5

Alan Brookner's book made two or three hours zoom by in happy concentration, even though I probably understood about one-fourth of what I was reading. The book was as dense and elegant as an Elliot Carter string quartet, and about as easy to grasp on first exposure. After a bright-faced little nurse rolled in the magic tray and injected me, the book began speaking with perfect clarity, but that may have been illusory.

I heard the door close and looked up to see Michael Hogan coming toward me. His long face seemed about as expressive as Ross McCandless's rusty iron mask, but as he got closer I saw that the effect was due to exhaustion not disdain. "I thought I'd check up on you before I went home," he said. "Mind if I sit down?"

"No, please do," I said, and he slipped into the chair sideways, almost languidly. A stench of smoke and gunpowder floated toward me from his wrinkled pinstripe suit. I looked at Hogan's weary, distinguished face, still distinguished in spite of the marks of deep exhaustion, and realized that the odor was nothing more than the same smell of ashes that I had caught at the Sunchanas' burned-out house. Along with Fontaine, Hogan had spent a lot of the night near burning buildings, and he had not been home since then.

"You look better than I do," he said. "How are things going? In much pain?"

"Ask me again in about an hour and a half."

He managed to smile through the tangle of emotions visible in his weary face.

"I guess the riot is over," I said, but he sent the riot into oblivion with a wave of his hand and an impatient, bitter glance that touched me like an electric shock.

Hogan sighed and slumped into the chair. "What you and Ransom were trying to do was incredibly stupid, you know."

"We didn't know who to trust. We didn't think anybody would believe us unless we caught him in his old house and made him talk."

"How did you think you were going to get him to talk?"

He was avoiding the use of the name—the process John had predicted was already beginning.

"Once we had him tied up"—this was the image I'd had of the conclusion of our attack on Fontaine—"I was going to tell him that I knew who he really was. I could prove it. There wouldn't be any way out for him—he'd have to know he was trapped."

"The proof would be this man Hubbel?"

"That's right. Hubbel identified him immediately."

"Imagine that," Hogan said, meaning that it was still almost too much to imagine. "Well, we'll be sending someone out there tomorrow, but don't expect to be reading much about Franklin Bachelor in the New York Times. Or the Ledger, for that matter." The look in his eyes got even smokier. "When we got in touch with the army, they stonewalled for most of the day, and finally some character in the CIA passed down the word that Major Bachelor's file is not only closed, it can't be opened for fifty years. Officially, the man is dead. And anything printed about him that isn't already a matter of public record must be approved first by the CIA. So there you are."

"There we all are," I said. "But thanks for telling me."

"Oh, I'm not done yet. I understand you met Ross McCandless."

I nodded. "I understand what he wants."

"He doesn't tend to leave much doubt about that. But probably he didn't tell you a couple of things you ought to know."

I waited, fearing that he was going to say something about Tom Pasmore.

"The old man's gun is at ballistics. They move slow, over there. The report won't come back for about a week. But the bullet that killed our detective couldn't have come from the same gun as the one that hit you."

"You're going too far," I said. "I was there. I saw Alan fire, twice. What's the point of this, anyhow?" And then I saw the point—if Allen had not killed Fontaine, then our whole story disappeared into a fiction about the riot.

"It's the truth. You saw Brookner fire twice because his first shot went wild. The second one hit you—if the first one had hit you, you'd never have seen him fire the second one."

"So the first one hit Fontaine."

"Do you know what happened to him? His whole chest blew apart. If you'd been hit by the same kind of round, you wouldn't have anything left on your right side below the collarbone. You wouldn't even be alive."

"So who shot him?" As soon as I had spoken, I knew.

"You told McCandless that you saw a man between the houses across the street."

Well, I had—I thought I had, anyhow. Even if I hadn't, McCandless would have suggested that I probably had. I'd conveniently given him exactly what he wanted.

"We still have a police department in this town," Hogan said. "We'll get him, sooner or later."

I saw a loose end and seized it. "McCandless mentioned someone named Ventura, I think. Nicholas Ventura."

"That's the other thing I wanted you to know. Ventura was operated on, put into a cast, and given a bed at County. Not long after the riot started, he disappeared. Nobody's seen him since. Somehow, I don't think anybody ever will."

"How could he disappear?" I asked.

"County's a disorganized place. Maybe he walked out."

"That's not what you think."

"I don't think Ventura could have stood up by himself, much less walked away from the hospital." The flat rage in his eyes seemed connected to the stink of ashes that floated out from his clothing, as if his body produced the smell. "Anyhow, that's what I had to say. I'll leave you alone now."

He pushed himself to his feet and looked grimly down at me. "It's been real."

"A little too real," I said, and he nodded and walked out of the room. The stench of his rage and frustration stayed behind, like a layer of ashes on my skin, the sheets, the book I had forgotten I was holding.