Thirteen

Las Vegas

Melanie noticed Gene first in the noon meeting at the Turning Point, the Alcoholics Anonymous clubhouse on Marion Street in North Las Vegas. They were seated in folding metal chairs on opposite sides of the room, and several times during the speaker’s story—a story filled with gratitude and grace—she caught him gazing at her with an expression that was calm but uninviting. Right away she was attracted to his thick wrists and worn-out face; and the way he dressed—faded blue jeans, white T-shirt, sneakers and no socks—reminded her of the boys she went out with in the early sixties, college boys she’d fucked on the first date, usually when she was drunk or in a blackout.

Because she didn’t recognize Gene from any of her regular A.A. meetings, Melanie assumed that he was either visiting from out of town or newly sober. And, as the minutes ticked by, she closed her eyes and tuned out the speaker, concentrating instead on the fantasy that was coming alive in her mind—a reverie of erotic yearning:

Gene slowly rises to his feet and Melanie, being careful not to draw attention to herself, waits a moment before she follows him outside, into the parking lot and the hard cold light. While he wordlessly smokes a cigarette, she wraps her arms around his waist and presses her face into his back. They stand like this in the dark for several seconds, her attention concentrated on his breathing, which is deep but almost inaudible. Then Gene drops his cigarette on the ground, turns around slowly, and puts his hands on her hips. When Melanie lifts her head to look up at him, he says,

“I don’t think I know you.”

“That’s true. You don’t.”

“But I know what you want.”

“Oh? Tell me.”

Gene leans down to kiss her lightly on the lips. “You want me to fuck you.”

“That’s not all I want,” Melanie says, grinning foolishly but feeling wonderfully alive. “But it certainly would be a good place to start.”

Melanie was jolted out of this imaginary encounter by the woman sitting next to her in the meeting—Brenda, a cocktail waitress at The Dunes with eight years of sobriety. “That man is staring at you,” she told Melanie, poking her in the ribs with her elbow.

Melanie’s eyes snapped open, her head dizzy with unfulfilled desires. “Really. Which one?”

“The new guy with the big shoulders who just walked outside.”

That evening Melanie was halfway through her shift when she noticed Gene playing blackjack at the table next to hers. Resting by his elbow was a drink that looked like ginger ale, and, judging by the row of chips stacked in front of him, he was winning big. Although they were once again in each other’s line of sight, the only time their eyes met Gene reached for a cigarette and self-consciously turned away. A disagreeable sadness radiated from Melanie’s eyes as she opened a new deck of cards and fanned them across the green felt table. The next time she glanced over, Gene was already out of his chair and striding briskly toward the cashier.

The following day, Melanie woke up around six A.M. with an electric current of energy surging through her shapely body. After saying her morning prayers, thanking God for her twenty years of sobriety, she quickly threw on her sweats and drove crosstown to the Westlake Academy, a private parochial school that was newly built on the east side of this ever-expanding city. Using a stopwatch to time herself around the quarter-mile dirt track, she ran six miles in just under forty-eight minutes.

She usually stretched and then walked a mile to cool down, but midway through her second lap she slowly became aware of a man sitting high in the bright yellow bleachers watching her—the same man she saw the day before at the A.A. meeting and later playing blackjack at the Desert Inn.

“I wonder if I could speak to you,” Gene said. He was on his feet now and moving down the bleachers.

Melanie picked up her towel and reached inside her gym bag for her car keys. “Speak to me about what?” she asked, not making eye contact as she angled toward the student parking lot behind the grandstand. “I don’t even know you.”

“You’re Melanie Novack. Correct?” Gene was standing a few paces away, smiling a little as Melanie got inside her sporty blue Datsun Z-200. Rolled up in his fist was the latest issue of Bim Bam Boom, the fanzine in which her twenty-year-old interview had appeared. “This Melanie Novack.”

