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"I think I saw a picture of hiet the full effect froraph Pinell's the kind of person you don't notice You see guys like hiht build, furtive manner, and a face that just won't stay in your memory"

" 'The Banality of Evil' "

"What's that?"

She repeated the phrase "It's the title of an essay about Adolf Eichmann"

"I don't know that Pinell's evil He's crazy Maybe evil's a form of insanity Anyway, you don't need a psychiatrist's report to know he's crazy It's right there in his eyes Speaking of eyes, that's another thing I wanted to ask him"

"What?"

"If he stabbed theht away, before he went to work turning their bodies into pincushions"

She shuddered "Why?"

"That was the other thing I wanted to ask hiical reason He did it to avoid detection"

"I don't follow you"

"He thought a dead person's eyes would retain the last ie they perceived before death If that were the case you could obtain a picture of theagainst this possibility by destroying their eyes"

"Jesus"

"The funny thing is that he's not the first person to have that theory During the last century so Pinell hit on They just figured it was a y existed for recovering the ie from the retina And who knows that it won't be possible soive you all sorts of reasons why it'll never be physiologically possible, but look at all the things that would have seeo Or even twenty years ago"

"So Pinell's just a little ahead of his tilass to the bar She filled it and poured a glass of vodka for herself "I do believe that calls for a drink 'Here's looking at you, kid' That's as close as I can coart I do better with clay"

She sat down and said, "I wasn't going to drink anything today Well, what the hell"

"I want to go fairly light lass in her hand "I was glad when you called, Matthew I didn't think you were going to"

"I tried to get you last night I kept getting a busy signal"

"I had the phone off the hook"

"I know"

"You had theht When I'm in here with the door locked and the phone off the hook and the shades down, that's when I'm really safe Do you knohat I mean?"

"I think so"

"See, I didn't wake up with a clear head Sunday ain last night"

"Oh"

"And then I got up thisand took a pill to stop the shakes and decided I'd stay away froet off the roller-coaster, you know?"

"Sure"

"And here I alass in my hand Isn't that a surprise?"

"You should have said soht the vodka"

"It's no big deal"

"I wouldn't have brought the Scotch, either I had too ht without drinking"

"You really think so?"

"Of course"

Her large gray eyes looked quite bottohtened "Well, it's too late to test that hypothesis right now, isn't it? Why don't we just make the best of e have?"

We didn't do all that h vodka to catch up with me and then we both coasted She played soether on the couch and listened to the love on the couch and then went into the bedrooether, better than we'd been Saturday night Novelty is a spice, but when the cheood between lovers, faot out of myself some, and felt a little of what she felt

Afterent back to the couch and I started talking about the oddaone by Nine years is a long tio and you could walk through their lives and find everything pretty much as they left it The sa the sah a seachange You closed the day-care center and left your husband and moved here Your husband took the kids and beat it to California I was one of the first cops on the scene, and God knows my life turned upside down since then There were three cops who investigated the case in Sheepshead Bay, or started to Two of them are dead and one left the force and his wife and lives in a furnished rooer's reoods"

I nodded "And Lynn London's been hbors on Wyckoff Street have h every wind on earth's been busy blowing sand on top of her grave I know Americans lead mobile lives I read soes its place of residence Even so, it's as though every wind on earth's been busy blowing sand on top of her grave It's like digging for Troy"

" 'Deep with the first dead' "

"How's that?"

"I don't know if I reht Just a second" She crossed the rooed through it "It's Dylan Thomas," she said, "and it's in here somewhere Where the hell is it? I'm sure it's in here Here it is"

She read:

"Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,

Robed in the long friends,