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front porch a while ago.
     He wrenched loose of the attorney's hand, shoved him aside, and made for the outer door in a state close to panic.
     Kadinska called after him: "Joey, what's wrong?"
     The hallway. Past the real-estate office. The dentist. Toward the stairs. He wanted desperately to be out in the fresh air, to be washed clean by the rain.
     "Joey, what's the matter with you?"
     "Stay away from me!" he shouted.
When he reached the head of the stairs, he halted so abruptly that he almost pitched to the bottom. He grabbed the newel post to keep
his balance.
     At the foot of the steep stairs lay the dead blonde, bundled in a transparent tarp partly opaque with blood. The plastic was drawn tightly across her bare breasts, compressing them. Her nipples were visible but not her face.
     One pale arm had slipped out of her shroud. Although she was dead, she reached out beseechingly.
     He could not bear the sight of her mangled hand, the blood, the nail hole in her delicate palm. Most of all he was terrified that she would speak to him from behind her plastic veil and that he would be told things that he shouldn't know, mustn't know.
     With a whimper like that of a cornered animal, he turned from her and started back the way he had come.
     "Joey?"
     Henry Kadinska stood in the dimly lighted hall ahead of him. Shadows seemed to be drawn to the attorney - except for his thick eyeglasses, which blazed with reflections of the yellow light overhead. He was blocking the way. Approaching. Eager to have another chance to offer his bargain.
     Now frantic for fresh air and cleansing rain, Joey spun away from Kadinska and returned to the stairs.
     The blonde still sprawled below, her arm extended, her hand open, silently pleading for something, perhaps for mercy.
     "Joey?"
     Kadinska's voice. Close behind him.
     Joey descended the precipitous flight of stairs hesitantly at first, then faster, figuring that he would step over her if she was really there, kick at her if she tried to seize him, down two stairs at a time, not even holding on to the handrail, barely keeping his balance, a third of the way, halfway, and still she was there, now eight steps below, six, four, and she was reaching out to him, the red stigmata glistening in the center of her palm. He screamed as he reached the last step, and the dead woman vanished when he cried out. He plunged through the space that she had occupied, crashed through the door, and staggered onto the sidewalk in front of the Old Town Tavern.
     He turned his face up into the Pabst-blue and Rolling Rock-green rain, which was so cold that it might soon turn to sleet. In seconds he was soaked - but he didn't feel entirely clean.
     In the rental car again, he fumbled the flask out from under the driver's seat where he'd tucked it earlier.
     The rain had not cleansed him inside. He had breathed in corruption, swallowed it. Blended whiskey offered considerable antiseptic power.
     He unscrewed the cap from the flask and took a long swallow. Then another.
     Choking on the spirits, gasping for breath, he replaced the cap, afraid that he would drop the flask and waste the precious ounces that it still contained.
     Kadinska hadn't followed him out into the storm, but Joey didn't want to delay another moment. He started the car, pulled away from the curb, splashed through a flooded intersection, and drove along Main Street toward the end of town.
     He didn't believe that he would be allowed to leave. Something would stop him. The car would sputter, stall, and refuse to start. Cross traffic would crash into him at an intersection, even though the streets seemed deserted. Lightning would strike a telephone pole and drop it across the road. Something would prevent him from getting out of town. He was in the grip of a superstition