4

The next morning, before they checked out, she spoke to him while he was looking at the maps. "You shouldn't ask me those questions."

"What questions?" He had been keeping his back turned, at her request, as she got into the pink dress, and he suddenly had the feeling that he had to turn around, right now, to see her. He could see his knife in her hands (though it was back inside the rolled-up shirt), could feel it just beginning to prick his skin. "Can I turn around now?"

"Yeah, sure."

Slowly, still feeling the knife, his uncle's knife, beginning to enter his skin, he turned sideways on the chair. The girl was sitting on her unmade bed, watching him. Her intense unbeautiful face.

"What questions?"

"You know."

"Tell me."

She shook her head and would not say any more.

"Do you want to see where we're going?"

The girl came toward him, not slowly but measuredly, as if not wishing to display suspicion. "Here," he said, pointing to a spot on the map. "Panama City, in Florida."

"Will we be able to see the water?"

"Maybe."

"And we won't sleep in the car?"

"No."

"Is it far away?"

"We can get there tonight. We'll take this road-this one-see?"

"Uh huh." She was not interested: she hung a little to one side, bored and wary.

She said: "Do you think I'm pretty?"

What's the worst thing that ever happened to you? That you took off your clothes at night beside the bed of a nine-year-old girl? That you were holding a knife? That the knife wanted to kill her?

No. Other things were worse.

Not far over the state line and not on the highway he had shown Angie on the map but on a two-lane country road, they drew up before a white board building. Buddy's Supplies.

"You want to come in with me, Angie?"

She opened the door on her side and got out in that childish way, as if she were climbing down a ladder; he held the screen door open for her. A fat man in a white shirt sat like Humpty Dumpty on a counter. "You cheat on your income tax," he said. "And you're the first customer of the day. You believe that? Twelve-thirty and you're the first guy through the door. No," he said, bending forward and scrutinizing them. "Hell no. You don't cheat Uncle Sam, you do worse than that. You're the guy killed four-five people up in Tallahassee the other day."

"What-?" he said. "I just came in here for some food-my daughter-"

"Gotcha," the man said. "I used to be a cop. Allentown, Pennsylvania. Twenty years. Bought this place because the man told me I could turn over a hundred dollars' profit a week. There's a lot of crooks in this world. Anybody comes in, I can tell what kind of crook they are. And now I got you straight. You're not a killer. You're a kidnapper."

"No, I-" he felt sweat pouring down his sides. "My girl-"

"You can't shit me. Twenty years a cop."

He began to look frantically around the store for the girl. Finally he saw her staring gravely at a shelf stocked with jars of peanut butter. "Angie," he said. "Angie-come on-"

"Aw, hold on," the fat man said. "I was just tryin' to get a rise out of you. Don't flip out or nothin'. You want some of that peanut butter, little girl?"

Angie looked at him and nodded.

"Well, take one off the shelf and bring it up here. Anything else, mister? 'Course if you're Bruno Hauptmann, I'll have to bring you in. I still got my service revolver around somewhere. Knock you flat, I'll tell you that for free."

It was, he saw, all a weary mockery. Yet he could scarcely conceal his trembling. Wasn't that something an ex-cop would notice? He turned away toward the aisles and shelves.

"Hey, listen to this," the man said to his back. "If you're in that much trouble, you can just get the hell out of here right now."

"No, no," he said. "I need some things-"

"You don't look much like that girl."

Blindly, he began taking things off the shelves, anything. A jar of pickles, a box of apple turnovers, a canned ham, two or three other cans he didn't bother to look at. These he took to the counter.

The fat man, Buddy, was staring at him suspiciously. "You just shook me up a little bit," he said to him. "I haven't had much sleep, I've been driving for a couple of days…" Invention blessedly descended. "I have to take my little girl to her grandmother, she's in Tampa-" Angie swiveled around, clutching two jars of crunchy peanut butter, and gaped at him as he said this-"uh, Tampa, on account of her mother and me split up and I have to get a job, get things put together again, right, Angie?" The girl's mouth hung open.

"Your name Angie?" the fat man asked her.

She nodded.

"This man your daddy?"

He thought he would fall down.

"Now he is," she said.

The fat man laughed. " 'Now he is!' Just like a kid. Goddam, you figure out the brain of a kid, you got to be some kind of genius. All right, nervous, I guess I'll take your money." Still sitting on the counter, he rang up the purchases by bending to one side and punching the buttons of the register. "You better get some rest. You remind me of about a million guys I took into my old station."

Outside, Wanderley said to her, "Thanks for saying that."

"Saying what?": pertly, self-assuredly. Then again, almost mechanically, eerily, ticking her head from side to side: "Saying what? Saying what? Saying what?"