Players

'In truth, Lyle, I don't care, really, cross my heart. A.J.'s in Limbo, Arkansas, far's I'm concerned. It's out of curiosity, only, I asked. Passing the time.”

'He may be in Canada or on his way to Canada. I'm not sure. I could be way off. But I think Canada.”

Bread sailed out of the woman's hand and a dozen pigeons came down among the fragments. Burks-i rolled down his window, yawning. Lyle yawned too, leaning over to read the car's plates.

'We'd like some input on Marina Vilar.”

'She still wants to do the Exchange.”

'Where's she located at?”

'I don't know. No idea. I think she lives in her goddamn car.”

'Who's with her, how many?”

'Don't you know any of this from Vilar?”

'Myself, Lyle, I couldn't tell you if Vilar's a Mexican or a Swede but everything I hear leads me to believe he's ready for the basket-weaving class. A mental. Not adjusting well to present surroundings.”

'I only know of one possibility, one other person, and he's probably the one who'll actually assemble the explosive.”

'Have a name, does he?”

'Luis Ramirez, maybe. I say maybe. I can't be sure. J. more or less indicated he did passports, he falsified passports. He's spent time with groups in other countries, // he exists, if that's his name. All three of them may be related one way or another. It's a little confusing.”

'Who's J.?”

'Kinnear.”

'A.J.”

'Your information's a little out of date.”

'All three who, the Latins?”

'Right, except they're Swedes.”

'I don't see as this is funny.”

Burks gave him a number to call as soon as Marina got in touch with him. When someone picked up the phone, he was to give his own phone number and then relate whatever information he had. Everybody was giving him numbers or proposing to give him numbers. He liked it. He had a feel for numbers. He didn't have to write anything down. He'd developed ways to remember, methods that went back to early adolescence. He did it every day on the trading floor, applied these methods. They were secret mnemonic devices. No one else used precisely the same ones. He was certain of that. The formulas were too idiosyncratic, situated too firmly in his own personality, to be duplicated elsewhere.

'Is there a date that sticks in your mind?' Burks said.

'She didn't say when. Not the slightest anything. Don't know what kind of explosive either.”

'What's their background, anything?”

'They did something in Brussels once and they did the airport, in West Germany-West Berlin, I mean. What's it called?”

'Shit, I don't know.”

'Anyway they hit the wrong plane.”

'Must have been hell to pay.”

'They hit the DC-9.”

'What did they hit it with?”

'Rockets.”

'Must have been hell to pay back at the office.”

Lyle got to his feet. The original Burks responded by starting up the car.

'Aren't you required by law to tell me what organization you're with, exactly?”

'If I had the energy to lift up my foot, Lyle, you'd be required to get kicked in the balls. That's the only requirement in effect right now.”

7

On the floor Lyle attended to the strict rationalities of volume and price. Close attention was a benign characteristic, mild eyes everywhere, sanity inhabiting the faces he encountered. This was solid work, clear and sometimes cheerful, old-world in a way, men gathered in a square to take part in verbal exchange, openly, recording figures with pencil stubs, the clerks having to puzzle over handwriting. Paper accumulated underfoot. Secret currents, he thought, recollecting Marina's concept of electronic money. Waves, systems, invisibility, power. He thought: bip-bip-bip-bip. A floor broker cuffed him on the side of the head, jokingly, a mock boxing match. Lyle went to the smoking area and called his firm's offices from one of the public booths, asking for Rosemary Moore. When Zelt-ner answered, he hung up. Frank McKechnie was standing nearby. He smoked with his arms crossed, bouncing on his heels, rapidly. There was an aura about him of manly suffering, things gone so far wrong they could no longer be expressed in coherent verbal form, needing commentary impossible here, tears or shouts.

'Well, then, Frank.”

'The world's still turning.”

'I see you shaved.”

'The outside world.”

'It turns, still.”

'That much is obvious, even to me.”

'It's good that it turns,' Lyle said, 'or there wouldn't be this stillness in here. We need that motion, see, exterior flux, to keep us safe and still.”

'This is what takes getting used to.”

'Because they never told you. Mummy and daddy. Your old pap. You know, flicking his suspenders. Never told you.”

'Where do I want to be, Lyle?”

'Inside.”

'Correct,' McKechnie said.

'About that call I wanted you to make. It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have asked. Everything's taken care of.”

'Don't tell me about it.”

'It's all okay. Nothing to tell. Finito.”

'Because I can't give it my undivided attention, Lyle, you know?”

'It's a religious matter, Frank. Uttering certain words, the names of certain people. It's a deeply personal thing.”

'Whatever you're talking about, I agree.”

'It touches a nerve in the darkest places.”

Already Kinnear seemed very distant in time and space. Lyle's two visits to the gray frame house were spots of fog now, half myth, the living room and yard, die basement arsenal. It was as though he'd overheard descriptions of these areas, never having been there, physically, himself, scratching his ribs, a little dry in the throat. He searched his memory for details of place, a sense of texture and dimension. There wasn't much more than soft-footed Kinnear, his perfect little features and grained hair. Friendly crinkles when he smiled. His voice, mature and professional: two credits, noncompul-sory. It was reducing itself, the whole series of events, his own participation, to this one element, J.'s voice, the carrier waves relaying it from some remote location.

He called again that night. When the phone rang Lyle knew at once it was J. and felt deeply relieved, as if he'd feared being abandoned to Marina and Burks, to the blunter categories of reality. Kinnear, speaking without inflection, wasting not a breath, reminded Lyle that he'd given him a phone number to use only at his, Kinnear's, specific instruction. This was to be taken as such instruction and he asked Lyle to make the call from a public phone