''Jesus, Sally,'' Del said. ''Take it easy on the nuts stuff.''

''We just want to know where you saw him, who he was with and what you know about him,'' Lucas said. ''Our source says you used to hang out with him.''

''Who is it? The source? I talk to you, you oughta give me something.''

''You know I can't tell you that. I could ask sex to give your place a pass for a couple of months,'' Lucas said, adding, ''if the information is decent.''

She nodded, calculating. A two-month pass from sex added up. She said, ''All right. I hung with the Seed, off and on, for maybe ten years? Up until-let's see-four or five years ago. They got me in the business to begin with, turned me out in Milwaukee. Dick was one of the bigger shots in theSeeds when I first met him. He was maybe twenty-five back then, so he'd be what, forty?''

''Thirty-eight,'' Lucas said. ''That's a long time ago.''

''Yeah. I remember him especially because he thought he was Marlon Brando. He liked to wear those squashed fisherman hats, and gold chains and shit. I caught him practicing his smile once, in the can at this bar in Milwaukee.''

''Practicing…?''

''Yeah.''

''I'm not getting a picture of a big leader, here,'' Lucas said.

''Oh, he was. Maybe a little too nuts, though. You know, most of the Seeds were sort of… criminal businessmen. A little dope, a little porn, a few whores.

Bad, but not necessarily crazy. Dick… you heard about the sleeping on the yellow line?''

''Yeah, heard the story,'' Lucas said.

''I was there. He did. And he was asleep. And I once saw him try to ride a

Harley up an oak tree…''

Lucas looked at Del and they both shrugged. ''He killed this guard, cut his throat, pretty cold,'' Lucas said to O'Donald. ''Does that sound like

LaChaise?''

She thought for a moment, cocking her head, then said, ''Well, ten years ago, he would've had to be pissed. But just cold like that…'' She snapped her fingers. ''I don't know.''

''His old lady and Georgie LaChaise-they had a rep for stealing money and giving it to nut groups,'' Lucas said. ''He had to have help in the escape. We thought maybe some of the nuts helped out.''

''I didn't know his wife or his sister. The Seed had some serious goofballs around, though. Just before I left it was the blacks this and the Jews that and the politicians and media and cops and feminists and television and banks and insurancecompanies and welfare and food stamps… the whole pizza pie.''

''Sounds like talk radio,'' Lucas said.

She laughed, an unpleasant gurgling sound, and her stomach bounced up and down.

She pointed her finger at him. ''That's good.''

''What was he doing at the laundromat?'' Del asked.

''Talking to some guy,'' O'Donald said. ''They was standing up, arguing with each other-that's when I came down the street and saw him. He has a beard and he had a beard when I knew him, but he didn't have a beard in the newspaper picture.''

''That was the last picture they had of him,'' Lucas said. ''He started growing the beard two or three months ago.''

''How'd it look?'' Del asked. He'd propped himself against a chest of drawers.

''Short and smooth? Special cut?''

''Bible prophet,'' she said. ''Long and scraggly.''

Lucas said, ''Then what? After he was arguing with the guy?''

''I didn't hang around. I don't need Dick LaChaise seeing me and asking for a favor, if you know what I mean.''

''You worried about freebies?'' Del asked.

''I don't care about freebies,'' she said. She looked away, her lips still moving, then she shook her head and said, ''If Dick is here, some of his old

Seed buddies are probably around, too. You really don't want to fuck with them.''

''We did,'' Del said.

O'Donald nodded: ''I read about it-that thing where you guys killed his old lady and his sister.''

''Yeah?'' Del nodded.

''He's here to even the score on that,'' O'Donald said. ''If I were you guys,

I'd move to another state.''

Lucas looked at her. ''You think he'd come after cops?''

''Davenport, have you been listening?'' she asked impatiently.''Dick is a fuckin' fruitcake. You killed his woman and his sister. He's coming after you, all right. Eye for an eye.''

She frowned suddenly, then said, ''That guy he was talking to-at the laundromat.

I think he was a cop.''

Lucas said, ''What?''

''I don't know who, but I recognized the attitude. You know how you can always tell a cop? I mean, except for Capslock here, he looks like a wino

… Well, this guy was like that. A cop-cop.''

''Would you recognize a mug shot?''

She shrugged: ''Probably not. I didn't really look at him, I was sort of looking past him, at Dick. It was the way he stood that made me think cop.''

Del looked down at Lucas and said, ''That's not good.''

''No. That's not good.'' Lucas looked back through the dark house, the smoke-browned wallpaper, the crumpled Chee-tos bags on the floor, the stink of a cat, and he said, half to himself, ''Eye for an eye.''

MARTIN HAD BROUGHT A FOAM TARGET WITH HIM, A two-foot-square chunk of dense white plastic with concentric black circles around the bull's-eye. He'd nailed it to a wall beside the refrigerator, and was shooting arrows diagonally across the living room, into the kitchen. The shooting made a steady THUMM-whack from the bowstring vibration and the arrows punching into the target.

Form practice, he called it; he didn't care where the arrow went, if the form was correct. As it happened, the arrow always went into the bull's-eye.

LaChaise had been watching a game show. When it ended, he yawned, got to his feet and went to a window. The light had died. He looked out into the gloom, then let the curtains fall back and turned to the room. He cracked a smile and said, ''Let's saddle up.''

Martin was at full draw, and might not have heard. He held, released:

THUMM-whack.

Butters had been playing with their new cell phone. They'd bought it from a dealer friend of Butters's, who'd bought itfrom one of his customers, a kid with a nose for cocaine.

''Good for two weeks,'' the dealer had promised. Butters had given him a thousand dollars for the phone, and the dealer had put the money in his jeans without counting it. ''The kid's ma is a realtor. She's in Barbados on vacation, left him just enough money to buy food. The kid said his ma made fifty calls a day, so you can use it as much as you want; I wouldn't go calling Russia or nothing.''

They'd used it twice, once to call Stadic, once to call a used-car salesman.

When LaChaise said ''Saddle up,'' Butters put the phone down, opened the duffel by his foot, and took out two pistols. One was a tiny. 380, the other a larger nine-millimeter. He popped the magazines on both of them, thumbed the shells out and restacked them. Then he took a long, thin handmachined silencer out of the duffel and screwed it into the nine-millimeter: excellent. He unscrewed the silencer, picked up his camo jacket and dropped the silencer in the side pocket.

''Ready,'' he said simply. Butters had a thick blue vein that ran down his temple to his cheekbone: the vein was standing out in the thin light, like a scar.

''How about you?'' LaChaise asked Martin.

Martin was at full draw again, focused on form: THUMMwhack. ''Been ready,'' he said.

LaChaise parted the drapes with two fingers, looked out again. The streetlights were on and it was snowing. The snow had started at noon, just a few flakes at first, the weather forecasters saying it wasn't much. Now it was getting heavier. The closest streetlight looked like a candle.

LaChaise turned back into the room, stepped to a chair, and picked up three sheets of paper. The papers were Xerox copies of a newspaper article from the