“Margrit the Maggot loves Ethan Hawke,” his son confided.

“Does she? Well, maybe so, but you shouldn’t call her that,” David said. He spoke in the absent tones of a man who will forgive his child-one of his children, anyway-just about anything. And his wife was looking at the kid with the eyes of one who regards a saint, or a boy prophet. Only Collie Entragian saw the look of dull hurt in the girl’s eyes as her revered brother was plumped down into the wagon. Collie had other things to think of, lots of them, but that look was just too big and too sad to miss. Yow.

He looked from Ellie Carver to the girl with the crazed hair and the aging hippie-type from the rental truck. “Do you suppose I could at least get you two to step inside until the police come?” he asked.

“Hey,” the girl said, “sure.” She was looking at him warily. “You’re a cop, right?”

The Carvers were drawing away, Ralph sitting cross-legged in his wagon, but they might still be close enough to overhear anything he said… and besides, what was he going to do? Lie? You start down that road, he told himself, and maybe you can wind up on Freak Street, an ex-cop with a collection of badges in your basement, like Elvis, and a couple of extras pinned inside your wallet for good measure. Call yourself a private detective, although you never quite get around to applying for the license. Ten or fifteen years from now you’ll still be talking the talk and at least trying to walk the walk, like a woman in her thirties who wears miniskirts and goes braless in an effort to convince people (most of whom don’t give a shit anyway) that her cheerleading days aren’t behind her.

“Used to be,” he said. The clerk nodded. The guy with the long hair was looking at him curiously but not disrespectfully. “You did a good job with the kids,” he added, looking at her but speaking to both of them.