flashlight, flagging us down.”
They drew to a halt, and over the whispery idling of the engine, Garrison heard
a man say, “Where you boys headed?”
“Up the beach.”
“That’s private property up there. You have any right up there?”
“It’s where we live,” Tommy, the driver, responded.
“Is that so?”
“Don’t we look like a bunch of spoiled rich kids?” one of them asked, playing
wiseass.
“What you been up to?” the man asked suspiciously.
“Beach cruisin’, hangin’ out. But it got too cold.”
“You boys been drinking?”
You dolt, Garrison thought as he listened to the interrogator. These are
teenagers you’re talking to, poor creatures whose hormonal imbalances have
thrown them into rebellion against all authority for the next couple of years. I
have their sympathy because I’m in flight from the cops, and they’ll take my
side without even knowing what I’ve done. If you want their cooperation, you’ll
never get it by bullying them.
“Drinking? Hell no,” another boy said. “Check the cooler in back if you want.
Nothing in it but Dr. Pepper.”
Garrison, who was pressed up against the ice chest, hoped to God the man would
not come around to the back of the vehicle and have a look. If the guy got that
close he would almost surely see there was something vaguely human about the
shape under the blanket on which the boys were sitting.
“Dr. Pepper, huh? What kind of beer was in there before you drank it all?”
“Hey, man,” Tommy said. “Why’re you hassling us? Are you a cop or what?”
“Yeah, in fact, I am.”
“Where’s your uniform?” one of the boys asked.
“Undercover. Listen, I’m disposed to let you kids go on, not check your breath
for liquor or anything. But I have to know—did you see an old white-haired guy
on the beach tonight?”
“Who cares about old guys?” one of the boys asked. “We were looking for women.”
“You’d have noticed this old character if you’d seen him. He’d most likely have
been wearing swim trunks.”
“Tonight?” Tommy said. “It’s almost December, man. You feel that wind?”
“Maybe he was wearing something else.”
“Didn’t see him,” Tommy said. “No old guy with white hair. Any you guys see
him?”
The other three said they had not seen any old fart fitting the description they
had been given, and then they were allowed to drive on, north from the public
beach, into a residential area of seaside homes and private beaches.
When they had rounded a low hill and were out of sight of the man who had
stopped them, they pulled the blanket off Garrison, and he sat up with
considerable relief.
Tommy dropped the other three boys off at their houses and took Garrison home
with him because his parents were out for the evening. He lived in a house that
looked like a ship with multiple decks, slung over a bluff, all glass and
angles.
Following Tommy into the foyer, Garrison caught a glimpse of himself in a
mirror. He looked nothing like the dignified silver-haired barrister known by
everyone in the city’s courts. His hair was wet, dirty, and matted. His face Was
smeared with dirt. Sand, bits of grass, and threads of seaweed were stuck
to his bare skin and tangled in his gray chest hair. He grinned happily at
himself.
“There’s a phone in here,” Tommy said from the den.
After preparing dinner, eating, cleaning up, and then worrying about Einstein’s
loss of appetite, Nora and Travis had forgotten about calling Garrison Dilworth
and thanking him for the care with which he had packaged and shipped her
paintings. They were sitting in front of the fireplace when she remembered.
In the past, when they had called Garrison, they had done so from public phones
in Carmel. That had proved to be an unnecessary precaution. And now, tonight,
neither of them was in the mood to get in the car and drive into town.
“We could wait and call him from Carmel tomorrow,” Travis said.
“It’ll be safe to phone from here,” she said. “If they’d made a link between you
and Garrison, he’d have called and warned us off.”
“He might not know they’ve made a link,” Travis said. “He might not know they’re