Nobody Runs Forever

around her torso below the breasts, to give support to a two-week-old broken rib caused by the violent husband. The last broken rib he would ever inflict on Isabelle; they drank to that, too.

And then they made love, very carefully, the doctor choosing the positions with great delicacy so as not to interfere with the healing of her rib. He was considerate, and he was knowledgeable, and she was grateful, which she demonstrated in a number of ways.

Once the armaments had been unloaded from Briggs’s van, Dalesia drew him a map to show the route back to Trails End Motor Inne, and Briggs shook hands all around.

“I’ll be in touch,” Parker said.

“Good hunting,” Briggs told them all, then got into his van, backed away to where he could turn around, and drove out of there.

Everything was now on the concrete factory floor: the guns lying atop their blankets, the rockets and the Commando ammunition still in their liquor boxes. McWhitney stooped to pick up one of the Commandos and sight along it, aiming at the driver’s door on his pickup. “It would be nice,” he said, cheek against the metal of the gun, “if they’d see these things and just fold the hand. Give it up. Open the doors, get out of the way.”

Dalesia said, “Never happen. Everybody’s gotta be a hero for just one second. Then they fold like a beach chair, but first they gotta make you go that one step too far. That way, they can think back on it without being embarrassed about themselves.”

“The only thing they can do that’s really stupid,” Parker said, “is try to shoot at us.”

“Shoot at us, you mean,” McWhitney said. “You’re gonna be in the police car.”

“It’s still stupid,” Parker said.

In another room in the Green Man Motel, down the hall from Dr. Madchen and his love, Sandra Loscalzo came in from her early solitary dinner and immediately switched on her scanners. She would now pick up any police radio transmission anywhere within twelve miles of here.

Those guys had wanted two days to finish whatever it was they were doing. She was interested in that. Without endangering herself, there might be a way to include herself into whatever was about to go down.

Sandra had once heard a definition of a lawyer that she liked a lot. It said: “A lawyer is somebody who finds out where money is going to change hands, and goes there.” It was a description with speed and solidity and movement, and Sandra identified with it. She wasn’t a lawyer, but she didn’t see why she couldn’t make the concept work for her.

In her room at the Green Man, among her scanners, the night blossomed with police calls. Prowlers, domestic disputes, drunken drivers, heart attacks, rowdy teenagers in parks and playgrounds, fights in bars. None of them were her three guys. Not yet.

The sequence at the Deer Hill Bank party was first cocktails and shmoozing until eight, then dinner, then the speeches. Elaine Langen got just drunk enough in the initial phase of the evening to have no appetite for the second, so she ate practically nothing of dinner. However, with the prospect of the speeches still out in front of her, she did keep on drinking.

Wendy couldn’t be physically present in the hospital after visiting hours, but she could phone Jake and did, after tidying the mobile home and eating her frugal dinner. “Jake,” she started, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Don’t,” Jake said. He’d been thinking, too, and every thought he had led directly to a dead end. A solid wall. A black hole.

“No, listen, Jake,” she said. “You and me, we’ve had our differences over the years, but we’re still brother and sister, we can still take care of each other.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”

“The first thing you don’t want to do,” she told him, “is that. No giving up.”

He made a face at the blank television screen. Maybe there was something he could watch there after all. “Yeah?”

“What you want to do tomorrow,” she advised him, “when they come around, you just deny everything.”

“That’s what I figured to do. If they come around.”

“They will, Jake. And when they do, no matter what they say, no matter what anybody at the motel says, you just deny it all.”

“There’s only two people at the motel,” he said, “you know, that could be, whatever, and I trust those people.”

“You’re a trusting man, Jake,” she said. “That’s a good quality in you, but sometimes it can get you in trouble. You know what I mean.”

“Let me go on trusting them, all right? As long as I can, let me go on trusting somebody.”

“You can trust me, Jake,” she said. “Listen, this is a terrible thing that’s happening, but if it has to happen this is a good time for it. I’ve got good money from the beast”—her unaffectionate term for her ex—“and tomorrow morning I’ll go out first thing and get you a lawyer. A good lawyer.”

“No, no, no,” he said. “You don’t do that first, then they wonder, how come you got a lawyer already before anybody came around?”

“Oh,” she said. “All right. But as soon as you need a lawyer, trust me, I can pay for a good one.”

“Thank you, Wendy.”

“Maybe he can do some sort of plea bargain for you,” she said. “If you know useful stuff on those guys.”

“Useful stuff?”

“Jake,” she said, “you want as little jail time as you can possibly—”

“I don’t want any jail time!” His heart was suddenly pounding so loudly he could hear it in his ears, as though it were coming through the telephone.