He hated them from the start.

Bunch of self-satisfied bastards. Eating and drinking and running their mouths, and he sat there among them and wondered what he was doing there. Whose idea had it been to invite him? What made anybody think he fit in?

Crazy, too. Bunch of grown men sitting around and waiting to die. The whole idea of dying made him sick to his stomach. He didn't like to think about it. Everybody died, death was out there waiting for everyone, but did that mean he had to think about it?

He was shaking when he left Cunningham's that first night back in 1961. If there was one thing he was clear on, it was that he was done with this group of fruitcakes. They could meet next year without him. He was done. Let 'em read his name or burn his name, whatever the fuck they wanted, because he was through with the whole deal. Luckily they hadn't made him sign his name in blood, or swear an oath on the head of his mother, or any of the usual secret-society mumbo jumbo. They had let him in, God knows why, and he could let himself out. And don't bother to show me to the door, thank you very much, but I can find my own way out.

But he went back the next year. He hadn't planned on it, but when the time came something made him go.

It was just as bad. Most of the talk concerned the progress they'd made since the last dinner- the promotions, the raises, the goddamn successes all over the place. The following year was more of the same, and he decided that was it, he was finished.

Then Phil Kalish died and excitement went through him like an electrical charge. I beat you, he thought. You were smarter and taller and better-looking, you were making good money, you had a wife and a family, and where did it get you? Because you're dead and I'm alive, you son of a bitch.

And wasn't that the point of it, staying alive? Wasn't that what they got together to celebrate? That they were alive and the ones who weren't there were dead?

So he went to the dinner in 1964 and heard Phil Kalish's name read. And he looked around the room and wondered who would be next.

That's when he started planning. He wasn't sure he was going to do anything, but in the meantime he could set the stage.

The first thing to do was die. He thought of a lot of ways to do it, most of them involving killing somebody and planting his identification on the corpse. But Vietnam was starting to heat up, and that was easy. He called Homer Champney and explained that his reserve unit had been called up and he couldn't make it back to the city for the dinner. He wasn't in the reserves, he'd never been in the army or the National Guard, a psychiatric evaluation had kept him out, which showed what they knew, the idiots, because he had turned out to be a far better killer than the people they took in. He phoned again, the week before the dinner, to report that he was being sent overseas.

By the following year he'd died in combat. The night of the dinner he went to a movie on Forty-second Street and thought how they'd be reading his name along with Kalish's, and they'd all say nice mournful things about him, and every one of the cocksuckers'd be glad it was him and not them.

A lot they knew.

He took plenty of time setting up the first one. He took his time with each of them, wondering how many of them he could do before they started to get suspicious. Well, they were down to fourteen men before anybody suspected a thing. More than half of them gone, although not all of them were his doing, not by any means.

But most of them were. And each time, all through the planning and the preliminary steps, he felt really alive, really in charge of his life. And then when he did it, well, actually doing it was pretty exciting, because it was dangerous and you had to be careful nothing went wrong.

Once it was done, though, it was sort of sad.

Not that he mourned for them. Fuck 'em, they deserved what they got. And it was wonderfully satisfying, because each time it was one more down and he was still standing, and he'd beaten another of the bastards.

No, what was sad was that it was over. A cat probably felt the same way when the mouse she was playing with finally gave up the ghost and died. You got to eat your dinner, but the game was over. Kind of bittersweet, you could call it.

That's why he was stretching it out. That's why he'd taken so many years instead of knocking them off at the rate of one a month. He'd kept them from finding out for a long time, and now they knew, and in a way that made it even better, because what could they do about it? Gerard Billings had known, and what good did it do him?

They wore the best clothes, and they ate at the best restaurants, and they got their names in the paper. Expensive dentists kept their teeth white and expensive doctors kept them feeling fit, and they got their suntans on expensive beaches. And this was their game, not his, and he was beating them at it. Because someday they'd all be dead, and he'd be alive.

"Except I guess I lose," he said. "You're gonna kill me."

"No."

"Then someone else'll do it for you. What's the matter, you don't want to get your hands dirty? That's why they hired you, 'cause I know those fucks wouldn't get their hands dirty, but what's your problem that you got to pass the buck? I'm ashamed of you, Matt. I thought you had more to you than that."

"Nobody's going to kill you, Jim."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"Believe what you want," I said. "In an hour or so I'm getting back on the plane with the other fellows."

"And?"

"And you're staying here."

"What are you trying to say?"

"You haven't been arrested," I said, "and you haven't been charged, and there won't be a trial. But sentence has been passed, and it's a life sentence with no possibility of parole. I hope you like this room, Jim. You're going to spend the rest of your life in it."

