“Herro Razalla,” Miss Violet does the Chinese thing with Lazarra even though she’s Stanford, Class of ’51, and third generation Sacramento. She insists that her success with Half Wong in Saddleton is due to the consistency in ambiance.

I think it’s all in the name which, for those in the know, tells the tale of a Chinese woman who has gotten rid of an unsatisfactory husband, a Mister Wong, who aspired to be a chef. I once joked with her about naming her café Half Right. She remarked that Half Light just wasn’t catchy.

Miss V’s eyes widened behind her glasses when I wad up the slip of paper from the broken cookie and cast it on the pile of pork bones. “You always keep those awful things. Something wrong, Lazarra?” she proves that her pronunciation is purely atmospheric.

“Be at peace with yourself,” I spit out. “The last two fortune cookies I’ve gotten have said the same thing.”

“Something wrong with the sentiment?” The tiny Chinese woman grins.

“I have a hard time believing that any random sample of fortunes in cookies would score three out of three in three different locations.”

“Maybe all fortunes same,” V reverts back to type. She picks up one from the plate at the nearest table. “Not worry,” she assures her male customer. “We realize you get wrong fortune. Have yours in kitchen.”

She ignores his vexed look and breaks open the cookie and reads, “The greatest danger could be your stupidity.”

“See, not your fortune,” Violet grins at him and turns to me. “Not all same.”

“Okay, okay,” I calm down. Just one of those strange coincidences in life.

“Getting late. Staying with Adam, tonight?” Violet turns to another subject.

“No, I’m on my way to Fresno to bunk with a friend,” I can’t explain to V about staying at Adam’s hotel since the murder.

“I’m going on vacation—headed to Palm Springs,” I change the subject towards less local information. “I may not be back in the area for a couple of months.”

“Seen Brick around?” Miss V’s question about my former boyfriend doesn’t annoy me. Ignoring my change in subject does—a little.

“Not for a long time. I hear that he and Decker Dooley make quite a pair,” I say more coolly than I intended. I don’t like to talk about that subject, either.

“You just barrel of fun, tonight,” my friend slides her glasses down her nose and peers at me over the rims.

Halfway down the hill to Stockton, I realize that I have a long drive to Fresno, so I call Radinka to let her know that I’ll be late. Radinka, meaning playful, encourages me with a promise of leftover meatloaf in the frig. “You know where the wine is,” my old friend, a brunette with cuddly looks and business sense as sharp as surgical cutlery, cuts the connection short because she’s taking out a client for dinner.

“He’s got ever so much money,” my friend’s fin cuts the water as she circles the prey. “He wants me to invest all of it.”

“So you will,” I say to dead air and feel the thump-thump of expansion joints across SH 16 vibrating through the wheel.

I share a bowl of instant oatmeal and coffee with Radinka in the morning. My venerable BMW hums down SH 99 in the direction of Bakersfield where I have to pound a client over the head, not on the back, for choking on a legal brief full of vegetables laced with heavy metals. I told him not to plant in that particular field!

A wrathful real estate agent stalking through my client’s deserted office space helps me track my target to a lunch counter on Truxton Avenue where Wilbur and I exchange a few threats and harsh words after which I leave with a bank draft in payment for services rendered. The paperwork for this case fills two heavy cases in the trunk of my car. I should charge out extra for gas..

Four hours lost in Bakersfield puts me very late into Palm Springs where I check in with my office using my NEC, the latest in laptop computers, and the internet.

A long list of messages downloads. Every other one reads Go on vacation, Laz. I strip off one of my shoes by stepping on the heel with the other and straining against the pressure from the shoelaces. The other I have bend down to untie before I kick it off. The footies come off by stepping on the toes and pulling out my knees joint. I can hardly wait for the hot tub and shower.

I’m so tired I won’t mind drowning. At last, I’m on vacation—only a few cases of paperwork in the car that I have to FED-X to the office in the morning.

“Hey! What’s that for?” I hazard a quick glance. He’s brushing frantically at ashes scattered across this shirt. I don’t tell him about the bit on his trousers.
“I’m allergic to tobacco smoke,” I yell through the roar. Our speedometer is quivering above seventy five. The Mack flat bed at my elbow continues to edge ahead of us as we start climbing the approach to the river bridge at the state border.
“What? Roll the damned window up,” he yells back.

 Having killed the offending cigarette, I don’t mind closing the glass. I keep the wind whistling through a small crack just in case. Neil doesn’t reach across for the lighter, again.
“I smoke when I get nervous,” he lets me know.
A paper bag and other trash blows out of the back of a blood red Chevy pickup as it whizzes by me. A sleek Labrador in the back of the truck thrusts its muzzle forward into the slip stream and strains in excitement against its short leash. The wind pulls the lips back exposing long yellow teeth. A sign alongside the road reads “Welcome to Louisiana.”
If he’s nervous, then I’m nervous. “I’ve got to pee,” I pull into the hospitality station on the Louisiana side of the Sabine River. A few ducks paddle around on a mossy lake behind the faked antebellum structure. A skimmer glides close to the surface and comes away with a small fish wriggling in its curved beak. An alligator settles into the mud and dreams of skimmer breakfast. The truck with its oversized load of drill pipe clanks on in the direction of Lake Charles.

