Wilderness

"So he can stand out there with his rifle, the silent protector.

Tireless, brave, deadly. Yes. I see."

"I think so," Newman said. "I don't mean to put him down. We need him badly in this. And he is tough. Toughest bastard I ever knew. And it's comforting to know he's out there. But he's also begi

"You think he takes too many chances?" she said.

"I think he doesn't want this to end," Newman said.

Janet thought about that as she looked at her husband. Behind her the voiceless Carson show ended and Tom Snyder appeared.

"That would make sense," she said. "If it ended he'd be back at his restaurant doing what he was doing, nothing bad. But nothing exciting.

Nothing that engages his, what, physical self? Beyond throwing out an occasional drunk."

Newman nodded. "I think if he really wanted this finished we could have done it already. I think it could be over with. But Chris.

"Let's check down this alley," he says. "Let's take another look at his house." We go over it and over it. We plan and talk. "You can't know too much," he keeps saying. And I'm afraid he's going to get us killed." "Jesus," she said. "All this time I've been feeling better about it all because Chris was involved. You think it's worse?" "It's both," Newman said. "I don't know if I could do it alone. But Chris's goals aren't the same as mine. I mean, I want this over. I can't write. I'm scared all the time. I worry about you. You know what we're doing tomorrow? We're going to get outfitted for the woods.

We spent most of Tuesday finding a spot to stay near Fryeburg and surveying the area. The spot to stay took an hour. The rest of the afternoon and evening we checked the cabin where Karl stays. Looked at the woods, walked ridge lines." Newman shook his head. "Goddamn," he said.

"What are you going to do?"

"Christ, I don't know. Even if I could do it without him, how could I tell him to screw? He's already risked his life for me. He's in a conspiracy to murder. If we get caught he's an accessory even if he bails out now. And this is the biggest thing in his life. How can I tell him we don't want him? That he's counterproductive?"

"I know. I couldn't say that to him either."

"What would help, would be if you came with us."

"You mean to Maine?"

"Yes, and stayed right with us through the actual shooting and everything." "I'm not saying I won't," Janet said, "but why?"

"It would help control Chris. He'd feel protective of you, because you're a woman, and it would give me courage. I'm much braver with you than I am alone."

"Do you worry about my safety at all?" "Yes," he said. "But I'm trying to really look at things. I'm trying, as someone suggested recently, to grow up. This is life or death. I can't romanticize. I need you.

There's risk to you but I can't make it without you. I know it, and I'm willing to risk you to help me through this. It's not a posture I'm proud of, but there it is." She said nothing for a long time. On the television Tom Snyder threw his head back in pantomime laughter.

"Yes," she said, "I'll go. I want to go. I am not afraid. I would kill Karl in a second and never feel a thing. It's my problem as much as yours. But I want you to teach me to shoot."

Newman wasn't looking at her now. He was staring at the silent television. "Yes," he said. "I'll teach you. It's easy. You just point the gun and pull the trigger. Just like the movies. You can learn easy." "Okay," she said.

"Are you mad?" he said.

"I don't know," she said. "I want to go to sleep now. I have an early class, I have to get some sleep. I didn't get to bed till three last night."

"But you don't think I'm that swell to ask you to go, do you?"

"It doesn't matter. I said I would."

"But it matters if you think badly of me."

"I don't think badly of you."

"But you're mad."

"I'm getting mad, Aaron. I said I'd do it, now let me alone. I want to sleep."

She turned away from him, shut off the bedside light, shut off the television, and shrugged the covers up over her shoulder, settling her head on the pillow.

The twisted knot in his stomach that had been there since he'd seen the murder twisted a little tighter. He shut off his light and lay on his back and felt it tighten.

Outside, in the shadow of now green forsythia bushes, along the fence Chris Hood squatted with the Ithaca pump gun across his thighs and looked carefully at the yard and empty street. Then he moved silently toward the backyard, staying close to the bushes, the shotgun butt braced on his hip, looking slightly sideways so as to see better in the dark. He was dressed in black and had put burnt cork on his face. On his belt, at the small of his back, was a bowie knife with a nine-inch blade.

In the backyard he stood motionless and nearly invisible in the shadow of an old sugar maple, and watched the house, barely breathing, listening for enemy footsteps.

CHAPTER 18.

"During the day he's always with his buddy," Steiger said. "The lights stay on at night usually till midnight, one o'clock. If there's an alarm, they normally would turn it on when they went to bed. Otherwise they'd keep tripping it, letting the cat out, dumping the garbage, that kind of thing. Embarrassing as hell when the cops come ru

As he talked Steiger was looking out the hotel window at the Charles, dark now and glossy-looking with the lights reflecting off of it from Storrow and Memorial drives. Angie sat with no clothes on at the round table on which they ate breakfast, and did her nails.

"So when would be best?" Angie said.

"In about an hour," Steiger said. "Round ten o'clock. I go knock on the door. When he answers I do it, and leave. Tomorrow we go back to Cleveland."

"You're going tonight?"

"Yeah."

"I hope you don't have to kill the wife."

"If she doesn't see me, I won't. If she does, I will. It's luck."

"I know," Angie said. "You want to make love again before you go?"

"Whatever we do together is making love, Angie." He walked over from the window and touched her shoulder. "We're making love all the time." "Okay," she smiled. Her nails were done.

"If anything happens to me you know what to do?"

"Like always. Every time you go out you go through it with me. I have the safe-deposit key. I've got plenty of money to get home. I leave everything here and go."

"Good. Kiss me good-bye."

She stood and pressed against him and kissed him, careful all the time that her still wet nails didn't touch his clothes.

"Hurry back," she said.

"I always do."

Steiger took the shoebox from the top shelf of the closet. He took out the Ruger, loaded it, put the holster on his belt, slipped the nose of it into his back pocket. He took twelve rounds of.44 ammunition, wrapped six in a Kleenex and put them in the left shirt pocket of his tan Levi shirt. He wrapped six more in another Kleenex and put them in the right shirt pocket. He buttoned both pockets. He put on a dark blue summer-weight blazer with plain brass buttons. It covered the gun. He slipped a package of Lucky Strikes into the breast pocket of the blazer, adjusted his shirt collar in the mirror so that the points of the collar rolled out over the lapels of the blazer. He looked at his watch.

"Okay, babe. See you pretty quick. How about late supper in the room when I get back?"

"Wine, cheese, French bread and a pate?"

"Wonderful."

He went out of the hotel room and took the elevator to the lobby. The elevator was glass-walled and the lobby was eleven stories high. He looked down, as the elevator descended, at the fountains on the ground floor. The elevator seemed to descend into them.