"You're just going to leave me here?"

"That's right."

"Shackled like this? I'll fucking starve."

I shook my head. "You'll have food and water. Red Hawk Island is the property of Avery Davis. He comes here once a year to fish for smallmouth bass. The rest of the time there's nobody here except for the family of Cree Indians who live here and maintain the place. One of them will bring your meals to you."

"What about keeping myself clean? What about using the toilet, for Christ's sake?"

"Behind you," I said. "A toilet and a washbasin. I'm afraid you'll be limited to sponge baths, and you won't be changing your clothes much. There's another jumpsuit like the one you're wearing and that's the extent of your wardrobe. See the snaps along the inseam? That's so you can get the suit on and off without unfastening the ankle cuff."

"Great."

I watched his eyes. I said, "I don't think it'll work, Jim."

"What are you talking about?"

"You think you'll be able to get out. I don't think you will."

"Whatever you say, Matt."

"The Cree family has worked for Davis for twenty years. I don't think you're going to be able to bribe them or con them. You can't slip the shackle or open it, and you can't get the metal plate out of the concrete slab."

"Then I guess I'm stuck here."

"I guess you are. You can vandalize your cell, but it won't do you any good. If you break the glass out of the window, it won't be replaced- and it can get pretty cold here. If you wreck the toilet you'll get to smell your own waste. If you find a way to start a fire, well, Davis has instructed his employees to let the place burn down around you. No one's greatly concerned about saving your life."

"Why not kill me?"

"Your fellow club members don't want your blood on their hands. But they don't want any more of their blood on your hands, either. There's no appeal from this sentence, Jim. No time off for good behavior. You stay here until you die. Then you'll wind up in an unmarked grave, and they'll start reading your name again at the annual dinners."

"You son of a bitch," he said.

I didn't say anything.

"You can't keep me caged like an animal," he said. "I'll get out."

"Maybe you will."

"Or I'll kill myself. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out a way."

"It won't be hard at all," I said. I took a matchbox from my pocket, tossed it to him. He picked it up from the bed and looked at it, puzzled. I told him to open it. He picked up the contents, held it between his thumb and forefinger.

"What's this?"

"A capsule," I said. "Courtesy of Dr. Kendall McGarry. He had it made up for you. It's cyanide."

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Just bite down on it and your troubles are over. Or if that doesn't appeal to you-"

I pointed to a corner of the room. He didn't see it at first. "Higher," I said, and he raised his eyes and saw the noose dangling from the ceiling.

"If you drag a chair over there and stand on it," I said, "it ought to be just the right height. Then kick the chair out of the way. It should do for you as well as the belt in the closet door did for Hal Gabriel."

"You bastard," he said.

I stood up. "There's no way out," I said. "That's the bottom line, and it's the only thing you really have to know. Sooner or later you'll probably try to trick the Cree guard, figuring you can knock him out or overpower him. But that won't do you any good. You can't force him to release you because he couldn't manage it if his life depended on it. He doesn't have a key. There is no key. The cuff's not locked around your ankle, it's welded. You'd need a torch or a laser to get through it, and there's no such thing on the island."

"There has to be a way."

"Well, you could chew your foot off," I said. "That's what a fox or a wolverine would do, but I don't know how well it works for them, or how far they get before they bleed to death. I don't think you've got the teeth for it. Failing that, you can try the rope or the capsule."

"I wouldn't give you the satisfaction."

"I wonder. Personally, I think you'll kill yourself. I don't think you'll be able to stay like this for too long, not with a quick exit that close to hand. But maybe I'm wrong. Hell, maybe you'll get what you've wanted all along. Maybe you'll outlive everybody. Maybe you'll be the last one left alive."

When I got back to the main house, Davis and Gruliow were having a drink. I looked at the bottle and the two glasses of amber whiskey and it seemed like a perfectly wonderful idea. It was a thought I chose not to entertain. The pilot was drinking coffee, and I poured myself a cup.

Well before sunset we were on the plane and in the air. I closed my eyes for a minute, and the next thing I knew Ray Gruliow was shaking me awake and we were on the ground again in Westchester.

33

When the dust had settled I took Elaine to a high-style vegetarian restaurant on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea. The room was comfortable and the service thoughtful, and, remarkably enough, it was possible to spend a hundred dollars on dinner for two without having anything that ever crept or swam or flew.

Afterward we walked down to the Village and had espresso at a sidewalk cafй. I said, "I figured a few things out. I'm fifty-five years old. I don't have to knock myself out trying to be the next Allan Pinkerton. I'll go ahead and get my PI license, but I'm not going to rent an office and hire people to work for me. I've been getting by for the past twenty years doing it my way. I don't want to change it."