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1

At quarter past nine the next morning, Holly is going over the Corrections Department’s daily list of bail jumpers. There are usually four or five; today there’s an even dozen. Spring fever , she thinks, and as if the thought had summoned her, Barbara Robinson blows in, almost literally. She doesn’t knock, just barges into Holly’s office and plops down in the client’s chair. The look of her—eyes too wide, zero makeup, clothes wrinkled as if she slept in them—is alarming.

Holly pushes her laptop aside. “Barbara? What’s wrong?”

Barbara laughs and shakes her head. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me up.”

Holly thinks she understands. She’s both glad and concerned. “Did you meet someone? Maybe… I don’t know… spend the night?”

“Not the way you mean, although it was late for sure. I got to bed around three, woke up at eight, put on the same clothes. Had to come over and tell you everything. Jerome has met somebody, did you know that?”

“Yes. Georgia Nickerson. He introduced us. Nice young woman.”

“And you know those tickets I won, calling into the Morning Circus on K-POP?”

“Yes. Sista Bessie’s first show at the Mingo.”

“I can give them to Jerome. He can take Georgia. We’re going as Sista Bessie’s guests. Only her real name is Betty Brady.”

With that, Barbara spills everything, starting with her out-of-the-blue call from Sista Bessie. Her trip out to Sam’s Club. The people she met (some names she remembers, most she doesn’t). The singing, most of all that.

“It was past one when they finally finished up… or tried to. Tones Kelly, her tour manager, pointed at his watch and said, ‘Time to call it a night, kids,’ so most of the band… they call themselves the Bam Band, did I tell you that?”

“Yes, Barbara.”

“They started to put their instruments down, but then the keyboard guy started a riff on his organ that was just too good. For the next eight minutes they sang ‘What’d I Say,’ with the Dixie Crystals doing the backing vocals. They grooved on it. No other word. I don’t know if you know that song—”

“I do, actually.” Holly knew it long before Barbara Robinson was born.

“It was so great! She was two-stepping with Red Jones, the sax player. And then Betty starts waving to me ! She’s yelling, ‘Get on up here, girl!’ in that big strong voice of hers. So I went up… I felt like I was dreaming it all… and the Crystals pulled me in, and I sang with them! Do you believe it?”

“Of course I do,” Holly says. She’s full of happiness for her friend. This is an excellent way to start the day. Certainly better than looking for slow-moving bail jumpers she can scoop up.

“Then we went out to the Waffle House, because they’re open twenty-four/seven. Everyone! Holly, you should have seen Sista—Betty, I mean Betty—you should have seen her eat ! Eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns scattered and smothered… and a waffle, too ! She’s big, but if I ate that much, I’d explode ! I guess singing must burn a lot of calories. I sat with her, Holly! I ate scrambled eggs with Sista Bessie and her agent!”

Holly smiles her widest smile, in large part because it was Holly that Barb chose to tell all this wonderfulness. “But did you sign her book?”

“I did, but that’s not the important part. There are two rhymed poems in my book, mostly because of Olivia Kingsbury. As a mentor she could be tough. She insisted that I write some stuff that rhymed. At least two. She said it was good discipline for a young poet.

“Early on, when I was getting to know her, we read a poem by Vachel Lindsay called ‘The Congo.’ It’s racist as hell, but it has a swinging beat.” Barbara thumps her feet to demonstrate. “So I wrote a poem called ‘Lowtown Jazz’ to sort of, I don’t know, tell the other side of the story. It’s not rap, but almost. It rhymes all over the place.”

Holly nods. “I love that one.”

“Betty said she did, too. Holly… she wants to set it to music and record it! ”

Holly just stares at her for a moment, mouth open. Then she begins to laugh and clap her hands. “ That’s why she wanted to get together with you!”

Barbara looks a little crestfallen. “You think?”

“No, I mean because you’re you, Barbara. Your poems are a part of who you are, and they’re so good.”

