"Cute."

The pie-faced football player said, "Cute ain't the word for it, a.s.shole. The Sequel is your worst f.u.c.king nightmare."

"My worst nightmare is about getting lost in a department store."

Pie Face looked puzzled.

Willie said, "Let's go," and stepped up to take the gun out of my hand.

I walked out into the yard ahead of Willie. "Where are we going?"

Willie just said, "Stop." So I stopped.

"Down on your stomach. Hands behind your head."

This was not going well. I said, "You going to shoot me in the back of the head, Willie?" And he hit me in the stomach with the b.u.t.t of his new shotgun.

I lay on my stomach and laced my fingers behind my neck.

Willie stepped a few feet away and blew three sharp blasts on his whistle. Seconds later, three more mena"college age but not exactly college materiala"came running.

Willie said, "Simon and Rooter?"

One of the boys, a thin kid with acne scars on his cheeks, said, "Got 'em set up north and south."

"Okay. Good. Looks like the only people here are in that house over there with the Mercedes parked in front. The two big buildings are like warehouses. One's got whiskey and cigars and other stuff Purcell smuggled in. The other one may be a meth factory."

Pie Face spoke up. "They're ours now."

The others guffawed and said things like, "Bet your a.s.s," and "f.u.c.king A."

Then I heard Willie blow his whistle again. One long blast.

Nothing happened.

Willie cussed and blew again. Still nothing. He said, "Don't those morons know the signal?"

Pie Face said, "Maybe they see something. They ain't gonna come if they're watching somebody."

Willie said, "Go see," and Pie Face trotted off in search of Simon and Rooter.

Minutes pa.s.sed during which the grumbling from Willie's posse grew louder. Finally, he blew his whistle again. And, once again, nothing happened.

I had seen Willie and Pie Face and two others. Two more, Simon and Rooter, had been standing watch on the north and south ends of the compound. Now, the lookouts were unaccounted for, as was Pie Face. There were three left, including Willie, and they were all standing over me.

I said, "Something's wrong, boys."

Willie said, "Shut up."

Two rifle shots split the air, and I heard the soft thuds of bodies. .h.i.tting dirt. I eased my hands to the ground and looked up. Willie's two buddies squirmed in the gra.s.s. One cussed. The other sobbed like a child. Each boy gripped his thigh and tried to keep blood from pumping out.

A voice came from the trees. "Put your gun down, Willie."

Willie stood his ground. "Granddaddy?"

"Put the shotgun on the ground, boy."

Willie hesitated before answering, and the cussing and sobbing of the two leg-shot boys filled the air.

"Granddaddy, what're you doing? Mr. McInnes is fine. We didn't hurt him. We just stopped him. They're working with Purcell. Come on out here where we can talk about it."

I yelled out. "Don't do it, Billy."

Willie lowered his voice. "You wanna get shot in the back of the head? Shut your mouth."

"You going to shoot your own grandfather, Willie?"

"Shut up."

"You can still walk away from this. Put the gun down. Let your grandfather come up here and take care of you."

Willie said, "I can take care of my..."

An engine roared. Willie spun around, and I sprang to my feet as the Mercedes that had been parked outside the only occupied house in the compound threw a cloud of dust into the air as it rounded the small warehouse and headed for the road.

I ran for cover behind the empty shack and felt the first shotgun blast in my chest, but it was the percussion I felt and not the load. I glanced back and saw Willie firing at the speeding car, leading the driver's window the way you lead a dove flying over a field of Egyptian wheat. Three more explosions shattered the morning air, and the car swerved and burst into flame and crashed into the porch. I dove to the left to avoid the car and any shots that might be coming my way.

I landed and rolled in the sand and sat up facing Willie. He was reloading. Without thinking, I jumped up and ran hard at him. Willie saw me when I was ten yards away.

