Smoked

CHAPTER FOUR

Smoke left Lola’s apartment around eleven the next morning. Both Lola and Pam had gone to their day jobs, so Smoke lounged around for a bit before heading back to his own place. He was in no hurry, and it was a nice day.

He came down the stairs into his apartment, still with lingering thoughts of Lola and her body from the night before. Last night had been better, thank you. It was almost noon and she should be on a break soon.

Yessir, he was a lucky man.

A large pile of fur was heaped on the linoleum floor of his tiny kitchen. At first, he thought one of the cats was merely sprawled out there. It was Bubbles, a big lazy yellow tabby. Sprawling out on the floor was nothing new for Bubbles. In fact, Smoke barely looked at the cat.

Then he did.

There was something abnormal about the way Bubbles lay there. Smoke’s heart raced off in a wild tattoo. Rat-a-tat-tat. The cat looked almost like it had been broken, or even smashed. Smoke approached Bubbles cautiously.

His heart pounded in his chest.

Run, you idiot.

The cat was demolished. It was humped and bloodied, like it had been tortured and killed by a cruel and sinister child. A streak of blood stained the linoleum beneath its carcass.

RUN. RUN.

He turned and a man stood behind him. The man had just emerged from the bathroom hallway. The man was short and dark, in jeans and a white T-shirt, covered by a light autumn jacket. His face was pock-marked and scarred along the side. He looked to Smoke like a man in his mid-forties, maybe a little older. Behind him stood a much taller, much broader young man. The kid was huge. He wore a leather cap on his head. Greasy brown hair strung down from it. He had a cowlick on the front of his hairline and a wild light in his eyes.

Smoke had seen the look before. It was the look of a crazy kid who should have been locked up someplace, but instead was hired as muscle. It was the look of those guys who went on bank jobs, then suddenly started spraying civilians with gunfire. It was a bad, bad look. It was the look of murder for hire.

Smoke turned to bolt out the back door, but another young man stood there. This one was slim, clean-cut, not as crazy looking, nor nearly as big as the other one. This kid’s eyes said he had seen a few jobs, and did exactly what the bosses told him. This was the survivor type. The survivor type with a Colt. 380 in his hand.

The back yard was blocked, and the way to the stairs was blocked. Smoke couldn’t outrun these guys. He had his cane, but he couldn’t outfight them. He couldn’t do anything.

Damn! So stupid to wait and wait and wait. Now it was too late.

He had had a bad feeling, and here it was in the flesh. The bad feeling personified.

“Can I help you fellows?” he said.

The small, dark man lit a cigarette.

“That’s okay, go ahead and smoke. I don’t mind.”

The man shrugged. “James Dugan, right? That’s what you call yourself these days?”

“Who wants to know?”

The kid ambled out from behind the small man. He was big, even bigger than at first glance. Smoke watched him approach. It was like watching a dark and terrible storm move in across a valley. He angled toward Smoke across the dingy linoleum, taking his time, not hurrying at all.

“Son,” he said. “The man asked you a question. It ain’t polite to answer him with a question.” He cracked his knuckles.

“You guys are in my home. Ever think of that? That puts me in charge of asking questions.”

The big man feinted with his left hand, then delivered a hard right cross to Smoke’s jaw. Smoke stumbled backwards, crashed into the kitchen table and went right over it. Two cats scattered as he rolled over and fell to the floor.

The kid came, and smiling, stood over him. His huge hands, like the mechanical claws that sift through scrap metal at the junkyard, reached down and picked Smoke up by the shirt. The kid backed up and swung him around in a large circle, then let him go. Smoke felt himself crossing the room as if he were flying, his feet barely scraping the ground. He hit the far wall, plowed into it, then bounced off and stumbled backwards. He turned, pinwheeling for balance. He spilled and slid across the floor.

Then the small man was standing over him. Smoke looked up at that hard face. The scar stood out in sharp relief. Smoke thought of the old dueling societies in Germany, where the guys would wear the scars as badges of honor. The guy took a drag on his cigarette.

“Friend,” the guy said. His voice barely rose above a whisper. “I want to talk to you. And I want you to look at me when I do. Right here, in the eyes.”

Smoke did. The eyes. Somehow, this guy had eyes that were worse than the madness of the kid’s eyes. It was almost like there were flames behind those eyes, and the guy was burning in there, burning in a hell you would have to live through to appreciate. Smoke had also seen this look before, but maybe never this strong.

The eyes held him. “Do we understand each other?”

Smoke nodded.

More whispers from the little man. “Okay. Here’s the rules. I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. You’re not in a position to act funny. You’re not in a position to ask me any questions. Do you still understand?”

Smoke nodded again.

“What? I didn’t hear you.”

“I understand.”

The scarred face smiled. “Good. Now, I want to show you something.”

He stepped aside and again the giant psychotic kid appeared. This time he was holding one of the cats. Melon was the cat’s name, so called because it was orange and as fat as a melon. Smoke’s heart sank at the sight of the kid with Melon. The kid stroked Melon’s fur, and even from the floor Smoke could hear the cat purring.

“That’s a good kitty,” the big boy said.

Jesus, after just watching this kid knock the piss out of me. Talk about betrayal.

Then the kid stopped stroking the cat and instead grabbed it roughly by the head. He turned the cat’s head to the left with a sudden and vicious snap. The cat went limp and the kid dropped its carcass to the floor. Two cats dead. It was a fucking cat holocaust.

The kid would pay for the cats, Smoke decided. In blood.

The scarred face appeared again.

“James Dugan, also known as Walter O’Malley?”

Smoke spit at the face. “Fuck you.” These guys were worse than the cops.

The karate works.

Lola sailed through the morning on that thought alone. Two big men had tried to take advantage of her – face it, they had tried to rape her – and she had kicked ass, just like the tattoo on her back said. It had been scary, sure, but now that it was over and gone, she wanted to do it again. This time, she wanted to go in knowing she would fight, and just get in there and, and, and… KICK ASS.

God, the feeling. She had put their lights out in seconds flat. She could have really hurt them both. By the end there, they were both completely under her power. Even now, she felt a tingle of electric excitement up her spine at the thought of it.

Smoke hadn’t been ready for her last night. That feeling of power, well, it had translated into everything. Friday night had churned up a lot of memories for her, had made it hard, but now it was clear, after last night, that it was for the good.

She felt great, that was the simple matter of fact.

She had lunch monitor duty today so she couldn’t call Smoke. Now she could barely wait until her afternoon break so she could check in with him.

It was a long day.

Smoke opened his eyes and was surprised to find himself on the floor again. For a while, they had put him in the chair.

He looked at the floor around his head. The linoleum was tacky with blood.

The skinny kid, the one who was missing the fingers, stood over him again. “Well, look who’s awake. Your girlfriend called a while ago. She left a message on the machine. She knows you’re out in the shop working. She just wanted to tell you that she loves you.”

The kid’s eyes showed rising good humor. He had a sheet of paper in his lobster claw hand. He referred to it, then looked up with a smile. “That would be Lola Bell, right? Twenty-five years old, African-American, resides at 210 Vesper Street in Portland? Top floor apartment?”

Jesus, Lola. He had to keep her out of it at all costs. It didn’t matter what they did to him. Lola was not part of this. She knew nothing about this. He wouldn’t take the bait. He wouldn’t say anything about her. If he let the comment die, perhaps they would forget about her. If he could get a message to her somehow, tell her to run…

The big one placed another dead cat on Smoke’s chest. He took a moment to get it positioned just so. Then he stood up. Smoke pushed the cat off. This time it was Minefield, so named because he was the three legged cat in the bunch. Three down and three to go. He looked around. The others appeared to have scrammed. Good for them.

The big guy settled into the chair. He pulled out an emery board and began filing his nails. “Smoke, she called you. Is that some kind of nick-name?”

“What does it sound like?”

The kid smiled. He rolled his eyes slowly. “Son, you’re gonna learn to appreciate how patient I been with you thus far. Like that cat of yours…” he gestured at the crumpled remains of Minefield. “I took all that time to get it just so. It was a piece of art how I had it. Then you knock it away. What you think of that, Fingers?”

Fingers flashed a silly grin. “I think it’s rude.”

“Rude. That’s exactly the word I would have picked.”

The dark man, Cruz, came out of the bathroom. He was not smiling. Another lit cigarette dangled from his mouth.

“O’Malley. I see you’re awake. Anything you’d like to tell us about your life up until now? Like, for instance, what you did with about two and a half million dollars you took from Roselli when you killed him.”

Smoke lay back on the linoleum and sighed. “I’m telling you. You have the wrong man. My name is James Dugan. I’m retired. I used to be an engineer for Sikorsky down in Connecticut. Now I make toys and adaptive devices for retarded children.”

Cruz nodded at the big kid.

“Roland?”

Slowly, the big man moved his bulk out of the chair. He flexed his triceps as he did so. He cracked his knuckles. He smiled.

“Friend, I’m starting to get bored, you see what I mean?”

Then the pain came again. And when the pain came, Roselli was dead and Smoke was holed up in a motel all the way out in Greenport, Long Island, waiting for the bad weather to come in, with all that money stashed in a satchel under the bed. The urge was there, to take that cold, hard cash and spread it out all over the bed and just lay in it and roll around in it, but he fought off the urge. When the storm came, he finally made the call, yeah, Walter O’Malley making reservations on Block Island, half way between the North Fork and Rhode Island. Yeah, I’m coming in on my own boat, is that okay? The weather? Oh, it’ll be a wet one, but I’ve been in worse than this. Sure, I’ll see you tonight.