“Be back in a jiff; please don’t smoke in the car,” I grab my purse and slam the door.
“Morning.” The lady behind the counter smiles and shoves the guest book in my direction. “Sign in and you get a box of chocolates,” she offers in a cracked voice. She is a tiny woman with pure white hair puffed about her head like a cotton ball. A pink silk scarf is knotted neatly around her neck; a tag on her lapel identifies her as a volunteer. Behind her, a small mountain of white cartons, each advertised to contain ten dozen individually wrapped Evangeline Chocolate Bars, threatens to overwhelm her. I scratch away with the ball point pen tied to the counter with a heavy brass chain and she hands me my sweet. I asked her if I could have one for each of my eight children that I’d left in the car.
She studies me. “Honey, a figure like that, I don’t think you’ve got one child, much less eight, in that car of yours.”
So much for my character. I check to make sure the stall has paper before I lock myself in. There’s no hook to hang my purse, so I balance the bag across my knees. I wonder if I should use my pen to add my own message to the cryptic bits of graffiti in front of me. “Help, someone’s trying to kill me,” occurs to me—appropriately following the line “fuck you, Gale.” Man or woman?
Back at the car, Neil is lounging back against the door. He taps his Swiss watch and tries to look important. The effect is lost if you notice the hole burned in his polyester pants.
“Can we hurry?” he complains.
I do my own consultation with my trusted Timex. “Relax, Neil, the Sulfur exit is only twenty miles. You’ve said another ten miles south, so we’ve got twenty minutes to spare.”
“About this meeting, Neil. You’ve said that Laz will be there?” I watch his expression closely. He’s nervous, but maybe that’s excitement.
“Sure, Morgan. That’s what they told me. They’re keeping Laz safe. She’s scared, that’s all.”
I’m in the car with the key in the ignition before he’s ready. I don’t like the implications of Neil’s statement. “Doesn’t sound like the Laz I know.”
Neil squirms in his seat, fastening his safety belt. “Maybe you’re not such a good judge of people.”
Maybe I’m not. I think back to last night with Neil. Well, last night was pure lust, though I wonder who was using whom. I keep this thought to myself while I concentrate on merging back into the traffic going east on I-10. I really need to know what is going on between Laz and Macquereau. “You and Laz good friends? You know Laz; the only thing she’s talks about is work.”
“Well, we do see quite a lot of each other on the job. I’m supposed to select your monitoring sites for the power company in accordance with EPA guidelines, arrange for access, keep the construction crews from bulldozing your equipment, that kind of thing.”
“You ever go with Laz to an Astro’s game? I’ve always wanted to see a baseball game in the Astrodome. We’ve got the Superdome in New Orleans, but we don’t have baseball. The Saints aren’t exactly the most exciting football team, are they?”
“Not like the Houston Oilers, no,” Neil has regained his humor. “Never saw much in baseball, myself,” he adds.
“What! Baseball is a beautiful game,” I protest.
“Men hitting a little ball with a stick? Bone jarring contact with padded bases? Okay, occasionally running blind into fences in the outfield, I’ll grant you that.”
“How about pigskin? Reminds me of the kind of guys that play football.”
“How about Roger Staubach?”
“An exception.”
“What about basketball?”
“Dribbling seems to fit.”
“Golf?”
“The little ball and stick thing without the intellectual depth of baseball. Although, I like the grass and fresh air.” I think about all the times Noel has asked me to play a round with him. He’s even threatened to buy me a set of clubs.
“Wrestling?” Neil plows on.
“All fake.”
“I meant Olympic.”
“Boring.”
“Boxing?”
“Not a game, is it?”
“I guess women don’t like contact sports,” Neil comments.
“I rather like Rugby,” I admit. “All those men grunting and struggling in heaps—something almost like sex.”
Neil retreats into the silence of the baffled. I flick the windshield washers on briefly in a futile attempt to clean the bugs off of the glass.
“So, Neil, where did you go to school?”
“Lamar Tech in Beaumont. Technology degree,” he answers. “You?”
“Tennessee. Nashville. Vanderbilt, not the University of Tennessee.”
“Ivy League,” Neil manages to sound sarcastic.
Change the subject. “How did you come to be working for the power company?”
“The usual way” he laughs. “Graduated with decent grades, couldn’t find the kind of job I wanted, parents made some phone calls—we’re an old line family in the Beaumont area. Finally, I went and talked to an uncle who shoved his foot in the door for me.”
“You seem to be doing all right for yourself,” I say. “Nice house, good job with a future. You don’t like what you’re doing?”
“Okay, I guess. My father’s getting on, wants me to take over the family construction firm. I don’t know if I want that. There’s an older brother who should come on board, but he teaches high school history. He says he likes his job and isn’t keen to wrap himself up in the dull life of a businessman. Besides, how would a history teacher make out dealing with the trades?”
Privately I’m sure a history major could do very well running a construction company. I value my liberal arts training more and more every day. “You think owning a business is dull?”
“I don’t know, never thought much about it. Is Nightwing Laboratories your business or your families?”

