'Fuck,' he said when he realized his victim had lost control of her bowels and bladder. 'I wish you hadn't done that.'

'I'm sorry. Please don't…'

'Shut the fuck up, bitch. You're going to drive real normal and you try anything I'm gonna blow your sweet little baby's brains all over the back of the car while you watch.'

'Take anything,' she cried. 'Just don't hurt her. Anything you want. Oh please! Anything…!'

'Shut up!' Smoke hissed.

Miss Sink was crying so hard her teeth were chattering. They drove behind Kmart and parked where asphalt gave way to acres of woods. Smoke grabbed her wallet out of her purse. He took the ten crisp twenties she had gotten from the money stop.

He robbed her of an additional two dollars and sixty-two cents, and quarters and tokens for tolls. Her watch and necklace weren't worth the trouble, and pawn shops were risky. She stunk so bad he was about to gag, and the fucking kid was waking up and beginning to cry.

'Loraine, it's all right, sweetie. Please be quiet, honey. My name's Miss Sink and this is my grandniece, Loraine,' Miss Sink prattled on. 'You don't want to hurt us. For God's sake, you must have a mother, a grandmother 'SHUT UP! QUIT NAGGING ME, YOU UGLY OLD BITCH!'

Smoke turned the radio up loud. The kid began to howl.

'SHUT THE FUCK UP!' Smoke yelled at the baby.

'Oh God in heaven! Please don't hurt us! Dear God! Think about what you're doing! You look like a smart young man. You don't want trouble like this!'

'I hate ugly old women like you. So you better shut the fuck up and consider yourself lucky I don't do other things to you. But you stink too bad,' he said in a low, cold voice. 'So now you're gonna bend over. So you don't see me when I get out. Okay?'

'Okay,' Miss Sink whimpered.

She pressed her face against the steering wheel. She squeezed her eyes shut and tightly covered them with her hands. She didn't move. She barely breathed. Annie Lennox was stepping on broken glass on the radio as Smoke dug through the glove box and the kid screamed. Smoke emptied the purse on the floor mat and helped himself to a pack of spearmint Freedent gum, fingernail clippers and a prescription bottle of Atavan.

'Thanks, Miss Sink,' he said. 'Grow up to be a good girl, Loraine. Y'all don't forget me, promise?' He laughed.

He popped a stick of Freedent into his mouth and scanned the area. No one was around.

'You know what I look like, bitch?' he said. 'I mean, you gonna recognize me on the street?'

'No. No. I didn't see you! Please,' Miss Sink begged.

'What 'bout that ugly little motherfucker of yours in her little seat back there. She know what I look like?' 'No! She's just a baby! You don't want to hurt us!' Miss Sink was shaking as if she was having a seizure. 'Let me think about this. What's a guy to do?' Smoke smacked his gum. He pulled back the slide of his Glock and it snapped forward with a loud clack. He felt the power. Smoke was high and hard with it as he pumped three Winchester hollowpoints into the back of Miss Sink's head.

Brazil stood with his hands in his pockets, impatiently staring out at sloped, loamy land sutured by railroad tracks and tangled with brambles and trees. Steam billowed from the Fort James Paper Company, and the river was soft music played with fingers of wind and bright notes of sun.

The portable radio on Brazil's belt was a staccato of dispatchers and cops cutting in and out in spurts and codes. Nothing was going on. A handicap van was abandoned on a roadside, traffic was tied up because a light wouldn't flash, a driver had been stopped at a Kmart.

Unit numbers and military time peppered the air, but Passman and Rhoad were strangely silent. Passman dispatched no calls. Rhoad answered no one. Brazil was furious. He was certain the cops were messing with him.

'Eleven,' Brazil tried again.

'Go ahead, 11,' answered a communications officer whose name Brazil did not know.

'Radio, I'm still at the cemetery,' Brazil said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. 'Need someone to 10-25 me right away.'

'That's Hollywood.'

'Ten-4.'

'Any unit in the area of Hollywood Cemetery, need someone to 10-25 unit 11 there.'

'Unit 199-'

'Go ahead, 199.'

'Just two blocks away, I'll swing by the cemetery, 10-25 11.'

Ten-5, 199, 0812 hours.'

Brazil turned away from the river as he heard a rustle. He caught a flash of red on the other side of the cemetery fence where Spring and South Cherry streets intersected. The chain link was dense with ivy. Through it Brazil could just make out the back of the large metal sign advertising Victory Rug Cleaning, an arrow pointing to the business a block away. He turned off his radio and didn't move.

The fence began to shake as someone gripped the edge of the sign and hoisted himself up. Brazil was hidden by the thick shadows of holly trees as he watched Weed reach for a tree branch and pull himself up with ease, swing over the fence and drop branch by branch to the ground. Brazil took cover behind a monument.

'Come on, it's easy,' Weed said to someone on the other side.

The fence shook harder. Brazil was baffled when a scraggly, bearded face was followed by a filthy, raggedly dressed body missing part of a hand and an entire foot. The street person grabbed a branch, got snagged a couple times, but somehow made it over.

'Can't believe I did that,' the street person said. 'Haven't done anything that agile in years.'

He looked around at the mute stony tongues of the dead speaking from the grass, as if searching for something.

'Shit,' he said. 'It ain't all too promising so far unless I plan on a steady diet of flowers.'

Weed nervously wiped sweat off his face with the tail of his extra-extra-large Bulls jersey and rubbed his hands on his relaxed-leg jeans.

'Go on," the street person said to Weed. 'I'll scrounge around and catch you later.'

Weed trotted off in untied Nikes as if he knew exactly where he was going. Brazil ducked behind more monuments, boxwoods and trees as he tailed Weed and kept an eye on the street person Weed had brought with him.

Weed jogged past the Presidents Circle and the graves of Jeb Stuart and John Tyler, on to Jeter Avenue and Bellvue, directly to Davis Circle where the vandalized statue of the first and last president of the Confederacy was still dressed for the game, lumpy basketball in hand. Weed stood in front of it and stared in reverence. Every now and then he cast about, his furtive gaze sweeping over the marble sarcophagus where Brazil this moment was hiding.

A swarm of histamines rushed forth to combat the dust mites storming into Bubba's sinuses and lungs as he probed with a flashlight on the floor of his Jeep. He began to sneeze. His throat and eyes itched and his nose started to run.

'Goddamn!' he said.

The Anaconda's Holo sight was hung on the position spring wire running from one seat to the other. The exposed CB antenna wires Bubba had installed himself and covered with a mat and his work rag were snagged on the trigger.

Smudge's voice came over the CB because Bubba had not been able to stand the silence and had turned radios and the phone back on. Smudge must be feeling better, Bubba thought snidely. Bubba had nothing to say.

'Shit!' Bubba cried when he bumped his funny bone on the door handle and numbness shot up his arm.

He sneezed three more times as he carefully groped under the seat, the engine running.

'Smudge to Bubba. You stealthing on me, good buddy? Called Queen Bee, says you're no show.'

Bubba's eyes were on fire and streaming. He couldn't breathe out of his nose. The stick shift kept grabbing his shirt. Smudge wouldn't shut up and Bubba's portable phone rang. He answered no one. He laid his head against old carpet, straining to see what was required to free his Colt revolver with its eight-inch barrel. He sneezed so hard his nose began to bleed.