On one side of the room sat a weight bench and barbells and plates, with mirrors angled toward the weight bench and hung on the walls. A workbench ran along the opposite wall, with shelves above it and a Peg Board with hooks holding tools. A couple of safes sat beneath the workbench, and in the safes were money, heroin, and guns. Beside the workbench stood a footlocker next to a stand-up case made of varnished oak and glass, in which four shotguns were racked.

On the third wall was a single-unit kitchenette with a two-burner electric stove, sink, and refrigerator stocked with bottled water and beer. Ray used the stove to make his private stash of methamphetamine, both the powder and the crystal, which he cooked on the stove in a small saucepan. On the steel countertop of the kitchenette were bottles of Sudafed and carburetor cleaner, and the other chemicals he used to make the crank.

Ray and his father had plumbed in some pipes and put a bathroom in the room, too. It was big and private, with a solid oak door. Ray could sit on the crapper and look at his stroke books back in there, and if he had a mind to, when he was done wiping himself clean, he could just turn around and pump a load off into the bowl and flush the whole dirty mess.

Beneath the carpet remnant that lay beside the weight bench was a trapdoor. Under that trapdoor was a tunnel that he and his father had dug out the summer before last. The tunnel was their means of escape, in the event that one was needed, and it went back about fifty, sixty yards or so, into the woods behind the barn and the house.

Ray Boone loved this room. Only he and his daddy were allowed back here, that was the rule. Nobody, none of Daddy's friends or his own friends or Edna, would think of coming back here, even if they had access to the key. Edna knew that the drugs she loved so much were in this room. Dumb as she was, though, and she was dumber than a goddamn rock, she was plenty smart enough to know not to try.

Ray picked up a set of barbells and stood before one of the mirrors. He did a set of twenty alternating curls. He dropped the barbells and checked himself out. His prison tats showed just below the sleeves of his white T-shirt. A dagger with blood dripping from it on one arm, a cobra wrapped around the staff of a Confederate flag on the other: standard-issue stuff. The good tattoos, a swastika between two lightning bolts and a colored guy swinging from a tree, he kept covered up on his shoulder and back.

Ray made a couple of serious faces in the mirror, raised his eyebrows, first one, then the other. He wasn't too good-looking so anyone would mistake him for a pretty boy, and he wasn't all that ugly, either. He had acne scars on his face, but they'd never scared any girls off, not that he'd noticed, anyway. And some women liked the way his eyes were set real deep under his hard, protruding brow. A couple of times when he was growing up, some boys called him crosseyed, and he just had to go ahead and pop those boys hard, square in the face. If he was cross-eyed, he didn't see it himself. Edna said he looked like that guy on the Profiler TV series, always played a drug dealer in the movies. Ray liked that guy. There wasn't nothin' pretty about him.

When Ray was done admiring himself he grabbed a vial holding a couple of meth crystals and slipped it into a pocket of his jeans. He took off his sneakers and put on a pair of Dingo boots with four-inch custom heels, opened the safe, and removed a day pack holding plastic packets of heroin the size of bricks that he had scaled out earlier in the day. He found his nine-millimeter Beretta, checked the load, and holstered the automatic in the waistband of his jeans. From the footlocker he withdrew a heavy flannel shirt and jacket, and put them both on, the tail of the shirt worn out to cover the gun. He slung the day pack over his shoulder, left the room, and locked the door behind him.

Edna was waiting for him out in the bar. She gave him a wet kiss as he palmed the vial over to her, then left the barn with her drink in her hand.

'Ready, Daddy?'

'Sure thing.'

Earl hated the city. There was only one thing good about it, far as he was concerned. It was down in the warehouse they called the Junkyard. For him, it was worth the trip.

Earl Boone stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. He killed his beer and crushed the can in his hand, dropping the empty in a wastebasket beside the electronic poker game. He slipped a deck of Marlboro reds into his shirt pocket and watched his son take his own pack of 'Boros off the bar and do the same.

Earl stood as his son crossed the room. Earl was a weathered version of the boy, the plow lines on his cheeks somewhat masking the acne scars, and deep-set, flat eyes. He was taller than Ray by six inches and wider across the shoulders and back. Unlike the boy, he'd never lifted a weight when he wasn't paid to do so, and he didn't understand those who did. A hitch in the Marine Corps and hard work had given him his build.

'Let's do it,' said Ray.

Earl smiled a little, looking at those high-heeled boots on his boy's feet. Ray sure did have a thing about his lack of height.

'Somethin' funny?' said Ray.

'Nothin',' said Earl.

Earl picked up a cooler that held a six-pack and looked around the bar and gaming area before he shut down the lights. He was real proud of what they'd done here, him and his boy. The way they had it fixed up, it looked like one of those old-time saloons. The kind they used to have in those towns out west.

Edna Loomis filled the bowl of a bong with pot and dropped a crystal of methamphetamine on top of the load. She stood at the window of the bedroom where she and Ray slept in the house and watched Ray and Earl leave the barn and head for their car, a hopped-up Ford parked between an F-150 pickup and Ray's Shovelhead Harley.

Edna flicked the wheel of a Bic lighter and got fire. She held the flame over the bowl and drew in a hit of ice over grass. Holding in the high, she watched Ray dismantle the top of the car's bumper, then take the heroin out of the day pack and stuff the packets into the space between the bumper and the trunk of the car.

She coughed out the hit, a mushroom of smoke exploding against the glass of the bedroom window.

Ray put a strip of rubber or something over the heroin and replaced the top of the bumper, pounding it into place with the heel of his hand. Earl was facing the wide gravel path that led in from the state road, keeping an eye out for any visitors. The both of them, thought Edna, they were just paranoid as all hell. No one ever came down that road. There was a locked wooden gate at the head of it, anyhow.

Edna was still coughing, thinking of Ray and Earl and their business, and her head started to pound, and for a moment she got a little bit scared. But she knew the pounding was just the rush of the ice hitting her brain, and then she stopped coughing and felt good. Then she felt better than good, suddenly straightened out right. She lit a Virginia Slim from a pack she kept in a leather case, picked up her drink, and sipped at it, trying to make it last.

She went to the TV set on the bureau and turned up the volume. Some white chick with orange hair was up on a stage, sitting next to a big black dude. The white chick was fat and asshole ugly, not surprising, and now some bubble-assed black chick was walking out on the stage and, boy, did she look meaner than a motherfucker, too. Looked like she was about to put a hurtin' on the white chick for sleeping with her old man. And damn if she wasn't throwing a punch at the white chick now… Edna had seen this one, or it could have been that she was just imagining that she had.

She went back to the window and looked down at the yard. Earl and Ray were three-point turning, heading down the gravel and into the trees.