Shallow Graves

friend that weren’t so nice. I’m sorry about him and I’m sorry about your job but there’s nothing to be gained by you staying in Cleary.”
    “You telling me to leave town?”
    “Of course not. You’re free to visit, to sight-see, hell, you can even buy yourself a house here—I understand you know a local real estate broker pretty good—all I’m saying is, you’re not free to be a policeman. And if you start troubling people I’m going to have to get involved.”
    “Your concerns’ve been noted.” Pellam tried to imitate the smile. It didn’t work too well. He had better luck with: “Have a good day, sir.”
    WEXELL AMBLER WAS going to visit his lover.
    He walked out of his house—supposedly on his way to a meeting—and strode toward his big Cadillac, parked in the U-shaped driveway. He was looking forward to sitting with her in the Jacuzzi in the glass-enclosed deck of his house in nearby Claverack, New York, from which they could watch the Catskill Mountains in the distance—now a stunning wash of color. He could look forward to enjoying fresh coffee and tasting some of her cooking.
    Thinking about making slow love in the hot tub or in the large Shaker bed he’d bought for her because she’d mentioned that she liked the simple lines. She was a strange woman. He often compared the two ofthem, his ex-wife and his lover. And tried to decide what were the differences and what were the similarities. They both were attractive, dressed well, knew how to carry on a conversation at the country club. His wife was more intelligent but she was also less imaginative; she had no spark, no humor. She let him get away with anything. His lover challenged him (perhaps, he now reflected, this made him feel younger).
    He’d just gotten into the Caddie when his housekeeper ran to the door and signaled to him with a wave.
    “It’s Mark,” she called. “Says it’s urgent.”
    Ambler said, “Have him call on the car phone.”
    He backed the car out of the driveway and waved to her affectionately once more.
    Waiting for the call. He was thinking less about what the beefy young man would have to say and more about the woman he was on his way to see.
    Ambler was a religious man (on the executive committee of the First Presbyterian Church), and although he understood that Calvinistic predestination did not absolve him from choosing the right path, the moral path, nonetheless the religion instilled in him a tendency toward helplessness on those moral questions the answers to which he did not like. He tended to throw his hands up and follow his instinct.
    So although he knew what he was doing was immoral, he felt an addiction to his mistress, and could more or less successfully conclude that he had no control over the matter.
    He packaged the infidelity carefully, though. Forinstance, he never thought of the word “cheating,” which gave the whole matter a blue-collar taint. And he always thought of his paramour as a mistress or lover, rather than girlfriend or “the woman he was seeing on the side.” (Dignity was important to Wex Ambler.) He never risked embarrassing his lover just to satisfy his own passion and went to crazy lengths to keep the affair secret.
    The one problem, though—one he hadn’t counted on—was that he’d fallen completely in love with the woman.
    Ambler, who was fifty-two, was not so old that he had forgotten love makes people stupid—and in his philosophy, as well as his profession, stupidity was the number-one sin. He had guarded against love but unlike religion and unlike money and unlike power, love had a mind of its own.
    It had nabbed him, but good.
    At his insistence, their get-togethers had become more and more frequent. And he now felt his center giving, falling further toward her. He was growing hungrier, even desperate—while she seemed increasingly aloof.
    Was there anything more foolish than a middle-aged man in love? And was there anyone who could care less about that foolishness?
    Ambler smelled leaf dust and warm air from the Caddie’s heater and wished he were already at the cabin.
    The phone buzzed. The noise always disturbed him; it reminded him of the alarm a hospital monitor would make when a patient went into cardiac arrest. He snatched up the light receiver.
    “Yes.”
    “I talked to Tom,” Mark said.
    “Yes. And?”
    “The guy’s turning into some kind of private eye.”
    Ambler concentrated on driving. The roads were narrow and wound in tricky