That final thought made him bring his dose and his whisky out to the porch, keeping both at the ready next to his Adirondack chair. He couldn’t help thinking Lansdale was singling him out for something. He had proven, inadvertently, mechanically, that he had special skills, and those skills seemed undeniably tied to his cure. Was that all this was, just a way to make him perform the way he had before he started cracking back at the very end of the war? He wasn’t in this for that. No. A robotic killer was never who he wanted to be. He took a deep breath, hoping to catch a scent of those bougainvilleas nearby, got nothing but the dead night air. He sighed, thinking that sometimes it seemed like the dose part of the cure was the only thing keeping him from cracking up altogether and for good.

Lett shot up right there on the porch. He washed it down with a belt of whisky. He didn’t care who saw.

Kanani saw. She was standing at a corner of the stairs, eyeing him.

“Welcome back,” she said.

“Aloha,” he said.

“You okay? You don’t look so okay.”

What was he supposed to tell her? Kanani wasn’t doing much better herself, it seemed. Her shoulders slumped, her dress had a stain on it, and her hair was pinned up sloppily. And her eyes looked puffy.

He waved her up and reached for the whisky bottle. They shared an awkward hug, Lett patting her on the back like a distant relative. Kanani dropped into the Adirondack chair next to his and sighed. They looked out. His lane of bungalows was quieter than usual this morning.

“You’re still here,” he said. “How goes the recon? Find out anything new?”

Kanani shrugged. Smiled. “We’ll see. Getting closer.” She looked away.

“Tell me,” Lett said.

“Charlie—Colonel Selfer, he’s looking for new friends, it seems.”

“So now it’s ‘Charlie’? What sort of looking?”

“We went on an outing. A picnic.”

Lett wasn’t surprised. He knew what she was getting into. “Just be careful. He came to me once, too.”

She stared at him.

“Oh,” he said. “You went to him. I see.” That stung a little. He drank. He held up the bottle for her, but she waved it away.

“Still no Miss Mae, I take it?” he said.

She shook her head.

“How’s the boogie house?”

She shook her head again. “Slow going. I’m starting to wonder how I’m supposed to get ahead, if I ever was supposed to. Like I already did what they needed me for, maybe. Those important visitors left the same time as you.”

“Can you tell me about them?”

She held up her hands. “One was Japanese, a real thug. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was a war criminal.”

Lett sat forward. “What did he look like?”