The staked Goat

that set the whole tone of the meal.”
    She laughed. We were both half kneeling, half squatting around the low table in her living room, throw pillows under our rumps.
    I sipped some of my wine. She pushed some corn around on her plate.
    ”Are you getting close?” Nancy said, eyes down and casual.
    ”Close to what?”
    ”Close to whoever or whatever you’re after?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Can you tell me about it?”
    ”Not ever.”
    She nodded. She finished her meal in a subdued, but not sulky, manner. She cleared the dishes while I finished my glass of wine.
    Nancy came back into the room. ”How about a walk on the beach?” she said peppily.
    ”The beach?”
    ”Yeah, Carson’s Beach.”
    ”Nancy, it must be zero with the wind chill.”
    ”So, you can use some of my sweaters.”
    ”They wouldn’t fit.”
    ”I’ll ask Drew Lynch for some of his then.”
    ”I don’t want him to know I’m here,” I said lamely. Nancy came over and put her hands on my shoulders gently, as though lecturing a slow learner.
    ”John, you won’t have to show Drew any identification for me to borrow a sweater from him. Besides, he certainly knows you’re up here by the sound of your footfalls.”
    I thought back to Jacquie and Ricker above me in old Curl’s house. I shuddered.
    ”Chill?” she said.
    ”No,” I replied.
    ”Well, then, let’s go.”
    ”What about the numerous ruffians who no doubt frequent the area?”
    She laughed. ”Don’t worry, it’s too cold for them.” I yielded.
     
    Drew’s sweater was a thick-ribbed, oily burgundy turtleneck that closed out the cold. The stars were bright over the patch of inky black harbor we could see as we strolled along the beach. A couple of
    joggers in ski masks thumped by us, looking like terrorists and flicking their mittens at us in salute. Nancy swung her arms conservatively at her side. I kept my hands in my pants pockets, thanking whoever had given Drew the sweater for Christmas.
    ”It’s tomorrow, isn’t it?” she said. She spoke quietly, but the air was so cold and the night so still that I was sure the joggers, at least a quarter mile behind us by now, could have heard her. We kept walking.
    ”What’s tomorrow?”
    ”Whatever it is that you’re going to do.”
    I exhaled heavily. My breath clouds never got started because of the wind coming off the harbor. ”Probably,” I said. ”If all goes well.”
    She dug her hands into her pockets and watched her feet. ”Would it do any good for me to argue that the court system is the better way to resolve disputes like this one?”
    She made me smile in spite of myself. ”No, it wouldn’t.”
    ”John Francis Cuddy,” she said wearily, ”you are too old, too recently drugged, and probably too damned decent to deal with these people.”
    ”You left out too loyal, too arrogant, and too stubborn to quit now.”
    She stopped and punched me in the arm, harder than I was ready for.
    ”Don’t!” she cried out, then dropped her voice. ”Don’t you dare make fun of yourself.”
    ”O.K.,” I said, feeling the little glow inside again. ”I won’t.”
    She shook away the tears beginning to form in her eyes. She went up on tiptoes and threw her arms around my neck, drawing her face up into the side of my throat.
    ”Please come back,” she said. No sobbing, just an even, reasonable request.
    I stroked her hair and began to realize just how much I wanted to.
    We walked back to her house, Nancy’s left arm slid into the crook of my right. We climbed the stairs. We both knew I’d taken a step out there on the beach. She had the good sense to realize that a step wasn’t a leap.
    ”Couch?” she said lightly.
    I nodded.
    ”I usually set the alarm for seven,” she said in the same tone.
    ”That’ll be just fine.”
    She walked into her bedroom. ”Why don’t you take the bathroom first,” she said, closing the door behind her.
     

Twenty-three
     
     
     
    M Y AGENDA FOR THE MORNING WAS SHORT, AND THE first two items took no time at all. I drove to Newton, a city about eight miles west of Boston. I obtained a large General Delivery mailbox for a month at the Newton Post Office under the name of ”J. T. Davis” and bought ten dollars’ worth of stamps. Then I stopped at a stationery store and bought five large book-mailing envelopes with the legend ”Books— Fourth Class Mail” already printed on them. I put these in the trunk of the rent-a-car, just above the blanketed shotgun I had bought at