“Anyway, we’re going to the show at the Mingo as Betty’s guests, and I can go back to rehearsals any time I want. She said my friend could come with me, and that’s you.”

“Great, I’d love that,” Holly says, with no idea that she won’t be in Buckeye City for the next little while, or even in the state. “So tell me what you wrote in her book.”

Barbara looks astounded. “I can’t remember. I was so excited.”

And with that, Barbara bursts into tears.

2

The next morning, Izzy is sitting on a bench in the mellow morning sunshine not far from Courthouse Square. She’s drinking a latte from the Starbucks half a block down First Street. Beside her on the bench is another latte. The name on the cup is Roxann, which is short an e , but you can’t expect baristas to know every name, can you?

The sun on her face is wonderful. Izzy feels she could sit here sipping coffee all morning, but here comes her target, a well-padded woman in a gray pants suit. She approaches Izzy’s bench with her purse swinging from one shoulder and her eyes firmly fixed on the prize, which happens to be the Starbucks. Izzy has tracked Roxanne’s coffee-break routine on two mornings, but hasn’t approached. Today, with the lady’s bossman safely out of the way in Cincinnati, she pounces.

Well, maybe nothing so predatory. She just holds up the cup and says, “I believe this is yours, Roxanne.”

Roxanne Mason stops and looks warily at Izzy. Then at the cup. She says, “That’s not mine.”

“It is. I bought it for you. My name’s Isabelle Jaynes. I’m a detective with the BCPD. I’d like to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About certain beyond-smut magazines. Toddlers. Uncle Bill’s Pride and Joy. Bedtime Story . Mags like that.”

Roxanne’s face, cold to begin with, now freezes solid. “That’s court business. Old business. Drink that extra coffee yourself.” She takes a step toward Starbucks.

Izzy says, less pleasantly, “You can talk to me here in the nice sunshine, or in a hot interview room at the station, Ms. Mason. Your choice.”

In a way, she already knows what she needs to know; the way Roxanne Mason’s face froze up told her most of it.

Roxanne halts in mid-step, as if playing Statues, then slow-steps back to the bench and sits down. Izzy holds out the coffee. Roxanne waves it away as if it might be poisoned, so Izzy sets it down between them.

“How do I know you’re not a reporter pretending to be a cop?”

Izzy takes her ID folder out of her back pocket and flops it. Roxanne looks at the photo, then looks away with a child’s pout on her round face: If I don’t see you, you’re not there .

“You work for Douglas Allen, correct?”

“I work for all the ADAs,” Roxanne says. Then—still not looking at Izzy—she bursts out: “I don’t know why you people have to keep digging at the Duffrey thing. If that man was telling the truth, it was a tragic miscarriage of justice. They happen. It’s sad, but they do. If you want to blame somebody, blame the jury, or the judge who instructed the jury.”

Roxanne—the assistant to the six Buckeye County Assistant DAs—doesn’t know that three people have been killed with the names of Duffrey jurors in their hands. To this point the police have been able to keep a lid on that. Sooner or later someone will blab, and when they do, the papers will be on it like white on rice. Or (Izzy’s thinking of Buckeye Brandon’s blog and pod), like flies on shit.

“Let’s just say that some questions have come up.”

“Ask Cary Tolliver, why don’t you? He’s the one who framed Duffrey, and did a good job of it, too.”

Or maybe he had a little help from an ambitious ADA , Izzy thinks. One who’d like to step up to the big chair currently occupied by Albert Tantleff. An ambitious ADA who had a headline-friendly case dumped in his lap and didn’t want to see it overturned.

“Cary Tolliver is in a coma as of this morning and won’t be answering any questions.” Which is a shame, because he could have told them what Izzy is currently fishing for, but—as Tom Atta pointed out—they didn’t know the right questions to ask, and Tolliver, half gorked out on morphine, hadn’t thought to tell them. Or he might have thought we already knew , Izzy thinks.

