“Same thing we are. Watching.”

Down on the beach, lifeguards stood with hands on hips as Serge ran in wild figure eights in the sand.

“Can’t catch me!” yelled Serge, whizzing by. “Try to catch me! Can’t catch me!…” He ran up to the guards. “Okay, you win.” He placed an index finger under his right eye and pulled the skin down. “Psych!” Then off in another figure eight. “Can’t catch me!…”

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

Another meeting in the Spanish stucco house. Another spread of paperwork across the cedar table.

“They all look too solid,” said Hector. “I don’t see any weaknesses.”

“Because there are none,” said Luis. “Every last man an upstanding citizen.”

“Thought you said we had something very promising.”

“We do-”

“I don’t understand,” interrupted Guillermo. “Cash Cutlass has a perfect delivery record. Why do we need to switch pilots?”

The brothers bristled at the silence-rule violation. Juanita intervened because Guillermo was her favorite.

“It’s been six months,” she explained.

Guillermo’s face said he still didn’t get it.

“There’s an expression in the stock market,” Juanita continued. “ ‘Everybody who makes money always sells just a little bit too soon.’ In our business, if you want to stay in business, you sever relationships while everything’s still smooth and no chance for the feds to turn someone. Six months, no exceptions. The principle has served the family well.”

Guillermo began to nod.

“Can we?” Luis snapped at his sister.

A glare in return.

“You were saying?” asked Hector.

“This one.” Luis passed a stapled packet to his brother.

“If not a weakness, then what?”

Luis told him.

“Interesting.” Hector rubbed a finger over an eyebrow. “Moral dilemma. I like it.”

“Just has to be played differently.”

Hector handed the pages across the table. “Guillermo, you’re chatty today. Think you can talk him into it?”

THE PRESENT

Perry, Florida. Between everything and nowhere.

The town of six-thousand-and-falling sits inland, at the state’s armpit, as the Panhandle swings down into the peninsula. It’s a long drive from any direction, Tallahassee, Tampa, Ocala, Jacksonville.

Maps show other small towns in surrounding counties, but they’re not really there. The region’s main industry is lapsed cellular reception.

Most people’s experience of Perry is waiting at traffic lights on the way to somewhere else, not seeing a soul, an evacuated dead zone giving little reason to stop.

The perfect place to hide out.

Guillermo and his crew had taken a strategically convoluted route out of Panama City Beach. Up to Blountstown, down through Port St. Joe and across Ochlockonee Bay to a prearranged drop spot in Panacea, where a Miami associate had been dispatched to swap their rental for an Oldsmobile Delta 88, which continued east and was now the only car in the parking lot of the Thunderbird Motel.

Rooms had dark wood paneling and anti-skid daisy stickers in the shower.

They had been instructed not to set a toe outside until getting an all-clear from the home office. Standard procedure, like the other times: Stock up on cigarettes, decline maid service, order pizza. The guys sat on dingy, coarse bedspreads, playing cards and passing a bottle of Boone’s Farm. Miguel slapped the side of the room’s original color TV, whose color was now raw sienna.

Guillermo hushed the others for a crucial phone call.

“… Madre, it’s me. Good news. We concluded our business meeting. It’s finally over.”

“No, it isn’t,” said the voice on the other end.

“What do you mean?”

“Guillermo, I’m very disappointed in you.”

“I don’t understand.”

Juanita stood in her south Florida living room, watching CNN with the sound off. “They just released the names. None of them is our friend.”

“That’s not possible. I was thorough.”

“Sure you had the right room?”

“Definitely. Got the number from a kid back at his dorm.”

“And you just took his word for it?”

“No, I did like you taught-double-checked by calling the front desk from the airport, then confirmed again when we got into town.”

“What a mess,” said Juanita. “It’s all over the news.”

“It isn’t the first time our work has been on TV.”

“Guillermo, Guillermo…”-he could picture her shaking her head over the phone-“… We always must take into account public relations. You brought me heat without a fire.”

“I’m so sorry, Madre. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“I haven’t any doubt,” said Juanita. “No matter what I say to you about business, you will always be my favorite.”

“Madre, I just need a little time to find out where he is.”

“I know.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

“No, I mean I know where he is.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

DAYTONA BEACH

We should take up surfing,” said Edna.

“But we don’t know how,” said Edith.

“That’s why it’s called ‘taking it up.’” She looked down a hundred feet at a handful of surfers in black wet suits trying to milk meager East Coast waves breaking off the Daytona Beach Pier. “It looks easy.”

The G-Unit continued out over the Atlantic Ocean in a pair of ski-lift-style gondolas that chugged slowly over the length of the pier and headed back to shore.

“Doesn’t this thing go any faster?” said Eunice.

“It’s a gondola,” said Ethel.

“This ride bites.”

As the cable cranked down to the docking station, a sudden, distant scream.

“What was that?” said Eunice.

“Up there.” Ethel pointed. “Those kids.”

“Now that’s a ride!”

Moments later, the G-Unit members each had twenty-five dollars in hand.

The ride’s operator collected money and pointed at a stack of plastic bowls. “Put all your personal possessions in those.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want anything flying off.”

Ethel and Edna went first.

“Wheeeeeeeeee!…”

The remaining gals shielded their eyes, squinting up into the bright sky as an open-air ball sailed up until it was a tiny dot. It reached the ends of its bungee cords and jerked back down. Then up again, down, bouncing over and over with decreasing range until it ran out of steam.

The ride’s operator stepped onto the platform and raised the padded safety bars. The women climbed down.

“How was it?”

“Mind-fucker!” said Ethel.

The others’ turn on the Rocket Launch. The operator locked the safety bars over Eunice and Edith. “Sure you put everything in the plastic bowls?”

They nodded.

He went back to his control station. “Ready?”

“Hurry up before we croak.” The catapult released. “Wheeeeeeeeee!…”

At the top of the arc, Eunice covered her mouth and looked up at a jettisoned piece of space debris heading for orbit.

“What was that?” asked Edith.

“My dentures.”

Edith looked at the safety bar and into the tiny camera filming them. “I’m definitely buying this video.”

Down below, Coleman led the students across the beach. “… I once bought a modified Frisbee from a head shop that had a secret pot chamber in the middle. It was called Catch a Buzz…”

One of the kids looked up at faint screams. “Hey, check out those old ladies.”

They continued through the sand. A rescue team from Ocean Cops ran by with paramedic bags. They knelt and rendered aid to an unconscious young coed from Vanderbilt with a bloody forehead wound where dentures were embedded.

Johnny Vegas sat in the background, tears trickling down his cheek.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

“What do you mean a preexisting condition!”