“Someone has to get me out of here,” I said. “I’m going to be sick.”

Hooker gave me a shove, and we all rushed out and stood gulping air in the middle of the warehouse. Gobbles had started shivering. He was shivering so much I could hear his teeth chattering.

“This is b-b-bad,” he said.

Hooker and I nodded agreement. It was bad.

“Who would want to kill Oscar Huevo?” I asked Hooker.

“The list is probably in the tens of thousands. He was a brilliant businessman, but I’m told he was a ruthless competitor. He had a lot of enemies,” Hooker said.

“We need to call the police.”

“Darlin’, we’re standing in front of a hauler we just hijacked and vandalized. And the dead guy on the floor owns the car that just beat me out of the championship. And if that isn’t bad enough, two Stiller employees are involved in some really bad shit.”

“Do you think Oscar Huevo is the billion-dollar cargo that was going to Mexico?”

“I think it’s a good possibility.”

We fell silent for a couple minutes, all of us absorbing the extent of the disaster.

“I got the icky c-c-creepy c-c-crawlies,” Gobbles said. “M-m-maybe we could just p-p-put Oscar back in the l-l-locker.”

THREE

A car door slammed outside the warehouse and Hooker, Gobbles, and I went rigid. A beat later the lock tumbled on the side door and Felicia Ibarra and her pal Rosa Florez walked in. Rosa works in one of the cigar factories on Fifteenth Street. She’s in her forties. She’s half a head shorter than me and twenty pounds heavier. And while I like to think of myself as having an okay shape, I’m built like a boy compared with Rosa.

Beans gave a happy woof and took off at a gallop, chugging across the room like a freight train. He skidded to a stop in front of Felicia, put his two front paws on her chest, and she went down to the floor with Beans on top of her.

Hooker gave a whistle, pulled a dog biscuit out of his pocket, and tossed it across the room. Beans’s head snapped around, his eyes opened wide, and he abandoned Felicia like she was yesterday’s news, thundering off in search of the biscuit.

“He likes you,” Hooker said to Felicia, helping her get to her feet.

“Lucky me,” Felicia said. “It’s a dog, right?”

Rosa hugged Hooker and me. “We just came to say hello. We never see you anymore.” She looked over Hooker’s shoulder and went wide-eyed at the hauler. “Omigod, this is one of those NASCAR trucks, isn’t it? It’s the thing the car goes in. How does it work? Where do you put the car?”

“The car goes in the top,” I told her. “The ramp is on hydraulics. It lifts the car and the car gets rolled into the bay on the top.”

“And who’s this?” she said, eyeing Gobbles.

“This is Gobbles. He also works for Stiller Racing.”

“Ladies,” Gobbles said, bobbing his head.

“Are you a driver?” Rosa wanted to know.

“No, ma’am,” Gobbles said. “I’m a spotter like Barney. And during the week I do some detailing.”

Felicia swept past me to the hauler. “What’s in the downstairs? I always wanted to see this. I just want to look in the door,” she said. “Just take a little peek.”

“No!” Hooker and I said in unison, blocking the way.

Rosa tried to see around Hooker. “Does this truck have one of those lounges with black leather couches where all the drivers have sex?”

“We don’t all have sex there,” Hooker said.

“Is there someone back there now?” Rosa asked. “Someone famous?”

“No,” Hooker said. “No one’s back there.”

“Your mouth is crooked,” Rosa said. “Your mouth always gets that little crook in it when you tell a fib. Who’s back there? It’s not a movie star, is it? I’m not giving up until I find out.”

There was a loud woof and then a thud from inside the hauler. We all turned and looked and saw that Beans had gone into the hauler through the side door and was trying to get Oscar Huevo to play. He’d managed to knock Huevo over, and now he was jumping on him, making growly dog sounds. Huevo didn’t move or squeak, so Beans straddled him and sunk his teeth into what I suspected was Huevo’s shoulder.

“Holy crap!” Hooker said.

He threw a biscuit at Beans, and Beans snapped it up in midair. The next biscuit fell short, and Beans had to jump over Huevo to get it.

I ran to the SUV and opened the back hatch. “Get him to jump in,” I yelled to Hooker. “Throw some biscuits in here.”

Hooker whistled and tossed the biscuits, and Beans galloped across the floor and sailed into the SUV. I slammed the hatch closed and leaned against the car, my hand over my heart.

“What is that?” Felicia wanted to know, looking into the hauler. “It looks like a big bag of chicken parts. No wonder the doggie wanted to chew it. What are you doing with chicken parts? Are you having a barbecue party?” She elbowed Hooker out of her way and stepped into the hauler. “It smells funny in here,” she said, bending for a closer look. “I think these chicken parts are rotten.” She suddenly straightened and made the sign of the cross. “This isn’t chicken parts.”

Hooker blew out a sigh. “It’s a dead guy.”

“Holy mother,” Rosa said. “What are you doing with a dead guy?”

I gave Rosa and Felicia an abbreviated version of the last six hours. Felicia made the sign of the cross at least ten times, and Rosa listened with her mouth open and her eyes half popped out of her head.

“I gotta see this,” Rosa said when I was done. “I gotta see the dead guy.”

We all returned to the hauler and gaped at Huevo.

“He doesn’t look real,” Rosa said. “He looks like one of those wax people. Like he was made for a horror movie.”

Especially now that he had big tooth marks in his shoulder.

“What are you going to do with him?” Rosa wanted to know.

Hooker and I looked at each other, sharing the same thought. We now had a dead man with holes in him that perfectly fit Beans’s canines. We couldn’t just put Huevo back in the locker like Gobbles had suggested. Sooner or later it would occur to people that there’s only one dog on the circuit with teeth that big…and Hooker would be dragged into the murder mess. Even without that, I couldn’t put Huevo back in the locker. It felt disrespectful to dismiss him that easily.

“I think he looks like fish food,” Rosa said.

Felicia did another sign of the cross. “You better hope God wasn’t listening to that. Suppose this man is Catholic? It would be our fault he doesn’t get a prayer over his body. It would be a black mark on our soul.”

Rosa cut her eyes to me. “Can’t afford to get too many more of those.”

“Yeah,” Hooker said. “I’m standing in a hot hauler, staring down at a Mexican with a hole in his head. Wouldn’t want to push my luck by pissing God off.”

“We should take him to his relatives,” Felicia said. “It’s what God would want.”

“His relatives are in Mexico,” I said. “What would God’s second choice be?”

“He must have somebody here,” Felicia said. “He wouldn’t be traveling alone. Where is he staying?”

We all shrugged. It wasn’t as if we could go through his pockets and find a matchbook.

“Not in a motor coach,” Hooker said. “Probably in one of the big hotels on Brickell Avenue.”

“We need to put him someplace where he’s going to be discovered,” I said. “If we leave him in the hauler, he might be taken to Mexico and disposed of and his family would never know what happened to him. Hard to know the killer’s plans. We could leave him in the hauler and make sure the police find him, but it’ll be even more of a scandal for NASCAR. And chances are good that Hooker and Beans will be brought into the investigation. Hooker might even become a suspect. So I think we need to find neutral ground. We need to leave Huevo someplace not associated with NASCAR and someplace where he’ll be found and recognized.”