Then he was out on the Boston Whaler, in the dark and the rain and the wind. Whitecaps topped the waves, the foam tearing off and blowing in his face. He went inside and set the charges in the cabin. He set them against the hull, one on each side, wet hair dripping in his eyes, Smoke working feverishly as the boat rocked and listed. He lowered the red fiberglass dinghy, no ordinary dinghy, a sturdy survival boat that would rock and roll. He loaded up and powered out of there. The Whaler was on its own.

He heard the muffled blasts moments later, and then the Whaler was gone. And O’Malley was gone. And bedraggled Dugan raced across heavy seas toward New London, where his car was waiting like a trusty dog, man’s best friend. He could take that car and run anywhere. Anywhere at all, and wherever he went, it would never be far enough. So when he found a place he liked, he stopped. He stopped way too soon.

Sometime later, Smoke opened his eyes.

His wrists were cuffed together, and they were attached to a rope slung over one of the exposed pipes that ran along the ceiling. The whole thing was pulled just tight enough that his toes barely touched the ground. He looked up at his hands. They had turned purple while he was passed out. He knew he had lost some teeth. In fact, he had seen them come out. It was possible that he had some bruised ribs as well. At least bruised. Maybe broken.

A new and terrible thought had occurred to him. “How’d you get in here?” he gasped to nobody in particular.

The one they called Fingers floated in front of his face. He grinned. His face looked like a carved up Jack o’ lantern. In his own way, he was as bad as the other two.

“We talked to the housekeeper.”

Shit. Lorena. She had been swept up in this, too.

“Where is she now?” Smoke said. He felt his Adam’s apple bob. He was afraid of the answer, afraid of everything now, afraid of what he had wrought with his goddamned stupid laziness. He had played a role, he had pretended to be a normal person, and then he had come to believe in the role himself. He had lied, and then he had bought the lie.

Stupid.

“She’s sleeping, brother,” Fingers said. He raised his eyebrows.

Smoke went numb.

Time passed as he hung there. He noticed the shadows were growing long outside. The light was starting to fade from the sky, and from the room. Death would be a relief of sorts. It was the money, of course. That was why they were here, and it was the only thing keeping him alive. They wanted to know where the money was.

It seemed like an effort even to blink.

There was pain everywhere in his body, and now that he thought about it, that was probably a good thing. They hadn’t severed his spinal cord, for instance. If ever he got away from these guys, he’d still be able to walk.

The beginning of a plan began to form.

Cruz stood in front of him. “You’re a trooper, O’Malley. I’ll give you that much. You can take a beating. We’re getting tired of it, actually. You see, we don’t like beatings. They’re slow. They don’t work on old-school tough guys like you. But our orders were not to hurt you too bad. You see, we had to keep you presentable in case that money was in the bank somewhere and we needed you to go in and get it.”

He shrugged, as if to himself. “But I guess it didn’t work. So when it gets dark out, we’re all going to take a little ride down to New York. You’re going to talk to some people down there about what you’ve been up to these past three years. Then you’re going to officially retire.”

“Well, that’s nice to know,” Smoke said. “I’ve been looking forward to retirement.”

Cruz nodded to the other two. They untied the rope from the ceiling and Smoke collapsed in a heap on the floor. The back of his head hit the worn floor hard, but it was just another pain to add to the list. Still, he faded in and out for a few seconds.

Cruz hunkered down next to him. He stood in a squat like a farmer, like he might run his hands through the deep rich soil. Smoke figured he couldn’t stand like Cruz was doing now even on his best days.

Cruz’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone.

“They’re going to kill you. You know that already. What you don’t know, and what you’re probably wondering, is why they’re bothering to bring you down to New York when we could do it just as easily here. I’m going to tell you, you know why? Because I don’t like to see anybody suffer needlessly, and you seem like a pretty good guy.”

“Thanks,” Smoke said. He made an effort to swallow.

Cruz went on. “You worry them, you understand? Here’s a guy who’s involved in big jobs over the years, suddenly up and disappears. Kills a guy. Steals a lot of money. Sinks his boat in a storm. You didn’t think anybody bought that lost at sea bullshit, did you?” He smiled. “No, nobody bought it. They’ve been looking for you the whole time. You’re an important man.”

Cruz paused, as if in reflection.

“There was something you did that had to be kept real quiet, am I right? Yeah, I am right. So they want to know who you talked to about this thing during three long years away. Did you talk to girlfriends? Did you talk to a shrink? To a priest?”

“I didn’t talk to anybody,” Smoke said, giving up the charade that he wasn’t the man they wanted. “I kept it to myself.”

Cruz turned to look at the two men standing behind him. Then he turned back to Smoke. “And the money?”

“Safe deposit boxes. Six different banks. Four here in town. One in Boston. One up in Quebec City. In case I had to run.”

Cruz nodded solemnly. “I believe you. But they’re not going to. They’re going to torture you, you understand? They’re going to cut your teeth out, one by one. They’re going to crush your balls. They’re going to break your fingers and toes. They’re going to impale you through the ass on a stick. They’re going to cut your eyes out. They’re going to do whatever they want. If you talked to anybody, they’re going to find out, and it’s going to be a slow process. The way you can beat that, and die quickly, is to tell them everything up front, right away.”

Smoke started to shake. “Look,” he said. His words tumbled out in a torrent, a flood of chatter. “You win, all right? You win. Am I keeping my mouth shut? No, I’m not. I told you where the money is. We can get most of it tomorrow, if you want. And I didn’t tell anybody. I can prove it, too. For the first couple of years I kept a diary. I wrote in loose-leaf notebooks almost every day. I kept stacks of them. I couldn’t keep it in my head, but I was afraid to tell anybody. For just this reason – I didn’t want to get anybody in the soup with me when you guys eventually showed up. I probably even wrote about stashing the money in the banks. I don’t remember now. But you can look at them. We got all night, right? The banks are closed by now. If we hadn’t spent all day with this…” He gestured at the floor around himself, the dead cats, the blood, his own crumpled form, and somewhere out there, his dead friend Lorena, who only wanted to have a garden.

“…with this bullshit, you could’ve gotten the money…” Abruptly, he started crying, and that surprised even him. But it hurt. It hurt so bad, and they had hardly even fucking started yet. New York was going to be worse. He knew that. He knew how bad it was going to be. His body was wracked by sobs.

“You can have the fucking money. Read the notebooks. It’s all in there.”

Cruz smiled. “Okay, notebooks. That’ll be a start. It won’t be proof that you didn’t talk to anybody, but it might make things easier on you. Where are the notebooks?”

“I keep them out in the workshop.”

Cruz looked at the two men standing by the doorway, watching the sun go down. “Moss, go check out those notebooks.”

The big man smiled, apparently at the thought of this little man giving him a direct command. “You heard the man, Fingers. Go on and get those notebooks out of the shed. We can see what our friend’s been up to all this time.”

Smoke shook his head, the tears still flowing. “The kid will never find them by himself. They’re in there under about a million different things. He’ll never be able to figure out all my junk.”

An amused, mocking light came into Cruz’s eyes.

“You know if you try anything funny, I am personally going to cut your left eye out. You realize that, right? You can’t get away from us, so don’t let something in your mind convince you otherwise. It’ll make your life, what little is left of it, a lot harder.”

Smoke shook his head. “I know all that. I’m just trying to help. The kid won’t find the stuff. It’ll take him half an hour. I’m not even sure where they are myself. But I’ll do a better job of finding them than he will.”

Cruz gestured at Smoke, and Smoke lay there until the two young men came over to help him. They grabbed him under the arms, and lifted. Smoke let his head loll backwards as they raised him.

Then he was standing. “I need my cane,” he said.

Cruz was right in front of him.

“Never mind your cane. Fingers here will help you walk.”

Smoke allowed Fingers to support him as he and the kid passed through the garden backyard and approached the workshop. Cruz followed behind them. They passed the little grave marker for Butch.

“You used to have a dog, Dugan?”

“Not me. The dog was buried there when I got here. I never felt like digging it up.”

Fingers leaned Smoke up against the wall of the shed, and handed him the key chain they had taken away from him earlier. Smoke worked the key in the lock and pushed the heavy door. It creaked as it opened. The shadows were long inside the workshop.

The kid shoved Smoke through the door and Smoke bounced across the room, then fell to the dusty floor. He was lying below the window that led to the back alley, and from there, the street. That back alley was overgrown with weeds that came right up to the window. He locked that window whenever he was away from the shed. But he kept the lock well-oiled and ready to open. It got hot in there, some days.

Fingers laughed at him. “You know what, old man? You’re pathetic. This is the easiest job I been on in my life. You know what I mean? I mean, we didn’t even hurt you. Not really.”

Smoke reached up and used the window to claw himself into an upright position. He leaned on the window sill. He reached up to the top of the window and clamped his hand on the lock. Motes seemed to float in front of his eyes. He was going to pass out again, and soon.

“The stuff is over here somewhere,” he said. “Look, can you turn that overhead light on? I can’t see, I need some light if I’m gonna see over here.”

“Do it yourself,” Fingers said.

Obnoxious kid. “Can’t you just do it? You guys come here, beat the shit out of me, and tell me I’m gonna be killed. Then you push me down onto the floor of my shop. I can’t even fucking walk, you know that? Shit. Fuck it, I’ll turn the light on myself.”

He made a move like he would turn around and pull the chain on the light, the simple hanging bulb. If only it was right there behind him. If only he could move a little better. If only he wasn’t so sore from the beating he had taken. He turned around wearily, creakily, gazing upward at the bulb. It was dark out, getting darker.

