From the Corner of His Eye

did."
        "That was before the Oreo."
        "I didn't get my teeth dirty," Angel protested.
        "How is that possible?"
        "Didn't chew."
        "So you inhaled it through your nose?"
        "Swallowed it whole."
        "What happens to people who fib?"
        Wide-eyed: "I'm not fibbing, Mommy."
        "Then what're you doing?"
        "I'm…
        "Yes?"
        "I'm just saying…
        "Yes?"
        "I'll brush my teeth," Angel decided.
        "Good girl. I'll get your jammies."
        Junior in the fog. Trying oh-so-hard to live in the future, where the winners live. But being relentlessly sucked back into the useless past by memory.
        Turning, turning, turning, the mysterious warning in his mind: The spirit of Bartholomew… will find you… and mete out the terrible judgment that you deserve.
        He rewound the words, played them again, but still the source of the threat eluded him. He was hearing them in his own voice, as if he had once read them in a book, but he suspected that they had been spoken to him and that An SFPD patrol car swept past, its siren silent, the rack of emergency beacons flashing on its roof.
        Startled, Junior sat up straight, clutching the silencer-fitted pistol, but the cruiser didn't abruptly brake and pull to the curb in front of the Mercedes, as he expected.
        The revolving beacons dwindled, casting off blue-and-red pulses of light that shimmered-swooped through the diffusing fog, as if they were disembodied spirits seeking someone to possess.
        When Junior checked his Rolex, he realized that he didn't know how long he'd been sitting here since Ichabod had driven off in the Buick. Maybe one minute, maybe ten.
        Lamplight still glowed behind the ground-floor front windows on the right.
        He preferred to venture inside the house while some lights remained on. He didn't want to be reduced to creeping stealthily in the dark through strange rooms: The very idea filled his guts with shiver chasing shiver.
        He tugged on a pair of thin latex surgical gloves. Flexed his hands. All right.
        Out of the car, along the sidewalk, up the steps, from Mercedes to mist to murder. Pistol in his right hand, lock-release gun in his left, three knives in sheaths strapped to his body.
        The front door was unlocked. This was no longer one house; it had been converted to an apartment building.
        From the public hallway on the ground level, stairs led to the upper three floors. He would be able to hear anyone descending long before they arrived.
        No elevator. He didn't have to worry that with no more warning than a ding, doors might slide open, admitting witnesses into the hall.
        One apartment to the right, one to the left. Junior went to the right, to Apartment 1, where he'd seen the lights come on behind the curtained windows.
        Wally Lipscomb parked in his garage, switched off the engine, and started to get out of the Buick before he saw that Celestina had left her purse in the car.
        Flush with the promise of their engagement, still excited by the success at the gallery, with Angel exuberant in spite of the hour and Oreo energized, he was amazed that they had made the transfer of the little red whirlwind from house to Buick to house with nothing else forgotten other than one purse. Celie called it ballet, but Wally thought that it was merely momentary order in chaos, the challenging-joyous-frustrating-delightful-exhilarating chaos of a life full of hope and love and children, which he wouldn't have traded for calm or kingdoms.
        Without sigh or complaint, he would walk back to her with the purse. The errand was no trouble. In fact, returning the purse would give him a chance to get another good-night kiss.
        One nightstand, two drawers.
        In the top drawer, in addition to the expected items, Tom Vanadium found a gallery brochure for an art exhibition. In the hooded flashlight beam, the name Celestina White seemed to flare off the glossy paper as though printed in reflective ink.
        In January '65, while Vanadium had been in the first month of what proved to be an eight-month coma, Enoch Cain had sought Nolly's assistance in a search for Seraphim's newborn child. When Vanadium had learned about this from Magusson long after the event, he assumed that Cain had heard Max Bellini's message on his answering machine, made the connection