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okay?

Okay? Okay?

'So what do you think?' Weiskopf asked Richler when Richler picked him up at a luncheonette three blocks from the Bowden home.

'Oh, I think the kid was in on it somehow,' Richler said. 'Somehow, some way, to some degree. But is he cool? If you poured hot water into his mouth I think he'd spit out icecubes. I tripped him up a couple of times, but I've got nothing I could use in court. And if I'd gone much further, some smart lawyer might be able to get him off on entrapment a year or two down the road even if something does pull together. I mean, he's still a juvenile. Technically, at least in some ways, I'd guess he hasn't really been a juvenile since he was maybe eight. He's creepy, man.' Richler stuck a cigarette in his mouth and laughed-the laugh had a shaky sound. 'I mean, really fuckin' creepy.'

'What slips did he make?'

'The phone calls. That's the main thing. When I slipped him the idea, I could see his eyes light up like a pinball machine.' Richler turned left and wheeled the nondescript Chevy Nova down the freeway entrance ramp. Two hundred yards to their right was the slope and the dead tree where Todd had dry-fired his rifle at the freeway traffic one Saturday morning not long ago.

'He's saying to himself, "This cop is off the wall if he thinks Dussander had a Nazi friend here in town, but if he does think that, it takes me off ground-zero." So he says yeah, Dussander got one or two calls a week. Very mysterious. "I can't talk now, Z-5, call later"-that type of thing. But Dussander's been getting a special "quiet phone" rate for the last seven years. Almost no activity at all, and no long distance. He wasn't getting a call or two a week.'

'What else?'

'He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the letter had been stolen and nothing else. He knew that was the only thing missing because he was the one who went back and took it.'

Richler jammed his cigarette out in the ashtray.

'We think the letter was just a prop. We think that Dussander had the heart attack while he was trying to bury that body the freshest body. There was dirt on his shoes and his cuffs, and it was fresh, so that's a pretty fair assumption. That means he called the kid after he had the heart attack, not before. He crawls upstairs and phones the kid. The kid flips out-as much as he ever flips out, anyway -and cooks up the letter story on the spur of the moment. It's not great, but not that bad, either considering the circumstances. He goes over there and cleans up Dussander's mess for him. Now the kid is in fucking overdrive. MED-Q's coming, his father is coming, and he needs that letter for stage-dressing. He goes upstairs and breaks open that box -'

'You've got confirmation on that?' Weiskopf asked, lighting a cigarette of his own. It was an unfiltered Player, and to Richler it smelted like horseshit No wonder the British Empire fell, he thought, if they started smoking cigarettes like that. 'Yes, we've got confirmation right up the ying-yang,' Richler said. 'There are fingerprints on the box which match those in his school records. But his fingerprints are on almost everything in the goddam house!'

'Still, if you confront him with all of that, you can rattle him,' Weiskopf said. 'Oh, listen, hey, you don't know this kid. When I said he was cool, I meant it. He'd say Dussander asked him to fetch the box once or twice so he could put something in it or take something out of it'

'His fingerprints are on the shovel.'

'He'd say he used it to plant a rose-bush in the back yard.' Richler took out his cigarettes but the pack was empty. Weiskopf offered him a Player. Richler took one puff and began coughing. 'They taste as bad as they smell,' he choked.

'Like those hamburgers we had for lunch yesterday,' Weiskopf said, smiling. 'Those Mac-Burgers.'

'Big Macs,' Richler said, and laughed. 'Okay. So cross-cultural pollination doesn't always work.' His smile faded. 'He looks so clean-cut, you know?

'Yes.'

'This is no jd from Vasco with