“What’s taking so long?” Cruz called from somewhere outside. It sounded like he had drifted back toward the house.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Fingers said. “I’ll turn on the fucking light, you gimp.”

Smoke braced himself as the kid moved into the room behind him. It was too bad it was just he and the kid in here. He wished it could have been everybody. Okay, this would have to do. His hand quietly turned the lock on the window. He imagined himself yanking it open then leaping through, blasting head-first through the bug screen, propelled by both his legs and arms. It would take everything he had.

Fingers played with the chain. “I can’t seem to get this thing to…”

Come on, kid. Light it up.

“You gotta do this fucking thing, you gimp.”

“Why? You can’t turn on a fucking light?”

COME ON.

“All right,” Fingers said. “I got it.”

Whooooosh.

Smoke saw the flash of light played out against the wall. He heard the tiny pop of the light-bulb going and then he felt the sudden heat on his back. An instant later he heard the kid start to scream.

It was loud, like a siren.

Smoke wrenched the window open and sailed through, his back in flames, the fire eating away at the hair on top of his head. He fell to the ground in the alley behind the shop, rolling to put out the flames on his back, patting out the flames on top of his head.

The inside of the shop was already on fire. With the paints he kept in there, the thing was going to blow sky-high. He saw a shadow stagger through the bright orange and yellow of the flames. It was the kid, lit up like a torch. He screamed for only a second longer, then went silent, and keeled over. Smoke pictured the kid inhaling fire. His larynx ruptured, the scream had died almost before it began.

The kid was a goner, but the other two weren’t. Smoke dragged himself up the footpath between yards in the gathering dark. Behind him, the shadows leapt and danced in red and amber.

Precious seconds passed.

Smoke turned right on the quiet street. No one was coming. No one was running. Soon though, they would all come soon enough.

Paint cans. Gunpowder. Blasting caps.

These were just a few of the things he stored in that shed.

He thought of the two ladies, old biddies, sisters, who owned the house. They could have been twins, but after so many decades, who could tell? Neither one stood five feet tall. They both had their white hair pulled back into buns. Neither one could hear worth a damn. They were eighty if they were a day. He rented his apartment from them, and they lived upstairs. How far was that shed from the house? Thirty yards? Less?

The neighbors, the firemen, someone would come and get them long before the house was threatened – he felt sure of it.

He lost his balance and fell into his neighbor’s dense bushes. His vision swam and darkened. He crawled deeper into the hedge.

He heard the explosion just before he lost consciousness again. The sound was deep, like far away thunder. It made an impression in the air, like a wave on the ocean. The wave passed over Smoke Dugan as he lay in the bushes. His face was lit with the firelight as the flames burst toward the heavens.

At the very end, a thought occurred to him. They knew about Lola.

His eyes rolled back in his head and he slept.

Cruz ran up the street, Moss loping along beside him.

In his mind, Cruz saw Fingers go up in flames again and again. The image was imprinted on his mind. He had stared at Fingers for several seconds too long.

Then the whole shed had blown and he and Moss were over the fence and running together up the block of tidy suburban homes. No signal, no teamwork, just BOOM, and they were gone.

They reached the work car. It was a green Ford Taurus, a couple years old, nondescript, a real piece of shit. It had twenty thousand miles on it. At least it would run for a while. They jumped in. Moss took the wheel and Cruz slid into the passenger seat. Moss started it up. Fingers had removed the lock mechanism. He had left four license plates in the trunk for them, in case they had to switch later. Fingers had done his job. Now he was dead.

Moss was laughing.

“Okay, what’s funny?” Cruz said. He didn’t see much humor in it. The whole job, everything, slipping away in the two minutes it took for Dugan and Fingers to go out to the shed.

Moss cruised past the house with the backyard on fire – ice cold, Moss – burning embers flying everywhere, black smoke funneling into the sky against the red and orange glow. The house was in danger of going up next.

Moss turned slowly onto the main thoroughfare – Broadway, it was called – still cruising slowly. His head did a slow swivel, looking for possible tails. None. Only now did he turn on the headlights. Cruz watched him check the rearview.

Now he sped up into traffic.

“You,” Moss said. “You’re funny. You tried to send me in that shed with the old man. If you had your way, it woulda been me going up in flames. That was the biggest fuck up I ever seen. Only way it could have been bigger was if it had been me.”

Cruz sat back. “I didn’t see you warning him off.”

Moss only shrugged. “You’re the boss, big man. That’s what the dossier says, anyway.”

At this moment, Cruz would love to know exactly what else Moss’s dossier said.

Moss went on: “And you know what? I didn’t mind Fingers. Had a sort of way about him. You didn’t know him, seeing as how you work alone and all, but I did. He was a good kid. Didn’t get scared. Did what he was told, didn’t complain too much.”

Moss nodded at the truth of this eulogy.

Cruz figured it would amount to about the kindest tribute Fingers would get now. If he had a mother somewhere in the world, God knew she had been expecting her boy to go down in flames for years – except without the actual flames.

Sirens began to wail in the distance. As of yet, Cruz didn’t know from what direction they were coming. They stopped at a traffic light. Three or four cars were ahead of them. No one was looking or acting strangely.

“Do you suppose the old man got out?” Moss said.

Cruz regarded the question. He didn’t answer right away. It was his job, they had sent Fingers along with him, God knew what for, and now the kid had been deep fried. Toasted. In his mind, Cruz saw the kid go up in flames again. His insides felt scraped raw. Shit. He cared. He had to get out. He was tired of seeing them die, even guys like Fingers, who had probably lived on borrowed time since he was ten years old, and had deserved his fate ten times over.

We all deserve it, Cruz thought. All of us.

These maniacs had killed the fucking Guatemalan cleaning woman or whatever she was. Why? No loose ends. That was the excuse, anyway. That was always the excuse. The real reason was they had killed her because they felt like it. They had tied her to some cinderblocks and dumped her off of the pilings near one of the lighthouses. It was about twenty feet deep, they thought, and murky down there. Oh, somebody would find her soon or later, sure, but we’d be gone by then. When they had told Cruz about it, he had nearly cried.

But he kept on the face. Impassive. A mask. Hell, he had seen it all before.

A thought surfaced like a shark from the depths of his mind. Dugan’s money was out there, enough money to drop out of sight and get away from all this bullshit. Six safe deposit boxes, four here in town, one in Boston, and one up in Canada. Could it be true? Cruz found himself clinging to the idea that it was true, that most of the money was right here somewhere, and all he had to do was make Dugan go in the banks and get it for him. Tricky, but after seeing what Dugan was capable of, Cruz would be more careful next time. And Moss? Cruz could handle Moss if necessary.

“Yeah,” Cruz said. “I suppose he did. That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Getting out? He had the place booby trapped.”

He scanned the streets, looking for what he knew he wouldn’t see – Smoke Dugan, bloodied and battered, his lungs half-seared, limping along with the secret to more than two million unmarked dollars tucked away in his head. No, Dugan was back there somewhere, back near the flames.

Damn! Cruz had done exactly the wrong thing. If he had wanted Dugan, he would have had to risk the cops and the good people of South Portland and wait around back at that house. Instead he had run.

Getting old, Cruz. Getting weak.

“What’s your big plan now?” Moss drawled.

Cruz had one ready. “We go forward,” he said. “Back across the bridge and into the city. We go see the girlfriend. If Dugan, O’Malley, whatever he wants to call himself, lived through that, he’s going to run to her next. Either to warn her, or collect her before he leaves town, but he’s going to get her. And when he does, we’ll already have her.”

“What if he don’t?” Moss said. “What if he just gets the money and leaves?”

“He won’t,” Cruz said. “An old guy like that, he’s going to run for the girl.”

Moss smiled. “All right, I’ll buy it. The girl I saw in the pictures, I’d like to run to her too. Can’t wait to meet her, in fact.”

Moss hit the gas and stolen Taurus took off across the long, winding bridge and toward the city.

Hal had a bad feeling.

He and Darren were parked in the Cadillac, the bucket seats lowered way back, watching the action on the dark, quiet street around Lola’s building. The way they were sitting, Hal could just about scan the area over the top of the dashboard. A moment ago, they had watched two men pull up in a Ford Taurus, park it up the street, and climb out. One of them was fucking HUGE. To Hal, it seemed like his massive arms hung down almost to his knees. He was like a gorilla, only taller. In fact, the big guy had captured his attention so completely that it was only after a moment he noticed the other one – a little guy, thin, dark, wearing a light spring jacket, no doubt with a gun inside there somewhere.

His first thought: cops.

Sure, he had made these guys as the real thing in no time. Lola had called the cops and these guys, plainclothes detectives, were working the case. They were probably doing some follow-up with the victim – cop talk for “let’s go back and ogle that sexy chick some more.”

Shit.

All these thoughts had passed through Hal’s mind in the first seconds after spotting them. Then they had come down the block, moving fast, and gone into Lola’s little walk-up building. Here’s where it got squirrelly. The building was old. It fronted the street with a red wooden door, right on the sidewalk. The door was locked – Hal had checked it half an hour ago. The big boy had jimmied the lock on the door and had it open in about ten seconds flat. Of course. These locks were to make the straight world feel safer. They were there to keep honest people on the narrow path. They didn’t mean shit to somebody who knew how to take them down.

But why would two cops break into the building?

Easy answer: they’re not cops.

