Crescent City Connection

was back. “Life. Life,” he said to himself, so deliberately he moved his lips.
    She said, “What? Did you say something?”
    He shook his head.
    “Isaac, I’m so sorry. But you don’t have to worry. I won’t say where you are, or anything about you. I’m meeting the cop at the Camellia Grill. She’ll never even know you exist.”
    He wrote: “Are you kidding? They have dossiers on everybody. They’ll have them on me. They’ll know I exist. They’ll come here and get me.”
    “What for?”
    “For questioning, I guess. Who knows what for? Can you imagine what would happen to me if I had to go to the police station for questioning?”
    “I think it’s pretty funny. I bet they’ve never questioned a man who’s taken a vow of silence.”
    She meant to make him laugh, but he just couldn’t. He was thinking of how to get her to say what he needed her to say. He couldn’t stand it.
    He wrote, “Lovelace, quick. Who’s the son of Mary and Joseph?”
    “Jesus Christ?”
    She had said it, but with a question mark. Was that good enough?
    “Say it again.”
    “Jesus Christ.”
    “Thanks. Do me a favor. Please don’t say my father’s name anymore.” And then he wrote “Jesus Christ,” to offset having written “my father.”
    Lovelace frowned, evidently puzzled, but seemed willing to humor him.
    It wasn’t good enough. He had used the possessive with “my father”. He wrote, “In Jesus Christ’s name,” but he couldn’t leave it at that—it made him look too crazy, so he kept on writing. “In Jesus Christ’s name, please don’t do this.”
    “Well, what the hell’s the alternative? They’ll just find us and spray us with automatic gunfire.”
    He wrote, “I have to get out of here.”
    “No. I’ll go. It isn’t fair to put you in jeopardy this way.”
    But they would find him. They were going to find him. And that was big trouble. Because he couldn’t be absolutely sure he wouldn’t kill someone.
    Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. That’s back
.
    That was a thought that had been gone for a while. Now, with this mention of the police, he knew the possibility existed. He might kill someone. There was simply no way in hell to be sure he wouldn’t. He might have done it already.
    He wrote: “I can’t talk about this anymore. I have to meditate.”
    “Okay.” She went back in the kitchen, and pretty soon he smelled garlic and onions and squash. She was probably making a vegetable pasta.
    He sat there and thought:
I have to get out. I might hurt someone. Even now, I can’t be sure I haven’t killed anyone; I just can’t. There’s no way to be sure, is there? Absolutely no way. If there were, I’d know what it is.
    And I can’t be sure I won’t do it again.
    I can’t go to prison. I can’t control the contamination. There aren’t enough showers in the whole prison system of the whole country to control the contamination.
    I have to leave.

Twenty
    STEVE WAS PULLING a roast chicken out of the oven when Skip got back.
    “Hi. You hungry?”
    “Starved. That looks great, but we’ve had a development—I’ve got to call Shellmire. Oops. My beeper just went off.” She recognized the number instantly—Shellmire’s. Eagerly, she dialed. “I was just about to call you. Guess what?”
    “I give up.”
    “The kid’s coming in out of the cold. We’re meeting tomorrow—at the Camellia Grill, of all places.”
    “How do you know it isn’t a setup?” Shellmire asked.
    “I don’t. We’re talking mega-backup. You want to be there?”
    “It’s no setup. And yeah, I’d love to. Can’t though. Bigger fish to fry, as your pal says.”
    “What could be bigger than this? And how do you know so much about it, anyway? Evidently she talked to Michelle. Do you have her line tapped?”
    “Sure we do, we’re Big Brother. Our guys heard the conversation, but Lovelace called from a bar—we didn’t get her phone number. But here’s the big news—Michelle’s not the only one she talked to. Take a wild guess at who her other phone friend is.”
    “Her dad.”
    “You’re never gonna guess. I better tell you—her grandmother.”
    It took a moment to figure out who he meant. “Rosemarie?”
    “We’ve got a majorly interesting tape of those two ladies. Rosemarie told her her grandpa and her dad are The Jury.”
    “No!”
    “Sure did. Why, I’m not exactly sure. I don’t think she had in mind Lovelace calling you, but she could have.”
    “Never mind why she did it—how