The only other idea that occurred to Chub was a trick he'd seen in some foreign prison movie, where the inmate hero kept a secret diary hidden up his butthole. The guy scribbled everything in ant-sized letters on chewing gum wrappers, which he folded into tiny squares and stuck in his ass, so the prison guards wouldn't get wise. Given Bode's low regard for Chub's personal hygiene, Chub was fairly sure his partner would object to the butthole scheme. He was right.

"What if first I wrap it in foil?" Chub offered.

"I don't care if you pack it in fucking kryptonite, that lottery ticket ain't goin' up your ass."

Instead they attached it with a jumbo Band-Aid to Chub's right outer thigh, a hairless quadrant that (Bode conceded) seemed relatively untainted by Chub's potent sweat. Bode firmly counseled Chub to remove the Lotto-ticket bandage when, and if, he ever felt like bathing.

Chub didn't appreciate the insult, and said so. "You don't watch your mouth," he warned Bode Gazzer, "I'm gone do somethin' so awful to your precious truck, you'll need one a them moonsuits to go anywheres near it."

"Jesus, take it easy."

Later they went to the 7-Eleven for their customary breakfast of Orange Crush and Dolly Madisons. Bode swiped a newspaper and searched it for a mention of the Lotto robbery in Grange. He was relieved to find nothing. Chub declared himself in a mood for shooting, so they stopped by Bode's apartment to grab the AR-I5 and a case of beer, and headed south down the Eighteen-Mile Stretch. They turned off on a gravel road that led to a small rock-pit lake, not far from a prison camp where Bode had once spent four months. At the rock pit they came upon a group of clean-shaven men wearing holsters and ear protectors. From the type of vehicles at the scene – late-model Cherokees, Explorers, Land Cruisers – and the orderliness with which they'd been parked, Bode concluded the shooters were suburban husbands brushing up on home-defense skills.

The men stood side by side, firing pistols and semiautomatics at paper silhouettes just like the ones cops used. Bode was disquieted to observe among the group a Negro, one or two possible Cubans, and a wiry bald fellow who was almost certainly Jewish.

"We gotta go. This place ain't secure." Bode, speaking in his role as militia leader.

Chub said, "You jest watch." He peeled off his eye patch and sauntered to the firing line. There he nonchalantly raised the AR-I5 and, in a few deafening seconds, reduced all the paper targets to confetti. Then, for good measure, he opened up on a stray buzzard that was flying no less than a thousand feet straight up in the sky. Without a word, the husbands put away their handguns and departed. A few drove off without removing their ear cups, a sight that gave Bodean Gazzer a good laugh.

Chub went through a half dozen clips before he got bored and offered the rifle to Bode, who declined to shoot. The blasts of gunfire had reignited the killer migraine from Bode's morning hangover, and now all he craved was silence. He and Chub sat down at the edge of the lake and worked on the beer.

After a while, Chub asked, "So when can we cash out our tickets?"

"Pretty soon. But we gotta be careful."

"That nigger girl, she ain't gonna say a word."

"Probably not," Bode said. Yet, thinking back on the beating, he recalled that the Lucks woman never seemed as scared as she should've been. Mad as a hornet, for sure, and crying like a baby when Chub shot her turtle – but there was no quivering animal panic from the woman, despite all the pain. They'd worked extra hard to make her think they'd return to murder her if she didn't keep quiet. Bode hoped she believed it. He hoped she cared.

Chub said, "Let's tomorrow me and you go straight up to Tal'hassee and git our money."

Bode laughed sourly. "You checked in the mirror lately?"

"Tell 'em we's in a car accident."

"With what – bobcats?"

"Anyways, they gotta pay us no matter how bad we look. We had leprosy, the motherfuckers still gotta pay us."

Patiently Bode Gazzer explained how suspicious it would be for two best friends to claim equal shares of the same Lotto jackpot, with tickets purchased three hundred miles apart.

"It's better," Bode said, "if we don't know each other. We ain't never met, you and me, far as the lottery bureau is concerned."

" 'K."

"Anybody asks, I bought my fourteen-million-dollar ticket in Florida City, you got yours in Grange. And we never once laid eyes on each other before."

"No problem," Chub said.

"And listen here, we can't show up in Tallahassee together. One of us goes on a Tuesday, the other one maybe a week later. Just to play it safe."

"Then afterwards," said Chub, "we put the money all together."

"You got it."

Chub did the arithmetic aloud. "If those first checks is seven hundred grand, times two is like one million four hunnert thousand bucks."

Bodean Gazzer said, "Before taxes, don't forget." It felt like his skull was cleaving down the middle, an agony made worse by his partner's greasy persistence.

"But what I wanna ast," Chub said, "is who goes first. Cashes out, I mean."

"Difference does it make?"

"I guess none."

They got in the truck and headed down the gravel road toward the Stretch. Chub stared out the window as Bode went on: "I don't like the wait no better'n you. Sooner we get the cash, sooner we get the White Clarion Aryans together. Start serious recruitment. Build us a bomb shelter and whatnot."

Chub lit a cigaret. "So meantime what do we do for money?"

"Good question," Bode Gazzer said. "I wonder if the Negro girl's canceled out her credit card yet."

"Likely so."

"One way to find out."

Chub blew a smoke ring. "I s'pose."

"We're down to a quarter tank," Bode said. "Tell you what. The Shell station up the highway, let's try the self-serve pump. If it spits her Visa, we'll take off."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. No harm done."

Chub said, "And if it takes the card?"

"Then we're golden for one more day."

"Sounds good to me." Chub dragged contentedly. Already he was daydreaming about barbecued chicken wings and a certain blond-haired beauty in satiny orange shorts.

The bank's computer indicated JoLayne's Visa card hadn't been used since the previous afternoon at Hooters.

"Now what?" she asked, waving the receiver.

"Order a pizza," said Tom Krome, "and wait for them to get stupid again."

"What if they don't?"

"They will," he said. "They can't resist."

The pizza was vegetarian, delivered cold. They ate it anyway. Afterwards JoLayne stretched out on her back, locked her arms behind her neck and bent her knees.

"Sit-ups?" Tom Krome asked.

"Crunches," she said. "Wanna help?"

He knelt on the floor and held her ankles. JoLayne winked and said, "You've done this before."

He counted along in his head. After a hundred easy ones, she closed her eyes tight and did a hundred more. He gave her a minute to rest, then said: "That was a little scary."

JoLayne winced as she sat up. She pressed her knuckles to her tummy and said, "Bastards really did a job on me. Normally I can do three-fifty or four."

"I think you should take it easy."

"Your turn," she said.

"JoLayne, please."

Then suddenly Krome was on his back, except she wasn't holding his ankles as a proper sit-up partner would do. Instead she was straddling his chest, pinning his arms.

"Know what I was thinking?" she said. "About what you said earlier, how white or black doesn't matter."

"Weren't we talking about dreams and horses?"

"Maybe youwere."

Deliberately Tom Krome went limp. His goal was to minimize the frontal contact, which was indescribably wonderful. He was also trying to think of a distraction, something to make his blood go cold. Sinclair's face was an obvious choice, but Krome couldn't summon it.