He glanced over at Darren, who was smoking a joint to calm his nerves. The lumpy skin around Darren’s eyes was slowly turning a sickly yellow. Darren smiled and offered the joint. It was clear from the beatific look on his face that Darren had taken the edge all the way off.

“No thanks. Look, do me a favor, okay? Go up the block and break the right taillight on that Taurus those guys popped out of, will you?”

“Why?”

Hal shrugged. “No reason. Just looks to me like something’s going on, that’s all. Boyfriends, maybe, but I doubt it. Boyfriends usually have a key to the front door. A broken taillight ain’t really any harm if I’m wrong, is it?”

“Suppose not.”

Darren climbed out and moved up the block in the darkness.

Simple Darren. The two guys – bad guys, trouble – go in our building. A building we already cased. There’s three apartments in there. The first floor opens on the street, and we already saw a creaking old man enter there just as the sun went down, straw hair swooped back over his head like a cartoon version of a symphony conductor. Then there’s a second-floor apartment, currently empty. Then there’s a third-floor apartment, belonging to Lola Bell / Pamela Gray, according to the mailbox. Roommates, apparently. These guys break in there, and Darren’s wondering why I might want their taillight broken. So I can tail them, you silly fuck.

He loved Darren like a brother, but this is how Darren got to the trailer park. He didn’t think. He couldn’t think.

Hal heard the sound of a breaking taillight. At least Darren got that part right. Here he came now, floating back up the sidewalk like a ghost.

He slid into the passenger seat. “No problem,” he said. The grin seemed permanently locked onto his face.

Hal glanced at the building again. He imagined reaching up and hitting that carved granite face he had seen go in there a moment ago. Just the thought of it made his arms tired. Another woman, a young white woman, her hair pulled straight back, came along the street and entered with what looked like a bag of groceries. She didn’t even stop and notice the door was already open. She just went right inside.

“Well, it looks like we got ourselves a party now,” Hal said.

The pain was like a rotten tooth lodged in Smoke’s skull.

“Shit,” he said. “Motherfucker.”

He stood at the public phone in the parking lot of the Gas-N-Go. Traffic flowed by, the people oblivious to the life and death struggles going on all around them. Lola’s telephone was a loud, obnoxious and constant busy signal. The girl was in her twenties, supposedly of the new modern generation, and she seemed like the only person left in America who didn’t have call waiting.

He slammed the receiver down.

“Shit!” He walked around in a tight little circle.

Only moments ago, Smoke had awakened and crawled through the hedges next to his home. When he reached the end of the hedge, he had lingered in the alley a moment, staring out at the parked cars. Behind him, huge orange shadows had danced on the sides of houses. Every few seconds, his vision had grown dark at the edges and he thought he would pass out again.

The fire department had already come, hosing down the backyard and the shed, which burned intensely. Crowds of people had gathered. Smoke came out and began walking along the street, eyes downcast, his head spinning, limping along at just under double speed. Bad enough just to walk. But worse if people noticed him and saw how badly he had been beaten the same night that his workshop exploded. Either way, he had no choice – he had to get moving.

Now, he stepped a few yards away from the phone. He could still see the red orange glow on the horizon. Cruz was out there now, rolling around like a loose ball bearing. No telling what he was going to do next. Then Smoke realized why Lola’s phone was busy. Cruz was already there. He had taken the phone off the hook – maybe ripped it out of the wall. Maybe Moss had wrapped the phone cord between his hands and…

Shit, Lola. A searing pain ripped through Smoke. It had nothing to do with the beating he had endured. It was the pain of separation, the impotent fear for her safety. His mind raced. He couldn’t breathe. He drifted back to the phone.

Call the cops. Call the fucking cops. Smoke had never called the cops in his life. Call the cops. Call them NOW.

A woman stood there next to him. She was blonde and slim, that kind of early-forties suburban mom who chauffeurs her children in a late model minivan from school to soccer practice to music lessons.

“Sir, do you need that telephone? My cell phone died.”

She smiled, but the smile died when she saw his bloodied face.

“I’m using it,” he snapped.

“Are you all right? Do you need an ambulance?”

“I’m fine.”

He punched in Lola’s number again. This time it rang. Thank God.

It rang and rang.

Finally, she picked it up. Her voice came, upbeat and musical as ever.

“Hello?”

Cruz and Moss paced through the second floor apartment.

It stood to reason it would have a similar layout to Lola’s place upstairs. Two bedrooms, a narrow bathroom, a living room, and a combined kitchen and dining room by the front door. This apartment was stripped – no furnishings, half-painted – paint cans, ladders and canvas tarps piled in a corner of the living room. It had that stale, musty smell – that stench of paint and sawdust trapped inside for too long. Cruz looked around. All the windows were closed. The smell was giving him a headache.

It was crazy roundabout bullshit to do it this way. If they had the girl Dugan would have to give himself up. Or would he? Some men would ditch, Cruz knew. It all depended on what the old boy felt for this hot little black girl he had seen in the dossier, and that remained to be seen. If she was just a piece of ass to him, he would leave her behind and run.

That simple.

And then Cruz would have blown the job and would have one more person to kill, an innocent. Two innocents, including the second girl. Not to mention Moss. He’d have to kill Moss, too, wouldn’t he? Sure. If he blew this job, there was no going home again. Man, this shit was wearing on him.

“It ain’t lightweight,” Vito had said. “You let us worry about the thinking end of it.”

Well, it wasn’t lightweight so far.

Someone was coming up the stairs. Moss pulled his gun and stepped lightly to the door and watched through the eyehole. Cruz heard the person reach the top of the first flight of stairs. Footsteps moved along the hallway.

“It’s a girl,” Moss whispered. “Going upstairs. Must be the roommate.”

Shit, another one. Another innocent in the way of this bullshit job. Cruz flashed to the cleaning woman weighted down in twenty feet of seawater, being picked clean by the crabs and the elements. When they pulled her out of there, they’d have to check the dental records just to know who she was.

Cruz didn’t want to go up there, not with Moss. Moss could turn this thing into a bloodbath. Unless…

He felt the sudden urge and let it carry him for a moment. What would it take? Pull the Glock right now and put three slugs in the back of Moss’s neck. Finish him with one to the brain. Walk out of this building then get in the car and drive.

Without the money.

No. It was too soon. Either do the job all the way through, bring Dugan back to New York, or wait around and get the money. Don’t do neither. The realization came to Cruz like something that had always been there, submerged at the bottom of a deep pool but slowly working its way to the surface over long years. The way you retire, he grasped now, is you don’t announce it beforehand.

Moss turned back to him. “Ready?”

Cruz couldn’t let Moss know just how far he had drifted in the past hour. At least, he couldn’t let him know yet. “Let’s do it,” he said.

“You’ve gotta get out of there!” Smoke shouted. “You gotta get out of there right this minute.” It made no sense.

Lola stood with the phone to her ear. She was distracted momentarily as Pamela came in from work – she had just this moment walked in the door with a bag of groceries from Micucci’s Italian Market at the bottom of Munjoy Hill. She was in her neat work attire. Slacks, a blouse, and a sports jacket. It was neat, but hardly sparkling. She wore sneakers for the long walk up the hill.

“Hey babe,” Pamela said. “You left the door open downstairs again.” She began to put the food away.

“I’m pretty sure I locked it,” Lola said.

“Listen to me! Will you listen to me?” Smoke was babbling, almost incoherent. Something about she had to get out of the house. He was insistent, he was raging, he was out of his mind. She had never heard him like this before.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Wait a minute. What are you saying?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” came his voice. He sounded like he was outside somewhere, next to a highway. Cars were going past him in the background. “Some men attacked me today.”

“What? Some men attacked you? Are you all right?” She thought of Mr. Shaggy and Mr. Blue Eyes. Had they attacked Smoke? Why would they attack Smoke? They could have been following her, seen Smoke, and decided to take out their revenge on him because they knew they couldn’t harm her. Jesus!

“Who were the men? What did they look like?”

“Lola, shut up and listen to me!”

She stopped. She hated that. She hated when any man thought he could end the conversation just by being louder, or by putting on his man-authority voice. If he had been attacked, he needed to tell her about it. But he didn’t have to tell her to shut up. She wouldn’t stand for that. He knew as much, too.

She heard her voice go cold. “I’m listening, but it had better be good, and it had better come with a box of chocolates and some roses.”

He didn’t take the hint, or even stop to comment on it. That, more than anything, made the skin on her back tighten into gooseflesh. He spoke slowly, as if to an imbecile or a child. There was something in his voice…

“Lola, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, there’s a lot I can’t get into right now. I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I never did, and now you just have to do what I say. Some very dangerous men are in town. They want money from me. I got away from them, but I’m worried they’re coming to get you. You have to get out of there.”

“Smoke, come on. What is this, a game?”

“Go out the back way. Right now. GO!”

Pamela came out of the bathroom, in stocking feet with her shirt unbuttoned halfway down from the collar. She headed back into the kitchen.

A knock came on the door. Lola looked at it. So what? Somebody was knocking. But how did they get in the building? Pamela changed directions and headed for the door. She reached out for the lock and the knob simultaneously. She wasn’t even going to glance through the peephole.

Suddenly, Lola was afraid.

“Lola, you’ve got to get out of there right now. If Pamela is there, you have to take her with you. It’s not safe.”

Pamela’s hand was on the knob.

“Don’t open it!” Lola screamed.

Too late.

Pamela turned to look at Lola, her eyes puzzled by the sudden outburst. She had unlocked the door, but hadn’t opened it. The door burst open, knocking her backwards. Lola watched Pamela take two stagger steps backwards and fall to the floor.

