“Did he ever have anybody in there besides Alice Makepeace?”
“Well,” Mark said, “if you listened to Michael, he’d done every female on campus with the exception of a couple he thought were too ugly. Those, he said, he got to blow him off. It was the way he talked. You could believe it or not, depending on what you wanted. I just tried to stay out of his way. You know, that guy is going about it all wrong. He’s going to end up dead and you’re not going to find what you want to find. What do you want to find?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure. A wallet, I think.”
“Michael put his wallet under there? Why?”
“Not his wallet, no,” Gregor said.
They had both turned to look at the operation at the evergreens. It was not going well. The first police officer had retired from the fray, and a new one, smaller, slighter, and more wiry, was making the attempt. Like the first man, he was starting by trying to slide in on his back. The alternative would have required him to press his face into the new snow and then down to the icy crust beneath it. He got less than half his body under the branches before he had to stop.
“That’s really crazy,” Mark said. “He can’t do it that way. Why don’t you just let me go in and get it?”
“That’s all I’d need,” Gregor said. “Your mother having a fit at me because you’d ended up in the hospital again, cut to ribbons by evergreen needles.”
“I wouldn’t be cut to ribbons,” Mark said. “It’s just a matter of doing it right. Come on. I’ll find whatever it is. I’ll do it for Alice.”
“What?”
“Alice,” Mark said. “She’s just over there. She’s inspired me. The most beautiful woman on campus.”
Gregor turned to look at Alice Makepeace, standing with the crowd at the edge of the library. Her red hair gleamed in the sun. Her black cape floated in the wind. She was the most noticeable person on the scene.
He turned back and saw that Mark had already left him, skidding down the hill on what he now realized were scuffed, brown penny loafers. Snow was flying everywhere. If Liz didn’t kill him for letting Mark be here at all, she was going to kill Mark for going out into ankle-deep snow in penny loafers and what appeared to be no socks. Gregor hurried down the hill after him. His own footwear was not exactly ideal. He consoled himself with the thought that wingtips, unlike penny loafers, had shoelaces. Why that should matter, he didn’t know.
He got to the bottom of the hill just as Mark was saying, “Think of it like you were retrieving a baseball. You’ve gotto get baseballs out of all sorts of places, right. Would you do that on your back? Would you do that humping your body up and down like you were a horny squirrel who needed glasses?”
Gregor coughed.
The wiry young police officer looked interested. “Baseballs,” he said. “Yeah.”
The police officer got down on the ground again, this time flat on his stomach. There was, Gregor realized, a lot of snow, much more than there seemed to be when you were standing up. Lying facedown, the police officer’s face was crammed into it. When he tried to slide under the branches, it got up his nose.
“Don’t push yourself,” Mark said. “Pull yourself. Keep yourself flat. Hold your breath if you have to. It’s only going to be for a couple of seconds.”
The police officer stood up. “Jesus,” he said, “you try it. I’m going to drown.”
“Okay,” Mark said.
Gregor should have realized what Mark was going to do. If he had, he would have stopped him. Mark was on the ground before anybody realized what was happening. Brian Sheehy saw what was going on and hurried forward. The wiry young policeman shot out a hand to stop his progress. They were all too late. Mark went flat on his face and stomach, shot out his right arm, and pulled himself under the evergreens.
“Crap,” he said as he disappeared from view and then, “Got it.”
A second later he had pulled himself out again, this time by sticking out his left arm and pulling the other way. When he got to his knees, he was holding the wallet between his teeth, and the entire front of his sweater was coated with snow. In a minute, Gregor knew, the snow would melt and he’d be soaking wet.
“Take it,” Mark said, handing it to Gregor. “If it’s not what you want, I’ll have to go in again. Because you can’t see anything under there, not the way you have to be lying tofit. That’s not Michael’s wallet by the way. I’ve seen his wallet a million times. It doesn’t look anything like that.”