the concentration camp guards came from, or the Albanian secret police, or the men who poured the hemlock into Socrates’ mouth.”
“He drank it himself,” I said.
“Well, if the Athenian cops were anything like Spurrier, it was the wisest course of action. He browbeat poor Christy until it was a wonder Christy had any brow left. Every question got asked thirty-two times, one for each tooth, like it was some sort of chewing rule. And he kept smiling at me and calling me ‘little lady,’ as though we were on the same side in some loathsome conspiracy.”
“How’d Christy take it?”
“He’ll survive. He tires so easily, though. If it hadn’t been for Alan, I don’t think he would have made it. Alan, as Wayde might say, is way cool. He treated Spurrier like something that had just crawled onto land and needed a good kick back into the drink.”
“Where’s Christy going to stay?”
“With Alan and his friend tonight. Tomorrow, he said he might check into a hotel. I told him what you said about staying away from the house.”
“He can go back tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow’s Monday, the day Nite Line will hit the streets-
“What vivid language.”
“-and our killer will know Christy doesn’t have his damn tags.”
“Our killer,” she said dryly. “Spurrier made Christy look at pictures of Max.”
“He’s a gob of phlegm,” I said. “Write about it.”
“I can’t. They’re giving it to someone on the police beat. Thank you very much, now butt out. How does someone turn into Spurrier?”
“Bitterness,” I said. “He’s only got one sport coat.”
“I’m serious.”
“How do I know? Some cops get like that. Some people become cops because they’re already like that. As Harry Golden once said about an anti-Semite, maybe his teeth hurt.”
“Well, I’m going to shower him off.”
“I tried that once,” I said. “It took a lot of water. What are you doing after your shower?”
“I don’t know. Get dirty, I guess.”
“Want to have dinner?”
She paused. I pictured her curling the phone cord around her index ringer, something she doesn’t know she does. She’s always wondering why the cord gets knots in it. “I’d considered it.”
“With me.”
“A girl lives clean for months,” she said, “deferring worldly pleasures in the pure faith that saintly conduct will be rewarded, and the world does not disappoint.”
“Is that a yes?”
“What language do you think in?” she asked. “Of course it’s a yes.”
“We can work on my English,” I said.
“You have more pressing problems. Eight o’clock?”
“Eight’s great, mate,” I said.
“I’ve got to learn to hang up earlier,” she said, hanging up.
The phone rang again immediately. “Listen to this,” Jack said. Then he read me Max’s letters. They were even better than I’d hoped.
“How did you do it?”
“Have you got Microsoft Word?”
“No. WordPerfect.”
“Well,” he said with leaden patience, “import the document.”
“I’ve got it on my screen.” I carried the phone to the computer and sat down.
“Okay, go into fonts. Wait, wait, highlight the document first. Do you know how to do that?”
“Yes, Jack,” I said through my teeth, “I know how to do that.”
“Got it?”
“Hold it. Okay.”
“Go into fonts. Choose roman, choose anything. Nah, choose roman. That’s all Max did, the old codger. He wrote his letter, printed it, mailed it, and then saved a file copy in a nonalphabetic font called Monotype Sorts. Talk about transparent codes.”
We shared a hearty laugh over how transparent the code was. I picked roman from the menu, and when the menu box cleared, I was looking at Max Grover’s last letter.
Mr. Phillip Crenshaw
P.O. Box 332
Kearney, NE 68849
Dear Phillip:
You’re a brave young man and a sweet one. I’m enclosing the cash for your ticket to a new life. I only hope I can help you find your feet here in the big city.
It’s not as bad as you’ve heard, especially if you have friends. I’m an old man, but I have a lifetime’s worth of friends. I know they’ll want to help you as much as I do.
Godspeed,
Max
P.S.
I’ll be at the gate with bells on (and your uncle’s dog tags, too).
“Think that’s the guy?” Jack asked.
“I know it is,” I said. Phillip Crenshaw.
Kearney, Nebraska. Farm boy territory.
19 ~ Typhoon
“Do you honestly think he’ll come?” Eleanor was wearing a scoop-necked sleeveless silk top the color of fresh salmon, an antique necklace of silver, marcasites, and jet, and four thin black bracelets that kept sliding up her arm like designer shackles. Those bracelets had prompted a number of perverse fantasies in the past, and from the way I kept drifting away from the topic, they hadn’t lost their power.
“Will he dare not to come?” I asked. “Maybe. But look what he’s done already. He risked his life to go back to the house to get the tags, and he went crazy when he couldn’t find them. He called me at home and actually left his number on my machine.”
“A number in an empty apartment.”
“Still, there were other people around, tenants, the manager. The sheriffs have a description now. Whatever information is on the tags, it’s more dangerous to him than a physical description. Max’s letter says they belonged to his uncle, but of course the kid told him that, and I don’t think we should put too much credence in anything the kid says. Whoever they belonged to, though, there’s a connection, a big look here sign that points right at him. He needs to get them back.”
“You don’t think they were his?”
“I don’t think he’s old enough to have been in the military. And I think they belong to someone he hates.”
Eleanor had decided on Typhoon, a modishly upscale pan-Asian restaurant that occupied the old control tower of a private airport and drew an unnaturally good-looking, semicelebrity clientele. It had been crowded when
