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  “I understand what you're saying, yeah. But if your husband's image is so fragile, why didn't you pay Purdy?”

  “What he was selling was so patently absurd that I—”

  “What was he selling?”

  She looked away. “Information.”

  “What sort of information?”

  “I don't think we need go into that.”

  “I think we do. Sheriff Beane will insist.”

  “You won't—but you wouldn't—you can't go to the police!”

  She grabbed Pickett's arm, then as suddenly she released it. Embarrassed, she turned and fled across the room to the unmade bed. She sank down on to it only to realize where she was, jump up and stride quickly toward the door. She placed her hand on the knob, stared at it for a moment, then turned.

  The softness was gone from her face. All its bone and muscle strained as if struggling to hold itself together—or keep something from coming out. The eyes had sunk deep into the skull, yet they stared wide and glassy. The voice came from somewhere beyond the mouth.

  “If he could, the he would destroy us.”

  Pickett's mouth came open, but nothing came out.

  Jan Ayers leaned towards him, her body straining toward his. “He works silently. Corrupting, tempting…” She raised an open hand before her face and slowly made a fist. “He insinuates himself. He creeps in. Not even the Righteous are safe. Slowly, relentlessly, he insinuates himself. When suddenly we realize that we're his, it's too late. Too late…”

  She glared at Pickett as if it were already too late—for him anyway. Then she leaned back against the door, closing her eyes. Slowly she relaxed. With the softness returned the traces of a smile. She'd just explained something difficult; her performance pleased her.

  Pickett looked as though he were missing a page from the script. “And—” He coughed uneasily. “Herbert Purdy is, uh, was like that? Is that it?”

  Her smile became somehow patronizing.

  “It's Satan I'm talking about, Mr. Pickett. And yes, Herbert Purdy did his work, whether he knew it or not. And whether or not you believe it, it's true just the same. It's no simple truth, like the ones you like, but it is true nonetheless. One seldom knows Satan for what”—she gestured vaguely—”or who he is.”

  As if to comfort the tall man across from her, she smiled.

  Pickett appeared far from comforted.

  “And what Satanic message was the evil Mr. Purdy purveying?”

  “Oh, now you're laughing at me. But I'll tell you anyway because I—and Edmund's flock—know it to be untrue. And I'll rely on your faith in… simple truths.” She straightened and took a deep breath. Her voice was as grave as her aspect. “We are to believe that Edmund was seeing another woman. “She paused.

  “No, we are to believe that he was meeting another woman for the purpose of intercourse. Sexual intercourse, Mister Pickett.”

  It was as if Edmund had taken an ax to a Brownie troop, and Pickett laughed loud and long.

  “Yes, you see how ridiculous it is.” Her breast rose like armor plating. “However, I find little to laugh at in the… situation.”

  “Look, I'm sorry.” Pickett wiped at his eyes with a dish towel, not looking particularly sorry. “It's just hard for me to imagine anyone thinking that kind of information worth anything to begin with.”

  “It's not information. It's an out and out lie.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I will not have this lie repeated.”

  “Fine, but I'm afraid you'll have to repeat it—to the Sheriff at least. If this clown's been running around Belle Haven playing badger games with himself, it oughta give Homer some clue as to a motive; though”—Pickett chuckled again into the towel—”I wouldn't bet on it myself.”

  Color rose suddenly to Jan Ayers's cheeks. “If you mean to imply—”

  “I'm not implying anything. I simply mean that unless you want a real scandal on your hands, you best go to the sheriff with it now. Look, if Mark saw him at your house, anyone might've. Better to tell the sheriff yourself, than… well—”

  “Oh!” Her hands went to her mouth. “Y-yes. Yes, I begin to see what you mean.” Her mind was racing away from that meaning. “I… I appreciate your advice. And—and I will think about it. I'm out of my depth here, I'm afraid.”

  She lingered over the doorknob, then turned back towards him, smiling.