A man came in. He walked with a swagger. He was huge, with impossibly muscular arms. The hand at the end of one of those arms held a gun. The gun had a large silencer attached to the end of it. He looked down at Pamela sprawled on the worn carpet near the door. Then he looked up at Lola.

He smiled.

Lola dropped the phone.

Cruz followed Moss up the narrow stairway. Moss’s bulk barely fit between the walls. His head nearly scraped the low ceiling.

Moss burst through the door and Cruz padded in behind him, moving fast, moving quietly. Moss backed the black girl, Lola, into the living room with the gun. The other girl, a slim, bookish white girl, was lying on the floor in a daze. Cruz pulled the door shut and locked it.

The girl on the floor stared up at him. Pretty girl, gone numb.

“If you do anything, I’ll kill you,” he said to her. He held up his gun for her to see it better. “It has big bullets. It’ll put big holes in your body. Understand?”

She nodded. Her eyes were wide and hollow like those of a Japanese cartoon.

“Is anyone else here?”

She gazed at him and didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

Cruz did a quick sweep of the apartment. He already had one extra witness. He hoped nobody else was in here. God, the bodies were piling up. He didn’t want to think about it. He went into a room. It was a bedroom with a double bed, the headboard against the wall. There was a poster of a black girl in tennis whites on the wall. Black girls played tennis? So much Cruz didn’t know. He picked in the closet. Nothing here, except some clothes, skirts and such. The room was clean. He went back outside.

He paused in the doorway and glanced over at Moss, who had Lola at gunpoint. She wore a pair of black tights and a belly shirt. Her body seemed to defy gravity. Her hair hung down in wild curls. She was something.

Moss looked at Cruz.

He grinned, and gestured at her with the gun. “Whaddya think?” he said.

Just then, Lola kicked out.

Amazingly, she knocked Moss’s gun right up into the air. Her kick – it finished high, nearly as tall as Moss’s head, and the gun flew back up and over his head, into the room Cruz was standing in. It slid across the floor. Moss watched it go. The girl followed up with a punch at Moss’s throat. Moss stepped back just before getting the brunt of it.

He laughed.

“Girl, I never saw anyone kick that high. Not in real life.”

Then she came for him.

Her movements were a blur. Moss blocked her first two punches. He was still laughing, the embarrassed laughter of a ten-year-old boy being attacked by a little girl in his class. Then Cruz saw her knee go into his groin. Moss grunted. A fist connected with his face. He barely moved. It was almost as if he was watching it happen to him. He couldn’t get his engine going. His eyes said that this sort of thing just didn’t happen. She hooked his leg, whirled and elbow smashed him in the face.

He lost his balance, stepping backwards and sideways. She kept coming.

A punch, a kick and down he went. Moss went down.

MOSS… WENT… DOWN.

It was like watching a building fall. Cruz felt the floor shake.

Incredible.

“Pamela!” Lola shouted. “Pamela, get the gun.”

The girl Pamela looked up from her stupor. Her eyes brightened as she became aware of the situation. She was four feet from the gun. Cruz was half way across the room from her. Ridiculous. Imagine if that little girl actually picked up the gun and began shooting it? She probably wouldn’t hit anything, but then again she might. In any event, a lot of shooting wasn’t the answer in this small apartment building in this residential neighborhood.

She crawled across the floor and reached for Moss’s gun.

Despite everything, Cruz felt calm. Very cool. He had seen worse than this. A lot worse. He had seen worse this very afternoon.

He held up his gun again. “Pamela,” he said.

She looked up at him. He pointed the gun at her and drew a bead down the barrel. He didn’t want to kill her. That was the last thing he wanted. Her face was perfectly centered in his iron sights.

There was no way he could pull this trigger.

“Pamela, if you pick up that gun I’m going to kill you. What I want you to do is crawl right back to where you were.”

Long seconds passed.

She backed away from the gun.

“That’s a good girl.”

As Pamela crawled away, Cruz moved in and picked up the gun. Then he backed into his doorway again, where he could get a better view of the whole apartment. He looked back over at Lola and Moss. Moss was up, circling in. He was still laughing, but he didn’t sound as enthusiastic as before. Lola circled away from him.

“Yessir,” he said, almost to himself. “I never seen anything like it.”

She swung and he blocked it with his thick arm, but an instant later her other hand came around and caught him on the side of the head. Then a foot shot up and kicked him in the balls. She danced away, just out of his reach.

“Lola!” Cruz called.

She cast an eye at him, all the while minding Moss.

“I want you to stop now,” Cruz said. “If you don’t, then I’m going to have to kill Pamela. Do you hear me? We’re here to see you. Pamela is worth nothing to us. If you don’t stop I promise I will kill her. If you do stop, I promise I’ll let her live. How does that sound to you?”

Lola faced Moss again.

“Lola, I’m going to kill her right now. Do you understand?”

Sure, she understood. She must have because she hesitated for moment, then let her arms go slack by her sides. She was winded, and she had a fine sheen of sweat on her face. Cruz pictured her dancing at a nightclub with a similar sheen on her. For an instant, he pictured her moving in bed, her body glistening.

“All right,” she said. “You win.”

Moss walked over to her.

“My friend’s going to give you some handcuffs to put on,” Cruz said.

Instead, Moss smacked her hard across the face, an open hand slap. She fell backwards onto the couch.

“The bitch kicked me in the balls,” Moss said. He wiped his mouth with his hand.

Cruz watched as Moss took out the cuffs and slapped them on.

Cruz looked at Pamela. What to do about her?

Moss came over and stuck out his hand. It seemed a foot wide. He didn’t look Cruz in the eye. He doesn’t like that, Cruz thought. Tangling with a little girl, and being rescued by me. He doesn’t like me. Cruz had known this since yesterday, but it was the first time he actually thought the words. Moss didn’t like him. Moss might look for a reason to kill him.

“Gun, please.”

Cruz handed Moss his gun back.

Moss looked down at Pamela on the floor. He toyed with his gun a moment, as if he were thinking everything over.

“You serious?” he said. “You plan on keeping this one?” He pointed at Pamela with the gun. It would take nothing, a few ounces of pressure, a mistake, and he would shoot her in the face.

“I gave my word, didn’t I?”

Moss shook his head. “Son, this is the most fucked up job ever.”

Hal and Darren sat slumped way down below the dashboard of Hal’s Eldorado. They watched as down the block, the two men came out with Lola and the other girl. The smaller guy seemed to be leading Lola along by her elbow. Oh, they weren’t cops, these two. Something deeper was going on.

Hal felt that old tickle of curiosity. This was even better than what they came for, maybe. “Her hands seem to be cuffed to you?” he said to Darren. “You catch a glint of metal there or anything? Both the girls, they got handcuffs on?”

Darren was watching. “I dunno. Can’t tell. What did you think?”

Hal shrugged. “I think I saw something.”

He kept watching. Now he really saw something. Up ahead, the two men opened the trunk of the Taurus and helped the girls inside. What the fuck? They put the girls in the trunk! And the girls went right on in there!

Unbelievable!

“Did you see that?” Darren said.

“I saw it.”

“What do you want to do? Call the cops?”

Hal’s wheels were turning like mad. “I don’t know. And say what? This girl we were trying to put into porno just got abducted by two other guys? First off, I don’t like to let two guys just walk off with my girl. Second off, I don’t want to just hand this over to the cops. Could be something big here. Could be money involved. Could be Lola needs to be rescued, and we’re the ones who need to do it. What do you say? You want to follow these guys? I mean, if we let them go, what else are we doing tonight? Aren’t you the least bit curious about what’s going on?”

Darren heaved a heavy sigh. “Did you see the size of that guy?”

“I saw him. Don’t worry, partner. I saw him, and we’ll steer clear of him until we’re good and ready.”

“Do I have any other choice?” Darren said.

Hal smiled. “Nope. It’s either this or crawl back to Auburn with your tail between your legs.”

He waited until the Taurus had turned left at the next corner onto Congress Street. Up at this end of town, the top of Munjoy Hill, Congress dead-ended into a quiet street of walk-up apartment buildings and storefronts. Down at the bottom of the hill, it became the main artery for downtown Portland.

Hal pulled out onto the street and cruised to the corner of Congress. The car was up ahead, driving down Munjoy Hill into the lights of downtown.

“We should’ve used handcuffs the other night,” Darren said. “On Lola, I mean. Keep her pacified.”

“Maybe we will,” Hal said. “Maybe we’ll make handcuffs a regular part of the act.”

Hal made a left, and he and Darren followed the Taurus downhill. The naked bulb shone bright white, while the rest of the taillights shone red and yellow. Darren had done a good job. Hal was going to be able to read that thing from a hundred yards back.

Hal knew how to tail.

For a long time, Hal had drifted from place to place and job to job. For a while he worked as a security guard, and that job led to undercover store security, and finally to a gig working with a private detective agency. He spent five years as a detective, then started his own firm and went belly-up in a matter of months. But he was good at surveillance, he knew that much.

In truth, Hal figured that he excelled at almost everything he did. Amazing really, since he had just about graduated high school, after all. Now, he had spent more than twenty years finding out how good he could be at things.

Tailing with one car, though, this was going to be work.

“You’re letting ‘em get too far ahead,” Darren said.

“I got ‘em,” Hal said.

“Yeah, but…”

“Brother, you got to keep it shut and let me do this, okay?” He said it forcefully, in a way that would pre-empt any more conversation. He needed all the concentration he could muster, and he couldn’t afford a smoked up Darren butting in every couple of minutes. Darren was not the brains of this operation.

