When the roofing business went in the tank with the rest of the economy, and some bones turned up in the Mojave and got written about in the newspapers, Cappy moved back to Minnesota, looked up Shooter.

Shooter introduced him to the gang at Cherries, and got him a job throwing boxes at UPS. The good thing about UPS was, you worked all night, had a full twelve hours to drink and ride, catch four hours of sleep, and then, with a little help from your friend methamphetamine, the next shift.

With all that, Cappy…

Had never been laid. HE KNEW how it was done; he'd even seen it done, live and in color, on a table in the Dome Bar in Bakersfield, among the bottles of Heinz catsup and 57 sauce and the clatter of silverware. It hadn't been pretty, but it held his attention. BARAKAT TOOK HIM to a bar called Trouble on the west side of Minneapolis, out on Highway 55, Cappy filled with cocaine and trepidation. Barakat drifted through a crowd unnaturally large for the crappy kind of bar it was, black light and brass poles, and hooked them up with three women named Star, Michellay, and Jamilayah. There was talk of money, but Barakat flashed the Ziploc and they were out of there, across the street to the Shangri-La Motel, where the three women lived in adjoining rooms.

Star and Jamilayah, one white, one black, were all over Barakat, and Michellay, a thin blonde with a knife-edge nose and narrow lips, hung on Cappy's arm, which made him feel thick in the chest.

Like this was it.

And this was it, and it didn't take long, listening to Britney on the Wave CD, doing lines off the dresser top, playing grabass through the three rooms, and then they were on the beds, Barakat with his two, and Cappy with Michellay, who slipped him out of his pants like an eel out of its skin,

And heck,

Everything went Pretty Damn Well. BARAKAT, walking through the rooms, waving his erection around, laughing, "Look at this, you bitches, look at this one," and Cappy drinking out of a tap, bent over the sink, and Jammy goosing him, and him almost going through the mirror, then chasing her down, the black woman screaming, Cappy rolling on top of her and bang.

It went Pretty Damn Well again. LIKE RIDING out of Bakersfield, up into the hills and down the other side and out into the Mojave, screaming through the night with the wind in his face…

And they left at four o'clock in the morning, and Cappy leaned his head against the dashboard and said, "I think I just fucked a spook."

"About six times, my man," Barakat crowed, slapping him on the back. "You were wondrous."

"She was like… pink inside," Cappy said. They headed back into town, and Cappy felt a surge of gratitude toward Barakat. He hadn't known if it would ever happen, because women, generally, didn't care for him. He'd accepted that: there was something in him that cut them.

Now, he knew, you just had to find the right women. SHAHEEN WAS a more intricate situation, and Barakat more sober about it: "I have known him for a long time. He is nothing, but still, I have known him. I would like to do this quietly. No guns. We have to come and go, leave him behind…"

As an emergency room physician, Barakat had seen all kinds of trauma. After considering it, he decided that the best solution would be a blow to the head with something heavy. "When he is down, then we can finish him. The main thing, we attract no attention. With what the woman saw, Karkinnen, we don't want somebody describing me."

Shaheen lived in an anonymous tan-stucco apartment building in south Minneapolis. Barakat and Cappy left the van on the street and walked back to it, in the night, and Barakat said, "His light's on."

"He have a girlfriend?"

"Shaheen? No. There's a girl back home that he's supposed to marry, fixed by his father. But he's told me he doesn't care for her."

"Don't care about that-I just wondered if he had one, if she's up there."

"What are your ideas for this?" Barakat asked. "To be quiet about it."

"Got no ideas," Cappy said. "Just be simple and do it." THE APARTMENT building had an interior door that was supposed to be locked, but Barakat pulled on it, hard, and the lock popped and they went through.

"How'd you know about that?" Cappy asked.

"Lock has been broken for two years," Barakat said. "Nobody uses their key anymore." SHAHEEN PEEKED around the door to see who it was, then let them in. "Now what? Has something happened?"

"We came to tell you that nothing has happened, everything is okay," Barakat said. "The police have found the people who did it, and they were killed."

"The police killed them? I didn't hear…"

And they got into it, talking in circles about the people who'd robbed the hospital. Cappy had come lounging in the door behind Barakat. Shaheen glanced at him and then turned to his talk with Barakat, glancing sideways at Cappy from time to time, but not asking who he was, or what he was doing with Barakat.

Shaheen's apartment was furnished in Poor Student, with ramshackle bookcases holding dozens of texts, piles of medical papers. A couch faced two old easy chairs, with a glass-topped coffee table between them, and, to one side, a wooden desk with a computer, printer, and more piles of paper. A bar separated a kitchenette from the living room. There were two interior doors, both open, one leading to a bathroom, the other to a bedroom. They could see the toilet stool in one and the end of a bed in the other.

Shaheen smoked. A large glass ashtray sat on the dining bar; as they talked, they moved past it, toward the circle of the couch and chairs. Cappy picked up the ashtray. Shaheen's back was to him and he lifted it in one hand, a question. Barakat gave him a tiny nod, and Cappy stepped toward Shaheen, who started to turn, and slammed it into his head, an inch behind his ear.

Shaheen went down as though shot. Barakat put his hands on his hips and said, "You know, I hate to see this."

"A little late to stop now," Cappy said.

"Oh, we can't stop." He knelt down and pushed a finger into Shaheen's neck. "Still alive," he said.

Cappy said, "Here," and he knelt beside the supine man, pinched his nose, put his hand over Shaheen's mouth, and pressed. Shaheen was profoundly unconscious, and never resisted. After a moment, he began to tremble and shake, and then he died.

Barakat checked again and said, "Well, that's that. Good-bye, Addie." Then he rolled him, fished his wallet out of his pocket, and took out a wad of cash. "He doesn't trust banks-there may be some more around, maybe in the refrigerator."

They found an envelope with $1,100 under an ice-cube tray; Cappy probed the bedroom, but found nothing more. Barakat had brought with him a dozen sample boxes of Viagra, distributed through hospitals and doctors' offices, two boxes of Tamiflu, and three bottles of stimulants.

They wiped them, then handled them with Shaheen's dead but still sweaty hands, and then put them in a shoe box under Shaheen's bed. The stimulants had the hospital's name on them.

"Now, we go away," Barakat said. They wiped the ashtray and touched the doorknob only with a paper towel, careful not to wipe it, and were gone.

"The thing about this is, this solves several long-term problems I have had," Barakat said, as they walked back down the sidewalk to the car. "I never liked Addle. He was always trying to climb out of his place. Also, he spied on me for my father."

"Hope he didn't tell your old man about the hospital."

"He didn't know about the hospital for sure. He thought I did it, but he wasn't sure. And now, it's not a problem," Barakat said. "You hungry?"

Cappy nodded. "I could use a bite… Man, like that spook was all pink down there, you know? I didn't know that about them."

He didn't think about Shaheen, because Shaheen was now irrelevant.