When Gene passed the magazine through the driver’s side window, Melanie kept a detached expression on her face, trying not to show her surprise as she glanced at the cover. “Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“You look like a cop.”

“I’m not.”

“You sure?”

“Okay, I used to be a cop,” Gene said. “Now I’m a private investigator.”

“Investigating me.”

“No. I’m investigating the murder of Bobby Fuller.”

Melanie handed back the magazine. Then she turned the key and the Datsun kicked over. “Sorry,” she said curtly. “I can’t help you.”

Gene said, “My brother’s an alcoholic,” and Melanie glanced up at Gene with a shade more interest. “I just thought I’d mention that.”

“Is he in the program?”

“No. He’s still drinking.”

“That’s too bad.”

“He’s a screenwriter,” Gene said. “Which reminds me, I ran into one of your former clients the other day. Ted Reuben. He said if I ever found you to say hello.”

“Tell him hello back,” Melanie said, looking a little uncomfortable. “By the way, who’s paying you?”

“No one.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Gene shrugged.

“How’d you find me?”

“A little leg work. A few phone calls. I’m good at what I do.”

Melanie shut off the engine and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. Her cheeks were flushed, and she smelled of coconut oil mixed with sweat.

Gene said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Melanie raised her head. Gene looked tense, shifting from one foot to the other, staring down at her with an expression that tried to minimize his uneasiness. “Okay, let’s talk,” Melanie finally said, her attitude now matter of fact, and she took her keys out of the ignition and opened the door.

Melanie sat next to Gene in the shaded bleachers underneath the announcer’s booth, letting the tension dissipate as she slowly and carefully answered his questions until the school bell rang and the first period classes began to assemble on the wide grassy field. In that hour Melanie learned that Gene had located Joan Reynolds, her downstairs neighbor when she lived at the Argyle Manor.

“She told me you were in A.A. So I went to a few meetings in Hollywood,” Gene said. “I said you and I were old friends and—”

“Basically you lied. You passed yourself off as a drunk and scammed my whereabouts.”

“More or less.”

“Gene, isn’t that a bit sleazy? Impersonating an alcoholic?”

Gene nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged off his apology. “You don’t look sorry.”

“No. I am. A.A. meetings should be a safe place. What I did was wrong. It’s been bothering me for a while.”

“Is that why yesterday you left the meeting early?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t look like anything was bothering you. In fact, you looked pretty laid back. And as long as we’re being honest, I kind of liked the way you looked.”

Gene crushed out his cigarette. In his side vision he caught Melanie smiling at him knowingly. She was trim, tan, much prettier than he’d imagined, but he knew that getting involved with her was absolutely out of the question. This was business, and he’d always maintained clear boundaries when it came to his work, no matter how horny he was.

“What changed your mind?” Melanie asked Gene later that morning, when he found himself naked between her flannel sheets, his arm comfortably around her shoulder, having passed easily, almost effortlessly, from acquaintance to intimacy in less than three hours. “You figure you’d get more info if you fucked me first?”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“Oh, please. You’ve been thinking about banging me all morning.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’re a guy,” Melanie whispered, as she softly pressed her lips into his neck. “That’s why. Here’s what happened,” she said. “As soon as I invited you back for coffee, your mind went directly into fantasy mode, and your dick started to get hard, just like it is now. But since you were up here on a mission and you didn’t want to blow it, you tried to put pussy—specifically my pussy—out of your mind. Right so far?”

“Pretty close.”

Melanie was now smiling as she rolled on top of Gene and sat up, cupping her breasts. “But then driving over you started to think about these. Correct?”

“I may have entertained a thought or two about your breasts.”

“Which you were just dying to squeeze, like I’m doing now,” Melanie said, and when Gene’s cock slipped inside her, she said, “I’m kind of a slut, huh.”

“A ‘sober slut.’ Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“So let me ask you something,” Gene said, reaching for her nipples, then feeling them stiffen underneath his fingers. “Did you fuck Bobby Fuller?”