The Taurus was three blocks in front already. Ahead and far below was the skyline of the city, lit up at night. Hal let them put on a nice lead, and kept his eye on that broken taillight. It disappeared for a second behind another car, then came back. He didn’t worry. It took an instinct, and he had it. You had to know where that car was going to be. Here was his guess: they would turn right on Washington Avenue and head for the highway – 295 North – or they would head straight downtown.

“No problem, no problem,” he said to the Taurus. “Do what you need to do.”

When Hal did detective work, on important jobs, two tail cars was the minimum. Three cars were better, if the client would pay for that sort of thing. The more cars the better. One car would be on the tail awhile, then drop back and another one would pick it up. The extra cars would be on the radio, following along on parallel streets. On the highway, they’d drop waaaaay back, or they’d speed up and get out ahead. Whatever. Keep dropping in and out of the tail, give them different looks, that way the target wouldn’t catch on. Leapfrogging, they used to call it.

But one car. That was an art. You had to play it real cool.

You had to lose touch sometimes. You couldn't give them any reason to suspect you. If they did, if they made you, then they’d bolt. They’d blow red lights. They’d drive the wrong way on one way streets. They’d make U-turns at police speed traps on the highway. They made a move like that, then you were lost. You blew it. You couldn’t follow.

Hal had a hunch here. It buzzed in his head like electricity. These guys weren’t going to blow any red lights. They weren’t going to try to shake a tail. There was something happening, and they couldn’t risk getting busted by a traffic cop – not with a couple of prisoners in the trunk.

In the trunk! He couldn’t fucking believe it. Man, this beat everything. This was like the movies. This was better. This was real. Totally awesome. Goddamn! They had walked right into some kind of full-blown hostage drama.

Hostages. Sure. These bastards had taken the girls hostage.

In some sense, hadn’t he and Darren done the same from time to time?

“Make a right,” Cruz said. “Right here, take this right.”

Moss took a long looping right past a fried chicken take out and onto a main drag, Washington Avenue. It was long, nearly deserted, a big old warehouse or factory passing by on their right. The highway entrance was at the end of this strip.

Cruz found himself sulking as they drove along. It hadn’t gone as he intended. Nothing on this whole trip had gone as he intended. That fucking taillight. He didn’t like that at all. Trouble was, he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been broken in the first place. Fingers would know, but Fingers was dead.

Why would Fingers steal a car with a broken taillight?

He wouldn’t, that’s why.

“Now! Make this left!”

Moss veered in front of an oncoming car and made the left. They cruised down a steep hill, a side street with run down houses climbing the hill. At the bottom, there were low-slung garden apartment style housing projects. From an unlit basketball court, dark black faces peered at them as they passed.

“I’m telling you, son. I’ve been in this game a little while now. There ain’t nobody back there. It was a kid that broke the taillight.”

“Why ours?”

“Why the fuck not? You paranoid, Cruz? That the problem?”

Cruz didn’t like it. The variables were piling up. Two girls in a trunk. A broken taillight. It was supposed to be a quick snatch, and then a return drive to New York. Goodbye, Smoke Dugan O’Malley, you worry about your problems, I’ll worry about mine. Instead, two people were already dead, and this Lola girl would have to go when all was said and done. She would have to go just as surely as the skinny girl, her roommate, would have to go.

And all the while, Cruz thinking about getting out. Face it. He was no good for this business anymore.

Moss cruised the side streets, moving slow, making random rights and lefts, stopping at all stop signs. They passed a parked police car. The cop was inside, writing something in his book. He didn’t look up.

“We done out here? You mind if I get back and get on the highway now? That’s all we need, a porky little pig try to pull us over for a broken light,” Moss said.

“That’d be one dead pig,” Cruz said absently. He meant it. No matter what trouble he himself was having, he knew Moss would drop a cop without giving it much thought.

He checked in back of them one last time. No one back there. Just dead, deserted streets.

“Yeah, go for it,” he said. “Make a left here.”

Moss made a left and climbed back up toward Washington Avenue.

“I think you’re losing your focus, son. We got the girl, like we said we were gonna do. Okay. The man’ll either give it up or he won’t. If he don’t, then we got problems. But in the meantime, we got this extra girl back there. And that’s a problem right now. She’s baggage back there. I can’t have that and neither can you. It’s bad for business.”

“I see what you mean,” Cruz said. To Moss, his decision to spare the roommate must have looked like weakness. To Moss, this entire job must have looked like weakness.

“I hope you do,” Moss said.

They were back on Washington Avenue, right near the chicken takeout again. A group of dark-skinned men sat out on plastic lawn chairs in front of another eatery, this one with no sign on it at all. The whole long strip of the avenue was darkened and nearly deserted. As they headed down the street, a few people loitered here and there in the gloom, standing around in ones and twos.

“Let me see your phone,” Cruz said.

“Son, you need to stop giving orders. Your big shot orders got my little buddy killed earlier today.”

Cruz and Moss crossed eyes like swords. Now was not the time for the show down with Moss. Or was it? Cruz pictured whipping out his gun and blowing Moss away right here in the car. It was one measure of how far he had fallen that Moss would say these things to him. The deeper measure, however, was that Moss was still alive. He couldn’t fight the man – Moss was too big, too strong. In the old days, Cruz would have just killed him instead.

“Lend me your cell phone, will you?” he said. “I want to call Dugan so that we can save this job before it goes all the way down the shithole.”

“That’s better,” Moss said. “I thought you didn’t use cell phones.”

“In an emergency, I’ll make an exception.”

Moss handed him the phone, a small black number with a lot of meaningless features. Cruz scrutinized it for what he needed, the green SEND button for one. He fished in his pocket for the girl’s home number, straight from the dossier.

“What’s the story with this phone?” he said. He hated cell phones. He didn’t even like to look at them. Cops could snatch these conversations right out of the air. Cops could trace back these phone calls. Somebody dies, and then what? The cops check the phone records, right? And here’s this cell phone number. Hell, maybe it’s right there on the caller ID. Shit, he hated these things. Lazy people used cell phones.

Moss shrugged. “It’s clean.”

“How clean?”

“It’s PCS. Completely digital. Encryption codes make it almost impossible to intercept the call.”

To Cruz, it sounded like so much mumbo-jumbo. “What about trace-backs?”

“The phone belongs to a gentleman from Fresno, California. He paid the whole contract, a whole year, up front. He likes to travel a lot, this gentleman. He’s got coverage everywhere in the great forty-eight. Anybody traces back a call, they’ll find out this gentleman made that call.”

“Who is he?”

Moss smiled, showing the gap in his front teeth. “Someone who don’t exist anymore.”

Hal leaned up against a telephone pole in the dim light along Washington Avenue.

Thirty yards away, the Cadillac was parked in the lot of the old bread factory. Now it was an office building, a low-rent warren filled with the offices of low-budget social service organizations. Hal glanced at the Caddy. Darren was hunched down low, probably wondering what the hell he was doing out here.

“Come on,” Hal said under his breath. “You know you want me.”

All the same, he was starting to worry. He had seen them make that sudden turn down the side street. But he knew those streets. He knew there was nothing down there for them. He knew it. There was nothing down there but machine shops, auto shops, and housing projects filled with refugees from African wars. Imagine, the wretched of the earth, refugees from Somalia and the Sudan, the desert, the baking heat, the sand storms, being relocated to Maine. It was like a cruel joke. Don’t like all the warfare, you desert nomads? Here, try snow and ice six months out of the year.

A car was coming along the avenue.

Hal looked at his shoes.

It passed, and he looked up. A green Ford Taurus. The broken taillight shone bright and white as it receded in the distance. They were heading for the highway.

“Ha! I knew you couldn’t leave me!”

He stepped into the shadows and ran for the Caddy.

It was cramped and dark in the trunk.

At times, little beams of light stabbed in through some crack above their heads. It was hard to breathe. They were on their sides, hands cuffed in front of them, facing each other. For a while, Pamela had hyperventilated. Now, as Lola watched her, Pamela simply lay there, eyes wide like saucers, tears streaming down her face, her lower lip quivering.

“Listen!” Lola hissed. “Pamela! Listen to me.” Pamela was beyond listening.

The car hit some kind of dip in the road. They went down and then up. It was like riding a roller coaster. Lola nearly fell over on her face. The car accelerated, and she guessed they were on the highway now.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, not sure if she was saying it to Pamela or to herself.

She thought of the moment the two men burst into the apartment. Smoke was on the phone, shouting something into her ear. Then that massive man with the stringy hair was there. He seemed to fill the entire room. And she had fought him. Kicked him. Punched him. Knocked the gun out of his hand. Knocked him down.

When he had slapped her, it was like a car crash, the force of it. He was that strong. She had been stunned. No one had ever hit her that hard before. And she knew he hadn’t hit her nearly as hard as he could.

But he wasn’t unbeatable. None of them were. They could be beaten, and she could do it. Maybe if Pamela… no, Pamela was a goner. Well, you could hardly blame her. Two strange men storm the apartment, handcuff them, and whisk them off.

To where?

Where are we going? Who are these men? The questions piled up. She had never seen either of them before in her life. She pieced it together. They were the ones who had attacked Smoke. Did they know Mr. Shaggy and Mr. Blue Eyes? Maybe not. Smoke had said it had something to do with him – they wanted money from him. Why did they want money from Smoke?

She sighed heavily.

All these men.

She had defined her life in relation to them. If she could, she thought she would thank those boys that raped her now, if she ever saw them again. Unfortunately that in itself would be hard to do. But she would if she could because the boys had awakened her. They had created the Lola that existed now.

