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No
youngsters any more.’
    ‘I was here
last year,’ said Charlie, in surprise. ‘I can remember that bowl being packed
out with kids.’
    ‘Times change,’
Christopher Prescott intervened. His voice was as dry as the wind in the
leaves.
    ‘Lot of young
couples decided that Alien’s Corners wasn’t the place they wanted their kids to
grow up in. Too quiet, you see, and nothing in the way of opportunity,
excepting if a kid wanted to be a horse doctor or a country lawyer. Then, of
course, there were the disappearances, all those kids going missing.’
    ‘Including the
Foss girl?’ asked Charlie.
    ‘That’s right,’
said Christopher Prescott.’ First young David Unsworth disappeared; then Ivy
Foss; then Geraldine Im-manelli. Then six or seven more. Some of the parents began to get scared. Those who lived in town moved out of
town. Some of them even went back to the city.
    Those who lived
outside of town didn’t allow their children into the Corners any more. So the
bowling alley died from what you might diagnose as a loss of young blood.’
    ‘Did they ever
find what happened to all those kids?’
    Christopher
Prescott shrugged. ‘They dragged the Quas-sapaug. They searched the hills for
fifteen miles in all directions. But I reckon those kids went to New York City;
or maybe to Boston, Massachusetts. They never found one of them, not even a
trace.’
    A
silver-coloured Cadillac appeared at the far corner of the green. Abruptly, the
deputy snatched at Charlie’s arm. ‘You listen here now, move that vehicle of
yours. That’s the bank president, coming back from lunch.’
    ‘Where does he
eat?’ asked Charlie sarcastically.
    ‘He sure as
hell doesn’t eat at Le Reposoir ,’
Oliver T. Burack put in. ‘He said to me the other day that Mr Musette was the
closest thing he’d ever met to a goat that walks on its hind legs.’
    ‘I thought your
friend was deaf,’ Charlie said to Christopher Prescott. ‘I also thought that
neither of you had ever heard of Le Reposoir .’
    ‘Oh, Oliver’s
deaf all right,’ smiled Christopher Prescott. ‘He knows what people are talking
about, though. He has a sixth sense. What do you call it? Intuition.’
    ‘Are you
talking bullshit about me again?’ Oliver T. Burack said.
    ‘Please,’ the
deputy asked Charlie, as the Cadillac came dipping over the last corner of the
green.
    But Charlie
persisted. He was beginning to get the measure of these people, and he wanted
to know what was going on.
    ‘The restaurant,’
he said. ‘How come you wouldn’t admit that you knew about the restaurant?’
    Christopher
Prescott stared up at him with watery eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s better to hold your
peace, better to say nothing at all than to say something malign.’ ‘What’s so malign about Le
Reposoir ?’ The deputy came back two or three paces and pulled again at
Charlie’s arm. The bank president’s car had arrived outside the bank, and the
bank president was leaning forward and peering through its windshield at
Charlie’s car as if he were seeing a mirage.
    ‘You want me to
book you for obstructing justice?’ the deputy demanded, almost panicking.
    Christopher
Prescott said to Charlie, ‘You’d better get along, fellow. I wouldn’t want to
get you into trouble.’
    ‘All right,’
Charlie agreed. He didn’t want to cause too much of a disturbance. MARIA
inspectors were supposed to be ‘discreet and inconspicuous in their behaviour
at all times’. He followed the deputy back up the grassy slope, and across the road to his automobile. The bank president was sitting with his
Cadillac’s engine running. His face was hidden behind a geometric reflection of
sky and trees on his windshield, but all the same Charlie gave a cheerful,
insolent wave.
    Martin took his
seat beside Charlie and slammed the Olds-mobile’s door. ‘You realize you’re
copping out again,’ he said. ‘Who’s copping out?’ Charlie protested, starting
the engine. I made a