“Are you familiar with the name Claire Rademacher, Roxanne? She works at First Lake City Bank, where Alan Duffrey and Cary Tolliver also worked.”

Roxanne finally takes the cup of coffee. Removes the lid and sips. “I recall the name. I think she was interviewed. Everybody who worked with Duffrey at the bank was interviewed.”

“But she was never called to testify.”

“No, I’d remember that.”

“My partner and I talked to her. It was an interesting conversation. Did you know that Alan Duffrey collected vintage comic books?”

“Is this going somewhere?” From her face, Roxanne Mason knows exactly where it’s going.

“Vintage comics come in special Mylar bags. Duffrey was particularly taken with a character named Plastic Man. Sixty-four issues were published between 1943 and 1956. I googled it. But then, about seven years ago, DC Comics did a six-issue run of Plastic Man comics—what they call a mini-series. And do you know what? Cary Tolliver gave Duffrey those six issues as a goodwill gesture when Duffrey got the chief loan officer’s job. Now, don’t you think that’s strange? Considering that Tolliver was also in the running for the job, then went and framed Duffrey as a pedophile?”

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Roxanne said. “We know what Tolliver did, or at least what he says he did. He spilled his guts on that podcast!”

“He said he spilled his guts even before that. Said he wrote a letter to ADA Allen in February, owning up to everything. Gave him info that wasn’t in the press.”

“Really? Then where’s that letter?”

Probably went through Douglas Allen’s shredder , Izzy thinks.

“Let’s go back to the Plastic Man comic books. Ms. Rademacher said that Duffrey was very pleased with those. Showed them to her. Said he was relieved Cary didn’t have any hard feelings. But here’s an interesting thing, Roxanne. When he showed Ms. Rademacher the comics, they weren’t in the Mylar bags. I have no idea why Tolliver wanted the bags back—or rather, what story he told Duffrey about why he wanted those bags back—but he took them.”

“So what ?” Only Roxanne knows what. It’s on her face. It’s on the way the coffee cup trembles in her hand. “This is a waste of time. I’ve only got a fifteen-minute coffee break.” She starts to get up.

“Sit down,” Izzy says, using her best cop voice.

Roxanne sits down.

“Now let’s talk about those kiddie porn mags that were found behind Duffrey’s furnace. The ones that supposedly had his fingerprints on them. Detective Atta and I assumed they were slicks, like Playboy and Penthouse , until we looked at the photos of the exhibits entered at the trial. They’re actually more like pamphlets, not bound, just stapled together. Done in some sick pedo’s basement, most likely, and mailed out in plain brown wrappers from a Mail Boxes Etc. under an assumed name. Cheap paper, pulp stock. Digest-sized.”

Roxanne says nothing.

“Pulp stock takes fingerprints, but not very well. They’re blurry. The ones ADA Allen submitted as evidence were clear. Every ridge and whorl sharp. There were two on Uncle Bill’s Pride and Joy , two on Toddlers , and three on Bedtime Story . Now are you ready for the big question, Roxanne?”

Izzy sees that Roxanne is indeed ready. The coffee cup has stopped shaking. She has decided that if someone’s ass is going to be grass, it’s not going to be hers.

“Were those fingerprints on the magazines , or were they on the bags the magazines were stored in when they were found behind Alan Duffrey’s furnace?”

Roxanne makes one final feeble attempt. “What difference does it make? They were Duffrey’s fingerprints.”

Izzy keeps quiet. Sometimes silence is best.

“They were on the bags,” Roxanne says finally. “It wasn’t crooked or anything, just that when the magazines were photographed in the bags—”

“The fingerprints looked like they were on the magazines, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” Roxanne mutters it into her coffee.

“You and I might have a difference of opinion on what constitutes crooked, Roxanne. Certainly if Allen got a confession letter from Cary Tolliver and trashed it, that would be as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Claire Rademacher—”

“You have no proof of that!”

