And I really don't want them on the doors if the cops are still out looking for a white FedEx minivan.

Who knows what that retard Michael told them?

Then, after this, I'll take Germantown home and finish the rest tomorrow.

Then he did pull over, but only to hit the overhead light and reread the waybill on the FedEx envelope. It had:

JOSSIAH MIFFIN

In his research at CrimeFreePhilly.com, Will Curtis had learned that originally it had been Miffin's girlfriend who'd turned in the thirty-year-old to the police. Miffin had been babysitting her eleven-year-old daughter at her house when she had left work early to surprise him.

And surprise him she had.

She walked into the living room carrying a store-bought angel food cake in a plastic to-go bag and a long slicing knife.

She found the two of them on the sofa.

He was teaching the girl how to masturbate.

The daughter, after quickly pulling on her pants, had loudly defended Miffin, declaring it all a simple misunderstanding. Using the vernacular of the street, she explained that Miffin had been teaching her self-stimulation only because he'd told her that it was very wrong for him to continue orally stimulating her with his tongue.

Her mother had responded to that information by also drawing from the street: She lunged for Miffin and tried cutting out his tongue with the angel food knife.

She failed, but did manage to slash a nasty gash on his left cheek in the shape of, oddly, a J.

After his arrest, Jossiah Miffin had been found guilty of indecent assault and corruption of a minor. (The mother claimed it had been self-defense that had led to the cheek cut.) Miffin was sentenced to probation, which included his getting and keeping a job, obtaining intense sex-offender treatments, and maintaining absolutely no unsupervised contact with minors.

Having made no effort whatsoever to meet even one of the requirements of his probation, Miffin's Wanted sheet hit the Megan's Law list.

And it hit Will Curtis's Law of Talion pervert list. On Ontario Street, just shy of Nineteenth Street and the SEPTA train tracks, Will Curtis slowed and started looking for 1822. It was damn difficult on the dark street. Here, too, there were huge gaps where row houses had once stood. And he had to start with a known address and try to count from there to 1822, guessing how many ghost addresses there were between existing houses.

And this easily could turn out like that other address-nonexistent.

He was amazed that his decent middle-class house was only a couple miles from this run-down ruin of a neighborhood. The houses were literally falling apart. And all the cars here were older models, some very much older, including the carcasses of two that clearly had been wrecked and abandoned long before.

As the minivan rolled down the street, its headlights picked up an occasional address-and, twice, a group of young boys walking down the broken sidewalk, trying to stay in the shadows.

They look like they're up to no good.

He finally saw 1818 in the headlight beam, counted the gap next to that house as 1820, and decided the next ratty row house had to be 1822.

He stopped the minivan at what he presumed was 1824, parked, grabbed the envelope, peeled off his denim jacket, and got out.

As he looked at the darkened house-he could not see one light on inside-he now worried that this address may be deserted.

One step away from falling down and becoming a gap, too.

But when he knocked on the old wooden door's glass pane, which was covered on the inside by a dusty curtain, a dog barked loudly from deep inside the house.

He faintly heard footsteps inside, then the lone bulb of the porch light came on.

Bony fingers pulled aside the dusty curtain, and an elderly black woman with a deeply wrinkled face and thinning gray hair peered out at him. She looked half asleep, and judging by her expression, she was not expecting to find a white man in a FedEx uniform on her porch.

"Can I help you?" she squeaked out.

"Sorry to bother you so late, ma'am. It's my last delivery." He held up the envelope. "Got a special delivery from the U.S. Treasury for a Jossiah Miffin at this address."

"A what?"

"It's an envelope from the Treasury Department in Washington. Been delivering these all day. I'm guessing they're some kind of refund check."

"Check?" she repeated, taking a long moment to consider that. "Just leave it. At the door be good."

"Sorry, ma'am. Can't do that. Need for this"-he glanced at the bill of lading and pretended to read it-"Jossiah Miffin to personally sign for it. He live here?"

She nodded. "He my grandson. I sent him to the drugstore in my car. You can wait if you want."

Will Curtis felt his stomach start to knot up again.

He looked at the woman, nodded, and said, "I'm going to wait in the van."

"Suit yourself," she said, and the dusty curtain fell closed. In the fifteen minutes that Will Curtis had sat in the minivan, hoping not to experience another unfortunate personal accident, he'd again seen the group of three boys who'd been walking down the sidewalk earlier.

They simply have nothing better to do.

Or choose not to find something better to do.

No wonder they get in such trouble. You look long enough for trouble, you're damn sure going to find it.

There was still a knot in his stomach. And he still felt terribly weak and drained. The dizziness had not completely gone away.

He pulled the Glock out from under his shirt and laid it on his lap, then realized he hadn't been keeping track of how many rounds he'd fired.

More important, how many I have left.

All I know for sure is that there's one round chambered.

He pushed the magazine release on the side of the weapon and the magazine dropped out of the grip. Its capacity was ten rounds.

He held the magazine up to the overhead light. Numbered holes up its back side allowed for a visual count of the bullets, but in the poor lighting he had trouble seeing exactly how many were there.

With some effort, he started thumbing the rounds out the top of the magazine and into his lap. He counted a total of five left.

Six, including the one in the throat.

He reloaded the magazine with some effort, slipped it into the pistol, and, using the heel of his left hand, slammed it home.

Okay, now where the hell are you, Jossiah?

A minute or so later, his eyes were slightly blinded by lights reflected in his rearview mirrors.

He blinked, then looked. He saw a yellowish pair of big, round headlight beams bouncing up and down the street toward him. Then he heard the sound of the engine valves knocking noisily as the driver accelerated.

That's one old damn car.

The shocks are shot. And it sounds like the engine is just about to go, too.

The car rattled to a stop at the weed-choked curb in front of the row house at 1822 Ontario Street. The air became heavy with the smell of raw gasoline and half-burned exhaust.

Will Curtis pulled on his grease-smeared FedEx cap and swung open the minivan's door. He stepped out, swaying a bit, then walked back and stood in the beam of the car's left headlight so that the FedEx logos on his hat, shirt, and the envelope were clearly visible to the driver.

He held the envelope in front of his crotch, concealing his hand holding the pistol.

As Will Curtis carefully continued stepping toward the car-which he now could see was a mid-1970s AMC Gremlin, in his opinion one of the ugliest and most worthless vehicles that had ever been produced-there came the sound of tortured metal as the driver pushed open the rusted-out door.