got another number for him?”

“I’m supposed to be picking up some signed contracts,” the driver said, ignoring the question. His teeth were wide-set, his complexion florid, like that of a man with perpetual sunburn, his wrists relaxed on the crosspiece of the steering wheel. He wore shined needle-point boots and a long-sleeve print shirt tucked inside beltless white golf slacks; the hair on his chest grew onto the ironed-back lapels of his shirt. “No signed contracts, huh?”

“No signed contracts,” Nick said.

The driver looked into space, then opened his cell phone and dialed a number. “It’s Liam. He wants to talk to you. No, he doesn’t have them. He didn’t say why. He’s standing right here in front of his house. That’s where I am now. Hugo, talk to the guy.”

The driver leaned over and handed Nick the cell phone through the window, smiling, as though the two of them were friends and had mutual interests. Nick put the cell phone to his ear and walked into his yard between two lime trees bursting with fruit. He could feel the humidity and heat rising from the St. Augustine grass into his face. He could hear a bumblebee buzzing close to his head. “I haven’t said no to your offer, but I need a sit-down before I finalize anything.”

“It’s not an offer, Nicholas. ‘Offer’ is the wrong word.”

“You used the name of this guy Preacher. He’s the guy who’s supposed to give me cold sweats, right? If he’s a factor, he should be there, too.”

“Be where?”

“At the sit-down. I want to meet him.”

“If you meet Jack Collins, it’ll be about two seconds before you become worm food.”

“You’re saying you can’t control this guy? I’m supposed to give you twenty-five percent of two businesses so I can be safe from a guy you can’t control?”

“You’re not giving me anything. You owe me over a hundred thou. I owe that to other people. If you don’t pay the vig, the vig falls on me. I don’t pay other people’s vig, Nick.”

“Was your driver at my club last night?”

“How would I know?”

“A guy answering his description got thrown out. He was shooting off his mouth with my manager. He claimed he was going to be working there. You want the sit-down or not? You called this guy Collins a religious nut. If I get to him first, I’ll tell him that.”

There was a long pause. “Maybe your wife gave you a blow job this morning and convinced you you’re not a pitiful putz. The truth is otherwise, Nick. You’re still a pitiful putz. But I’ll call Preacher. And I’ll also have those transfers of title rewritten. Forget twenty-five percent. The new partnership will be fifty-fifty. Give me some shit and it will go to sixty-forty. Guess who will get the forty.”

Hugo hung up.

“Got everything worked out?” the driver of the Chrysler said through the window.

PETE AND VIKKI got exactly sixteen miles up a dark highway when the car Pete’s cousin had sold him on credit dropped the crankshaft on the asphalt, sparks grinding under the frame as the car slid sideways into soil that exploded around them like soft chalk.

When Pete called, the cousin told him the car came with no guarantees and the cousin’s car lot did not have a complaint window for people with buyer’s remorse. He also indicated he and his wife were leaving with the kids early in the morning for a week of rest and relaxation in Orlando.

Vikki and Pete removed two suitcases and Vikki’s guitar and a bag of groceries from the car and stood by the roadside, thumbs out. A tractor-trailer rimmed with lights roared past them, then a mobile home and a prison bus and a gas-guzzler packed with Mexican drunks, the top half of the car cut off with an acetylene torch. The next vehicle was an ambulance, followed by a sheriff’s cruiser, both of them with sirens on.

Two minutes later, a second cruiser appeared far down the road, its flasher rippling, its siren off. It came steadily out of the south, a bank of low mountains behind it, the stars vaporous and hot against a blue-black sky. The cruiser seemed to slow, perhaps to forty or forty-five miles per hour, gliding past them, the driver holding a microphone to his mouth, his face turned fully on them.

“He’s calling us in,” Pete said.

“Maybe he’s sending a wrecker,” Vikki said.

“No, he’s bad news.” Pete widened his eyes and wiped at his mouth. “I told you, he’s stopping.”

The