Matt picked up Andrew at 8:40.

"Where's the gun?" asked Andrew.

"In the trunk," said Matt. "I love this song." He cranked the volume all the way up on the stereo, which was playing "s.e.x Pootie," by a band called the Seminal Fluids. The lyrics were: I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

I want your s.e.x pootie!

And so on.

"What's a s.e.x pootie?" asked Andrew.

"What do you think it is?" asked Matt, scornfully, although in truth he wasn't sure what a s.e.x pootie was, either. To change the subject, he said: "This sound system sucks." Matt had great contempt for any sound system that was not loud enough to stun cattle.

"Why'd your dad buy a Kia?" asked Andrew.

" 'Cause he's a dork," explained Matt.

Andrew nodded understandingly. His dad was a dork, too. It seemed like everybody's dad was a dork. It amazed Matt and Andrew that their generation had turned out so cool.

"I just hope Jenny doesn't see this car," said Matt.

Jenny was the girl they were going to kill. Matt thought she was hot. She was in his biology cla.s.s at Southeast High School, and he'd spent many cla.s.sroom hours looking at her while pretending to look at diagrams of the pancreas and other organs. He'd tried to think of some way to talk to her, but he never came up with anything feasible. But now that he was going to kill her, he figured that would break the ice.

Matt had been a.s.signed to kill Jenny by Evan Hanratty, a Southeast High student who had organized that year's edition of Killer. Killer was a game that surfaced every year at various high schools; it had been vehemently condemned and strictly banned by the school authorities, so it was very popular with the students.

There were various versions of the game, but basically it worked this way: You paid the organizer some money (at Mart's school, it was ten dollars to become a player). The organizer then gave you, in secret, the name of another person in the game; your goal was to kill that person. At the same time, you became the target of some other unknown person, who would be stalking you.

At a given time, the game officially started, and the killing began. After each round, the survivors were given new targets; the game repeated until the last surviving killer collected a cash prize from the organizer.

The killing was done with squirt guns. For the kill to be legal, you had to squirt your victim in the presence of one witness-but only one witness. This meant that you couldn't get your target at school or in a public place like the mall; you had to work by ambush, usually at the victim's home.

Some kids got their parents involved. A kid would get his mom to drive him over to the target's house; then he'd hide in the bushes while the mom, looking innocent, would ring the bell and ask if the target was home. When the target came to the door, the killer would leap out of the bushes, squirt gun blazing.

Matt and his friends thought it was way unmanly to use your mom to kill somebody. They preferred the night ambush, operating under the cover of darkness, when you had the element of surprise, plus the element of (you never know) possibly seeing the target naked.

Matt parked his dad's Kia two streets away from Jenny's house. He opened his trunk and got out his gun, a SquirtMaster Model 9000, top of the line, $33.95 at Toys "SI" Us. It looked like a real a.s.sault weapon and held a gallon of water; it could accurately shoot a stream of water fifty feet.

Matt and Andrew loped through the humid night to Jenny's driveway. They encountered n.o.body but mosquitoes; this was an expensive Coconut Grove neighborhood, whose residents stayed inside their compounds at night.

Jenny's house was big, but surrounded by trees and barely visible from the street. There was a six-foot masonry wall around the property, and the driveway was blocked by a motorized steel gate. Next to the gate was an intercom speaker.

"What's the plan?" whispered Andrew. "You wanna ring the buzzer?"

"Nan," said Matt. "What'm I gonna say? 'Hi! It's Matt Arnold, here to kill Jenny.' We gotta go over the wall."

"What if they have a dog?" asked Andrew.

"I like dogs," said Matt, thinking, s.h.i.t, I hope they don't have a dog.

They walked along the wall around to the back of the property. There, next to a huge tree, they found a place where the wall looked pretty easy to climb. Matt gave the SquirtMaster to Andrew and went over the wall first; Andrew then tossed the gun over and followed. Once on the ground inside, they stopped for a minute to listen for a dog, but all they heard was flute music. With Matt in the lead, they began to walk quietly toward the house.

