As soon as Conner was outside, big black hands fell on his shoulders.

Fat Otis put a huge arm around Conner’s shoulders, crushing him in a half hug, lifting him off the sidewalk. Conner’s feet momentarily dangled six inches off the ground.

“Conner, pal.” Otis grinned. “Going someplace?”

Conner smiled weakly.

“Man, you know I don’t want to do this shit. Why do you put yourself in this position?” Otis asked, his voice plaintive.

“Bad karma?” Conner said.

“You gonna bad karma yourself two broken legs if you keep it up.”

Conner thought about squirming out of Otis’s grip, making a run for it. But that wasn’t really a very good idea. Conner was pretty sure he could count on Otis’s friendship just a little while longer. Hopefully long enough to come up with Rocky’s money. Besides, it was a bad idea to make Otis run after him. Fat Otis didn’t enjoy running. Make him run and you got extra bones broken. No, best to play it cool. Conner was safe. For now.

Otis looked at Conner, read his mind. “Yeah, you off the hook for today. I talked Rocky into giving you some more time, but he wasn’t happy about it. So you got to come talk to him. He wants to see you face-to-face.”

“How about I just send him a postcard?” Conner said.

Otis shook his head. “Nope.”

“A nice letter with a promissory note for the money.”

“Get in.” Otis tossed Conner into the passenger seat of the yellow Lincoln. “Buckle up.”

Rocky Big haunted the dark, cavernous back rooms and hallways of a dirty downtown building on the cheap side of the arena where the Ice Pilots hockey team played. Pensacola was hardly infamous for its rough neighborhoods. The small city didn’t have a Bedford-Stuyvesant or a South Bronx, but there were a few places somebody could buy crack or get knifed. Playerz Gentleman’s Club fronted Rocky’s building. Otis led Conner past some sleepy-eyed women dancing topless in the smoky red light, past the sluggish day crowd to a back door, which opened into a narrow hall that took them past an unused kitchen and ended finally at Rocky Big’s Forbidden City, a secret hideout of criminal activity that wasn’t really so secret if you were a Pensacola lowlife or a cop on the take.

Conner had heard of Rocky’s Forbidden City, but this was the first time he’d seen it. It was like stepping through a door and suddenly you were in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. But instead of candy, there was stolen merchandise. Instead of Oompa-Loompas, there were sweaty guys who looked too ugly to be longshoremen. Men loaded trucks to one side of him, unloaded other trucks on the other side, pushed carts or racks filled with Nintendo GameCubes or fur coats or cartons of cigarettes or a hundred other things. Anything stolen that went east or west across Interstate 10 came through the Forbidden City.

“I’ll take you through Applianceville to Rocky’s office,” Otis said.

Applianceville was a long, wide hallway lined with washers, dryers, refrigerators, and microwave ovens. Most were brand-new and still in the original boxes.

At the other end of Applianceville, they entered a dark warehouse, stacks of CD players, digital video cameras, laptop computers piled high. The commotion of men loading trucks faded behind them.

They passed a reedy little man sitting on a forklift. He had a thin moustache, hair slicked back and oily. When he heard Conner and Otis approach, he reached for the compact machine gun in the seat next to him but left it when he recognized Otis. He went back to reading the newspaper and smoking a stubby cigar. The smell made Conner’s stomach pinch.

They walked past the forklift guard, down another short hall to a door lit by a single bare lightbulb swinging from the ceiling. Otis knocked three times.

A voice on the other side, Southern, slightly high-pitched. “Come in, please.”

They went in.

At first, Conner thought there must have been a mistake. The little man behind the desk could not have been the Rocky Big that Conner had heard so much about. Conner had always pictured a big, hairy guy with a scar down his face and a gold tooth. Somebody who could make you cry just by looking at you.

The man behind the desk was neither rocky nor big nor anything else Conner had expected. Rocky had buttery skin and thick pink lips and dark red hair combed back and wavy like some actor from a 1930s movie. He wore a starched white shirt and a plaid vest buttoned halfway. He stood to offer Conner his hand. Short, barely five and a half feet tall.

“Nice to meet you, Conner,” Rocky said. “Can I call you Conner? I hope you’ll call me Rocky. Otis has told me so much about you. Glad we could finally meet.”

He shook Rocky’s hand. Conner tried to smile but his face wouldn’t do it.

“Please have a seat.” Rocky motioned to a chair. “I’m sorry my desk is such a mess.” He indicated an adding machine, ledgers, stacks of computer printouts. “There’s simply an obscene amount of paperwork involved in an organization like this. You wouldn’t believe it.”

Rocky sat, smiled. They looked at one another. Otis hovered in the background.

“Well.” Rocky cleared his throat. “It seems we have an unpleasant financial matter to discuss.”

Conner squirmed. “Rocky, I-it’s just that-maybe…” Conner couldn’t figure any positive spin he could put on the fact he didn’t have any money.

A knock at the door.

Rocky said, “Hold that thought, won’t you, Conner?” He looked at Otis, raised an eyebrow.

Otis opened the door a crack, had a quick mumbled conversation with someone on the other side. Otis looked over his shoulder at Rocky. “Jeff is here.”

“Oh, damn.” Rocky suddenly looked stricken. “He’s early. Damn damn damn. I really hate this sort of thing.”

Otis looked concerned. “Let me handle it, Rocky. You shouldn’t have to do this.”

Rocky took a deep breath. “No, no. It’s okay. I have to do this in person once in a while, or people will begin to wonder.” He put a thick phone book in his chair, sat on top of it. He appeared marginally bigger. “Conner, I hope you don’t mind. Just some business that needs my attention. Could you have a seat over there, please?”

Conner wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was glad the focus had moved away from him. He took the chair on the other side of the office.

Rocky said, “Okay, Otis. Tell him to come in.”

Otis mumbled at somebody through the door crack, and a few seconds later he opened it wide, ushered in a squat man with a scruffy beard. He wore a polo shirt, jeans, sneakers, a gold hoop in each ear. Brillo-pad hair.

“Have a seat, Jeff.” Rocky’s voice was suddenly lower and rough. A slight scowl on his face, which Conner couldn’t quite decide was convincing or not.

“Sure, Rocky.” Jeff’s wide smile looked tight and strained. He sat.

“Jeff, I think we need to discuss the twenty-five thousand dollars you owe me.”

Jeff’s eyes slid sideways to Conner a moment, then back to Rocky. Conner noticed Otis had moved to stand behind Jeff’s chair.

“Like I told your boys, Rocky,” Jeff said. “It’s just a little delay. My dumb-ass brother-in-law had to make a run to Mexico, right? And he had the dates wrong and now it’s just a simple delay with the merchandise.”

“I made you a loan,” Rocky said. “The particulars are of no interest to me.”

“Right, right. I know. I hear you.” Jeff bobbed his head. Agreeable. “And I totally respect what you’re saying. But I give you my one hundred percent promise that this deal I’m working on is a slam dunk. We needed you to finance us because we were up against a time thing, but as soon as my idiot brother-in-law comes back with the goods, we got a buyer waiting no problem and everybody gets paid.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”