we sit down, his signature is going to be on that reapportionment of title. He’s a sawed-off fat little Jew putting on a show for his wife. Believe me, you’ll make him shit his pants. Let’s face it, you know how to give a guy the heebie-jeebies, Jack.”

Hugo salted his beer and drank from the foam. He wore a Rolex and a pressed sport shirt with a diamond design on it. His hair had just been barbered, and his cheeks were glowing with aftershave. He did not seem to notice the tightness around Preacher’s mouth.

“Where’s the sit-down?” Preacher asked.

“A quiet restaurant somewhere. Maybe in the park. Who cares?”

Preacher cut a piece of meat and speared string beans onto the tines of his fork and rolled the meat and string beans in his mashed potatoes. Then he set down the fork without eating from it and looked at the row of men drinking at the bar, slumped on their stools, their silhouettes like warped clothespins on a line.

“He plans to pop both of us,” Preacher said.

“Nicholas Dolan? He’ll probably have to wear adult diapers for the sit-down.”

“You got him scared, and you want him even more scared?”

“With Nick Dolan, it’s not a big challenge.”

“Why do cops use soft-nose ammunition?” Preacher asked.

“How should I know?”

“Because a wounded or scared enemy is the worst enemy you can have. The man who kills you is the one who’ll rip your throat out before you know he has his hand on you. The girl who blinded me with wasp spray and pumped two holes in me? Would you say that story speaks for itself?”

“Thought I’d let you in on a good deal, Jack. But everything I say seems to be the wrong choice.”

“We’re going to talk to Dolan, all right. But not when he’s expecting it, and not because you want to take control of his business interests. We’ll talk to Dolan because you screwed things up. I think you and Arthur Rooney have been running a scam of some kind.”

“Scam? Me and Arthur? That’s great.” Hugo shook his head and sipped from his beer, his eyes lowered, his lashes long like a girl’s.

“I paid him a visit,” Preacher said.

A smile flickered on Hugo’s face, the skin whitening around the edges of his mouth. “No kidding?”

“He’s got a new office there in Galveston, right on the water. You haven’t talked to him?” Preacher picked up his fork and slipped the combination of meat and string beans and potatoes into his mouth.

“I broke off my connections with Artie a long time ago. He’s a welcher and a pimp, just like Dolan.”

“I got the impression maybe you weren’t ’jacking the Asian women for Dolan. You just let Dolan think that way so you could blackmail him and take over his businesses. It was yours and Rooney’s gig from the jump.”

“Jack, I’m trying to get your money to you. What do I have to do to win your faith? You’re really hurting my feelings here.”

“What time does Dolan close his nightclub?”

“Around two A.M.”

“Take a nap. You look tired,” Preacher said. He started to eat again, but his food had gone cold, and he pushed his plate away. He picked up his crutches and began getting to his feet.

“What did Artie tell you? Give me a chance to defend myself,” Hugo said.

“Mr. Rooney was trying to find his finger on the floor. He didn’t have a lot to say at the time. Pick me up at one-fifteen A.M.”

PETE FLORES DID not dream every night, or at least he did not have dreams every night that he could remember. Regardless, each dawn he was possessed by the feeling he had been the sole spectator in a movie theater where he had been forced to watch a film whose content he could not control and whose images would reappear later, in the full light of day, as unexpectedly as a windowpane exploding without cause.

The participants in the film he was forced to watch were people he had known and others who were little more than ciphers behind a window, bearded perhaps, their heads wrapped with checkered cloths, cutouts that appeared like a tic on the edge of his vision and then disappeared behind a wall that was all at once just a wall, behind which a family might have been sitting down to a meal.

Pete had read that the unconscious mind retains a memory of the birth experience—the exit from the womb, the delivering hands that pull it into a blinding