"You think-"

"Dude-"

Barakat pulled the trigger, and the gun went off with a deafening explosion, and a trickle of plaster fell from the ceiling. Stunned, they both stared at the small hole above their heads.

"Dude," Cappy said, and then he started laughing. Barakat didn't join in; he got angrier.

"Let's go," he said. He pushed the gun into the front of his pants.

"Gonna shoot your nuts off," Cappy said. But he stood up.

Barakat frowned-an "Oh, yeah" frown. He took the gun back out, checked the safety. "This is, they say, cocked and locked. Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Cappy asked.

"You a pussy?"

"I'm smoking this fuckin' cigarette, ain't I?"

They took Cappy's van, with Barakat behind the wheel. He'd taken a small baggie of coke, and he snorted another pile off the back of his hand and passed the baggie to Cappy. "Pussy," he said, and he laughed, and turned north, and reached out, clicked the radio on, pushed the first tuning button and got a rock station. Cappy sat almost silently, except for the sniffing, and watched the streetlights go by. Two blocks before they would have gotten to the 1-94 entrance ramp, Barakat turned east, down the dark streets, toward St. Paul's downtown.

Snow was filtering through the trees, and the streets were empty. Four blocks, five, around a couple of blocks, past a closed market and a couple of open bars, town houses, apartments, back through the residential area. They crossed Lexington, still going west, when they saw the man walking alone down the sidewalk. He was wearing a parka, and carrying some kind of bag.

"Pussy," Barakat said. He stopped the van, pulled the pistol from his pants, undid the safety, got out of the van, shouted, "Hey, mister. Hey, mister."

The man stopped, looked at him, slipping and sliding across the street; tall thin white man on ice.

"What's up?" Black man with a briefcase. For some reason, the briefcase irritated Barakat. An unwarranted assumption of status.

He pointed the gun at the man's chest and said, "This," and pulled the trigger. There was a bang, and a lightning flash, and the gun jumped in his hand, and the man went down. Barakat ran back to the van and they were off.

Cappy was laughing hysterically. "You crazy fuck, you crazy fuck, you shot that motherfucker…"

"Am I a pussy? Am I a pussy? Tell me…"

They jogged out onto Snelling Avenue and idled back toward Barakat's place. A block or so away, Cappy said, "That was cool, but you know what? I could use another bite to eat. I don't know. Let's go someplace else, get another sandwich."

"I would like a doughnut," Barakat said.

"You're right. Let's get a doughnut. We could go to Cub. They got good doughnuts."

"Maybe two doughnuts," Barakat said. VIRGIL FLOWERS had the sense that things were out of control, that they didn't know what was going on. He could see the same worry reflected in Lucas. Virgil had taken three pillows off the living room couch so he could sleep in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, where he could intercept any traffic coming into the house, from any direction. Weather thought that was ridiculous, and made Lucas help Virgil carry the couch to the same place, so he'd have an easier night.

Easier, but still not easy. He woke with the unfamiliar sounds in the house, and he woke when he heard a car turn into the driveway at four in the morning. He looked at his watch, in the dark-paper delivery. He rolled off the couch and peeked out the window, recognized the car, and then the paper hit the porch with a solid thunk, and the car was backing away. He sat for another two minutes, watching. Nothing moved, and he went back to sleep.

At six, he woke again when he heard movement: Weather was up and about. Virgil went quietly back to the guest bathroom, washed his face and brushed his teeth, then out to the front porch to get the papers.

Lucas and Weather came down together, quietly, not to wake the kids, and found him reading at the kitchen table. At the same moment, another car pulled into the driveway, and Virgil checked: "Shrake," he said. He could see light snow coming down, in Shrake's headlights. Still dark as pitch. "It's snowing."

"That's great," Lucas said. "I love getting up in the middle of the night when it's snowing."

Shrake came in: "Good morning, everybody."

"Shut up," Davenport said.

Virgil: "I'm gonna shave and take a shower."

"Anything in the papers?" Lucas asked.

"Some poor bastard got shot off Snelling. He was walking home from his job. Somebody shot him in the chest. Paper says there was no robbery… says he was an interior decorator guy, working late on some remodeling plans. St. Paul says it looks like a random shooting."

"Poor guy," Weather said. "Why would anybody do that?"

"Gangs," Lucas said. He yawned, stretched, and said, "Doesn't have anything to do with us, anyway."

"And that's a good thing," Shrake said. "Are we talking coffee?"

12

WEATHER WAS HEADED out to the car when her cell phone rang. Gabriel Maret: "Go back to bed. Sara's got problems again. I'll be down in the cafeteria about nine o'clock, maybe you could come by."

"Are you at the hospital now?"

"All night. They're cycling. Sometimes they're fine, and then they start to deteriorate. Blood pressure is a problem. I'm going to take a nap, and we can talk about what to do at the staff meeting."

"I'll see you at nine o'clock." LUCAS AND SHRAKE were looking at her: "They put it off?" Lucas asked.

"The kids are in trouble. We're going to meet at nine. I'll tell you what, we're getting to the point where we'll have to go no matter what. They can't be hung up like this."

Weather went to their home office to work on correspondence, Lucas went back to bed, Shrake went out to drive around the block, and Virgil turned on the TV Nothing to do but wait… GABRIEL MARET looked busted. He sat at the cafeteria table with a cup of coffee, talked with Mark Lang, one of the neurosurgeons, and Geoff Perkins, a cardiologist, and when Weather and Virgil came in, he waved and pointed at a chair. Virgil peeled off, taking a chair where he could see the room. Weather sat next to Maret, and he said, "Still have the gunslinger, yes?"

She sighed and nodded. "Yes."

"He looks like a cowboy," Maret said, watching Virgil. "He's watching us, I think."

"Probably. He's a little obsessive," Weather said.

"With those boots and jeans, he would do very well with French women," Maret said. "Unless he's gay?"

"No. He's definitely not gay," Weather said. "He does disgustingly well with American women. He sometimes has Lucas writhing in jealousy."

"Ah, well. He will fall, sooner or later," Maret said.

"He's already fallen several times," Weather said. "So: are we going?"

Maret shook his head: "Maybe late this afternoon-I've asked everybody to be ready. Tomorrow morning is more likely. But Geoff is saying that the kids are in a tailspin. Is that the word? Tailspin?"

"That's right, but it's not good," Weather said. She looked at Perkins. "What's happening?"

He shrugged. "The operation is putting too much pressure on Sara's heart. To take the pressure off, we slow it down and drop the blood pressure. But that gets on Ellen's heart, too, and she's not handling it well."

"So what are we doing?" Weather asked.

"We're going to try a couple more things, try to balance out the chemistry, get back to stable," he said. "This afternoon's a possibility, but tomorrow's more likely. Still not a sure thing."

"We've got to wait it out," Maret said.

"But the trouble is not going away," Perkins said. "You might have to make a decision."

Maret knew what he meant: "No. I'm not going to lose Sara. We can pull it off."