and arms.

"I almost forgot to ask you. You get a line on thisBegley?"

"I talked to him for quite a while. He didn'tgive too much. He's living with a woman on Shearwater Beach."

"Who's the lucky woman?" Fargo said.

"Madge Gerhardi is her name. Do you knowher?"

"No, but I think I know who he is. If I couldtake another look at him—"

"Come over there now."

"I can't. I'll tell you who I thinkhe is under all that seaweed, if you promise not to quote me. There's such athing as accidental resemblance, and a libel suit is the last thing Ineed."

"I promise not to quote you."

"See that you don't." He took adeep breath like a skin diver getting ready to go for the bottom. "I thinkhe's a fellow named Thomas McGee who murdered his wife in Indian Springs aboutten years ago. I took a picture of McGee when I was a cub reporter on thepaper, but they never used the picture. They never play up those Valleycases."

"You're sure he murdered hiswife?"

"Yeah, it was an open-and-shut case.I don't have time to go into details, in fact they're getting pretty hazy atthis late date. But most of the people around the courthouse thought he shouldhave been given first degree. Gil Stevens convinced the jury to go for seconddegree, which explains how he's out so quick."

Remembering Begley's story about his tenyears on the other side of the world, the other side of the moon, I thoughtthat ten years wasn't so very quick.

The fog was dense along Shearwater Beach.It must have been high tide: I could hear the surf roaring up under thecottages and sucking at their pilings. The smell of iodine hung in the chillyair.

Madge Gerhardi answered the door andlooked at me rather vaguely. The paint on her eyelids couldn't hide the factthat they were swollen.

"You're the detective, aren't you?"

"Yes. May I come in?"

"Come in if you want. It won't do any good. He'sgone."

I'd already guessed it from her orphanedair. I followed her along a musty hallway into the main room, which was highand raftered. Spiders had been busy in the angles of the rafters, which werewebbed and blurred as if fog had seeped in at the corners. The rattan furniturewas coming apart at the joints. The glasses and empty bottles and half-emptybottles standing around on the tables and the floor suggested that a party hadbeen going on for some days and might erupt again if I wasn't careful.

The woman kicked over an empty bottle onthe way to the settee, where she flung herself down.

"It's your fault he's gone," shecomplained. "He started to pack right after you were here thisafternoon."

I sat on a rattan chair facing her."Did Begley say where he was going?"

"Not to me he didn't. He did say Iwasn't to expect him back, that it was all off. Why did you have to scare him,anyway? Chuck never did anybody any harm."

"He scares very easily."

"Chuck is sensitive. He's had a greatdeal of trouble. Many's the time he told me that all he wanted was a quiet nookwhere he could write about his experiences. He's writing an autobiographicalnovel about his experiences."

"His experiences in NewCaledonia?"

She said with surprising candor: "Idon't think Chuck ever set foot in New Caledonia. He got that business aboutthe chrome mine out of an old National Geographic magazine. I don't believe heever left this country."

"Where has he been?"

"In the pen," she said."You know that, or you wouldn't be after him. I think it's a dirty cryingshame, when a man has paid his debt to society and proved that he canrehabilitate himself—"

It was Begley she was quoting, Begley'sanger she was expressing, but she couldn't sustain the anger or remember theend of the quotation. She looked around the wreckage of the room in dim alarm,as if she had begun to suspect that his rehabilitation was not complete.

"Did he tell you what he was in for,Mrs. Gerhardi?"

"Not in so many words. He read me apiece from his book the other night. This character in the book was in the penand he was thinking about the past and how they framed him for a murder hedidn't commit. I asked him if the character stood for him. He wouldn't say. Hewent into one of his deep dark silences."

She went into one of her own. I could feelthe floor trembling under my feet. The sea was surging among the pilings likethe blithe mindless forces of dissolution. The woman said:

"Was Chuck in the pen formurder?"

"I was told tonight that he murderedhis wife ten years ago. I haven't confirmed it. Can you?"

She shook her head. Her face hadlengthened as if by its own weight, like unbaked dough. "It must be amistake."

"I hope so. I was also told that hisreal name is Thomas McGee. Did he ever use that name?"

"No."

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009