Life Expectancy

your doorstep. He isn't. I can assure you."
        By her eyes alone, Lorrie conveyed a question to me that I could read as clearly as printed text: Should we share with him the story of Grandpa Josef and the five dates?
        Only the adults in our immediate family and a few close and trusted friends knew about the prophecy under which I lived: five swords of Damocles hung by five hairs, two of which had spared me, three of which still dangled.
        Huey Foster knew, but I didn't think he would have shared it with Porter Carson.
        Reveal such a thing to a hard-nosed FBI agent, and he would write you off as a superstitious fool. I could almost hear him: So you believe that you're cursed, Mr. Tock? You mean like witches and voodoo?
        Grandpa Josef hadn't cursed me. He had not wished five terrible days upon me. By some miracle, in the last minutes of his life, he had been given the power of prophecy to warn me, to give me a better chance to save-not myself, perhaps, but-those whom I loved.
        Inevitably, however, it would sound like a curse to Carson. Even if I could pierce his skepticism and make him understand the difference between a malediction and a prediction, he was no more likely to believe in fortune-telling than he was in the effectiveness of a shaman's evil eye.
        As a responsible officer of the law, he might feel it incumbent upon himself to report to child-protective services that Annie, Lucy, and Andy were being raised by parents who believed themselves to be hexed, who felt oppressed by diabolists and necromancers, who shared these fears with their offspring and thus terrorized them.
        Over the years, newspapers had carried numerous stories of false charges of abuse resulting in parents' loss of custody, families torn apart for years until the accusers admitted to lying or were beyond doubt proved malicious. By that time, lives were ruined, children traumatized beyond full recovery.
        Because no one wished to put children at risk, authorities in such cases often believed the most transparent lies by people with obvious grudges to settle. An earnest FBI agent who had no history with us, no reason to malign us, would receive a respectful hearing and swift action.
        Unwilling to risk calling down upon our heads a buzzing hive of misguided and self-righteous bureaucrats by telling Porter Carson about Grandpa Josef, I answered the question in Lorrie's eyes with a shake of my head.
        Turning to Carson again, Lorrie said, "All right, okay, listen to me, I can't tell you how I know, but I know the crazy son of a bitch is coming right here sometime between midnight tonight and midnight tomorrow. He wants-"
        "But ma'am, that's just not-"
        "I'm talking to you, I'm begging you, listen to me. He wants my little Andy, and he probably wants to kill all the rest of us. If you're truly serious about catching him, then forget Venezuela, he's not in Venezuela anymore if he ever was. Help us set a trap here, now."
        The fervor in her face and the adamancy in her voice unsettled Carson.
        "Believe me, ma'am, I can absolutely assure you that Beezo is not on your doorstep and will not be here tomorrow. He-"
        Frustrated, gray-faced with anxiety, Lorrie pushed back her chair, rose to her feet, and, wringing her hands, said to me, "Jimmy, for God's sake, make him believe it. I get the feeling Huey doesn't have enough manpower to protect us this time. We aren't going to be lucky like before. We need help."
        Looking distressed, too much a gentleman to stay seated when a woman stood, Carson rose, and I stood, too, as he said, "Mrs. Tock, please let me repeat and explain what Chief Foster told your husband on the phone a short while ago."
        Carson cleared his throat and continued: '"Jimmy, we've just got some good news about Konrad Beezo you'll want to hear."
        The most peculiar thing wasn't that he repeated precisely what Huey had said on the phone but that he sounded exactly like Huey, not like Porter Carson.
        No, that wasn't what Huey had said on the phone. I had not been talking to Huey earlier, but to this man.
        To me, the FBI agent said, "And your response, as I recall, was pointed." A pause." "This isn't much in the yuletide spirit, but I hope the bozo turned up dead somewhere."
        His voice was so similar to mine in timbre and in nuance that I felt fear like blood flukes twitching