"We're investigating the murders of Shooter Chapman and Mikey Haines," Lucas said.

Mack registered what looked everything in the world like shock. The bartender, eyes wide, put both hands to the sides of her face, her mouth open. Her lips working, no words coming out. If they were faking it, Lucas thought, they deserved Oscars.

"What?" Mack got the first response out.

"Is your brother around?" Lucas asked.

"He's in the can… Uh, shit, come on back. We can talk in the office."

He turned and went through the door, heading into the back. Lucas and Shrake walked around the end of the bar past the bartender, who asked, "How were they killed? Are you sure they were murdered?"

"They were shot with a shotgun and put in garbage bags and thrown under a bridge," Shrake said. "If it wasn't murder, it was a really weird accident."

They went through the door behind the bar, heard Lyle Mack yelling at his brother, up a set of stairs. "The cops are here-they say Shooter and Mikey been killed. Come on out of there."

And he turned back and said, "Come on to the office."

The office was a small plywood room attached to the loading dock; one chair behind a desk and two chairs in front of it, two filing cabinets, an old computer, and a new multitask print-fax-copy-scan machine.

Mack took the desk seat and Lucas sat down while Shrake leaned in the doorway. "You know them?" Lucas asked.

"Sure. They're members of the club," Mack said. "I bet the fuckin' Mongols had something to do with this. We're okay with everybody else."

"You know any Mongols? They're pretty thin around here," Shrake said.

"Well, who else…?"

"Lyle, don't give us any shit. I've had some dealings with the Seed in the past, and people got killed, and I've got very little patience with you guys," Lucas said. "You push dope and you used to do a little strong-arm robbery and you ran a couple massage parlors and I know all that shit. So what I want to know is, were Haines and Chapman hustling meth or coke? Who were they selling it to? Did they owe somebody? Were they scared?"

Shrake stepped back and let another man through the doorway, Joe Mack, who had a lean, pale-white face and lantern jaw, with a black do-rag on his close-cropped head. If he'd had a gold hoop earring, Lucas thought, he could have played Long John Silver.

"They're dead?" Joe Mack asked. His eyelids were half-closed, and he smelled of alcohol.

Lyle nodded at Lucas and said, "This guy is giving me a lot of shit. He thinks they were dealing dope."

Joe Mack registered astonishment so profound that Lucas almost laughed, and Shrake did. He said, "Dope?" as though it were inconceivable.

"Let me 'splain something to you guys," Shrake said. "This is a double murder, at least, and maybe a triple. We think they were the guys who knocked over the pharmacy at University Hospitals three days ago, and kicked the pharmacist to death."

Lyle Mack: "No…"

"And you're bullshitting us, right now, is what you're doing," Shrake continued. "That's accessory after the fact on three murder-ones, which is just as good as doing it yourselves. We'll shake it all out, and you'll go to prison… if you keep bullshitting us."

Lyle Mack shook his head: "All right. Shooter and Mikey could be assholes. We know that. But we don't know anybody who'd kill them for it."

"The Mongols would," Joe Mack said to his brother.

"Aw, for Christ's sakes, forget the Mongols," Lucas said. "We're gonna prove Haines did the pharmacy, by tomorrow. Then we're gonna come back here with a flamethrower, if we don't get some cooperation. This is their club. This is where they hung out, where their friends were. So: Who were they running with? They hang out with any hospital people? What?"

Lyle Mack said, "Listen… we're bar owners. We make money at it. These guys are customers, but they're not good friends or nothing. They always come in together, they hang together. And you know, they bullshit with the guys, but they were partners. They hung with each other."

"They gay?" Shrake asked.

Joe Mack snorted. "I don't think so. They were Seed. Seed don't take gays."

"No gays, no sex perverts of any kind," Lyle Mack said.

"When was the last time they were in?"

The two brothers looked at each other, and then Lyle Mack said, "Could have been Saturday. I'm pretty sure they were here on Saturday night."

"Did they seem nervous, or worried, or scared?" Lucas asked. "Were they hanging with anyone new?"

Lyle Mack exhaled, looked at his brother, back at Lucas, and said, "Listen, if we, you know… if we talk to you, this gets out, we're done. The place gets wrecked, we get the shit beat out of us, or killed."

"We don't talk," Lucas said.

"If the information is good," Shrake added. "If it's not good, we might talk."

Lyle Mack said, "Saturday night, they were hanging with Anthony Melicek and Ron Howard. Drank a few beers. They were on the Deer Hunter for a couple hours."

"The Deer Hunter?" Shrake asked

"Game machine," Joe Mack said.

"Where do we find these guys?" Lucas asked. He was writing their names in his notebook.

"I don't know," Lyle Mack said. "You've probably got their addresses. Or Ron's, anyway. He's on probation, some kind of thing with his old lady."

"You mean, he beat her up," Lucas said.

"No, no. I mean he and his old lady are on probation," Lyle Mack said. "I'm not sure exactly what they did, but they might have been selling stuff."

"Stolen stuff."

"Maybe. If you tell anybody we told you this…"

"Who else did they hang with?"

"Man, they hung with each other…" THEY HAD two names, and not much more; and assured the brothers that they would hang around in the parking lot, talking to customers coming and going, so that Melicek and Howard wouldn't know where their names had come from.

Lucas stood up, took a card out of his wallet, and dropped it on the desk. "If you hear anything, it would behoove you to call me. No motorcycle big-shot bullshit, burning the card or any of that; just a quiet call. Nobody will know, and it might be useful to you sometime, to have a guy you can call. If you know what I mean."

SHRAKE LED the way out, Lucas a step behind; when they'd gone through the door into the front, Lyle Mack said to Joe, "We're in a lot of fuckin' trouble, Joe."

Joe Mack said, "We oughta get out of here."

"Can't," Lyle Mack said. "If it was only a robbery, we might get out of town. Murder, they'd come after us. Come after you. We gotta find that chick and shut her up." THERE WERE still fifteen or twenty people in the bar, but in clusters now, four and five together. From behind the bar, Lucas called, "Can I have your attention? Anybody here know Mikey Haines or Shooter Chapman?"

Dead silence.

"I know some of you must be their friends, if they had any friends," Lucas said. "Somebody took them out and blew their faces mostly off, with a shotgun, and I would like any opinions anybody's got about that."

More silence, then one voice, "We got no opinions."

Shrake said, "If you get home and find out you got an opinion, about who may be executing Seeds, you call the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and ask for Agent Shrake. S-h-r-a-k-e. Shrake."

"The reason you should do that is, being a tough guy is just fine, but if somebody's shooting you in the back of the head with a shotgun, from an ambush, like they did with Shooter and Mikey, tough isn't good enough," Lucas said. "So you got any ideas, it might be your own life you're saving." THEY DID SPEND fifteen minutes in the parking lot, grabbing people as they came and went-mostly went-but got no more names.

"Can't talk to us in public," Shrake said. "Gang law."

"Talk about the cold shoulder," Lucas said. "My shoulder's frozen all the way down to my ass."