A hand clamped on to the back of my neck and squeezed. I yelped and was brought face-to-face with Horse. His eyes were narrowed, and his mouth was twisted into a scary, gap-toothed smile. He was in his late forties and he looked like he shopped in the Big and Tall store. He was thick-lipped and had close-set eyes. His dark hair was cut short. Because I’d seen him through binoculars at the track, I knew he had a tattoo on the back of his neck. It had looked like a snake, but it was hard to tell for sure at that distance.

“Well, look who we have here,” he said. “I was supposed to go out and find you, but you came onboard with your boyfriend. The pretty little fly walked right into the spider’s web.”

I tried backing away, and his hand tightened.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Thinking about leaving? Don’t you like me? Maybe you just have to get to know me. Maybe we should go belowdecks and get acquainted.”

I heard Hooker surface and flounder beside the boat. I turned my head to see him, and Horse fisted his hand in my hair and yanked my head back.

“Pay attention when I’m talking to you,” he said. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?”

“Let go of me.”

“Maybe I should be the one to teach you manners. It wouldn’t be the first time I had to teach a woman to pay attention. In fact, it’s one of my specialties. That’s why I got the job of talking to you. Everyone knows I have a way with women. I can make women beg. Of course, there’s some pain in the beginning. Do you like pain?”

I opened my mouth to scream, and he yanked my head again.

“Nobody’s gonna care if you scream,” he said. “There’s only crew on the boat right now. All the guests are off in the launch taking a harbor tour. So this is how it works. I’m gonna hurt you pretty bad, and you’re going to spill your guts to me. You’re going to tell me everything I need to know. And if you’re real nice to me after that, I’ll let you go when I’m done with you.”

I broke into an instant violently-sick-stomach cold sweat, and I threw up on Horse. The only time in my life I’ve ever done projectile vomiting.

“Oh shit,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

Horse jumped back and looked down at himself. “What the fuck is this?”

“Cereal and bananas.”

“Fucking bitch. You’re gonna pay for this.”

My heart stuttered in my chest, and then terror-driven instinct took over, and without giving it a second thought, I turned, scrambled over the rail, and jumped. I went under and took in some water before I pushed myself to the surface and bobbed up next to Hooker.

I was wearing jeans and sneakers and they were weighing me down. “Help!” I gasped, spitting out seawater. “Sinking!”

Hooker grabbed me by the front of my shirt and towed me around the side of the boat. We struggled to get past the prow and latched on to the dock while we caught our breath. We went partway down the finger pier, until we came to a ladder and were able to climb out of the water.

My hair and clothes were plastered to me. My sunglasses and hat were riding on the tide. My cell phone was still clipped to my belt and was oozing water.

“I hated that,” I yelled at Hooker. “I don’t know why I went with you. I knew something like that was going to happen. I was almost tortured by the monster with the horse dick. My phone is ruined. And I lost my hat and my sunglasses. And my sneakers are soaked. And they were my favorite sneakers. It’s not like great sneakers grow on trees, you know. And I could have drowned.”

Hooker was staring at my soaked T-shirt and smiling. “Nice,” he said.

Life is simple when you’re a guy. All the world’s problems can be at least momentarily forgotten when in the presence of a wet T-shirt and cold nipples. I blew out a sigh and squished my way to the SUV. I stopped when I got to the car and stared into the empty back window, my teeth clamped into my bottom lip.

Hooker put an arm around me and cuddled me against him. “I miss him, too,” Hooker said. He gave me a brotherly kiss on the top of my head. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him back.”

“I didn’t actually like him all that much when he was around. But now I feel terrible.”

“Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it,” Hooker said.

Everyone in the Ibarra house was off working at the fruit stand, including Gobbles. Hooker and I were alone at the Ibarras’ kitchen table, eating leftovers from the night before. I was showered and dressed in my only clean outfit: khaki shorts, a white T-shirt, and white sneakers.

Hooker was in shorts, T-shirt, and borrowed flip-flops. “I didn’t count on wet shoes,” he said. “I need to stop someplace and get something to wear besides flip-flops. Hard to kick ass in flip-flops.”

“You never told me what went on in Huevo’s office.”

“He asked me why I stole his cars. I said I didn’t steal his cars. He asked me how my dog came to be in the lounge if I didn’t steal his cars. I said someone stole my dog and planted him in the lounge. He said he wanted his cars back. I said I wanted my dog back. He said if he didn’t get his cars back by the end of the day, he was going to cut off my balls and feed them to my dog. I said at least I had balls. And then he had me thrown overboard.”

“Good thinking.”

“When in doubt, deny everything.”

I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth and stared at him.

“I never denied sleeping with that salesclerk,” he said. “I just don’t remember it.”

“Do you have any plans for keeping your anatomy intact?”

“I’m not too worried. I figure he’ll beat the crap out of me, but he probably won’t cut my balls off, because then I’d most likely die and he’d never find his cars. He wants those cars back bad.”

“Here’s a thought?why don’t you offer to pay Huevo for the cars in exchange for Beans?”

“Yeah, that sounds fair. A million plus for a Saint Bernard whose only talent is drooling.”

“It’s not his only talent. He says hello by knocking people down to the ground. And he can stand on three legs and scratch his ear with his foot. And he has pretty brown eyes.”

“Like me,” Hooker said. “Except I can’t scratch my ear with my foot.”

“Yep. You and Beans are the perfect pair.”

Hooker grinned at me and reached for his cell phone. He went to punch in Huevo’s number and water leaked out. “It’s dead,” Hooker said. “Drowned.”

“Can you get Huevo’s number off it?”

“No, but I can probably get a number from Butch.”

Ten minutes later, Hooker put the Ibarra phone back in its cradle on the kitchen counter.

“Well?” I asked.

“Huevo said he doesn’t want the money. He wants the cars.”

“Maybe it’s the chip that he wants. Maybe you should call him back and offer him the chip.”

Hooker was fidgeting with the gearshift knob we’d lifted off the 69 car. He was turning it upside down and right side up, examining it. “This is a work of art,” he said. “Huevo’s machine shop has designed this knob so it’s strong and comfortable in your hand with minimum weight.”

He set it on the table with the threaded side down and there was a barely perceptible plink. He picked the knob up and a tiny metal disk was left lying on the table.

I pushed the disk around with my finger. It was silver and slightly smaller than a contact lens.

“It looks like a watch battery, but it doesn’t have any markings,” I said to Hooker. “And I don’t know what the heck it was doing inside the gearshift knob.”

“Maybe this is the traction-control thingy.”

“Impossible. It doesn’t connect to anything. I cut the shifter in half. No wires. The microprocessor has to send electricity to a mechanical part to get the engine to slow down. We only know two ways to send electricity. One is over a wire. The other is a lightning bolt.”

“Then what is it?”

I turned it over in the palm of my hand. “I don’t know. I’d like to see inside, but I’m afraid I’ll destroy it if I try to open it. It wouldn’t be a problem if we were in Concord.”