"Protecting him?" he said. "I'd shoot him."
"Oh dear," Bethel said mockingly. "Such ambition. And then you could go down in history."
"I'll go down in history anyhow," Tinbane said.
"What for? What have you done? And what in the future do you intend to do? Keep on digging up old ladies out at Forest Knolls Cemetery?" Her tone lacerated him. "Or for being married to me?"
"That's right; for being married to you." His tone was equally scathing; he had learned it from her, over the long, dead months of their alleged marriage.
Bethel returned, then, to the living room. Left alone, he continued to disgorge, now left in peace. He appreciated it.
Anyhow, he thought gloomily, Tilly M. Benton of South Pasadena likes me.
3
Eternity is a kind of measure. But to be measured belongs not to God. Therefore it does not belong to Him to be eternal.
--St. Thomas Aquinas
It had always been difficult for Officer Joe Tinbane to determine precisely what official rank George Gore held in the Los Angeles Police Department; he wore an ordinary citizen's cape, natty turned-up Italian shoes and a bright, fashionable shirt which looked even a bit gaudy. Gore was a relatively slender man, tall, in his mid-forties, Tinbane guessed. He came directly to the point, as the two of them sat facing each other in Gore's office.
"Since Ray Roberts is arriving in town, we've been asked by the Governor to provide a personal bodyguard... which we planned to do anyway. Four or possibly five men; we're in agreement on that, too. You asked to be reassigned, so you're one." Gore shuffled some documents on his desk; Tinbane saw that they pertained to him. "Okay?" Gore said.
"If you say so," Tinbane said, feeling sullen--and surprised. "You don't mean for crowd control; you mean all the time. Around the clock." In proximity, he realized. By personal they meant personal.