“He home?” he asks Dave, lifting his chin at 240.

“Dunno,” Jim says, coming over. “But you hardly ever do, do you? That’s what makes him so weird. Half the time he leaves his damn car in the garage and cuts through the woods to Hyacinth. Probably takes the bus to wherever it is he goes.”

“You scared of him?” Dave asks Gary. He’s not exactly taunting, but it’s close.

“Shit, no,” Gary says, cool, looking at the redhead, wondering about how it would feel to have a package like her in his arms, all sleek and springy, maybe slipping him a little tongue as she snuggled up to his boner. Not in this life, Bub, he thinks again.

He tosses the redhead a wave, is outwardly non-committal and inwardly overjoyed when she returns it, then sails diagonally down the street toward 240 Poplar. He’ll deliver the Shopper on to the porch with his usual hard flip, and then-if the crazy ex-cop doesn’t come charging out the front door, foaming at the mouth and glaring at him with stoned PCP eyes, maybe waving his service pistol or a machete or something-Gary will go across to the E-Z Stop for a soda to celebrate another successful negotiation of his route: Anderson Avenue to Columbus Broad, Columbus Broad to Bear Street, Bear Street to Poplar Street. Then home to change into his uniform and off to the baseball wars.

First, however, there is 240 Poplar to get behind him, home of the ex-cop who reputedly lost his job for beating a couple of innocent North Side kids to death because he thought they raped a little girl. Gary has no idea if there’s any truth to the story-he has never seen anything about it in the papers, certainly-but he has seen the ex-cop’s eyes, and there is something in them that he’s never seen in another pair of eyes, a vacancy that makes you want to look away just as soon as you can without appearing uncool.