Odd Hours

off the pier.”
    I looked disappointed, shook my head. “That was crazy—jumping off the pier, talking tsunamis. But the girl, sir, I don’t know her.”
    “Maybe you just don’t remember knowing her.”
    “No, sir. When I came on the pier after being mugged, and I had amnesia, I saw her and thought, well, maybe I often went to the pier and she would know who I was.”
    “But she didn’t know you.”
    “Not a clue.”
    “Her name’s Annamaria,” he said.
    “That’s a pretty name.”
    “Nobody knows her last name. Not even the people letting her live above their garage rent-free.”
    “Rent-free? What lovely people they must be.”
    “They’re do-gooder morons,” he said in the nicest way, with his warmest smile yet.
    “The poor girl,” I sympathized. “She didn’t tell me that she had amnesia, too. What’re the odds of that, huh?”
    “I wouldn’t take the bet. The thing of it is—the same day, here you are with no first name or last, and here she is with no last name.”
    “Magic Beach isn’t a big city, sir. You’ll help us find out who we are. I’m confident of that.”
    “I don’t believe either of you is from around here.”
    “Oh, I hope you’re wrong. If I’m not from around here, how will I find out where I’m from? And if I can’t find out where I’m from, how will I find anyone who knows who I am?”
    When the chief was in his charming-politician mode, his good humor was as unshakeable as the Rocky Mountains. He kept smiling, though he did close his eyes for a moment, as if counting to ten.
    I glanced at Mr. Sinatra to see how I was doing.
    He gave me two thumbs up.
    Hoss Shackett opened his warm Irish eyes. Regarding me with delight, as if I were the leprechaun he had longed all his life to encounter, he said, “I want to go back to the big-dream question.”
    “Still an ice-cream parlor for me,” I assured him.
    “Would you like to hear my big dream, son?”
    “You’ve accomplished so much, I’d guess your big dream already came true. But it’s good always to have new dreams.”
    Chief Hoss Shackett the Nice remained with me, and there was no sign of Chief Hoss Shackett the Mean, though he resorted to the silence and the direct stare with which he had regarded me when he had first entered the room.
    This stare had a different quality from the previous one, which had been crocodilian. Now the chief smiled warmly, and as Frankie Valli sings in that old song, his eyes adored me, as though he were looking at me through a pet-shop window, contemplating adopting me.
    Finally he said, “I’m going to have to trust you, son. Trust isn’t an easy thing for me.”
    I nodded sympathetically. “Being an officer of the law and having to deal every day with the scum of the earth…Well, sir, a little cynicism is understandable.”
    “I’m going to trust you totally. See…my big dream is one hundred million dollars tax-free.”
    “Whoa. That is big, sir. I didn’t know you meant big big. I feel a little silly now, saying an ice-cream parlor.”
    “And my dream has come true. I have my money.”
    “That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you. Was it the lottery?”
    “The full value of the deal,” he said, “was four hundred million dollars. My cut was one of the two largest, but several others here in Magic Beach have become very rich.”
    “I can’t wait to see how you’re going to spread the good fortune around, sir. ‘Everyone a neighbor, every neighbor a friend.’”
    “I’m adding four words to the motto—‘Every man for himself.’”
    “That doesn’t sound like you, sir. That sounds like the other Chief Shackett.”
    Sitting forward on his chair, folding his arms on the table, virtually sparkling with bonhomie, he said, “Happy as I am to be stinking rich, I’m not without problems, son.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    Such a wounded look of disappointment came over his face that you would have wanted to hug him if you had been there.
    “ You are my biggest problem,” he said. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you are. That dream, the vision, whatever it was that you passed to me and Utgard.”
    “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. It’s a very disturbing little dream.”
    “And so spot-on accurate. Clearly you know too much. I could kill you right now, bury you somewhere like Hecate’s Canyon, and nobody would find you for years.”
    In his Chief Hoss Shackett the Nice persona, he had brought to the moment such a spirit of