Jan leaned across the front seat and reached under it. She pulled out the gun. “Seriously, you should take it.” It wasn’t Dwayne she was worried about. But if things went south in that basement, it was best that Dwayne took care of them before someone came charging out looking for her. And she’d rarely handled guns. At least Dwayne knew how to point and shoot.

Dwayne said, “You need to lighten up.” He put both feet on the ground, slammed the door shut, and said through the open window, “Think about where we’re going to go to celebrate. I am going to get fucking wasted.”

As Dwayne walked down the left side of the house, Jan shifted over behind the wheel, and kept the gun on the seat next to her.

• • •

“So let me ask you this,” Banura said to Oscar Fine. “I know you don’t give a flying fuck about the diamonds, since they’re worth shit, so I’m guessing, if you don’t mind my saying, that this has something to do with that.”

Banura pointed to the end of Oscar Fine’s left arm.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

“So these two, these are the people who did this to you.”

“One of them,” he said. “The woman. You described her perfectly.”

Banura nodded. “That must have hurt like a son of a bitch.”

Oscar Fine nodded. He didn’t like to talk about it all that much.

“I seen a lot of that kind of thing, where I come from. It’s a little more common there than it is here.”

“I can imagine. I’ve seen your photos.”

Banura nodded. “I was eleven.”

“To do something like that, at eleven, it must stay with you,” Oscar Fine said.

Banura appeared thoughtful. “Yes.” It was difficult to discuss such things with a man who had had his hand chopped off.

There was a loud rapping on the door above them. Oscar Fine took a position around the corner from the bottom of the stairs while Banura went up to answer it. Oscar Fine took his gun from inside his jacket and held it firmly in his right hand.

Oscar Fine listened as Banura moved the bar out of position and opened the door.

“Hey,” Banura said.

“How’s it going,” said Dwayne.

“Raise your arms, please.” Dwayne did as he was told, allowing Banura to pat him down.

“You can trust me,” Dwayne said. “You said not to carry, I don’t carry.”

“Where is your friend?” Banura asked.

“She’s just waiting for me in the truck,” he said. “I didn’t come too soon or nothin’, did I? You got the money?”

“Everything is all set to go,” Banura said, closing the door and putting the bar back in position. “You brought the same number of diamonds back, I hope?”

“Fuck yeah.” Dwayne laughed. “That’d be a pretty dickish thing to do, get a generous offer from you and then come back with half the goods.”

Banura chuckled along with him as they came down the stairs. As Dwayne entered the room, he glanced right, saw Oscar Fine standing there, left arm tucked into his pocket, right arm extended, pointing the gun directly at his head.

“Hey, whoa, the fuck is this?” Dwayne said. To Banura, he said, “Okay, you said you might have a whatchamacallit, an associate, here, that’s cool, but you got no call to threaten me.”

“Do you remember me?” Oscar Fine asked.

“Huh? You his banker or bodyguard or what? I’m not looking for any trouble. I’m just here to pick up what’s owed me.”

Banura stood at the bottom of the stairs, blocking Dwayne’s way should he decide to bolt.

“I asked, do you remember me?” Oscar Fine said.

“I got no idea who the fuck you are,” Dwayne said.

The man with the gun took his left arm out of his pocket. Dwayne looked down, maybe expecting to see another weapon, then noticed the missing hand.

He paled instantly. A moment later, the crotch of his jeans darkened.

“Aw, shit, don’t piss on my floor, man,” said Banura, although he had to know that a puddle of urine on his basement floor was going to be the least of his worries in a few minutes.

“I take that to mean that you do remember me,” Oscar Fine said, pointing the gun below Dwayne’s waist.

“Yes,” Dwayne said.

“Tell me your name.”

“Dwayne. Dwayne Osterhaus.”

“Well, Dwayne Osterhaus, it’s very nice to meet up with you at last. Although we didn’t have a real face-to-face, I believe you were the driver.”

“You shoulda had a combination or something,” Dwayne said. “Then, you know, things would have been different. Wouldn’t have had to, you know, with the hand.”

“It was difficult to communicate a combination to you once you’d shot me with the dart,” he said.

“I’m really sorry, man, honest to God,” Dwayne said. “And I know you kind of passed out and everything, but you understand, I wasn’t the one who actually did it, you know that, right?”

“I remember who did it,” Oscar Fine said. “Where is she?”

Dwayne hesitated.

Oscar Fine said, “Please, Dwayne, you must see where this is going. It’s in your interest to be cooperative. Here, let me show you something.” He held up his left arm. The shirt cuff was tucked around the stump, and Oscar Fine slipped it up his arm with the index finger looped through the trigger of his gun.

“No, that’s okay,” Dwayne said.

“Not at all, my pleasure,” Oscar Fine said. He pulled away the fabric and displayed the ragged, but healed, end of his arm.

“Jesus,” Dwayne said.

“He can’t help you,” Oscar Fine said. Satisfied that Dwayne had had a good look, he tucked his shirtsleeve back around the wound. He asked, “Are you left- or right-handed?”

The spot on Dwayne’s pants broadened. Oscar Fine repeated the question.

Dwayne swallowed. “Right.”

“Then I shall take your left. No sense making this any more difficult than it needs to be. And I trust Banura here has something that will allow me to make a cleaner cut than the one I was left with.”

Sweat droplets were forming on Dwayne’s forehead. “You don’t need to do anything like that. If you let me go, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s in the truck.”

“Why didn’t she come in with you?”

“She’s nervous,” Dwayne said.

“And why would that be?”

“She thinks Mr. Banura here was offering us too much money. She got suspicious. So she took some of the diamonds to someone else to look at, and they said they’re worthless.”

Oscar Fine nodded. “But yet you’re here.”

Dwayne appeared on the verge of tears. “I took Mr. Banura here at his word.”

“So it’s ‘Mister’ now,” Banura said. “No more ‘Banny Boy.’”

“Hey,” Dwayne said, smiling nervously. “No disrespect.”

“So she thought something was wrong,” Oscar Fine said. “Does she suspect I’m here?”

“She never said that. She’s just spooked, is all.” Dwayne brightened, wiped the tears from his eyes. “I got an idea. You don’t take my hand off, you let me walk away from this, and I’ll go out to the truck, and I’ll tell her there’s a problem, that some of the money, it’s in some weird currency, like euros or Canadian, and she needs to help me count it, and I’ll get her in here, and then you can let me go. Because, swear to God, I never wanted her to cut your hand off. I was all, hey, let’s go someplace, get some stronger tools. What we brought wasn’t good enough, to cut through the chain? You know what I’m saying? I’d drive the limo somewhere where we could take some time, do it right, so you wouldn’t get hurt. But she got all kind of caught up in the moment and went crazy, but you need to know, I was totally opposed to that shit.”

Oscar Fine nodded, as though considering the proposal.

“So you bring her to me, and then I let you go.”

Dwayne nodded furiously, offered up a nervous smile. “Yeah, that’s right. That’s the deal. I wanna help you out here.”

“I have some questions,” Oscar Fine said.

“Oh yeah, sure, no problem.”

In fact, Oscar Fine had quite a few. About where the two of them had been the last six years. About who Constance Tattinger had become. Where she’d been living, and with whom. Dwayne tried to be as obliging as possible. He told Oscar Fine everything he knew.