And cold as brass tits out here.

He hobbled his feeble butt back inside.

“Hey, Eddie,” Ray said, leaning on his cue stick. “Tell me something.”

“Shoot,” Eddie said, hanging up the phone.

On the word shoot, Tony Briggs missed the seven in the corner and cursed under his breath. They’d started a game of nine ball on the pool table in his uncle’s office.

“You’re sending the kid to Chicago. He’s supposed to deliver stuff. Bring stuff back.”

“That’s right.”

“Both ways, it’s…sensitive. Right?”

“I’d say that ‘sensitive’ sounds accurate.”

Ray looked mystified. “Why let the kid drive a car like that? Out of curiosity.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. He’d wondered that himself. “A Camry. Minivan. Something a little less…”

“Conspicuous?” Eddie said.

Ray touched a finger to his nose. “There you go. Conspicuous.”

Eddie nodded, like it was a reasonable question. He leaned back in the tall chair behind his fancy walnut desk. “Let me ask you something back.”

“Sure.”

“If you were out on patrol and you saw a car like that, how would you respond?”

Ray shrugged. “Depends where I saw it.”

“Suppose you saw it in a questionable part of town.”

“Questionable?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Like Regency,” Tony offered. “Or Country Club. You know, questionable.”

Ray chuckled. “I’d notice it.”

Now Eddie touched a finger to his own nose, mimicking Ray. “You’d notice it. Now, say the car was, I don’t know. Speeding, going too slow, swerving across lanes…I don’t know, Ray. Hell. Say it was doing something wrong. Would you notice it more or less than you’d notice a Camry? Or a minivan?”

“Something less conspicuous,” Tony said.

Ray said, “I’d notice any infraction of the law.”

Tony laughed. Asshole.

Uncle Eddie grinned. “And I feel personally safer knowing you’re out there. But seriously.”

“I’d notice more.”

“You’d notice more,” Eddie said. “Of course you would. Let’s face it, a car like that is a cop magnet. Tony? Am I wrong?”

“A cop magnet,” Tony said. “Sure.”

“Yeah, Eddie,” Ray said. “That was kind of my point.”

“Okay, say you’re not you. Say you’re the guy driving the cop magnet. And you’ve got, I don’t know. Hypothetically.” Eddie raised his hands. “Say you’ve got a dead hooker in the trunk.”

“A dead hooker.”

“Hypothetically,” Tony said.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Eddie said. “Something illegal. You’re driving a conspicuous hot rod and you’re carrying something illegal. How would you feel?”

“Like a dumb asshole,” Ray said. He leaned over and dropped the seven ball with a stiff crack. “But I see where you’re going.”

“You’d feel like a sitting duck, right?” Eddie made a finger gun and pointed it at his own head. “And if you had half a brain—which I thought the kid did, up until now—you’d drive that hot rod like it was exam day at the DMV.” He lowered the gun and started counting off points on the same fingers. “You wouldn’t let your guard down, the way you might if you were driving a Camry. You’d wear your seat belt, you wouldn’t speed, you wouldn’t scratch the tires. You’d make sure you didn’t have so much as a broken taillight, so that a state trooper, or a fine city officer like yourself, would have absolutely no reason to pull you over. If you had half a brain.”

“Which you thought the kid did,” Tony said. He couldn’t help it.

Uncle Eddie sighed. “Which I thought the kid did.”

Tony looked at Ray. Ray shrugged and considered his shot selection.

“The point is, the kid never got where he was supposed to be going,” Eddie said. “I want to know why. More importantly, our friends in Chicago want to know why.”

“Sure,” Ray said.

“You know what? I don’t even give a shit why,” Eddie said. “I just want to find the stupid son of a bitch.”

Tony said, “Well, at least you can look on the bright side.”

“There’s a bright side?”

“Easier to track down a BadGoat than a Camry.”

Looking tired now, Eddie sighed and touched his nose again. Somebody knocked on the office door.

“It’s open.”

A pair of young guys slouched in. Both white, eighteen or twenty. The first kid looked like a bulldog: baggy jeans, FUBU sweatshirt, stocking hat pulled low over his eyes. The second kid looked like a heroin addict or a wannabe rock star, not necessarily one or the other: slight build, stud in his nose, no coat. Tats up and down his arms like sleeves.

The FUBU kid looked toward Tony and Ray at the pool table. No expression. A real tough guy. He said to Eddie, “We can come back.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said. “Troy Mather, Derek Price, this is my nephew Tony. That’s Ray.”

“Hey,” the skinny kid said. He broke away, flopped into the couch in the other corner, and turned on the television.

“Shit, hey,” the FUBU kid said. “You guys are the cops, right?”

Tony leaned against the edge of the table and didn’t say anything. Ray chuckled and kissed the eight ball into the side pocket.

“Troy,” Eddie said, “what did you need?”

“We found some shit out,” Troy Mather said. “Thought you might want to hear.”

Everybody stood around, waiting. Eddie finally said, “Well?”

“She’s in the hospital,” Troy said. “This chick she’s friends with told us.”

“Who’s in the hospital?”

“Gwen. Russ’s girl.”

“Who told you?”

“This chick she’s friends with. LaTonya,” Troy said. “Me and Derek ran into her at this party last night? She sees us and straps on this attitude. Gets all up in our grill about how our friend beat up her friend again and put her in the hospital this time.”

Eddie grabbed a pen. “Which hospital?”

“She wouldn’t say. But there’s that big place right up the street from the store where she works, right? So we called and asked if they had a Gwen Mullen there.”

Eddie scribbled something on a notepad. “And did they have a Gwen Mullen there?”

“Fuckin’-A did,” Troy said. “Still do.”

Tony looked at Ray, raised his eyebrows. Ray listened to Mather. The kid was pleased with himself; he was a genius. It wasn’t bad thinking, Tony Briggs gave him that. For a grunt.

His uncle crossed his arms and sat. In a minute, he looked toward the pool table. “Think you guys could check it out?”

“Hey, Eddie, me and Derek can do it.”

Eddie didn’t respond. He was waiting for an answer from Tony. Tony looked at Ray again. Ray leaned on his stick and said nothing.

Eddie had his answer. He sighed and said, “You’re probably right.”

“Seriously,” Troy Mather said. “We got it covered, boss. No problem.”

Somebody else knocked on the door then. Eddie closed his eyes, rubbed his temples, and said, “Yes?”

Darla, the office manager, stuck her head in. Darla was maybe thirty-eight, dirty blond, kind of sexy in a tapped-out single-mom sort of way. Tony was pretty sure his uncle was doing her. Aunt Joan would sauté his balls.

“Your chain saws are here,” she said.

Eddie nodded. “Thanks.”

As Darla disappeared, Tony said, “Chain saws?”

Eddie grabbed a sheet of paper and held it out. “Taping the TV spot in an hour.”

Tony had wondered why Eddie was decked out in a holiday sweater with reindeer hopping around on it. He stepped over, took the page, and gave it a look.

It was copy of a full-page print ad for the newspaper. Across the top, in shivery blue letters, the ad announced: Hundred-Year Storm Sale!

Tice Is Nice Quality Used and Discount Furniture was slashing prices all across the board. You didn’t want to miss it; you couldn’t even begin to imagine the deals. And if the best prices in town weren’t enough, for a limited time, you’d take home a free fourteen-inch Homelite Bandit with the purchase of any bedroom set or plasma screen television.