"All right," Mac panted once they'd gotten the inert immensity onto the gurney and strapped him in. The blood-pressure cuff was still around his neck, the bulb dangling behind. "Let them get right behind you," Mac was saying to Bundy. "Then when you hear 'three,' floor it, hit it hard. You ready?" he said to Felix. Felix, holding his rib cage, nodded.

Same principle as launching a bobsled, essentially. When Bundy hit the accelerator, Mac and Felix shoved. The gurney hit the doors, the doors blew open and the gurney with its two hundred and fifty pounds of meat took off. It went through the windshield of the car behind. The car veered off the road into a stand of palmettos thoughtfully planted to welcome people to Key Biscayne, and burst into flames.

Charley sent Rostow off with Mac to take him to Fort Lauderdale and let him out at a secluded part of the beach. Rostow would call the police and report a shooting. The police would arrive to find yet another mugging victim. Bundy took Felix to Mercy Hospital. Alone, he turned his attention to Barazo, tied securely to a chair that was bolted to the cement floor in the basement of the safe house. He sat and smoked a cigar until the staphylococcus had worked its way through Barazo's GI tract. He gave him some Coca-Cola to settle his stomach, and then turned on the tape recorder and began.

He explained what it was he wanted. Barazo told him to go fuck himself. Many times. Charley was a believer in letting a man get things out of his system first, so he let Barazo go on until he was exhausted. Then, with a you-give-me-no-other-choice expression, Charley put on surgical gloves and surgical mask and eye protectors and went to a corner of the semi-darkened room and wheeled out a stand from which intravenous bags are hung. He attached the tubing to the needle with nearly faultless verisimilitude, rolled up Barazo's sleeve-Barazo struggling-wet a cotton ball with alcohol and rubbed the inside of his arm, located a vein, nodded with satisfaction and gently inserted the long needle. (He'd done this for Margaret in her final illness, so he was adept.) This done, he produced a cooler, one of the playfully designed red-and-white jobs one associates with sun-drenched days at the beach. He flipped back the lid in full view of Barazo and removed a plastic bag full of red liquid. The label read:

DANGER: CONTAMINATED BLOOD

HIV-POSITIVE

Charley watched Barazo's eyes closely, and it was amazing what he saw in them: a clear readiness to die. Give the man that, his ruthlessness contained contempt even for his own life. "You know, Jesus," he said, appearing to adjust the bag one last time before opening the stopcock and letting the blood (Karo syrup and food coloring) seep into his veins, "while you're dying, you know what people are going to be saying about you, don't you? They're going to say, 'Ol' Haysoos making himself out to be such a tough guy and the whole time he turns out to be a maricon. How about that?'"

14

"Sorry about this," Diatri said to his Whole Crispy Fish Hunan Style, chopsticking through thick, crackled skin to steamy white flesh. The fish stared back with a Churchillian pout, lower jaw a-jut, eyes sullen with plum glaze.

Diatri said sympathetically, "Hey, it could have been worse. You could have been a lobster. You get dunked live in boiling water, then people wearing bibs with your picture on them fight over your claws. At least this is more dignified."

He considered: one dead scumbag on East Eighth, his missing roommate Ramirez, Ramirez's mother with ten grand through her mail slot, a smart-ass priest who thinks he heard Ramirez's confession over the phone in the middle of the night.

"Let me try something out on you," he said to the fish. "Ramirez and Luis get into an argument, Luis storms out, Ramirez follows him and pops him on the sidewalk, freaks out and splits and on his way out of town shoves ten grand through his mama's door to tide her over."

The sea bass frowned. "Why didn't he call her? Why did he leave the coke behind? What about the $1,200 they found on Luis? What about the raid jackets?"

"Maybe he wants his mother to think he's dead in case Luis' friends came looking for him. Maybe he didn't want to carry an ounce of blow on him after whacking someone. Maybe he freaked after whacking Luis and didn't think to take his money. As to the raid jackets, you noticed Detective Korn's attitude problem." Diatri whispered to the fish, "Did it occur to you that maybe the Ninth Precinct has some vigilante thing going?"

"That's crazy," said the fish.

"Yeah?" Diatri dabbed away the plum sauce from his lips. "You're so smart, how come you're on the menu?"

"You finish?" Diatri jumped. These Chinese waiters, the way they creep up on you.

"Yeah."

"Or you wan talk more with fish?"

"No, that's- I'll take some tea and the check."

"What fish say?"

"He said you use too much MSG." It was nine o'clock. It was time to go see Victor.

Diatri drove north on Third Avenue, toothpick in place and humming "You Gotta Turn the Lights Down Low If You Want to Boogie Real Slow." Dropping in on Victor like this always put him in a pleasant mood. Victor was a dope lawyer who had made one mistake a few years ago.

Victor was on retainer for the Ochoa family of Medellin. A teenage nephew of Jorge Luis Ochoa, son of Don Fabio Ochoa, founder of the illustrious dynasty, was caught coming through U.S. Customs at Kennedy Airport with a pet boa constrictor stuffed with twenty condoms full of cocaine inside it. His uncle called Victor.

A few days later, the Bogotá police, acting on an anonymous tip (from Don Fabio), arrested an Eastern Airlines baggage handler. They turned up trace amounts of cocaine, an empty box of El Gigante brand condoms-the same kind-and a National Geographic book on boa constrictors with the nephew's flight number written on the back. The baggage handler confessed that he had planted the cocaine in the nephew's boa while it was being loaded into the plane; his accomplice at Kennedy was supposed to snatch the snake at the other end, but had screwed up. The Bogotá magistrate handling the case forwarded the information to the U.S. Justice Department. The U.S. District Attorney decided to prosecute nonetheless, but Victor had his ducks all lined up and presented an impassioned Fourth Amendment-based defense to the jury: how would you like it if Big Brother took your dog Skippy away from you and sliced him up just to see if he'd eaten anything illegal? The nephew was acquitted. A few months later the Bogotá baggage handler quietly escaped from prison and retired on an annuity provided by Don Fabio.

Victor submitted a bill for two million dollars. The Ochoas paid well, but even they thought this was on the high side. Uncle Jorge transferred a million laundered U.S. dollars to Victor's Cayman Islands account. Victor, who had an ego problem, was outraged and decided to get even. He'd gone up against Diatri in court a few times. He called him and said he had something for him. He said to meet him at the new Central Park zoo, by the snakes. Victor thought that was a nice touch. At the meeting, he gave Diatri the name of Ochoa's New England distributor and the time and place the next shipment would arrive in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was a good tip, producing arrests and a 500-kilo seizure. (In those days, 500 kilos was a good haul.) A few days after the arrest, Diatri sent Victor a tape recording of their conversation at the snake house. Victor called up Diatri, hysterical, trying to make himself into Jesus and Diatri into Judas, an analogy Diatri rejected. "What do you want from me?" Victor cried. "What? What? What?"

"I want lunch," said Diatri.

"Lunch?"