Twenty feet above, Puggy watched the two guys with the gun disappear into the thick vegetation. He wondered what was going on. This was the second pair of armed people he'd seen go over this fence in the past half hour.

CHAPTER two

As it happens, the Herk household did have a dog, named Roger. Roger was the random result of generations of hasty, unplanned dog s.e.x: Among other characteristics, he had the low-slung body of a beagle, the pointy ears of a German shepherd, the enthusiasm of a Labrador retriever, the stubby tail of a boxer, and the intelligence of celery.

On this evening, Roger was, as usual, patrolling the backyard, but he represented no threat to human intruders. Roger loved humans, all of them, unreservedly. Because you never knew when a human was going to, out of nowhere, like magic, produce food. And Roger really loved food.

What Roger hated was the toad. This was a Bufo marinus, a very large South American toad that had become common in South Florida since its introduction in the 1940s by well-meaning idiots who believed that Bufo would control sugarcane pests. The toads multiplied and thrived in the moist, fetid subtropical soil; before long, they had become the pests.

The particular toad that Roger hated, the Enemy Toad, had thrived to a weight of three pounds; it was a squat, hideous, warty, mud-brown, beady-eyed creature the size of a catcher's mitt. As far as Roger was concerned, this toad was the most evil being in the universe, because it ate his food. Each day, Nina, the maid, would fill Roger's bowl with a heaping mound of dog food and place it on the patio outside the family room. And each day, just as Roger was about to devour his food, the toad, with a startlingly quick movement, would launch its bloated body into the air and land splat in the center of Roger's dish, where it would commence to chow down on Roger's kibble.

The first time this happened, Roger, naturally, tried to eat the toad. Big mistake. In nature, you do not become a big fat toad without a defense against predators, and Bufo marinus had developed a dandy: Behind each eye, it had a gland that secretes a chemical called bufotenine, which is toxic. (It's also hallucinogenic; people have been known to lick these toads to get high. Sometimes, these people die. You could argue that they deserve to.) So when Roger bit the toad, he got a mouthful of bufotenine. Fortunately for him, he spat it out rather than swallowing it, so instead of going to the Big Kennel in the Sky, he merely got very sick. Roger was not a rocket scientist, but he knew that he'd better not bite the toad again. The toad knew it, too. And so every day, for hours on end, the toad sat in Roger's dish, leisurely eating Roger's food, while Roger sat exactly thirty inches away, growling at the toad. This activity occupied most of Roger's working day, but he made time in his schedule for other important ch.o.r.es such as barking at the doorbell, licking his private region, and greeting any humans who ventured into the yard, in case they had food.

When the two men climbed over the fence this night, Roger trotted happily up to them and gave them a friendly, tail-wagging welcome, which was why they elected not to shoot him. After determining that they did not have any food for him, Roger trotted back to his dish on the patio and resumed growling at his archenemy, the toad. You had to be vigilant.

A few feet away from Roger, on the other side of the sliding-gla.s.s door, Anna Herk and her daughter, Jenny, were sitting side by side on the family-room sofa, watching Friends, which they both liked a lot. They were laughing together, and then they stiffened together when they heard the unsteady footsteps of Arthur Herk clomp into the room behind them. He clomped over to the bar and, for the fourth time that evening, filled a tall gla.s.s with red wine. Holding the drink and swaying slightly, he stood directly behind Anna and Jenny. They were looking at the TV, but they could feel him back there.

"Why do you watch this s.h.i.t?" he said.

Jenny, who rarely spoke to her stepfather, said nothing. Anna, willing her voice to be calm, said: "We like this show, Arthur. If you don't like it, you don't have to watch it."

