Leonard scowled at me.

“What’s Leonard’s capacity here?”

“He’s bodyguard.” Cody slapped my cheek, not too hard, but not too gently, either. “After you and your friend came to visit that time, I thought I might need some protection.”

“And the WWF was having a yard sale?” I asked.

Leonard leaned over the counter and the muscles in his forearm flexed. “Keep talking, bitch. Just-”

Cody waved him off. “So where is your friend, Pat? The big dumb one who likes to hit people with tennis rackets.”

I tried to tilt my head in the direction of the front of the house, but it hurt too much and the nausea kicked in double-time.

“Out on the street, Cody.”

Cody shook his head. “No, no. We took a walk while you slept this off. There’s no one out there.”

“You sure?”

A wisp of doubt flickered in his eyes, then vanished. “He’d have come crashing through here by now, I think.”

“When he does, Cody, what are you going to do?”

Cody pulled a.38 from his waistband, waved it in my face. “Shoot him, of course.”

“Sure,” I said, “make him mad.”

Cody chuckled, then shoved the gun barrel up against my left nostril. “Ever since you humiliated me, Pat, I’ve dreamed of something like this. Gives me a hard-on, to tell you the truth. What do you think of that?”

“I think your erogenous zones need rewiring.”

He pulled back on the hammer with his thumb, dug harder into my nostril.

“So, you going to kill me now, Cody?”

He shrugged. “I gotta be honest, I thought I’d killed you up in the bathroom. I’ve never knocked someone out before. I’ve never even tried.”

“Beginner’s luck, then. Kudos.”

He smiled, slapped my face again. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, both Codys had returned, the transparent one just to the right of the real one.

“Mr. Falk,” Leonard said.

“Hmm?” He peered at something on the side of my head.

“This is bad news. Either call the police, or we take him someplace and do him.”

Cody nodded, then leaned in to take a closer look at the side of my head. “You’re bleeding pretty bad.”

“From the temple?”

He shook his head. “More the ear.”

I noticed a distant, high-pitched hum in there for the first time. “Inner or outer?”

“Both.”

“Well, you did take a few good swings.”

He seemed pleased. “Thanks. I wanted to make sure I did it right.”

He took the gun barrel out of my nostril and sat back on the floor in front of me, kept the.38 pointed at the center of my face.

As I watched, the idea grew in his brain, and an icy realization billowed in his eyes and sucked the heat out of the room.

I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“What if we really did kill him?” Cody asked Leonard.

Leonard’s eyes widened and he put the towel filled with ice down on the counter in front of him.

“Well…”

“You’d expect a bonus, of course,” Cody said.

“Mr. Falk, sure, yeah, but we’d need to really think this through.”

“How so?” Cody winked at me from the other side of the gun hammer. “We have his wallet and keys. That’s his Porsche parked in front of the Lowensteins’. We pull the car into the garage, dump him in the trunk, and then drive him somewhere.” He leaned forward, grazed the gun barrel across my lips. “And shoot-no, stab him to death.”

Leonard’s wide eyes met my own.

“You know, Leonard,” I said, “you ‘do’ me. Just like in the movies.”

Cody reached out and slapped me again. It was starting to get annoying.

“Killing someone,” Leonard managed, “is not something you just decide to do, Mr. Falk.”

“Why’s that?”

“It, ahm…well-”

“It’s not easy,” I said to Cody. “There’s always things you forget.”

“Such as?” Cody seemed only mildly curious.

“Such as who knows I’m here. Who would figure out I was here, in either case. Who would come looking for you.”

Cody laughed. “And, lemme see if I remember this-‘burn down my restaurants and paralyze my dumb fucking ass’? Is that right?”

“For starters.”

Cody gave it some thought. He leaned his head against the butcher block and his lids fell to half-mast and he watched me with a burgeoning excitement. He seemed giddy, like a twelve-year-old at his first peep show.

“I really like this idea,” he said.

“Great, Cody.” I gave him an emphatic nod. “I’m happy for you.”

He opened his eyes wide and leaned in close to me. I could smell the bitter mixture of coffee and toothpaste on his breath.

“I can already hear you screaming.” A slim tongue flicked up to the cut on his lip. “You’re on your back and it’s arched and I stab you in the chest.” He sliced a clenched fist through the air. “And I pull the knife back out and I stab you a second time.” His eyes glistened. “And then a third. A fourth. You’re screaming your head off and the blood’s popping up in spurts from your chest, and I just keep stabbing.” He sliced the air several more times, his mouth broadening into a rictus grin.

“No way…” Leonard said, and then his throat dried up. He swallowed several times. “Mr. Falk? No way, if we’re going to do this, we can get him out of here until nightfall. That’s, like, a long time away.”

Cody kept his eyes on me, studying me the way you’d study an ant trying to carry away your napkin at a picnic. “We move him out through the garage, put him in the trunk of his car.”

“And then what?” Leonard said. His eyes flashed my way, then back to Cody. “We drive him around all day? In a ’63 Porsche? Sir? We can’t do him in the daylight. It won’t work.”

Cody got a look on his face like it was Christmas Eve and he’d just been told he couldn’t open his presents until morning. He turned his head and looked back at Leonard. “Are you going gutless, Leonard?”

“No, Mr. Falk. Just trying to help here.”

Cody looked at the clock on the wall above my head. He looked out at his backyard. He looked at me. Then he slammed his palm on the floor several times and screamed, “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!”

He dropped to his knees and kicked out the cabinet door below the butcher block.

He reared forward like an animal, the tendons stretched on his neck, and screwed his face up into mine until the tips of our noses touched.

“You,” he said, “are going to die. You understand, prick?”

I didn’t say anything.

Cody butted his forehead into mine. “I asked if you understood.”

I gave him a flat and bloodless glare.

He butted his forehead into mine a second time.

I bit down against the sharp stabs of pain filling the front of my skull and still said nothing.

Cody slapped my face and then scrambled to his feet. “What if we kill him right here? Right now?”

Leonard held out his huge hands. “Evidence, Mr. Falk. Evidence. Let’s say one person knew or even suspects he was coming here and then he turns up dead. A forensics team, right? They’ll find pieces of him in places you never thought they’d go. Cracks in the running boards you didn’t even know existed will have chunks of his skull in it.”

Cody leaned against the butcher block. He ran his palm over his mouth several times and breathed heavily through his nostrils.

Eventually, he said, “So we keep him here till dark. That’s your advice.”

Leonard nodded. “Yeah, sir.”

“And then take him where?”

Leonard shrugged. “I know a dump in Medford will do the trick.”

“A dump?” Cody said. “Like someone’s shitty apartment? Or an honest-to-God dump?”

“An honest-to-God dump.”

Cody gave it a lot of thought. He circled the butcher block a few times. He ran some water in the sink, but instead of running his hand through it and wiping his face, he just leaned over and sniffed it for a while. He stretched until the muscles in his lower back cracked. He looked at me several times and chewed his inner cheek.

“All right,” he said eventually. “I can live with this.” He smiled at Leonard. “But it’s cool, isn’t it?”