The Ghostway

take him to court. Did I know you couldn't collect a gambling debt in court?'

Vaggan had just listened. The Man was very, very angry.

'I said I'd turn it over to my collection, and he said screw my collection. He said try to get tough with him and I'd end up in the pen.'

'So you want a kneecap broken?'

'Something or other,' the Man said. 'Whatever is appropriate. But I want people to know about it. Too many deadbeats saying sue me. Let's get some publicity out of Leonard. Cut down on the bad debts.'

'Whether or not we get the money?'

'I don't mean kill him,' the Man said. 'Kill him, I'm out a hunnert and twenty grand and interest. He ain't gonna name me in his will.'

Vaggan didn't respond to that. He sat easily in the telephone booth, receiver to his ear, and watched a woman trying to back a Cadillac into a space at the shopping center across the street. He let the silence tick away. Better to let the Man start the next phase of the negotiations.

'Vaggan,' he said at last. 'There'd be a bonus for the publicity.'

'I can see that,' Vaggan said. 'What you're asking me to do is sort of challenge the cops to do something about it. Roughing up Leonard is one thing. Roughing him up so it's public is like daring 'em to catch me. And if I do it right, I'm putting myself out of the collection business. All you have to do is mention Jay Leonard and they hand you a cashier's check.'

'What's fair?' the Man asked.

'I'd say all of it,' Vaggan said. 'You lose the Leonard money but you make the point with everybody else. All of it, if I really do it right. I mean, make the TV news shows, and the Times. Get a big splash.'

They argued for a while, haggling, each man objecting. But they settled on a price. Several prices, actually, depending on the nature of the publicity and on Leonard paying up promptly. Even the lowest one was enough to pay for putting in the reinforced concrete storage house that Vaggan was going to build into the hillside next to his place. It made the lost $50 dog deposit seem reasonable.

Vaggan glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes now. He put down the book. The wind gusted against the van, shaking it on its springs and battering it with a barrage of twigs and whatever the dry Santa Ana gale picked up from the lush lawns of Beverly Hills. The sound of Gotterdammerung muttered from the speakers—turned low in the interest of safety but, at this thunderous point in the opera, loud enough to be heard over the storm. The passage always moved Vaggan. The Twilight of the Gods, the end of the decayed old order, the cleansing. Blood, death, fire, chaos, honor, and new beginnings. 'Nietzsche for thought, Wagner for music,' his father would say. 'Most of the rest of it is for niggers.' His father…

He turned his thoughts instantly from that, glanced at the watch again. He would leave a little early. He slipped off his shoes, pulled the chest-high waders from their box, and slipped his legs into them, the splint on his left forefinger making the action clumsy. Vaggan hated the splint for reminding him of his moment of carelessness. But the finger had healed quickly, and he'd soon be done with the bandage. Meanwhile, he'd not think about it. 'Think about your strength,' the Commander had said. 'Forget weaknesses.' The waders were heavy with the equipment he had stuffed in their pouch. He pulled the rubber over his hips and adjusted the suspenders. Even in the waders he was graceful. Vaggan exercised. He ran. He lifted weights. He weighed 228 pounds, and every ounce of it was conditioned to do its job.

Vaggan picked up the canvas airline bag he used to carry his bulkier equipment, locked the van behind him, and walked slowly up the sidewalk, getting accustomed to the clumsy waders. At the corner, the view opened before him. The lights of Los Angeles, bright even at 3 a.m., spread below. Vaggan thought of a luminescent southern sea, and then of the phosphorescence of decay. An apt thought. He shuffled along on the waders' felt soles, keeping silent, keeping in the shadows, looking at the glow of sleeping Los Angeles. The glow of a rotting civilization. One day soon it would be sterilized, burned clean. Very soon. The article he'd clipped from Survival estimated fourteen Soviet warheads targeted on the Greater Los Angeles area, including lax, the port at Long Beach, and the city center, and the attendant military installations and industrial areas. Hydrogen bombs. They would clean the valley. When it was over, and safe again, he could climb these hills at night and look down into clean, quiet darkness.

The dogs heard him coming or perhaps—despite the wind—smelled his scent. They were waiting for him at the fence. He examined them while he extracted his wire cutter and his pipe wrench from the wader pouch. The dogs stared back, ears forward, tense and expectant. The smaller one, the female, whined, and whined again, and made a quick move toward the wire, drawing her lips back in a snarl. The Santa Ana had blown clouds and smog out to sea, as it always did, and there was enough late moon to reflect from white, waiting teeth. Vaggan pulled on his heavy leather gauntlets and snipped the first wire. The dogs wouldn't bark. He was sure of that now.

He had made sure on his second visit to the fence, taking along the cardboard box with the cat in it. The cat was a big Siamese tom which Vaggan had adopted at the Animal Shelter in Culver City—paying $28 to cover the cost of license, shots, and neutering. The dogs had charged the fence, standing tense, and the cat had smelled them. He had scratched and struggled inside the box so frantically that Vaggan had to put it on the ground and hold the lid down with one hand while he cut the cord holding it. Then he had thrown the box over the fence.

The cat had emerged in midair. It landed running and lasted a minute or so. Vaggan had wanted to learn if the dogs' training to silence would hold even during the excitement of an attack. It had. They had killed the cat with no more sound than their breathing. He had also learned something useful about how they worked. The female was the leader. She struck, and then the big male went in for the kill. Instinct, probably. It hardly seemed to Vaggan that it was something animals could be taught.

Vaggan's sentiments, oddly for him, had been with the cat. For the cat was the foredoomed loser in this affair, and Vaggan had no regard for losing, or for those who did it. Vaggan, however, admired cats, respected their self- sufficient independence. He identified with that.

Often, in fact, he thought of himself as a cat. In the world that would come after the missiles and the radiation he would live as a predator, as would everyone who survived more than a week or so. Cats were first-rate predators, requiring no pack to hunt, and Vaggan found them worthy of his study.

Vaggan had started clippping wires at the bottom of the fence, wanting to be standing erect when he had cut enough to make it possible for the dogs to attack. But the dogs made no move. They waited, skittish and eager, aware that Vaggan was the enemy, wanting the wire out of the way for what was inevitable.

He clipped the last wire, holding the severed fence between him and the Dobermans. He dropped the clippers,