Sinclair made no response. He was still working frenetically on the first part of Demencio's answer. He'd gotten as far as the word "Virgin" when Roddy's interruption had thrown him off track, causing him to lose the rest of Demencio's quote. Now Sinclair was forced to reconstruct.

"Did you say 'It cries' or 'She cries'?"

"Shecries," said Demencio, "like a drunken priest."

Neither Roddy nor Joan could imagine seeing such a coarse remark printed in a family newspaper, but Sinclair transcribed it anyway.

"And twelve of my turtles," Demencio said, "got the apostles on their backs. It's the damnedest thing you ever saw – check out the moat!"

"Slow down," said the frazzled Sinclair. His fingers had begun to cramp. "The man who was with Miss Lucks – they left together?"

"Yeah. In his car."

While Sinclair scribbled, Roddy, Joan and the mayor maintained silence. Any distraction would only slow him down more. Demencio, though, had grown restive. He began to shuck the head of lettuce, arranging the leaves in piles, according to size, on the ottoman. He was worried the newspaperman would ask about his financial arrangement with JoLayne Lucks regarding the turtle-sitting. Demencio had no illusion that one thousand dollars was a customary or reasonable fee, or that the newspaperman would believe it was JoLayne's idea.

But when Sinclair finally looked up from his notes, all he said was: "Did they mention where they were headed?"

"Miami," Demencio answered, in relief.

Joan, her track record as a tipster at stake, piped in: "We heard Bermuda. They say anything about Bermuda?"

"Miami's what they told me. JoLayne said she had some business down that way."

"Slower," Sinclair protested, bent over the pad like a rheumatic jeweler. "Please."

Demencio had run out of hospitality. "It's M-i-a – "

"I knowhow to spell it," Sinclair snapped.

The mayor wedged a knuckle in his mouth, to keep from laughing.

They rode for miles on the farm roads without finding the other car. Bodean Gazzer was too drunk and tired to continue. Chub offered to take the wheel but Bode wouldn't hear of it; nobody else was allowed to drive his new Dodge Ram. He parked on the edge of a tomato field and passed out to the strains of Chub and Shiner bickering about the shooting fiasco at the trailer. At first Bode thought Chub was being too rough on the kid, but his opinion changed at daybreak when he noticed the two ragged bullet holes in the truck's quarter panel.

Bode said to Chub: "Shoot his damn nuts off."

"I didn't know it was you guys!" Shiner protested.

Bode angrily grabbed for the gun in Chub's belt. "Here, gimme that thing."

Chub knocked his hand away. "Somebody'll hear."

"But I thought you was NATO!" Shiner cried. "I said I was sorry, dint I?"

"Look what you done to my truck."

"I'll pay for it, I swear."

"Fucking A you will," snarled Bodean Gazzer.

Shiner was a jittery wreck. "Gimme another chance," he begged.

"Another chance? Shit," Chub said. He'd already concluded the boy was a hopeless fuckup – they had to cut him loose. He and Bode could toss a coin to see who'd break the news.

Chub got out to take a leak, and immediately came upon a rusty aerosol can of spray paint – in the middle of a tomato field! It seemed too wonderful to be true. Because Bode disapproved of sniffing, Chub kept his back to the truck. He knelt in the loamy sand and excitedly shook the can. The rattle soothed him, the beat of an old familiar song. He cupped his hands around the nozzle and pressed down with his chin, but no paint shot out. He held the nozzle beneath his nostrils and sniffed fruitlessly for a trace of fumes; not a whiff. He swore, stood up and hurled the empty can as far as possible.

When he unzipped his pants to pee, a horsefly landed on the tip of his pecker. Chub couldn't imagine feeling less like a millionaire. Despondently he shooed the fly away and finished his business. Then he removed the Colt Python from his belt and tucked it in his left armpit. He groped carefully down his right pants leg until he found the bandage: At least the lottery ticket was safe. He wondered what his parents would say if they knew he had 14 million bucks taped to his thigh!

When he returned to the pickup truck, he saw that Bodean Gazzer had settled down. Shiner was earnestly inquiring about the pending NATO attack on the United States, wondering if there was something particular he should be watching for; a clear signal it was all right to go for the guns.

"Like helicopters. I heard about them secret black helicopters," he was saying, "from the Internet."

Bode said, "I wouldn't go by the helicopters no more. Hell, they might switch to blimps. All depends."

"Damn," said Shiner.

"Tell you what, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened the dead of night, real quiet. You wake up one morning and the fuckin' mailman's wearing a blue helmet."

Shiner recoiled. "Then what – they kill all us white people, right?" Chub said, "Not the women. Them they rape. The men is who they'll kill."

"No," Bode Gazzer said. "First thing they do is make us all so dirt poor we can't afford food or medicine or clothes on our back."

"How in the world?" Shiner asked.

"Easy. Suppose they decided all our money's illegal. Everything you saved up, worthless as toilet paper. Meanwhile they print up all new dollars, which they give out by the millions to Negroes and Cubans and such."

Chub sat on the bumper of the truck and tried to massage the hangover from his forehead. He'd already heard Bode's conspiracy theory about U.S. currency replacement. The subject had come up the night before, at Hooters, when Chub again recommended that they get rid of the nigger woman's credit card before it could be traced. Bode had said they ought to hang on to it, in case the New World Tribunal took over all the banks and issued new money. Then everybody's hard-earned American cash would be no good.

Whatcash? Chub had wondered. They were dead fucking broke.

"And the new money," Bode was telling Shiner, "instead of George Washington and U. S. Grant, it'll have pitchers of Jesse Jackson and Fy-del Castro."

"No shit! Then what do we do?"

"Plastic," Bode replied. "We use plastic. Ain't that right, Chub?"

"For sure." Chub got up, scratching at his crotch. It had been so long since he'd seen a fifty-dollar bill, he couldn't remember whose face was on it. Might as well be James Brown, for all it mattered to Chub.

"Let's get some goddamn food," he said.

On the drive to Florida City, Shiner fell asleep with his teeth bared, like a mutt. Bode and Chub used the quiet time to discuss the events of the night before. Were they really followed, or was the car they'd heard simply lost in the farmlands?

Bode Gazzer voted for lost. He insisted he would have noticed somebody tailing them from the restaurant.

"Maybe if you was sober," Chub said.

"It was nobody after us, I guarantee. We was just jumpy from all the boy's shootin'."

Chub said, "I ain't so sure."

He had a strong feeling that their luck was going rotten. He became certain after breakfast, at the diner, when the waitress failed to return promptly with the credit card. Chub spotted her consulting with the restaurant manager at the cash register. In one hand the manager was holding the stolen Visa. In his other hand was the telephone.

Chub whispered across the table, "Jig's up."

Bodean Gazzer went rigid. Working his toes back into his cowboy boots, he accidentally kicked Chub in the knee. Irritably Chub glanced under the table and said, "Watch it."

Shiner, bug-eyed, twisting his paper napkin into a knot: "What the hell do we do now!"

"Run, boy. What else?" Chub playfully rapped his knuckles on Shiner's bare marbled scalp. "Run like the fuckin' wind."