He needed to ride, he needed to do something, but he had no money. None. His life couldn't much be distinguished from life in a dungeon: work, a space for food and drugs, sleep, and work some more-with nothing at the end of it.

He smeared shaving cream on his face and thought of California; or maybe Florida. He'd never been to Florida. Had been told that it was lusher and harder than California-meth as opposed to cocaine-with lots more old people.

And he thought again about the liquor store. Big liquor store in Wisconsin, next to a supermarket. He'd been in just before closing on a Friday night, nobody else in the store, and he'd paid $12.50 for a bottle of bourbon, fake ID ready to go.

They never even asked: he looked that old. But more interesting was that when he'd paid with a fifty, the checkout man had lifted the cash tray to slip the bill beneath it, and there'd been at least twenty bills under there, all fifties and hundreds. With the five, tens and twenties in the top, there had to be two thousand dollars in the register.

Enough to get to Florida. Enough to start, anyway.

He caught his eyes in the mirror and thought, Stupid. Every asshole in the world who wanted money, the first thing they thought of was a liquor store at closing time. They probably had cameras, guns, alarms, who knew what?

No liquor stores, Cappy. Have to think of something else.

Some other job.

He was staring at himself, thinking about the bed, when the phone rang.

He picked it up, and Lyle Mack asked, "That you, Cappy?" CAPPY SAT in the back of Cherries and looked at Lyle Mack and said, "So that fuckin' Shooter told you I kill people."

"He made it pretty clear. Didn't exactly say the words," Lyle Mack said.

"That could get you locked away in California," Cappy said. "Maybe get you the needle."

"That's exactly the reason we have a problem with Shooter. He talks," Lyle Mack said.

Cappy, his voice flat: "Ten thousand dollars?"

"Five thousand each."

"Then what?" Cappy asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You can't just leave them laying out there," Cappy said. He'd had some experience with the disposal issue.

"We'll… dump them somewhere."

Cap sat staring at Lyle Mack for a long time, his flat crazy-man stare, until Mack began to get nervous, then said, "Fifteen."

"Aw, man, we don't have a lot of cash," Lyle Mack said. "C'mon, Cappy, we're asking you as a brother." Lyle Mack had never contracted for a murder, and he was jumpy as hell. Joe Mack sat next to him and kept rubbing his face, as though he couldn't believe it.

"Fifteen is the brother price," Cap said. "I need a new van."

"You can't get a new van for fifteen," Joe Mack said.

"Well, it's not a new-new van, it's new for me," Cap said.

Joe Mack leaned forward. "Tell you what. I'll sign my van over to you. It's worth that, Blue Book. Perfect condition. Dodge Grand Caravan Cargo, three years old, good rubber, twenty-eight thousand actual. It's got XM radio and a drop ramp for bikes, it's got nav. It'd be perfect for you."

"How's the tranny?"

"The tranny's perfect. Never been a glitch," Joe Mack said.

"I gotta Dodge; it's been some trouble," Cappy said. But he was thinking: Florida.

"Everything got some trouble. But in vans, the Dodges is the best," Joe Mack said.

Cappy stared at Joe Mack, then said, "I'd want to look it up in the Blue Book."

"Be my guest," Joe Mack said.

"And two grand in cash. I gotta eat, too."

Lyle Mack, staring into Cappy's pale blue eyes, realized what an insane little motherfucker he really was. THEN THEY got practical, and Lyle Mack called Honey Bee on her cell phone: "You still at Home Depot?"

"Just got back in my car."

"I thought of a couple more things we need," Lyle Mack said.

"Run back and get some of those contractor clean-up bags, okay? Like big garbage bags, but really big. And some Scrubbing Bubbles, and, uh, you know, some of those rubber kitchen gloves."

"So when am I the goddamn maid around here?"

"Well, you're right there at the store, goddamnit, Honey Bee…" THEY'D SENT Cappy down the street to wait at the Log Cabin Inn, and picked him up after Honey Bee got back. Honey Bee would open the bar: "You didn't start the wienies. They're still gonna be cold when we open."

Lyle Mack shook his head. "Honey Bee, I'm just so… busy. You know we've got some trouble. Help me out, here."

When Lyle had gone out the back, and Joe Mack was getting his coat on, he tried to cheer her up by squeezing her butt, and giving her a little leg hump, but she wasn't having it: "Get out of here. Go get busy." HONEY BEE had a horse ranch thirty miles south of St. Paul, though as ranches went, it was on the small side-forty acres. But Honey Bee liked it, and so did her three horses. The Macks were not horse persons themselves; their attitude was, if God had meant people to ride horses, He wouldn't have invented the Fat Bob.

They rode out in Joe Mack's van, so Cappy could hear it run, with the Macks in the front seats, and Cappy on a backseat with a shotgun that he'd brought from home. Joe Mack said to his brother, "I totally know where you're coming from, you know, with this thing-but I gotta say, I kind of like these guys, when they're not being assholes."

"But they're assholes most of the time," Lyle Mack said. "Now look at this. We have a perfect job, big money, no trouble, and now what? Now we're looking at a murder. I mean, fuck me. Murder? And they keep lettin' you know about that eggplant that Shooter killed out in California. You can't sit down and have a beer without them hinting around about it. It's gonna be the same thing here."

"You're right about that," Cappy grunted. The Macks had told him about the bind they were in; not because they wanted to, but because he said he needed to know. "I didn't know him but two minutes when he started ranking me about it."

"So we shouldn't have used them," Joe Mack said.

"Well, you're right. You know? You're right," Lyle Mack said. "We made a mistake. There they were, handy. I shoulda gone, it shoulda just been me and you and the doc, but you know I'm no goddamn good in the morning."

They both thought about that-and the fact that Lyle Mack was too chicken to have gone in-and then Lyle Mack added, "We made a mistake, and now they're going to have to pay for it. I gotta say, it's not fair, you know, but what're we going to do? They'll flat turn us in, if they get in a pinch."

"Bother you?" Joe Mack asked Cappy.

Cappy shook his head. "Don't bother me none, long as I get the van." THEY RODE along in silence for a while, looking at the winter countryside, then Lyle Mack said, over his shoulder to Cappy, "One thing I gotta tell you. If they're sitting on the couch in the front room, it's a purple couch, we gotta get them off it. We can't shoot them on that couch. Honey Bee would have a fit. We need to get them up on their feet."

"Not on the couch," Cappy said.

"It's velour, and it's brand-new," Lyle Mack said. "If we do them on the couch, the couch is toast. She'd be really, really pissed. She just got it from someplace like Pottery Barn. One of those big-time places."

"Okay."

Joe Mack asked, "What do you think about the van? Pretty nice, huh?"

"It's okay," Cappy conceded. He looked in the back. With one rear seat folded, he could get the BMW in there, no problem.

They were coming up to the turnoff, and as they came down off the blacktop onto the gravel road, Lyle Mack said, "Okay, listen, I got an idea." HONEY BEE's house wasn't much, an early twentieth-century clapboard farmhouse with a front porch that was no longer square to the rest of the structure, and a round gravel driveway big enough to circle a pickup with a two-horse trailer. The barn was newer, red metal, with a loft for hay. A detached garage was straight ahead, an exercise ring off to the left.