Koko

with dull unexpectant waiting. “You want to tell your story, so tell it.”

“Did we interrupt your work, Mrs. Dengler?” Maggie asked.

A gleam of satisfaction. “I turned off my stove. It can wait. You people are here. You know what I think? We trained him more than most would, and some didn’t care for what we did. You can’t put your faith in what others say. Muffin Street is a world like many others. Muffin Street is real. You go ahead now.”

“Mrs. Dengler,” Tim said, “your son was a wonderful human being. He was a hero under fire, and more than that, he was compassionate and inventive—”

“You think backwards,” she broke in. “Oh, my. Backwards. Inventive? You mean he made things up. Isn’t that part of the original trouble? Would there have been a trial, if he hadn’t made things up?”

“I would never defend his being court-martialed,” Tim said, “but I don’t think you can blame it on him, either.”

“Imagination has to be stopped. You’re talking about imagination. You have to put an end to that. That’s one thing I know. And Karl knew it, up until the day he passed away.” She turned almost in agitation to look at the rows of identical grape clusters, each grape with its identical flare of light within. “Well. Go on. You want to. You came all the way to do it.”

Underhill talked about Dragon Valley, and the stories that had eased George Spitalny at first left her unmoved, then seemed to distress her. Pink crept into the whiteness of her face: her eyes zapped into Poole’s, and he saw that it was not distress that made her flush, but anger.

So much for the gods of storytelling, he thought.

“Manny’s behavior was fantastic, and he mocked his officer. Behavior should never be fantastic, and he should have respected the officer.”

“The whole situation was a little fantastic,” Underhill said.

“That is what people say when they try to excuse themselves. Wherever the boy was, he should have acted as if he were on Muffin Street. Pride is a sin. We would have punished him.”

Poole could feel Tim’s anger and sorrow even through Maggie Lah, who sat between them.

“Mrs. Dengler,” Maggie said, “a moment ago you said that Manny was a good boy, considering where he came from.”

The old woman lifted her head like an animal sniffing the wind. Unmistakable pleasure shone through her round eyeglasses. “Little girls can listen, can’t they?”

“You didn’t mean Muffin Street, did you?”

“Manny didn’t come from Muffin Street. So.”

Maggie waited for what was to come next, and Poole wondered what it would be. Mars? Russia? Heaven?

“Manny came from the gutter,” Mrs. Dengler said. “We took that boy out of the gutter and we gave him a home. We gave him our name. We gave him our religion. We fed him and we clothed him. Does that sound like the work of bad people? Do you think bad people would have done that for an abandoned little boy?”

“You adopted him?”

Underhill was leaning backwards against the stiff plastic, staring intently at Helga Dengler.

“We adopted that poor abandoned child and we gave him new life. Do you think his mother could have had my coloring? Are you such fools? Karl was blond too, before he went grey. Karl was an angel of God, with his yellow hair and his flowing beard! Yes! I will show you.”

She all but hopped to her feet, glowered down at them with her X-ray eyes, and left the room. It was like a grotesque parody of their evening with the Spitalnys. “Did he ever say anything to you about being adopted?” Poole asked.

Underhill shook his head.

“Manuel Orosco Dengler,” Maggie said. “You must have known something was going on.”

“We never called him that,” Poole said.

Mrs. Dengler opened the door, admitting a whiff of the odor of damp wood along with herself. She was clutching an old photograph album made of pressed cardboard treated to resemble leather. The corners and edges had frayed, showing the blunted grey edges of the layers of compressed paper. She came forward eagerly, open- mouthed, like a wronged defendant to the judge. “Now you see my Karl,” she said, opening the album to an early page and turning it around to face them.

The photograph took up nearly the entire page. It might have been taken a hundred years earlier. A tall man with lank pale hair that hung past his ears and a pale unruly beard glared at the camera. He was thin but broad- shouldered and wore a dark suit that hung on him like a sack. He looked driven, haunted, intense. The nature of this man’s religion rose off the photograph like steam. Where his wife’s eyes looked through you to another world, dismissing everything between herself and it, his looked straight into hell and condemned you to it.

“Karl was a man of God,” Helga said. “You can see that plainly. He was chosen. My Karl was not a lazy man. You can see that too. He was not soft. He never shirked his duty, not even when his duty was to stand on a street corner in below zero weather. The News would not wait for fine weather, and it needed a hard, dedicated man to tell it, and that was my Karl. So we needed help. Someday we would be old. But we didn’t know what was going to happen to us!” She was panting, and her eyes bulged behind the round glasses. Again Poole felt that her body was gathering density, pulling into it all the air in the room and along with it all that ever was or ever would be right or moral, leaving them forever in the wrong.

“Who were his parents?” Poole heard Underhill ask, and knew that she would misunderstand.

“Fine people. Who would have had such a son? Strong people. Karl’s father was also a butcher, he taught him the trade, and Karl taught Manny the trade so that Manny could work for us while we did the Lord’s own work. We raised him from the gutter and gave him eternal life, so. He was to work for us and provide for our old age.”

“I see,” said Underhill, bending forward slightly to glance at Michael. “We’d also like to know something about your son’s parents.”

Mrs. Dengler folded the photograph album shut and laid it across her lap. Some of the musty smell had permeated the cardboard, and for a moment the odor eddied about them.

“He didn’t have parents.” She gleamed at them, self-satisfaction personified. “Not the way real people do, not like Karl and me. Manny was born out of wedlock. His mother, Rosita, sold her body. One of those women. She delivered the baby in Mount Sinai Hospital and abandoned him there, just walked out as fancy as you please, and the baby had a viral infection—he nearly died. Many did, but did he? My husband and I prayed for him, and he did not die. Rosita Orosco died a few weeks later. Beaten to death. Do you think the boy’s father killed her? Manny was Spanish only on his mother’s side, that’s what Karl and I always thought. So you see what I mean. He had neither mother nor father.”

“Was Manny’s father one of his mother’s customers?” Underhill asked.

“We did not think about it.”

“But you said that you did not think the father was Spanish … Latin American.”

“Well.” Helga Dengler shifted on the stool, and her eyes changed weather. “He had a good side to balance the bad.”

“How did you come to adopt him?”

“Karl heard about the poor baby.”

“How did he hear? Had you gone to adoption agencies?”

“Of course not. I think the woman came to him. Rosita Orosco. My husband’s church work brought many low, unhappy people to us, begging for their souls to be saved.”

“Did you see Rosita Orosco at the church services?”

Now she planted both feet on the floor and stared at him. She seemed to be breathing through her skin. Nobody spoke for an excruciating time.

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Mrs. Dengler,” Underhill finally said.

“We had white people at our services,” she said in a low, slow, even voice. “Sometimes we had Catholics. But they were always good people. Polishers. They can be as good as anyone else.”

“I see,” Underhill said. “You never saw Manny’s mother at your services.”