Mohawk

showing up with all that money. I don’t know how it would have gotten paid for otherwise.”
    Anne smiled for the first time that day.
    “Did he tell you what he did?”
    “No. We hardly ever see each other.”
    The other woman was studying her carefully. “I guess I’ve been wondering about it. You know Dallas. He almost never has more than he needs, and he doesn’t need much.”
    “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Anne said. “Anybody lucky enough to get something out of Dallas shouldn’t ask too many questions. He probably had ten dollars on a number or something.”
    “I guess he gave you a rough time when you were married.”
    “No, I gave him a rough time.”
    Loraine looked away, embarrassed. “I should mind my own business.”
    “It was a long time ago. We’ve both forgotten. I’m almost fond of him.”
    “Me, too. I mean I
am
fond of him. David worshiped him, of course.”
    “I remember,” Anne said. She liked Loraine, whose purpose was clearer than she supposed. “Dallas can be very sweet. Also very inconsiderate. Kind. Oblivious.Savvy. Obtuse. He doesn’t know how to behave, and nobody will ever teach him, but he’ll turn up when you least expect it, the nicest man you know. If we’d stayed married, there’d have been no survivors, but another woman might do better.”
    “I don’t know if I’d be up to it.”
    “You could try, if you felt like it. If you end up telling him to go away, he will, and he won’t hold a grudge either. He’ll just forget to be mad.”
    They were walking along the path now and stopped where the men were finishing up beneath the canopy. “Well,” said one of the men, unaware that they were not alone, “that’s about it. Say hello to eternity.”

64
    Two days before Randall Younger’s trial was due to convene, the prosecutor collapsed. He had played his hand boldly, some said recklessly, but things just hadn’t worked out. The young man could not be shaken from his story. In the beginning it had looked like a child could get a conviction, but the mounting testimony and evidence weakened the prosecution’s case like a wasting disease. Randall’s lawyer was combing the town looking for people who had witnessed peculiarities in Officer Gaffney’s last days, and he didn’t have much trouble. The Presbyterian minister had discovered two thirty-eight caliber shells in the wall when he went up to investigate the darkened belfry, and these the attorney was extremely interested in. Several of the regulars at Harry’s were willing to testify to the policeman’s condition on the Fourth, and the abandoned car in the ditch was a matter of public record. It turned out Officer Gaffney had also accosted his landlady with explicit directions never to let anyone into his flat in so wild-eyed and accusatory a manner that the old woman had been terrified.
    The way the defense would tell it, Officer Gaffney, unhinged by his impending retirement, had gone loonyand started shooting and stopped when there was no one left to shoot. Then he had shot himself. Ballistics would do little to discourage such a theory. The boy’s lawyer was rumored to have enlisted a big shot from down the line to testify that the bullet’s angle of entry was consistent with a self-inflicted wound. The prosecution’s own experts would be forced to admit to possibility if not probability. To make matters worse, the prosecution would be asked to explain why Randall’s gloves were covered with Rory Gaffney’s blood, while the gun used to kill Rory’s brother was clean. Thus reasonable doubt would be established.
    The district attorney himself would tell a very different story, admirable in its consistency. If he worked hard and told it well, he would not seem a fool. He might even convince a few jurors. But the outcome? A reasonable doubt. The boy’s story, most of it, would sound true. Secretly the prosecutor had to admit that it sounded true even to him, which left him with a dead cop, a dead citizen, a dead retard, an angry public, lots of media attention, the chance of a political lifetime and nothing to do but drop the charges. In desperation he called on the boy’s lawyer and offered, “in the interest of all involved,” to reduce the charges to first-degree manslaughter. But the son-of-a-bitch just smiled, and the game was up. “Zilch,” he told his staff. “That’s what we got here.” His staff had offered this much off the record for weeks. And so, late Friday