"What?" Trixie said.
"I do know one person. Who owns a gun. Someone who owes me a favor. Someone who might let me borrow it."
o o o
"Do you know what time it is?" Earl said when he opened his front door to me and Trixie. She'd changed out of her work clothes and into some jeans and a T-shirt, and had gone out of her house first, making sure there was no sign of Rick or anyone else at my house two doors down, then waved for me to join her. I ran across the street in a flash, ducked into some bushes as Trixie rang Earl's bell.
"Let us in," Trixie said. "Zack needs your help."
"Where's Zack?"
"He's the one here, in the bushes. Turn off your front light."
Earl was dressed in checkered boxers and a sweatshirt. He padded barefoot into the kitchen, where he found a pack of cigarettes and lit up.
"What the fuck's going on?" he said, running his hand over his shaved head. He looked nervous. "You told, didn't you?" he said, looking at me. "You told the cops about my business. How long before they get here?"
"I didn't do anything like that," I said.
"Did you tell that wife of yours? Did she call them?"
"That would be Sarah," I said. "And no. I didn't tell her. I'm here to ask a favor."
Earl squinted. "A favor?"
"I need a gun," I said. "I want to borrow your gun."
"Forget it."
"Earl, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. There are people looking for me tonight, and until I sort a few things out, I need some protection."
Earl glowered at me. "You ever owned a gun?"
"No."
"You ever fired a gun?"
"Not exactly, no."
"Zack, you ever even held a gun?"
I tried to think. Did toy guns count? And what about the G. I. Joe figures and accessories I'd had as a kid? Did that count for something?
"I guess, technically, no. All my shooting has been with a camera."
"And what the hell do you need a gun for anyway? How many enemies does a guy make writing space stories?"
"Come on, Earl. Don't you owe me one? Did I make a call to Detective Flint after I left here the other day?"
Earl shook his head. "Look, I appreciate that. But what you're asking, I don't know."
"Maybe you're going to have to explain," Trixie said.
And so I started in all over again, for the second time in the last hour and a half, although I gave him the Reader's Digest version. For example, I didn't tell him about trying to instruct Sarah in the fine points of purse safety. I said I'd found a purse.
"So I wanted to return it, and check the driver's license, and it was a woman named Stefanie Knight, who works over at Valley Forest Estates."
Earl turned away, shaking his head, and reached for a beer from the fridge.
"So I was trying to track her down, and left my name and e-mail address at her mother's place, and then this psycho named Rick comes looking for me, wanting what's in this purse, which at first I thought was all this money, but that turned out to be counterfeit, and then I figured it was this film -"
"Film?"
"A roll of film. Of Stefanie Knight and this councilman in the sack."
"What councilman?"
I told him. "But it turns out Rick and his boss, Greenway, wanted something more than just the film, they were after this ledger." I indicated it, on the table, as if I was pointing to Exhibit #1.
"So they're after you for this ledger?"
"Yeah, that, and I sort of pissed off Rick, hitting him in the head."
Earl sat down, alternating puffs of cigarette and swigs of beer. "You hit him in the head."
"When he came to my house, and Angie came home. It was a kind of self-defense thing, although I think, under other circumstances, he might have liked me. He read my book and really liked it."
"That must have made you feel good. You never know when you're going to run into a fan. I've been meaning to read it someday myself."
"You kind of left out the most important part," Trixie said.
"Huh?"
"This Stefanie Knight chick, she's dead," said Trixie.
"I was getting to that," I said. "I'm having a hard time keeping it all straight. Maybe hanging off the roof of that house has made me forgetful." Earl took a long drag on his cigarette, blew the smoke over our heads, and I continued. "That's kind of why I've been on the run all night. She was murdered, and I've got her purse, well, I had her purse, and I've still got her car, and I think it's going to take a long time to explain all this to the authorities. But I'm thinking maybe it's time to go see them anyway."
Earl said nothing for a moment. He was thinking. Trixie looked at me and shrugged. Finally, Earl said, "You need more than a gun, my friend. You need muscle."
I smiled. "You have someone in mind?"
He returned the smile. "I might. Seems to me you need to pay another visit to this Greenway guy and Carpington and find out just what happened. We might have ways of getting the information out of them that the police aren't really supposed to use. And if this Rick character shows up, we'll have to deal with him as well."
I felt a renewed sense of confidence.