Cooper released Borrego’s paw from the handshake.

“What I’m curious about,” he said, “is when I can expect to get my gun back from your army of one.”

Borrego motioned to his bodyguard and Cooper turned and caught the Browning as the velociraptor threw it.

“Hasta luego,” Cooper said, and took his best shot at stepping on the bodyguard’s toe on his way out of the office. The security man pulled his wingtip back as Cooper passed-and Cooper might have caught the velociraptor smirking at his lame attempt.

Despite the relative humiliation, Cooper exited the administrative building and headed for the train tracks.

22

It was six o’clock in the morning when Cooper heard the phone ring forty or fifty times. Somebody finally silenced it-meaning it wasn’t too much of a stretch to peg the three hard whacks at his door for Ronnie, coming to say the call was for him.

“Rise and shine,” Ronnie said, “you sorry rummy fuck!”

Cooper’s first thought was, Who’s dead now? But doing his best to ignore this thought, he reached under his bed, picked up, then heaved his Ken Griffey Jr. Autograph-Special Louisville Slugger in the direction of the front door of his bungalow.

It wouldn’t do anything to Ronnie but scare the daylights out of him-Cooper was too tired to get up and take the swing that would have done the trick-so he made sure of his aim, watching with satisfaction as the heavy bat careened off the concrete floor of the bungalow in a single hop then rocketed into the jalousie panes on the door. The bat shattered all twelve louvered panes to splinters, gouging a hole in the screen beyond-Cooper hopeful, though unable to see whether the hardwood handle of the bat had reached far enough through the screen to strike Ronnie in the shin.

“Keep out!” he bellowed.

Through the window near the foot of his bed, Cooper saw Ronnie stroll down the stairs and pass out of view-middle finger extended all the while, dropping a foot with each step taken down and away from the bungalow.

A fuck-you puppet show, Cooper thought-what a fine way to start the day.

He found a saggy set of black shorts with an AND1 logo on the thigh and slipped on his Reefs. He ignored, even enjoyed the eighty-five-degree rain as it dumped its thick drops on his mussed hair and naked, weathered shoulders. He came through the dark, empty kitchen with its huge stainless steel appliances-detecting, as with every early morning, the faint scents of hops, barley, rum, and conch fritters emanating from the floor, probably inherited as much from the old mop used to scrub it clean as from the food and drink spilled on it the night before.

In a cubbyhole behind the kitchen sat a hulking phone. It seemed Ronnie had left the receiver off the hook.

“Yep,” he said upon snatching the receiver.

“Good morning, Professor.”

Upon hearing the sound of Julie Laramie’s voice, Cooper instantaneously jerked the phone from his ear and dropped it from great elevation onto its cradle.

He made his way leisurely back through the garden to his room, where he removed the AND1 shorts and slid beneath the sheets again. He could feel some sand in the covers, the way he always felt some, even if he’d had the sheets washed thirty minutes prior.

The ringing started up again, and after twenty-one of the phone’s shrill, bleating rings, the clamor ceased. To Cooper’s great relief, the sounds of the diminishing rain on the metal rooftops and wind-rustled palms washed over the club.

Then he heard those goddamn footsteps coming up the porch again.

“Fuck’s sake, Guv,” Ronnie said. “I hung up on her, but she’s waking up all the guests.”

“The hell you expect me to do about it?”

“Don’t know how many times I need to tell you, old man. Give these fucks your sat phone number and maybe the rest of us can sleep till six-thirty-maybe seven.”

“You sleep till seven, Woolsey’ll have your ass, ‘Guv.’”

“Be my pleasure,” Ronnie said. “Bleedin’ ’ell, I been trying to get ’im to fire me since my first day here.” He went silent for a minute, but Cooper didn’t hear any footsteps, so he knew the errand boy was still standing there.

“Was nice havin’ her around, you know,” Ronnie said. “Why don’t you take her call, you effin’ stump?”

Cooper, his voice almost delicate, said, “Ought to mind your own business.”

He heard the pooled raindrops dripping from the gutters, from the railings, from an occasional wide, waxy leaf. The rainfall itself began to abate, and the wind, too, slowed. After a while, Ronnie’s departing footsteps mingled briefly with the regular mix of sounds.

After another while, Cooper lying in his sheets listening, the last of the sounds of draining water ended too, and the silent heat began to beat down on the places the rain had moistened, and warm the roof of his bungalow, and infiltrate the depths of his room.

Another day has begun, he thought, here in Conch Bay.

Cooper sat in the blistering inferno that was his porch, the old stoop made that way by the direct sunshine that struck and cooked it every afternoon between the hours of two and five. It hadn’t been designed quite right to handle the direct, oppressive afternoon sun. He’d once planted a thermometer out here to measure how hot it got, and the thing had actually sprung a mercury leak. It had registered higher than 140 degrees on the day it broke, but Cooper had decided this wasn’t quite possible-that he’d simply bought a faulty unit that wasn’t made for direct sunlight.

Around noon, the kitchen phone had started up with another ring cycle, and somebody had taken down the number of the woman everybody had already been told not to bother to come get him for. Now, baking in the afternoon heat, Cooper, bored with too many options on how to spend the remaining hours of the day, begrudgingly punched in Laramie’s number on his sat phone. He was informed by the man who answered that he’d reached the LaBelle Motor 8 Luxury Motel. As instructed by the information scribbled on the slip of paper, he requested room number eighteen.

She answered on the second ring.

“All right, what is it,” he said.

Laramie’s interpretive delay lasted only a couple seconds.

“Why did I call, you mean?” she said. “Maybe I was calling just to catch up.”

“Maybe not.”

Cooper leaned slightly forward in his deck chair and planted his elbows on his knees, the sweat pouring out of him in the heat of his outdoor oven. He’d never tried it, but frequently wondered whether eggs would fry out here if he cracked open a pair on the reading table between the chairs. He reflected that for a few months, on and off-between trips aboard the Apache to a string of resorts-Julie Laramie’s rear end had logged its share of oven-hot hours in the other chair on this deck, but not many; not enough. Laramie hadn’t liked the afternoon heat-she preferred the porch at night, under the stars.

Though as it turned out, she hadn’t preferred much of that, either.

“I’m-” Laramie said, then stopped. “This is mildly awkward.” She hesitated again, Cooper suspecting she was hoping for an encouraging word or two-Go ahead, Laramie-but he didn’t bite. Effectively maintaining his reputation as a grouch.

Laramie went on anyway.

“I’m in a complex and difficult situation,” she said. “I’ve been given permission, and instructions, to speak to you-officially, I mean. To recruit you. As a member of my team.”

Cooper sat silently for a while, elbows pressing reddish indentations into his thighs.

“That is awkward,” he said.

“I’m in Florida. Obviously I’m unable to discuss why, or what we need you to help us with, on the phone. We’ll pay for you to come meet with us.”

Cooper began a kind of repeating, monotone chuckle.