“Willie, what are you doing?” Noble asked, as the actor took another sip from the bag.

He shook his head and coughed. “I’ve had a cold for days now,” he said. “Doctor gave me a prescription for this cough medicine.” He pulled the tiny brown bottle from the bag. “I’m supposed to have a tablespoon of the stuff, but I didn’t want to wait until I got home.”

“Oh,” Noble said.

Argus laughed.

“Why? What did you think I was doing?”

Noble kicked at a stone and sent it rolling down the laneway. “Well, I thought you might be depressed about how it went today and, you know…”

“Was drowning my sorrows with a bottle of whiskey?”

Noble could feel the blood rushing to his face. “Yeah, something like that.”

Willie smiled and pocketed the bag of cough medicine. “You’ve been watching too much television. I might play that kind of character, but I haven’t had a drink since I was a teenager. Probably about your age, as a matter of fact.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t. And that’s because a lot of people in this town made up their minds long ago about who and what Willie Greene is…Who cares what the truth is?”

“So what is the truth?” Argus wanted to know.

“The truth is…I’m not exactly what I seem, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Noble nodded in understanding. Willie wasn’t the only one in the alley who had a secret life.

“Never mind all this,” Willie said, getting up off the steps and heading out of the alley. “What are you two doing here?”

Noble looked at Argus, then back at Willie. “To be honest, I came down to make sure you’d be going back to the protest tomorrow…that you weren’t too discouraged.”

Willie’s grin was ear to ear. “You think I’ve never had a bad opening night before? Sure, my dialogue needs work, and the costume could be toned down a bit, but I think I’ve got something here with this Manchoka character. I’ve already got one radio interview out of it, and that’s one more than I expected.”

“Manchoka,” Noble repeated. “What does the name mean?”

“Beats me,” Willie shrugged. “I made it up. Sounds pretty good, don’t it?”

Noble smiled and nodded. Willie was more of a professional than Noble—or anyone else in town—had given him credit for. If Willie was determined to see this through to the end, then Noble and the pack would have to do everything in their power to help him.

“About your dialogue,” Noble said. “Maybe Argus and I could take you over to the library and work on some new material for tomorrow.”

“Hey, that would be great!”

“What do you say, Argus?”

Argus shrugged. “Libraries and I don’t usually mix, but…it’s for a good cause.”