Chaingang

She phoned the Waterton chief of police, Marty Kerns, at home. Tried the regional highway patrol unit out at Satellite J. Called all over town, phoning everybody she could think of. Nobody had seen Sam that day.

Around midnight Myrna Hyams's party line cleared up and Mary learned that Sam had never made it in to work.

“Myrna, how is it you never called the house to ask if he was ill?” she'd asked, rather more pointedly than she'd intended.

“I just assumed he was out showing properties or something. And then when he hadn't shown up by late afternoon, I did try to phone, but your line didn't answer."

“I'm sorry, Myrna. I went to get groceries about three-thirty."

“So I just assumed maybe he'd had to run you somewhere or something. I guess I did wrong. I should have called—"

“No. That's perfectly—"

“I should have called back. Did you call the hospitals?"

“It was the first thing I thought of. He's probably okay. I better get off the line in case he'd try to phone. I'll let you know if I hear anything. You do the same, okay?"

“Sure, Mary. I will. Call me when you find out something. Please?"

“Course I will. Sorry to phone so late. I'll let you know."

The women hung up. Neither of them had thought to mention—was Sam's car out in the parking lot? Later Myrna would admit that she'd stayed so busy with paperwork, she never thought to look around for his vehicle. In the morning the police noticed his car, and it became an official investigation.

Saturday and Sunday Mary Perkins had stayed close to the phone. But when he was still missing on Monday, she started reaching for straws: phoning the FBI for one thing, and then getting in the car and starting her own hunt.

By midweek she'd been everywhere she could think of, asking around, asking friends, casual acquaintances, Sam's beer-drinking buddies of old, anyone she could think of who might have remembered seeing Sam on Friday morning. She stopped in every merchant's on North Main: First Bank of Waterton, O'Connor Motors, the doctor's office, Judy's Cafe. She went back down South Main to Wilma's and Joe Threadgill's and Dale's Tires. Nobody had seen Sam.

Mary had worn out her welcome with the local cops, and she could tell Marty Kerns hadn't learned a thing. The FBI had blown her off, and everybody else sort of shrugged and said—"We're doing everything we can. He's gone up in smoke and we can't figure out what happened to him."

After six days of it, she was very tired and very worried. She'd slept “like the dead,” as her deceased mother used to say, and yet she felt as if she'd been up for thirty-six hours straight. Exhausted, red-eyed, and sick to her stomach with fear, she picked up the phone and called her old boyfriend.

7

WATERWORKS HILL

Royce Hawthorne was shaking. It was cold in the tiny hillside cabin, but he didn't feel like building a fire. He was sure it would be warmer outside. The brightness of the day shone through the grimy windows. He threw some clothes on—the same old shirt and greasy pair of jeans—pulled on his scuffed cowboy boots, splashed icy water on his face, grabbed sunglasses, and lurched out the cabin door.

Outside it was summertime! The sun was blazing hot on his face. The sky was as blue as it ever gets, at least over North America, and it was a day for the fast movers: the jet jockeys from Scott AFB, and the T-38 pilots out of Eaker all overflew Waterton regularly. This morning there was a big tick-tack-toe game overhead; a crosshatching of contrails covered the blue. The fresh lines were as bright as white paint, as white as pharmaceutical cocaine. Where they began to dissipate, they had the look of downy cotton pulled out in a long strand.

Hawthorne stood eyeballing the perfectly crossed vectors, their straight-arrow pathways intersecting and then softening, dying, vanishing back into nothing.

He took off his shades and rubbed sleep or whatever it was that was gumming up the corners of his eyes. Still a little groggy and hung over, he needed to brush his teeth. Drink a brewski. His mouth was foul from too many tequila shooters and ghetto gang-bangers.

Royce could scarcely believe his deal had gone south on him. That was supposed to be later. But this business with Drexel was too off the wall for words. He felt that old Rockhouse anxiety attack that he'd experienced at the blackjack layout trying to resurface. He had trouble grasping what had happened. Drexel! Of all people to fuck him over, it's Mr. Straight. That preppie hippy dippy yuppy wimpy pimpy prince. Folding on him. Then with the melons not to take his calls.

He'd phoned maybe a dozen times, each time getting the two rings and that suck-face recorded message that he was “unable to come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name and number when you hear the tone—” It had tested all his willpower not to leave a screaming threat on his machine, but fortunately he wasn't quite that stupid or that high.