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fluttered open—the direct blue eyes she had got from her mother—and she sat up, rubbing her face. “Daddy? Where are we?”
    â€œAlbany, hon. The airport.” And leaning closer, he muttered, “Don’t say anything yet.”
    â€œOkay.” She smiled at the cab driver, and the cabby smiled back. She slipped out of the cab and Andy followed her, trying not to stagger.
    â€œThanks again, man,” the cabby called. “Listen, hey. Great fare. Don’t tell me, I’ll tell you.”
    Andy shook the outstretched hand. “Take care.”
    â€œI will. Glyn’s just not gonna believe this action.”
    The cabby got back in and pulled away from the yellow-painted curb. Another jet was taking off, the engine revving and revving until Andy felt as though his head would split in two pieces and fall to the pavement like a hollow gourd. He staggered a little, and Charlie put her hands on his arm.
    â€œOh, Daddy,” she said, and her voice was far away.
    â€œInside. I have to sit down.”
    They went in, the little girl in the red pants and the green blouse, the big man with the shaggy black hair and the slumped shoulders. A skycap watched them go and thought it was a pure sin, a big man like that out after midnight, drunk as a lord by the look of him, with his little girl who should have been in bed hours ago leading him around like a Seeing Eye dog. Parents like that ought to be sterilized, the skycap thought.
    Then they went in through the electric-eye-controlled doors and the skycap forgot all about them until some forty minutes later, when the green car pulled up to the curb and the two men got out to talk to him.
4
    It was ten past midnight. The lobby of the terminal had been given over to the early-morning people: servicemen at the end of their leaves, harried-looking women riding herd on scratchy, up-too-late children, businessmen with pouches of weariness under their eyes, cruising kids in big boots and long hair, some of them with packs on their backs, a couple with cased tennis rackets. The loudspeaker system announced arrivals and departures and paged people like some omnipotent voice in a dream.
    Andy and Charlie sat side by side at desks with TVs bolted to them. The TVs were scratched and dented and painted dead black. To Andy they looked like sinister, futuristic cobras. He plugged his last two quarters into them so they wouldn’t be asked to leave the seats. Charlie’s was showing a rerun of The Rookies and Johnny Carson was yucking it up with Sonny Bono and Buddy Hackett on Andy’s.
    â€œDaddy, do I have to?” Charlie asked for the second time. She was on the verge of tears.
    â€œHoney, I’m used up,” he said. “We have no money. We can’t stay here.”
    â€œThose bad men are coming?” she asked, and her voice dropped to a whisper.
    â€œI don’t know.” Thud, thud, thud in his brain. Not a rider-less black horse anymore; now it was mailsacks filled with sharp scraps of iron being dropped on him from a fifth-story window. “We have to assume they are.”
    â€œHow could I get money?”
    He hesitated and then said, “You know.”
    The tears began to come and trickled down her cheeks. “It’s not right. It’s not right to steal.”
    â€œI know it,” he said. “But it’s not right for them to keep coming at us, either. I explained it to you, Charlie. Or at least I tried.”
    â€œAbout little bad and big bad?”
    â€œYes. Lesser and greater evil.”
    â€œDoes your head really hurt?”
    â€œIt’s pretty bad,” Andy said. There was no use telling her that in an hour, or possibly two, it would be so bad he would no longer be able to think coherently. No use frightening her worse than she already was. No use telling her that he didn’t think they were going to get away this time.
    â€œI’ll try,” she said, and got out of the