"I watch what I want to watch," said Herk. Anna was tempted to point out that this statement, in the current context, made no sense, but decided against it. For a few seconds, the three of them watched the attractive, witty, zero-body-fat Friends characters, who were sitting on sofas bantering.

Herk said, "Those guys are f.a.gs."

Anna and Jenny said nothing.

"Oh yeah," said Herk, "big-time f.a.gs, is what I read."

"He can read?" said Jenny, softly, looking straight ahead.

"What did you say?" said Herk, coming around the sofa.

Anna put her arm in front of her daughter. "Arthur," she said, "leave her alone."

"What did you say?" said Herk again, standing in front of Jenny, his head bobbing, wine sloshing from his gla.s.s.

Jenny stared straight ahead, as if looking right through Herk. She wished she could disappear into the TV set, become part of Friends, live with fun, nice people instead of this drunk a.s.shole who hated her and hit her mom.

"Arthur," said Anna, knowing that she would pay for this later. "You get away from her."

Herk turned toward Anna, his head still bobbing, his eyes unfocused and red. Anna couldn't believe that she once found this man attractive. He took a step toward her, sloshing more wine. Anna was watching his right hand, the one without the gla.s.s. He saw her looking at it, and he made his hand into a fist and jerked it toward her. Anna flinched. Herk liked that. He made her flinch again, then turned and picked up the remote control.

"Let's see what else is on," he said, and he changed the channel.

Outside in the humid darkness, at the edge of the patio, the two men-both swatting mosquitoes; one holding a rifle-were watching the Herks through the sliding-gla.s.s door. Their names were Henry and Leonard, and they were being paid $25,000 apiece, plus first-cla.s.s round-trip expenses from their nice homes in suburban New Jersey, to shoot Arthur Herk with real bullets.

Henry and Leonard had been hired by a Miami company called Penultimate, Inc., where Arthur Herk was a mid-level executive. Penultimate was one of the largest engineering and construction firms in South Florida. It specialized in government contracts, and it made spectacular profits. Penultimate's formula for success was simple: aggressive management, strict employee discipline, and a relentless commitment to cheating. The company lied extravagantly about its technical qualifications, submitted absurdly unrealistic lowball bids to get contracts, and tacked on huge add-on charges. Penultimate was able to do these things because it paid excellent bribes to government officials. Penultimate was as good at munic.i.p.al corruption as it was bad at actually building things. In political circles, it was well known that Penultimate could be absolutely relied upon to do the wrong thing. In South Florida, a reputation like that is priceless.

Granted, sometimes there were problems. There was the time Penultimate won a large contract to build a prisoner-detention facility in downtown Miami. The facility was supposed to feature a state-of-the-art electronic security-door system, and the taxpayers certainly paid for a state-of-the-art security-door system. But what actually got installed was a semi-random collection of hardware that included, as a central element, garage-door openers purchased on sale at Home Depot for $99.97 apiece. The result was that, during a bad lightning storm shortly after the facility went into service, a number of key doors simply opened themselves, leaving it up to the prisoners to decide, on the honor system, whether they wished to remain in jail.

As it happened, 132 prisoners, out of a possible 137, decided that they did not wish to remain in jail. It was a huge story: a horde of criminals, some of them murderers, running loose on the streets of downtown Miami, pursued by a frantic posse of police and media. The highlight came when the capture of an escaped prisoner was shown live, nationally, on the NEC Nightly News, and a reporter shouted to the prisoner, as he was being hustled into a police cruiser, "Who masterminded the escape?"

"Ain't n.o.body mastermind s.h.i.t" the prisoner shouted back. "The mufuh doors opened."

Even by Miami standards, this was considered a major screwup. Under intense pressure from the media, Penultimate explained, through its dense firewall of high-priced attorneys, that all the blame belonged to ... subcontractors. The politicians, who did not want Penultimate to get into trouble, inasmuch as almost all of them had received money from the company, pounced on this explanation like wild dogs on a pork chop: Yes! That was it! Subcontractors were responsible!

