I’d bought a toothbrush and some toothpaste and deodorant at the 7-Eleven a block from the hotel. I scrubbed my teeth. I’d forgotten to buy a razor. My stubble was thick and dark.

There was a hard knock on the door. I opened it, and Lou was standing there shirtless with a little syringe sticking out of his upper arm like a stray pub dart. He was red faced, strands of blond hair matted to his forehead. His face was crinkled up like an actor’s in a laxative commercial.

“I need you to push it in, man. Make the juice go in.”

“Are you on the junk?”

“I think I stuck it in a nerve or something. I can’t get my other arm up to push it in.” It was true. He tried to bring his other arm around but it froze up halfway like Frankenstein playing the violin.

“If you’re shooting junk, I swear I’ll fucking put a bullet in your face right now.”

“It’s not dope, man. It’s- It’s part of my muscle building regimen.”

“Steroids.”

“It hurts, man.”

“I hear that stuff shrivels your gonads.”

“Will you just push it in!”

I took hold of the syringe gently and thumbed down the contents.

“Take it out.”

I pulled the syringe out of his arm and dropped it on top of the television.

The arm was his again. He rubbed it, flexed. “Yeah, man. Yeah!” He slapped his muscles, flexed some more and dropped to the floor where he began doing push-ups. “Feel the burn. Ride the burn. Oh, yeah.” It didn’t look like he was going to let up anytime soon.

“Could you shout slogans and sweat in your own room?”

“It’s not even midnight. We got to find Spanklicious.” He kept on with the push-ups.

“That’s a bust. I talked to the girl in the band.”

“Too skinny. No rack.”

“She said the joint they play in burnt down.”

“Burnbabyburnbabyburn- now what?”

“We know where they’re going. Tomorrow night.”

“Back to Gainesville,” said Lou.

“Mudhog Sammy’s.”

This time the phone book was a bust, and Information stuck me for two quarters so I could find out no place called Mudhog Sammy’s existed as far as the phone company was concerned. I parked the Suburban in a pay lot off downtown near the clubs, and Lou and I searched on foot. I didn’t think any of the respectable places would inflict Spanklicious on their customers, but we had to start someplace. Since it was a lazy afternoon, nobody much minded taking a few seconds to talk to us, but nobody was much help either.

Finally, an old black man with trumpet player’s cheeks pointed us in the right direction. “A place just off Main called Underground. Full of kids. Plays that new clank and crank electro-junk. Maybe that the place. Maybe not. No telling. All them bands look alike. Sound alike. Ask somebody over there.”

“Thanks.” I pulled a wad of bills from my pants pocket. “Let me take care of you.”

“Thanks, no. Just remember where to come back to when you want to hear something good. We got Diesel Joe Jarvis on the ivories tonight.”

“We’ll keep it in mind.”

We found the Underground just off Main down at the rotten end with the homo bars, but it was closed. A sign said they wouldn’t open until ten and advertised a band called the Bone Destroyers. We stood on the sidewalk with our hands in our pockets.

“Okay, New Guy,” I said. “How do we find these guys?”

“I don’t know, but I’m getting hungry.”

“Later.”

“I’m telling you, man, I get cranky if I don’t eat on some kind of regular schedule. I’ve got to keep my carb level at a certain-”

I tuned him out. Across the street, three dirty teenagers sat on the curb, panhandling the pedestrians. The two girls looked like the might have been pretty under their layers of street grime. The guy had half of his head shaved, and the other half was a green mop, tattoos up and down his arms. He leaned back on his elbows letting the girls do the work.

“Shut up about food,” I said to Lou. “Follow me.”

I walked up to the kids as I fished the wad of bills out of my pocket again. I peeled off a single and handed it to the first girl. Lou made a noise behind me like I was the dumbest thing on legs.

“God bless you, sir.” That must’ve been what she figured generous people wanted to hear. She made the dollar disappear into her sweater, but kept looking at me, expectant. She knew there was more to it. Smart kid.

I took out a five, held it where they could see it. The other girl paid attention too. The guy still acted like it was none of his business.

“A band called Spanklicious,” I said. “Ever heard of them?”

The girls looked at each other. Then the guy said, “They don’t play the Underground.” He looked away again like that was all I needed to know.

The one girl shrunk into her sweater. The other one was a little older, blond hair tucked up under a Gators ball cap, ring in her nose, another in her left eyebrow. She eyed the five in my hand and tried to turn the guy’s comment into useful information. “They wouldn’t play downtown. No place around here.”

“Where?”

A shrug.

“You know a place called Mudhog Sammy’s?”

“No.”

I gave her the five and said thanks. Lou started in on me as we walked away.

“Might as well of flushed the six bucks down the toilet.”

“I didn’t see you coming up with any brilliant ideas,” I said.

A voice chased after us as we turned the corner. “Hey, mister.”

We looked back. It was the girl in the oversized sweater. She jogged up to us, stopped, looked at us hard for a second. “Are you two cops?”

“No.”

“If I ask straight out and you’re cops, you have to say so, or it’s like entrapment or something, right?”

“Sure.”

“I know some more about the Mudhog and the band.”

“Tell us.”

“I want some money. More than five.”

I took the bills out, showed her a picture of Andrew Jackson.

“More.”

“How ’bout I squeeze it out of her?” said Lou.

That didn’t scare her. She just looked at me.

“Let’s hear what you have,” I said. “I’ll decide what it’s worth.”

“The Mudhog’s out on the Prairie, back in the woods before it gets too swampy. It not like an official kind of place, you know? It was like this old house, and then kids started hanging around a lot. Then some people just sort of set up shop and sold beer but didn’t card anyone, and you can usually score some smoke or whatever you want. Maybe on a Saturday night there’ll be a couple of hundred kids.”

“Keep going. What about the band?”

“They’ll be there tonight, but they don’t just play. They also deal from the back of their van. I’ve scored from them a few times.”

“How do we know this ain’t just a pretty story, so you can tap us for a few bucks?” asked Lou. He said to me, “She saw that wad of dough you had, man. Maybe she figured you looked gullible.”

She pushed up the sleeve of her sweater and turned her arm over to show us the tracks. Some of the needle marks looked fairly old. “I get high out there off and on when I can get a ride. That’s why I asked if you were cops. I could get in the shit talking to cops.”

“What did the van look like?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Think.”

“Not like a new mini-van. Bigger. Blue. Dark blue. But you can’t miss it. It’s got like a really shitty airbrush job of a moon and stars kind of night sky picture on the side.”

“Probably has Orange County plates,” said Lou.

“Ford or Chevy or what?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Can I have the money?”

“No. I want directions.”

“I told you Paynes Prairie.”

“I want a map. You draw it.” Lou had a pen, and I ripped down a lost dog sign from a telephone pole. She drew a map on the back.

“That’s the worst map I’ve ever seen,” said Lou.

“Label the roads.”

“I did,” she said.

“That one.”