  “I hope that you'll forgive me for troubling you with all this.” Her voice was soft and animated, that of the woman Pickett had met the night before. “It's just that, well, Mark was so worried.” She brightened incongruously. “A mother worries, too, you know.” Then she stepped toward Pickett and extended a small white hand. “Thank you again. I hope that Mark and I haven't inconvenienced you with our… intrusions.”

  Pickett took her hand, but he didn't kiss it. He held it for a moment, then released it. “It not just the dead man, you know. That Mark's worried about, I mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. No, he's worried about Amy—Amy Mooring.”

  “Yes, I know who you mean.” Jan's face was expressionless.

  “Is he in love with her, do you think?”

  The fullness drained away. The lips flattened against her teeth.

  “Love?”

  Jan Ayers released a harsh laughed. She bit it off as quickly. Chin raised, eyes narrowed, she stared at him for a moment, then, softly, said:

  “And what do you think, Mister Pickett?”

  The tall man shrugged. “One seldom knows Satan…” Pickett paused, smiling benignly. “How does it go?… for what or who he is—is that it?”

  Jan Ayers looked at Pickett defiantly.

  “Or she?” Pickett pressed.

  “She?” Mock amazement lit Jan's face.

  But before the other could reply, her face darkened, and in a voice cold and thin, she said:

  “Good day, Mister Pickett,” and smoothly slipped through the door into the dark of the landing, closing the door softly behind her.

  The tap of her heels faded into the natural sounds that floated up from the canal. A moment later, an engine sputtered to life, and the canal birds scattered.

  Pickett stood where Jan had left him. He ran long fingers through his hair. His puzzlement appeared genuine.

  11

  It sat off to the right on a patch of sandy land reclaimed from the pine scrub that surrounded it. The exit said, IDDO SPRINGS and Bodie Pickett took it.

  Three cars rested next to a white mobile home that looked neither mobile nor homey. Pickett's car made a fourth. A heavy traffic that materialized much later in the day had churned and pitted the dirt beneath them. At the far end of the trailer a door flanked an open window—weathered grey plywood covered the others. A simple sign, black on white, leaned against the side next to the door. MASSAGE, it said in foot high letters.

  Pickett, squinting in the glare of the midmorning sun, climbed from the Nova. He wore a light blue work shirt, khaki jacket and trousers, and once white deck shoes. He yawned, shook his head as if to clear it and shuffled across the dusty lot to the trailer's single door.

  Just inside the door an old man sat at a card table reading a newspaper, like a desk clerk come down in the world. To his left a kitchenette flanked a narrow door that led into a dark hall. Behind him, three 8-by-10 glossies hung by duct tape from the wall. Remnants of a fourth still clung to the cheap paneling. A name tag depended from each of the three still there—from the woman on the flyer, “Mandy.”

  “Massage, twenty-five bucks.”

  The old man hadn't looked up. Pickett laid two tens and a 5 on the newspaper in front of him.

  “Sheila.” The old man spoke as if to the bills before him.

  The three of them sprawled on a cheap red plush sofa to Pickett's left, each stoned senseless—apparently by the Phil Donahue Show which burbled from a small color set behind the old man. One of them looked up when the old man spoke, then back to Phil who was discussing child pornograp
hy with a convicted child molester and a lawyer from the A.C.L.U. She looked reluctantly then, at Bodie Pickett.

  “Pshhhh,” and she pushed past the tall man into the kitchenette. This was Sheila—although about the only resemblance between her and the photo on the wall were the two prodigious lumps beneath her T-shirt.

  Pickett followed the three of them to the refrigerator. “What now?”

  “Like, you laid out the two bits, honey.” Sheila slammed the refrigerator door shut with a roll of her ample hips, bringing up a can of Colt 45 Malt Liquor. “Whatever”—(“Pwoosh!” said the can)—”turns you on.”

  Sheila poured the contents down her throat in one go, looked at the can, and belched. Her heavy breasts swung wildly at the explosion, colliding with one another several times before coming to an uneasy repose beneath her pink T-shirt. Her eyes went blank for a moment with whatever visions a shotgunned can of malt liquor conjured, then slowly focused on the space between herself and her client. She appeared surprised that he was still there. Or, rather, disappointed.

