“I didn’t do anything.”

“Relax, I don’t like the police either.”

“Why do you think I don’t like the police?”

She patted his knee. “I’ve raised a lot of boys.”

Andy, thinking what might await him at the house: “How many boys do you have?”

“Why don’t I make you lunch?”

The Mercedes pulled up a driveway.

“Nice place,” said Andy.

Juanita turned and looked into his eyes with decades of maternal manipulation. “Would you like a job?”

“What kind of job?”

“Pretty much the same as you’re doing now. Except better pay. And less sloppy. You won’t get caught.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Whatever I say.” She opened her door. “Are you obedient?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me Madre.”

Serge barreled down South Dixie Highway, timing green lights. Ignoring red.

“God, just this one favor…”

Juanita led Andy through the front door.

“Guillermo,” she called from the foyer, hanging her purse on a hook. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.”

They came around the corner into the dining room.

Guillermo’s back was to them, head sagging. The clear part of the Jack Daniel’s bottle now much bigger than the brown.

Juanita turned to Andy. “Don’t get the wrong idea. He just had an accident, in a lot of pain.”

“Not anymore,” said Guillermo, reaching for the sour mash.

They walked around the table into his view.

“Guillermo,” said Juanita. “I’d like you to meet Billy… Billy, Guillermo.”

“Yo.” Guillermo was now pulling straight from the bottle.

“Billy,” said Juanita. “Let me see your gun.”

Moment of truth. The pistol was his only ace. Unarmed, he’d be helpless. A calculation.

He pulled it from his shirt. “Here you go.”

Juanita popped the clip and racked the slide. A bullet ejected into the air and bounced across the wooden floor. She replaced the clip and racked again.

“Glock. Nice one.” She handed it back. “You said you were obedient?”

Andy nodded.

Juanita looked toward Guillermo. “Shoot him.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

Serge got stacked up behind five cars at a traffic light.

“Screw it!”

He cut the corner through a gas station, briefly leaving the ground as he sailed over a curb where there was no exit.

“Shoot him?” asked Andy.

“That’s what I said.”

“Ha!” blurted Guillermo. “The test!”

“What test?”

“Don’t worry,” said Guillermo. “Just to see if you’re loyal.”

“Shoot him,” Juanita repeated.

Andy raised his arm, lowered it, raised it again.

“Go on, shoot me,” said Guillermo, knowing he was her favorite and remembering how she’d rigged his own test in the beginning. “What are you waiting for?”

Juanita stepped up to his side. “What are you waiting for?”

Andy raised his arm again. This is what he’d come for. Why couldn’t he close the deal?

“I’ll make it easy,” said Guillermo, pushing himself up from the table to create a larger, swaying target.

Andy aimed the gun at his face, hand shaking heavily.

“Look,” said Guillermo. “It’s not loaded. So make her happy and pull the trigger.”

Andy pulled the trigger.

Bang.

Guillermo’s eyes went wide. He grabbed his neck, blood running between his fingers.

“Son of a bitch!”

He looked at Juanita. “Madre, you left a round in the chamber. Have to be more careful.”

“I know.”

“Well, it’s just another flesh wound, like I don’t have enough.” He grabbed paper towels. “But this is getting ridiculous.”

“Guillermo,” said Juanita, “when I said ‘I know,’ I meant I know I left a round in the chamber.”

“What? Why?”

“You used to be magnificent. What’s happened to you?”

“But I’ve always done everything you asked.”

She turned to Andy. “Shoot him. This time steady it with two hands.”

Andy stretched out both arms. Guillermo backed up and crashed into a china hutch. Adrenaline. Liquor haze parted.

“Madre,” shouted Guillermo, lighting up with recognition, “that’s Andy! Andy McKenna!”

“Andy?”

“I recognize him from the hotel room with Ramirez.”

Juanita shook her head. “You’re just saying that now to save your hide. If it really was Andy, you would have mentioned it when we first came in.”

“That was because of the whiskey, but now I’m sure!”

“You disappoint me.”

“Just listen,” said Guillermo.

Juanita smiled at her new recruit. “You’re not Andy, are you?”

He shook his head.

She looked back at Guillermo. Out the side of her mouth: “Shoot him.”

Instead, she felt the barrel of a Glock against her temple.

“I’m not Andy. But I am Billy. Billy Sheets, son of the mother you killed. And the father you tried to.“ He raised the gun and cracked her in the side of the head.”Now go around the table and stand next to him.”

A woody station wagon skidded up the driveway of a hacienda south of Miami.

Serge ran through the front door with gun drawn. “Andy? Are you here?…”

He turned the corner into the dining room. “Andy, don’t shoot!”

“Fuck it.” He steadied the gun in two hands like Juanita had instructed.

“Easy with that trigger,” said Serge. “You’re shaking.”

“Good!… You two ready to die?”

“Let’s calm down and talk,” said Serge. “This isn’t the Andy I know. You haven’t shot yet, which means something.”

“Yes, I have.”

Guillermo pointed at his neck.

Serge raised his eyebrows. “Okay, but you haven’t shot twice.”

“Shut up!” Andy stretched his arms to the fullest.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Serge. “I’m coming up behind you.”

“What do you care? I thought you wanted ’em dead almost as much as me.”

“Not by your hand. Mine are already dirty.”

“He’s crazy!” said Guillermo.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Serge. He stepped beside the boy and slowly reached. “Carefully let go of the trigger and I’m going to take the gun, okay?”

Andy stood rigid. As Serge’s hand grabbed the top of the barrel, an index finger uncurled.

The youth let go the rest of the way and fell crying into one of the dining table’s chairs. “I let my family down.”

“Just the opposite.” Serge took aim. “Where’d you leave the Challenger?”

“Up the street.”

“Get in it, go back to the motel and forget everything.”

“But-”

“I’ve got it from here. This isn’t your turf. Now go.”

Andy stood up and went out the front door.

Serge motioned with the gun. “Have a seat.” The pair slid forward and pulled out chairs.

Serge grabbed his own on the other side of the table. They sat facing each other.

“What are you doing?” asked Juanita.

“Waiting for dark.” Serge leaned back, bracing the gun against his stomach. “Now no more talking.”

FOUR A. M.

“Where are we?”

Serge poked the gun into Guillermo’s back. “Keep walking.”

The air atop the Miami skyline was electric with decorative floodlights bathing the sides of banks and offices. A bridge over the bay glowed blue underneath like a car pimped with neon tubes.

A different story down in the dark streets south of the MacArthur Causeway.

Underpass world. Shopping carts, malt liquor bottles. The lobster shift of bums begged at red lights.

Serge kept the pistol aimed as he approached yet another construction site and pushed down a loose stretch of chain-link fence that had previously been vandalized by graffiti artists. He waved them through, then picked up the gym bag at his feet and followed.

“What’s in the bag?” asked Guillermo.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”