“Not that I could tell.”
“All right, so she may or may not be playing around. But the point is, Jerrold thinks she might be, and you're afraid of what he might do if it turns out he's right.”
“That's it.”
“Well, Christ, why don't you just send the two of them packing?”
“It's not that simple.”
“Why isn't it?”
“Because I owe Ray Jerrold five thousand dollars,” he said. “I was having some problems the second year he came up here, and we got to talking, and it turned out he was willing to make a long-term loan that I couldn't get from any bank. I borrowed seventy-five hundred, and so far I've paid back twenty-five hundred. But if I throw him out, he's the kind who'd demand the rest of the money as his pound of flesh-and I just don't have it. I don't have anywhere near that much.”
I swallowed some of my beer. The fan was not doing much for the heat in there, and not doing much for me except clammily drying the sweat under my arms. “Okay then,” I said, “I can understand your position. What did you think I could do?”
“Keep an eye on things, watch Mrs. Jerrold and the rest of them and see if there really is something going on.”
“And if it turns out there is?”
“Then I send the guy packing immediately, no matter who he is. But I've got to know for sure first.”
“That part of it is all right,” I said. “What I don't care for at all is Jerrold. You said yourself he's close to a breakdown. Suppose he goes over the edge? Suppose he decides he doesn't need proof and gets it into his head to just go and let loose at his wife or Cody or some of the rest of us? That kind of thing has happened before, it can happen again.”
“Maybe it's not that bad.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Okay,” he admitted, “okay, maybe it is. That's the other reason why I want you here. I can't call in the cops and I'm not sure I can handle a serious crisis on my own. I need a man with professional experience, professional training.”
“Some favor,” I said.
“I'd pay you if I could afford it-”
“I wouldn't take your money, Harry.”
“Will you do it?”
I did not like any of it much, but I liked even less the prospect of driving back into San Francisco and waiting there for Tuesday and the pathologist's findings from the sputum test. There was really not much difference, I thought, in facing a potential metastasizing tumor or a potential psychotic-and yet, forced up against it, I would take the psychotic every time. I wondered if other men would feel the same way; I wondered if, despite more than twenty years of military service and city police duty that had involved no small amount of personal danger, I was in some ways a coward.
And the hell with that. In some ways we're all cowards.
“Yeah, I'll do it,” I said. “But I don't know how long I can stay. I've got to take care of some… business in San Francisco fairly soon.”
“The Jerrolds are supposed to leave for home on Saturday,” Harry said. “Could you stick it that long?”
You can call Dr. White from here, I thought, don't forget that. Call him on Tuesday afternoon. Then No. Worry about then when the time comes.
“I'll stick it as long as I can, Harry.”
He nodded. “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “I won't ask for any more than that.”
Three
The cabin Harry gave me was Number Three, well up into the trees toward the center of the camp and positioned back into a kind of niche that had been hollowed out of the slopeside. You could not see any of the lake from there. It was shady, a little cooler, very quiet except for the natural sounds of birds and squirrels and summer insects. Random shafts of sunlight slanted down to the needled ground, hard and yellow and solid-looking, like spires of pure quartz gold.
Inside, the cabin had an old blackened wood-burning stove, twin rollaway beds, a table and two wooden chairs, a rattan settee and a rattan captain's chair, a standing water cooler in one corner, and a heavy insulating mat rug on the floor. Against one wall was a cabinet sink and a two-burner kerosene cookstove; a closed door at the rear led to the shower and toilet facilities. Short on luxury, long on simple comfort. I could have lived there the year-round with no trouble at all.
I had packed a single bag with a few things before leaving my flat, and I put it down on one of the beds, along with my fishing gear. Harry set the bag of groceries he'd insisted on carrying on the side of the cabinet sink. Then we went out again and sat down together on the porch steps.
I said, “I'm going to need to know a few more things.”
“Whatever I can tell you,” he said.