 
“All mine, plus the ninety nine percent owned by the bank.”
“See, I couldn’t take the pressure.”
“Speaking of pressure, what did you think when you found out that Laz was missing?”
“I was real worried when you called from New Orleans. I got to thinking that Laz has been hinting about some kind of trouble with Puddy Madling the last few days. I can see how that might have something to do with her running into hiding.”
The man sounds sincere, but I have my doubts. “I was wondering how you located Laz so quickly?”
While he’s thinking about what to say, I’m pressing the accelerator of my rental car as far as it will go and watching the needle climbs slowly through fifty five. A steady staccato of mosquitoes peppers my windshield.
“If I were a betting man, which I am,” Neil says, “I’d bet that Puddy Madling has been trying to push Laz into falsifying reports. You met him; you know what he’s like. When I heard from you, I started calling anyone that might know something. Laz ever talk to you about him?”
I ignore his question. “Makes sense. Madling’s another pimple on the world’s ass as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’ve got to be careful with Madling, Morgan,” Neil cautions me. “People say that he’s connected.”
“And what do you mean by connected, Neil?” thinking he was making up a story that sounded like a plot for a crime flick.
“You know, to the big boys, the players, the people in charge.” Do I detect impatience in Neil’s voice?
“Does their dirty work, huh?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I’m just saying Madling is an ugly guy.”
“And Madling told you where to find Laz?”

 
“Of course not!” Neil barks. Would his teeth show if he stuck his head out of the window?
Along with Madling, I have other serious worries and memories of a few things Malcolm Adams mentioned. “Anything been settled about the foundation tests at the site?”
I could sense the shrug from my passenger. “I can’t comment on that, officially. There’s a lot of influence peddling going on, which is where Madling comes in. Like I said, you’ve got to be careful around him,” he repeats.
“Well, consider this, Neil. Those foundations are going to be required to support huge masses of concrete, and the containment vessel is slated to shield fissionable materials. We’ve carefully sampled and evaluated the soil, the water tables are being measured for stability, and we have a battery of tests to run that may reassure everyone that the final design is adequate—and of course there are budgetary considerations. Anyone who controls the way the testing program is handled basically controls the project. That’s why we’re the incorruptible third party.”
I guess Neil doesn’t notice my sarcasm. “Is that what Lazarra is worried about?”
“I don’t know, Neil. You tell me.”

I was also thinking about how the complexities in the chain of interpretations of the data could lead to bad decisions. Under the visible parts to the final structure, a matrix of columns of steel, or reinforced concrete cylinders called piles would be in place. The piles are driven, screwed, or bored and poured deep into the earth, and because they seemed so elemental, they therefore seem reliable, a secure and comforting beginning for erecting a mighty and, at least potentially, dangerous edifice.

 
The simplest concepts, friction and displacement. Nothing builders haven’t known about and used for countless centuries. And yet, mother earth can be treacherous. Changing water tables can turn solid soil into pudding, sand can trickle away, or clay can swell, and buildings and bridges can crack, sink, tilt, or crumble. All kinds of things could go wrong—some things in fact would go wrong. I just hoped that the inevitable mistakes would add up to minor problems.
In my opinion, the oldest methods of driving individual piles into the ground, putting heavy weights on them and waiting to see if they’ll sink hasn’t seen much improvement. The Feds hint at funding new tests at the University of Houston. That could be years off. Meanwhile, the usual method of using data on single piles and adjustment factors to figure loads on multiple pile clusters will have to do. No one was ever completely certain about predicting load capacities of group piles. There is a lot of room for error when you consider the interaction effects transmitted through soil. And the soil, itself. Can you be sure it is either cohesive or granular? There are gray areas. That’s why the work that my laboratory is doing is crucial. The data and the monitoring work will yield a mass of basic information, another kind of foundation support, so that critical engineering decisions can be made with the highest levels of confidence, if not absolute certainty. Shrink the margins of error until they were acceptable.
Only I knew that things don’t work quite that way. Compromises leaks into to every pore of the construction phase. There is always the danger that a series of small compromises will be linked in unsuspected ways, creating dangerous flaws in design and execution.

[more]
Sulfur Exit

I only half listen to Neil as he fills the time with a running account of the latest problems at the Sabine site. He seems to have an enthusiasm for the negative. I follow Neil’s directions and take exit twenty at Sulfur. So far, so good. It occurs to me belatedly that if Neil goes off on another track, Adams won’t be able to find me.
The fumes from the chemical plants a few miles away on Lake Charles are making my nose burn. Overhead, the sky has clouded over, again, and my brain and eyes follow a small plane that descends to stay under the gray ceiling while I am driving this god forsaken road.
My stomach rumbles. “I’m thinking about the place with the big concrete pig standing in front— Hollier’s Barbecue behind us in Sulfur—when we get through with this,” I say. “You said about ten miles?” I check my gas gauge.
“Maybe twelve,” he says. “Watch out for the school bus!”
I brake hard and waive at the lady who is waiting with a gaggle of children at the side of the road. A large yellow school bus is signaling in front of me and positioning its doors alongside the queue. A lot of shouting and jostling is going on.