No , Izzy thinks, and if it went into the shredder, I never will.

“Claire Rademacher wasn’t on Allen’s witness list, so Grinsted, Duffrey’s lawyer, never questioned her. She didn’t come forward because it never crossed her mind that the comics were important. Basically, your boss concealed evidence, didn’t he?”

“They’re all my bosses,” Roxanne says angrily. “Most days I’m like a one-legged woman in an ass-kicking contest.”

But Allen said he’d take you with him if he moved up, didn’t he?

It’s a question Izzy won’t ask.

“In fact, it was more than concealment. It was deliberate misdirection, and a contributing factor in Alan Duffrey’s murder.”

“Some con murdered Duffrey. Stabbed him with a stiletto made from a toothbrush handle.” Roxanne pours out her coffee, staining one of her shoes. “We’re done here.” She gets up and starts back toward the county courthouse.

“Doug Allen won’t be moving up to DA,” Izzy calls after her. “Never mind the letter from Tolliver he might have trashed, when this comes out, he’ll be lucky to get a job in the private sector.”

Roxanne doesn’t turn, just keeps on trucking. That’s all right. Izzy now knows what she (and Tom) had only suspected: Cary Tolliver wasn’t the only one responsible for putting Alan Duffrey in the frame. He had help. If “Bill Wilson” knows this, he could consider ADA Allen the guiltiest one.

Izzy raises her face to the day’s welcome sunshine, closes her eyes, and sips her latte.

3

Kate and Corrie arrive in Omaha at two in the afternoon, Kate driving most of it with the hammer down. They take half-hour turns playing the Sirius XM, Kate bellowing 80s rock anthems at the top of her lungs, then Corrie singing along with Willie, Waylon, and Shania. Tonight’s gig for A Woman’s Testament is at the Holland Performing Arts Center. Two thousand seats and, as Corrie gleefully reports, “A butt in every one!”

Corrie stands in her accustomed position, behind the house manager with his earphones and little wall-mounted TV screen, as Kate strides onstage to thunderous applause that drowns out the booing section. She hasn’t bought a new Borsalino or even ordered one. Tonight she’s wearing a red Cornhuskers lid. She sweeps it off in her usual bow, grabs the mic from the podium (at every stop Corrie emphasizes that it must be a cordless mic and not a lav; Kate considers lavs unreliable), and walks out to the apron of the stage.

“Woman Power!”

“ Woman Power! ” the audience roars back.

“You can do better! Let me hear you, Omaha!”

“ WOMAN POWER! ” the crowd bellows. Most of it, anyway.

“Good, that’s good,” Kate says. She’s moving around. Pacing. Brilliant red pants suit that matches the hat. Corrie found it for her in Fashion Freak. “That’s great. Go on and sit down. I need to testify, Omaha. I feel the spirit strong in me tonight, so sit.”

They sit in a whoosh of clothes. A few women are crying for happy. There are always a few. Some have Kate McKay tattoos.

“To start with, I want you to pretend you’re in school. Can you do that? You can? Good! Terrific! Now I want all the men in the audience to raise a hand. Come on, guys, don’t be shy.”

There’s some laughter and shuffling around, but the men are determined to be good sports. They raise their hands. About twenty per cent of every night’s audience is male, Corrie has decided. Not all of them are in the booing section, but most are.

“Now those men who’ve had an abortion, keep your hands up. Those who haven’t, put your hands down.”

More laughter. Most of the women applaud as all the male hands go down.

“What, none of you? Wow! I mean holy jeepers !”

General laughter. Corrie has heard this warm-up routine many times.

“But who makes the laws here in Nebraska? I’m thinking of that question as regards the Dobbs decision, which kicked abortion legislation back to the states. In Nebraska, the cut-off is twelve weeks. Seventy-two per cent of the legislators who made that law are men, who have never had to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy.”

“ God’s law! ” someone shouts from the back of the auditorium.

