wear, the owner furious. No prints. Red and Jack looked through photo collections of possible suspects, but no matches. Just a couple of punks out for a lark, never caught.

That day was a long ride. Gazing out the car window today, rolling through flatlands, Red thought back to a week or so after that dreadful day, at Jack's house, a Cape Cod on an acre, lawn beaten to dirt by the many McVey kids. That's when he met Jack's cousin, Patti, who held court in the grimy kitchen, a Tareyton held regally. Twelve-year-old Red couldn't get over how beautiful she was. He felt both inferior to her Irish majesty—her spray of freckles, her strawberry blonde hair confected into a beehive, her skirt cut just above the knee, herelf booties with a bit of heel, her cheekbones—and, yet, he also felt welcomed into the royal circle by her easy manner.

Patti was a high school grad, currently attending secretarial school. Her fiancé, Frankie, a mechanic, had added a few JC Whitney touches to her powder-blue VW bug: chrome wheels, baby moon hubcaps, and a gag wind-up key on the back of the toy-like auto. She was, on one hand, an adult, living in an adult world, almost, just a few months shy of a real job, and all of that grown-up stuff. On the other hand, she was so young and modern, so different from grouchy parents and teachers: a bridge that extended a warm hand to a land of milk and honey, a new nation where