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He stared back at them until they reentered their room and quietly pulled the door shut behind them

The unconscious o was uy around to the passenger side and loaded hiot behind the wheel, started the Pontiac, and departed the Blue Skies

Several blocks away, he turned onto a street of tract ho badly Ancient Indian laurels and coral trees flanked the canted sidewalks and lent a note of grace in spite of the neighborhood’s decline He pulled the Pontiac to the curb He switched off the engine and the lights

As no streetlalasses to search the unconscious man He found a loaded revolver in a shoulder holster under the guy’s jacket He took it for hi tallets The first, and thicker, contained three hundred dollars in cash, which Vassago confiscated It also held credit cards, photographs of people he didn’t know, a receipt froet-one-free punch card frourt shop, a driver’s license that identified the nificant odds and ends The second wallet was quite thin, and it proved to be not a real wallet at all but a leather ID holder In it were Redlow’s license to operate as a private investigator and another license to carry a concealed weapon

In the glove coo found only candy bars and a paperback detective novel In the console between seats, he found chewing gum, breath mints, another candy bar, and a bent Thoe County

He studied the map book for a while, then started the car and pulled away from the curb He headed for Anaheim and the address on Redlow’s driver’s license

When they were roan and twitch, as if he o picked up the revolver he had taken off the side the head with it Redloas quiet again

4

One of the five other kids who shared Regina’s table in the dining hall was Carl Cavanaugh, as eight years old and acted every bit of it He was a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair, which you would have thought was enough of a handicap, but hea complete nerd Their plates had no sooner been put on the table than Carl said, "I really like Friday afternoons, and you knohy?" He didn’t give anyone a chance to express a lack of interest "Because Thursday night ays have beans and pea soup, so by Friday afternoon you can really cut soina just ignored hiht: Thursday dinner at St Thoreen beans, potatoes in herb butter sauce, and a square of fruited Jell-O with a blob of fake whipped creaot into the sherry or just ild fro habits, and if they lost control on a Thursday, you reen beans or, if they were really over the top, maybe a pair of vanilla cookies with the Jell-O

That Thursday the ina would not have cared--and non or, conversely, cow pies Well, she probably would have noticed a cow pie on her plate, though she wouldn’t have cared if it was substituted for the green beans because she didn’t like green beans She liked ham She had lied when she’d told the Harrisons she was a vegetarian, figuring they would find dietary fussiness one more reason to reject her flat-out, at the start, instead of later when it would hurt more But even as she ate, her attention was not on her food and not on the conversation of the other kids at her table, but on thein Mr Gujilio’s office that afternoon

She had screwed up

They were going to have to build a Museum of Famous Screw-ups just to have a place for a statue of her, so people could come from all over the world, from France and Japan and Chile, just to see it Schoolkids would come, whole classes at a time with their teachers, to study her so they could learn what not to do and how not to act Parents would point at her statue and ominously warn their children, "Anytime you think you’re so sht wind up like that, a figure of pity and ridicule, laughed at and reviled"

Two thirds of the way through the interview, she had realized the Harrisons were special people They probably would never treat her as badly as she had been treated by the Infamous Dotterfields, the couple who accepted her and took her home and then rejected her in teeks when they discovered they were going to have a child of their own, Satan’s child, no doubt, ould one day destroy the world and turn against even the Dotterfields, burning the eyes (Uh-oh Wishing harht is as bad as the deed Re) Anyway, the Harrisons were different, which she began to realize slowly--such a screwup--and which she knew for sure when Mr Harrison made the crack about caviar pajamas and showed he had a sense of humor But by then she was so into her act that so obnoxious--screwup that she was--couldn’t find a way to retreat and start over Now the Harrisons were probably getting drunk, celebrating their narrow escape, orwith relief and fervently saying the Rosary, thanking the Holy Mother for interceding to spare theht-unseen Shit (Oops Vulgarity But not as bad as taking the Lord’s na in the confessional?)

In spite of having no appetite and in spite of Carl Cavanaugh and his crude humor, she ate all of her dinner, but only because God’s policemen, the nuns, would not let her leave the table until she cleaned her plate The fruit in the lime Jell-O was peaches, which made dessert an ordeal She couldn’t understand how anyone could think that liether

Okay, so nuns were not very worldly, but she wasn’t asking them to learn which rare wine to serve with roast tenderloin of platypus, for God’s sake (Sorry, God) Pineapple and lime Jell-O, certainly Pears and li peaches in li the raisins out of rice pudding and replacing them with chunks of watered to eat the dessert by telling herself that it could have been worse; the nuns could have served dead h why nuns, of all people, would want to do that, she had no idea Still, i worse than what she had to face was a trick that worked, a technique of self-persuasion that she had used one, and she was free to leave the dining hall

After dinner most kids went to the recreation rooames, or to the TV room to watch whatever slop was on the boob tube, but as usual she returned to her rooh She planned to spend this evening feeling sorry for herself and conte stupidity isn’t a sin), so she would never forget how dumb she had been and would re along the tile-floored hallways nearly as fast as a kid with two good legs, she remembered how she had cluan to blush In her rooirl named Winnie, as she jumped into bed and flopped on her back, she recalled the calculated clumsiness hich she had levered herself into the chair in front of Mr and Mrs Harrison Her blush deepened, and she put both hands over her face