We’re coming up on the bayou bridge when Macquereau directs me off the pavement and down a gravel trail to the right. I breathe a sigh of relief; we are headed to the place I described on the phone to Malcolm last night. Our car bumps across some deep ruts ground into an unpaved lane. We idle through a grove of cypress trees and tall grass before coming out into an open area. An abandoned warehouse squats along a crumbling dockside that looks as if it might slide into the bayou at any moment. I mention the fact that the place looks deserted. I scan the area hoping to see some sign that Adams is nearby, but of course I didn’t see anything. What if he didn’t get my message? Suddenly there seemed to be far too many if’s in my situation.
“They’re probably inside,” he snaps. “Stop over there,” indicating a paved area behind a loading dock which features a small green fishing trawler in dire need of fresh paint. The rusting skeleton of an abandoned fuel pump suggests that the trawler has not moved in a long time. As I pull up to the indicated spot I get a view behind the building and make out a shiny black BMW parked next to an open door in the warehouse wall that faces the water. My queasy stomach is telling me how stupid I am. Is Neil on the level? Can Laz really be here? After that phone call last night, I can’t be sure. What did he imply when he said to someone over the phone, “I’ve got a problem.”
Neil looks nervous as he slides out of the car. He motions at me impatiently and tries to act nonchalant as he saunters towards the door. Inside, the warehouse looks black. I think about doing the prudent thing like getting back into the car and driving off.
“I’ve got an umbrella. Looks like rain?”
Neil waves his hand behind him and keeps on walking. “Either you’re incredibly cool, Morgan, or you’re incredibly stupid.”
I’m pretty sure I know which. I let Neil get further ahead of me and stop next to the water. I find that I can’t focus. My mind is wandering. What’s the sense of hurrying? If I had my rod I’d try a few casts across the grassy bed trailing in the current behind the trawler’s stern. A weedless spoon ought to do nicely. From where I stand, I can see the boat is resting on the shallow bottom. I know there’ll be some nice sand trout hanging out along the channel side of the derelict.
“Hey, Morgan!” Neil is waving at me from the door. My stomach tightens up into a knot with the certainty that Malcolm never got my message.
“Be right over.” I bend down to retie my shoelaces and try to see through the shadows at Neil’s back. Still can’t penetrate into the darkness—which I suppose is the point of the setup.
I get close to Neil and he reaches out to grab my arm, smiling as if he’s about to escort me into the Prom. Or, more likely, he’s making sure I won’t back out.
“Don’t keep us waiting, Morgan.” I don’t like the slimy tone in his voice.
My eyes take a few moments to adjust to the difference in lighting. Instead of a ceiling, the shadowy spider web of overhead beams lurks high up near the warehouse roof. Something else is there, but I can’t make it out. A few pinpricks of light mark the locations of missing screws. Neil decides to drop my arm.
“So, where’s Laz?”
A man wearing a tan pinstripe suit and brown checkered tie lounges about ten feet in front of me against one of several stacks of wooden crates scattered across the concrete floor. He’s an ugly bastard with a flattened nose and acne scars cratering his face. His grey flecked hair is sleeked back and braded into a shoulder length pony tail. Pale yellowish eyes track me as I move away from Neil’s side, flicker back in Neil’s direction, then fasten on me. I decide to call him Gus after a bully I knew in high school. I haven’t yet seen him blink.
“She’s close by, Miss Nightwing.” The voice is high pitched and nasal. “We’re waiting to see if you’ve come by yourself. His grin reveals teeth that need dental work.
“You said we. I don’t see anyone else,” I admit.
“Well, then, I’m waiting to see if you came alone,” Gus man smoothes down his tie. He has the relaxed appearance of a man who knows he’s in total control of the situation.
I think he’s expecting me to ask. “How long will we have to wait?”
“Yes, how long” Neil decides to chime in. “My uncle said Laz would be here.”
“Well, now, we had separate instructions about that,” the man speaks without taking his eyes off of me.
Gus takes his time looking me over, and I feel my cheeks heating up. I’m getting a real bad feeling about this. “You didn’t bring her, did you?”
“Now look here,” Neil is like a fly buzzing into the silence. “My uncle promised me that Laz Rayburn would be at this meeting!” The sound of a petulant boy.
The move was too quick for my eyes to follow. The barrel of the automatic in Gus’s hand divides the space between Neil and me, ready to move in either direction.
“Hey, you can put that away,” Neil squeaks. “Aren’t we all friends, here?”
“Sure,” Gus shrugs, and then squeezes the trigger.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the red spray of Neil’s blood sent mixed spatter patterns over the wall.  The puzzled expression on his face will surely accompany him into eternity. My knees feel weak, but don’t buckle just yet. Neil’s body hits the floor with a wet thud as I become aware of the gunman once more.
I watch in slow motion as the weapon swings back in my direction. I know I’ll never hear the sound.
“Not yet, Miss Nightwing.” I imagine I can see the shiny end of the round in the chamber at the other end of the barrel. Everything has happened so fast that the ejected brass cartridge is still ringing as it bounces on the floor. Gus bends to scoop up the evidence.
I feel myself start to shake uncontrollably.
“Don’t faint,” the man barks an order at me, causing me to lift my eyes up from the spinning floor. The shaking tapers off, temporarily, as he comes back into focus.
“You could run.” He punches the gun in the direction of the door behind me.
I imagine the bullet tearing through my body from behind; I’d be dragged out as dead meat.
“I’d rather not,” I manage to whisper. Instinctively I know I’ll live longer if I fight the fear building in me.
“Tell you what I’m going to do,” he pulls a big, mean looking knife with a serrated edge out of a sheath looped through his belt. He waves it slowly back and forth in front of him like he’s trying to hypnotize me.
“You want to kill me?” he grins. “Here!” he tosses the automatic in my direction. The gun slides across the floor and comes to rest by my feet. “Pick it up and shoot me. If you don’t I’ll gut you like a fish, slide this knife right up into your belly and all that pretty stuff inside of you is going to fall out.”
Tears are blurring my vision. I try to clear my eyes with the heels of my hands.
“I’m coming now.” He takes a short step forward.
This is too much. I scream, going down painfully on one knee. He advances another step. My heart’s pounding, I can’t let myself faint; I pick up the weapon, scramble to my feet and turn in the direction of the door. I can outrun this asshole.

