“I have no idea.”

Gary saw a couple-the Carvers, he was almost positive-running down the street toward the store, closely pursued by a galumphing African-American gent that had to be the one, the only Brad Josephson.

Marinville turned to face him. “This is bad shit. I’m calling the cops. In the meantime, I advise you to get off the street. Now.”

Marinville hurried up the walk to his house. Gary ignored his advice and stayed where he was, glass in hand, looking at the van idling in the middle of the street down there by the Entragian place, suddenly wishing (and for him this was an exceedingly odd wish) that he wasn’t quite so drunk.

The door of the bungalow at 240 Poplar banged open and Collie Entragian came charging out exactly as Cary Ripton had always feared he someday would: with a gun in his hand. Otherwise, however, he looked pretty much all right-no foam on the lips, no bloodshot, buggy eyes. He was a tall man, six-four at least, starting to show a little softness in the belly but as broad and muscular through the shoulders as a football linebacker. He wore khaki pants and no shirt. There was shaving cream on the left side of his face, and a hand-towel over his shoulder. The gun in his hand was a.38, and might very well have been the service pistol Cary had often imagined while delivering the Shopper to the house on the corner.

Collie looked at the boy lying facedown and dead on his lawn, his clothes already damp from the lawn sprinkler (and the papers that had spilled out of his carrysack turning a soggy gray), and then at the van. He raised the pistol, clamping his left hand over his right wrist. Just as he did, the van began to roll. He almost fired anyway, then didn’t. He had to be careful. There were people in Columbus, some of them very powerful, who would be delighted to hear that Collier Entragian had discharged a weapon on a suburban Wentworth street… a weapon he had been required by law to turn in, actually.