“Please don’t hit the car again,” Cody said.

Bubba held up a comforting hand. He nodded. Then he sliced a pretty fluid backhand through the air and connected with the Audi’s rear window. The glass made a loud popping noise before it dropped all over Cody’s backseat.

“Jesus!”

“What did I say about talking, Cody?”

“But he just smashed my-”

Bubba flung the tennis racket like a tomahawk and it hit Cody Falk in the center of the forehead, knocked him back into the garage wall. He crumpled to the floor and blood streamed from the gash over his right eyebrow and he looked like he was going to cry.

I picked him up by his hair and slammed his back into the driver’s door.

“What do you do for a living, Cody?”

“I…What?”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a restaurateur.”

“A what?” Bubba said.

I looked back over my shoulder at him. “He owns restaurants.”

“Oh.”

“Which ones?” I asked Cody.

“The Boatyard in Nahant. I own the Flagstaff downtown, and part of Tremont Street Grill, the Fours in Brookline. I…I-”

“Sshh,” I said. “Anyone in the house?”

“What?” He looked around wildly. “No. No. I’m single.”

I pulled Cody to his feet. “Cody, you like to harass women. Maybe even rape them sometimes, knock them around when they don’t play ball?”

Cody’s eyes darkened as a thick drop of blood began its descent down the bridge of his nose. “No, I don’t. Who-”

I backhanded the wound on his forehead and he yelped.

“Quiet, Cody. Quiet. If you ever bother a woman again-any woman-we’ll burn down your restaurants and put you in a wheelchair for life. Do you understand?”

Something about women brought out the stupid in Cody. Maybe it was the telling him he couldn’t have them in the manner he’d come to enjoy. Whatever the case, he shook his head. He tightened his jaw. A predatory amusement crept into his eyes as if he believed he’d found my Achilles’ heel: a concern for the “weaker” sex.

Cody said, “Well. Yes, well. I don’t think I can do that.”

I stepped aside as Bubba came around the car, pulled a.22 from his trench coat, screwed on the silencer, pointed it at the center of Cody Falk’s face and pulled the trigger.

The hammer dropped on an empty chamber, but Cody didn’t seem to realize that at first. He closed his eyes and screamed, “No!” and fell on his ass.

We stood over him as he opened his eyes. He touched his nose with his fingers, surprised to realize it was still there.

“What happened?” I asked Bubba.

“Dunno. I loaded it.”

“Try again.”

“Sure.”

Cody’s hands shot out in front of him. “Wait!”

Bubba pointed the muzzle at Cody’s chest and pulled the trigger again.

Another dry click.

Cody flopped on the floor, his eyes screwed shut again, his face contorted into a puttylike mask of horror. Tears sprouted from under his lids and the sharp smell of urine rose from a burgeoning stain along his left pant leg.

“Damn,” Bubba said. He raised the gun to his face, scowled at it, and pointed down again just as Cody opened one eye.

Cody clamped the eye closed as Bubba pulled the trigger a third time, hit another empty chamber.

“You buy that thing at a yard sale?” I asked.

“Shut up. It’ll work.” Bubba flicked his wrist and the cylinder snapped open. One golden eye of a slug stared up at us, disrupting an otherwise unbroken circle of small black holes. “See? There’s one in there.”

“One,” I said.

“One’ll do.”

Cody suddenly vaulted up off the floor toward us.

I raised my foot, stepped on his chest, and knocked him back down.

Bubba flicked the cylinder closed and pointed the gun. He dry-fired once and Cody screamed. He dry-fired a second time, and Cody made this weird laughing-crying sound.

He placed his hands over his eyes and said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” then did that laughing-crying thing again.

“Sixth time’s the charm,” Bubba said.

Cody looked up at the suppressor muzzle and ground the back of his head into the floor. His mouth was wide open, as if he were screaming, but all that came out was a soft, high-pitched “Na, na, na.”

I squatted down by him, yanked his right ear up to my mouth.

“I hate people who victimize women, Cody. Fucking hate ’em. I always find myself thinking, What if that woman was my sister? My mother? You see?”

Cody tried to twist his ear from my grip, but I held on tight. His eyes rolled back into his head and his cheeks puffed in and out.

“Look at me.”

Cody wrenched his eyes back to focus and looked up into my face.

“If the insurance doesn’t pay for her car, Cody, we’re coming back with the bill.”

The panic in his eyes ebbed as clarity replaced it. “I never touched that bitch’s car.”

“Bubba.”

Bubba took aim at Cody’s head.

“No! Listen, listen, listen. I…I…Karen Nichols, right?”

I held up a hand to Bubba.

“Okay, I, whatever you call it, I stalked her a bit. Just a game. Just a game. But not her car. I never-”

I brought my fist down on his stomach. The air blew out of his lungs and his mouth repeatedly chomped open and shut trying to get some oxygen.

“Okay, Cody. It’s a game. And this is the last inning. Understand this: I hear a woman-any woman-is being stalked in this city? Gets raped in this city? Has a bad fucking hair day in this city, Cody, and I’m just going to assume it’s you who did it. And we’ll come back.”

“And paralyze your dumb fucking ass,” Bubba said.

A burst of air exploded from Cody Falk’s lungs as he got them working again.

“Say you understand, Cody.”

“I understand,” Cody managed.

I looked at Bubba. He shrugged. I nodded.

Bubba unscrewed the silencer from the.22. He placed the gun in one pocket of his trench coat, the suppressor in the other. He walked over to the wall and picked up the tennis racket. He walked back and stood over Cody Falk.

I said, “You need to know how serious we are, Cody.”

“I know! I know!” Shrieking now.

“You think he knows?” I asked Bubba.

“I think he knows,” Bubba said.

A guttural sigh of relief escaped Cody’s lips and he looked up into Bubba’s face with a gratitude that was almost embarrassing to witness.

Bubba smiled and smashed the tennis racket down into Cody Falk’s groin.

Cody sat up like the base of his spine was on fire. The world’s loudest hiccup burst from his mouth, and he wrapped his arms around his stomach and puked in his own lap.

Bubba said, “You can never be too sure, though, can ya?” and tossed the tennis racket over the hood of the car.

I watched Cody struggle with the bolts of pain shooting up his body, seizing his intestines, his chest cavity, his lungs. Sweat poured down his face like a summer shower.

Bubba opened the small wooden door that led out of the garage.

Cody eventually turned his head toward mine and the grimace on his face reminded me of a skeleton’s smile.

I watched his eyes to see if the fear would turn to rage, if the vulnerability would be replaced by that casual superiority of the born predator. I waited to see that look Karen Nichols had seen in the parking lot, the same one I’d glimpsed just before Bubba pulled the.22’s trigger that first time.

I waited some more.

The pain began to subside and the grimace relaxed on Cody Falk’s face; the skin loosened up by his hairline, and his breathing returned to a semiregular rhythm. But the fear stayed. It was dug in deep, and I knew it would be several nights before he slept more than an hour or two, a month at least before he could shut the garage door behind him while he was still inside. For a long, long time, he would, at least once a day, look over his shoulder for Bubba and me. Cody Falk, I was almost certain, would spend the rest of his life in a state of fear.

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the note Karen Nichols had left on his car. I crumpled it into a ball.