And slide on Neil’s blood, catch myself then lurch towards the door where I can’t avoid stepping in the pool of blood spreading across the floor. I don’t see the open gutter outside the door. My foot goes off the slick ledge and I fall forward, scraping my palms against the rough concrete. The gun goes spinning out of my hands and I chase it down on hands and knees, waiting for that big, ugly knife to slice into me.

So much time lost while she was trying to avoid an encounter with the whole tribe of surprise visitors! She would need to boost hard to rendezvous on schedule with her orbiting scout ship and renew the pleasurable company of her mate. Aldren, who was also her copilot, would be bringing up the plasma temperature to operating levels in the quantum containment field in preparation for their journey to the next system. She looked forward to the leisure time they would have together.

She tapped a key on the com to accept a secure channel signal and listened as Aldren’s voice reached across the void to reassure her that she was not alone. Srrith hated being alone. Most of the Vag species did not function well alone, so scouts were always sent out in pairs—usually life mates as in the case of Srrith and Aldren. She noted that her mate’s voice was tense.

“We may not have much time to clear this system,” he was saying. “I’ve detected a TLS on approach.”

“How far out?”

“Two, maybe three turns. We’ll lose the trace once she breaks out in-system.”

Srrith turned the various possibilities over in her mind. “We could be looking at one of our Vag surveyors. How could anyone know we’re in this system?”

“Not our ship. The Q-signature is different—unknown to our database. I suggest we be gone before our visitors arrive.”

Srrith drummed her six digits on the plastic console, her sharp, gold decorated nails adding more scratches to the already chipped surface. “I have one more beacon to check on the older land mass in the southern hemisphere.” Srrith had visited Jerith Six Alpha—the Vag designation for the planet—three times in the past, checking on the weapons cache beacons. She preferred the ancient, warm red and gold stones of the desert regions covering the central parts of the southern continent to the jagged, frigid thrust of the mountain ranges crisscrossing the northern landmasses. Besides, the ancient geology of the southern regions was more stabile—and no indigenous people to thrust a spear at you unexpectedly.

* * *

The oblong piece of black crystalline solid looking like a piece of fire darkened flint was an AIWS, or Adaptive Intelligent Weapons System, part of a weapons cache inadvertently scattered across the earths surface when the Vag ship was caught by weapons fire just as she was attempting to clear the Earth’s atmosphere. Thousands of the nearly indestructible units were scattered across the globe, most falling and sinking irretrievably into the ocean depths, some impacting on the continents where they lay undiscovered for a million years.

A Stone Age boy known by his kin group as Eth decided to try a strange black stone to flake the edge on a carefully selected piece of flint. Tomorrow’s hunt was to be his first as a full member of his clan. Young Eth felt a momentary disorientation as biochemical scanners conducted a delicate survey of his neural pathways.

Looking down, he discovered a beautiful spear point in his hand. In his surprise, he cut himself on the edges of the triangular shaped piece with it grooved extension for lacing strips of animal hide around a heavy shaft. He displayed the new point proudly to the other hunters, glowing with satisfaction at their envious reactions to his prize.

Unfortunately for Eth, the raging boar he cornered early the next day took the razor sharp point in his chest and charged right up the shaft, skewering poor Eth with long curved tusks before shuddering and dying with the weapon through his heart. The group brought back poor Eth for burial in honor of his sacrifice, but although they searched everywhere, the perfect spear point had disappeared.

In Roman lands, on a cold winter’s eve near Hadrian’s wall, a tall and youthful Briton named Merlinius picked up a stone to throw at a hungry wolf and found himself holding an incredible sword so sharp the blade would cut through silk scarf floated in air. Merlinius gifted the fabulous weapon to his companion, Arthur. Together with a small band of mercenaries they fought off several groups of Pictish attacking across the Roman defensive line.

Arthur, poisoned by his peasant wife in a fit of jealousy over a questionable affair involving the daughter of a local Celtic family, became the central figure in a legend originally known as the “Sword from the Stone”. Merlinius never discovered the fate of the mystical sword, the weapon having disappeared while Arthur lay on his deathbed.

The slow, cold drizzle looked to last all night as Patrick Henry McCarty, sometimes calling himself William Bonney, usually identified as Billy the Kid, nursed a sputtering campfire in the twilight with damp twigs and bits of boards from an abandoned corral in order to heat his last can of beans. Billy was looking around for a rock to pound the knife through the lid of the can, found a dirt encrusted black stone, picked it up, and was about to strike the haft of the blade when the crust dropped away from the “stone” and he found himself holding a beautiful Colt 45 Peacemaker in his hand. He shouted in surprise and almost dropped the shiny, nickel-plated pistol to the wet ground.

McCarty was supposed to have been pardoned by the Governor, and instead found himself at the wrong end of a manhunt. The last days had been tiresome, and he was hungry, dirty, and angry to be hiding out by himself after a jailbreak while a former friend, Pat Garrett, currently the sheriff of Lincoln County, was out looking for him.

