"How sad!" the First Lady whispered back. "Why, I'll just invite him to the mansion!"

"Oh, now that would be mighty nice, ma'am," Macovich replied as if it were the most magnanimous thing he'd ever heard.

Andy Brazil had no idea what he was getting himself into, Macovich thought with a thrill of vindication. The pretty white boy was going to have the stuffing ripped out of him just like the straw man the flying monkeys carried off, following the orders of their supervisor, the wicked witch of the west, or wherever she was from.

"Well, I guess we should go," the governor decided as his submarine plunged into murky bile spewed out by his gallbladder. "I'm not feeling well and should never have eaten that Belgian fudge cake that Trader had couriered to the restaurant and sent to the table," he added as Andy's antenna went up. "It's true, Maude, I need to cut back."

Macovich and his fellow troopers led the First Family away to the helicopter under a cloak of protective darkness as Andy got out his cell phone. He would call the steak house immediately and insist that any leftover fudge cake be sealed in a plastic bag right away. Suddenly he remembered he had promised Hammer to tell the governor about the situation on Tangier Island. The helicopter's engines ignited and the four blades began to turn as Andy ran toward the chopper.

"But Governor!" Andy shouted, "Superintendent Hammer has urgent news and must talk to you!" His words were scattered by rotor wash.

"I smell cigarettes!" the First Lady went off like a smoke alarm as she held on to her stiffly sprayed hair, protecting it from the sudden wind.

"Not me," all of the troopers said at once.

Smoke and his road dogs were watching all this from behind the tinted glass of the black Toyota Land Cruiser that had been stolen in New York and through a series of transactions had ended up in Smoke's possession with new plates and the vehicle identification number filed off. The pirates had been cruising when they happened upon Bellgrade Shopping Center, where Ruth's Chris Steak House was tucked back behind old trees, and they couldn't help but notice the huge helicopter sitting in the grass.

None of the highway pirates had ever seen such a thing, and when the throttle was turned up to full power, Smoke and his crew gawked at beating blades and landing lights blazing as trees whipped in hurricane-force gusts.

"Shit," Smoke exclaimed. It was rare he showed emotion other than anger and hate. "Would you fucking look at that!"

Cuda, Possum, and Cat sat in awed silence, the chopping of the blades thudding their eardrums and exciting their blood like lust.

"I wonder how hard it'd be to fly one of those things," Smoke said. "You imagine what we could do with something like that? Fuck trucks! Shit, no one could ever catch us and we could deliver the goods ourselves in half the time from here to Canada, get the middle man out of the way."

The helicopter lifted, flooding wildly swirling grass with dazzling light, and through an expansive passenger's window, Smoke could just make out one of the Crimm daughters ripping open a bag of junk food, maybe chips. Then he noticed someone else. Andy Brazil was trotting back to his unmarked car. It turned Smoke to molten lava to see that son of a bitch again. When Andy had been a city cop, he and Hammer had been responsible for catching Smoke and putting him in prison. Not a day had passed in Smoke's cell when he hadn't entertained sadistic fantasies about what was in store for those two cops.

"Well, well, well," Smoke said, as the helicopter rose above trees and thundered into the sky. "Look who's here. Maybe I ought to blow his motherfucking brains out right now."

"Whose brains?" Cat tore his eyes away from the bright light churning up the night. He followed Smoke's vindictive stare to a blond trooper climbing into an unmarked car.

"Why you want to blow his brains out now, man?" Possum protested as Smoke put the SUV in gear. "Don't go be doing something like that with all these police around! You crazy or what? You wanna do that, I'm getting outta the car."

Possum was riding up front, and when he grabbed the door handle, Smoke backhanded him across the face. Cuda and Cat shrank into their seats, getting smaller and falling silent. They despised Smoke but had nowhere else to go, and were in too much trouble by now to do anything but stay in their present employment. Both Cuda and Cat had started out in street gangs, which were a dime a dozen these days. Being a pirate was like being the Mafia, Cat reassured himself as he didn't move or blink in his seat in the Land Cruiser. Nobody messed with Smoke and his road dogs, and they went after bigger prizes than just ripping off people and ATM machines and doing drive-by shootings for fun. The other day, Smoke had taken his crew to Cloverleaf Mall and bought all of them brand-new Nikes and all the pizza and french fries they could eat in the food court.

So he wasn't all bad. Possum was trying to make himself feel better, too. But he was tired of being smacked around by Smoke and worrying about him hurting or killing poor little Popeye. When Possum was growing up, his daddy used to smack him around, too, and do awful things at the dinner table, stabbing steak knives into the wood and throwing food across the room. His daddy

liked to shoot rabbits and send the dogs after them so he could have the pleasure of watching the small, shrieking creatures torn to bits. Possum began to stay in the basement, dropping out of school to watch TV in the dark. Over the years, he stopped growing and crept up from the basement only late at night to raid the refrigerator and the liquor bottles after his parents had quit fighting and gone to sleep.

Possum had never caused any kind of trouble until he was able to see in the dark and sunlight hurt his eyes. Then he began to venture out of the basement after midnight and walk around Northside's Chamberlayne Avenue, looking dreamily at cars gliding past and normal people out-people who could come and go as they pleased and didn't have to spend their days in the basement listening to their daddy tear up the house and beat on their mama and torture animals.

One morning at about 2:00 A.M., Possum was malingering in the parking lot of Azalea Mall, eyeing the ATM and hoping someone had forgotten to get their cash out of the little slot he was shoving a Slim Jim down, and a Land Cruiser pulled up. Possum started running, but Smoke was too fast for him. Next thing, Possum was tackled to the pavement and a white boy with dreadlocks was sticking a gun to Possum's head and ordering him into the Land Cruiser. Possum had been a road dog ever since, and sometimes he missed the basement and thought about his mama. Once-and only once-he had called her from a pay phone.

"I got me a good job working at night," he told his mama. "But I can't say where, Mama, 'cause Daddy would come get me, you know. You doing all right?"

"Oh, honey, sometimes it ain't so bad," she said in that defeated, depressed tone Possum knew so well. "Please come home, Jerry," she added, because Possum's real name was Jeremiah Little. "I miss you, baby."

"Don't you be worrying none." Possum got a big lump in his chest as he talked inside the graffiti-scarred phone booth. "1 gonna get enough money to get you out of there and we go live in some nice motel where he ain't never gonna find us!"

The problem with his plan, Possum had since learned, was that Smoke kept the prize money to himself. He gave cash to his dogs as needed and wouldn't allow them to accumulate any on their own. Possum got plenty to eat and all the alcohol and pot he wanted. He wore nice basketball shoes and huge jeans that were always falling off. He was equipped with a pager, a cell phone, a handheld Global Positioning System, a gun, and his own room in the RV. But he had no savings and it was likely he never would. He thought about this as his face stung and the inside of his lip bled. Possum missed his mama and realized that Smoke was even worse than Possum's daddy.