  She sighed, pulled a smile as fresh as the handbill he'd pulled from Purdy's Chrysler, and jiggled down the narrow passageway to Pickett's right, balancing precariously on a pair of gold lam‚ spikes. Two crescents of white flesh winked from under her cutoffs. She led Pickett through a narrow curtained door into what looked like a discount store dressing room.

  Thin mahogany look-alike paneling covered three narrow walls; a full length mirror covered the third. A bench draped with dirty white towels made pink by the single red Christmas bulb that lit the cubicle ran along the mirror. A small shelf high to the left of the door held an assortment of bottles and rubber utensils. The odor of stale sex scented the room.

  Before Pickett could say anything, Sheila wiggled out of her T-shirt. “Hokay, honey… She cocked her hip, a red eye bobbing in the center of each breast. “Two bits gets you the hand job. Anything extra, like, costs extra. Price depends.”

  “Uh-huh.” Pickett seemed unable to decide where to look. He settled for the eyes in her face. Behind the green, they were red, too. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You got fifteen minutes, honey, and, like… it's your bread.”

  “I'm looking for a guy, and I was wondering…”

  She looked at Pickett skeptically for moment, then fished a pack of Virginia Slims out from behind a bottle of baby oil on the shelf. She dropped to the bench.

  Pickett said: “Herb Purdy, you know him?”

  Sheila struck a match, setting the tobacco on fire and two of her red eyes in motion. From behind a cloud of smoke made pink from the reflected light, she said: “You a cop?”

  “Nope.”

  “You look like a cop.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I just wondered if you knew him, was all.”

  She emptied her lungs of pink smoke. “Yeah, I know him. What of it?”

  “Nothing at all. Just wondering what he was up to.”

  Sheila rose, dropped the cigarette to the floor, and ground it out with one lam‚'ed foot. “You got the wrong gal, honey. You want Millie. But she aint here no more.” Sheila pulled down the zipper on her cut-offs, releasing an impressive mass of doughy white flesh. “Now, honey, if you got anything tween those long legs of yours, you'd best, like, get it out. Know what I mean? Aint got all day.”

  Pickett smiled and expelled air through his nose as if to say that all day was about all she had. But what he said was: “Millie who?”

  Sheila stopped, her cut-offs rolled about half way down her massive thighs. “Millie Millie. How the hell I know?”

  “What's she to Herb?”

  “Jesus!” Sheila yanked the pants back up over her bottom. “Like, what are you? Taking a poll or something?”

  She leaned over, sucking in her stomach, trying to fasten the snap on her jeans.

  “It's worth another twenty.”

  Sheila dropped back to the bench exhausted, her jeans still unfastened. “Show.” She stuck out her hand.

  Pickett placed a ten in it. Sheila raised her eyebrows.

  “You answer, then the rest.”

  Sheila got up, holding her pants together with both hands, and peeked through the curtain and down the hall. She stuffed the ten in her pocket and sighed. “Herb, he works for the guy who runs this place. He come by every now and again to, like, pick up the cash and stuff, y'know?”

  “And he used to get it on with this Millie?”

  “Herb?” Sheila laughed out loud, red eyes jiggling in unison. “Are you kidding? Ralph would a cut it off and made him eat it. Like, Ralph don't let none of his boys fool around with the help. Strictly business.”

  “Who's Ralph?”

  “Who's Ralph?” she mimicked. “Ralph—the guy who, like, runs this dump.”

  “Ralph Kemp?”

  “You know him?”

  “Uh-huh, we've met. So what did Herb want with this Millie?”

  “It's what she want with him. She used to, like, give him money, y'know? She told me he was doing a job for her or something.”

  “What kind of job?”

  Sheila shrugged.

  “Know where I could find her?”

  Sheila opened her mouth to answer, but paused. Her eyes narrowed, she smiled. “I know… You work for Ralph.”

  Pickett said nothing.

  Sheila leaned forward, leveling an index finger at him. “I knew you weren't straight. Look, it's just like I told Ralph last week. I just work here, I don't, like, tell any of the other girls my life story, and they don't tell me none of theirs. If Ralph wants to find Millie, I mean, like, I can't help him. I only seen her when she come to work. If she's took off…” Sheila finished it with another shrug.

