"It looks to me," Ed Mackey said, "as though you zigged when you should have zagged."

"There was a local hand," Parker said, "dumber than he had to be."

Mackey nodded. "I read about it in the local papers."

This was a different place from where he'd met with the lawyers, farther along the same corridor in the same building, a more open place like a cafeteria, with bare metal tables and metal chairs, and soda and snack vending machines in a row on one wall. There were family groups and single visitors, with a steady surf sound of conversation, guards walking around but nobody standing over you.

The rules in here were few and simple. The prisoners were not to put their hands under the table, and no object of any kind, not even and Oreo cookie, was to pass between a prisoner and any visitor, not even an infant. To break either rule was to be removed from the visitor room immediately and strip-searched; and probably to lose visitation rights, at least for a while.

When Parker had been led in here, Mackey was already seated at a small square table away from the vending machines and the loudest family groups. Mackey, stocky, blunt-featured, and blunt-bodied, didn't rise but grinned and waved a greeting. Parker went over and sat with him, and when Mackey said he'd been reading the local papers, he asked, "You reading up on more than one thing?"

"Not around here."

"Good," Parker frowned at him. "I didn't know you'd be in this part of the world."

Mackey laughed. "I didn't know you'd be here either," he said. "You wanna know why I'm here?"

"Yes."

"There was a fella we used to know named George Liss."

"That's right."

"And because you were there, too," Mackey said, "I'm still alive." What he didn't add, not in a place like this, was that Liss was not still alive, and Parker'd done that, too.

So Mackey felt he owed Parker one, because in truth Liss had tried to kill them both, and in saving himself Parker had saved Mackey as well. Parker didn't keep scorecards like that, but he didn't mind if Mackey wanted to. He said, "I appreciate it."

"De nada," Mackey said. "Anything I can do to make life a little brighter?"

"One thing now."

"Sure."

"This is all transient," Parker told him. "The whole population, everybody moving through. Tough to get a read on anybody."

"You need histories," Mackey suggested.

"And if it's somebody I can talk to," Parker said, "then I need a friend of his on the outside to tell him I'm all right."

Mackey wore a zippered jacket, and now he took from its inner pocket a memo pad and pen, which attracted the attention of a guard. The guard watched, but Parker kept his hands flat on the table and Mackey leaned back, pad on the palm of his left hand. "Go," he said.

"Brandon Willams. Bob Clayton. Walter Jelinek. Tom Marcantoni."

Putting the pad and pen away, Mackey said, "This is tricky. Very roundabout."