Melanie’s eyes flinched but nothing happened to her face. “I wondered when the question-and-answer period was going to start up again.”

“Didn’t mean to take you by surprise.”

“No, that’s exactly what you meant to do. But I was hoping you’d let me come once more before you started.”

“I bet you did. I bet you fucked him.”

“Stop talking, Gene.”

“But—”

Melanie clamped her hand over Gene’s mouth. Right before she came, she thumped his chest twice with her fist and sat back on her haunches with her eyes closed. “No,” she screamed at the ceiling. “I did not fuck Bobby Fuller!”

While Melanie was splashing and singing in the shower, Gene used her phone to dial his home in Los Angeles. There were two hang-ups on his answering machine and a message from Jacob Reese, who repeated his name twice in a cautious but measured voice. Gene replaced the receiver and drifted over to the blinded window, separating the slats with his fingers. Down below, a middle-aged woman with slim long legs was sunning herself in a lounge chair by the pool. Seated next to her, rubbing baby oil into her coppery skin, was a gloomy-faced man around the same age, dressed in a pink short-sleeved linen shirt and madras shorts.

“Can’t stop snooping, can you?” Melanie reentered the bedroom naked with her hair still wet and water trickling down her stomach, dampening the dark triangle between her thighs. “Who’s down there—a couple of topless showgirls?”

“I wish.”

“Oh, I see. You didn’t get enough.”

Gene dropped the blinds and took a seat in the rattan chair by the bed. Melanie seemed to be smiling as she fastened her bra and disappeared into the closet, coming out a moment later wearing a cream-colored blouse with the Desert Inn logo stitched over the pocket. She quickly pulled on her slacks and stepped over to Gene so he could zip her up from behind. When he was finished, he asked her when her shift ended that evening.

“Ten.”

“Then what.”

“Quick bite. Maybe I’ll catch a late-night A.A. meeting downtown.”

Gene got to his feet and stood behind Melanie, watching her while she brushed her hair in a full-length antique mirror that was mounted on the wall. When his arms went around her waist, she backed up into his groin and their eyes met in the glass. She was looking at him carefully.

Gene said, “We didn’t really get a chance to talk.”

“True. But I think screwing was way more fun.”

“What if I stayed over? Would you talk some more?”

Melanie separated herself from Gene’s embrace. She then put her brush in the dresser and picked up her car keys. There was an awkward moment before she turned to him with an expression that was slightly troubled. “I want to tell you a story. So pay attention,” she said, staring at Gene intently until he slowly nodded his head. “When I was nineteen, I had this really cool boyfriend. Ted Babcock. He was a senior at U.C.L.A. We met at the beach one Saturday. I got drunk on warm beer and fucked him that night. I fucked him all summer. That fall Ted went to law school and we stopped going out. It was just a summer fling. Eventually he got a job downtown working for the D.A., and I began to see his name in the L.A. Times every once in a while. He was part of a team of lawyers who were investigating the infiltration of organized crime into the music business. Are you following me, Gene?”

Gene looked confused. “I’m not sure what this has to do—”

Melanie raised her hand like a crossing guard, and Gene stopped speaking. “You mean what does this have to do with talking to you? Well, lots. Because you see, in 1964, two years before Bobby died, I got popped for driving drunk. That’s on my record, the record that you already scoped out. But what you don’t know is, not only did I get a D.U.I., but in my purse I was carrying two ounces of high-grade heroin that I was dealing in clubs around Hollywood, clubs like the Melody Room and Ernie’s Stardust Lounge, heroin that I copped from Carl Reese. Still with me, Gene?”

Gene’s eyes wandered past Melanie’s face and over to the coffee table, where several college textbooks were stacked in a neat pile next to a tray filled with sharpened pencils.

“Gene?”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“Who do you think busted me?”

“No idea.”

“Your ex-partner Eddie Cornell. And guess who scored an ounce from me earlier that night at The Tally-Ho? That’s right. Chris Long.”