  “Did she have family hereabout?

  “How'd I know?”

  “Know where she lives then?”

  “I told you, I don't know nothing about her. Why's Ralph pickin on me… ?” Sheila picked up the T-shirt, covered her breasts—the part the T-shirt could cover—and whined: “I hardly even, like, talked to her.”

  “What did you talk about when you did?”

  “Nothing. Stuff… Her eyes brightened. “She asked me to mail a letter for her once. Is that important?”

  “Could be. Who to?”

  “Just a sec.” Sheila scrunched up her face. “Yeah, it was funny, y'know—Herb had just come round with our money. And Millie, like, gave some back to Herb, and… and, stuffed the rest in an envelope and asked Herb to mail it cause she had somebody coming. Yeah, and Herb, like, laughed at her and told her to have her John mail it. I was going home and she asked me to drop it in the mail. So I did.”

  “Who to?”

  “What?”

  “The letter—who was it addressed to?”

  Sheila looked down at her toes and scratched at her head. “To someplace out State forty-six… Something, like, outta the Bible.”

  “The Bible?”

  “Yeah, like, you know, outta the—”

  “Canaan?”

  “Huh?”

  “Canaan?”

  “Yeah, now I remember. Addressed to somebody Moses—in Canaan. Moses in Canaan—I thought that was funny, y'know? Like outta the Bible and all?”

  Pickett admitted that it was funny and asked her how long this Millie had been gone.

  “A couple of weeks, maybe.”

  “Why'd she leave?”

  “She didn't, like, leave, really. She just never shows up one morning. Matter of fact, the last I saw her was the day I mailed the letter.”

  “The same day she paid Herb?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he say anything to her—scare her off or something?”

  “Nah. Matter a fact, she seemed pretty up after she talked to him. Said things was gonna, like, change or something. I didn't think anything of it then, but I guess she meant that she was gonna leave.” Sheila didn't need to explain the assumption.

  Pickett asked if she
could think of anything else. Sheila couldn't.

  “But that's something aint it?”

  Pickett told her that it was.

  “Well you tell Ralph that I, like, helped, okay?” Sheila grabbed Pickett's arm. “You tell him, now.”

  Pickett told her he would, gave her the other ten, and left her struggling with the snap on her jeans.

  The old man had taken Sheila's place on the couch. Phil Donahue fielded questions from the studio audience. A fat middle-aged woman asked if the guest didn't think being a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. contrary to the Judeo-Christian Ethic; she admitted that the other guest couldn't be held responsible for being a convicted child molester since the National Enquirer had recently reported that such things were probably due to fluoridated water. Phil seemed relieved. Pickett glanced up from the TV to the glossies on the wall, then to the floor. A photo lay face down next to the card table. The missing corners matched those still taped to the wall. He dropped his car keys, knelt and picked them up while sticking the photo into his coat.

  One of the other two girls giggled as Pickett stood. The old man grinned at her and removed his hand. He threw a smug look Pickett's way. “Come again, son.”

  It sounded as much a question as an invitation.

  12

  Bodie Pickett took I-4 east to the Sanford exit, and then route 17-92 back south along the St. John's. The sun was high and hot, but something in the glitter of the river made up for the heat.

  He turned east on route 46 toward Canaan, then pulled up near the Osteen cutoff at a place called the Crab Shack. If they sold crabs, the name was apt.

  Inside, it was cool and dark. Half a dozen tables covered in red checked plastic filled the small square room; windows covered three sides. A plump young woman emerged from the double doors on the fourth side with a menu typed and decorated with copious notes and emendations in pencil.

  Pickett took one look at it, then at a chalk board above the kitchen door marked “Specials.”

  He ordered “Shrimp 'n Beer.” While he waited, the plump waitress brought him a half gallon plastic pitcher of sweetened iced tea. Soon the heady aroma of beer, shrimp, Tabasco, and Zatarin's Crab Boil turned through the room, steaming the windows.