At first, she had crumpled up and died inside.

After she was raped, she had dropped out of school, she had quit dancing lessons, she didn’t go anywhere. She didn’t see her friends anymore. She stopped taking an interest in anything. She stayed in her room and watched soap operas on television most of the day. She didn’t even read.

One day when she woke up, there was a thin, paperback book on the table next to her bed. Her grandmother had gone out to run her errands, but that book was there. It was called Sandinista Woman. It had a photo of a woman on the cover, a Hispanic woman in a green camouflage military outfit.

Lola didn’t pick it up at first. First she watched TV. But later in the day she grew bored with the television, and she picked up the book. It was the story of exactly that, a woman who had fought with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. The woman had been captured by the fascist forces of the Nicaraguan government, and raped by dozens of soldiers. It was a source of terrible shame for the woman, until she met other women who were fighters for the cause. They came to realize there was nothing to be ashamed of in their suffering, that indeed it was a badge of honor. Gradually, all of the women came to realize this, as did the men who fought alongside them.

Lola read the book in two days, stopping only to eat and use the bathroom.

Still, she didn’t buy it right away.

The next day, a flyer slid through the crack under her bedroom door. It showed an Asian man flying through the air, kicking and shattering a brick that must have been suspended ten feet from the ground.

DEFEND YOURSELF! The flyer read. Learn devastating self-defense techniques from a master. At the bottom of the flyer it said Special Women Only Classes Available. Below that, her grandmother had scrawled in pencil.

Interested?

So she joined. What else was she going to do? She couldn’t stay in that room forever. At first it seemed like a joke. The basic techniques she was learning, she didn’t think they’d work on anybody. But times passed, and months later she wasn’t so sure.

She started to come alive again.

And as part of being alive, she began to think of revenge. They had stolen her old life from her, but now she had this new life. She was increasing in confidence, and with that newfound confidence came a new question. Could she get back at them somehow?

If so, how?

She began to keep alert for news of them. Five boys, one older than her by a year, a couple her age, one a year younger and one a year younger than that. Kendrick. Tyrone. Abel. Michael. Ishmael.

A whole year went by and she was still musing on this subject. She had changed – she was astounded by the things her body was capable of. It still didn’t mean she could take her revenge with that body, though.

Michael died in a drive-by shooting. A week later, Tyrone and Abel were arrested for the crime. A year after that, Ishmael was shot in the groin and then in the back by an unknown assailant or assailants. He lived, but he was paralyzed from the waist down. The rumor went that not only was he impotent, but that his member was actually obliterated. That left only Kendrick alive and on the streets. And he had disappeared.

Five years ago, it came to pass on a chilly evening in March that she climbed off the bus three blocks from her apartment and her dying grandmother, and began to walk home. It had been raining all day, and had just stopped recently. The ground was wet, the air was wet, and she could see her breath as she moved along. Just in front of her, a big man shuffled along in a long and ratty trench coat. From behind him, all she could see was the slope of his back, the shake, rattle and roll of his legs, and the fluffy crown of unkempt nappy hair piled on top. She moved along behind him, walking slow, watching the tall man weave.

The back was familiar, but she almost couldn’t believe it was him.

On this strip, nobody was around. Two young crack dealers lolled on a bench to their right. One said something to the other and they both laughed. Tall and skinny, they looked to be about twelve years old. They both wore big bubble TROOP jackets, their legs sticking out the bottom like pipe cleaners. They looked like some new kind of dinner bird, fattening up for Christmas.

Lola watched the big man approach them. He said something, but they shook their heads. “Ken, you used up all your credit already. Go on back to Gary, you want credit.”

The big man shuffled on.

The kid called him Ken. Her heart did a lazy barrel roll. It had been years since she had seen him.

She let him get another ten yards past the prepubescent dealers. Then she moved in. “Kendrick?” At first her voice came out as a croak and the man heard nothing. He just shambled along, bopping to some music only he could hear.

“Kendrick!” And this time it was a shout.

The two dealers sat up and took notice. Perhaps here came some of the family strife that was such a constant backdrop to the ghetto. This was entertainment. For two young men on the fast track to oblivion, this would be better than the lame, watered-down fare on television. This was real-life, messy, often action-packed and bloody, and without any commercials.

The man turned around, his body moving as slowly as the glaciers.

He was tall, a full head taller than Lola. That was the first thing that sank in. The next thing that sunk in was how horribly wasted he had become. His shoulders were broad, and so had seemed to give some shape to the trench coat as it hung down. But beneath that coat he wore a Milwaukee Brewers T-shirt and red sweat pants. Both were ratty and had holes in them. And he was skinny. The T-shirt, which must have been a small or a medium, clung to a frame that had once worn extra large. His navel showed at the bottom of it. The clothes had probably come from a mission somewhere that gave out such clothes. Summer clothes in the winter, winter clothes in the summer. He wore old Air Jordan sneakers with no socks.

Sure, wearing somebody’s cast-off sneakers.

He peered at her and she came closer. Closer, she began to get the smell of him, the funk of days without a bath, of nights on benches in train and bus stations. In the light of the street lamp she saw his rheumy bloodshot eyes and she saw that he trembled just slightly. An old, closed scar ran under his chin.

It was Kendrick. Times had caught up with him.

“Lola?” he said, squinting just a bit now. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Lola.” The second time he said it with a nod to himself, as if the sudden appearance of Lola now confirmed everything, as if this was the final rung of his downfall. He smiled a grim smile and showed the black spaces where some of his teeth once were.

“We got you good, girl. Stopped going to school and everything. That’s what they told me. Never saw you on the street no more. Yessir, we got to you good.”

She dropped her bag, much like she had dropped her books four years before. She stepped up, hands protecting her face, and gave him a front kick to the groin. She didn’t try to kick hard, she just concentrated and moved her body properly. This generated more than enough force, coming out in a line from her torso, her buttocks and finally the big leg muscles above the knee.

Kendrick melted to his hands and knees on the wet ground. He coughed hard as if to clear his throat.

Only a second had passed, maybe two. Lola resumed her stance, then fired a roundhouse kick that caught the side of Kendrick’s head. He fell over sideways and sprawled half on the sidewalk, half on the muddy weeds and dog shit that bordered the sidewalk.

Behind Lola, one of the drug dealers whooped and hollered.

“You go, girl! Bruce Lee, motherfucker. She fucked that ass up!”

The two boys laughed.

And like that, the anger evaporated. It was replaced by a calm and almost bitter disappointment. She immediately understood that it was a feeling to which she would spend a long time reconciling, maybe the rest of her life. For four years she had hated this bastard. No, she had more than hated him. He had become almost everything to her. She had trained for the day when they would meet again and she would be ready for him. She carried a carving knife in her bag in anticipation. She imagined he would be the strong and arrogant and evil Kendrick that he was at eighteen, not this pitiful character, already the walking dead at twenty-two. She imagined theirs would be an epic battle that would take all her energy to fight, and might take both their lives. Her identity, her life had become defined in relation to this man and what he had done. Her revenge had become her obsession.

And here she was, standing over him. But the victory was far from sweet. The ghetto had taken her revenge long before she ever got there. If she wanted to kill Kendrick, she would have to spend six months cleaning him up first, feeding him, keeping him off drugs, buildings up his wasted muscles. Otherwise it wouldn’t mean anything.

Kendrick’s breaths came in rasps. He was down and out, as far down as most people get without being dead. Drug-addicted, weak, cold, and now laying in the mud after a swift beat down from a woman wronged. It was a long walk back, and Lola knew that when someone had come this far, they didn’t even try to make that walk. It was too damned far.

“Bitch,” Kendrick said in that same hoarse voice. “Bitch.” Lola looked closer and saw he was crying. She thought about spitting on him, for old time’s sake, but she couldn’t even bring herself to do that. Everything had once again been stolen from her. She picked up her bag and continued on her way.

When she was half a block away, she turned around to see if Kendrick had managed to get up yet. He hadn’t. He was on all fours on the wide, glistening sidewalk. Like circling vultures, the two boys had moved in after she was gone. When a man was down, a man was down. The law of the jungle prevailed. They took turns kicking him and jumping up and down on his carcass.

From where she stood, their laughter was carried to her on the breeze. It was the laughter of childhood. In another time and place, two boys might laugh like that on their way down to the creek to go fishing.

It was time to go home.

Smoke arrived at the apartment knowing how late he was.

It was full dark. He parked his little Toyota half a block down from the apartment. He killed the headlights, then waited and watched. No one was moving on the street. TV lights flickered from homes on his left and his right. His sense of dread was so complete that he felt he might vomit. All along, he had made mistakes, and now it had probably cost Lola and Pamela their lives. He should have told Lola long ago about his life before now. Scratch that – he shouldn’t have become involved with Lola, or anyone.

A breeze kicked up and the trees along the street creaked and swayed. Shadows moved. A young couple, bundled up and leaning on each other, laughed together as they walked along the sidewalk.

He had killed the kid without thinking of the fallout. It had been an instinct. Kill the kid. Kill them all. Get away. But of course he hadn’t been able to kill them all. That big guy, Moss, it would be hard to kill a guy like that.

He should have let them take him in – maybe he could’ve escaped some other way. Lola’s death was a horrible price to pay for his own life.

