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you didn’t see for sure?”
    He licked his upper lip. “Headphones had to be there. I saw the Walkman.”
    Spaulding’s radio squacked. “Ready blue,” it said.
    “What did the Walkman look like?” I said, coming to my feet now.
    Levine was backing away a half-step at a time. “Just—you know. A Walkman. A black plastic box. Red wires coming out the top—”
    The radio squacked again. “Ready red,” it said.
    I lunged for Spaulding’s arm. “Captain, wait—” I started, but he was saying, “Do it!”
    I was already running for the building. The shots came exactly together and sounded like only one shot. Like I say, those guys are good. I was through the front door and halfway up the steps when the explosion came.
    It wasn’t all that big. Probably just a couple of sticks of dynamite wired to a thumb switch. Push the button down and it turns on; take your thumb off and boom. It’s called a dead man’s switch, since it turns on only when the man holding it is dead. It’s easily wired to any charge, big or small.
    This one was pretty small. It was barely big enough to throw me backwards down the stairs and out into the street on my head. Just big enough to take out most of that corner of the building and all the windows in the building next door.
    Plenty big enough, of course, to kill everybody in that small corner room of the Rossmore.

Chapter Four
    I woke up in the quietest room I’ve ever been in. Everything was white. I had a bad taste in my mouth and I couldn’t hear anything except an annoying hum. My head hurt. I was lying down in some kind of bed. There was a stiff, crusty feeling on my left cheek. I raised a hand to touch it and felt bandages. My hand fell away all by itself and I was asleep before it hit the bed.
    I woke up again. I still heard the hum, but I could hear other noises in the background now. A man in a three-piece suit was leaning over me. I decided he wasn’t a doctor. He didn’t look like a doctor. He looked like a hyena. That probably meant he was a lawyer.
    He held up a sheaf of papers and moved his mouth in an exaggerated, overcareful way, like he was talking to a retarded foreigner. “Can you just sign here, please?” he said.
    Yup: a lawyer. I closed my eyes.
    I woke up again. This time it was a doctor. He was a mean-looking old man with a bow tie, a beard, and a nasty glint in his eye. He wore a white coat. He was holding up my left eyelid with a hard thumb and shining a bright light into my eye.
    “Cut it out,” I yelled. Or at least, I thought I yelled it. What came out was a kind of muffled, raspy whine.
    “Good. You’re awake,” the doctor said. He snapped off the light. “I think you’re going to live.” He sounded like that offended him.
    I wasn’t sure I wanted to live. I wasn’t even sure what it meant. I closed my eyes.
    I woke up again. Captain Spaulding was sitting in the chair beside my bed.
    “Billy,” he said, and stopped. The hum was gone now. I could hear fine, although everything still sounded like it was coming from the next room.
    “Billy,” Captain Spaulding said again. I closed my eyes, but this time I didn’t go to sleep. This time I couldn’t. Seeing Spaulding there, hearing him calling me Billy—
    It had happened. It had really happened.
    They let me go home the next day. The house was neat, a little too neat. It had been cleaned up by someone who expected to be away for a while.
    They had given me the note Jennifer came down to the station to leave for me. It said she’d had about enough and she was taking our daughter away for a few weeks. They would stay with her brother in Paso Robles and call in a few days. She hoped we might be able to work things out, but she wasn’t holding her breath.
    That night was the first time I tasted my gun. It tasted pretty good.
    But I didn’t pull the trigger. I don’t know why. Maybe I was just being stubborn. Jennifer always said I was too stubborn. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t