Gene’s head turned and he stared at Melanie, who coldly met his eye for a moment and then looked away. “Let me get this straight. You and Long are drug buddies. And this guy Babcock, he—”

“Ted offered me a deal. Snitch off Reese and he’d drop all the charges. But I said I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Too frightened. Reese, Havana, that’s a very bad crowd,” she said, and Gene’s head went up and down. “But Ted dropped the charges, the drug charges anyway. Ask me if I let him fuck me?”

“Did you?”

“Of course I did. Just like I let you fuck me, too. And I didn’t tell you shit either. And now,” Melanie said, looking at her watch, “I have to go to work.”

Gene said quickly, “Where does Eddie fit into all this?”

“Ask him yourself.”

“What about Long?”

“You’re getting close.”

Melanie swung open the front door and Gene followed her outside and down the stairs to the first floor. The temperature was over 100 degrees, probably closer to 110, and, by the time they reached the parking lot, Melanie’s face was already wet with sweat. There was something semi-secret in her smile as she turned away from Gene and unlocked the Datsun.

“Am I going to see you later?” Gene asked, as she slid behind the wheel.

“I don’t know. I think I’ve told you enough.”

“Who killed him, Melanie?”

“Who, Bobby?”

“Yeah.”

Melanie thought for a moment. Then she looked up at Gene with her smile still in place. “No one killed him, Gene. He just fucking died.”

Gene drove back to the Desert Inn and left his car with the valet in front, a Mexican kid with yellowish circles under his tranquilized eyes. When he got to his room, he cranked up the air conditioner and dialed room service, ordering a cheeseburger, fries, a Caesar salad, and a pitcher of iced tea. Then he called Jacob Reese, who picked up immediately, taking Gene by surprise.

“Hello?” His voice sounded loud, irritable.

“Reese?”

“Who’s this?”

“Gene Burk.”

“How’s everything in Vegas, Burk?”

Gene was silent.

“Burk?”

“What’s the deal, Reese? Why’re you following me?”

“Why?” Gene could hear Reese light up a cigarette before he resumed speaking. “Because you’re a fucking nuisance. And you’re starting to aggravate the wrong people.”

“And who might that be?”

“Me. Stay away from the broad.”

“Are you threatening me, Reese?” Gene’s voice was soft, almost thoughtful. “Is that what’s going on here?”

Reese laughed abruptly, then his voice became hard. “Let’s just say you’ve been warned.”

Gene put down the receiver and lay back on the bed with his eyes closed. From his conversation that morning with Melanie he understood now that she had never been interviewed by Chris Long. What she told Long while they hung out together, and what appeared many years later in Bim Bam Boom, were the mood-enhanced ramblings of an alcoholic, careless and fragmented conversations that were never meant to be printed anywhere.

“And a lot of what’s in there is bullshit. For instance, I never met Nancy Sinatra,” Melanie had told Gene earlier that day, while they were sitting in the bleachers in the absolutely still air. “Once or twice Bobby called her from my apartment, but I got the feeling that they were no more than friends. I know he slept with a lot of girls, but he didn’t brag about it like a lot of guys. He liked chicks who were smart.”

Gene said, “In the article you talk about Bobby’s mother. You say she was jealous.”

“She was protective. She wanted Bobby to be successful.”

“You said she didn’t like you.”

“That’s true. She didn’t like the way I dressed. She thought I looked cheap. I wore tight skirts and sweaters. I wanted men to stare at my tits and ass, because I was ashamed of my face.”

Gene admitted that he was surprised when he saw her at the A.A. meeting. “I was expecting someone—”

“A little more used up.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

Melanie gave Gene a long quiet look. “I know. You were going to say something nice.”

“You’re right.”

“Then say it. No. I’ll say it. I looked younger than you expected.”

“By ten years.”

“Exercise and clean living. Does it every time.”