He had been unable to go back to the apartment – the neighborhood was crawling with cops and firemen. His car was around the corner, so he had simply climbed in and driven off-you mention earlier that he had to go back and get his car. It’s a little confusing as written. He didn’t know when he would go back there. So the long and the short of it was he couldn’t pick up his guns. They were trapped in the apartment. In the old days, he had loathed guns, but over time he had made a certain peace with them. Since he had been on the run, he had kept three of them. Two, fully loaded, safeties off, hidden in the apartment, and one small two-shot derringer here in the car, tucked away under the driver’s seat.

At least he had the derringer – the Bond Arms Cowboy Defender. He held it in his big hand. Five inches long in total, with three-inch, over-under barrels. It was so small that it looked almost like a toy cigarette lighter. But it packed a wallop. It fired two. 45 rounds, and was fully loaded. The barrel was so short that the gun was useless except for the most up-close fighting. That’s why he kept it in the car. You couldn’t hit the side of a barn with it if the barn was more than ten yards away, but if somebody was sitting in the car with you, or standing right in front of you, you might just kill them. He thought of Moss again. He looked at the tiny Derringer in his hand.

Jesus.

He climbed out of the car and moved slowly toward the building, limping, gun palmed in his hand. He could palm the fucking thing, like they used to do to hide their cigarettes from adults when he was nine years old. Despite the chill of autumn in the air, beads of sweat ran down the back of his neck. He had incinerated their friend, so God only knew what they had done to his friends.

Unless, of course, they were still up there, laying in wait for him. He had called the apartment again, and had gotten only a busy signal, but that didn’t mean anything. They could be sitting there in the living room, waiting for him to walk in. Or lurking in the stairwell along the empty second floor.

Well, fuck it. If he was going down, he was going down shooting.

He reached the building. The old man was home downstairs, playing his violin. The haunting beauty of the music seemed to come from a world other than the one Smoke inhabited. Looking around, up and down the street, he entered the building.

Nobody was in the bottom hallway.

The overhead light was on. He reached up and smashed it out with the gun. The small crash of the bulb breaking didn’t disturb the violin in the least. Smoke ventured up the narrow stairs into the gloom of the second floor. He tried not to let the ancient wood creak. It was ridiculous. If they came now, he would be doomed. Then again better they come for him than kill Lola. He stopped trying to hide himself.

He reached the second floor landing, and hobbled along until he reached the bottom of the stairs to the third floor. He peered up. The door was closed. There was no sound up there. He climbed the stairs.

The door was unlocked. He walked in.

Nobody here.

He could feel the apartment’s emptiness. The light in the bathroom was on, throwing shadows through the living room. The coffee table in there had collapsed, as though someone had fallen on top of it. That was the only sign of struggle he could see.

He stood for a moment, holding his breath, looking and listening.

No sound, except from below. Far away, the strains of the violin.

He settled onto one of the dining room chairs. His breath came out in a long, low groan. Okay. He had come this far. Now he would take a moment, gather his emotions, and then search the rest of the apartment. If anyone was here, they were dead.

I’m so sorry, Lola.

The phone was on the floor. He stood, picked up the receiver, and placed it back in the cradle hanging on the kitchen wall.

It started ringing.

Smoke jumped so high he nearly banged his head against the low ceiling.

Two rings. Three rings. He stood and watched it ring. He picked it up just before the answering machine.

“Hello?”

“Dugan?” the voice said. It was Cruz. It had to be.

“Yes.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was wondering when you were going to finally get there. That was some job you pulled with the kid. It’s not going to make this any easier on anybody.”

Smoke swallowed. “I understand that.”

The voice went on. “Your friend is here with us. Okay? Other than that, we don’t have much to talk about.”

“There’s no reason for her to be involved.”

“Well, sure, I agree with that. But you involved her. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The little man went on. “The other one, too. The roommate.”

“Was she here?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Smoke nearly choked. “Where is she now?”

Cruz said nothing. He didn’t even answer. Smoke had dealt with men like this for most of his life. They were fucking animals. They had no reason to keep Pamela alive. No reason at all.

“Where is she?” Smoke repeated.

“See if you can find her.”

Fuck.

“So it seems like the thing for you to do is to get moving. That place is going to get pretty hot by tomorrow, if not later tonight. I don’t think your friend here wants you to see that kind of heat, you know?”

Smoke knew. Sooner or later, the explosion at his apartment, combined with the death of the kid and Smoke’s disappearance, would lead the cops here to Lola’s place. In fact, sooner or later the cops were going to find out that there was no Smoke Dugan. Probably sooner rather than later. They were going to take some prints in that apartment and find out that Smoke Dugan was actually Walter O’Malley, convicted felon from thirty years ago. Shit. He needed some time before the police came down on him. The last thing he needed was to get picked up by the cops. Getting picked up by the cops was worse than getting picked up by Cruz. They’d kill Lola and then get him in jail.

Cruz went on. “Do me a favor, all right? We need a place to meet, a public type place, a crowded restaurant, say. We’re there, you walk in, sit down at our table, your friend gets up and walks out. And we need to know where you’ll be staying tonight, a place we can reach you. Got any ideas? We’re open to ideas right now. Ways we can make this happen without too much pain.”

“There’s a Best Western in South Portland,” Smoke heard himself say. “It’s a motel right by an exit off the highway. There’s a big restaurant there, Governor’s, a lot of people go there for breakfast.”

“Yeah? How’s the food?”

“You eat eggs? Bacon? It’s a buffet.”

“Okay, that sounds good. Best Western, South Portland. Governor’s Restaurant.” There was a pause as Smoke imagined Cruz writing this down on a napkin or an envelope. “Your friend know how to get there?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, then. Take a room at the Best Western. We’ll contact you there tomorrow, or maybe later tonight. You won’t know. If you’re not there when we call, I guess you know what happens. The deal will be off. The trade won’t happen. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do.” The trade was Smoke for Lola. That’s what they were offering. “Is the trade for both of them?”

“Sure, if you like.”

It didn’t sound right. He didn’t know whether to believe them or not. Lola and Pamela could both be dead already.

“Put her on the phone.”

“Who’s that?”

“You know.”

“Tomorrow.”

Smoke shook his head, as though Cruz could see that. “Not tomorrow, now.”

“Okay, that’s enough chat. Never know who’s listening nowadays. Do me that little favor I mentioned, will you? Wouldn’t want anything to get in the way.”

Smoke was about to say something else.

The line went dead.

He stood there with the phone in his hand for several minutes. Out the back window, and far away, a boat went by on the dark water. He couldn’t see the boat at all. He could tell it was there by the red running light at its stern.

The phone started buzzing violently. “If you’d like to make a call,” a robot woman said. “Please hang up and try again. If you’d like to make a call…”

Smoke hung up.

Shit.

He walked through the rooms absently, checking out the rest of the apartment. Shadows loomed all around him. No one was here. Pamela wasn’t here. Whatever they had done with her, they hadn’t left her behind.

He went into Lola’s room and the life-size poster of the black tennis player startled him. It hung there over the bed, accusing him. You murdered her. You did it. There was nothing he could say in his defense.

He kept an extra cane here at the apartment. He rooted around in the closet and found it at the back, behind a pile of clothes. That, at least was something.

He went back into the dining area and sat down again.

Smoke looked at the cane in his hands. It was knobby wood, more of a walking stick than a cane. Along its shaft was a button, camouflaged to look like a part of the cane itself. You’d have to look closely to even notice it.

Hell, you’d have to know it was there.

He pressed the button and the bottom twelve inches of the cane detached and fell off. A sharp stiletto spike six inches long protruded from the end of the shaft that he held. A solid jab with that would piece anyone’s heart, even big, bad Moss.

Smoke looked at his large workman’s hands.

He had the strength. He could do it.

“You see, I don’t often hit girls,” Moss was saying. “I don’t like doing it.”

They were driving north along Interstate 95, Moss’s big hands gripping the wheel. All around them, the darkness had closed in. Cruz marveled at how the city simply ended and the country began. There was nothing to see out here but trees. It was like driving off a cliff into complete darkness.

Well, they’d let all that smoke clear back there, and hide the girls somewhere Dugan couldn’t try to get at them. In the morning, they could go and collect Dugan, provided the cops hadn’t already done so. Or they could make Dugan wait a little while. Fear him up that they were going to kill his girls.

In fact, Cruz wasn’t sure what to do next.

He thought of the money again.

How many times? How many times had he put down someone who thought they could run? Too many. No amount of money was enough. Certainly not a couple mil.

He glanced sidelong at Moss. That thick, solid skull. It wouldn’t stop a bullet.

Would it?

“So,” Moss said. “You know, the girl is kicking me and hitting me, and I’m not fighting back.” He shrugged. “You know?”

Cruz lit a cigarette. “I know. But you think we ought to shoot this other one.”

Moss looked at him. “Don’t you?”

It was Cruz’s turn to shrug.

“Anyway, it’s one thing to hit a girl,” Moss said. “It’s another thing to shoot somebody. Shooting’s easier.”

“Very true.”

A half-hour passed, each lost in his own thoughts. They got off the highway and cruised slowly down the dark and quiet exit ramp and along a feeder road. There was not another car on the road. They turned at an intersection, empty except for a hanging streetlight that blinked red in all four directions. The area was deserted this late in the tourist season. The road ahead was winding, two lane blacktop. Moss drove along between dense stands of forest. Cruz wasn’t sure what he was looking for – he figured he’d know it when he saw it.

And see it he did.

“There,” he said. “Stop in there.”

A sign said: COUNTRY HOME MOTEL amp; COTTAGES – Open Through Thanksgiving.

A long winding driveway led up from the road to the motel compound.

“Let’s go up there and see if it’s quiet.”