Everybody Dies

"That F-A-R-L-E-Y?" I shook my head and spelled it for him, and he made a face. "Leave the Y off an' you got Farrell, rhymes with barrel. Put the Y on an' it's Farrelly, rhymes with Charlie. Don't make no sense."

"Few things do."

"If she got a listed phone, I can find her. Take awhile, is all. There's a site, got all the phone listings by state. You figure New York?"

"I suppose you have to try it first."

There was an Elizabeth Dowling in Syracuse, and a number of E Dowlings, including one in the Bronx. That was far too simple and obvious, of course, and it turned out to be Edward, and he'd never heard of an Elizabeth or a Betty Dowling and didn't sound as though he appreciated my call.

We tried New Jersey next, and then Co

"Good we get to make our toll calls free," TJ said, "or we be ru

He got way ahead of me- the computer could find Dowlings faster than I could call them- and that gave him a chance to hobble over to the bed and elevate his leg. When I was between calls he said, "Meant to tell you, I phoned that girl this afternoon."

"And which girl would that be?"

"Sweetheart of BTK? Black father, Viet mama? She say she wonderin' why she didn't hear from me."

"So you told her you took a bullet in a shoot-out."

"Told her I had the flu. Vitamin C, she said. Yes, ma'am, I said, an' did you find out about the dude with the face like the moon? Found out his street name is all. You want to take a guess, Bess?"

"Moon," I said.

"Moon. Friend of Goo's from Attica, an' that be all anybody knows about him. Said thanks a lot, an' call me when them pimples clear up."

"You didn't say that."

"Course not." He cocked his head, looked at me. "You sick of makin' phone calls, ain't you? You got somethin' else to do, I can work the phone. I can even elevate my damn leg while I do it."

I left and started walking uptown. I hadn't eaten anything since Mrs. Horvath's Nutter Butter cookies, and I stopped in front of a Chinese restaurant on Broadway, a block or two beyond Lincoln Center. I hadn't eaten Chinese food since my last di

Oh, get over it, a voice said, and it was Jim's voice, but it wasn't a mystical experience, it was my imagination, supplying the response I could expect from him. And he was right, of course. It wasn't the food or the restaurant, it was the guy who walked in with a gun, and he wasn't going to be doing that anymore.

Still, I couldn't eat a Chinese di

The food was all right. Not great, but not terrible, either. I knocked off a pot of tea with the meal, and afterward I ate the orange wedges and cracked open the fortune cookie.

There is travel in your future, it advised me. I paid the check, left a tip, and traveled the rest of the way to Poogan's.

"The guy who hit you was Do

"I hope it wasn't before they learned to diagram sentences."

"Do they still teach that? I remember my eighth-grade teacher standing at the blackboard drawing lines, taking sentences apart and putting them back together. Here's a subordinate clause angling off this way, and there goes a prepositional something-or-other slanting up toward the ceiling. Did you get that in school?"

"Yes, and I never knew what the hell they were doing."

"Neither did I, but I bet they don't do it anymore. It's another lost art. It would have been useful knowledge for Do

"You don't happen to know where he served it, do you?"

"Tip of my tongue. Upstate, but not Da

"Attica?"

"That's it. Attica."

I went home and called TJ. "Attica," he said. "We gettin' a lot of hits on that site. Too late to call, though."

"A call won't really do it," I said. "I think I'll have to go up there and talk to somebody."

"Attica," he said again, rolling the word on his tongue this time, as if looking for a name that rhymed with it. "How you get there, anyway?"

"Easiest thing in the world," I said. "Just hold up a liquor store."

Mick called, wanting to know if I'd heard anything from Tom Heaney, whom he'd been unable to reach. I said I hadn't, but that anybody who'd called would have had to talk to the machine. Tom, I pointed out, barely talked to people. I told him what I'd learned- about Moon, about Do

I made it an early night, and I was at Phyllis Bingham's travel agency at nine on the dot. She was already at her desk. I told her I wanted to go to Buffalo, and while she brought up what she needed on her computer she asked how Elaine was doing on her buying trip. Of course she would have seen the sign in the shop window, it was just up the street, but for a minute I didn't know what she was talking about. I said it was going fine, and she said she could get me on a 10:00 a.m. Continental flight out of Newark, but that wouldn't give me any time to pack. Nothing to pack, I said. She booked me on the flight and on a return flight at 3:30 the same afternoon. If I missed it there'd be another two hours later.

"I guess you won't get to look at the Falls," she said.

I went out and got a cab right away, and I didn't even have to talk the driver into making the trip to Newark. He was delighted. I made my plane with a few minutes to spare and landed an hour later in Buffalo. I rented a car and drove to Attica, and that took another hour because I missed a turn and had to double back. I was there by noon and I was out of there by two, which put me way ahead of Gary Allen Dowling, not to mention Goo and Moon and Do

There was a long line for cabs at Newark, so I saved a few dollars and took a bus to Pe

George Wister had turned up, she told me, but this time she'd said I was out and refused to let him in. He came back with a partner and a warrant, but she'd spoken to Ray Gruliow, who was waiting with her when Wister showed up. She let them in, and after Wister had satisfied himself that I wasn't there he traded threats with Ray and then left.

"They were looking for a gun," she said, "and I knew you wouldn't have tried to take yours through a metal detector. I looked all over before I found it in your sock drawer. I took it to the basement and locked it in our storage bin, and after they left I went down and retrieved it, holster and all. It's back with your socks."