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you, Dr. Jessup. He thinks of you as his real father, his only father.”
    I was thankful for the absolute darkness and for his ghostly silence. By now I should be somewhat armored against the grief of others and against the piercing regret of those who meet untimely deaths and must leave without good-byes, yet year by year I become more vulnerable to both.
    “You know how Danny is,” I continued. “A tough little customer. Always the wisecrack. But I know what he really feels. And surely you know what you meant to Carol. She seemed to
shine
with love for you.”
    For a while I matched his silence. If you push them too hard, they clutch up, even panic.
    In that condition, they can no longer see the way from here to there, the bridge, the door, whatever it is.
    I gave him time to absorb what I’d said. Then: “You’ve done so much of what you were put here to do, and you did it well, you got it right. That’s all we can expect—the chance to get it right.”
    After another mutual silence, he let go of my hands.
    Just as I lost touch with Dr. Jessup, the pantry door opened. Kitchen light dissolved the darkness, and Chief Wyatt Porter loomed over me.
    He is big, round-shouldered, with a long face. People who can’t read the chief’s true nature in his eyes might think he’s steeped in sadness.
    As I got to my feet, I realized that the residual effects of the Taser had not entirely worn off. Phantom electrical sounds sizzled inside my head again.
    Dr. Jessup had departed. Maybe he had gone on to the next world. Maybe he had returned to haunting the front yard.
    “How do you feel?” the chief asked, stepping back from the pantry.
    “Fried.”
    “Tasers don’t do real harm.”
    “You smell burnt hair?”
    “No. Was it Makepeace?”
    “Not him,” I said, moving into the kitchen. “Some snaky guy. You find Danny?”
    “He’s not here.”
    “I didn’t think so.”
    “The way’s clear. Go to the alley.”
    “I’ll go to the alley,” I said.
    “Wait at the tree of death.”
    “I’ll wait at the tree of death.”
    “Son, are you all right?”
    “My tongue itches.”
    “You can scratch it while you wait for me.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “Odd?”
    “Sir?”
    “Go.”

CHAPTER 6
    T HE TREE OF DEATH STANDS ACROSS THE alley and down the block from the Jessup place, in the backyard of the Ying residence.
    In the summer and autumn, the thirty-five-foot brugmansia is festooned with pendant yellow trumpet flowers. At times, more than a hundred blooms, perhaps two hundred, each ten to twelve inches long, depend from its branches.
    Mr. Ying enjoys lecturing on the deadly nature of the lovely brugmansia. Every part of the tree—roots, wood, bark, leaves, calyxes, flowers—is toxic.
    One shred of its foliage will induce bleeding from the nose, bleeding from the ears, bleeding from the eyes, and explosive terminal diarrhea. Within a minute, your teeth will fall out, your tongue will turn black, and your brain will begin to liquefy.
    Perhaps that is an exaggeration. When Mr. Ying first told me about the tree, I was a boy of eight, and that is the impression I got from his disquisition on brugmansia poisoning.
    Why Mr. Ying—and his wife as well—should take such pride in having planted and grown the tree of death, I do not know.
    Ernie and Pooka Ying are Asian Americans, but there’s nothing in the least Fu Manchu about them. They’re too amiable to devote any time whatsoever to evil scientific experiments in a vast secret laboratory carved out of the bedrock deep beneath their house.
    Even if they have developed the capability to destroy the world, I for one cannot picture anyone named Pooka pulling the GO lever on a doomsday machine.
    The Yings attend Mass at St. Bartholomew’s. He’s a member of the Knights of Columbus. She donates ten hours each week to the church thrift shop.
    The Yings go to the movies a lot, and Ernie is notoriously sentimental, weeping during the death scenes, the love scenes, the