The swamp was silent except for the wind gushing in my lungs and the blood pulsing inside my chest. The barrel arced slowly upward from the ground to point at my stomach, and what Willie's hands were doing became very important to me. The blunt, gnawed fingertips of his left hand gripped the front stock. His right fingers flipped out and away from his body like someone slinging water off his hands, and Willie tossed three red spinning sh.e.l.ls into the air. His right fingers moved back to the checkered lever on the side of the housing, and he pumped the first round into the chamber. I dove under the barrel at his ankles and found nothing.

Willie still moved like the high school jock he had been. And I skidded across clipped saw gra.s.s as he skipped out of reach. I rolled onto my back and looked up. Willie smiled. He had seated the stock against his shoulder and just taken aim at my face when a rifle shot from the brush snapped Willie's head forward and dropped him face first into the dirt.

For a time, I could see only the boy's face pressed into soft earth; I could hear only my own breathing. Then conscious thought floated back and brought with it the soft whimpering of leg-shot teenagers, the m.u.f.fled pump of running feet in sand, and the hiss of fire.

Peety Boy reached me first. He held a carbine in his left hand. He used his right to pull me to my feet. "You all right, son?"

I didn't answer, and he repeated the question while shaking me by the arm.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. Who shot him?"

"I did. Didn't figure his own granddaddy ought to have to do it. Somebody had to." Peety Boy looked over at the flaming car. "Who's that?"

I looked over at a curly black, lifeless head hanging from the side window. I said, "It's L. Carpintero. The Hammer."

Peety Boy seemed to think about that for a few seconds. His leathery forehead wrinkled, and he worked his nearly toothless jaw. Then he said, "Who's that?"

While Captain Billy stood watch, Peety Boy and I loaded Joey into the cab of his truck and tossed the four hurt members of The Sequel into the bed alongside the two Bodines that Peety Boy had already retrieved from the wrecked truck in the swamp. The old fishmonger headed out for the hospital emergency room in Apalachicola.

Back in the compound, Captain Billy crouched on one knee beside his dead grandson and wept.

I walked over to examine Carpintero and the wrecked Mercedes. On the leather seat beside him were an automatic pistol, a black leather briefcase, and a nail gun with a portable compressor next to it.

I walked back and stood over Captain Billy Teeter. The old man got to his feet.

I said, "I never meant for anything like this to happen."

Billy looked up at the sky with pale wet eyes. "When you called me last night, I knew it was gonna get bad. The boy took a shot at you then, and he was gonna kill you just now. I reckon I didn't know the boy, 'cause the one I knew couldn't a done this." Then he added. "Didn't have no daddy and not much of a mother."

"I'm sorry, Billy. But I've got to get moving. The young girl I was trying to help is missing now. And a woman, a good friend, is missing too and may be hurt."

Billy wiped tears from his eyes with the veined back of a calloused hand. "The house over there where the car come from, that the only one with anybody in it?"

I nodded.

"Better check it over again. We could still get shot out here."

And the old man picked up his carbine and started off. I retrieved a thirty-thirty that one of the leg-shot boys had dropped and followed Billy's path. When I arrived, the old man had his back pressed flat against the outside wall next to a window.

He held up a palm to stop me. Then he pointed at the house, nodded his head, and made an opening-and-closing motion with his thumb and fingers to indicate someone was talking inside.

I retreated around the corner of a warehouse.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Billy listened, and I waited. Finally, the old shrimp boat captain waved me over. "There's a woman and a little kid in there. Maybe somebody else. But, if there is, he ain't saying nothing. You think you can kick open that door?"

"You cover me through the window, and I'll kick it in." The old man had aged a decade since Peety Boy, his childhood friend, had shot his grandson and namesake in the back of the head. Tears still clung to his gray eyelashes, his wrinkled-leather face had turned sallow, and his thick hard hands trembled on the stock of his carbine. But Captain Billy Teeter was functioning. He was still helping a man who was arguably responsible for getting his grandson killed because it was the right thing to do.

