Koko

surface of the house, green pebbly asphalt paper had been applied, and flaps had begun to peel away from the door and windows. Poole pushed the bell. The smell of chocolate surprised him again.

“Just a sweet and sour kind of town,” Underhill said.

“Sweet ‘n’ sour,” Maggie said.

The door opened, and a short stocky man with thinning black hair plastered straight back against his skull frowned through the storm door. He was wearing khaki trousers and a clean, starched khaki work shirt with double front pockets. His hard little eyes scanned the two men and stopped moving when they reached Maggie. He had not expected anything like her, and he did not really recover until she smiled at him. He gave Poole a dark look, then broke down and cracked the storm door open a few inches.

“You the people who called?”

“Mr. Spitalny?” Poole asked. “May we come in?”

George Spitalny pushed open the storm door and stood there propping it open and scowling until the three visitors had edged around him into the entry. Poole smelled sausage and boiled cabbage. “Go on,” Spitalny’s father said, “I gotta close the door.” Everybody jostled together to allow it to swing closed. “In there.”

Poole followed Maggie and Underhill through a doorway into a living room where an anxious-looking woman in a flowered housedress stood clutching her hands before a sofa covered in plastic. Her face froze when she saw Maggie, and her eyes darted toward her husband. George Spitalny stayed in the entrance, unwilling to help. It was clear that both of them had been sitting on the sofa, staring out the window, waiting for a car to pull up, and now that the company had come neither one of them knew what to do.

Maggie stepped forward and held out her hand to Mrs. Spitalny. She introduced the two men, who also stepped forward.

Mr. Spitalny hurriedly shook the hands of the men, and said, “Well, I guess you better take a pew.” He moved to a large green recliner and hitched up his trouser legs before he sat down. Maggie, still smiling for all she was worth, sat down next to Mrs. Spitalny.

“Well,” George Spitalny said.

“You have a beautiful home, Mrs. Spitalny,” said Maggie.

“It suits us. What did you say your name was?”

“Maggie Lah.”

Margaret Spitalny tentatively held out her hand toward Maggie, then realized that she had already shaken her hand, and snatched her hand back.

“Still snowing, is it?” she asked.

Her husband looked out the window. “Stopped.”

“Oh. My.”

“Couple hours back.”

Poole realized that he was looking at a photograph of Governor George Wallace, beaming from his wheelchair in the midst of a crowd. Porcelain deer, gnomes, and dairy maids stood on a round table beside him. The floor had been covered with green linoleum. Everything was very clean.

George Spitalny took another shuttered look at Maggie, then frowned down at his shoes on the bright linoleum.

These people had no idea of how to act when other people were in their house, Poole realized. If it had not been for Maggie, they would all still be standing inside the door.

“So you people knew Victor,” George Spitalny said. He looked at Poole, then gave another doubtful glance at Maggie.

“Dr. Poole and I served with him,” Underhill said.

“Doctor, are you?”

“Pediatrician.”

“Umm.” George pursed his lips. “Well. I still don’t know what you people expect to find. I think all this is a big waste of your time. We got nothing to say on the subject of Victor.”

“Oh, George.”

“Maybe you got something to say. I don’t know what.”

“Maybe these men would like a beer, George?”

“Got some Hamm’s,” George said.

“Please,” they said, and George walked through the door, relieved to have something to do.

“I hope you don’t think we’re wasting our time, Mrs. Spitalny,” Underhill said, leaning forward and smiling at her. In his bulky sweater and blue jeans, Underhill looked utterly at ease, and for as long as she could focus on him, Mrs. Spitalny relaxed.

“I don’t know why George said that. He’s still upset about Vic, I guess. He’s proud, you know—very proud.”

She closed her mouth and threw her eyes out of focus again as her husband returned to the room carrying three bottles of beer with water glasses upended on their necks. He held them out toward Michael, who gingerly took the first from his fingers. The second beer went to Underhill, and he kept the third for himself. Maggie gave Mrs. Spitalny another bright smile.

George Spitalny sat down and poured his beer. “Bet you don’t get this where you come from, huh? Most people around here won’t drink nothing but the local brews. It’s all Pforzheimer’s with most of your people here. They don’t know what they’re missing. And I’ve tried your New York beer. Swill, I thought. Plain swill.”

“George.”

“Wait till they try this. It’s the water that makes the difference. I always say that, it’s the water.”

“Sure it’s the water,” Underhill said. “You bet it’s the water.”

“What else could it be?”

“Did Vic have friends?” Margaret Spitalny broke in, speaking directly to Tim Underhill. “Did you people like him?”

“Well, sure he had friends,” Underhill said. “He was very close to Tony Ortega. And a lot of other people. Isn’t that true, Mike?”

“Sure,” said Poole, trying not to see Victor Spitalny attempting to saw the ear off Anthony Ortega’s corpse with his K-bar. “We were his friends. We went out on a lot of missions with Victor.”

“Victor saved their lives,” Maggie said with a smile so forced that Poole could feel its strain. “Why don’t you tell the Spitalnys about that?” Poole and Underhill looked at each other for a moment, and Maggie chimed in, “In Dragon Valley. Well, maybe he didn’t save your lives exactly, but he kept everybody calm and he followed the medic around.…”

“Oh,” Poole said. Both George and Margaret Spitalny were staring at Poole, and with a silent apology to Dengler’s ghost, he began, “Well, on Lieutenant Beevers’ first day in the field, he got lost and led us into an ambush …”

When he had finished, Margaret Spitalny said, “Vic never told us anything like that.”

“Vic never bragged about himself,” Underhill said.

“Anything else like that ever happen?” George asked.

“Did he ever tell you about the time he carried a wounded soldier named Hannapin on his back about three or four miles?”

Both Spitalnys shook their heads, absolutely riveted, and Poole told another Dengler story.

“Well, maybe the service made a man of him after all,” his father said, looking sideways at George Wallace in his wheelchair. “I believe I’ll have another beer.” He stood up and left the room again.

“God bless you, boys,” said Margaret Spitalny. “And you too, miss. Do you all work for the army?”

“No, we don’t,” said Poole. “Mrs. Spitalny, do you have any letters or postcards, or anything at all from Victor? Any photographs of him?”

“After—you know, after we heard, George took everything of Vic’s from the service and burned it. Every little scrap.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I have all the pictures from when he was little and some from high school.”

“Has he been in touch with you at all since he left the army?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Vic’s dead.”

Mr. Spitalny came through the door with more beer bottles, this time with one for Maggie. “I forgot a glass,”