'You're here to do business?' the man asked.

'I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.'

'Cocaine. Do you want to score, or don't you?'

Entrapment, Billy Joe thought. If this guy was an investigator, he'd blown his case right there. 'What makes you think I-?'

'Look, don't waste my time. The regular delivery man had to' leave town for his health, couldn't stand the competition, if you get my meaning. I've got this route now, and plenty of other stops to make. Four minutes more, and I'm leaving. Make up your mind.'

Billy Joe suddenly realized that the Ford had approached the parking lot from the opposite direction that he himself had used. This guy – whoever he was – couldn't possibly have been tailing him.

Billy Joe realized something else, that he was sweating more profusely and shaking so bad his teeth were clicking together.

'Okay, I've made up my mind.' Barely controlling his trembling hands, he awkwardly opened his door and stepped out, legs wobbly. 'Let's do business. Same price as the other guy charged?'

The stranger unlocked the trunk of the Ford. 'No. The Feds have been making too much trouble, intercepting too many shipments. I've got extra expenses.'

Billy Joe felt too desperate to object.

'But this one time only, I'm being generous, adding more to each package. Sort of a good-will gesture, a way of introducing myself to my customers.'

'Hey, fair enough!'

Rubbing his hands together, Billy Joe followed the man to the trunk of the car and peered eagerly inside. What he saw was a bulging plastic garbage bag that the stranger opened, revealing white powder. 'What the-? What kind of way is that to-?'

A sharp pungent odor reached his nostrils. The trunk smelled like a…? Laundry. That was it. A laundry"! Why would-?

'All for you, Billy Joe.'

'Hey, how come you know my name?'

The stranger ignored the question. 'Yes, we brought all of this for you.'

'We?'

Car doors banged open. Three men who'd been crouching out of sight in the Ford rushed toward the trunk, grabbed Billy Joe – one on each side and one behind him – bent him over, and shoved his head toward the powder in the plastic bag.

Billy Joe strained to shove back, squirming, twisting, frantic, but even years of hefting a sledgehammer didn't give him the strength to resist the determined men.

'All for you, Billy Joe.'

He struggled with greater desperation, but the powerful hands kept pressing him downward. As his head came closer to the white powder, the strong pungent smell became overwhelming, making him gag. He recognized what it was now. Ammonia. Powdered bleach.

'No! Jesus! Stop! I-!'

His words were smothered as his face was thrust against the powder. It smeared his cheeks. It caked his lips.

Then his face was rammed beneath the powder. It filled his ears. It plugged his nose. He fought to hold his breath, but as the three men held him down while the fourth man twisted the mouth of the plastic bag around his neck, Billy Joe finally inhaled reflexively and felt the stinging powder surge up his nostrils, spew down his throat, and cram his lungs. It burned! My God, how it burned!

The last thing he heard in a panic before he lost consciousness was, 'We know it's not the powder you're used to, but how do you like it, Billy Joe? You let three hundred people die from ammonia. It's time you got a whiff of it yourself.'

SIXTEEN

The eastern bank of the Mississippi. Ten miles north of Memphis.

In the bedroom of his country mansion, Harrison Page huffed and puffed but finally admitted that his frustrating efforts were pointless. The irony of the word wasn't lost on him. Pointless. It exactly described his penis. Out of breath, giving up, he rolled off the woman – his affair with whom had caused his wife to divorce him – and lay on his back, staring bleakly at the dark ceiling.

'Sweetie, that's okay,' the woman, Jennifer, said. 'You don't need to feel your manhood's threatened. You're tired is all. You're under stress.'

'Yeah, under stress,' Page said.

'We'll try again later, sweetie.'

Page had only recently admitted to himself how much her shrill voice annoyed him. 'I don't think so. I've got a headache.'

'Take one of my sleeping pills.'

'No.' Page stood, put on his pajamas, and walked toward a window, parting its drapes, brooding, oblivious to the moonlight glinting off the river.

'Then maybe a drink would help, sweetie.'

If she doesn't stop calling me that, Page thought. 'No,' he said irritated. 'I've got a meeting with my lawyers before I testify at the hearing this morning. I have to be alert.'

'Just doing my best to be helpful, sweetie.'

He spun, trying to control his temper. The moonlight through the parted drapes revealed her naked body, her dark mound between her legs, her lush hips, slender waist, and ripe breasts. Overripe, Page bitterly thought. They're like melons so swollen they're about to go rotten. And her skin, when he stroked it, had lately begun to make him cringe, because beneath its smooth once-arousing softness was a further softness, like jelly, like… fat, Page decided. The way she lies around all day, watching soap operas, eating chocolates, she'll soon be as fat as…

Although he stifled the angry thought, another thought insisted. How could I have been such a fool? I'm fifty-five. She's twenty-three. If I'd kept my dick in my pants where it belonged… The first time, after we screwed, when she started calling me sweetie, I should have realized what a mistake I was making. We don't have anything in common. She's incapable of an intelligent conversation. Why didn't I stop right then, give her a bonus, transfer her to another office, and thank God I didn't ruin my life?

But the fact was, Page dismally admitted, he'd let his dick control his brain. He had ruined his life, and now he didn't know how to salvage it. 'I'm going downstairs. I've got some testimony to prepare before I walk into that hearing.'

'Whatever, sweetie. Go with the flow, I always say. Just remember, I'll be waiting.'

Yes, Page thought, subduing a cringe. Isn't that the hell of it? You'll be waiting.

He put on slippers and left the bedroom, shuffling along a corridor, gripping the curved bannister of a marble staircase, unsteadily descending, relieved to be out of her presence. Her excessive perfume – like the smell of flowers at a funeral – had been making him sick.

Except for Jennifer and himself, the mansion was deserted. He'd sent the butler, cook, and maid away, lest they overhear conversations that might incriminate him if the servants couldn't keep their mouths shut when the investigators questioned them. Footsteps echoing, he felt the emptiness around and within him as he crossed a murky vestibule, entered his study, and turned on the lights. There he hesitated, chest heaving, staring at a stack of documents on his desk, the possible questions that his lawyers had anticipated he'd be asked at the hearing and the numerous calculated responses he would have to know by heart.

Weary, he rounded the desk, slumped in his chair, and began reviewing the depressing documents. If only his ex-wife, Patricia, were here, he'd be able to talk with her, to sort out the problem and try to solve it. She'd always helped him that way, listening sympathetically, rubbing his taut shoulders, offering prudent advice. But then he wouldn't have this problem if Patricia were here, because they wouldn't be divorced and she wouldn't have nearly bankrupted him in the settlement and he wouldn't have been distracted from managing the railroad, let alone have been forced to cut maintenance costs so he could squeeze out more profits to make up for the millions he'd been forced to pay his ex-wife. Three hundred people dead. Tens of thousands of acres of forest and pasture turned into a wasteland. An entire county's water supply poisoned. All because I thought with my dick instead of my head.