I leaned over, holding myself up with the shovel where I'd put it into the ground. My lips tasted salty and I stayed like that for a while, getting myself together. "Wilma," I shouted as I walked into the clearing. I was so goddamn tired. I shouted some more and she finally trotted over.

"Keep your voice down, there are other properties around here."

"Like they didn't hear that gunshot?"

"People are always target practicing out in the country."

"You got an answer for everything, don't you?" I said as I dragged Trace by his heels into the clearing. I sat down.

Wilma stood over Trace, a concerned look on her face. I knew it wasn't 'cause I'd broken his nose and he looked like shit. She was wondering like me what Weems' right-hand man was doing here, and what that meant in terms of the holier-than-thou commissioner's involvement.

"Well, he's breathing, that means he can answer questions."

"You should have been a cop with that kinda attitude."

Wilma bent down and slapped Trace on the side of his face with her pistol. It was a good-sized gun. Pistols weren't my thing, but it was clear homegirl knew something about them.

Trace's eyes fluttered like I'd seen players do after getting their head rung.

"Why did Weems send you?" She stood back, the gun on him.

"You have broken a commandment," he said.

"Let me worry about my soul." She waved the gun, a shiny automatic of some kind. "You need to focus on the issue at hand, Trace."

He grinned. "And who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?"

I shook the end of the shovel in front of him. "How 'bout I bust you upside the head again and see if that harms your Biblespoutin' ass?"

"The defiler can never know the ways of the righteous."

Wilma kicked him in the leg. "Cut the sanctimonious crap. How much does Weems know about Stadanko? Or were you and your dead pal up here on some kind of fishing expedition?"

Trace lifted his large shoulders and let them come back down. "I am but a vessel. Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

I sank the handle of the shovel hard into his gut. He didn't flinch much, only sneered at me. ''He's just going to keep this bullshit up. We're wasting time."

Wilma put on her lawyer face. She walked in small circles as she talked. "It doesn't seem likely Weems would send these two to hide out and wait around for Stadanko and the rest to get here this weekend." She had one hand on her hip, the gun loose at her side in the other.

"Maybe they came here to look for the files like us."

"That's more delicate work than I'd send Trace to do."

"That why you didn't want me and Nap doing it?"

She came over to me, touching my wound. "Now, baby."

Trace made a move and I hit him with the business end of the shovel. The bastard hit the deck, his hands out before him. I kicked him in the side and this time he felt it. He held his ribs.

"Your day is fast approaching, defiler."

Wilma pointed the gun at him. Much as I didn't like the asshole, killing somebody like that made me jumpy. I guess it shouldn't have, but it did. "You're gonna dust him? That's two goddamn bodies we gotta deal with, Wilma."

"This is so he'll behave." She jerked the gun. "Give him the shovel."

"Are you"

"Please, baby," she said sweetly, "I know what I'm doing."

I didn't dig it that I wasn't in control, didn't know the rules for this kind of play Wilma did, or at least that gun and what she did with it made it seem so. I threw the shovel over to Trace. He was on his feet again, rubbing his ribs, sizing me up for another rumble.

"You're going to bury your friend." Wilma got an angle on him for a good, clean shot.

He touched his flaming cross. "I will not."

Wilma shot past his head, the bullet sinking into the wall of the shed in a puff of plaster.

Me and Trace stood there with our mouths open. She didn't say anything else and Trace picked up the shovel. We walked over to the area behind the shed where there were Joshua trees and cactus and other shit I couldn't name. We stopped at a patch of earth and Wilma pointed at the ground. Trace got a funny look on his face and I tensed. But he got busy digging.

He didn't talk, didn't take off his coat. He kept working, stopping now and then to get his breath. Eventually he'd dug a hole big enough for Randy. The space wasn't too long but was deep.

"Put down the shovel and let's get your boyfriend."

"You will be punished." He was breathing heavy, sweat pouring off him like buckets of water. His suit was dirty and wet.

"No, that's not going to happen," Wilma said.

Me and Trace carried Randy's corpse to its makeshift grave.

"Zelmont, search the body just in case they found anything."

I did. The only thing I found was a pocket edition of the New Testament and two pens. Then we dumped the body in the pit.

The dead man was tall so his body didn't really fit lengthwise. He laid there, his knees bent like he was resting, his eyes open and focused on nothing. It gave me the goddamn willies.

Again without a word, Trace got busy, filling the hole with the dirt he'd just dug out. When he was finished, he broke off two small branches from a Joshua tree. He fastened them together with his shoelaces to make a cross and stuck it over the place Randy's head was. He bowed his own head and mumbled a prayer. All the while I didn't take my eyes off him. I was waiting for him to try and get slick.

"And now, Mary Magdalene?" he said.

She came up on him, the gun level. Trace was gonna get to see Jesus faster than he might want to, his cap pealed in the bargain. Wilma then patted him down thoroughly and looked like she was enjoying it. Trace acted like he wasn't. "Now get in the car you came in and go back to Los Angeles. Tell Weems what happened, don't spare the details, you hear?"

Trace finally took off his coat. He put it over his arm and went off, walking directly through the bushes and all.

"Uh, what the fuck are you doing?" I pointed after him.

Wilma was walking toward the shed. "What can Weems do, Zelmont? He sent those two up here for something, but it's definitely off the books, right?" She tried the door of the shed but it was locked.

"Yeah," I said, not really sure what she meant. I stepped up and leaned on the door.

"We have to make it seem like we were never here," she said.

"I know." The door caved in after a few knocks with my shoulder. It wasn't too busted up, so it would look pretty normal when we shut it back, I figured.

Wilma went inside the room. Sunlight came in through the dirty windows. She found a switch and put on the light, "Weems is up to something," she said, sensing I was still confused about her sending Trace off like she did. "If he reports Randy's death, then he has to explain what those two were doing here. And he doesn't want that."

After a few seconds, I said, "Stadanko can't call the law 'cause they're after him, and big-stick-up-his-ass Weems can't 'cause his slippery shit will come out."

Wilma was looking around. "Exactly. Ironic, isn't it?"

"Very"

Inside the place was what you'd expect to find in a tool shed. There was a power drill, a rake, a push broom, and a big table with those little drawers built in to a long rack above it. A vise was lying on the table next to all kinds of parts. Standing there I felt kinda sad. It was like the workplace I'd always imagined my dad would have had when I was a kid. Like we'd be together in it while Moms cooked dinner, working on a model car. Or he'd be showing me how to fix a faucet family shit like that.

"Damn," I said quietly.

Wilma wasn't paying attention. She was looking around very carefully. If she picked something up she was sure to place it back just where it had been. I did the same.