Don DeLillo - Running Dog

"Secondly, your involvement with _Running Dog_ was taken into account."

"Elaborate."

"That woman you've been seeing. What's to elaborate?"

"You know, it's interesting, the first thought I had that night was that she was the subject. Her article on Percival. Then I thought, Christ this is insane. No way. I'm half hallucinating this thing. They wouldn't come down that hard. Insane, totally."

"You were the subject," Lomax said. "Of course it wasn't supposed to happen that way. You were supposed to be alone. And you were supposed to be unarmed. But you were holding. Why were you holding? There's no justification for that."

"I mean shit, Arthur, you nearly shot three kids just now. Do you need a gun, your job?"

"It's the business, I guess."

"The business."

"Or maybe we're just gun-totin' folks."

Selvy waited for Lomax to stop chuckling.

"We go to bed."

"You go to bed," Lomax said. "Thanks for your candor."

"But that doesn't involve me with the magazine."

"Our information's different. Our information's that you were pointing Robbins in the right direction. I think recent events prove this to be the case. But that's all behind us. I came on my own, by cab, to let you know they want to adjust, period."

"What recent events?"

"She found the collection, Robbins."

"Not with my help," Selvy said. "Not with any help from me.

"That annex sensor you rigged in the fireplace. The readout indicates that wasn't Percival going through on the night in question. Much lighter person. She was there that night. I can play you the tapes."

"What's my motive?"

"Motive, obvious, sex, clearly."

"Sex, clearly."

"It's been known to happen," Lomax said. "The lady wants to make a name. She's tapping away on her Olivetti. The exposé of the half century. When she hits a dead spot, you fill it in for her. Hump, hump, tap, tap. When she needs a tactical lead, you provide it."

"You said information. Your information's different. But this is speculation, it's gaming."

"Hard information behind it. Granted, they didn't wait for all the input. They tried to adjust a hell of a lot sooner than they should have. But you _were_ Robbins' source, weren't you? So in retrospect it was justified. Technically you can fault them for being premature. It was handled badly. We've been doing that. There's been some 'slippage. I'm frankly concerned."

Selvy was tired of this. It brought things to the surface, or close to it-things he didn't care to know about. Textures, entanglements, riddles, words. It compromised the routine.

"What I came for, ultimately," Lomax said in the midst of a deep breath. "There's a new operation in progress. This time you're looking at something different is my understanding."

"What am I looking at?"

"An assassination team of former ARVN rangers."

"How many?" Selvy said.

"Two in number."

"Carrying what?"

"I'm not sure."

"Been nice chatting," Selvy said.

"They're part of a kind of special project. A pet project. Pulled out of Vietnam at the very end and then brought over here."

"I'm glad to hear they're gainfully employed, the little fuckers."

Lomax stood with hands in pockets, the edges of his sport coat drawn back. There was an alligator stitched on the breast pocket of his knit shirt. A plane banked over the river after takeoff from National. Lomax checked the tar on his pants.

"Want you to know," he said. "I'd like to undo it completely. Whole process."

"Don't."

"I'm thinking of getting out myself. Stand clear for a while. Get a perspective."

"Sure, your dogs, the puppies."

"Buy a place in the country."

"They need room to run," Selvy said.

By midnight he was on Interstate 95 north of Philadelphia. In the back seat of his Toyota were some clothes and a couple of cartons packed with various possessions. He smoked and listened to the radio. Fixed limits and solid dark. After a while he turned off the radio and rolled down his window. The highway was almost empty but a roar filled the interior of the car, an air blast so integral to travel on major routes that he couldn't break it down to component sounds. So much his own car. So much the sparse additional traffic. So much the power of night.

Moll Robbins sat looking into the keys of her typewriter. On the wall to her left was a neon display, bluish white, a smoking gun. At her elbow, which rested on the table before her, was a glass of iced tea and half a cruller. The limp white page in the typewriter was blank.

When she got up and looked through the peephole to find it was Selvy who'd just knocked, she discovered she didn't fully welcome the visit. Something in her resisted his appearance just now. Bad timing, that was all, probably.

"What time is it?"

"I don't know," he said.

"I'm awake, oddly enough."

"I like your robe. It's not your kind of thing, though, is it?"

"The gunfighter. Sit down, I'll get you something. It's not a robe, it's a tea gown. I'm drinking tea."

"I'm drinking whisky," he said.

"What else? The gunfighter's special. NYPD's been looking for you, hill and dale, ever since you rode into the sunset. I get calls regularly. Precinct, homicide, missing persons."

"They know my name?"

"Nope."

"What'd you tell them?"

"You were a pickup. I picked you up. You were too cute to resist."

"Plausible," he said.

"Sure, good girl, except you're not Clark Gable and I'm not Jean Arthur. Any of it begin to make sense to you?"

"Afraid not."

"The police have some leads, apparently."

"Cops don't know shit. Forget cops."

She poured him a drink. He looked drawn and spare and a little dangerous, reminding Molt of the first time he'd turned up at her door. She left the bottle and sat across the room, studying him.

"Something new in here."

"What?" she said.

"Neon."

"Guess I couldn't resist. More flash. Transience and flash. Story of my life. I realize looking around this place that I don't have any furniture in the strict sense. I stack clothes in those modular boxes in the bedroom. I work at a folding table. I have a wall unit. It's just as well, isn't it? If you don't live in a house on your own piece of property, there's no point owning real things. If you're floating in the air, ten-twenty-thirty stories up, might as well live with play objects, shiny balls and ornaments."

"It's a gun. I didn't see at first from this angle. A sixshooter."

"I saw it the day after. Couldn't resist. Also the story of my life. Not being able to resist."

"Resist what?"

"Whatever I don't see clearly."

He gestured toward the typewriter.

"If I'm interrupting, say so."

"I wasn't getting anywhere."

"Where do you want to get?"

She leaned well forward, peering at him, her hands hanging down over her knees, almost as though she was getting ready to slip off the end of the ottoman, an impromptu comic bit.

"Who are you, Selvy?"

He sat back in his chair, an intentional countermotion, a withdrawal, and smiled in deep fatigue, self-deprecatingly. He appeared to be disassociating himself from whatever significance the question by its nature ascribed to him.

"Who is Earl Mudger?" she said.

"Don't know."

"Who is Lomax?"

"Lomax. Don't know."

"Of course I have my own versions of the answers to all these questions."

"I can't corroborate."

She reached over to the table for her iced tea. It was the middle of the night. She was remotely tired, knowing it wasn't the kind of weariness that leads to immediate sleep. The reverse probably. Getting to sleep would be labor, prolonged exertion. The ice in her glass had melted, making the tea flavorless.

"What is it like, secrecy? The secret life. I know it's sexual. I want to know this. Is it homosexual?"