Odd Hours

camaraderie and such fine intentions that the low concrete ceiling had seemed to expand into a high vault. Now it so suddenly crashed down again that I ducked my head a little.
    Once again I could detect the smell of vomit under the pine disinfectant.
    “If I have a vote, sir, I’m opposed to the kill-and-bury-in-Hecate’s-Canyon solution.”
    “I don’t like it, either. Because maybe that fake-pregnant girlfriend of yours is expecting you to report in.”
    “Fake-pregnant?”
    “That’s what I suspect. Good cover. The two of you come into town like vagrants, the kind nobody looks at twice. You’re like some surf bum, she’s like a runaway. But you work for somebody.”
    “Sounds like you have someone in mind.”
    “Maybe Homeland Security. Some intelligence agency. They have a slew of them these days.”
    “Sir, how old do I look to you?”
    “Twenty. You might look younger than you are, might be twenty-three, twenty-four.”
    “A little young to be an undercover spy, don’t you think?”
    “Not at all. Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, the best of the best—some of them are twenty, twenty-one.”
    “Not me. I have a gun phobia.”
    “Yeah. Right.”
    I had leaned on the table, as well. He reached out and patted my arm affectionately.
    “Suppose you don’t check in with your partner, this Annamaria, at the appointed hour, and she gets on the horn to your controllers back in Washington or wherever.”
    Amnesia no longer served me well. I would do better being a cool and deadly government agent. I said only, “Suppose.”
    “In a spirit of trust, which I sincerely hope you genuinely do appreciate, I’ll tell you—the job that made me rich, my part of that is done tonight. In two weeks, I’ll be living in another country, under a new identity so tightly guarded I’ll never be found. But leaving the right way, the careful way, is going to take two weeks.”
    “During which you’re vulnerable.”
    “So I have only three options I can see. One—I have to find your Annamaria real quick, before she squawks, and kill you both.”
    I consulted my watch, as if in fact I had a pending report time with my undercover co-agent. “You won’t be able to pull that off.”
    “That’s what I figured. Option two—I kill you here, now. When you don’t report to Annamaria, she sends the alarm, your agency comes storming into town. I play dumb, tough it out. Never saw you, don’t know what happened to you.”
    I said, “I’m sorry to hear…this must mean Reverend Moran is in this with you.”
    “He’s not. He found you in his church, you said your life had taken a wrong turn. Then you started talking Armageddon, the end of the world, you made him nervous. You told him the retriever’s name was Raphael, but he knew who owned the dog, and its name is Murphy.”
    I said, “Gee, a troubled young man worried about the end of the world, maybe on drugs, has a dog isn’t his…I’d think a preacher would try some counseling and prayer before turning me in.”
    “He feels comfortable calling me about small stuff, and don’t pretend you don’t know why.”
    “Are you a member of his parish?” I guessed.
    “You know I am.”
    I hesitated, then nodded. “We know.” I made the we sound like eight thousand bureaucrats in a block-square building near the CIA. “And don’t forget—the reverend knows you arrested me.”
    He smiled and dismissed my concern with a wave of his hand. “That doesn’t matter if before morning the reverend kills his wife and commits suicide.”
    “I gather you’re not a believing member of the parish.”
    “Do I sound like a Christian to you?” he asked, and laughed softly, not as if he were remarking on his ruthless criminality but as if Christian were a synonym for brain-dead troglodyte .
    I said, “Back to your second option. You remember that?”
    “I kill you now, play dumb, say I never met you.”
    “Won’t work,” I told him. “They know I’m here right now.”
    “They who?”
    “My handlers in…the agency.”
    He looked dubious. “They can’t know.”
    “Satellite tracking.”
    “You aren’t carrying a transponder. We searched you at the church.”
    “Surgically implanted.”
    A little venom seeped into his twinkling Irish eyes. “Where?”
    “Very tiny, efficient device. Could be my right buttocks. Could be my left buttocks. Could be in an armpit. Even if you found it, cut it out, and crushed it, they already know I’m here .”
    He sat back in