"What?" I had no idea what he was asking about.

He shot me a warning glare. "I told you about making me ask twice about things."

"I'm sorry, I don't-"

"The phone. That little cell you got. Where'd you get it?"

"Denver," I said, struggling to stay in tune with whatever he was talking about. "I bought it in Denver before I came out here."

"What kind of range has it got?"

My jaw tightened. My legs were shaking so much, my knees were almost knocking. I didn't know the answer and I didn't know if that would upset him and I didn't know if I should make something up and-

"They don't let you have cell phones in prison, asshole." Dan had recovered his voice, just in time.

Having found nothing but a wallet, keys, and spare change in Dan's jacket, Little Pete dropped it on the floor, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and, just as his father had last night, rolled a cigarette slowly between his thumb and forefinger before lighting up. He started to move as he smoked, brushing his shoulder along one of the tarps as he paced back and forth. I had a feeling he was trying to figure out what to do next. I wished Big Pete were here to tell him. God knows what he'd come up with on his own.

I unzipped my jacket. Had to. Even though it was cold in the bag room, I was so hot I was going to faint. Dan had both hands clamped against the back of his neck. With his head dropped back, I could see the long red striations beneath the collar of his shirt.

"Are you all right?" I asked him, keeping an eye on Little Pete.

He stared straight down at the floor, looking disgusted, ashamed even, and I remembered what his grandmother had drilled into him, that men were put on this earth to take care of women.

"Dan, he's bigger than both of us put together, he's been drinking, he has a gun, and I don't think he cares if he lives or dies tonight. Do you really think it's a good idea to provoke him?"

Still he didn't reply.

"The goal is to survive," I said. "If you don't care about yourself, do it for me. I don't want to be left alone with him." I looked into his eyes and didn't look away until he nodded.

Little Pete had his own radio clipped to his belt, and every once in a while it would report. He'd cock his ear and listen and check his watch. At one point I heard Kevin calling for me. We all did. It seemed to remind Little Pete that we weren't in a vacuum. After one last deep drag on the cigarette, he dropped it to the cement and stepped on it.

"You two quit your whispering over there," he said, checking his watch again. What was he waiting for?

"Go that way." He pointed toward the tarp-lined passageway, the one that led to the back where Angelo lay. I went first, then Dan. Pete followed. When I got to the opening around the bag belt, it was hard for me even to look at the corpse. Not Little Pete.

"Stand over there where I can watch the two of you, and don't do nothing stupid."

We moved to where he was pointing, to his left, and stood with our backs to the wall. We weren't far from the door to the terminal, the one he'd already blocked somehow.

He walked to the bag belt and bowed his head for a moment of reverential silence over the man he'd just murdered. "Fuckin' Angie," he said, his voice filled with moist emotion. Then he slipped one foot under Angelo's knee and, careful not to disturb anything, launched himself over the belt, over the body, and into the center of the racetrack. He went straight to the far side of the loop and came back with a box, one that rattled. He climbed back over and set the box on a painter's bucket. It was Myers's Rum, a whole case, probably up from the Caribbean duty free and most certainly swiped from some unsuspecting tourist. And it had already been opened. Just what this situation needed-booze.

"Compliments of Angie," he said as he uncorked one of the distinctive, flask-shaped bottles. Then he raised a toast to his victim. "Here's to you, old man." He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and took a long pull. When he finished, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and addressed the corpse again. "You shoulda kept your big, rat-bastard mouth shut."

Dan could contain himself no longer. "What," he sneered, "it's Angie's fault you had to smash his skull in?"

"No, it ain't his fault." Little Pete whipped around and pointed the flask at Dan, and I cringed to think that it could just as easily be a gun as a bottle of rum. "It's your fault."

"My fault?"

"You're the one who called Theresa. You can't even handle the situation man to man. You gotta go and get his wife involved." Pete took another quick hit from the bottle. "He's laying there dead because of you."

"You are the biggest dumbfuck-"

"Hey," I said, mostly to Dan, "can we just calm down, please?"

Little Pete was smug. "He's just pissed off that I'm in charge tonight, that I'm the one calling the shots. Ain't that right, Danny boy?"

"The fact that you're still breathing pisses me off."

Little Pete laughed. "How about you?" he asked me. "Do you want to see me dead, too? Everybody else does."

"I don't want any of us to be dead, including you."

He nodded, smiling faintly. "She's smarter than you, Danny boy. She's smart enough to be scared of me. You should be scared of me, too."

"Why should I-"

"We're both scared of you," I said, cutting Dan off. "And you are in charge tonight. We both see that."

Little Pete narrowed his eyes, suspicious perhaps that someone actually agreed with him. "Let me ask you a question," he said, speaking to me now as if we were old friends. "Don't you think that a man's got a right to protect his name?"

"What name?" Dan snapped. "Dickhead?"

"I'm not talking to you." He turned back to me. "See, that's how I look at this whole thing. It's like self-defense. She knew what was going to happen if she didn't mind her own business. Once she was gonna do what she was gonna do, I didn't have any choice- but she did."

My jaw was trembling and my eyes were burning as I listened to him casually mention that he had killed Ellen. It was horrifying, and more so to hear his justification and to know that he believed it. This man was capable of anything.

"She made the choice herself," he said, "so she did kill herself. The bitch was warned."

It seemed important to him that I believe him, important that someone be on his side, and I'd decided that's what I would do. What I didn't count on was Dan's reaction. When he started toward Little Pete, I grabbed him. The muscle in his forearm was hard as bone.

"What do you think is going to happen here tonight, Pete?" I was talking just to talk, not saying anything, trying to stay in front of Dan and buy us some time.

"You think he even knows? Like this murdering bastard's got some kind of a plan. His pop's not around to do his thinking-"

"Shut the fuck up, asshole."

Yes, Dan, shut the fuck up. Little Pete was drinking more and thinking less. I could hear it in his loosening voice, see it in his dulled reactions, and every time he turned, the gun was there. Dan wasn't much better. His skin was drawn so tight, I thought I could see the muscles underneath, and he was literally vibrating with the effort to stand still. "You are such a worthless piece of crap," he yelled. "Nothing is ever your fault."

"Dan, stop." I was panicked because I knew he wouldn't. I knew exactly what was going to happen and I had no way to stop it.

"It's my fault you had to kill Angie. It's Ellen's fault you had to kill her. Let me ask you something. Whose fault was it that you killed those twenty-one people in the Beechcraft?"

I was almost afraid to look at Little Pete. He was standing perfectly still next to Angelo's body, about eight feet away from us. His long arms hung awkwardly at his sides. A quick lunge would have put him at Dan's throat in an instant. For a second I thought that's exactly what he would do, as he seemed to fight back the urge, squeezing the bottle in his hand instead. He squeezed it until it shook. I noticed that it was empty. When he noticed, he turned and walked to his rum stash, pretending he'd been headed over there anyway. He slipped the empty back in, pulled out another bottle, and uncorked it. "That was Dickie's fault," he said after slamming a third of the bottle back like Gatorade.