saying Holland is a retread and a rural schmuck who surrounds himself with other losers. Why borrow trouble?? Bobby Lee said.

?The man has the Navy Cross.?

?So, rah-rah, he?s a swinging dick. Maybe he ran in the wrong direction.?

?You have a serious problem, Bobby Lee.?

?What?s that??

?You come to conclusions without looking at the evidence. Then you find reasons to justify your shoddy conclusions. It?s like inventing a square wheel and trying to convince yourself you like your wagon to ride a little rough.?

?Jack, you smoked a federal agent. You want to add another cop to your tally? They not only execute in this state, they have beer parties at the prison gates when they do it. I?m risking my life throwing in with you. We?ve got Hugo and Artie Rooney to deal with. Then there?s Vikki Gaddis and the soldier boy. What?s next, dropping a hydrogen bomb on Iran??

?I?ll handle Artie Rooney.?

?You ought to get laid. You know what Hugo said? I?m quoting Hugo, I didn?t say it, it?s Hugo talking, not me. He said, ?Preacher?s last sexual encounter was a visit to his proctologist.? How long has it been since you got your ashes hauled??

Preacher watched the lizard?s throat puff out in a red balloon on the rock. The lizard?s tongue uncoiled and wrapped around a tiny black ant and pulled the ant into the lizard?s mouth. ?I?m glad you?re on my side, Bobby Lee. You have loyalty in your lineage. That?s why General Lee stuck with the state of Virginia, isn?t it? Loyalty has no surrogate. Blood will out, won?t it??

There was a long silence. ?Why are you always ridiculing me? I?m the only guy who stood with you. You really hurt my feelings, man.?

?You got a point. You?re a good boy, Bobby Lee.?

?That means a lot to me, Jack. But you got to quit renting space in your head to bozos who couldn?t shine your shoes.?

?Artie Rooney is going to pay me a half million dollars. Ten percent of that will go to you.?

?That?s generous of you, man. You got a kind heart.?

?In the meantime, Artie is going to leave the Jews alone. That one isn?t up for grabs.?

?You still worried about the Jews after what Ms. Dolan did to you? What about the Gaddis broad and the soldier boy? Are they out??

?They?re in.?

?They?re in??

?You heard me.?

?What about Holland??

?I?ll give it some thought.?

?I think he saw me. I pulled off the road to case his place. I thought he was asleep. He came outside and saw my car. But it was too dark for him to get my tag or see my face. If we leave him alone, he?ll forget about it.?

?You didn?t tell me that.?

?So I just did. Use your head, Jack. Artie Rooney hijacked Josef Sholokoff?s whores. Who do you think Rooney is gonna put that on? You got the rep from L.A. to Miami. Mexican cops think you walk through walls. Artie gets on the phone, tells Sholokoff you?re a psycho, tells him you?re working for Nick Dolan, and gets you permanently out of his hair. You taught me to be a fly on the wall, Jack.?

?Want to spell that out??

?That agent you capped wasn?t just a fed, he was from ICE. They?re fanatics, worse than Treasury agents. You got any idea of how hot you are??

?You just said ?you.??

?Okay, ?we.??

?Call me when you find Vikki Gaddis.?

?Is this girl worth clipping? Think about it. A waitress from a truck stop??

?Did I say anything about clipping her? Did you hear me say that??

?No.?

?You find her, but you don?t touch her.?

?Why should I want to touch her? It?s not me who?s got??

?Got what??

?An obsession. Like a tumor on the brain. The size of a carrot.?

Again Preacher let his silence speak for him; it was a weapon Bobby Lee never knew how to deal with.

?You still there??

?Still here,? Preacher said.

?You?re the best there is, Jack. Nobody else could have done what you did behind the church. It took guts to do that.?

?Say again??

?To step across the line like that, to grease every one of them, to burn the whole magazine and bulldoze them under and mark it off. It takes maximum cojones to do a mass whack like that, Jack. That?s why you?re you.?

This time Preacher?s silence was not of his own volition. He took the cell phone from his ear and opened his mouth to clear a blockage in his ear canal. The side of his face felt both numb and hot to the touch, as though