Debbie comes out and he has a furnished apartment waiting for her in Somerset, where she used to live, not four miles from his home in Bloomfield Hills. He helps her get settled, maybe paint a room, rearrange the furniture, get in some groceries, booze. They have a drink, kick back. "Boy, it's good to sit down, huh?" Debbie gets high.

Naturally she's a little horny, not having been with a man in almost three years. She gives him the look.., one Fran has been waiting for ever since he and Debbie met and she started doing investigations for him: the look that says it would be okay to become intimate, not seriously intimate but for fun. Fall into it and say, after, "Wow, how did that happen?"

He had told Terry one time, years ago, he had never picked up a girl in a bar, even when he was single. Terry said, "You never tried or you never made it?" Fran told him he'd never tried. Why didn't he have the same confidence in a bar he had in a courtroom? Terry said that time, "You're too buttoned up. Lose some weight and quit getting your hair cut for a while."

Terry's answer to any problem was based on the serenity prayer. If you can handle it, do it. If you can't, fuck it.

5

AT NIGHT CHANTELLE KEPT HER pistol close by, a Russian Tokarev semiautomatic she bought in the market with money Terry had given her. There were hand grenades i:or sale, too, but they Јrightened her.

This evening she brought the pistol outside with her and laid it on the table where he was twisting a joint he called a yobie. She had told him that here mariiuana was sometimes called erniyobya bwenje, "the stuЈЈ that makes your head hot." From that he had made up the word yoie. They had smoked one before supper-goat stew left over from last night, Terry complaining always about the fine bones-and now they would smoke another one with their brandy and coЈЈee, the mugs, the decanter, and a citronella candle on the table.