“And the way you were dressed,” Gene said. “Just like a college girl.”

“I am a college girl,” Melanie said, and she took an extra moment, arching her back and stretching her arms luxuriously above her head, before she explained: “Two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to college. U.N.L.V. Ten units a semester. I’ve been going for five years. I’m a senior,” she said with cheerful independence. “Surprised?”

“Impressed.”

“Good. I like it that you’re impressed. When I graduate I’m gonna work at Covenant House, this home for troubled teenagers. There’s a lot of fucked-up kids in Vegas.”

“There’s fucked-up kids everywhere.”

“You’re right.” Melanie was looking away from Gene now, her eyes following the trail of a jet taking off from nearby Nellis Air Force Base. “There’s a never-ending supply.”

“I was a pretty fucked-up kid. And so were you,” Gene said, looking down as a soft breeze moved the blond hair on her arms. “But we turned out okay.”

“Did we?”

“Yeah. I think we did.”

Melanie got to her feet and grinned down at him. “I think you should speak for yourself.”

A little before eleven Gene left the hotel and drove down to the Pony Express, a small poker club located next to a sporting goods store on Fremont Street. Playing seven-card stud, he was up close to five hundred dollars in less than an hour, but he dropped it all on one hand when the full house he was holding was trumped by four nines. As he was leaving the club, he noticed a pit boss with puffy cheeks and heavy veins in his hands, meticulously cleaning his clear-rimmed glasses. He was talking to a jittery, rat-faced man whose lips barely moved when he spoke. When his elusive eyes caught Gene staring at him, the rat-faced man flashed him a queer, twisted half-smile that quickly faded, and then he hunched his shoulders and looked away. It was not until he arrived back at the Desert Inn that Gene recalled meeting him earlier that week in the offices of Big City Music.

Gene felt a flutter of fear and even some anger as he reentered the hotel. In the elevator he realized suddenly that he had to speak with Melanie, to be rigorously honest and explain to her that he was probably being followed, and that she might be in some danger. He called her from his room, but her machine picked up after six rings. He put down the receiver without leaving a message and sat motionless on the bed for several seconds, before he bolted to his feet and grabbed his car keys off the side table nearest the door.

On the way back to Melanie’s apartment, Gene’s radio was tuned to Night Forum, a talk show broadcasting out of Logan, Utah, that was hosted by a gentleman named Gil Dean. The topic for the evening was: “Telling Lies.”

“I lied to my mom when I was fourteen. It might have been the worst lie of my life,” said the first and only caller that Gene heard that night, a man who didn’t give his name until later in the conversation. “It was on a Saturday back in 1955. I was living in Rutledge, Indiana, where I was born. I’m a Hoosier, Gil.”

“What did you lie about?” Gil Dean asked, trying to draw him out.

“I said I needed some money for the movie playing downtown, but my mom wanted me to do my chores. I said I’d do them after the show and we argued. Finally, she gave in and gave me two dollars for the show and a snack. But I never went to the movie on that Saturday. Instead, I took the bus into Indianapolis and spent the afternoon wandering around the city.”

“Did you do this for any particular reason?”

“I was lookin’ for my dad,” the caller said. “He left me and my mom when I was ten.”

“When was that?”

“In the spring of 1951. He came by my school and gave me fifty dollars and a piece of paper with his phone number written in green ink. He said, ‘You ever need anything at all, Robert, you just call me.’ That same night I dialed the number but it was disconnected.”

Gil Dean said, a little impatiently, “Did you find him on that Saturday that you lied to your mom?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even know where to start looking. After a couple of hours I got lost and ended up in a run-down neighborhood where only black people lived. At a stoplight two boys around my age called me names and punched me in the stomach for no reason. Then they stole my bus ticket back to Rutledge and the rest of the money I had left over, which included three weeks’ worth of allowances, about nine dollars altogether.”

“How did you get home?”