Unfortunately for the cause of justice, most of the key subcontractors involved either fled the country or died, generally in boating accidents. Eventually, the investigation lost steam, and the issue degenerated into a vast steaming bog of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits that would not be settled within the current geological era. Everybody lost interest, and Penultimate went back to winning contracts.

One of these was for a six-story downtown parking garage that wound up costing, what with one thing and another, just under four times the original contract figure. Each price increase was approved with virtually no discussion by key political leaders, who were invited to make speeches at the garage dedication ceremony, which fortunately was held outside the structure, which is why only two people were injured when the entire central portion of the structure collapsed during the opening prayer.

Once again there was outrage; once again there were statements and hearings; once again the finger of blame ultimately wound up being pointed at-it is so hard to get good help-those darned subcontractors. Who of course by that point were disappearing faster than weekend houseguests in an Agatha Christie story. And Penultimate continued to prosper and grow and benefit from its reputation as a company that only a fool would mess with.

As it happened, Arthur Herk, in addition to being an abusive alcoholic, was a fool. To pay off a gambling debt, he had embezzled $55,000 from Penultimate. Unbeknownst to him, his bosses, experts in the field of dishonesty and far smarter than Arthur, had discovered the theft almost immediately. They viewed embezzlement as a fairly serious violation of corporate policy, punishable by death.

And so Penultimate had hired two specialized subcontractors, Henry and Leonard, the men waiting in the humid darkness outside the sliding-gla.s.s door to the Herk family room. In whispered voices, they were discussing scheduling.

"We shoot him now," Leonard was saying, "we make the eleven-forty flight to Newark."

"I can't shoot him now," Henry said. "He's too close to the women." Henry was the man with the rifle; Leonard's main jobs were to drive and keep Henry company.

"You don't shoot him soon," Leonard said, "I'm dead, from these f.u.c.king mosquitoes." He slapped one on his wrist, leaving a quarter-sized blot of blood and bug parts. "Look at this thing," he said. "He's the size of that f.u.c.king dog."

"She," said Henry, continuing to watch the Herk family through the window.

"She?" asked Leonard. "She what?"

"The mosquito," said Henry. "It's a she."

Leonard looked closely at the blot on his wrist, then back at Henry. "How fiief.u.c.k can you tell that?" he asked.

"This show on the Discovery Channel," explained Henry. "They said only the female mosquito sucks your blood."

Leonard looked at the blot again. He said, "b.i.t.c.h."

"What they didn't explain," said Henry, "is what do the male mosquitoes eat?"

"What, are you worried about them?"

"No, I'm not worried about them. I'm just ... "

"You want I should go get a f.u.c.king pizza for them, set it out here in the jungle so they don't starve?"

"I'm just saying, what do they eat? If they don't suck blood? Is all I'm saying."

"Maybe they suck each other," said Leonard.

Henry had to smile at that, which only encouraged Leonard.

"Oh, Bruth!" Leonard said in a lisping mosquito whisper. "YouhaveaBIGthtinger!"

Henry was quietly quaking with laughter now; his rifle barrel vibrated in the gloom.

Inside the family room, Arthur Herk was methodically, relentlessly changing channels. He was doing this partly because the instinct to change channels is embedded deep in the male genetic code, and partly because he knew his wife and stepdaughter hated it. For a few minutes, Anna and Jenny stared at the flashing jumble of images, expressionless, not wanting to give Herk any satisfaction. Finally, Jenny sighed and stood. Addressing Anna, she said, "I'm gonna go to my room, where it's not so, I don't know ... stupid. Good night, Mom."

Herk kept changing channels.

Anna said, "I think I'll let Roger in and go to bed, too."

Herk stopped changing channels and looked at her. She recognized the look. She hoped he'd pa.s.s out in the family room tonight. She hoped he would not make it to the bedroom. She rose from the sofa.

Outside, Henry whispered, "They're leaving."