'Hey, Eugene,' said Quinn as he reached him, not slowing down, and Franklin saw the automatic come up from beneath the waistband of Quinn's jeans.

Franklin stepped back from the doorway as Quinn swung the barrel of the gun viciously, its shape a blur cutting through the fluorescent glare of the hall. The gun connected at Franklin's temple, and the room spun instantly as he stumbled back.

Franklin's feet were gone beneath him. He began to fall, and as he fell through the dimming light the gun streaked toward him, and this time he barely felt the blow. At the end, he saw his partner's face, ugly and angry and afraid, and Franklin loved him then. Falling into a soft bed of night, Franklin felt only relief.

Quinn stood in the center of Eugene Franklin's living room, the automatic held loosely in his hand.

Franklin sat on the couch, his head tilted back, holding a damp towel tight to his temple. The towel was pink where the blood of a deep gash had seeped through. Quinn had placed a yellow legal pad on the coffee table before him and set a pen on top of the pad.

'How'd you turn, Gene?'

'How?' repeated Franklin.

'Delgado drew you in.'

'Yeah. Used to see him down at Erika's all the time. In there every night, drinkin', talkin' mad shit, then goin' home alone. Delgado, he was like me. Neither one of us had many friends or was gettin' any play. So we got to talkin,' Adonis and me. I knew he was all bad; everyone knew. But I talked to him anyway.'

'What'd you talk about?'

'This and that, you know. Went from one thing to the other, until it came to this other thing. Delgado was tellin' me how a man with some money in his pocket didn't have to worry about finding women, they'd find him. How you could kick it with anyone out there if the woman had the idea you were holdin' bank. I knew his mouth was overloadin' his asshole, man, but with the alcohol runnin' through me and shit-'

'How'd it go to the next level?'

'He started talkin' about Cherokee Coleman's operation, down off Florida. How Cherokee wasn't never gonna see no time, how no one could touch his ass 'cause he was too smart. That the operation would keep goin' on as long as there was a market for drugs, and fuck all those junkies, anyway, they weren't nothin' but the low end of Darwin's theory. And then he told me how he was making a little extra on the side, how he figured out that if Cherokee was gonna be all that and no one was gonna do a goddamn thing about it, why didn't he, Adonis, deserve to get some, too.

'It wasn't no big deal, he said. A load came in twice a month to Coleman's, and twice a month Delgado cruised the perimeter of the area during drop-off day and made sure there wasn't anything goin' on out there in the way of interference, local or federal law. Never even got out of his car. He said it wasn't any more complicated than that.'

'Why tell you? Why did he need to cut you in?'

"Cause he couldn't always be there. And because they had a problem that Delgado couldn't or didn't want to handle on his own. Course, I didn't know what that problem was when I got in.'

'Chris Wilson.'

Franklin's eyes moved to the floor. 'That's right. His sister had got hooked up with Ricky Kane. He followed Kane's trail the same way y'all did, and it took him to Coleman's. On one of those trips, Kane went into the office with Sondra Wilson, and when he came out, he was alone. Sondra was Coleman's woman, just like that, and it pushed Wilson way over the edge.'

'You were in at this point?'

'Right about then, yeah. It was easy, just like Delgado said; wasn't nothin' but drivin' around the block a couple of times, twice a month. I didn't see anything all that wrong with it at the time.'

'Bullshit'

'Just trying to explain it to you, how it was.'

'Bullshit,' said Quinn, a catch in his voice. 'What happened next?'

'Wilson was surveilling now in his street clothes, by the Junkyard and on the corners. I guess that's when he got those pictures of me. He knew he couldn't go up against Coleman's army himself, and he didn't know who to trust anymore inside the department. But by now he was all fucked up over his sister, and he was gettin' out of control. He threatened Delgado outside of Erika's one night. He threatened me.'

'You and Delgado went to Coleman.'

'Delgado did. They decided to get rid of Chris Wilson. For Delgado, it was easy. By then I'd found out he'd killed before for Coleman. It didn't matter what I knew at that point; I was damn near one of them. They wanted me all the way in, locked in for real.'

'They wanted you to kill Wilson.'

'That's right.' Franklin dropped the towel at his feet. A drop of blood burst from his cut and trickled down his cheek.

'They had Kane call Wilson out?'

Franklin nodded. 'Kane told Wilson he'd gotten his sister back. To meet him on D Street at a certain time. They knew Wilson would lose it when he got there and found Kane alone. I drove us up on the scene. You know what happened next.'

'You tell me, Eugene. You tell me what happened next.'

'I never shot a man. Never even shot at one, Terry. I had my gun out and I had it pointed at him, but-'

'Why didn't you shoot him, Eugene?'

'Because you shot him first.'

Quinn looked down at the gun in his hand. 'You knew I would.'

'No, I didn't know. But I knew you were more capable of it than I was. And I knew

'What?'

'I knew you. I knew what you'd see when you saw Chris Wilson holding a gun on Ricky Kane.'

Quinn raised the gun to his hip, pointing it at Franklin on the couch. Franklin's lip trembled, and his eyes filled with tears.

'You won't do it, Terry. There's a part of me that wishes you would. But you won't.'

'You're right,' said Quinn, and he moved the muzzle of the Glock, pointing it at the pad on the table. 'Write it out. All of it, Gene. Go ahead. I'm going to disgrace you to your family, and your fellow cops, and to all the folks you came up with over in Northeast. They're all gonna know what a lowlife you are. And I'm gonna make good and goddamn sure your fellow inmates know you used to wear the uniform when they haul your ass to jail.'

'I'm sorry, man.'

'Fuck you, Eugene. Fuck your apologies, too. Write it down.'

Franklin wrote a full confession out on the yellow pad, signed and dated the bottom of the last page, and dropped the pen when he was done.

'I'd like to talk to my father before this makes the news,' said Franklin. 'When are you going to turn this in?'

'After we get the girl home.'

'She's not in D.C.'

'I know it,' said Quinn. 'Me and Strange, we were out there today. We followed those rednecks out to their property, where they're keeping her.'

Franklin dabbed at the cut on his temple. The bleeding had stopped, and he lowered the towel. 'I'm going to be there with Delgado tomorrow night.'

'Why?'

'We're dropping off money and bringing back a load of drugs.'

'Thought you never had to do anything but drive around the block.'

'We met with Coleman earlier,' said Franklin. 'Those rednecks you followed, the Boones: the short one's named Ray, and his father's name is Earl. They killed a couple of Colombian mules, out at that property. Coleman wants us to kill the Boones, to make himself right with the Colombians.'

'What about the girl?'

'They didn't mention the girl, maybe because they knew I wouldn't like what they had to say. Delgado used to hit it himself, and he still has her on his mind. He starts killin', though, I don't see him stopping until everyone's put to sleep.'

'And you'll do what?'

'I can't shoot anybody, Terry. I already told you-'

'This is going down tomorrow night?'

'I'm meeting Delgado at eight… That would put us out there near nine o'clock. They're going to pick us up somewhere else, then drive us back to the place.'