“I didn’t go home,” said the caller. “I spent the night with a man I met in the park. He was an old guy, a folksinger named Harry Keystone, but he called himself Stoney. And no, he was not what you think. He was not a homosexual. In fact, he’d just gotten divorced from his wife, a lady named Kate who taught journalism at Duke University in North Carolina. And now he was back on the road. Actually he wasn’t really that old, about forty-five, the same age I am now.”

Gil Dean waited for the caller to continue his story. When he didn’t, Gil broke the silence. “Did this man, this folksinger—”

“Stoney.”

“Did he bring you home?”

“I never went back home. Not for five years.”

Gene was parked in front of Melanie’s townhouse with the engine off but the radio still playing. At first he didn’t believe the caller’s story. It seemed overrehearsed, presented in a voice that was strangely uninflected, a neutral tone that Gene felt was designed to deceive. He reached for the dial, ready to switch off the program, when the caller stated that he and his “road buddy” hitchhiked out west to Shawnee, Oklahoma, where Stoney introduced him to legendary folksinger Del Durand.

“We sat around Del’s living room, drinking whiskey and singing all his songs, classics like ‘Lucinda Over the Valley’ and ‘Fortune’s Child.’ Folks kept dropping in all night, other folksingers like Cisco Houston, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Jocko McPherson, this black blues guitarist from the Mississippi Delta.

“I got high on reefer for the first time that night, and later on that weekend I lost my virginity to one of Dels cousins, a girl named Polly who told me that Del had a rare form of cancer that was sure to kill him in a few years.”

The caller, whose voice was now spinning out into the night with more intimacy and warmth, went on to talk about his travels with Stoney, briefly touching on their stay in Denver with a prostitute named Gail, a girlfriend of Beat legend Neal Cassady, the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. The caller also claimed he met Elvis at a church barbecue in Greenwood, Mississippi.

“Eventually we made it out to California, and that’s where me and Stoney went our separate ways,” the caller said, and a note of real sadness slid into his voice. “He went back to North Carolina to see if he could patch up his marriage, and I stayed in L.A. Like everyone else I thought I could become an actor, and I did get a few parts, because I was a good-looking boy and I had a nice build. I appeared on a couple of episodes of Sugarfoot, this western series starring Will Hutchins. And I played a young killer with no name and no lines on an early Maverick. I’m in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, too. I got to know the director Don Siegel, and he let me stay in his guest house for a few weeks after we wrapped.”

“What about your mom?” Gil Dean said, breaking into the caller’s story, which was threatening to become a monologue.

“What about her?”

“She must have been concerned. Did she know where you were?”

“More or less. I wrote her postcards now and then, and I called her on her birthday.”

“But—”

“She was cool with it, Gil. Six months after I left she got married to a guy with kids of his own. All of a sudden she had a whole new family to worry about, and as long as I was safe and sound she was happy.”

Gene leaned toward the radio, thinking, I was fucking wrong. No way this guy is making this up: Will Hutchins, Sugarfoot, Don Siegel’s guest house—the details were too exact.

“Did you ever see your father again, Robert?”

“Robert?” The caller’s voice tightened with suspicion. “How did you know my name?”

“You said it earlier in our conversation.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, I think you did.”

“Did I say my last name?” “No.”

The caller let out a slow breath. “That’s good. I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait a second,” Gil Dean said. “What about your father?”

“He’s still alive. Did I mention that he knew Charles Manson?” the caller said, and Gene felt his body become perfectly still. A moment later the porch light came on outside Melanie’s apartment.

“Charles Manson. You sure?” Gil Dean said. His voice sounded cool, somewhat disbelieving.

“Back in the forties, Manson’s mother Kathleen moved to Indianapolis. She lived with a salesman from the National Shoe Company, the same place my dad worked. They used to party together. Manson was about twelve. His mom kicked him out of the house when he got caught stealing a bike, and he ended up in the juvenile center downtown. He escaped and was sent to Father Flanagan’s Boys Town in Omaha. He escaped from there, too. He and another boy stole an old Plymouth and rolled it into a ditch near Johnsonville, Iowa. Along the way they committed two armed robberies—a gas station and a grocery store. Manson was still only thirteen when he got arrested.”