Billy found himself mesmerized by the weapon’s perfect finish, the way the flickering flames glittered on the polished barrel. He hefted the pistol, let it hang with a finger through the trigger guard, and marveled at the balance and feel of the piece. He spun the cylinder and saw that that the pistol was empty. He reach out to his bandolier and extracted six cartridges and slipped the brass casings smoothly into place. Without thinking, he whirled the weapon and fired from his hip at an empty whiskey bottle balanced on top of an old cedar stump a couple of dozen steps away. The light was poor, the shot difficult if not impossible, and yet the bottle shattered as the loud report echoed off of a nearby hillside. He knelt at the edge of the fire, stunned. If only he’d had a gun like this before.

Two weeks later at Fort Sumner Pat Garrett fired a bullet through Billy’s heart from across a darkened room. Billy’s friend, Pete Maxwell, and a few others known to the gunslinger, spent years looking for the beautiful pistol they’d seen Billy carrying, but no trace of the unusual weapon was ever found.

Jill had said it, and he couldn’t forget it. After her loud and slightly drunken pronouncement, she had flounced off across their new, Mexican-tile patio leaving  him standing alone in front of his friends in his backyard. They had been crowding around his fancy new gas grill and admiring the chrome and stainless steel smoker accessory. They were guzzling his beer, talking about prospects for rain in Texas, and  generally milling around with good feelings like Texans always do when there’s free ribs, fancy potato salad, and plenty of iced beer in the cooler. Carl was absolutely certain that until that very moment, Jim was going to give him the contract to clean the large rack of oil field pipe in the local storage yard.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if Jim had been more properly apologetic about his grill being rated superior to his host’s, or if Iris, Jim’s wife, hadn’t had a smirk on her face. God damn it, anyway, he needed that cleaning job so he could replace his battered flatbed Ford.  Cleaning a thousand joints of casing and drill pipe amounted to a lot of beer and ribs, not to mention mortgage payments on their new house. What the Hell was Jill doing, anyway?

And now, just look at the mess he was in!

He stretched back against the worn cushions on the bench seat of his battered service truck and ran the palms of his hands over the scarred steering wheel. He needed to get his mind around the events of the last few hours. He closed his eyes and tried to remember every painful detail. This was going to be mighty important. The scene where Jill finished yelling at him and walked away with her Bud Light splashed vividly into his consciousness.

“Well, Jim,” he heard himself fill the silence left by Jill’s declaration, “your barbeque may be better than mine, but I bet I can hit that piece of pipe sitting over there on the fence with my  pistol with my first shot. He slapped the old single action Colt that he liked to strap around his waist for show. You want to try your luck?”  He was trying to make it sound like a joke. He wanted people to see that he was just fooling around with Jim, giving him a chance to make it right. Just shut the fuck up a voice in his head was telling him all the while.

The crowd, sensing a good, clean Texas kind of challenge, parted like magic, leaving a broad, open lane to the piece of fence in question. Why not, there was no one for miles out in that direction? Only this one piece of heavy drill pipe that Carl had bolted to the top of a fence post so he could put up the special Texas flag that his friends had given him–one of those that was certified to have been flown over the Capitol, itself. It was his contribution to the new Texas political machine.

 
He pulled the antique revolver out of its holster, the one that his Daddy was reported to have used to chase off some stubborn cattle thieves at the rail head. First he spun the cylinder and made a show of inspecting the cartridges, then pulled the hammer back,  sighted carefully, allowing for the slightly crooked barrel and how much he was going to pull off line when he squeezed the trigger, and took the shot.

The satisfying explosion, the hefty recoil that knocked his hand up, was followed by a whizzing sound as the bullet ricocheted off of the piece of pipe and spun back at an angle. Everybody was ducking down except for Jill, who was still sauntering across the patio on the other side of the yard with her back turned towards him. He heard a little “Oh” that was breath driven out of her. She collapsed like a rag doll, overdone pasta wrapped in jeans and a plaid shirt.

And Jim had run to Jill screaming something Carl couldn’t quite make out, but which made Iris suddenly go white with anger, some kind of knowledge that Carl couldn’t even let himself imagine. And then Carl was running towards the limp bit of flesh that had once, only moments before, been his wife. Now she was cradled in another man’s arms, and Carl couldn’t seem to get his mind around that, either.

She should be in my arms, he was thinking. I should have been there first. Why wasn’t I there first, he kept going around and around in his mind with this thought, seeing Jill in Jim’s arms, Iris with a growing sense of anger and frustration, and he himself standing around feeling helpless as a child, letting someone else dial the hospital for an emergency team while he stood motionless in shock.

And then, for some inexplicable reason, he had run off. He had run to the black flatbed, jumped in, and roared off into the back roads of the county. It was a big county, and he kept going around until he had taken off down a trail alongside a ravine known, for Christ’s sake, as Dead Man’s Gulch after a sheep herder that had been found dead of a rattler bite a hundred years ago.

And now he had bumped down the sandy trail between cane and scrub oak until it was dark and the only thing he could see was the huge September moon, rising red over the ridge to the east. He listened to the  trill of crickets, the flutter of a few wild dove down by the water in the gulch, and the ticking of the diesel engine as it cooled off beneath the hood. All alone, and now, really alone, he thought. It was a forlorn thought, and he felt a few tears gather to blur his vision.

