“That’s George,” Icarus said, indicating the Negro. “And that’s Rooney and Joan.”

Hook nodded at them, but still they made no response.

“He’s Chris’s father,” Icarus kept on. “You remember the kid I brought to Harley’s last week. The kid who—”

“The kid who killed himself,” the one named Rooney said.

Hook stared at the young man. He could not believe he had heard him right, could not believe the self-approving smirk that crossed his face now. Finally Hook looked away from him, trying to check his anger. The heavy odor of marijuana was in the air—Hook remembered it from the days of his weekend passes in Tijuana during the war—but for him that could no more explain the youth’s comment than could alcohol, and there was that too, a gallon jug of red wine sitting on the table, and glasses spread around.

“I don’t believe he did it,” he heard Icarus say now. “Chris was too straight a kid for that.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Hook said. “I know he didn’t do it. But I don’t know what did happen. I was wondering if you knew anything, or if you’d gone to the police yet—told them when he was here, when he left.”

The Negro laughed out loud, throwing his mouth wide open, which made him look like a deranged marmoset.

“Yeah, man,” he said. “Why didn’t you do that, huh, Icky?”

Rooney also was amused. “You don’t go to the pigs, friend,” he said to Hook. “You’re took in by the pigs. That’s the scene today, man.”

Icarus asked Hook if he wanted a drink. “I’ve got a beer and wine,” he added. “That’s all.”

“Maybe he’d like a smoke,” the girl suggested.

Rooney, who was rolling a cigarette from a glassine pouch, shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know, man. You already cost us a pretty fair-size roach. We thought you was pig, see? So Joannie here, she splits in there and flushes the thing down the hole. So you owe us.”

“I won’t be staying,” Hook said to Icarus. “I just wanted to ask you about the morning Chris left here. Was it Tuesday, the ninth?”

Icarus picked up his drink, a glass of red wine. Sinking into the car seat, he revolved the glass under his nose, as if it were a brandy snifter containing a fine old cognac.

“Jesus, I can’t remember,” he said. “I can’t be sure. That was over a week ago.”

“Do you remember when you read about it in the paper? Was it the next afternoon after he left here?”

“No. A couple days later, I think. Why?”

But again Rooney intervened. He had just crawled over to the legless table to refill his wine glass and to light his marijuana cigarette on a taper burning there. Standing now, he clucked his tongue at Hook.

“Man, this is really sad, you know? This is a real sick scene, you coming out here.”

Hook said nothing.

“You don’t want to know why it’s sick, man?”