The Hellfire Club

museum. Now, there's a museum worth visiting. Of course it also has that Basketball Hall of Fame, if you can believe that. Have to throw the yokels a crumb now and then.'

'Basketball was okay when white people still played it, but look what happened. Overgrown glandular cases took over, and now it's all exhibitionism. Sportsmanship? Forget it, there's no sportsmanship in the ghetto, and basketball is only the ghetto with big paychecks. All part of the decline in public morality. My father - you think he cares who really wrote Night Journey? His idea of good literature is a copy of American Lawyer with his picture on the cover. You should see what goes on at Dart, Morris - the bill padding, the Concorde flights we charge to the client. What gets me, they don't see the humor in this stuff, they chug down two bottles of Dom Peignon and stuff themselves with caviar at what they call a conference, bill the client five hundred bucks for the dinner, and don't even think it's funny! No wonder people hate lawyers. Compared to the other guys, I'm a paragon. I take care of my old ladies. If I bill them for lunch, it's because during that lunch we talked about business. It isn't all Danielle Steel and Emily Dickinson, you know.'

They had been driving aimlessly through the outskirts of Springfield, Dart scanning both sides of the streets for a motel as he talked.

'Take Shelley Dolkis here. Delivered dildos and inflatable dolls to guys too feeble to have sex with other people. Even the sex industry has a hierarchy, and Shelley was on the bottom end - the jerk-off end. But if he could talk, he'd tell you he provided a necessary service. If people didn't have access to his products, why, they'd go out and commit rape!'

'I suppose you're right,' Nora said.

'Whole thing comes down to having the balls to be completely straight about being crooked. The guy who runs for the Senate and says he wants the job so he can screw the aides, stuff his pockets with payoff money, take a lot of drugs, and swim naked with a couple of strippers, that's the guy who gets my vote. This country founded on fairness? A bunch of other guys owned it, and we took it. Wasn't there a little thing called the Boston Tea Party? Suppose you came to Connecticut in 1750 and happened to see a nice plot of land on the Sound with half a dozen Pequot Indians living on it. Did you say, too bad, guess I'll move inland? You killed the Indians and got your land. You lived in Westerholm a couple of years. Ever see any Pequots? The same things happen over and over. History books lie about it, teachers lie about it, and for sure politicians lie about it. Last thing they want is an educated public.'

'Yes.'

'This is a happy time for me. I'm a lot more sensitive than most people think I am, and you're beginning to see that side of me.'

'That's true,' Nora said.

'And here's a place that will suit our little family just fine.'

A shabby row of cabins stood at the top of a rise. Numbered doors lined a platform walkway. A neon sign at the entrance to the parking lot said HILLSIDE MOTEL.

'Hillside, like the strangler,' Dick said. He pulled up in front of the last unit and patted the corpse's cheek. 'Relax for a moment, Shelley, while Nora and I secure our accommodations.'

An ancient Sikh accepted twenty-five dollars and shoved a key across the counter without leaving his chair or taking his eyes off the Indian musical blaring from the television set on his desk.

'Nora, Nora,' Dart said as they walked on creaking boards back toward their car and Sheldon Dolkis. 'As they say in beer commercials, does it get any better than this?'

'How could it?' Nora said.

'You and me and a big fat dead man.' He slid the key into the door of the last room. 'Let's have a look at our bower.'

An overhead light in a rice-paper bubble feebly illuminated a bed covered with a yellow blanket, a battered wooden dresser, and two green plastic chairs at a card table. Worn matting covered the floor. 'Nora, if this room could talk, what tales it would tell.'

'Suicides and adulteries,' Nora said, and felt a dim flicker of terror. This was not the kind of thing the person inside the bubble was supposed to say.

But she had not displeased Dick Dart. 'You get more interesting with every word you say. When you were in Vietnam, were you raped?'

She collapsed against the wall. Davey couldn't figure it out in two years of marriage, and Dick Dart saw it in about twenty-four hours.

He glanced outside. 'After we escort Shelley into this lovely room, I have a story to tell you.'

Back outside. Dart opened the passenger door and put his hand on Dolkis's shoulder. The dead man was regarding the roof of his car as if it were showing a porn movie. 'Shelley, old boy, time for a short stroll. Nora- sweetie, what I am going to do is pull him toward me, and I want you to get up behind him and catch him under the other arm.

Dart leaned into the car and pulled the dead man's head and shoulders into the sunlight. 'Get set, don't want lo drop him.' Nora wedged herself next to the car and bent down. The dead man's suit was the oily green of a Greek olive and stank of cigarette smoke. 'Here we go,' Dart said. The suit jerked sideways. She lifted the arm and edged in close to the body. 'Good hard pull,' said Dart. The body lifted off the car seat, and its feet snagged. A soft noise came from the open mouth. 'Don't complain, Shelley,' Dart said. He reared back, and Dolkis's feet slid over the flange. One of his shoes came off. 'Walky walky,' Dart said.

They dragged him inside. At the far end of the bed, Dart lowered his side of the body and let go. The weight on Nora's back slipped away, and the body's forehead smacked against the rattan carpet. Dart rolled the corpse over and patted the bulging gut. 'Good boy.' He untied the twisted necktie and threw it aside, then unbuttoned the shirt and pulled it out of the trousers. A thin line of dark hair ran up the mound beneath the sternum and down into the dimple of the navel. Dart unbuckled the belt and undid the trouser button.

'What are you doing?' Nora asked.

'Undressing him,' He yanked down the zipper, moved to the lower end of the body, pulled off the remaining shoe, and peeled the socks off the plump feet. He yanked at the trouser cuffs. The body slid a couple of inches toward him before the trousers came away, exposing white shorts with old stains on the crotch. Dart reached into the left front trouser pocket and extracted a crumpled handkerchief and a key ring, both of which he threw under the table. From the right pocket he withdrew a brass money clip and a small brown vial with a plastic spoon attached to the top.

'Shelley took coke! Do you suppose he actually tried to get a heart attack?' He unscrewed the cap and peered into the bottle. 'Selfish bastard used it all up,' The bottle hit the floor and rolled beneath Nora's chair. 'I have to get some things out of the car.'

Dart strode out into the dazzling light. Grateful to be powerless, to feel nothing, Nora heard the trunk of the car open, the rustle of bags, a lengthy silence. A blue jay screamed. The trunk slammed down. A dignified, doctorly man carried a lot of bags into the room and became Dick Dart.

He hitched up his trousers, knelt beside the body, and arranged the bags in a row beside him. From the first he dumped out his knives. From the second he removed a pair of scissors. He took the half-empty vodka bottle from the third, removed the cap, winked at Nora, and took a long pull, which he swished around in his mouth before swallowing. He shuddered, took a second drink, and replaced the cap. 'Anesthesia. Want some?'

She shook her head.

Dart walked up the body and levered the trunk upright. 'Give me a hand.'

When the body was naked except for underpants. Dart rummaged through the suit pockets: a ballpoint pen, a pocket comb gray with scum, a black address book. He threw these toward the wastebasket, then noticed the money clip on the floor beside him. 'My God. I forgot to count the money.' He pulled out the bills. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, ninety, a hundred, a hundred and ten, four singles. Why don't you take it?'

'Me?'

'A woman's incomplete without money.' He folded the bills into the clip, scooped coins from the floor, and dropped it all into her palm. 'Nora-pie, would you be so kind as to go into the bathroom and tear down the shower curtain?'

She went into the bathroom and groped for the switch. Glaring light bounced from the walls, white floor, and mirror. A translucent curtain hung down over the side of the white porcelain tub. Nora reached up and tore at the curtain. One by one, plastic rings popped off the rail.