The old Colt was punching him in the side, pushed up against him because the holster was made for riding horses, not sitting in trucks. A spasm of anger spit his guts wide open. He jerked the weapon free and threw it through the open window as far as he could.  His Daddy’s gun disappeared into the Texas night, crackling through some low mesquite and scrub oak as it made it’s way down into Dead Man’s Gulch. The night went silent and he heard the hissing in his ears that comes when there’s really no sound around to block out the nerve noise. It sounded like air coming out of a tire. Then things went on again, like a switch thrown, and a little breeze sprang up out of the west.

 
“Gonna go back soon,” he promised. He said it loudly, so he could hear himself. His voice was raspy and dry. His throat hurt. He slid down out of the truck and rummaged through the tool box bolted to the driver’s side. He came up with a partial bottle of Jack Daniels that wasn’t supposed to be there. He took one good swig and screwed the cap back down tightly. This wasn’t going to help, at all, he thought. He eased the cab door against the switch so the light would go out. A velvet darkness closed in around him. Shadows of the rising moon dancing with the gentle rustle of cane tops bending in the wind. Down in the canyon an owl hooted. Another ripple of silence brought the hiss back into his awareness.

Thoughts spun out of control through his head. Third quarter taxes were going to be due, employees had to be paid, suppliers would be screaming for their money, and Jill always knew how to stretch a buck. She’d gotten them through the hard times.

I’m one sorry bastard, he thought. I’ve accidently killed my wife and I’m thinking how I’m going to pay next week’s bills. Guilt was buzzing around in the back of his mind like a an irritated rattlesnake. I should not have thrown Father’s gun away, he thought. There will be questions and surely it will look strange that I threw it away. I can tell them where it is and maybe they can find it.

In fact, Carl was thinking how that pistol had been unlucky for him all along. I always thought I loved that old gun. It was my Daddy’s pride, and he gave it to me just before he died. He said it was from his wife’s father, a kind of inheritance that went along with the fifteen hundred acres he received when he married Ella. Fifteen hundred acres, some of it bottom land that would take a lot of grazing. Unlike a lot of ranchers, he didn’t have to put out so much money for feed during the winter. And that old gun had seen a lot of action, too. There were still wolf bones, coyote skulls, and snake skins hanging about on fence posts, sun bleached wash house walls, and the old tool shed that was behind the ruins of the old homestead. But that old pistol had betrayed him before, like the time he was gored by the wild hog while riding the fence in the east pasture. The pistol had misfired and Carl had stumbled backwards over the new fence post he was putting in. Just lucky the pig got tangled up in the barbed wire before he finished me, he thought.

I never did fix the roof on the tool shed, he thought. I should have restored the old house. There was a lot of good timber in that house, some of it hauled all the way from Fredericksburg. It was a list of regrets so long that his mind shied away from it, like Jill. Everything was just too painful.

My tongue feels gritty, and I’m having trouble finding my right hand. I delay moving because I’m pretty sure there’s going to be pain involved.
Stage one, I remain comfortably sprawled on my back with the lower half of me entangled in twisted sheets and my right arm crimped under my pillow. I push my numb arm towards the pillow at the other side of the bed hoping to restore circulation in all kinds of ways. “Mark?”
Silence. I pry one eye open. In the half light, I detect the shadow of an indentation. I pull the pillow over my face and savor the faint trace of musk and sweaty hair. Before I can slip back into my fantasies, the alarm by the bed spoils my feelings of God-like powers. Reaching for the snooze bar triggers the headache. I must replace that cheap Mexican brandy with decent Tequila.
My slacks, shirt, socks, and panties mark a trail like unconsumed bread crumbs leading from the door to the bed—Mark and I were in a hurry. I collect the evidence of my precipitous sexual engagement while I stumble to the bathroom. Still only one toothbrush in a glass beside the basin. Where did I lose my bra?
Stage two. I select the new outfit I’d bought recently during the summer sale at Macy’s. The sun peeps through breaks in the trees and creates strings of sparkling points of dew like Christmas lights in my rose hedge. Through the open window in my dining nook, New Orleans smells fresh from overnight showers and the beautiful flowers that my neighbor raises in profligate profusion. A house wren serenades me from my magnolia tree, and a lake breeze promises perfect weather. Disgusting; I shall crawl back in bed and pull the covers over my head.
I rinse the remains of yesterday’s soup from the cereal bowl and slice my last ripe peach. The coffee mill has delivered an aromatic mix of Ghirardelli White Chocolate and finely ground dark roasted beans. While steaming fresh coffee sputters from my little Espresso Machine I retrieve my newspaper from the weedy expanse of my side yard. I carry the pot over to the table and pour the rich black Brazilian blend into my favorite mug while I settle down to catch up on the local news.
At least I have all the sections, this morning. For a change, Pooch, my neighbor’s Cocker Spaniel, has left the Times-Picayune intact. Perhaps the dog is ill from ingesting too much newsprint. I’ve got to scan this fast because my taskmaster Nightwing Laboratory is waiting. I jump start each Monday morning at the office.
The editorial page is spread in front of me, and I am scanning the latest quotes from a group of outraged environmentalists camped downstream from one of our largest oil refineries and an adjacent plastics plant. The environmental group is pushing a controversy that promises to generate more business for my testing laboratory: allegations of contaminated soil; a pregnant women sick from drinking well water; lost business from a sport fishing outfit. Not to expound on my cynicism, but most of the time the “proofs” offered in these cases don’t stand up to scientific analysis.
Some of my best friends are smart and ethical lawyers who pursue their cases accordingly, but there are legal firms specializing in and chasing after environmental cases that are just plain dumb—or realize that their paycheck depends more on dramatic cliché than on hard facts. I guess that’s not so dumb after all if you want to make money off the misfortune of sick people. I remember that Mark had gotten a bit prickly last night when I brought up something about the environmental issues around New Orleans. Something about jobs and people needed gasoline for their cars. Where did he say he worked? I can’t remember if we’d talked about his job. In retrospect, Mark really is not very interesting, but his body is great.

