Now, after ruminating for hours on how he might broach the subject, Earle had come to a conclusion. He placed the last bottles of beer in the cooler, collapsed the box, then made his way tentatively to where Jimmy was sitting. He laid his fists on the bar and said: ‘Anything wrong, Mr. Jewel?’

Jimmy emerged from his reverie, looking slightly shocked.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, “Anything wrong, Mr. Jewel?”’

Jimmy smiled. In all of the years that he had known him, Earle had probably asked no more than two or three questions of a remotely personal nature. Now here he was, his face filled with concern, and only minutes after indicating that he’d lay down his life for his employer. If things went any further, they’d be booking a church for the wedding and moving to Ogunquit, or Hallowell, or somewhere else with too many rainbow flags hanging from the windows.

‘Thank you for asking, Earle. Everything is fine. I’m just mulling over how to handle a certain matter. When I’ve figured it out, though, I may ask for your help.’

Earle looked relieved. He’d already come as close as he had ever done to expressing his affection for Mr. Jewel, and he wasn’t sure that he could cope with any further intimacy. He lumbered away to add the crushed box to the recycling pile, leaving Jimmy alone. Jimmy took a series of photographs from beneath the newspaper, and examined once again the images of the jeweled seals. The gems alone were worth a fortune, but combined with the artifacts themselves, well, Jimmy had no concept of how much the right person might pay for such an item.

Now Jimmy knew that Tobias and his buddies were not smuggling drugs; they were smuggling antiquities. Jimmy wondered what else in a similar vein they might have in their possession. He had spent a day trying to work out the angles, figuring out a way that he could profit from what he had learned, and at the same time expand his knowledge. His only regret was that Rojas was involved. Rojas had let slip that he had begun trying to sell on some of the gems and gold, promising Jimmy a cut of twenty percent as a finder’s fee, as though Jimmy were just some rube to be palmed off with a chump’s cut. Rojas couldn’t see the big picture. The trouble was, neither could Jimmy, but unlike him, Rojas wasn’t prepared to wait until it was revealed.

Jimmy twisted the saucer with his finger, causing the cold coffee in the cup to ripple slightly. He wasn’t hurting for money, but he could always do with more. The downturn in the economy, and the hiatus in the development of the waterfront, meant that he had cash tied up in buildings that were depreciating with every passing day. The market would bounce back – it always did – but Jimmy wasn’t getting any younger. He didn’t want it to bounce back just in time to provide him with a bigger headstone.

He shivered. There was an unseasonably cool breeze coming in off the water, and Jimmy was highly susceptible to cold. Even in the height of summer he wore a jacket. He had always been that way, ever since he was a little kid. There just wasn’t enough meat on his bones to keep him warm.

‘Hey, Earle!’ he called. ‘Close the goddamn door.’

There was no reply. Jimmy swore. He walked through the office and past the storeroom to where a door opened on to the bar’s small parking lot. He stepped outside. There was no sign of Earle. Jimmy called his name again, suddenly uneasy.

His foot slipped as he stepped into the lot. He looked down and saw the dark, spreading stain. To his left was Earle’s truck. The blood was coming from beneath it. Jimmy squatted so that he could see under the truck, and looked into Earle’s dead eyes. The big man was lying on his belly on the far side of the vehicle between the passenger door and the garbage cans by the wall, his mouth open, his face frozen in a final grimace of pain.

Jimmy stood, and felt the gun nudge his skull, like death’s first tentative touch.

‘Inside,’ said a voice, and Jimmy couldn’t hide his surprise at the sound of it, but he did as he was told. He glanced at the truck as he rose, and caught a glimpse of a masked figure reflected in the window. Then the blows rained down on him for having the temerity to look. Kicks followed, driving him along the hallway and into the storeroom. The assault ceased as Jimmy crawled over to the liquor shelves, looking for some kind of purchase so he could raise himself. He could taste blood in his mouth, and he had trouble seeing out of his left eye. He tried to speak, but the words came out as hoarse whispers. Still, it was clear that he was begging: for time to recover, for the blows to stop.

For more life.

One of the kicks had broken a rib, and he could feel it grinding as he moved. He slumped against the shelves, drawing ragged breaths. He raised his right hand in a placatory gesture.

‘You killed a man for a hundred and fifty dollars and change,’ said Jimmy. ‘You hear me?’

‘No, I killed him for much more than that.’

And Jimmy knew for sure that this wasn’t about the money in the safe. It was about Rojas, and the seal, and Jimmy Jewel understood that he was about to die as the black mouth of the suppressor gaped like the void into which Jimmy would soon pass.

He gave away everything after the first shot, but his interrogator had fired two more anyway, just to be sure that he wasn’t holding anything back.

‘No more,’ said Jimmy, ‘no more,’ his wounds bleeding onto the floor, and it was both a plea and an admission, a rejection of further pain and an acceptance that all was about to come to an end.

His interrogator nodded.

‘Oh my God,’ whispered Jimmy, ‘I am heartily sorry-’

The final bullet came. He did not hear it, but only felt the mercy of it.

It would be days before his body, and that of Earle, were found. Summer rains came that night and washed away Earle’s blood, sending it flowing across the sloped surface of the lot, through the wooden pilings that supported the old pier, and into the sea, salt to salt. Earle’s truck was left at the Maine Mall, and when it was still there after two days mall security took an interest, and subsequently the police arrived, for by then it was clear that Jimmy Jewel had fallen off the radar. Calls were going unanswered, and beer could not be delivered to the Sailmaker, and the drunks who worshipped there missed its cloisters.

Jimmy was discovered in the storeroom. He had been shot through both feet, and one knee, by which point he had presumably told all that he knew, and therefore the fourth shot had taken him through the heart. Earle lay at Jimmy’s ruined feet, like a faithful hound dispatched to keep its master company in the afterlife. It was only later that someone noticed the correspondence of dates: Earle and Jimmy had died on June 2nd, ten years to the day since Sally Cleaver had breathed her last at the back of the Blue Moon.

And old men shrugged, and said that they were not surprised.