Hooker was on all fours with the chain in his hand, trying to wrap it around Rodriguez’s ankle, but Rodriguez was a moving target, rolling on the cement floor, holding his leg, swearing and moaning. I threw myself on top of Rodriguez, Rodriguez let out an oouf of air, and I pinned him long enough for Hooker to secure the loop of chain with a padlock.

I rolled off Rodriguez and looked at Hooker, still on hands and knees. “Are you okay?”

Hooker dragged himself up to standing. “Yeah, aside from having size-ten footprints on my chest, I’m peachy. Next time I open a trunk with a killer in it, I’ll step back.”

We waited for Rodriguez to quit swearing and writhing in pain, and then we dragged him across the room and chained him to the pipe.

Rodriguez propped himself up against the wall, his knee outstretched. “You broke my fucking knee,” he said.

“It’s just a bruise,” I told him. “If I’d broken it, you’d see swelling.”

“It feels swollen.”

“I’m sure it’s not swollen.”

“I’m telling you it’s fucking swollen. You goddamn broke my knee.”

“Hey!” Hooker said. “Could we forget the knee for a minute? We’re in an unfortunate situation, and we need you to answer some questions.”

“I’m not answering nothing. You could cut off my nuts and I’m not answering nothing.”

“There’s an idea,” I said to Hooker. “I’ve never cut off anybody’s nuts before. It might be fun.”

“Messy,” Hooker said. “Lots of blood.”

“How about this, we could hang him upside down until all the blood rushes to his head, and then we could cut off his nuts.”

Hooker smiled at me. “That might work.”

Rodriguez groaned and put his head between his legs.

“I think he’s feeling sick,” I said to Hooker.

“Maybe we should give him a break,” Hooker said. “He’s probably not such a bad guy. Only doing his job.”

“You’re such a softy,” I said to Hooker.

“Trying to be fair.”

I was still holding the flashlight and I gave it a little waggle. “Can we at least beat the crap out of him?”

“I know that was our original plan,” Hooker said, “but I think we should give him a chance to save his ass. I bet he could tell us some interesting stuff.”

We both looked down at Rodriguez.

“Shit,” Rodriguez said. “You’re playing me.”

“True,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t cause you a lot of pain if you don’t cooperate.”

“And if I do cooperate?”

“No pain,” Hooker said.

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know about Oscar Huevo.”

“He wasn’t such a nice guy. And now he’s dead,” Rodriguez said.

“I want to know how he got dead.”

“It was an accident.”

I had the flashlight trained on Rodriguez, making him squint past the glare.

“He had a big hole in the middle of his forehead,” I said to Rodriguez. “It didn’t look like an accident.”

“Okay, it wasn’t an accident. It was more like good fortune. Oscar and Ray got into a big fight. I don’t know what it was about, but Ray came out of it mad and decided he needed to get rid of Oscar. So Lucca and me got the job. Problem is, Oscar has his own muscle, and there aren’t a lot of opportunities to gracefully make Oscar disappear, if you know what I mean. We watched Oscar for a couple days, and we were worrying it wasn’t gonna happen, and then it got dropped in our lap.

“Oscar had a girlfriend stashed in South Beach. He’d sneak out of his hotel on Brickell and spend the night with his girl, and then his guy, Manny, would pick him up and bring him home real early in the morning. Manny’d drop Oscar off a couple blocks from the hotel, and it’d look like Oscar was out getting exercise. Oscar was laying low on account of the divorce. Figured why stir up any more trouble than he already had. So Manny’s supposed to pick Oscar up, only Manny’s eaten some bad clams or something and he can’t get himself out of the bathroom long enough to get his shoes on. That’s how Lucca and me got the call to go get Oscar.

“We drive over there and it gets even better. The girlfriend opens the door and tells us Oscar’s in the bathroom, and he’s in trouble. Turns out he took some of that stuff to, you know, help him out in the sack, and his dick won’t go down. He’s buck naked in the bathroom, and he’s trying everything he knows, and his dick won’t go down. So we shot him.”

“That explains a lot,” Hooker said.

“Yeah, I honestly thought it would help his situation, but even after we shot him, his dick wouldn’t go down,” Rodriguez said. “I’m telling you, I’m never taking that stuff.”

“What about the girlfriend?”

“We shot her, too. One of those unfortunate necessities.”

“Had to be messy,” I said.

“Hey, Lucca and me are professionals. We’re not stupid about this. We shot them both in the bathroom. Wall-to-wall marble. Easy cleanup. Had to use a brush on the grout, but overall it wasn’t bad.”

We were discussing a grisly double murder and Rodriguez was telling us all this in the same sort of conversational tone a person might use to pass on a favorite lasagna recipe. And I was responding with the same enthusiasm a new cook might show. I was simultaneously horrified and impressed with myself.

“Tell me about the plastic wrap,” I said to Rodriguez. “What was that?”

“Ray figured he had a way to get rid of Oscar and Suzanne. He figured he’d take Oscar back to Mexico and bury him someplace where the widow Huevo would look guilty…like in her flowerbed in the hacienda backyard. Ray wanted to make it look like Oscar had gone back to Mexico and had it out with the missus. And the perfect way to get him to Mexico was in the hauler since it was already supposed to take the car back to the R and D center. Only thing was, Ray said we had to make sure we didn’t get anything dirty. He didn’t want blood smears all over the hauler. And he didn’t want Oscar stinking things up.

“We would have put him in a big garbage bag, but there was only one left in the kitchen at the girlfriend’s condo, and we used it on the girlfriend. So we were left with the plastic wrap. Good thing there was a lot of it. A couple giant rolls. I don’t know what they were doing with all that wrap. Probably something kinky. Oscar had some odd tastes. Anyways, we found a couple boxes by the Dumpster outside the condo, and we put Oscar and the girlfriend in the cardboard boxes and carried them out like they were going into storage. We tossed the box with the girlfriend into the Dumpster. And we brought Oscar onboard the hauler. We thought he was hidden better in the locker, so we threw the box away and stuffed him in.

“Originally we were gonna put Oscar onboard when the hauler made a rest stop, but it had an engine problem and it turned out we were able to transfer him at the track. We drove up just as everybody was leaving. The two drivers went to take a leak, and we got the box out of the SUV we were driving and into the hauler. It was real sweet…until you stole the truck.”

“Guess we ruined the plan,” Hooker said.

“Big-time. And you got the gizmo. Ray don’t like that you got the gizmo. He needs it bad. He’s on a rant.”

“What’s so special about the gizmo?”

“I don’t know exactly. I guess it’s one of a kind.”

Hooker had his phone in his hand. “Now all you have to do is tell all this to the police.”

“Yeah, right,” Rodriguez said. “How many murders you want me to confess to? Maybe I’ll get off easy and they’ll only fry me twice.”

Hooker looked over at me. “He’s got a point.”

“You could change the story,” I told Rodriguez. “You could say Ray killed Oscar. We don’t care if you tweak the facts a little.”

“Right,” Hooker said. “We just want to look squeaky clean, so we can get on with our lives.”

“Ray was always with people,” Rodriguez said. “He’ll be able to account for his time.”

“Okay, how about you say Lucca killed Oscar? You could plea-bargain,” Hooker said. “They do that all the time on television.”