“The line of showers that moved through the New Orleans area last night will continue south into the Gulf, today. Monday’s forecast calls for clearing along the coast from Biloxi, Mississippi west to Lake Charles, Louisiana. The marine forecast predicts: northerly winds offshore at fifteen knots, decreasing to five knots by this evening. Tonight’s outlook: seas calm with a low tide at Morgan City at 12:32 A.M.” Noel Webster’s large fist came down on the clock radio with the delicacy of an expert boxer pulling his punch. The green numbers on the dial face blurred briefly as he rolled upright—life reminding him of time passing. He should have kept his appointment with his doctor, last week.
Silence in the house, untouched by the faint slap of his bare feet on cool tile as he padded into the kitchen in his boxers and set a kettle of water on the stove. He squinted in the half light at the refrigerator door where his housekeeper had scrawled a message on the magnetic pad. “Packages of Oatmeal in drawer, new jar of coffee on the second shelf.”
He dug around in the drawer to the left of the stove top and came up with peach flavored instant cereal. The jar of instant coffee was sealed with a foil liner that burst when he stuck a finger through the thin metal. A puff of brown powder turned to mud in the water splattered at the edge of the sink. There was a plate, a mug, a bowl, and some flatware resting in the drain by the kitchen sink—all one man needed, really. Webster dumped what he estimated to be a couple of heaping teaspoons of instant coffee into the mug and emptied the cereal pouch into the bowl.
He settled at the kitchen table to wait for the water to boil, not bothering to turn on the lights. A passing garbage truck rattled the unused china stacked in the glass fronted cabinet in the dining room. In a few minutes the kettle whistling on the stove added another lonely sound.
After forcing down the cardboard cereal and the flat taste of dehydrated coffee, Noel tried working out in his spare bedroom. Nothing seemed to satisfy him. He punched and shoved at the imaginary boxer that swung from the hook overhead. The dummy didn’t punch back, a situation that he found irritating, especially this morning.
Too many unimportant things were colliding all at once, all taking time away from the serious problems in his current life. He yearned for a good, clean fight, some conflict well defined, not as shadowy or as illusive as Jell-O. He dredged up fond memories of his college boxing career, though he didn’t miss the broken nose and bruised ribs.
Noel was worried about Morgan’s new project, a program of materials testing and qualification for nuclear power generating facilities. He was worried as her lawyer, and he was worried as her friend.
Noel felt protective and even fatherly towards Morgan, but there were times when he remembered how his daughter died and how Morgan had trembled in his arms, seeking shelter from an awful truth. He remembered how young she was, how vulnerable, as she rushed into his arms. But she was also mature for her years, and he’d known, deep in his unconscious, that she had more than innocent feelings towards him.
He tried a right uppercut that felt solid. He was still so much older, except now he was no longer her court appointed guardian. Did that make any difference? He couldn’t admit to himself that he was attracted to her.
She was grown up and didn’t need him like that, now, he argued with himself. Trouble was, he knew a lot of things that he hadn’t told Morgan about. He was still playing guardian, even if Morgan hadn’t agreed to his role. And that brought up a whole host of serious problems for Noel. For one thing, Morgan’s relative and Noel’s friend, Sam Friendly, had called to warn him about a threat from a Senator in Texas.
“I wanted you to know what might be going down, and I didn’t want to worry Morgan. She’s got so many things on her plate as it is,” Sam had explained. The Senator’s investors are being hurt. Separate a politician from the source of his money…well, damned dangerous.”
Noel agreed with Sam. With a full schedule of municipal water testing and port monitoring, he didn’t know how Morgan was going to manage the nuclear project in Beaumont. Oh, she’d manage, somehow; she had a good field tech on site. However, Noel knew that these giant projects were the spawning grounds for serious corruption, and Morgan was putting herself right in the middle of that battleground. Morgan could easily become an unwelcome cog in the schemes of others, a small gear to be broken and discarded.
The young woman was just too smart and too confident! He slammed a right into the padded bag and felt the pain shoot up his wrist. Christ, he felt so useless! Was this to be a repeat of what happened when his daughter was murdered? He jabbed with his left and felt another satisfying stab of pain shoot up his arm. All this pretended anger at Morgan, but Noel’s heart wasn’t in it. He knew what really bothered him.
Sam had called late last week. “I know you’ve never forgiven me about failing with Holly,” he said. “And, I kept you from being with us when we got to her and Morgan.”
“We’re still friends, Sam,” Noel had broken in—not really an admission. “I would have been in the way,” he had added. Down deep he didn’t really feel that way. You were a father. You had a right to fail with your own child, didn’t you? The blame should have rested on his shoulders, not with some one else—too easy to blame someone else.
“But this time, the ball is in your court,” Sam had continued. “I can’t help Morgan without tipping our hand. They might move on her sooner if they see me in the wings. You know how politicians are, Noel, especially if they’re running scared.”
“So this time it’s up to you with me as backup.” Sam said with finality.