different beats. Along the way, Frank had no doubt visited that
alleyway in Calcutta or someplace like it, for he had conveyed with him
dozens of roaches, not just one, and rats as well; they were
incorporated into the tissue everywhere that Bobby looked, further
ensuring that Candy’s flesh was too diffused and polluted ever to be
properly reconstituted. The monstrous and obviously dysfunctional
assemblage fell to the floor, flopped and shuddered, and finally lay
still. Some of the rodents and insects continued to quiver and writhe,
trying to get free; inextricably bonded to the dead mass, they also
would soon perish.
THE HOUSE was simple, on a section of the coast that was not yet
fashionable. The back porch faced the sea and wooden steps led down to
a scrubby yard that ended the beach. There were twelve palm trees.
The living room was furnished with a couple of chairs, a low seat, a
coffee table, and a Wurlitzer 950 stocked with records from the big-band
era. The floor was bleached oak, tight made, and sometimes they pushed
the furniture to the wall rolled up the area rug, punched up some
numbers on the juke and danced together, just the two of them.
That was mostly in the evenings.
In the mornings, if they didn’t make love, they poured through recipe
books in the kitchen and whipped up bak goods together, or just sat with
coffee by the window, watched the sea, and talked.
They had books, two decks of cards, an interest in the bir and animals
that lived along the shore, memories both good and bad, and each other.
Always, each other.
Sometimes they talked about Thomas and wondered what gift he’d possessed
and had kept secret all his life. She said made you humble to think of
it, made you realize everyone and everything was more complex and
mysterious than you could know.
To get the police off their backs, they had admitted workin on a case
for one Frank Pollard from El Encanto Heights, who believed his brother
James was trying to kill him over a misunderstanding. They said they
felt James may have been a comPlete psychotic who had killed their
employees and Thomas merely because they had dared to try to settle the
matter between the brothers. Subsequently, when the Pollard house was
found torched with gasoline, with a confusing arra of skeletal remains
in the aftermath, police pressure was slowly lifted from Dakota &
Dakota. It was believed that Mr. James Pollard had killed his twin
sisters and his brother, as well, and was currently on the run, armed
and dangerous.
The agency had been sold. They didn’t miss it. She no longer felt she
could save the world, and he no longer needed to help her save herself.
Money, a few more red diamonds, and negotiation had convinced Dyson
Manfred and Roger Gavenall to invent another source for the biologically
engineered bug when, eventually, they published their work on it.
Without the cooperation of Dakota & Dakota, they would never know the
actual source, anyway.
In the finished attic of the beach house, they kept the boxes and bags
of cash they had brought back from Pacific Hill Road. Candy and his
mother had tried to compensate for the chaos of their lives by storing
up millions in a second-floor bedroom, just as Bobby and Julie had
suspected before they had ever gotten to El Encanto Heights. Only a
small portion of the Pollards’ treasure was now in the beach-house
attic, but it was more than two people could spend; the rest had been
burned, along with everything else, when they’d torched the house on
Pacific Hill Road.
In time he came to accept the fact that he could be a good man and still
sometimes have dark thoughts or selfish motives. She said this was
maturity, and that it wasn’t such a bad thing to live outside of
Disneyland by the time you reached middle age.
She said she’d like a dog.
He said fine, if they could agree on a breed.
She said you clean up its poop.
He said you clean up its poop, I’ll take care of the petting and Frisbee