Kate doesn’t miss a beat. She never does. “I didn’t know God had been elected to the Nebraska Legislature.”

This brings a round of applause. Corrie has heard it all before, and since she won’t be called upon to make a guest appearance tonight—Kate will have the stage all to herself, which is just how they both like it—Corrie heads to the greenroom to make some calls. There are loose ends to be tied up before the next stop.

Their current security cop is parked in a corner of the greenroom, snacking away from one of the many hospitality plates. He’s a Douglas County sheriff’s deputy named Hamilton Wilts. (“You ma’ams can call me Ham.”) Corrie knows it’s not politically correct to think of overweight persons as fat, but when she looks at Ham Wilts, she can’t help thinking of her father nodding at such a one and murmuring, There goes a walking cheese wheel .

The greenroom TV is showing Kate onstage, pacing, really getting into it— testifying —but the sound is turned down and Wilts is reading a paperback mystery. As well as snacks, the long counter running beneath a trio of makeup mirrors is loaded with so many bouquets they jostle for space. Most are from various women’s groups, the largest from the one sponsoring her talk. The flowers and snack plates were already here. Now there’s also a white envelope. It’s new.

Corrie picks it up. In the upper lefthand corner it says, FROM THE OFFICE OF MAYOR JEAN STODART. The envelope is hand-addressed to Ms. Kate McKay and Ms. Corrine Anderson. If not for what happened in Reno and Spokane, Corrie would have opened the envelope without hesitation and left it propped open on the counter for Kate to glance at when she finishes tonight’s performance (nothing else to call it). But Reno did happen, and the picture with the threatening note did, too. So Corrie hears alarm bells. Probably stupid, but her fingers seem to feel something bulgy in the bottom of the envelope. Maybe just some fancy embossing on the card, but—

“Officer Wilts… Ham… who brought this?”

He looks up from his book. “One of the ushers. Is Ms. McKay almost done?”

“Not yet.” It will be twenty minutes, at least. Maybe longer. “Man or woman?”

“Hmm?”

“The usher who brought this, was it a man or a woman?” She holds up the envelope.

“Pretty sure it was a young lady, but I didn’t really notice.” He holds up his book. On the cover is a terrified woman. “I’m just getting to the part where I find out who did it.”

You’re supposed to notice, goddammit , Corrie thinks. It’s your fucking job to notice, you… you cheese wheel. She would no more say this aloud than Holly would.

Ham Wilts goes back to his book. Corrie goes through the various drawers in the greenroom. She finds old makeup, a bra, and half a roll of Tums, but not what she’s looking for.

“Officer Wilts.”

He looks up and closes his book. Something in her voice.

“Do you have a mask? A Covid mask? This envelope… it’s probably fine, but we’ve had threats, and in Reno—”

“I know what happened to you in Reno,” he says, and now there’s something in his voice. Also in his face. Corrie thinks it might be a glimpse of the man Wilts was thirty years and eighty excess pounds ago. “Let me see that.”

She hands it over. “I feel something in there, maybe just the embossing on a fancy greeting card, but it seemed to shift when I pressed down on—”

He’s frowning. “This is wrong.”

“What?”

“The mayor’s name. It ain’t Stodart, it’s Stothert.”

They look at each other. On the TV, muted, Kate is making her trademark c’mon, c’mon gesture, and faintly Corrie hears applause. It sounds like it’s coming from some other world.

Wilts doesn’t have a Covid mask, but he drove them to the venue in his cruiser and he does have a few drug masks, the N95s officers wear if they collar a suspect who’s holding. Wilts tells Corrie they’ve had officers pass out after inhaling coke spiked with fentanyl or heroin from a busted Baggie. He hands her a mask and says, “Better safe than sorry.”

Corrie puts on the mask. She can’t tell for sure, but looking at the monitor she guesses Kate has started the Q-and-A part of the program, ready to rain down well-honed ridicule on anyone who dares to disagree with her positions on matters political and female… which, to Kate, are one and the same.