He said, "Go."

chapter thirty-four.

This was not an oak security door on a million-dollar beach house. One hard kick buried my shoe in the veneer surface and sent the door hurling inward. I jumped inside, minus one shoe that now hung from a footprint-shaped hole in the open door, and pointed my gun at nothing.

The room was empty. I s.n.a.t.c.hed my shoe from the door and pulled it on.

A single door led to a back room. I walked toward the door, being careful to stay to one side, and tried the k.n.o.b. It turned. Keeping to one side, I pushed it wide. Three shots spit through the opening and splintered wood across the room. s.h.i.t.

I tried, "You're surrounded," and realized it sounded even dumber out loud than it had in my head.

No answer.

"You've got nowhere to go. Toss out the gun. We don't want anyone else hurt here today."

Three more shots. .h.i.t the other side of the wall that my back was pressed against. One blasted out a light switch and snapped my shirt against my ribs. The h.e.l.l with this. Lots of handguns are six-shooters; a lot aren't. I took off my shoe and flipped it into the room.

I heard the clack of a firing pin striking a spent casing, and I went in fast. So fast and so scared that I almost shot the dark pretty woman from the beach on Dog Island. She was fumbling with the cylinder of a snub-nosed revolver.

I yelled, "Stop!"

She didn't. Trembling fingers with manicured nails pulled spent rounds from the chamber and reached for a box of cartridges on the bed beside her.

"What are you doing? Stop, d.a.m.nit. Uh, alto. Alto!"

She had a fresh bullet now, but she was fumbling as frightened eyes darted from me to the empty chamber of her revolver.

"s.h.i.t! What's the word?" My mind raced back fifteen years to Seora Stippleman's Spanish I. Some half-forgotten vocab test floated in. "Pare!"

She glanced up at that one. She glanced up as trembling fingers clicked the bullet home. I raised my carbine. "Pare, G.o.dd.a.m.nit. Pare!"

The dark beauty had one bullet and five empty chambers. She swung the cylinder into place, and I tightened my finger against the trigger.

I couldn't do it. "s.h.i.t!" I let go of the front stock and whipped the carbine at the wall to divert her attention. Before the gun hit, I was moving. Three steps and I dove as Seora Carpintero leveled the snub-nose at my chest and pulled the trigger.

I heard the metallic clack of the firing pin snapping an empty chamber as I hit her full force and jammed the gun into the air with my right hand. She fought, and I had to twist her wrist harder than I wanted to wrest the gun from her grip. I plucked the revolver off the bedspread where it had fallen and scrambled to my feet.

The seora rubbed her wrist and watched me with narrow wet eyes. I popped open the cylinder on her handgun and let the one good bullet drop to the floor. When I did, she sprang off the bed and ran for my discarded rifle. She almost made it. I got a handful of blouse and spun her back onto the bed.

"Stop! Jeez, lady, it's time to give up. I'm not going to hurt you. It's okay. You understand? It's okay."

She sat and watched. I called out for Captain Billy before realizing he was standing four feet behind me. He said, "You okay?"

I was trembling as much as the tiny woman on the bed. "I'm not shot. Do you speak Spanish?"

"Nope. She think you were gonna rape her or somethin'?"

I looked around. "We just killed her husband."

"Oh."

"And she's got a kid around here somewhere. That's who she's trying to protect."

Billy walked up to stand beside me. "Want me to have a look in the closet?"

"No. I want her to calm down first. If she thinks we're looking for the boy to hurt him, I'm afraid we'd have to shoot her to keep her from scratching our eyes out."

Billy was quiet for a few beats; then he said, "I seen what you done. Been easier to shoot her. Didn't want to, did you?"

"Would you shoot her for defending herself and her kid?"

Billy said, "Might. If it was me or her."

"Bulls.h.i.t. Come on, let's get her out of here. See if we can get her to calm down some."