One way or another, it was time to close the book. But I had to be certain there would be no more lies. I pulled the gun from my holster and placed it on the table. “Were you behind the beating? The one from Sludge and his boys.”

He looked at the .38.

“You don’t have to worry unless you lie.”

He stared at the gun. “Yeah. I hadn’t figured the Lonny angle yet and wanted you to go away. Inviting you into the neighborhood was a bad mistake. I tried to talk you out but you wouldn’t leave.” He looked at me accusatorially. “If you listened I wouldn’t have needed Sludge. Shit, the truck thing would’na happened either.”

I felt my face blanch as a terribly different picture of the last two weeks finally burst through my resistance. “Emil, I want to know about the letter.”

He looked suspicious. “Jesus, man, you jump around like a flea. The letter scared me and when you sprung me from the bounty hunter, I wanted you to check it out, that’s all.”

“What was in that letter?”

He caught his breath, eyes shifting away. “I already told you.” “You told me some of what the letter said.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I dropped my hand to the gun’s grip. My head was splitting, and my stomach was nauseous with heavy foreboding. I scraped the gun along the table.

For a moment I thought he was going to run. Instead, he leaned forward and breathed his garlicky grass breath. “Whoever wrote the letter knew things no one shoulda known. I never told nobody this shit before. Nobody. That’s what made the letter so fucking weird. Like someone else was at the quarry.”

I forced the question out of my mouth. “What happened that night, Emil?”

“Man, it was twenty years ago but it’s clearer than yesterday. It was hot, real hot. Lonny tells Pete he’s got some very clean acid.” Blackhead suddenly stopped short.

“What is it, Blackhead?”

A dirty smile crossed his face. “Lonny. He was a real chickenhawk.” “Chickenhawk?”

“Young girls. Lonny made sure Pete brought Melanie.” “Peter didn’t mind?”

“Why should he mind? She wasn’t gonna fuck Lonny. You know her, she don’t fuck nothing.” Another dirty smile crossed his face. “I always figured she was closet.”

I gritted my teeth and nodded.

“Anyhow,” he continued, “it was the cleanest acid ever. Lonny said he got it direct from Owsley. He had this fancy stereo and all sorts of good music. We probably listened to Vanilla Fudge fifty times.” Blackhead looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “But Pete got bored and wanted to go swimming. So we split.”

His face clouded. He had finished the comfortable part of his story. “Keep talking, Emil. What happened at the quarry?”

He surprised me and continued without more prodding, “We left Lonny’s…” “The three of you?” I interrupted.

He looked confused. “The three of us?” “You, Peter, and Melanie.”

“Melanie didn’t come with us. She stayed at Lonny’s.”

I guessed it coming but it still felt like a knee to my groin. I felt my shoulders slump. “Go on.” “We got to the quarry and went swimming.” Emil grew flushed and uncomfortable. “It was hot like I said. So after the swim we were laying on the rocks and Pete told me about the saint.” “The saint?”

“Fucking Jon-a-than. Pete’s thing with Barrie was crazy. Pete was top drawer at b&es, but when he worried about getting busted he’d sell his ass.” Blackhead shook his head. “He was going down on Barrie for free. Free. I didn’t get it. Why the fuck free?”

Homophobia crawled off his skin like a river of maggots. “Then Pete told me he was moving out. He and Melanie were going to move in with the saint.” A brooding, hurt look crossed his face and he spoke in a whisper. “Pete said he loved him.” Another ugly look, then he sneered, “That’s it, man. We’re through.”

“Finish the story, Blackhead.” “That’s it, I’m telling you!” “You’re lying.”

He looked at the gun, then forced the next words in a hoarse voice. “He tried to mess with me.”

“Mess with you?”

“He tried to go down on me, okay?” All the nervous energy had drained from his body; he almost fell down on the dirty floor.

But I wasn’t finished. “What did you do when he tried to fuck you, Emil?”

His head shot up. “I ran, goddamnit! I grabbed my shit and ran.” His face worked furiously and, to my shock, I saw tears roll from his eyes. “Don’t you see? I fucking ran away! If I stayed he wouldn’t be dead! I could have been able to help!”

