The door burst open behind me. The big guy came out. He had a couple of locals with him. Both looked like farmers. We all stepped into a pool of yellow light from a fixture on a pole. We all faced each other. Our breath turned to vapor in the air. Nobody spoke. No preamble was required. I guessed that parking lot had seen plenty of fights. I guessed this one would be no different from all the others. It would finish up just the same, with a winner and a loser.

I slipped out of my jacket and hung it on the nearest car’s door mirror. It was a ten-year-old Plymouth, good paint, good chrome. An enthusiast’s ride. I saw the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to come out into the lot. He looked at me for a second and then stepped away into the shadows and stood with his men by the cars. I took my watch off and turned away and dropped it in my jacket pocket. Then I turned back. Studied my opponent. I wanted to mess him up bad. I wanted Sin to know I had stood up for her. But there was no percentage in going for his face. That was already messed up bad. I couldn’t make it much worse. And I wanted to put him out of action for a spell. I didn’t want him coming around and taking his frustration out on the girls, just because he couldn’t get back at me.

He was barrel-chested and overweight, so I figured I might not have to use my hands at all. Except on the farmers, maybe, if they piled in. Which I hoped wouldn’t happen. No need to start a big conflict. On the other hand, it was their call. Everybody has a choice in life. They could hang back, or they could choose up sides.

I was maybe seven inches taller than the guy with the face, but maybe seventy pounds lighter. And ten years younger. I watched him run the numbers. Watched him conclude that on balance he would be OK. I guessed he figured himself for a real junkyard dog. Figured me for an upstanding representative of Uncle Sam. Maybe the Class As made him think I was going to act like an officer and a gentleman. Somewhat proper, somewhat inhibited.

His mistake.

He came at me, swinging. Big chest, short arms, not much reach at all. I arched around the punch and let him skitter away. He came back at me. I swatted his hand away and tapped him in the face with my elbow. Not hard. I just wanted to stop his momentum and get him standing still right in front of me, just for a moment.

He put all his weight on his back foot and lined up a straight drive aimed for my face. It was going to be a big blow. It would have hurt me if it had landed. But before he let it go I stepped in and smashed my right heel into his right kneecap. The knee is a fragile joint. Ask any athlete. This guy had three hundred pounds bearing down on it and he got two hundred thirty driving straight through it. His patella shattered and his leg folded backward. Exactly like a regular knee joint, but in reverse. He went down forward and the top of his boot came up to meet the front of his thigh. He screamed, real loud. I stepped back and smiled. He shoots, he scores.

I stepped back in and looked at the guy’s knee, carefully. It was messed up, but good. Broken bone, ripped ligaments, torn cartilage. I thought about kicking it again, but I really didn’t need to. He was in line for a visit to the cane store, as soon as they let him out of the orthopedic ward. He was going to be choosing a lifetime supply. Wood, aluminum, short, long, his pick.

“I’ll come back and do the other one,” I said. “If anything happens that I don’t want to happen.”

I don’t think he heard me. He was writhing around in an oily puddle, panting and whimpering, trying to get his knee in a position where it would stop killing him. He was shit out of luck there. He was going to have to wait for surgery.

The farmers were busy choosing up sides. Both of them were pretty dumb. But one of them was dumber than the other. Slower. He was flexing his big red hands. I stepped in and headbutted him full in the face, to help with the decision-making process. He went down, head-to-toe with the big guy, and his pal beat a fast retreat behind the nearest pickup truck. I lifted my jacket off the Plymouth ’s door mirror and shrugged back into it. Took my watch out of my pocket. Strapped it back on my wrist. The soldiers drank their beer and looked at me, nothing in their faces. They were neither pleased nor disappointed. They had invested nothing in the outcome. Whether it was me or the other guys on the ground was all the same to them.

I saw Lieutenant Summer on the fringe of the crowd. Threaded my way through cars and people toward her. She looked tense. She was breathing hard. I guessed she had been watching. I guessed she had been ready to jump in and help me out.

“What happened?” she said.

“The fat guy hit a woman who was asking questions for me. His pal didn’t run away fast enough.”

She glanced at them and then back at me. “What did the woman say?”

“She said nobody had a problem last night.”

“The kid in the motel still denies there was a hooker with Kramer. He’s pretty definite about it.”

I heard Sin say: You got me slapped for nothing. Bastard.

“So what made him go looking in the room?”

Summer made a face. “That was my big question, obviously.”

“Did he have an answer?”

“Not at first. Then he said it was because he heard a vehicle leaving in a hurry.”

“What vehicle?”

“He said it was a big engine, revving hard, taking off fast, like a panic situation.”

“Did he see it?”

Summer just shook her head.

“Makes no sense,” I said. “A vehicle implies a call girl, and I doubt if they have many call girls here. And why would Kramer need a call girl anyway, with all those other hookers right here in the bar?”

Summer was still shaking her head. “The kid says the vehicle had a very distinctive sound. Very loud. And diesel, not gasoline. He says he heard the exact same sound again a little later on.”

“When?”

“When you left in your Humvee.”

“What?”

Summer looked right at me. “He says he checked Kramer’s room because he heard a military vehicle peeling out of the lot in a panic.”

We went back across the road to the motel and made the kid tell the story all over again. He was surly and he wasn’t talkative, but he made a good witness. Unhelpful people often do. They’re not trying to please you. They’re not trying to impress you. They’re not making all kinds of stuff up, trying to tell you what you want to hear.

He said he was sitting in the office, alone, doing nothing, and at about eleven twenty-five in the evening he heard a vehicle door slam and then a big turbodiesel start up. He described sounds that must have been a gearbox slamming into reverse and a four-wheel-drive transfer case locking up. Then there was tire noise and engine noise and gravel noise and something very large and heavy sped away in a big hurry. He said he got off his stool and went outside to look. Didn’t see the vehicle.

“Why did you check the room?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I thought maybe it was on fire.”

“On fire?”

“People do stuff like that, in a place like this. They set the room on fire. And then hightail out. For kicks. Or something. I don’t know. It was unusual.”

“How did you know which room to check?”

He went very quiet at that point. Summer pressed him for an answer. Then I did. We did the good cop, bad cop thing. Eventually he admitted it was the only room rented for the whole night. All the others were renting by the hour, and were being serviced by foot traffic from across the street, not by vehicles. He said that was how he had been so sure there was never a hooker in Kramer’s room. It was his responsibility to check them in and out. He took the money and issued the keys. Kept track of the comings and the goings. So he always knew for sure who was where. It was a part of his function. A part he was supposed to keep very quiet about.