"You know," she said. "I'm studying art history, women's studies, and casting my own bronzes."
"When I grow up," said Leon, "I'm going to do magic. Poof. Will you teach me, Mike Ainsel?"
"Sure," said Shadow. "If your mom doesn't mind."
Sam said, "After we've eaten, while you're putting Leon to bed, Mags, I think I'm going to get Mike to take me to the Buck Stops Here for an hour or so."
Marguerite did not shrug. Her head moved, her eyebrow raised slightly.
"I think he's interesting," said Sam. "And we have lots to talk about."
Marguerite looked at Shadow, who busied himself in dabbing an imaginary blob of red sauce from his chin with a paper napkin. "Well, you're grownups," she said, in a tone of voice that implied that they weren't, and that even if they were they shouldn't be.
After dinner Shadow helped Sam with the washing up-he dried-and then he did a trick for Leon, counting pennies into Leon's palm: each time Leon opened his hand and counted them there was one less coin than he had counted in. And as for the final penny-"Are you squeezing it? Tightly?"-when Leon opened his hand he found it had transformed into a dime. Leon's plaintive cries of "How'd you do that? Momma, how'd he do that?" followed him out into the hall.
Sam handed him his coat. "Come on," she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the wine.
Outside it was cold.
Shadow stopped in his apartment, tossed the Minutes of the Lakeside City Council into a plastic grocery bag, and brought it along. Hinzelmann might be down at the Buck, and he wanted to show him the mention of his grandfather.
They walked down the drive side by side.
He opened the garage door, and she started to laugh. "Omigod," she said, when she saw the 4-Runner. "Paul Gunther's car. You bought Paul Gunther's car. Omigod."
Shadow opened the door for her. Then he went around and got in. "You know the car?"
"When I came up here two or three years ago to stay with Mags. It was me that persuaded him to paint it purple."
"Oh," said Shadow. "It's good to have someone to blame."
He drove the car out onto the street. Got out and closed the garage door. Got back into the car. Sam was looking at him oddly as he got in, as if the confidence had begun to leak out of her. He put on his seat belt, and she said, "Okay. This is a stupid thing to do, isn't it? Getting into a car with a psycho killer."
"I got you home safe last time," said Shadow.
"You killed two men," she said. "You're wanted by the feds. And now I find out you're living under an assumed name next door to my sister. Unless Mike Ainsel is your real name?"
"No," said Shadow, and he sighed. "It's not." He hated saying it. It was as if he was letting go of something important, abandoning Mike Ainsel by denying him; as if he were taking his leave of a friend.
"Did you kill those men?"
"No."
"They came to my house, and said we'd been seen together. And this guy showed me photographs of you. What was his name-Mister Hat? No. Mister Town. It was like The Fugitive. But I said I hadn't seen you."
"Thank you."
"So," she said. "Tell me what's going on. I'll keep your secrets if you keep mine."
"I don't know any of yours," said Shadow.
"Well, you know that it was my idea to paint this thing purple, thus forcing Paul Gunther to become such an object of scorn and derision for several counties around that he was forced to leave town entirely. We were kind of stoned," she admitted.
"I doubt that bit of it's much of a secret," said Shadow. "Everyone in Lakeside must have known. It's a stoner sort of purple."
And then she said, very quiet, very fast, "If you're going to kill me please don't hurt me. I shouldn't have come here with you. I am so f**king f**king dumb. I can identify you. Jesus."
Shadow sighed. "I've never killed anybody. Really. Now I'm going to take you to the Buck," he said. "We'll have a drink. Or if you give the word, I'll turn this car around and take you home. Either way, I'll just have to hope you aren't going to call the cops."
There was silence as they crossed the bridge.
"Who did kill those men?" she asked.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"I would." She sounded angry now. He wondered if bringing the wine to the dinner had been a wise idea. Life was certainly not a cabernet right now.
"It's not easy to believe."
"I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."
"Really?"
"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen-I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath.
Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, "Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think that I'm a nut."
"Maybe," she said. "Try me."
"Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today?"
"…Maybe."
"And that there are new gods out there, gods of computers and telephones and whatever, and that they all seem to think there isn't room for them both in the world. And that some kind of war is kind of likely."
"And these gods killed those two men?"
"No, my wife killed those two men."
"I thought you said your wife was dead."
"She is."
"She killed them before she died, then?"
"After. Don't ask."
She reached up a hand and flicked her hair from her forehead.
They pulled up on Main Street, outside the Buck Stops Here. The sign over the window showed a surprised-looking stag standing on its hind legs holding a glass of beer. Shadow grabbed the bag with the book in it and got out.
"Why would they have a war?" asked Sam. "It seems kind of redundant. What is there to win?"
"I don't know," admitted Shadow.
"It's easier to believe in aliens than in gods," said Sam. "Maybe Mister Town and Mister Whatever were Men in Black, only the alien kind."
They were standing on the sidewalk outside the Buck Stops Here and Sam stopped. She looked up at Shadow, and her breath hung on the night air like a faint cloud. She said, "Just tell me you're one of the good guys."
"I can't," said Shadow. "I wish I could. But I'm doing my best."
She looked up at him, and bit her lower lip. Then she nodded. "Good enough," she said. "I won't turn you in. You can buy me a beer."
Shadow pushed the door open for her, and they were hit by a blast of heat and music. They went inside.
Sam waved at some friends. Shadow nodded to a handful of people whose faces-although not their names-he remembered from the day he had spent searching for Alison McGovern, or who he had met in Mabel's in the morning. Chad Mulligan was standing at the bar, with his arm around the shoulders of a small red-haired woman-the kissing cousin, Shadow figured. He wondered what she looked like, but she had her back to him. Chad's hand raised in a mock salute when he saw Shadow. Shadow grinned, and waved back at him. Shadow looked around for Hinzelmann, but the old man did not seem to be there this evening. He spied a free table at the back and started walking toward it.
Then somebody began to scream.
It was a bad scream, a full-throated, seen-a-ghost hysterical scream, which silenced all conversation. Shadow looked around, certain somebody was being murdered, and then he realized that all the faces in the bar were turning toward him. Even the black cat, who slept in the window during the day, was standing up on top of the jukebox with its tail high and its back arched and was staring at Shadow.
Time slowed.
"Get him!" shouted a woman's voice, parked on the verge of hysteria. "Oh for God's sake, somebody stop him! Don't let him get away! Please!" It was a voice he knew.
Nobody moved. They stared at Shadow. He stared back at them.
Chad Mulligan stepped forward, walking through the people. The small woman walked behind him warily, her eyes wide, as if she was preparing to start screaming once more. Shadow knew her. Of course he knew her.
Chad was still holding his beer, which he put down on a nearby table. He said, "Mike."
Shadow said, "Chad."
Audrey Burton took hold of Chad's sleeve. Her face was white, and there were tears in her eyes. "Shadow," she said. "You bastard. You murderous evil bastard."
"Are you sure that you know this man, hon?" said Chad. He looked uncomfortable.