”

“Affirmative.”

“What’s the best record? The best record and the best song?”

Henry thinks about it. “Do you realize what a dreadfully personal question that is?”

“Yes.”

Henry thinks some more, then says: “ ‘Stardust,’ maybe. Hoagy Carmichael. For you?”

The man behind the wheel thinks back, all the way back to when Jacky was six. His father and Uncle Morgan had been the jazz fiends; his mother had had simpler tastes. He remembers her playing the same song over and over one endless L.A. summer, sitting and looking out the window and smoking. Who is that lady, Mom? Jacky asks, and his mother says, Patsy Cline. She died in an airplane crash.

“ ‘Crazy Arms,’ ” Jack says. “The Patsy Cline version. Written by Ralph Mooney and Chuck Seals. That’s the best record. That’s the best song.”