“Sorry to bother you, Lundgren. You must be quite a guy.”

“I don’t get it.” He expected a ticket for going twenty miles over the limit.

“Well, the lawyer gave our boys the motel number and we ran a check on you. We had to. Anyway, congratulations.”

“Thank you. I should have been more careful.”

“It’s not my business but you should be careful about that girl. She’s a known drug user.”

“Oh my god!” Warlock faked recoil, shaking his head. “You just never know these days. She said she was a schoolteacher.”

“Just a tip. Don’t worry. We won’t blow your cover. Bye. Hang loose.”

“Hang loose.” He waved as the trooper laid a stretch of rubber and smoke. He was not normally paranoid but now felt queasy at his foolishness. It was probably only professional courtesy that had kept them from making a dope raid on his motel. Think of the shame Diana and Dad would have felt. How would Hudley have gotten back home? A dark temptress had almost got his ass in a sling. From now on no dope and adultery, plus he would only use pay phones.

By the time he reached Traverse City he had regained much of his composure by using a nostrum Diana had tried to teach him. During a particularly depressing part of the winter he had taken to sitting at the kitchen table for hours at a time “just thinking.” One night she sneaked up behind him.

“Leave yourself alone,” she screamed.

He had fallen off the chair as if protecting himself from a fatal blow. “You do that again and I’ll kick your ass,” he blubbered, his heart still at full flutter.

“I’m trying to help you, Johnny. You’re becoming paralyzed.”

“I might have died of a heart attack for Christ’s sake.”

“You didn’t. It was worth the risk. You’re going mad from self-pity, self-concern, self-indulgence. You begin every fucking sentence with ‘I’ or ‘my.’ You say ‘I’m hungry,’ ‘My stomach is upset,’ ‘I’m horny,’ ‘My heart is broken,’ ‘I hate Kojak,’ ‘l hate hamburgers,’ ‘I hate Star Wars.’ ‘I,I,I,I,I,I’” she sang as if she were a mariachi singer in a Mexican cantina, then marched up to her secret room.

He had brooded for a while on the best tack against this insult. He recognized her shot as being basically true, but there was a dim-witted masculine urge to get the upper hand somehow.