'You want to say that again?' he asked.

'Guys like you are cruel because you got fucked up in toilet training. That's how it works. Go to a psychologist and check it out. It's better than living with skid marks in your underwear.'

The man with crossed eyes started to laugh, then looked at Buchalter's face.

Buchalter was breathing heavily now. His hands were moist with perspiration, poised on my chin and neck. But the indecision, the physical pause, was still there, the means of resolving the insult not quite yet in place.

Then the man with crossed eyes turned in his chair and stared at the side window, whose blinds were drawn. He raised one hand in the air.

'Will, there's somebody outside,' he said.

Buchalter's hands slid away from me. He took the Beretta from his pocket while the man called Chuck peeked out the side of the blinds.

'It's a delivery guy,' he said.

'What do you mean "a delivery guy"?' Buchalter said.

'A fucking delivery guy. With a clipboard and a flashlight. He's coming to the back door.'

'Let him give you what he's got, then get rid of him.'

'Me?'

'Yes, you.'

The man called Chuck went out on the back porch, beyond my angle of vision. Buchalter rested one hand on my shoulder and placed the barrel of the Beretta behind my ear.

'UPS. I got a box for Dave Robicheaux. I guess your doorbell's broke,' a voice said out in the darkness.

I saw Bootsie's eyes fasten on mine.

'Put it on the gallery,' Chuck said.

'It's COD.'

'How much?'

'Eight fifty.'

'Wait a minute.'

The man named Chuck came back into the kitchen, his face filled with consternation.

'I ain't got any money, Will,' he said.

'Here,' Buchalter said, and handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

'What if I got to sign for it?'

'Just scribble on the board. Now, get out there and do it.'

Chuck went back out on the porch. I could see his shadow moving about under the bug-crusted light.

'All right, thanks a lot,' I heard him say. 'Just set it on the gallery. I'll carry it in later.'

'I'll bring it around. It's no trouble.'

'No, man. You don't need to do that.'

'It's going to rain. We're responsible for water damage.'

Chuck came back into the kitchen, the skin around one eye twitching with anxiety.

'Calm down,' Buchalter said. 'Go out front and help the man. Just keep him away from the back.'

'I'm cool, I'm cool.'

'I can see that, all right.'

'I don't need you on my case, Will. This one gets fucked up, I'm going down on a habitual.'

'It's better you not talk anymore, Chuck.'

'You don't get it. I been down four times. I don't need this kind of shit in my life. Now there's this fucking weird guy for UPS. I'm telling you, I don't need this kind of shit, man. I ain't up for it.'

'You're under a strain, Chuck. Wait a minute, what do you mean "weird guy"?'

'He looks like an ape with a UPS cap on its head. Wearing fucking Budweiser shorts. You don't call that weird?'

Buchalter's hand pinched at his mouth. I could feel the heat from his body, smell the mixture of sweat and deodorant secreting under his arms.

'Go out the front door, Chuck,' he said. 'You talk to the man out front. You keep him there. That's your assignment. You understand me?'

'Why me? I don't like this, Will. You want to 'front the guy, you 'front the fucking guy.' Then the skin of Chuck's face drew tight against the bone, stretching his eyebrows like penciled grease marks.

'The sonofabitch is coming around the side again,' he said.

'I'll handle it. You keep these two quiet,' Buchalter said.

'You wouldn't listen to me, man. Now it's turning to shit. I can feel it.'

'Shut up, Chuck. If it goes sour, you make sure Mr. and Mrs. Robicheaux catch the bus,' Buchalter said. 'If he doesn't work for us, he doesn't work for the Jews, either.'

'You want to clip a cop? With our prints all over the place? Are you out of your goddamn mind?'

Buchalter raised his ringers for the cross-eyed man to be silent, then dropped the Beretta into his pants pocket and walked out onto the back porch, with a smile at the corner of his mouth that looked like an elongated keyhole.

Chuck picked up his crossbow and leveled it at my throat. His hands looked round and white and small against the bow's dark metal surfaces. He breathed loudly through his nose and shook a fly out of his face. Large, solitary drops of rain began hitting in the trees outside.

I heard Buchalter open the screen door out on the porch.

'Okay? Is that everything now?' he said.

'I need you to sign.'

'All right.'

'You got a pen? Mine must have fallen off my clipboard.'

'No, I don't. And I'm rather busy right now.'

'Maybe it's in my pocket-'

'Now listen, my friend-'

'Hands on your head, down on your knees, motherfucker! Do it! Now! Don't think about it!'

I heard the weight of two large bodies crash against the wood slats and rake across the tangle of garden tools on the porch; then Buchalter and Clete Purcel fell into the kitchen, and Clete's blue-black.38 revolver skittered across the linoleum.

Buchalter got to his feet first, his flat buttocks pinched together, the change jangling in his slacks, his triangular back rigid with muscle, and drove his right fist into the center of Clete's face. Clete's head snapped sideways with the force of the blow, blood whipping from his nose across his cheek. But he grabbed Buchalter around the legs, locked his wrists behind Buchalter's thighs, and smashed him against the doorjamb.

'Chuck!' Buchalter yelled out, as he tried to get his hand into his pants pocket.

But Chuck had taken his crossbow and gone through the hallway and out the front door like a shot.

Buchalter began swinging both his fists into the top of Clete's head. He wore a large Mexican ring on his right hand, one with a raised, knurled design on it, and each time he swung his right fist down, he twisted the ring with the blow, and I could see gashes bursting like tiny purple flowers in Clete's scalp.

But Clete Purcel was not one who gave up or went down easily. With rivulets of blood draining out of his hair into his eyes, he reached behind him, grasped a three-pronged dirt tiller by the wood handle, and jerked the sharpened tines upward into Buchalter's scrotum.

Buchalter's face went white, his mouth opening wide with a roar that seemed to rise like a rupturing bubble from the bottom of his viscera, as though bone and linkage were being sawed apart inside him. He stumbled sideways, lifting his knees into Clete's face, and crashed through the screen door into the backyard. Then I heard his feet running into the darkness.

Clete pulled himself up by the doorknob and walked like a drunk man into the kitchen, soaked a dish towel under the faucet, and pressed it to the top of his head. He kept widening his eyes and breathing hard through his mouth. His knees were barked, and one sock was pulled down over his ankle.

'Pick up your piece,' I said.

He wiped at his nose and eyes with the towel, then leaned over heavily, holding the towel to his scalp, and closed his hand around his.38.

'The handcuff key is on the dresser in the bedroom,' I said.

He went into the bedroom, came back with the key, and began unlocking the handcuffs. I could feel water dripping out of his hair onto my neck. The handcuffs clattered to the floor. My hands were purple, bloated with lack of circulation, the skin dead to the touch. I opened my pocketknife, cut through the electrician's tape at the back of Bootsie's head, eased it out of her mouth, then began sawing loose the tape on her arms.

'Oh God, Dave,' she said. Her breath came in gasps, as though she had been held underwater for a long time and her lungs were aching for air. 'Oh Lord, God. Oh God, he was going-'