Don DeLillo - Running Dog

"Right."

"Talerico," she said, fixing him with a meaningful look.

"Familiar."

"There's two of them. Paul. That's the one who's here. One of the New York families, as you can well imagine. Pornography, trucking, vending machines. Don't you love it? That's the legitimate end. The other one. That's Vincent. He's upstate or somewhere. They're cousins, I think."

"I know the names," Selvy said.

"Vincent's in charge of acquiring, Stony said. Acquisitions. He specializes in first-run movies. When they can't get rights by bargaining, they send Vincent. He gets the film. He just takes it. Then they make their own prints. Then they distribute,"

She hunched way down in her chair, conspiratorially, her face just inches above the table top.

"They call him Vinny the Eye. Don't you love it? It's so dumb, I love it. I've only seen Paul. He was in the other day. Everybody went around saying, '_Paul's here, Paul, he's in the building_.' I was disappointed in Paul. I was not impressed. It was disillusioning for a country girl like myself. I think Vinny's the Hollywood one. The dresser. The fancy gangster type. It's really dumb. I wish he'd come around so I could see him."

When the food came she didn't waste time, obviously hungry. Watching her eat relaxed him. It occurred to Selvy he hadn't been hungry in years. He'd experienced weakness and discomfort from lack of food, But he hadn't desired it really, except to ease the discomfort. He tried to recall the last time he'd felt a real desire for food.

"Are you seriously going to Little Rock?" she said.

"Thereabouts, sure, why not."

"Ever since I've been working in that place I keep thinking the whole world smells of Lysol."

"You owe me a story, you know."

"'Naomi and Lateef.'"

"I might change my mind," he said.

"All I know, I'm not doing 'Flaming Panties.' That story's so sick I've been changing it little by little. A little every day. I don't care who complains. It's a story that relies on combinations. Incest is just the beginning. It _starts_ with incest. Then near the end it just becomes reciting words. Some words I just won't say. It piles on the phrases. It becomes red meat."

"Your customers."

"They laugh, mostly. Some get embarrassed. You'd be surprised."

"Sitting there naked, laughing."

"Sheepish nudes, I told Stony."

"So some words you just won't say."

She finished chewing the last bite of baked potato.

"Who are you trying to avoid anyway?"

Selvy looked toward the old man, who sat rigidly staring into space.

"_Tieu to dac cong_."

He gave her a delayed smile, self-consciously weary, and signaled for the check.

Outside a police towaway crew was about ready to haul the battered Cadillac. Tourists were interested in the pimpmobile. A man, two women and two children posed for pictures, using the car as background. When they were finished, two other women and three children moved into position along the front door and fender. A conventioneer wearing an enormous name tag crouched in the gutter, inserting a flash cube in his Instamatic.

Earl Mudger stood on the patio, facing east, barechested despite the chill, a mug of coffee in his hand. He liked being the first one up, coming down in the dark to start the coffee perking. He would roll his shoulders as he moved around the house, would swing his arms occasionally, feeling the stiffness ease away. Ever since he could remember, in whatever house or barracks he'd lived, with whatever people, family or military, he'd always been the first one up.

With pale light intensifying, aspects of sunrise visible through the trees, he went back into the kitchen. On the counter lay a manila folder and a spool of magnetic tape. He poured more coffee into his mug and sat on a stool, opening the folder and scanning the topmost page, a document headed: _Department of the Treasury, District Director, Internal Revenue Service_. Beneath this was a white label with a long series of numbers arrayed across the top, followed by Grace Delaney's name and home address.

Mudger began turning pages, glancing at audit forms, photocopied documents, photocopied checks and bank statements, agent evaluations, notices of "unfavorable action." He closed the folder and regarded the tape spooi. It contained confidential information on the accounts of roughly five hundred taxpayers and had been acquired by Lomax from the same source, an IRS supervisor who had access to restricted files. Among the data was further information relating to Grace Delaney's account.

Mudger finished his coffee and went downstairs. He rechecked the fit and worked some more on the handle section. Then he put on his magnifying glasses and studied the blade.

The knife was a modified bowie. It had a broad sweeping single-edged blade with a clipped point. Overall length was about eleven and a half inches. The blade measured seven and a quarter.

There was a display panel, a hinged triptych, fastened to the wall above a work table. Mudger's knives were exhibited here, some he'd made himself, others turned out by custom knifemakers.

They had sex in the front seat of Selvy's car, which was parked in the barren dells near the West Side Highway. It was an act they knew would take place as they walked through the dark streets to the car. It helped dispel certain disquieting energies. Times Square Saturday night.

"My hotel's right near that restaurant. Why are we doing it here?"

"I'm a little crazy tonight."

"Try reaching that ashtray and push it closed."

Stale cigarette butts. Smell of various plastics that made up the interior of the car. They straightened up finally. She sat on the driver's side, back resting against the door, her feet up on the seat. Selvy looked straight ahead. A silence, followed by:

"Naomi is this buxom Israeli girl who we find bathing one day in a stream that runs through her kibbutz. She has giant white breasts, etcetera etcetera, nipples, etcetera. So then along comes Lateef, who's an Arab army deserter. Well, to tighten the script, they meet and fall in love and just screw and screw and screw, doing it where they won't be discovered. Forbidden love with a capital F. I'm skipping the details, understand. There's a lot about Lateef's Arab pecker, which you probably don't mind if I glide over. Anyway one day we find them having a picnic on the Golan Heights. It's very star-crossed and tender."

"Wait a second."

He was looking in the rearview mirror. Nadine turned her head, intending to lean back out the open window and check what it was he'd seen.

"Don't do that."

Nobody said anything for the next four or five minutes. Selvy kept his eye on the mirror. He seemed engaged in deep and melancholy thought.

"It's getting daylight," she said.

He got out of the car, walked around to her side and stood leaning against the door, smoking.

"We ought to get my clothes. One thing, I won't mind leaving that hotel. More Lysol. Night clerk's insane. Pigeons in the elevator. One more week here, I'd be ready to fall on my sword."

He was interested in knowing precisely what instruments, devices, tools they might be carrying. It would put things in perspective, having that information. It would clarify the relationship, subject to adjusters.

"Glen with one _n_," she said. "If you're bent on avoiding someone, how come you're standing in plain sight outside the selfsame car that you're getting ready to drive away in?"

He reacted as though coming out of a trance, a state of detachment from his present surroundings. Yet there was an element of alertness in his features, his whole body, as though at the center of that dazed state he'd found a level clearer than any thus far accessible to him.

He was facing east, watching the tops of buildings take on color in the hazy light.