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to go bad—one month? Two? Three maybe?”
    â€œA year.”
    â€œThey lasted about as long as she did.”
    She was Cynthia Blondin, the estranged twenty-three-year-old companion of Billy Diron who was a founding member of Galahad’s Balloon, a rock group that had made him a multimillionaire by the time he was twenty-eight. Now thirty-nine, Billy Diron had nearly completed the prescribed four weeks at the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs for his addiction to alcohol, cocaine and the occasional toot of heroin.
    â€œSo what’re you gonna do when Billy gets out—stay on?”
    â€œI’m a house-sitter,” Overby said. “Not a nursemaid.”
    â€œWhatcha got lined up—anything?”
    Overby glanced at his Cartier tank watch. “I’ll know this afternoon.”
    â€œBut you’re still paying the house bills—the gas, phone, electric and all?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThen you mizewell pay mine.”
    Garfias reached into a pocket of his faded blue Levi’s jacket and
brought out a pink statement. He passed it to Overby who saw that the bill was $100 more than the $200 it should have been. He rose, walked over to the kitchen counter drawer, took out a three-tier checkbook and brought it back to the table. Then he filled out a check—already signed by the incarcerated Billy Diron—for the exact amount of Garfias’ pink statement.
    When finished, Overby put down the pen, neatly tore the check out and extended both hands, his right offering the check, his left prepared to accept the $50 dollar bill Garfias had almost finished folding lengthwise into fourths. The check and the $50 dollar bill were exchanged simultaneously.
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    When Booth Stallings walked off the United flight at 3:46 P.M. and into the arrival-departure lounge of Los Angeles International Airport, the first thing he noticed was the sign that had been neatly lettered on the coated side of a shirtboard by a sure hand with a felt pen. The sign read: Mr. Stallings.
    The man who displayed the sign without any visible self-consciousness was somewhere in his early forties and had one of those too still and too careful faces that are frequently worn by men who have something to do with the law—either its enforcement or its avoidance.
    Stallings also noticed that the man’s expensive dark blue suit seemed to be a size or so too large, as if he had lost ten or even fifteen pounds and, by grim resolve, had made sure the weight stayed lost. Stallings automatically classified the suit as a patently false testimony to steadfast character.
    Carrying his only luggage—a scuffed buffalo hide Gladstone he had bought in Florence years ago—Stallings walked toward the man with the sign. When they were seven or eight feet apart they made eye contact, an act of mild bravery that Stallings had noticed fewer and fewer Americans were willing to perform.

    The man’s cool blue-green eyes seemed to slide over Stallings, dismissing him. Stallings walked fifteen feet past the man, stopped and turned.
    The man with the “Mr. Stallings” sign stood patiently, examining each of the two hundred or so male economy passengers who were still filing off the Boeing 747. The man stood with his feet a little less than eighteen inches apart, his back straight, his pelvis tipped slightly forward. It was the posture of someone who knows all there is to know about waiting.
    Stallings retraced his steps until he stood just behind the man with the sign. “Otherguy Overby, I’ll be bound,” he said.
    If he hadn’t been watching for it, Stallings might not have caught Overby’s slight start that was really no more than a twitch. But Overby didn’t turn around. Instead, still watching the arriving passengers, he said, “I figured it was you from what that son-in-law of yours told me over the phone. An old crock, he said, who’ll be wearing funny cheap clothes, a