"Two guns," Jack said.

"Crowbar's better," Bix said, "for this work."

"Both untraceable," Jack said.

"You ask Mama?" Bix asked.

"I don't want to put Mama Lucky on the spot," Jack said.

"But I'm family, huh?" Bix said.

"Not the kind of spot I mean," Jack said. "I go to Mama, you find out, you go bawl her out."

"Then," Bix said, "I whop you upside the head for not coming to me."

Bix was smiling, but Jack knew how serious he was.

"You know I can get you what you want," Bix said. "Why go outside the family? You got something you want to tell me?"

"Where's the crowbar?" Jack asked.

Bix reached into his battered white Chevy truck and handed it to Jack.

Jack swung the crowbar, shattering first one then the other taillight. Despite the stab of pain in his side.

"Your condition," Bix said, "you sure you should be doing that?"

"Fuck, yes," Jack said.

2.

By the time Caroline arrived, Jack and Bix had stripped most of the glass and chrome, anything that might shatter during the demolition derby, from the clunker.

"You weren't home," Caroline said. "You didn't answer your cell. I thought you might be here."

Jack was prying off trim.

"No one's going to bother you," Jack said. "Not with your uncle, your family around."

"That wasn't why I was upset you left," Caroline said.

Bix was welding the junker's doors shut. In his plastic goggles he looked like a BEM-bug-eyed monster-from a 1950s sci-fi movie, an effect heightened by the acetylene torch that seemed to shoot fire from his alien hand.

"I think we should call the cops," Caroline said.

"You trust them?" Jack said.

He circled the clunker. His leg throbbed.

"Someone should give your sister a good spanking," Jack said.

"Wouldn't she just love that!" Caroline said.

Jack gave the side trim a crack with the crowbar.

"Having fun?" Caroline asked.

Jack handed her the crowbar, which she swung with all her might at the side of the car.

"Everyone should keep a car like this in their yard," Caroline said. "There'd be fewer wars."

"Pry off the trim," Jack said.

Caroline did, working her way along the side of the car.

"Does Nicole know what happened to Robert?" Jack asked.

Caroline nodded.

"Big news in the local papers," she said. "Even over the border here in New York."

"I always said Robert was a real ball of fire," Jack said.

Caroline scowled. Not amused.

"The funeral's this afternoon," Caroline said.

The trim clattered to the stony ground.

"By the way," Caroline said, as she handed the crowbar back to Jack, "I saw someone standing outside our house last night."

Jack froze.

"Across the street," Caroline said. "I couldn't sleep. I was on my way to get a glass of water and happened to glance out the window. I'm sure he was watching the house."

Jack held the crowbar so tightly his knuckles went white.

"And all these years I've been afraid of aliens and vampires," she said.

3.

"I'm not going to discuss it," Caroline said, as she and Jack crossed the grass toward Robert's funeral.

"A guy's watching your house-"

"Maybe."

"-and you think you don't need a gun?"

A dozen-and-a-half people were gathered around the grave.

"I can't kill anyone, Jack," Caroline said.

"A guy's squeezing your neck," Jack said, "you can't breathe, you know you're dying, and you tell me you wouldn't pull the trigger."

Caroline walked faster. Away from Jack.

Bix had promised to get Jack two guns. And a third for himself.

"When I'm not around," Jack had asked Bix, "keep an eye on her. When you can."

The tombstones lined up in neat rows looked like pieces on a giant Stratego board, as if someone were playing a cosmic game against-who? What?

God? Nature? Fate?

In the old cemetery to the right, all the tombstones were leaning or knocked over, as if whoever was losing had tried to end the game-against God, nature, fate-by upsetting the board.

Weatherworn skulls grinned lopsidedly from the old stones. A dancing skeleton, wearing victor's laurels, held in one boney hand the moon and in the other a smiling, spiky sun. A poker-faced Adam and Eve stood on either side of the Tree of Knowledge-or Life-staring down any passerby who might notice their effaced nudity.

Demons holding arrows of death.

Fierce angels blowing Trumpets of Doom.

Thunderbolts from stone clouds striking a stone earth.

God's wrath.

God's vengeance.

Human suffering.

Human evanescence.

Jack passed a grave decorated with a small, tattered American flag-a military flag with fringe-and a black-and-white flag in honor of missing Vietnam POWs. Along with a young man's birth and death, the tombstone was engraved with: Hold Your Mud.

A man in a seersucker suit and black-and-white spectator shoes caught up to Jack and asked, "Do you know where the pet cemetery is?"

Jack shook his head no.

The man shrugged and handed Jack a business card: Pet bereavement: three sessions. Pet genealogies our specialty.

"For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past," the minister droned, "and as a watch in the night..."

Jack took his place next to Caroline.

Under the bandages, his leg itched.

When he breathed, his ribs ached.

Across Robert's grave, Jack saw Keating. His chin seemed longer, the pouches under his eyes grayer, his cheekbones sharper. His face was crosshatched with fine lines, as if it were covered with a web of burlap.

But he stood erect, almost military in his posture, in a dark hat, dark suit, white shirt, dark bowtie, and black shoes so polished they reflected-Jack thought-the scudding clouds.

A trick of light?

Keating moved, not his head, but his eyes, and fixed his gaze on Jack's face.

"He knows," Caroline whispered, "we were with Robert when he died."

Watching Keating's raptor's eyes, Jack figured she was right.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

1.

Jack caught up with Shapiro at his home on Amity Street. Shapiro had dodged calls at his office. He spotted Jack entering Judie's, where Jack had been told Shapiro was having lunch, and slipped out unseen.

Jack had to ring the front doorbell six times before Shapiro reluctantly answered.

"I'm busy," Shapiro said.

"Why did Keating Flowers get you fired?" Jack asked.

Without answering, Shapiro turned and headed along a hallway, decorated with old movie posters: Paul Muni in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville, Come Blow Your Horn....