Me and Danny looked at each other, the kid getting sick. We knew what the sound was. The back door, which was near a corner, was locked, and I had to keep him from shooting the lock off. The sound of men laughing, enjoying their work, could be heard through the open window.

I looked through the pieces of metal and found a bar I could use to pry the door open. We got it in position and tugged. The door came loose and we went inside fast. Now we were in an office. There was a door on the other side, which flew open as me and Danny reached it. Standing there was a dude with an automatic, and I hit him dead in the face with the iron bar before he had a chance to fire.

He said something in Russian or whatever the hell it is they speak in Serbia. I hit him again, grabbing the piece from his hand as he went down, blood gushing from his forehead. Danny was already past me.

"Cut him loose, bitch," Danny hollered at one of the thugs, putting his gun in the boy's face. The guy had the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, the skin on the knuckles of his right fist torn and bloody. There was another one looking at us, his jaw all down around his ankles. He'd been sitting eating some chow in cream sauce, one end of a plastic milk crate filling in for a table. His dinner show was Nap's beating. A glass of wine had been knocked over next to the plate. I recognized him from the red wound on one side of his forehead. He was the punk I'd hit with the ashtray the other day.

They had bound up Nap pretty creatively. A chain was looped over a steel beam running down the center of the pointed roof. The end of that was wound around Nap's wrists, his arms up over his head. A big lock kept the links together. He was standing spread eagle, his ankles bound with chains. The end of each one of these was connected to some piece of machinery and pulled tight as hell. His shirt was off, his pants and underwear pulled down. A small lead pipe was on the ground near his feet. It was dark on one end. He had a handkerchief tied around his mouth and duct tape wrapped over that. His face was pulped up with welts and bruises. Pure hate was in his eyes.

''Sick motherfuckahs.'' Danny hit the one he had the gun on in the face. As the dude wilted, he jumped on him and began pistol whipping the fool. I had to get him focused before we had more bodies to get rid of than Dr. Kevorkian.

"Danny, come on, we got to get Nap out of here and to a doctor." I was grabbing for him with one hand and trying to keep my gun on ashtray head with the other. The dude he was wailing on with his automatic was swearing up a blue storm in that language of theirs. "Goddammit, Danny, you got to control yourself."

"They wasn't beatin' the shit out of your brother." Now he started kicking the dude.

I was gonna point out that Nap wasn't a stranger to this particular form of rear-end action but skipped it. "He's down, Danny, he ain't moving anymore, understand?"

Danny stopped, breathing hard from exertion.

The other chump, the one that had been grubbin', smiled and I walked over to him. "Keep it up and I'll let Danny start in on your war criminal ass."

"This is just business, Zelmont."

"We ain't on a first-name basis, son. Turn him loose."

He hesitated like he was gonna make a move, but the fact I was still hefting the gun made him reconsider. "We weren't going to kill him."

"Uh-huh, just a little re-negotiating of the terms of the contract."

He unlocked Nap, then we made him get the big man's pants on. The Little Hand gangster and Danny walked him to the wall, where they let him slide down and lie with his back against it.

Danny was nodding his head. "Okay." Fast as all hell, he spun and backhanded the cat with the butt of his gun in the middle of his face. He went down and out like Buster Douglas does in every fight.

"Sure glad you made it." Nap managed a smile. Damn.

"Can you walk?" I asked him. "We gotta get you looked at." Though I didn't want to, I glanced at the pipe. It made me shiver.

"Give me a couple of minutes, will you?" He put his head back and closed his eyes, gathering strength.

"Come on, Danny, we got to take care of this other thing."

"What?"

No wonder gangbangers were always doing drive-bys; on the wrong mark, or getting their simple selves busted 'cause they forgot to take the surveillance tape out of the camera. All that kronik must mess with their memory retention. "Follow me. We'll be right back, Nap."

At my direction we crept back around the building. There were some dudes in overalls walking nearby, and we had to wait for them to move on before I went back to my ride. I drove it closer to the building and parked. Moving as quick as we could, we got the body out and brought it inside. I hoped to Jesus no one saw us.

I turned to Danny after we plopped the body down in the room where they'd tortured Nap a few minutes ago. "Wipe down your piece and leave it."

"Fuck you," Danny yelled.

"Don't be simple, fool. Is the piece registered to you?"

He cocked his head. "You know better than that, dog."

"So like I said, drop your piece here. If it can't be traced to you then there's nothing to sweat. But you keep walking around with it, the cops got a match for the holes in this boy you done."

"It was self-defense," he whined.

"We ain't got all day for this shit, Danny."

"Do like Zelmont told you, Danny," Nap said. "He's right."

Danny finally wiped off the gun and set it down, his bottom lip sticking out the whole time like the spoiled knucklehead he was. We got Nap into the Explorer and I drove back around the building. Except this time I got smart and had swathed some mud on the plates in case anyone was paying attention. Not that I thought Rudy Chekka would be complaining to the law.

I guess I was too hyped, 'cause I got turned around and went down a one-way side road. I turned back and was trying to figure out how to get out of the dump when a Shindar garbage truck rumbled past us on the road I'd been on.

"I wish we had time," Danny began, " 'cause I'd like to blast some of those Little Hand bastards."

"Let's just concentrate on getting your brother out of here," I said. "We ain't got time to follow all their trucks around."

"Follow that one," Nap said in a hoarse voice.

I turned to look at Nap. His eyes were fluttering and he was breathing heavily. "Why, Nap?"

"Just follow it," he repeated in a whisper. "They talked a lot while they were having fun with me." Then his eyes closed shut.

I followed behind the Shindar truck and started to get the tingle as we went down a narrow road. The instincts that had made me among the top five receivers in the NFL, that feeling that used to tell me where the defender was without me looking, kicked in like a mother.

"Why you fallin' back?" Danny said, pissed. "We got to get this done so we can get Nap out of here."

"We will, little brother, we will."

"Don't call me that," he said in a tone that told me he wasn't bullshitting. I let the truck get farther ahead, then I went down the path. It was dirt, so I kicked up a lot of it just like the truck had. I was betting the driver hadn't noticed my ride. We went along, then I stopped and backed up. There was another tiny road leading downhill. I followed it.

"Goddamn, this'll not only do Nap in, but us too."

Danny was right for once. The stench from the garbage pit was strong enough to wipe out a whole team of All-Pros. I figured the road must wind around it on one side. I stopped the car.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Back the fuck up."

"Stay put," I ordered.

"Man." He shook in his seat. Nap was whimpering.

I got out and walked down the path, walls of dirt rising up to my right and left. Suddenly I came to a driveway. It led upward and was bordered on one side by a concrete wall about my height. I walked up and stopped at the corner of the wall, peeking around. At the top of the driveway was a building with a satellite dish on the roof. The truck was parked in front of the building. My eyes were watering and my stomach was starting to roll from the overpowering odor.