'Rebecca.'
'Well, I heard you almost killed yourself after she did.'
'I thought about it, Billy. But that wasn't the first time. I don't think I'll be thinking about it much again.'
That seemed to be what Billy Rader had been digging for, and Paine was happy he had found it. Bader threw down his cigarette, and Paine watched the glow snuff out under Rader's boot.
'I imagine that don't make getting over her any easier.'
'In a way, it does.'
'Oh,' Billy Bader said. Then he said, 'Let's have one more look at the Ring Nebula in Lyra, then we'd better close this sucker up and get you to the airport. Landers means what he says. But that don't mean,' Rader continued, 'that a good ole Texan like me can't keep looking around a little for what you need to know.'
'Thanks, Billy,' Paine said as dawn began to rise. 'I was just about to ask.'
Later, as the plane climbed up in the new hot day that would get hotter, as Paine laid his head back and watched Texas fall beneath him from the window, he thought of the Ring Nebula. A gently glowing circle of yellow- orange gas, it very much resembled a ring in the darkness. A ring meant many things. Sometimes it meant emptiness. He had worn a ring on his left hand once, and he had taken it off and the space in the middle of it had been his marriage to Ginny. He had never given Rebecca a ring.
Terry Petty wore a ring, a thin round sliver of yellow-orange gold that encircled her finger. He knew she had a hook in her gut. The ring, therefore, was not just a circle of metal but a symbol of an inviolable, mysterious process. Her finger made the ring whole; there was no emptiness in its center.
Bobby Petty had been a lucky man with, it had seemed, a very large hook in his gut. Paine thought of the headless man in the motel toilet, the look of astonishment in the eyes. Many things could cause astonishment, including the betrayal of a friend, and the stark, sudden viciousness of a cold enemy.
Paine wondered if Petty still wore his ring, or if it had been taken from his finger, becoming only a hole in space signifying, as hard as it was to believe, the destruction of the essential self, the dropping of the hook, and, finally, mere and utter emptiness.
10
Paine saw the two men standing awkwardly near the entrance to his building when he went in, so he wasn't surprised when they came into his office. They still looked awkward coming in. One of them glanced behind him nervously, so Paine reached beneath his desk and turned on a switch that activated his hidden tape recorder.
'Can I help you?' Paine asked.
One of them, who was thin and tall with curly light hair and a mustache, closed the door to Paine's office and stood with his hands folded in front of him. The thin one looked at the other one, who was stocky and slightly muscled, with dark hair and eyes, and the stocky one shuffled to Paine's desk and tried to look mean. He looked more nervous.
'We're here to talk to you,' he said, gruffly.
'So talk,' Paine said.
The gruff one looked at the thin one with the mustache, who shuffled his feet and looked down. The stocky one put the flats of his hands on Paine's desk and leaned on it.
'Someone sent us.'
'Who?'
'Jeez, it's hot in here,' the one by the door suddenly said. He looked at Paine a moment and then looked back down at the floor.
'We want you to vacate the building,' the gruff one said.
'Excuse me?' Paine said.
'Move out,' the one by the door added quickly.
The gruff one began to move around the desk toward Paine, and now the one by the door came briskly away from it and approached Paine from the other side. The two of them had finally made up their minds. The stocky one reached into his pocket, removed a short length of brass tube, and wrapped his fingers around it into a fist. The skinny one with the mustache had his wide eyes riveted on Paine now, his hands balling into fists.
The skinny one reached for Paine first, and Paine stood and came up at him under the chin. The man made a surprised sound and then Paine turned his attention to the one with the pipe under his knuckles. As expected, he tried to use that fist first and Paine easily ducked way from it, crouching and throwing a solid blow into the man's crotch. He groaned and sat down heavily on the floor. His hand opened, the pipe rolling away, and he clutched at his privates.
The skinny one decided to try again. Paine was on him quickly, kicking him hard in the knee as he rose, and the man grabbed at his knee and yelled and Paine hit him again. Paine kicked him sharply in the right side as he lay out flat on the floor and that seemed to be it for him.
The stocky one had not quite given up, he was on all fours, trying to rise, so Paine kicked him twice in quick succession in the rib cage and that was the end of it.
Paine stood over them and said, 'You guys wanted to talk to me?'
'Jesus,' the stocky one groaned; the thin one with the mustache said, 'Shit.'
'Let's talk,' Paine said. 'Tell me who sent you.'
The stocky one shook his head dully, so Paine kicked him again in the ribs.
'Jesus!' he said. 'Stop it!'
'Tell me who sent you.'
'I can't,' the stocky one said. Paine made sure the skinny one was watching and he kicked the stocky one again, harder, and the stocky one screamed.
Paine went to the other one and said, 'Tell me who sent you.'
'Please, let's just forget it,' the skinny one said.
'You saw what I did to your friend?'
The man nodded.
Paine kicked him smartly in the side.
'Anapolos sent us!' the skinny one said.
'Who are you?' Paine asked.
The skinny one was moaning, lying on his back, holding his side. 'Jesus!'
'You're not Jesus,' Paine said. He cocked his foot back and the skinny one stopped moaning long enough to say, 'Koval. My name's Koval.'
'Who's he?' Paine asked, pointing to the stocky one.
'Kohl,' Koval said. 'His name's Richie Kohl.'
'What do you have to do with Anapolos?'
Richie Kohl had rolled up into a sitting position, arms around his knees. He looked grouchy and hurt. 'We live in his building in Easton.'
'Pennsylvania?' Paine said. 'Anapolos owns a building in Easton, Pennsylvania?'
Koval, the skinny one, nodded. 'Two buildings. They're pigsties.'
'And what are you if you live in them?'
'We owe him rent,' Kohl said.
'Get up,' Paine said.
They both rose, warily.
'Here's the story,' Paine said. He reached under his desk, turned off the tape recorder. 'I see you around here again, I bust your heads. Then I get you arrested. I want you to tell Anapolos he's a scumbag. Got that?'
They nodded, looking like schoolboys caught stealing milk money.
'And if it helps,' Paine said, as they slouched toward the door, 'You don't owe Anapolos rent anymore. In fact, you've got the next six months rent free.'
Koval and Kohl looked at Paine blankly.