A man around thirty with closely cropped blond hair appeared in the doorway of Melanie’s apartment. He wore tight white Jockey shorts and a workshirt that was faded bluish white. “You think you could turn that radio down?” he said, glancing into the parking lot. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to get some rest.”

Gene’s hand moved toward the radio dial, and he faded Gil Dean’s voice as he was saying, “You seem to know quite a lot about Mr. Manson.”

“My dad’s the one with the scoop. I just get it secondhand. He and Charlie have been corresponding since he first got jailed. You should see the letters he’s got. They’re gonna be worth something someday.”

With her hair uncombed and her athletic body covered by a plain nightgown, Melanie Novack languorously came forward from the interior of her apartment. She took up a position behind the crew-cut man and gently squeezed his hips. After a second or two Gene saw her lips drift across the man’s shoulder while her hand moved around his waist and slid down his shorts.

“Cut it out,” the man said, laughing as he pulled away.

“What’s wrong?”

“They can see us.”

Melanie cocked her head. “Who?”

“Whoever’s down there.”

“Fuck whoever’s down there,” Melanie said in a carrying voice, yawning widely as she turned and pulled the man out of the flickering shadows. Gene, experiencing a stab of jealousy that made him feel faintly embarrassed, waited until they were both inside the apartment and the porch light was off before he started his engine.

Driving back to the Desert Inn, Gene quickly felt his jealousy overtaken and smoothed away by a wave of carnal scorn: How fucking dare she spend the night with someone else only hours after screwing him? “That’s just wrong,” Gene said out loud, the wind lifting his angry voice into the soft desert air, and then he slammed his closed fist down hard on the steering wheel, loudly beeping the horn.

“Good talkin’ to you,” Gil Dean told the caller. “That was quite a story.”

“And every single word was true.”

“I’ll let our audience be the judge of that,” Gil Dean said and broke for a commercial.

In his room later, his body both alert and sleep-deprived, Gene twice raised the phone to call Melanie, stopping himself both times before he could punch in the last digit. Toward dawn, when it was not yet dark or light, his mind swerved back to the brief but confusing conversation he’d had on Wednesday with Martin Bender, the attorney representing him in a civil suit against TWA. Talking softly, almost affectionately, Bender told Gene that he’d received a partial transcript of the conversation that took place in the cockpit moments before Alice’s plane crashed.

“The aircraft was destabilized by a problem with the wing,” Bender said. “Both Stewart and Lee Doerr, his copilot, mention a gear assembly light that was blinking red. They were attempting to make an emergency landing in Moline when they lost power.”

“They’re certain it was mechanical?”

“The voice recorder seems to back up the F.A.A. report.”

“Marty, the guy was a fucking lush. He was probably hungover and—”

“His copilot wasn’t hungover, Gene. Even if Stewart was passed out cold in the aisle, Doerr was fully capable of landing the plane. We’ll never be able to prove pilot error.”

“So what you’re saying is, we’ll lose in court if I try to fight it.”

“They’ve got a five hundred thousand offer on the table. Everyone else has settled.”

For a while the line was silent. Then Gene took a breath. “Were there any other voices on the tape except Stewart and Doerr?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the transcript you read, was there anyone else speaking? Was Alice ever in the cockpit?” Gene asked, and when he said her name, Alice’s face came alive in his mind, making him flinch.

“I don’t know. It’s possible,” Martin Bender said. “We only received those parts that were relevant to our case.”

“I want to know her last words, if they exist on that tape.”

“I’m not sure I can find that out. That information is released only to family or next of kin.”

Gene said, “But she was my fiancée.”

“I know, but—”

“I’m not going to settle—unless I know for sure.”