He tried to stop the flow of tears, failed, and broke into loud heaving sobs. I sat back in the chair numb with the belief that Emil spoke the truth.

He finally stopped crying, staring at me from wet-splashed eyes. “Maybe this is why I hired you in the first place,” he panted, chest moving rapidly.

“What do you mean?”

It took him another moment to catch his breath. “I think after I got the note I had to tell somebody about all this. I kept everything inside for a real long time; maybe I couldn’t take it no more.”

We sat quietly in the middle of his disheveled living room. I actually felt sorry for his twenty years of hidden guilt and grief. Then I felt sorry for myself. Emil’s mourning was coming to a close, mine was just beginning.

I waited a few more minutes before I spoke, though my skin was already cringing from answers I didn’t want to hear. But the same demand that had pushed Blackhead to hire me, the inexorable drive to finally close old wounds, pushed me to break the silence.

“Emil, you’re certain Melanie didn’t leave Prezoil’s with you and Peter?”

He looked at me. “Sure I’m certain. I told you I can remember every detail. That’s what was making me batty.”

I felt the perverse lure of a major depression and almost asked for rolling papers. Instead, I pulled my cigarettes from inside my pocket, lit two, and handed him one. “Where did you go after you left the quarry?”

He took a long drag. “Home. I went home.”

“Was Melanie there?” I felt my body tense while I waited for his answer. Everything in the room seemed farther away. Like my eyes had sunk to the back of my head.

“No, she didn’t get home ‘til after I downed out. I don’t know what time.” He hunched his body in my direction. “Why do you keep asking me about her? And why do you want to know about that night anyway?”

I skipped the first question and lied about the second. “I’m just curious,” I said. “What the fuck for?”

“I said I’m curious, that’s all. Where would she have crashed if she didn’t stay at home?” “You’ll have to ask her. We weren’t exactly tight, you know. Never really got along. We didn’t fight or nothing, mostly stayed away from each other. She never liked that Pete and me were close.” He frowned and some of his earlier sadness returned. “After Pete’s accident she always blamed me for not coming home with him.”

“You ever wonder whether she sent you that letter?”

“How could she? We left her at the party and the letter had details. Anyhow, I think she crashed at Lonny’s with everyone else.”

“He tell you that?” “Sort of.”

“What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“Look, Matt, you have to understand what was happening. Lonny knew the pigs wouldn’t bother too much about Pete. But the less they bothered the better. He said I shouldn’t talk to him or no one about that night. He’d see what he could do to quiet things down. By then, the cops had already questioned me once. Anything that would cool things out was fine by me.”

His voice dropped. “I figured Lonny didn’t want to deal with giving acid to kids. Also, if he did get in Melanie’s pants, and she bitched, that would mean more trouble. She was still jail bait.”

His words made my skin crawl, but I wasn’t getting angry; a wall was building inside, insulating me from my feelings. My body was stiff, cold, and uncomfortable, but my head was clear and alert. “You don’t make it sound like Lonny had much of a chance.” It was hard to imagine, but I fervently hoped they’d spent the night together.

“Who knows? Lonny don’t usually strike out. You never can tell about things, man. Everybody wants to keep their crap secret, man, you know what I mean? Melanie stuck to Pete like a fly on sugar, but she didn’t know he hustled. If people don’t want you to know something, they find a way to keep it quiet.”

“Pete kept quiet about his hustling?”

“Yeah.” Hurt filled his face. “Pete said one of the things that made him decide to move in with Jonathan was that he could stop doing the street. If he needed to lay dead, he could always get bread from Barrie.”

I sighed and put the gun back into the holster; it was time to leave. Time to be alone. I stood, shrugged into my leather, and stared at the tinfoil ball of dope. I sighed again and lit a cigarette.

“You aren’t still gonna set me up, are you?” Blackhead pleaded. “I told you everything, man. More than everything.”

I stood by the dangling door-chain and looked at him. There wasn’t much to see. I rubbed my eyes and briefly wondered how he had managed to crawl so deeply under my skin. “Don’t worry, Emil, you’re out of it. Completely out of it.”

Skin and all.