Wilts, seeming more and more like a police officer, slits the envelope along the top. He peeps in. His eyes widen. “Leave the room, ma’am, this stuff’s probably talcum powder, but—”

“Better safe than sorry. I hear you.”

Heart pounding hard, Corrie retreats to her usual position by the stage manager. Time passes slowly. She imagines Ham Wilts stretched out dead on the greenroom floor. Stupid, but since Reno and Spokane, her mind has a tendency to default to the worst possible scenario.

Kate finishes with a hands-up bellow of “ Thank you, Omaha! ” and comes offstage, smiling and flushed. It’s obviously been a good one, which is no surprise to Corrie; Kate has been honing her performance at every stop. By the time they get to New York, she’ll be raising the roof.

She gives Corrie a brief hug and says, “Was it good?”

“Sure, fine, but—”

“Let’s blow this pop stand. I want a steak and I want a shower. I stink.”

Corrie says, “There may be a problem.”

4

It is a problem.

Instead of spending some time off in Des Moines, as they had planned, Kate and Corrie spend it in Omaha. It wasn’t talcum powder or baking powder or baking soda. It was Bacillus anthracis and silica. The Douglas County sheriff shows them a photo of the powder that spilled out of the card and into the crease at the bottom of the envelope. Then he shows them a photo of the powder heaped on a lab scale. He says they put a rush on it. If he expects thanks from either woman, he doesn’t get it. Kate looks solemn and pale. Maybe this is starting to be real to her now , Corrie thinks.

Wilts doesn’t try to embellish his story, and Corrie respects him for that. He was absorbed in his book. An usher knocked and came in. He knows it was an usher because of the gray slacks and blue blazer. He uses person because he’s not entirely sure it was a woman, but he’s pretty sure. Lots of dark hair. The usher gave him a nod, propped the envelope against one of the flower vases, and left.

“I wish I could say more,” Ham Wilts says, “but several people were in and out while Ms. McKay was on. Plus the book was really good. I feel like I let you down.”

“You didn’t really think anything was going to happen, did you?” Kate’s tone is flat. Not accusatory but not not accusatory.

Wilts has to be aware that the sheriff is glaring at him. He makes no reply. Which is answer enough.

“Do you have a picture of the card?” Kate asks.

The sheriff slides another photo across the desk. Kate looks at it and shows it to Corrie. It’s the kind of card you buy blank at a drugstore or stationers’ shop, allowing you to put your own message on the outside and also on the inside. What’s on the outside of this one is A BASIC CARD FOR BASIC BITCHES.

“Nice,” Kate says. “What’s on the inside? Best wishes from your crazy-as-fuck friend?”

A fourth photo is passed across the desk. Printed inside, once again in caps: HELL AWAITS THE DECEIVER.

5

On the night of Kate’s Omaha gig, Chrissy Stewart is staying at the Sunset Motel on the outskirts of Omaha. It’s a pit. Such fly-by-night businesses still take cash, and sometimes rent rooms by the hour. Chrissy will stay the night, but be up bright and early the next day. She wants to beat the baby-killing bitches to their next stop.

Or not, if the anthrax has done its job.

In Room 6, Chrissy takes off the gray pants, white shirt, and blue blazer that served her as an usher’s uniform—probably wasted effort, the stupid rent-a-cop hardly looked up from his book. She takes off the wig and the bathing cap she wears beneath it. She goes into the plastic-walled closet that serves as a bathroom, and washes the light makeup from her face. Tomorrow she’ll throw the usher clothes, plus the wig and bathing cap, in a rest area dumpster miles from here.

Chrissy can’t murder all the women who want to regain the right to kill the next generation, but she and her brother can get the one who makes the most noise, who stands so stridently and shamelessly against God’s law. Although childless herself, Chrissy knows what the equally childless Kate McKay doesn’t: the loss of a child is like the loss of heaven.

