Chapter 7: The Balcony

Loyd talked the cardiologist into letting him out that afternoon.

By nine o'clock he was asleep in the second bedroom of my hotel suite with his boots on.

The surgery was set for Saturday morning.

He had made me promise to wake him if anyone called with news.

"In daylight," he mumbled, as I pulled the blanket over his chest.

"I know, Loyd."

I closed the door softly and went to the sitting room.

Someone knocked.

Dinah stood in the hall with a canvas bag over her shoulder and snow melting in her hair.

"You said ten-forty," I said.

"I said I'd come after I finished." She held up the bag. "It took longer than I thought."

It clinked when she swung it onto the table.

I opened the top.

Inside, in a heap, lay badges.

Two hundred and twelve of them, with their lanyards tangled, still clipped to little photos of people smiling at the wrong moment.

"Grady threw them in the dumpster behind the mailroom," she said. "I thought they should go somewhere."

I picked one up.

It was the old assembler's, with the gray eyebrows, a younger face over thirty-one years of service.

"They can't un-quit," she said. "He'll have them arrested for trespass if they go back. But they said, if you're serious, they'll work for you."

"For Corbett Launch?"

"For Loyd." She wiped her hands on her jeans. "Wherever Loyd goes."

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