easy reach. De Gier studied the skin on Tom's hand, soft skin covered with tiny, very blond hairs. A good knife with a thin, wicked blade. He had fought men with knives before. But to a fight a man who holds a knife takes concentration, and he wouldn't be able to watch what the others were doing. Tom threw the match into a carton filled with garbage and picked up his beer can. He drank, looking straight ahead. The fox fellow was tracing a crack in the counter with his forefinger. Albert had closed his eyes and was whistling. Madelin was reading the label on her beer can. De Gier smoked and rearranged his purchases, the processed cheese in front of the carton of crackers. He stacked the candy bars and put the carton of cigarettes on top and the peanuts on top of the cigarettes. He unscrewed the plastic flashlight and inserted the two batteries. He flicked it on. It worked. He flicked it off again. The cigarette had come to its end and he dropped the stub on the floor, rubbing it out with the heel of his boot. Nothing happened for the next ten minutes. Albert's whistled song repeated itself endlessly. A monotonous theme, but quite exact. De Gier listened to every repetition. He wasn't particularly worried. He had found the answer to the puzzle. There was nothing he could do but wait. There was nothing the enemy could do but wait. They would have to outwait each other. But the enemy was several steps ahead of him. The enemy could drink beer and be together, he could do nothing and he was alone. And the enemy could call the end of the game.
What next? Another cigarette? But he had just put one out. He felt in the side pocket of his jacket and his hand came up with an Amsterdam bus ticket. He held the ticket at arm's length and read its text: 'This ticket is valid on the day of issue for any distance on an Amsterdam streetcar or bus including transfers provided that…' He crumpled the ticket and threw it into the garbage carton. Not too interesting, no plot, no characters. He glanced at the enemy. The enemy wasn't doing anything in particular, but Albert still whistled. Even so, there had been some subtle change. Albert's pouted lips blew a variation on the theme and his foot tapped twice. The taps seemed to set off the fox fellow, who got up, walked to a position halfway between the counter and the door, and began to click his fingers. Madeira's right hand became a fist, and her knuckles hit the warped and stained counter. Tom did something too. He picked up his knife, turned it around, and made the handle repeatedly touch his beer can. The sounds didn't blend at first, but Albert's whistling became a little louder and he held a note, broke it, and held it again. The rhythm fell into place.
De Gier got off his stool and unbuttoned his jacket. The enemy turned toward its prey, but the whistling, clicking, knocking, and rapping continued. De Gier's hand reached into his inside pocket and produced a flat black leather case. The whistling stopped, then started again. He opened the case and took out a small metal flute and screwed its two gleaming parts together. He blew his first note. It fitted into a missed beat of the knocks and clicks, and the sergeant breathed in, held his breath for four bars, and blew a higher, much longer note. When it broke, Albert's whistling caught up and spread and de Gier made the flute go down and become the whistle's shadow. He wouldn't dominate the enemy, he would be content to follow. He knew the tune. 'Straight, No Chaser.' A very good tune, created and played by the best musicians on the Coast and in New York City. He had the tune on at least twelve records. He had played it often with Adjutant Grijpstra accompanying on his old set of drums. But perhaps the present rhythm section was more of a challenge than the methodical approach the adjutant, the faraway adjutant, had offered on previous occasions. He knew the adjutant's style well and liked to adjust to Grijpstra's ways, but the enemy was new and bound to produce surprises, sudden changes, a whole new way of making use of the tune's possibilities.
He started the high note again but cut it into slivers and got back into the theme, repeating it to give the others a chance to fit in. Madelin was the first to start the chant. There was a word to the chant: Cannonball. Tom chanted with her, using the word's syllables to stress the main theme of the tune. Madelin's voice reminded the sergeant of the iced landscape he had seen in the Orca road surface, but the emptiness was no longer void. There were beings in it now, transparent and floating. The hoarse, thin voice of the fox fellow gave the beings more form and de Gier began to recognize some of the creatures on the edges of his mind, but not quite, for they were of his dreams and wouldn't enter into actual, definable existence. Can-non-ball. The word seemed logical, the only word that could be used in the chant. He remembered that he should follow rather than lead and Albert's whistling filled the store again, reaching into its dark corners. Tom had left his protected nook by vaulting across the counter. He no longer held his knife and the beer can. The fox fellow was no longer clicking his fingers. The chant had become powerful. Even quiet Albert was chanting, and Madelin's voice rose and broke die limitations of the room. She sang the last syllable of the chant's word. Ball. High and eerie but also sweet. A holy sound, de Gier thought, but truly holy, cleansed of the goodness that clings to angels and saints, approaching the purity that can no longer be named.
He was facing the door when it opened and the sheriff and chief deputy came in and stood between the shelves holding giant cola bottles that formed a corridor into the store. The store's scanty light reflected in the blue metal of their guns and the silver badges on their Boy Scout tunics. The tune halted abruptly when the flute dropped away from de Gier's lips, and Tom vaulted back to his place behind the counter. He faced his customers and smiled.
'What can I do for the law this evening?'
'Any sandwiches left, Tom?'
'Yes, sheriff. Turkey or salami? Eat here or take out?'
'Turkey. What do you want, Bernie?'
'Turkey.'
'Turkey, twice, to take out.'
The sandwiches appeared from the depths of the refrigerator and looked fresh and tasty. Tom wrapped them, pulling the plastic from a slit in the counter, pulling and cutting the thin film in a single movement. The sheriff paid and the two men turned and began to walk back to the cruiser waiting under the awning, partly visible through the door's glass. The cruiser's wide nose nudged the timid shape of de Gier's Dodge.
'Evening, sergeant,' the sheriff said as he eased his way past de Gier. 'See you later in the jailhouse. I still have an hour of patrol to get through with.'
De Gier nodded. The door closed and a hand touched his wrist. He looked up into the light yellow brown eyes of the fox fellow. The door's key rested in the fox fellow's outstretched hand. De Gier took the key, walked to the door, inserted the key into the lock and turned it. There was a click, but no latch moved out of the lock.
'A trick lock?'
'No, just old.'
'You have used it before?'
The fox smiled, a pleasant slow smile. 'Not too often. It tends to upset people.'
'Sergeant?'
Tom had joined them. He held a brown paper bag. 'Your things. The bag is on the house. I like your flute, come again.'
The fox laughed. 'You don't have to say that, Tom. You've got the only grocery store.'
De Gier carried his bag to the door. The girl slipped past him and opened it.
'Thank you.'
'Do you remember where I live, sergeant?'
He remembered. The house behind the realtor's office. He also remembered that her father had gone to the Bahamas.
'Yes.'
'I'll be waiting for you.'
Her feet hardly touched the snow as her slender body, wrapped in a tight fur coat, flitted to a large car parked in the yard by the store.
When he switched the Dodge's radio on the sheriff was talking to the deputy called Bert. 'But we've got to get eggs, Bert. You know that the egg truck overturned. Robert's Market won't have any eggs for a week. The prisoners want eggs for breakfast.'
'I can't get them, Jim. I tried. Nobody has eggs to spare, it's winter. They've slaughtered most of the chickens.' The radio crackled.
'I may get some duck eggs from Smithtown. Would the prisoners eat duck eggs, Jim?'
'Get duck eggs, Bert. Get them tonight. Ten four.'
'Sheriff,' Bert said. 'Jim, please. That's thirty miles each way and the roads are bad. Maybe he's out of eggs too. He's got no phone. You don't want me to go nowhere for nothing, Jim.'