“Don’t think about it,” she mutters. “You know what will happen if you do.”

She certainly does. Thinking about the loss of the child will bring memories. A limp hand for instance, fingernails sparkling in the morning sun. It will bring on a headache, one of the bad ones. As if her brain is trying to rip itself in two.

She travels with two suitcases. From one she takes a shorty nightgown, then lies down and turns off the light. Outside, to the west, an endless freight train is thundering by. Maybe Kate’s dead already. Kate and the bitch she runs with. Maybe my work is done .

So thinking, Chrissy drifts off to sleep.

6

Corrie has asked for all the pictures the sheriff showed them to be forwarded to her email, and the sheriff agreed. The next morning, Kate comes into Corrie’s room. Kate looks both younger and more vulnerable in her pajamas.

“Had enough?”

Corrie shakes her head.

Kate flashes a grin. “Screw that bitch if she can’t take a joke, right?”

“Right. FIDO.”

Kate frowns. “What?”

“FIDO. Marine saying. It stands for ‘fuck it, drive on.’?”

“Good one,” Kate says, “but we’ve got some time off before we have to FIDO to Des Moines. Thank God. There’s a sports bar down the street, we could watch the Yankees play Cleveland. Day game. Split a pitcher of suds. Interested?”

“Sure,” Corrie says.

“Hey, wait—are you old enough to drink?”

Corrie gives her a look.

Kate bursts out laughing.

7

Kate and Corrie watch the Yankees play the Guardians at DJ’s Dugout Sports Bar in Omaha. In Buckeye City, Dean Miter is watching the game in Happy, the bar where John Ackerly works most days. Dean is an eighteen-year veteran of the Buckeye City police force and has been slated by Lew Warwick to be the starting pitcher for the police team in the Guns and Hoses softball game at the end of the month. Why not? Dean hurled three shutout innings last year before the FD broke through and scored six runs against two relief pitchers.

Dean is off-duty today. He’s drinking his second beer-and-a-shot, watching the game, bothering nobody. Someone sits down next to him at the bar, giving his shoulder a hard bump. Beer sloshes on the bar top.

“Oh, pawdon me ,” the newcomer says.

Dean looks around and sees, glory be, the fireman he struck out to end his stint in last year’s game. Before that game, this fellow had yelled across the field that he’d never seen such a bunch of blue pussies. After Dean struck him out, Dean had called, “Who’s the pussy now, Bush League?”

“Watch yourself,” Dean says now.

The fireman, a burly fellow with a big head, gives Dean a look of exaggerated distress. “Didn’t I say pawdon me? Why so touchy? Could it be because we’re going to light you up again this year?”

“Pipe down, fool. I’m trying to watch the game.”

The bartender—not John Ackerly, it’s John’s day off, but just as adept at seeing when trouble may be brewing—ambles over. “All friends here, right?”

“Right, just yankin his chain,” says the fireman, and when Dean raises his shot-glass to his mouth, the fireman doesn’t just bump him but shoulder-checks him good and hard. Instead of drinking his whiskey, Dean finds himself wearing it.

“Oh, pawdon me ,” the fireman says. He’s grinning. “I seem to have—”

Dean spins on his stool and hauls off, fist wrapped around the shot-glass. The big-headed fireman sees the punch coming—Dean isn’t exactly speedy—and ducks. Mr. Big Head’s not especially speedy, either, and instead of swishing harmlessly over his head, Dean’s fist connects with the broad shelf of the fireman’s brow. Mr. Big Head tumbles off his barstool.

“That’s it, that’s it!” the bartender says. “Take it outside if you want to continue this!”

Dean Miter has no intention of taking it outside or continuing anything. He unrolls his fist with a cry of pain. Three of his fingers are dislocated and one is fractured. The shot-glass has broken in his hand. There are deep lacerations from which fangs of glass protrude. Blood patters down on the bar.

Dean’s pitching days are over.